The Young Clementina (14 page)

“He's by Black Boy out of Dark Lady,” she was saying. “Daddy bought him for me as a two-year-old from Lady Vera. He's six now and I love him awfully.”

“I don't wonder!” commented Mr. Howard.

“Horses never let you down,” continued Clementina. “I mean they never go back on you. They aren't like people who pretend to be fond of you and turn their backs on you when troubles come. Horses love you because you're you.”

“That's quite true,” said Mr. Howard in some astonishment. “But I should have thought you were too young to have found it out.”

“I'm not young,” Clementina told him in her childish voice. “I'm a hundred years old, I think.”

He laughed at that, but not unkindly. “Perhaps as you grow older you may lose some of that frightful burden of years,” he suggested.

We were now at the gates of the Manor, and I could do no other than ask him to come in and have tea. He jumped at the offer and we all turned in at the gate together and trotted up the avenue.

“I haven't been here since the dance,” he said, looking about him. “It must be twenty years ago—or very nearly. It was my first grown-up dance; I suppose that's why I remember it so well. I was supposed to be going up to Oxford the following year, but of course I didn't.”

“Why didn't you?” inquired Clementina interestedly.

“Because a certain grandee got himself shot by a fanatic,” replied Mr. Howard smiling. I had never heard of the man before, but he stopped me going to Oxford just the same. His death set the world on fire; I don't suppose it would have done so if the world hadn't been ripe for a blaze.”

“Oh, the war,” said Clementina. “I didn't know you were as old as that.”

Mr. Howard looked slightly taken aback by this frank statement, and then he smiled. “That's a compliment, Clementina,” he said. “I didn't recognize it as such at first sight, but it
is
a compliment, and a very nice one too.”

Tea was a cheerful, pleasant meal; we were all hungry and slightly tired after our long day; the buns and cakes disappeared like melting snow. Mr. Howard chaffed Clementina over her appetite, and she replied in good part. I had never seen the child so normal and childlike. When we had finished, and Mr. Howard had got his pipe going, he told us something of his life in Canada. He was an engineer and had been engaged upon an electric power scheme to supply electricity to a large and growing town. He told us some of his difficulties and disappointments and then launched out into an extremely funny but wholly incredible account of his adventures in the mountains with grizzly bears.

“Baron Munchausen,” I said at last, softly, under my breath.

He looked at me and smiled wickedly. “You believed quite a lot of it,” he said. “I saw the moment when a wavering doubt of my veracity dawned upon your mind.”

“I am in the habit of believing my friends,” I told him severely.

“Rats!” he exclaimed, and rose stiffly out of his chair. “Yes, I really must go. Mother will wonder where on earth I've got to. I said I would be home at five.”

Clementina and I saw him off at the door. He wouldn't let me call Sim to bring his mare round.

“I'll find her at the stables,” he said. “
Au
revoir
, you'll be out on Thursday, I suppose.”

“Unless it freezes,” I said, shivering a little as the cold wind swept round the corner of the house.

He waved to us, and disappeared in the darkness.

“A nice man,” I said to Clementina, “I liked him, didn't you?” She didn't answer, and suddenly I saw that her eyes were full of tears. “My darling girl, what is the matter?”

“Nothing,” she said roughly, pulling herself away from my arm which had gone round her shoulders. “Nothing except—he won't come here again—not when he knows—not when he hears about—about us. He doesn't know—that's why he's friendly and nice.”

I held on to her arm. “Clementina, a man like Mr. Howard wouldn't care. He has traveled, knocked about the world. He was friendly and kind because he liked us.”

“Because he didn't know,” she said, dragging her arm away. “When he knows he'll be quite different—you'll see. You don't understand what it's like because you haven't seen it happen. He'll be polite—and—and in a hurry—he'll be in a hurry to get home—you'll see.”

She fled away, upstairs. I called to her twice, but she did not answer nor come back.

