The Determined Bachelor (17 page)

“Well, what of it?” thought Anne. “I shall have a little more time to myself. Perhaps they have gone to see Lady Cardovan, or Sir Basil has met one of his acquaintances. They may even have gone to the park to take the air.”

But a glance out of the window above her writing table discouraged this line of thinking. What had begun as a clear, bright winter morning had grown suddenly overcast. The sky was a heavy leaden gray, and the fog had begun rolling into the city streets in great clouds. Determined, however, to make use of her few solitary hours, Anne sat down again to write. The scene she had been working upon, in which the hero of the novel was introduced, had delighted her at first. She read through the pages she had written now, expecting to be pleased with them, but instead a frown came into her eyes after only a few paragraphs.

“Why, that is not right at all,” she said aloud, frowning.

“It is far too much a caricature. No one can be expected to recognize such a paper hero. Even Sir Basil is not quite so bad as that.”

And so the first paragraphs were scratched out, and written anew. The same process was repeated, until Anne, bewildered and angry with herself, could stand no more. Jumping up, she walked over to the hearth and kicked the glowing embers of the dying fire. Sparks flew, but the wood refused to be ignited. Leaning down, she tugged and pushed the logs about, with little more success.

“Perhaps that is what has happened to me,” thought she with a rueful smile. “I had one great burst of flame, and now I shall never again catch fire. It is perfectly plain: My skills are limited to the description of what I know. For me to describe a man of Sir Basil's worldliness is even more presumptuous than asking a child to do a man's work. I shall never be able to satirize this world until I know it as well as I know my own. Till then, my descriptions will all ring hollow, my conversations will lack any trace of life, my command of the action will be worse than a little boy playing with tin soldiers. I had better face it and be done: I have no future in this kind of work.”

It was unlike Anne to admit defeat so early. For two years she had laboured to bring forth a slim volume of papers. Through crossings out and tossings into the fire she had kept her determination, and nothing had brought her up until the work was done. But neither was she one to presume to a wisdom she did not possess. All at once, in a rush of elucidation such as everyone knows at moments in their lives, the truth came home to her: her work
then
had been founded upon real knowledge, thorough familiarity with a place and its inhabitants, an absolute intimacy with its manners, morals, and attitudes. How easy it had been to transform the curate's sermons or her own mother's speech into high comedy! How easy to turn a familiar landscape into a setting, or the village near her own home into a backdrop for the action of her novel.
Now
she must draw upon a world with which she had only the most passing acquaintance, a world not her own, and never likely to be her own. Had all her grand ideas been for nought? Had she come to London with expectations far surpassing what was possible, much less probable? She had come to “see the great world.” But how much of that world could a governess glimpse? So far, she had not seen much
more than the street upon which they lived, the row of shops on St. James's Street, and the carriages driving in Hyde Park. She did not delude herself that things would be much different in the future.

“I shall always be condemned to sit in the second parlour, whilst everyone else converses in the drawing room. Even should I be asked to go to Paris with Nicole—which is doubtful in any case—I shall see hardly any more there! Oh! A thorough acquaintance with the nurseries and kitchens I shall gain, I expect—but more than that? Foolish girl! At least, had you been a Mrs. Siddons, you should have had your own kitchens and half a dozen maids to wait upon you. And the children in your nurseries should have been your own!”

Anne bit her lip at this, and murmured an apology to the absent Nicole. She had made her own bed. Very well, then—she should lie in it. It would be months, perhaps years, before she knew enough of the “great world” to write about it, much less satirize it. And in the meantime? For the year at least, she was forced to remain as she was. If Sir Basil would not take her to France, she must find another situation. And what if she could not delude anyone else as thoroughly as she had deluded the Baronet? It was unlikely that she would find anyone else as thoroughly ignorant of the requirements of her trade as he was, much less a friend as indulgent as Lady Cardovan.

This black mood must needs have some end, but it was some time before Anne had the heart, or the desire, to look up from her unhappy musings. The fire had by then long since died out, and the clock struck three.

Starting up, Anne went out into the corridor. Not a sound was to be heard. Puzzled, she descended the stairs to go in search of the butler. But the man was not at his usual station in the upstairs pantry, and the entrance hall was deserted. What on earth could have befallen Nicole and the Ambassador?

Just then the sound of laughter reached her ears, coming, as it seemed, from beyond the door. In a moment, the crash of the great knocker came, and Anne, who had been just on the point of ascending the steps once more, went forward to answer it.

The sight which greeted her eyes upon throwing back the door was the last one in all the world she had anticipated. There were the two figures of Sir Basil and Nicole, dressed as they had been before; the gentleman in his walking cape and
top hat, the child's flushed faced barely visible between the rim of her bonnet and the fur of her collar: nothing astounding in that. The faces, however, and the expressions upon those faces were so changed from what they had been in all the time Anne had known them that she was for a moment incapable of speech. Nicole's features, more given to merriment than her guardian's, were lit up in an absolute spectacle of mirth and happiness. Her small cheeks were bright as apples from the cold, her large black eyes were dancing. But Sir Basil—what on earth could have happened to him? wondered Anne, drawing back a pace or two to let them in. Sir Basil had undergone as complete a transformation as the young lady had ever seen. Where his gaze had always been keen, intelligent, and critical, now it was softened by an expression of—could it be?—perfect enjoyment. Anne would not have believed it possible, had she not seen it with her own eyes, that any set of features could be so radically changed in the space of several hours. Taken aback as she was, she was yet lucid enough to perceive that the transformation was all flattering. Whatever of thinness, dryness, and sarcasm had lurked in that nose, those eyes and lips, and those cheeks, was now all gone, and in their place was as much human kindness as she had ever witnessed.

