Chapter VI: A Taste of Town Life

"Every beginning is pleasant. The threshold is the place of expectation."—GOETHE.

"BLUEBELL, do you know we have been here a month to-day? What shall I say about our coming home to Rachael? I am writing to her."

"Oh, you needn't say anything, need you? Cousin Ida has no intention of letting us go yet. Make haste with your letter, the dinner-bell will ring soon. Give my love to Rachael, and tell her to give the canaries a little saffron in their water. That is what they want when they don't seem well."

"Any message to Abigail?"

"I should think not, indeed. She has never sent us one, or written us one line since we left."

"Well, we haven't written to her."

"No, and we don't want to. Oh, Heather, aren't you longing for the concert to-morrow?"

The girls are sitting in their pretty bedrooms, and at first glance, they seem much altered. Their simple white evening dresses with black ribbons have a style about them that only a London dressmaker can give. Their hair is coiled up in the latest fashion, and their radiant, animated faces make them quite beautiful. They are getting accustomed to town life now. They have done a large amount of sight-seeing under the guidance of Cyril, whom they regard as a cousin. He seems to have a good deal of spare time on his hands, and is not at all averse to his position as mentor.

Mrs. Carter is very well satisfied with her charges. After a great deal of persuasion, she has begun to give them dancing-lessons, and the girls, though wondering what Abigail would say, are quick and apt pupils and thoroughly enjoy it. They have not been introduced into society yet, but Captain Carter, who is in the Grenadier Guards, is in the habit of bringing several of his brother officers in to dinner, and Mrs. Carter has a great many friends and acquaintances who avail themselves of her genial, pleasant hospitality. So that, altogether, they see a great deal of company, and the novelty attracts and delights them.

A few minutes later, and the girls had left their rooms and were going in to dinner.

"It seems quite nice to be alone for once," said Mrs. Carter. "I hope you have no engagement to-night, Hal?"

"Tell me how you're going to entertain me if I stay at home."

"We are going to have some music. You haven't heard Heather play on her harp. It arrived this morning. I don't know whether it's the thing for her to take up. Harp-playing has gone out of fashion."

"Then by all means play it," said Cyril, turning to Heather, with a little nod of approval. "There's nothing like novelty nowadays, and the girls must be conspicuous, or they'll die!"

"I don't mind being 'conspicuous,' as you call it, when we are alone," said Heather, spiritedly; "and I am not going to give up my harp for any one. I love it!"

"We'll arrange a programme. Minnehaha, you and I will sing that duet that we have been practising. The captain will recite a barrack-room ballad, and the missus will finish up with a waltz on the piano, and we'll foot it on the carpet. What? Is your precious carpet unable to bear the strain of our light feet? We'll exit into the hall, then. I have been yawning over County Council Bills all the day, and must stretch my limbs a little."

"I always say," said Captain Carter, meditatively, "that county members are the most narrow useless beings in the whole House. Their interest is only in agriculture and in game laws. Anything affecting the metropolis or the world at large is a matter of perfect indifference to them. They vote whichever way their party tells them. And as to matters concerning the Services or the Colonies they're as ignorant as a baby. They're sent to the House by a few hundreds of country yokels, and as long as they know what their constituents want, and try to get it for them, they think they have done their duty."

"I will not be drawn into talking shop," said Cyril, calmly. "When we are in ladies' society, let us suit the conversation to their capabilities."

"I never take interest in parliamentary affairs, unless there is a row of some sort," said Mrs. Carter, not at all offended by her brother-in-law's remark. "I like to read of the lords of creation losing their tempers, and slanging each other like a pack of schoolboys, but when they are all dull and prosy, they're no good at all. I think your maiden speech was the essence of dulness, Cyril!"

"Thank you. I know now what your taste is, and what style you prefer. What are you making big eyes at, Minnehaha?"

He had dubbed Bluebell this two days after her first arrival.

"I was thinking," she said, "how very seldom I have heard you speak seriously on any subject."

"He couldn't be serious," responded Mrs. Carter; "joking runs in the family. Even on my wedding-day, just before we took our places in church together, Hal whispered—

"'All the king's horses, and all the king's men,
Can't make me a happy bachelor again!'"

"She looked so exasperatingly superior and complacent," said Captain Carter, joining in the laugh. "I suppose it's the one day when women feel their power. The man is nowhere; people look upon him as a poor fool!"

"Power is a wonderful thing," said Cyril, fixing his eyes on Bluebell's laughing face opposite his. "There isn't a human being on earth who doesn't love power."

"I don't," said Bluebell, promptly.

"I do," said Mrs. Carter, nodding her head saucily across at her husband.

"And I think I do sometimes," said Heather, slowly.