I went into the library and stood looking at the fire. It was difficult to know what to do with Clementina, what to say. I had not realized that Clementina knew so much. I wondered just how much she did know. It was dreadful to feel that she was suffering this misery alone, had been suffering it for months without saying a word. I remembered—looking back with newly found knowledge—that Clementina had always avoided meeting people when she could. “We'll go down by the fields,” she would say, if there was an errand to do in the village. When we went to church she led me out by the side door, remarking, “There's such a crowd at the front door, it's shorter this way.” When we hunted, Clementina took her own line; she avoided gates where she might find herself squeezed up against somebody she knew—gates were unnecessary to Clementina when she was mounted on Black Knight. I saw all this now, though I had not seen it at the time. Clementina took enormous pains to avoid everybody she knew. It was a dreadful position for a child, far worse for a child than for a grown-up person—I saw that clearly. She could not understand what had happened, nobody discussed things with her, nobody explained things to her. Any knowledge that she possessed was picked up through hearing conversations—or parts of conversations—which were not meant for her ears, or through the servants. She put the pieces together and brooded over them. What could she know about her parents' affairs? She knew that something shameful had happened; she knew that the house—once so proud and respected—was shunned by the County. She knew that her mother's name was never mentioned.

I sat down by the fire and thought about it for a long, long time, but I could see no way of helping the child. Save by guarding her as well as I could and showing her that I understood and was her friend, I could do nothing for her. Perhaps you could have helped her, Clare—I wonder if you could. Would you have tackled the thing boldly, or would you have shirked the issue as I did?

I had not been at Hinkleton long before I realized that Miss Milston—Clementina's governess—resented my advent. She had a great admiration for Kitty and thought that Kitty had been badly treated. She was too cautious to air these opinions openly; she was of the type which does and says nothing openly, but works in the dark to achieve its purpose. At first I thought that Miss Milston was stupid, that her rudeness and gaucherie arose from ignorance, but I soon saw that she was too subtle to give unintentional offense. She calculated to an inch how far she could go with impunity, and enraged me without giving me anything definite to which I could take exception. I never met anybody who could enrage me so easily as Miss Milston. However much I schooled myself beforehand to take no notice of the woman she always roused me to boiling point in a few minutes. She lunched with us every day and at last I came to dread the hour for lunch to be announced, solely on account of Miss Milston. She was really a greedy woman—sometimes I saw her licking her thin lips with her pointed red tongue when she saw an especially succulent dish appear upon the sideboard—but, after Mrs. Harcourt had left and been replaced by an eminently satisfactory substitute, she pretended to be very fastidious, wrinkling up her nose, and picking distastefully at the dishes which were set before her. She did it to annoy me, I know, and I am ashamed to say she succeeded in her amiable intention. All housekeepers know how vexing it is to have good food treated as if it were only fit for pigs, so all housekeepers will be able to sympathize with me in my troubles with Miss Milston.

“Clem can't eat liver, can you, dear?” she would remark very sweetly. “Of course Auntie couldn't know that; she hasn't known you as long as I have,” and then, turning to me, “Mrs. Harcourt did a little piece of fish for Clem when grown-up food was unsuitable.”

“Liver is very good for children,” I would reply, having discovered this important fact from a small book on the diet of children, which I had been studying with the purpose of remedying my ignorance on the subject. “But not for Clem,” she would say, smiling sadly. “I wouldn't eat it, dear, it is sure to disagree with you. Perhaps the new cook would make a poached egg for you instead.”

I was quite unable to cope with this sort of thing. If I showed any resentment, Miss Milston apologized in a hurt manner and assured me that she was only speaking “for the child's good.” She was altogether too subtle for me and too careful.

Once I had realized the subtlety of the woman, I began to wonder what her object was in alienating me and making my life a burden. She was too clever to work without a purpose. I decided to observe Miss Milston carefully and try to get to the bottom of her antagonism. If I could not do this she would have to go; it was bad for Clementina to live in an atmosphere of petty strife. And then quite suddenly one day I saw through the woman, and saw her object. We were talking about London and Miss Milston had been telling us of her experiences as a teacher in a fashionable school. She turned to Clementina and said, “It was so kind of Auntie to give up her appointment in London and come and stay with us, wasn't it? I'm afraid it must be very dull for her here, but it really wasn't necessary, was it, Clem? You and I could manage quite nicely by ourselves.”

Clementina didn't answer—she wasn't intended to answer. Miss Milston flowed on to other topics, but I had seen through her carefully concealed purpose at last. She wanted to make my position untenable, she wanted to get rid of me and rule the Manor herself. I almost laughed at her optimism—it was she who would have to leave the Manor, not I. I had been left in charge by Garth, and nothing short of dynamite would move me.

