The Young Clementina (18 page)

“He bamboozled me on purpose. It was easy because my brain was not working properly at the time. The whole thing had come as a great shock to me, and I was overworked. I see now, looking back, that I was very near a breakdown of some sort.”

“I thought you looked dazed.”

“I was dazed. I had a dreadful pain in my head and the whole thing was like a nightmare.”

“It was good of you to tell me,” he said. “I am glad you have done so. It makes it easier to work with you. I confess I was aghast when Mr. Wisdon nominated you as co-trustee. I protested, but he was not to be moved from his purpose. Mr. Wisdon had a very high opinion of you, Miss Dean. I see now that he was justified.”

There was a great deal in the papers about “The Fraser Expedition” during the next few weeks. Their adventures caught the imagination of the public. There were photographs of the desert, photographs of the camp, photographs of the sites of the proposed airplane depots, and photographs of the explorers themselves. People were talking about the expedition and discussing the practicability of the scheme (so Mr. Howard informed us) and wherever the subject was discussed the name of Garth Wisdon was mentioned with respect. He was the hero of the hour. There were a dozen theories as to how he met his death—we shall never know the truth—but everybody seemed to agree he had met it nobly, like the brave Englishman that
he was.

Clementina and I devoured all the accounts in the papers with interest and pride. Her admiration for her father was profound. It was the first thing that brought her real comfort in her sorrow. I, too, was comforted by my pride in Garth. I realized that this was the kind of death Garth would have chosen. He would have chosen to die alone, far from civilization; he would have chosen to die on his feet with his gun in his hand. I remembered that he had said to me, “It does not amuse me to kill animals that have never harmed me.” It did not appeal to him to hunt a defenseless animal, but this lion that he had gone out to kill was neither harmless nor defenseless. It had carried off one of the porters already and might do so again now that its taste for human blood had been whetted. This lion was an enemy worthy of his steel, and he had gone out to meet it gaily with a laugh and a joke on his lips.

Garth's end was in the Wisdon tradition, the great Wisdons of the past had died for their country, fighting for her honor or exploring for her welfare. They had died face to face with their enemies just as Garth—the last of the line—had done. There were pictures of Wisdons hanging on the walls in the library and the dining room and in the hall. Men with stern faces and determined mouths, men with smiling mouths and straight-gazing keen eyes, they all looked down from the walls upon Clementina and me as we sat at dinner or moved about the house. For some reason I was more conscious of them after Garth's death, and Clementina must have felt the same.

“It's a pity I wasn't a boy,” she said one day, looking up at the ancestor who had died at the taking of Quebec.

“You are a Wisdon,” I told her, answering her thought. “Whether you are a boy or a girl you have their blood in your veins just the same. It is a fine heritage and you can well be proud of it. Perhaps someday you will have a son.”

“If I ever have a son I shall call him Wisdon,” she said. “But it's a pity, all the same.”

I realized that if I were going to write Garth's book I should not have time to give Clementina her lessons—it would be impossible to do both these things adequately. And this brought me face to face with a problem—should I engage a governess for Clementina, or should I send her to school? I thought it over carefully, and the more I thought about it the more sure I became that Clementina ought to go to school. She required the companionship of other girls, and the discipline of school life. I had brought her out of her shell (she was much more like a normal child than she had been) but I saw quite clearly that she had idiosyncrasies which I could never eradicate, and which never would be eradicated unless she had girls of her own age to tease her and chaff her and chivvy her about. I did not come to the decision to send Clementina to school without a struggle. She would hate it at first, and I would hate it all the time—we were friends now. I would miss her, the house would be too dreary for words without Clementina—but the child's welfare was the important thing. I wanted her to be a whole woman, not a crank.

Mr. Ponsonby agreed with me, and we found a girls' school about twenty miles from Hinkleton which was run by a woman with a positively alarming array of letters after her name. I went over and saw Miss Scales and found her a sensible, cultured woman—I liked her at once and I liked the school. It was comfortable but by no means luxurious, and I thought it would suit our purpose admirably. We arranged for Clementina to go there after the Christmas holidays.

Clementina was anything but pleased at my arrangements for her welfare. She retired into her shell, not sulking, but simply withdrawing the essential part of her soul from contact with the world. I left her alone, it was the only way I could deal with these moods of hers; but I reflected that school would deal with them less gently and that this would be all to the good. After a few days of silent contemplation Clementina came to me and broached the subject herself.

“Aunt Charlotte, why must I go to school?”

“It's good for people.”

“But I shall miss the hunting.”

“Your father missed the hunting when he went to school.”

“He was a boy.”

“You said it was a pity you were not a boy.”

“That's not the point,” she said, and of course it wasn't. “Boys have got to go to school, but girls needn't. If you won't have time to teach me why can't I have a governess?”