"Allow me to continue. It is a subject upon which I can speak seriously. Power is an attribute that is in the breast of every human creature from infancy. Take a baby; why does it love shaking a rattle, ringing a handbell, seizing handfuls of its mother's hair? The love of power over all objects it can grasp. Watch a girl alternately nursing and slapping a doll, a boy beating a drum and whipping a top. Power over inanimate objects again. See the schoolboy bullying, making pets of anything he can control, and working havoc in all directions. Love of power prompts him. Ask an artist, a musician, a sculptor, an author, in what their chief enjoyment consists. They will allow, if they are truthful, that it is their sense of power over their pencils, their pens, their clay, and their instruments. Analyze your own feelings over your favourite occupations, you will find you never really like a thing unless you think you do it well."

"Such as hearing one's self talk, and reducing others to silence," murmured Captain Carter. "Pray go on."

"I don't think I agree with you," said Heather, turning to Cyril.

"You never do," said Mrs. Carter, laughing. "I think you two disagree on every point brought up."

Cyril raised his eyebrows.

Heather said a little confusedly, "I was thinking about enjoyment. I like playing on my harp, but I enjoy hearing others' music much the best. I think I like anything that takes me quite away from my surroundings."

"Highly complimentary to present company," murmured Captain Carter again, and Heather's fair young face was covered with blushes at once.

"You are only half developed yet, my child," said Cyril, with his grandfatherly air, stopping her confused apology. "Wait till you have had a season in town; your tastes will have altered by that time, I fancy."

"Lady Grace asked me to-day if they were going to be presented," said Mrs. Carter, looking across at her husband. "What do you male creatures think about it?"

"Folly and waste of money," said her husband tersely.

Bluebell and Heather looked up greatly excited.

"Presented to the queen!" they gasped. "Could we be?"

"Very easily. I was presented just after my marriage, and I could take you. If you stay a couple of months longer with me, I can manage it."

"Are they going back to the country, after such a taste of society?" queried Cyril, with a mocking light in his eyes.

Mrs. Carter rose.

"We need not discuss the matter further now," she said with great dignity. "Come, girls, we will leave them to their smoke."

But Heather and Bluebell were far too excited to let the matter drop. They pursued it in the drawing-room till the gentlemen came in, and when they retired to their rooms were still full of the subject.

"We must stay away longer now," said Heather. "Why, even Abigail would be proud to think we had been presented to the Queen! Isn't it almost like a fairy tale, Bluebell? Sometimes I fancy we shall wake up and find it all a dream."

"Yes," said Bluebell; "it seems as if every enjoyment has been kept away from us all our lives, and now they crowd upon us so thick and fast that it is quite overwhelming."

"And Abigail would have kept us out of it all."

"Heather, do you know, I cannot go back to our old life again. Is it wicked, I wonder, to feel so?"

Heather gave an impatient little sigh.

"Oh, don't keep asking if it is wicked," she said; "I'm going to enjoy the present as much as ever I can without thinking."

Bluebell drew her Bible to her, but she soon closed it.

"I feel I can't do anything but think about the Drawing-Room," she said. "Won't you be very frightened of making your curtsey, Heather? Cousin Ida says we can't be asked out to any really nice people's houses until we have been presented. I did not know that was so necessary."

"Our dresses will cost a lot of money," said Heather, meditatively. "I don't know how it is, but money seems to fly in London. We have spent more in this month than we should do in a whole year at home."

"Cousin Cyril said that was part of our education. To learn how to spend money! How dreadfully satirical he is! He always seems to consider women on such a much lower level than himself. And don't you object to his making fun of serious subjects as he does? I do dislike his asking us so often how our religion is getting on!"

"He seems to think we're losing it," said Heather, slowly, as she brushed out her curly hair and gazed at herself abstractedly in the glass as she did so. Then after a moment's pause she added, "And I am not sure that he isn't right."

"Speak for yourself, please," said Bluebell, lightly. "I'm not going to turn into a heathen because I am in London. It's ridiculous, and absurd."

"What is true religion?"

Heather breathed rather than spoke the words. Then she flashed forth a little excitedly—

"I wonder now if we ever had anything but a mere form of religion. We had nothing to tempt us, nothing to try us at home. I don't believe any girls were more shielded from evil than we were. And now when our lives are so utterly changed, it seems a test of it all. I cannot get Abigail's verse out of my head, 'She that liveth pleasure is dead while she liveth.' I don't know how you feel, but I want pleasure. I love it, and I seem to want more and more of it. I should be miserable if I went home now and left it all when we are only just beginning to enjoy ourselves. But I do not believe God wants us to be shut out of the world. Cousin Ida is religious and she loves London society. I mean to copy her. I believe there are two kinds of religion in the Bible; Abigail's is one kind and Cousin Ida's is the other, and which is right, I wonder! I know which is the brightest and happiest life."

"It's very puzzling," said Bluebell, a graver look stealing into her merry eyes. "But I think we're both of one mind about it. We will enjoy the present while we can. And don't let us philosophize too much about it. It puts one in the blues!"