Lalage's Lovers Part 6

Carpy cannot be the real name of the lady who teaches Latin to Lalage and Greek to the awful girl. I have tried to reconstruct her name from its corruption, but have hitherto failed to satisfy myself. She may be a Miss Chartres. Perhaps she is the purple-gowned woman who hustled, pushed, herded and slung Lalage on the day of her arrival. She cannot, in any case, be identified with the mathematician who uses red ink. No ingenuity in nicknaming could extract Carpy from Campbell.

There was, in spite of its great length, a postscript to Lalage's letter. There was also an enclosure.

"P.S. What does 'flippant' mean? The old Pet said my comp. was flippant, and I don't know what that is. It was my first comp."

I unfolded the "comp." and read it carefully:

Composition on Politeness by Lalage Beresford

Politeness is a very difficult art to acquire. It is altogether an acquired art, for no one is polite when he is born. Some sorts of politeness are sensible and they are comparatively easy to learn.

Begging a person's pardon when we tread on their toes is polite and is a reasonable thing to do. But there are many silly things to learn before we become really polite. For instance, a boy must learn to open the door for ladies and walk after them always. This does the ladies no good and is sometimes very inconvenient for the boy. He may be in a hurry. It is not polite for a girl to sit with her legs crossed and her head leaning aback on her hands. This is a position which does no one any harm, so it is absurd that it should be considered unpolite. In old days politeness was carried to much greater extremities than it is now. In the days when they used to fight duels, when two gentlemen felt really annoyed, instead of one of them saying to the other, "Go and get your sword and let me kill you," and the other replying, "All right, I shall be delighted to kill a man whom I detest," they demanded "satisfaction"

of each other in most polite tones and parted with low bows and polite, though sneering, smiles. Politeness is a very good thing in moderation, but not if carried too far.

Skeat traces the word "flippant" back through "flip" and the old Northumbrian present participle ending "an" to the Icelandic "fleipa,"

which means to prattle--I found this out in a dictionary and copied it down for Lalage. Miss Pettigrew was not, I think, justified in applying the word, supposing that she used it in its strict etymological sense, to Lalage's composition. There was more in the essay than mere prattle.

But Miss Pettigrew may have had reasons of her own, reasons which I can only guess, for wishing to depreciate this particular essay. It is quite possible that she was herself the person who told Lalage that it is rude for a girl to sit with her lees crossed. My mother, to whom I showed the composition when I consulted her about the probable meaning of flippant, refused to entertain this suggestion. She knows Miss Pettigrew and does not think she is the kind of person who would attach excessive importance to the position of Lalage's legs. She thinks that the maxim referred to by Lalage--there evidently was a maxim in her mind when she wrote--must have fallen from the lips of Miss Campbell, the mathematician, Carpy, or the purple-gowned woman. If she is right, I can only suppose that Miss Pettigrew in using the word flippant meant to support the authority of her subordinates and to snub Lalage for attempting to rebel against time-honoured tradition.

I walked across to the rectory after luncheon, intending to show my letter and the composition on politeness to the Canon. I found him seriously upset. He had received a letter from Lalage, and he had also enjoyed a visit from the Archdeacon. He was ill-advised in showing the letter to the Archdeacon. I should have had more sense. I suppose he thought that, dealing as it did almost entirely with religious subjects, it was likely to interest the Archdeacon. It did interest him. It interested him excessively, to an extent which occasioned a good deal of trouble.

"Dear Father: I have read nearly the whole of the 'Earthly Paradise'

since I came here. It is an awfully jolly book. ('Little Folks' is Miss Campbell's idea of literature for the young; but that's all rot of course.) Who wrote the Litany? If you do not know please ask the Archdeacon when you see him. I've come to the conclusion that some of it is very well written."

"I did ask the Archdeacon," said the Canon, looking up from the letter, "and he said he'd hunt up the point when he went home."

"Lalage," I said, "has quite a remarkable feeling for style. See the way she writes about the 'Earthly Paradise.' It must be the way you brought her up on quotations from Horace. Miss Campbell hardly appreciates her, I'm afraid. But of course you can't expect a mathematician to rise much above 'Little Folks' in the way of literature. I suppose the Archdeacon was greatly pleased with that conundrum about the Litany."

"It was what followed," said the Canon, "which excited him."

He began to read again:

"There is a clergyman who comes once a week to give us a scripture lesson. He is only a curate and looks very shy. We had a most exciting time with him yesterday. We all shied paper wads, and he moved nearly every one up and sent one girl out of the room."

"He can't," I said, "have been as shy as he looked. But I'm beginning to understand why the Archdeacon was shocked."

"He didn't mind that," said the Canon; "at least not much."

Lalage's letter went on:

"I was glad, that it wasn't me, who was just as bad, that he didn't what he calls 'make an example of.' Even that didn't calm the excited cla.s.s and he said, 'Next person who laughs will be reported to Miss Pettigrew.' It was not me, but the girl next me, Eileen Fraser. I was the innocent cause of the offence. (A mere wink at Hilda when I had my belt round her neck.) She was not, however, reported, even to Carpy."

"By the way," I said, "who is Carpy? She comes into my letter too."