“You could, of course,” I said. It was no use to be anything but frank with Clementina, and, after all, a reasonable being deserves the truth. “You
could
stay at home and have a governess, but I do want you to go to school. I was never at school myself and it is a drawback. I did not think so at the time for I loved my lessons with my father, but I found it a drawback afterward. I found I knew less of the world than other women. Lessons are not everything. You learn about other girls at school, and you learn to get on with people and to rub shoulders with people you don't like without minding, or at least without showing that you mind. I don't want you to be like other girls under your skin, but I want you to be more like other girls on the surface. It will be so much easier for you afterward—life will be easier.”

“I shall never be like other girls.”

“Perhaps not, but you will learn to appear like them.”

“I shall hate it.”

“So shall I. But we shall both know we are doing the right thing,” I replied firmly.

Clementina and I spent Christmas together quietly but happily. She was resigned to her fate. We both felt the approaching separation and the feeling that we had so little time to be together brought us closer. We had some good hunting, for the weather remained open and the skies were soft and gray. Violet Felstead and her mother had gone abroad to escape the damp and cold of the English winter; they had left Mr. Felstead behind and he was very lonely all by himself in the big, empty house. He came over to Hinkleton quite often, either to lunch or tea. We saw a good deal of Mr. Howard too; he and Clementina had become tremendous friends.

Mr. Ponsonby came down once or twice on business connected with the estate. I had found some rough plans of a rock garden in one of the drawers of Garth's writing table and I was anxious to put the project in hand. I thought it would be nice to carry out Garth's ideas; it would be a sort of memorial—far more individual and personal to Garth than the brass tablet in the church which bore his name. Mr. Ponsonby agreed to the expenditure, and agreed also to dismiss the head gardener—an argumentative man, who resented my interference—so that I could have a free hand. The site of the rock garden was the hill behind the house where the path leading to the station and the Parsonage climbed up through a wood of conifers. It was a sheltered spot, an ideal position for a garden which would be at its best in spring.

From the veranda, a broad green lawn sloped gently to the bottom of the hill, so that when the rock garden was made, it would be in full view when we sat in the veranda having our tea. The broad green lawn, the rock garden, and, above that, the dark trees. I could visualize it very clearly in my mind's eye and I was sure it would add greatly to the beauty of the Manor. Garth's plans showed a path of uneven steps made of huge slabs of the local gray stone winding up the hill and disappearing into the woods. On either side of the path were natural rocks and boulders, and smaller stones which would give the necessary background for alpine plants and heaths. The whole thing was on an ambitious scale and would take months to complete.

The gardener engaged in place of Fulton was a Scotsman called Walker; he was a man after my own heart, with all the virtues of his race and few of the vices. He rapidly became one of my chief amusements, and a firm ally. We did not always see eye to eye, but we respected each other's vision, and he was always willing to defer to me and to carry out my ideas even when they were at variance with his own.

“Och well,” Walker would say when he had tried to persuade me and failed, “he who pays the piper calls the tune,” and so turn away with admirable philosophy to put my “daft-like ideas” into practice.

The rock garden appealed to the engineer in Walker which lies dormant in every Scot. We studied books together and combined half a dozen ideas with our own and Garth's and the amenities of our site. But before we started on the rock garden itself I turned my attention to its approach. The broad green lawn, which sloped so admirably toward my rock garden, was disfigured by round beds in which bedding out plants—calceolarias, geraniums, and antirrhinums—succeeded one another in formal array. I had some trouble with Walker before he agreed to eliminate these atrocities and turf the beds, but when it was done even Walker admitted that it was a vast improvement. The lawn looked twice as big, and the untroubled sweep of green carried the eyes up to the entrance of the rock garden—in our vivid imaginations already a blaze of color—and the dark trees which rose behind.

In the rock garden itself the rough stones form an uneven path winding up to the hill into the woods. Among the natural rocks flanking the path, we planted heaths which were specified to flower at different seasons of the year—and dianthus in the crevices to reach out over the stones, and large clumps of anemones and primroses and small alpine plants. Higher up, at the entrance of the wood, we planted rhododendrons, and, in the wood itself, bluebells and foxgloves.

But this is anticipating. There was a tremendous lot of work to be done before the thing took shape, and I spent many long hours in the rock garden having the stones arranged as I wanted them and discussing the mixture of colors with Walker and his satellites. At Christmas it was merely a fairy vision in our minds. I had ordered the stones for the path and they had come: big, uneven, rough-hewn stones, gray and jagged. They lay in a confused heap waiting to be sorted out and placed in position. At present they were an eyesore, and my heart sank when I looked at them—would they ever be as I wanted them to be?

