Six to Sixteen Part 11

Another reason, I am sure, for Matilda's dislike to appearing in company was a painful sense of her personal appearance; and as she had heard Aunt Theresa and her friends discuss, approve, and condemn their friends by the standard of appearances alone, ever since she was old enough to overhear company conversation, I hardly think she was much to blame on this point.

Matilda was emphatically at what is called "an awkward age"; an age more awkward with some girls than with others. I wish grown-up ladies, who mean to be kind to their friends' daughters, would try to remember the awkwardness of it, and not increase a naturally uncomfortable self-consciousness by personal remarks which might disturb the composure of older, prettier, and better-dressed people. It is bad enough to be quite well aware that the size of one's hands and feet prematurely foreshadow the future growth of one's figure; that these are the more prominent because the simple dresses of the unintroduced young lady seem to be perpetually receding from one's bony-wrists above, and shrinking towards the calves of one's legs below, from those thin ankles on which one is impelled to stand by turns (like a sleeping stork) through some mysterious instinct of relieving the weak and overgrown spine.

This, I say, is mortifying enough, and if modesty and good breeding carry us cheerfully through a not unfelt contrast with the a.s.sured manners and flowing draperies of Mamma's lady friends in the drawing-room, they might spare us the announcement of what it hardly needs gold eyegla.s.ses to discover--that we really grow every day.

Blushes come heavily enough to hands and cheeks when to the shyness of youth are added the glows and chills of imperfect circulation: it does not need the stare of strangers, nor the apologies of Mamma, to stain our doubtful complexions with a deeper red.

All girls are not awkward at the awkward age. I speak most disinterestedly on Matilda's behalf, for I never went through this phase myself. It is perhaps because I am small that I can never remember my hands, or any other part of me, feeling in my way; and my clothes--of whatever length, breadth, or fashion--always had a happy knack of becoming one with me in such wise that I could comfortably forget them.

The St. Quentin girls were nearer to Matilda's age than I, but they too were very happy and looked very nice in the hobble-de-hoy stage of girlhood. I am sure that they much preferred the company of their young brothers to the company of the drawing-room; but they did what they were told to do, and seemed happy in doing it. They had, however, several advantages over Matilda. By judicious care (for they were not naturally robust) they were kept in good health. They kept a great many pets, and they always seemed to have plenty to do, which perhaps kept them from worrying about themselves. Adelaide, for instance, did all the flowers for the drawing-room and dinner-table. Mrs. St. Quentin said she could not do them so well herself. They had a very small garden to pick from, but Adelaide used lots of wild-flowers and gra.s.s and ferns. She often let me help her to fill the china jars, and she was the only person who ever seemed to like hearing about Grandpapa's paintings. They all did something in the house. But I believe that their greatest advantage over poor Matilda was that they had not been accustomed to hear dress and appearance talked about as matters of the first importance, so that whatever defects they felt conscious of in either did not weigh too heavily on their minds.

On poor Matilda's they weighed heavily indeed. And she was not only troubled by that consciousness of being plain, by which I think quite as many girls are affected as by the vanity of being pretty (and which has received far less attention from moralists); she was also tormented by certain purely nervous fancies of her face being swollen, her eyes squinting, and her throat choking, when people looked at her, which were due to ill-health.

Unhappily, the ill-health which was a good excuse for Matilda's unwillingness to "play pretty" in the drawing-room was the subject on which she was more perverse than any other. It was a great pity that she was not frank and confiding with her mother. The detestable trick of small concealments which Miss Perry had taught us was partly answerable for this; but the fault was not entirely Matilda's.

Aunt Theresa had not time to attend to her. What attention she did give, however, made her so anxious on the subject that she took counsel with every lady of her acquaintance, and the more she talked about poor Matilda's condition the less leisure she had to think about it.

"It may be more mind than body, I'm afraid," said Aunt Theresa one afternoon, on our return from some visiting in which Matilda had refused to share. "Mrs. Minchin says she knew a girl who went out of her senses when she was only two years older than Matilda, and it began with her refusing to go anywhere or see any one."

Major Buller turned round on his chair with an anxious face, and a beetle transfixed by a needle in his hand.

"It was a very shocking thing," continued Aunt Theresa, taking off her bonnet; "for she had a great-uncle in Hanwell, and her grandfather cut his throat. I suppose it was in the family."

Major Buller turned back again, and pinned the beetle by its proper label.

"I suppose it was," said he dryly; "but as there is no insanity in my family or in yours that I'm aware of, Mrs. Minchin's case is not much to the point."

"Mrs. O'Connor won't believe she's ill," sighed Aunt Theresa; "_she_ thinks it's all temper. She says her own temper was unbearable till she had it knocked out of her at school."

"Matilda's temper was good enough till lately," growled the Major.