The Canon did not know and seemed uninterested in the point. He went on reading:

"Another day he committed an unforgivable offence. He said to us, 'You must stand up when quoting the words of the Bible.'"

"Isn't that always considered essential?" I asked. "The unforgivable offence," said the Canon, "is in the next sentence."

"But _he_ sat with his feet on the fender, the pig. I do hate that sort. Even when Hilda said that Ananias told a lie and was turned into a pillar of salt he did not laugh. He said he'd turn one girl out of the room to-day for nothing but dropping her pen."

"The Archdeacon," I said, "could of course sympathize with that curate."

"It wasn't that which made him really angry," said the Canon, "although he didn't like it."

"There must be something pretty bad coming, if it's worse than that."

The Canon sighed heavily and went on reading

"Hilda taught me the two-step at rec. Another girl (also in my cla.s.s and jolly nice) played them."

The Canon looked up with a puzzled expression. I explained as well as I could.

"The two-step," I said, "is a dance. What the jolly, nice girl played is a little obscure, but I think it must have been tunes suitable to the performance of the two-step. 'Rec.' is a shortened form of recreation.

Lalage is fond of these contractions. She writes to me about her comp."

The canon read: "On the other days, the old Pet takes us herself at Scrip: We were at Genesis, and she read out, 'In the beginning G.o.d created the heaven, and the earth.' 'But of course you all know He didn't. Modern science teaches us----' Then she went on with a lot of rot about gases and forces and nebulous things."

"The Archdeacon," said the Canon, "is going to write to the Archbishop of Dublin about it. He says that kind of teaching ought not to be allowed."

"We must head him off somehow," I said, "if he really means it. But he hardly can. I don't expect he'll run into extremes. He certainly won't without taking advice. The Archdeacon isn't a man to do anything definite in a hurry. He's told me over and over again that he deprecates precipitancy of action."

"He feels very strongly about the Higher Criticism. Very strongly indeed. He says it's poisoning the wells of religion in the home."

"Last time he lunched with us he said it was sapping the foundations.

Still I scarcely think he'll want to inst.i.tute a heresy prosecution against Miss Pettigrew."

"I'm very much afraid--he seemed most determined----"

"We must switch him off on to some other track," I said. "If you funk tackling him----"

"I did my best."

"I suppose that I'd better try him. It's a nuisance. I hate arguing with archdeacons; but of course we can't have Lalage put into a witness box and ballyragged by archbishops and people of that kind, and she'd be the only available witness. Hilda can't be in a position to give a clear account of what happened, considering that she was half strangled by Lalage's belt at the time."

"It was at the curate's cla.s.s that the belt incident occurred," said the Canon, "just after they had been throwing paper wads."

"So it was. All the same I don't think Hilda would be much use as a witness. The memory of that choking would be constantly with her and would render every scripture lesson a confused nightmare for months afterward. The other girls would probably lose their heads. It's all well enough to pelt curates with paper wads. Any one could do that. It's quite a different thing to stand up before an ecclesiastical court and answer a string of questions about nebulous things. That Archbishop will find himself relying entirely on Lalage to prove the Archdeacon's case, which won't be a nice position for her. I'll go home now and drive over at once to see the Archdeacon."

"Do," said the Canon. "I'd go with you only I hate this kind of fuss.

Some men like it. The Archdeacon, for instance. Curious, isn't it, how differently we're made, though we all look very much alike from the outside. 'Sunt quos c.u.mculo----'" I did not wait to hear the end of the quotation.

I approached the Archdeacon hopefully, relying, I confess, less on the intrinsic weight of the arguments I meant to use than on the respect which I knew the Archdeacon entertained for my position in the county.

My mother is the sister of the present Lord Thormanby, a fact which by itself predisposes the Archdeacon in my favour. My father was a distinguished soldier. My grandfather was a still more distinguished soldier, and there are pictures of his most successful battle hanging in my dining-room. The Archdeacon has often seen them and I am sure appreciates them. I am also, for an Irish landlord, a well-off man. I might, so I believed, have trusted entirely to these facts to persuade the Archdeacon to give up the idea of communicating Miss Pettigrew's lapse into heterodoxy to the Archbishop. But I worked out a couple of sound arguments as well, and I was greatly surprised to find that I produced no effect whatever on the Archdeacon. He bluntly refused to modify his plan of action.

I quoted to him the proverb which warns us to let sleeping dogs lie.

Under any ordinary circ.u.mstances this would have appealed strongly to the Archdeacon. It was just the kind of wisdom by which he guides his life. I was taken aback when he replied that Miss Petti-grew, so far from being a sleeping dog, was a roaring lion. A moment later he called her a ravenous evening wolf; so I gave up my proverb as useless. I then reminded him that Lalage was evidently quite unaffected by the teaching which she received, had in fact described modern science as a lot of rot. The Archdeacon replied that, though Lalage escaped, others might be affected; and that he was not quite sure even about Lalage, because insidious poisons are most to be feared when they lie dormant in the system for a time.

This brought me to the end of my two arguments and I had to invent another on the spot. I am always rather ashamed to think of the one I actually used, but I was driven against the wall and the position seemed almost desperate. I suggested that Lalage's account of the scripture lesson was in all probability quite unreliable.