Clementina took no part in these verbal battles. I could not make out whether she liked Miss Milston or hated her—as I should have hated her if I had been a child—I did not even know whether she were on my side or against me. I could not believe she was as neutral as she seemed.

Another source of constant trouble with Miss Milston was Clementina's hunting; she made all sorts of objections when the meet happened to be on a lesson day. It was upsetting the child to take her away from her lessons, it tired her out, she never worked so well after a day's hunting. I was on firm ground here, for Garth had ordained hunting for his daughter, and, so far from upsetting Clementina, I saw that the excitement and the exercise were good for the child. Clementina on a horse was a different creature, more human and natural, easier to understand. So I overruled all Miss Milston's objections and informed her that Clementina's father wished her to hunt.

About a week later Clementina and I started off to a meet at Borland Corner. It was a splendid hunting day, rather mild and damp, with a gray sky and a slight breeze from the west. We were walking quietly down the drive when we met Miss Milston coming up from the village with her attaché case in one hand and her umbrella in the other. She signaled to us to stop and came running up to us, panting, and very red in the face.

“I told you that we were hunting today,” I said when she came within earshot. “Had you forgotten?”

She took no notice of me, but addressed herself to Clementina. “Come down at once,” she cried. “Come down off that horse. You know very well what I told you yesterday. I told you you were not to go out hunting today, disobedient girl.”

Clementina looked at her and said nothing.

“Back you go to the house,” said Miss Milston. “We have got to get those problems right this morning. Come along at once, Clem. No nonsense, please.”

Clementina did not move.

Miss Milston turned to me. “Clem was very naughty yesterday, Miss Dean,” she said breathlessly, “and I told her she was not to hunt.”

I was trying to make up my mind what to do. It was difficult, for I was entirely in the dark as to the nature of the child's offense. I knew, of course, that Miss Milston had chosen the punishment with a view to scoring off me, and this made me angry. There she stood in the middle of the drive, waving her umbrella at us and talking at us in her unpleasant high-pitched voice. She was as full of spite as a toad.

“I'm sorry this should have happened, Miss Milston,” I said, trying to speak calmly. “I had no idea that Clementina had done anything wrong. Another time it will be better to inform me and allow me to choose her punishment. It is too late now for her to go back, our arrangements are made.”

“It is not too late,” screamed Miss Milston.

I was intensely conscious of the absurdity of the scene and of Sim's eyes watching us all. It was so undignified to brawl over the child, so bad for the child to be brawled over by two women in front of a groom.

“It
is
too late,” I replied. “Our arrangements must stand. My niece is in my charge while—”

“You are undermining my authority,” she cried.

“I will speak to you tomorrow, we are late already,” I told her and signed to Clementina to proceed. We trotted off down the avenue leaving the wretched woman standing there on the path.

Clementina said nothing; her face wore the shuttered look that had become so familiar to me. I wondered, rather miserably, whether I had done right or wrong—that depended upon what Clementina was feeling about it. I felt I must know.

“Why didn't you tell me what Miss Milston had said?”

“I wanted to come,” she replied simply.

“You put me in a difficult position,” I pointed out.

The idea was evidently new to her. I saw her brows knit as she considered it. “But it wasn't a fair punishment, you know. She had been waiting for something to happen so that she could prevent me from going out hunting with you. She had been waiting for days and days. It's not fair, is it, to have a punishment waiting ready for a person to do something wrong?”

I did not think it was.

“She knew I couldn't do the sums,” Clementina continued. “And when I did them wrong, she said it was naughty, and I was to stay in today and do them. I didn't say I would.”

I saw Miss Milston the next morning and told her that she had better find another post. It was an extremely disagreeable interview. She told me that I had no authority to dismiss her; she had been with Clementina for three years. Mrs. Wisdon had engaged her. I pointed out, as tactfully as I could, that I was in charge now and that her salary was paid through me, which gave me the right to dismiss her if I thought fit.

“Clem has never been the same since you came,” she cried. “You spoil her. You are ruining the child. You have upset the whole house.”

“That is quite enough, Miss Milston,” I said firmly. I paid her and sent her away.