“Oh, Miss Calder!” cried the child, running into the hall and flinging back her cape, “we have had the most wonderful adventure!”

“I hope you have not been worried,” put in the Baronet, stepping into the hall himself and closing the door behind him. “We hoped you would not be. In truth, we did not mean to be away so long.”

“Uncle Basil has shown me all over London, and all the places he used to go when he was little!”

“
Uncle
Basil?” repeated Anne, wonderingly.

“Yes!” cried the child, skipping about the room. “Uncle Basil knows everything about London! We have been to Westminster Bridge, and the Tower, and of course St. James's, and driven through the Prince's Park, and up Bond Street, and past all the shops. And I saw White's, and Boodle's, and—and—”

“That is quite enough, Nicole,” warned the Ambassador, resuming a more natural dignity of demeanor. “You shall exhaust Miss Calder if you go on. I believe she is inclined to send us both upstairs without any dinner as it is.”

“Oh, dear!” cried the child, pausing in her progress about
the hall with a most horrified look, “you shan't do that, shall you, Miss Calder?”

Miss Calder was far too astonished to do anything of the kind. It was all she could do to muster a few words.

“Dear me. Dear me. No—no, I shan't send you to bed! I
have
been worried, but, that is—”

“Perhaps,” suggested Sir Basil helpfully, “we had better adjourn to the library and have some tea. I, for one, am famished. I do not recollect being so hungry in all my life. Do you suppose you could persuade them to give us a very hearty tea, Miss Calder? If so, I shall promise to do anything you like. I believe I shall be open to any kind of punishment you have in mind, so long as I am fed.”

“I don't think Miss Calder is really very angry,” confided Nicole to her guardian, when Anne, dumbfounded, had gone in search of a maid.

“Do you not?” Sir Basil seemed reassured. “Then she is rather different from every other governess I have known. But never mind—I shan't let her beat you.”

“Thank you very much,” replied Nicole, grinning widely. It had taken her some time to understand her guardian's odd sense of humour, but after an hour or two of driving about London, she had come to see that the Baronet was fond of making outrageous statements and that he was far more pleased if one laughed at them than if one did not.

“I hope she shan't beat
you,”
she added, tugging at his sleeve. The Baronet was gazing into space and did not react at once.

“What? Oh—oh, yes. I hope not, too.”

But Nicole saw that her guardian was not attending to her. He was still gazing into space in a kind of peculiar, rapt way, and seemed lost in his own thoughts. He hardly replied to her suggestion that he remove his cape and hat, and when the butler appeared to repeat the suggestion, Sir Basil only gave him a blank stare.

Tea was soon ready, and the little party adjourned to the library, where Anne begged to be informed of the particulars of the morning's adventure. Sir Basil had now regained most of his usual sobriety, as Anne was a little sorry to note. To her question whether they had ascertained if the bishop was still fond of plums, he replied only with a confused look.

“The bishop,” repeated she, “is he still fond of plums? You mentioned yesterday that when you were a little boy—”

“Bishops ought not to be made fun of, Miss Calder,” responded
he gravely. “They are our loftiest clergymen. We had do better to heed their sermons and pay less attention to their eccentricities.”

“It is a different bishop,” interjected Nicole. “This one is quite thin and important-looking.”

Anne looked interested. “And did he have anything of great import to say?”

“He said a great deal about serving one's country and one's king,” reported Nicole, her mouth full of cake. “It was from Revelation, Uncle Basil says.”

“The passage was from Revelation, not the sermon,” the Baronnet corrected her. He gave Miss Calder a keen look.

“Your father is a clergyman, is he not, Miss Calder? I suppose you know a great deal about sermons and the like.”

“Only what everyone else knows,” replied Anne, bewildered by this sudden change in the Baronet, and feeling her usual urge to goad his pomposity, despite all the promises she had made to herself.

“And what is that?” Sir Basil wore a thin little smile, quite a sardonic smile, thought Anne. It was a pity she had not kept on with the sketch she had been writing.

“That sermons are never better than the man who delivers them, and often worse: for a great man may not speak so well as his inferiors in virtue, and a petty, selfish man will sometimes move you to tears with his words, though his actions do not correspond to his ideas.”

“An interesting theory,” was all Sir Basil gave in the way of a response, but his look, more than his words, spoke volumes. Anne saw at a glance how he despised her, and the knowledge made her wish more than ever to bait him.

“Perhaps your experience has been different from my own,” said she. “I have been acquainted with a great many clergymen besides my father, whom I believe to be an admirable man even despite my own prejudice, and not one of them has suited that idea of charity and universal love which is thought generally the nature of the profession. There are as many weak, vain, and selfish men in the clergy as in any other walk of life. Perhaps more: for some are drawn to the Church precisely for the easiness of the work.”

“Do you take so dim a view of all mankind?”

Anne regarded him a moment with a faint smile. How she would have liked to take up his challenge! But a sudden idea warned her to keep her peace. I am sure he would be delighted
to be given so easy an excuse to criticize me, thought she, and aloud she said:

“No, I do not. But I have observed that there are more of us who are inclined to sloth than to hard work, to leisure and pleasure than self-sacrifice.”

“Ah! Then you include yourself?”

“Most assuredly. I am not superior to other mortals, but on the contrary, certainly more foolish and lazy than most.”

Sir Basil smiled upon hearing this, which served as further proof to Anne, had she needed any, that he could not have agreed more heartily. But he said nothing for a moment, only staring off into thin air. After a moment, he inquired if she did not sometimes resent the fate which life had dealt her?

Anne glanced uneasily at Nicole, who, though seemingly immersed in the consumption of an immense piece of cake, was obviously attending to every word. This seemed a most peculiar topic of conversation to pursue before a child.