Lalage's Lovers Part 2

"If you had a heavy, two-handed sword hanging over your head by a hair," he explained, "you would be thinking about something else besides luncheon."

"What has the Archdeacon been doing?" I asked.

The Archdeacon is a man with a thirst for information about church affairs, and he collects what he wants by means of questions printed on sheets of paper which he expects other people to answer. Canon Beresford, who never has statistics at hand, and consequently has to invent his answers to the questions, suffers a good deal from the Archdeacon.

"It's not the Archdeacon this time," he said. "I wish it was. The fact is I am in trouble again about Lalage. I am on my way up to consult your mother."

"Has Miss Battersby been complaining?"

"She's leaving," said the Canon, at once. "Leaving, so to speak, vigorously."

"I was afraid it would come to that. She wasn't the sort of woman who'd readily take to swearing."

"I very nearly did," said the Canon. "She cried. It's curious, but she really seems fond of Lalage."

"Did she by any chance force her way into the pigsty and find the _Anti-Cat?_"

Canon Beresford looked at me and a smile hovered about his mouth. "So you've seen that production?" he said. "I call it rather good."

"But you can hardly blame Miss Battersby for leaving, can you?"

"She didn't see it," said the Canon, "thank goodness."

"Then why on earth is she leaving? What else can she have to complain of?"

"There was trouble. The sort of trouble n.o.body could possibly foresee or guard against. You know Tom Kitterick, don't you?"

"The boy who cleans your boots? Yes, I do. A freckly faced brat."

"Exactly. Well, it appears that Miss Battersby is rather particular about her complexion, and----"

"Lalage tried the stuff on Tom Kitterick, I suppose."

"Yes. She used the whole bottle, and Miss Battersby found out what had happened and complained to me. She was extremely nice about it, but she said that the incident had made her position as Lalage's governess quite impossible."

"Lalage, of course, smiled balmily."

"Calmly," said the Canon. "She told me herself that the word was calm, though it looked rather like 'balm.' Anyhow, that was the last straw.

Miss Battersby goes next week. The Archdeacon----"

"I thought he'd come in before we'd done."

"He did his best to be sympathetic and helpful. He said yesterday, just before he went to Dublin, that what Lalage requires is a firm hand over her. That's the sort of thing a bachelor with no children of his own does say, and means of course. Any man who had ever tried to bring up a girl would know that firm hands are totally useless, and, besides, I haven't got any. '_Non sum qualis eram bonae sub regno...._' Don't try to translate that if you'd rather not. It simply means that I'm not the man I used to be. I hate trying to cope with these domestic broils. That's why I'm going up to see your mother."

The drawn sword did not really interfere with the Canon's appet.i.te, but he refused to smoke a cigar after luncheon. I went off by myself to the library. He followed my mother into the drawing-room. I waited, although I had a good many things to do, until he joined me. He sighed heavily as he sat down.

"Lalage is to go to school after summer," he said.

"My mother," I replied with conviction, "is sure to be right about a matter like that."

"I suppose she is; but Lalage won't like it."

The Canon sighed again, heavily. I tried to cheer him up.

"She'll enjoy the companions.h.i.+p of the other girls," I said. "I daresay she won't have a bad time. After all, a girl of fourteen ought to have friends of her own age. It will be far better for her to be running about with a skipping rope in a crowd of other damsels than to be climbing chestnut trees and writing parodies in lonely pigstys."

"That's very much what your mother said. I wish I could think so. I'm dreadfully afraid that, brought up as she has been, she'll have a bad time of it."

"Anyhow, she won't have half, as bad a time as the schoolmistress."

I had hit upon the true line of consolation. The Canon smiled feebly, and I pursued my subject.

"There won't, of course, be pigstys in the school, but----"

"I don't think a pigsty is absolutely essential to Lalage's comfort."

"Probably not. Lalage isn't the sort of girl who is dependent for her happiness on the accident of outward circ.u.mstance. You know, Canon, that our surroundings are not the things which really matter most. The philosophic mind----"

I had unthinkingly given the Canon his opportunity. I could see a well-known quotation actually trembling on his lips. I stopped him ruthlessly.

"I know that ode," I said. "It's one I learned at school, but it doesn't apply to Lalage. She isn't in the least content with things as she finds them. That's her great charm. She's more like Milton's Satan."

I can quote too, though only English poets, unless after special preparation beforehand. I intended to shoot off some lines out of "Paradise Lost" at the Canon, but he would not listen. He may not have liked the comparison suggested.

"I have to be off," he said. "Lalage is waiting to hear what your mother has settled. I mustn't keep her too long."

"Did you tell her you were coming up here for advice?"

"Of course I did. She quite agreed with me that it was the best thing to do. She always says that your mother is the only person she knows who has any sense. Miss Battersby's sudden resignation was rather a shock to her. She was in a curiously chastened mood this morning."

"She'll get over that all right," I said. "She'll be bringing out another number of the _Anti-Cat_ in a couple of days."

I spent two hours after the Canon left me watching the building of a new lodge at my back gate. My mother professes to believe that work of this kind, indeed of any kind, is better done if I go and look at it.

In reality I think she is anxious to provide me with some sort of occupation and to interest me in the management of such property as recent legislation has left to an Irish landlord. But she may be right in supposing that the builders build better when I am watching them.

They certainly build less rapidly. The foreman is a pleasant fellow, with a store of interesting anecdotes. I give him tobacco in some form and he narrates his experiences. The other workmen listen and grin appreciatively. Thus a certain sedateness of progress is ensured and all danger of hasty building, which is, I understand, called jerry building, is avoided.

At five o'clock, after I had heard some twenty or thirty stories and the builders had placed in position about the same number of stones, I went home in search of afternoon tea. My mother was in the drawing-room, and Miss Battersby was with her. She too, had come to ask advice. I am sure she needed it, poor woman. What she said about Lalage I do not know, for the subject was dropped when I entered the room, but Miss Battersby's position evidently commanded my mother's sympathy. Shortly after leaving the rectory she was established, on my mother's recommendation, in Thormanby Park. Lord Thormanby, who is my uncle, has three daughters, all of them nice, well-disposed girls, not the least like Lalage.

Miss Battersby got on well with them, taught them everything which well-educated girls in their position ought to know. She finally settled down as a sort of private secretary to Lord Thormanby. He needed some one of the sort, for as he grew older he became more and more addicted to public business. He is at present about sixty-five. If he lives to be seventy and goes on as he is going, Miss Battersby will have to retire in favour of some one who can write shorthand and manipulate a typewriter. She will then, I have no doubt, play a blameless part in life by settling flowers for Lady Thormanby. But all this is still a long way off.

I was naturally anxious to hear Miss Battersby's version of the experimental treatment of Tom Kitterick's complexion. I hoped that my mother would have told me the story voluntarily. She did not, so I approached the subject obliquely after dinner.

"The Archdeacon," I said, "was lamenting to me this morning that Mrs.

Beresford died while Lalage was still a baby."

My mother seemed a little surprised to hear this.

"He takes the greatest interest in Lalage," I added. "She's a very attractive little girl."