The air was easier to breathe when Miss Milston had gone. I felt quite young and gay, and even Clementina seemed to cast off some of her hundred years. At lunch I inveigled her into playing a ridiculous game called “Cross questions” which had been a great favorite with Garth and me when we were children. She picked it up very quickly and became quite human over it—I was absurdly pleased at my success.

I decided not to engage a new governess for the child; it was partly because I shirked the task, and partly because I hoped that by teaching Clementina myself I should come to know her better. We did lessons together every morning. I found Clementina an interesting child to teach—interesting but difficult; the subjects that she liked she tackled eagerly and with intelligence, the subjects that bored her she neglected entirely. Arithmetic came under the latter heading with Clementina; she was as ignorant of arithmetic as a normal child of seven. I could not determine whether her brain was incapable of assimilating the most simple rules of arithmetic or whether she simply didn't try—I never found out. I battled with her resolutely but with little success, and we both sighed with relief when the daily hour of arithmetic was over and we were free to consider other matters. She read books with amazing rapidity and an even more amazing catholicity of taste. Any book was grist to Clementina's mill, from boys' adventure stories and Hans Andersen to Dickens, Thackeray and Sir Walter Scott. I tackled her one day on the subject of
Little
Dorrit
with which she was enthralled at the moment. I wanted to find out whether she really understood what she was reading.

“I like Tatticoram best,” she said.

“But, Clementina, she was so ungrateful.”

“She couldn't help it, Aunt Charlotte,” Clementina said eagerly. “They wanted things from her. They wanted her to be grateful. You can't be grateful to people who are always expecting you to be grateful. They were always pawing her.” She shivered. “I hate being pawed.”

“Dickens didn't mean us to like her.”

“He didn't understand her,” said the astonishing child.

“But, Clementina, he must have understood her to write about her.”

She was silent for a few moments and then she said: “I know it seems funny, but I'm sure he didn't really understand her any more than the Meagles did. He had never been a little girl so he couldn't know just how little girls feel about things.”

After this conversation I began to feel that I understood Clementina better. She allowed me to understand her, and you helped me, Clare. I felt all the time you were helping me to understand the child. Perhaps you have girls of your own. I did not try to force the pace with Clementina. I just went my own way. When she wanted to talk to me I was ready to talk, and when she shut herself away from me I turned to other things.

Mr. Howard continued to be friendly with us even after he had heard about the misfortunes of Clementina's parents. In fact, he was even more friendly with us than before. We met him constantly in the hunting field and he often rode over to the Manor for lunch or tea. He was always friendly and cheerful, and I liked him more and more.

One day he rode over from Fairways to have tea with us; Clementina had gone down to the stables, so I was alone in the library when he arrived.

“I'm glad you're alone,” he said. “I wanted to talk to you.”

“What do you want to talk to me about?” I asked, smiling.

“About that wretched divorce; it makes me mad the way people go on. It's extraordinary to come back from the wilds and find people behaving like this.”

“Behaving like what?” I inquired.

“Refusing to have anything to do with Clementina,” he replied. “It's not Clementina's fault if her parents made a mess of things. I thought the world had progressed a bit, but it's just as narrow as ever.”

“It's only a little bit of the world,” I told him, “and you need not waste your pity on us. Clementina and I are quite happy in our own society—and yours.”

“Yes, it's their loss of course. That's what I said to—I mean—er—it makes me feel pretty sick all the same.”

I smiled at his slip; he had evidently been crossing swords with somebody over Clementina and me. It was nice to feel we had a champion, and such a vigorous one.

“Are they still talking about it?” I asked him.

“Well—er—a certain amount,” he replied, looking rather embarrassed at the question. “It's not so much the actual divorce that they're mad about—lots of people get divorced nowadays. But the Wisdons resented any interference—they kept it all dark. Mrs. Wisdon was stuck up—so they say—and Wisdon snubbed one or two people who tried to poke their noses into his affairs. He was quite right, of course, but it alienated people. The Wisdons didn't want sympathy, they wouldn't tolerate busybodies—that, apparently, is their chief crime.”

I was interested. “What are people saying—exactly?” I inquired.

“Oh, there are lots of tales,” he said. “I don't believe the half of them—about what went on at Hinkleton Manor. They have to make up tales because they don't really know anything—that's what annoys them.”