"She says Dr. O'Connor's brother, who is the medical officer of a lunatic asylum somewhere in Tipperary," continued Aunt Theresa, "declares all mad women go out of their minds through ill-temper. He's written a book about it."

"Heaven defend me, mind and body, from the theories of that astute pract.i.tioner!" said Uncle Buller piously.

"It's all very well making fun of it, but everybody tells one that girls are more trouble than any number of boys. I'm sure I don't remember giving my mother any particular trouble when I was Matilda's age, but the stories I've heard to-day are enough to make one's hair stand on end. Mrs. Minchin knew another girl, who lost all her appet.i.te just like Matilda, and she had a very sulky temper too, and at last they found out she used to eat black-beetles. She was a Creole, or something of that sort, I believe, but they couldn't stop her. The Minchins knew her when they were in the West Indies, when he was in the 209th; or, at least, it was there they heard about her. The houses swarmed with black-beetles."

"A most useful young lady," said Uncle Buller. "Does Matilda dine on our native beetles, my dear? She hasn't touched my humble collection."

"Oh, if you make fun of everything----" Aunt Theresa began; but at this moment Mrs. St. John was announced.

After the customary civilities, Aunt Theresa soon began to talk of poor Matilda, and Mrs. St. John entered warmly into the subject.

To do the ladies of the regiment justice, they sympathized freely with each other's domestic troubles; and indeed it was not for lack of taking counsel that any of them had any domestic troubles at all.

"Girls are a good deal more difficult to manage than boys, I'm afraid,"

sighed Aunt Theresa, repeating Mrs. O'Connor's _dictum_.

"Women are _dreadful_ creatures at any age," said Mrs. St. John to the Major, opening her brown eyes in the way she always does when she is talking to a gentleman. "I always _longed_ to have been a man."

[Eleanor says she hates to hear girls say they wish they were boys. If they do wish it, I do not myself see why they should not say so. But one thing has always struck me as very odd. If you meet a woman who is incomparably silly, who does not know an art or a trade by which she could keep herself from starvation, who could not manage the account-books of a village shop, who is unpunctual, unreasoning, and in every respect uneducated--a woman, in short, who has, one would think, daily reason to be thankful that her necessities are supplied by other people, she is pretty sure to be always regretting that she is not a man.

Another, trick that some silly ladies have _riles_ me (as we say in Yorkshire) far more than this odd ambition for responsibilities one is quite incompetent to a.s.sume. Mrs. St. John had it, and as it was generally displayed for the benefit of gentlemen, who seem as a rule to be very susceptible to flattery, I suppose it is more a kind of drawing-room "pretty talk" than the expression of deliberate opinions.

It consists of contrasting girls with boys and women with men, to the disparagement of the former, especially in matters over which circ.u.mstances and natural disposition are commonly supposed to give them some advantage.

I remember hearing a fat, good-natured girl at one of Aunt Theresa's garden-parties say, with all the impressiveness of full conviction, "Girls are far more cruel than boys, really. You know, women are _much_ more cruel than men--oh, I'm _sure_ they are!" and the idea filled me not less with amazement than with horror. This very young lady had been most good-natured to us. She had the reputation of being an unselfish and much-beloved elder sister. I do not think she would have hurt a fly.

Why she said this I cannot imagine, unless it was to please the young gentleman she was talking to. I think he did look rather gratified. For my own part, the idea worried my little head for a long time--children give much more heed to general propositions of this kind than is commonly supposed.]

There was one disadvantage in the very fulness of the sympathy the ladies gave each other over their little affairs. The main point was apt to be neglected for branches of the subject. If Mrs. Minchin consulted Mrs. Buller about a cook, that particular cook might be discussed for five minutes, but the rest of a two hours' visit would probably be devoted to recollections of Aunt Theresa's cooks past and present, Mrs.

Minchin's "coloured cooks" in Jamaica, and the cooks engaged by the mothers and grandmothers of both ladies.

Thus when Aunt Theresa took counsel with her friends about poor Matilda, they hardly kept to Matilda's case long enough even to master the facts, and on this particular occasion Mrs. St. John plunged at once into a series of ill.u.s.trative anecdotes of the most terrible kind, for she always talked, as she dressed, in extremes. The moral of every story was that Matilda should be sent to school.

"And I'll send you over last year's numbers of the _Milliner and Mantua-maker_, dear Mrs. Buller. There are always lots of interesting letters about people's husbands and children, and education, and that sort of thing, in the column next to the pastry and cooling drinks receipts. There was a wonderfully clever letter from a 'M.R.C.S.' about the difficulty of managing young girls, and recommending a strict school where he had sent his daughter. And next month there were long letters from five 'British Mothers' and 'A Countess' who had not been able to manage their daughters, and had sent them to this school, and were in every way satisfied. Mr. St. John declared that all the letters were written by one person to advertise the school, but he always does say those sort of things about anything I'm interested in."