One mild windy morning soon after the new year I was busy among my heap of stones. They were so heavy that it took four men to lift them and we had had to engage extra labor for the job. One of the largest stones had just been placed and the men were resting after their Herculean task when I heard a shout, and looked up to see Mr. Howard approaching. I left the scene of action and walked slowly across the lawn to meet him. I felt dirty and untidy. The warm gusty wind had loosened my hair; it blew in little tendrils across my mouth. Far above us, the clouds were blowing in white streaks across the blue sky.

Mr. Howard waved to me as he approached. “What d'you think you're doing?” he said when he was still some yards away.

“I think I am making a rock garden,” I replied with a smile. Mr. Howard amused me; he was always so alive and vivid, so full of excitement and eagerness about everything. He always seemed to me much younger than his years, much younger than myself although in reality there was only about a year between us. I suppose it was his life which had kept him young; he had lived his life in the wilds untouched by the frets and boredoms of civilization.

“I don't mean that,” he said. “You can make a dozen rock gardens if you like—it doesn't affect me. I mean what are you doing with Clementina?”

“Clementina is down at the stables; she always goes down at teatime to take Black Knight an apple.”

“I know. I've seen her. She says you're sending her to school.”

“Yes.”

“You must be mad!” he cried. “You must be crazy! Do you realize the risk?”

“The girls are well taken care of, I can assure you. Hill House is an excellent school.”

“I daresay it is. One of those high class establishments for the daughters of gentlemen, I suppose.”

“You're very old-fashioned in your ideas,” I told him, trying not to laugh. “Hill House is not a seminary. Nowadays the daughters of gentlemen rub shoulders with the daughters of sausage-makers quite happily—it prepares them for modern life.”

“It may be an excellent school for ordinary girls, but Clementina—the idea of sending Clementina to
any
school!”

“Why not?”

“Why not?” he echoed with disgust. “The woman asks me why not. Do you realize that Clementina will become like other girls?”

“That's what I'm hoping,” I replied inaccurately. It was rather fun to tease him; he was getting more and more furious at my obtuseness.

“My God!” he exclaimed piously. “You're hoping that, are you? You're trying to turn Clementina into a simpering, giggling schoolgirl.”

I had to laugh. I couldn't help it. The idea of a simpering, giggling Clementina was so absurd.

“It's no joke,” he said furiously.

“I can't help laughing,” I told him. “You're so funny when you're angry, and Clementina will never learn to simper if she stays at Hill House for twenty years.”

“How old is she?”

“Thirteen.”

He did some rapid calculations. “I'm old enough to be her father,” he said sadly.

“Yes. What a nice idea that is!”

“Nice!” he cried. “It's absolutely hellish, that's what it is. Look here, Charlotte, I've come here to talk to you this afternoon. I've been offered a job in Australia; it's a dam. I meant to take a long holiday, but I've changed my mind. I shall go away for four years—it's a four years' job—I shall accept the job and build their damned dam for them. I shan't hang about here and watch you turn Clementina into a modern young lady with plucked eyebrows and painted lips.”

“Very wise of you,” I agreed.

“Wise! I don't know whether it's wise or not. Probably not. Most likely I shall come back and find her married to some lounge lizard of a creature with oiled hair.”

“I think it unlikely at seventeen.”

“Curse you, Charlotte!” he cried. “Can't you be decent to me? Don't you see that I'm half-crazy with all this?”

I burst out laughing in his face. “Not if you curse me. You can call me Charlotte if you like, but you ought to know better at your mature age than to curse a lady, especially if you want something out of her.”

“Be serious, for God's sake,” he adjured me. “It's serious. I'm serious. Clementina is the most serious thing in my life. I suppose you think I'm a fool to go on like this about a child, but Clementina isn't a child; she's a person, and she's absolutely perfect as she is—and you go and send her off to a boarding-school so that she can be made like other girls.”

“Don't worry,” I said, taking compassion on him. “Clementina will be all right. She must learn to mix with her kind, but it won't change her—not inwardly. The real Clementina is too strong a personality, too formed in character to be changed by a few years at school.”

“That's true,” he said more quietly and thoughtfully. “She's a strong character, but the risk is frightful—simply frightful.”

“Go and build your dam and leave Clementina to me.”

“I suppose I must. I've no option really. I'd chuck the dam if it would be any use, but it wouldn't, would it?”

“None,” I replied firmly. “None whatever. For heaven's sake go and build your dam.”

“I shall come back.”

“Come back when the child is grown up. I shan't stand in your way if Clementina loves you.”

He scraped about on the ground with his toe. “Thank you, Charlotte—you couldn't say fairer. I must just take my chance I suppose—I'm old enough to be her father—damnable, isn't it?”

He went away sadly.