"You're very kind," said Mrs. Buller.

"There was a most extraordinary correspondence, too, after that shoemaker's daughter in Lambeth was tried for poisoning her little brother," continued Mrs. St. John. "The _Sat.u.r.day Review_ had an article on it, I believe, only Mr. St. John can't bring papers home from the mess, so I didn't see it. The letters were all about all the dreadful things done by girls in their teens. There were letters from twelve 'Materfamiliases,' I know, because the editor had to put numbers to them, and four 'Paterfamiliases,' and 'An Anxious Widower,' and 'A Minister,' and three 'M.D.'s.' But the most awful letter was from 'A Student of Human Nature,' and it ended up that every girl of fifteen was a murderess at heart. If I can only lay my hand on that number---- but I've lent it to so many people, and there was a capital paper pattern in it too, of the _jupon a l'Imperatrice_, ready p.r.i.c.ked."

At this point Uncle Buller literally exploded from the room. Aunt Theresa said something about draughts, but I think even Mrs. St. John must have been aware that it was the Major who banged the door.

I was sitting on the footstool by the fire-place making a night-dress for my doll. My work had been suspended by horror at Mrs. St. John's revelations, and Major Buller's exit gave an additional shock in which I lost my favourite needle, a dear little stumpy one, with a very fine point and a very big eye, easy to thread, and delightful to use.

When Mrs. St. John went away Major Buller came back.

"I am sorry I banged the door, my dear," said he kindly, "but whatever the tempers of girls may be made of at fifteen, mine is by no means perfect, I regret to say, at fifty; and I _cannot_ stand that woman. My dear Theresa, let me implore you to put all this trash out of your head and get proper medical advice for the child at once. And--I don't like to seem unreasonable, my dear, but--if you must read those delectable articles to which Mrs. St. John refers, I wish you'd read them at her house, and not bring them into ours. I'd rather the coa.r.s.est novel that ever was written were picked up by the children, if the broad lines of good and evil were clearly marked in it, than this morbid muddle of disease and crime, and unprincipled parents and pract.i.tioners."

Uncle Buller seldom interfered so warmly; indeed, he seldom interfered at all. I think Aunt Theresa would have been glad if he would have advised her oftener.

"Indeed, Edward," said she, "I'll do anything you think right. And I'm sure I wouldn't read anything improper myself, much less let the children. And as to the _Milliner and Mantuamaker_ you need not be afraid of that coming into the house unless I send for it. Mrs. St. John is always promising to lend me the fashion-book, but she never remembers it."

"And you'll have proper advice for Matilda at once?"

"Certainly, my dear."

Mrs. Buller was in the habit of asking the regimental Surgeon's advice in small matters, and of employing a civilian doctor (whose fees made him feel better worth having) in serious illness. She estimated the seriousness of a case by danger rather than delicacy. So the Surgeon came to see Matilda, and having heard her cough, promised to send a "little something," and she was ordered to keep indoors and out of draughts, and take a tablespoonful three times a day.

Matilda had not gone graciously through the ordeal of facing the princ.i.p.al Surgeon in his uniform, and putting out her tongue for his inspection; and his prescriptions did not tend to reconcile her to being "doctored." Fresh air was the only thing that hitherto had seemed to have any effect on her aches and pains, or to soothe her hysterical irritability, and of this she was now deprived. When Aunt Theresa called in an elderly civilian pract.i.tioner, she was so sulky and uncommunicative, and so resolutely refused to acknowledge to any ailments, that (his other prescriptions having failed to cure her la.s.situde, and his pompous manner and professional visits rather provoking her feverish perversity) the old doctor also recommended that she should be sent to school.

Medical advice is very authoritative, and yet Uncle Buller hesitated.

"It's like packing a troublesome son off to the Colonies, my dear," said he. "And though Dr. Brown may be justified in transferring his responsibilities elsewhere, I don't think that parents should get rid of theirs in this easy fashion."

But when Eleanor came, the Major's views underwent a change. If I went with Matilda, and we had Eleanor Arkwright for a friend, he allowed that he would consent.

"That is if the girl is willing to go. I will send no child of mine out of my house against her will."

Major Buller asked her himself. Asked with so much kindness, and expressed such cheery hopes that change of air, regular occupation, and the society of other young people would make her feel "stronger and happier" than she had seemed to be of late, that to say that Matilda would have gone anywhere and done anything her father wished is to give a feeble idea of the gush of grat.i.tude which his sensible and sympathetic words awoke in her. Unfortunately she could not keep herself from crying just when she most wanted to speak, and Uncle Buller, having a horror of "scenes," cut short the one interview in which Matilda felt disposed to confide in her parents.