The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne Part 23

An inner voice, an ironical, sardonic inner voice with which there is no arguing, tells me that I am a hypocrite; that an interest in Carlotta's spiritual development is a nice, comforting, high-sounding phrase which has deluded philosophic guardians of female youth for many generations.

"What does it matter to you whether she has a soul or not," says the voice, "provided she can babble pleasantly at dinner and play cribbage with you afterwards?"

Well, what on earth does it matter?

July 21st.

She was at Euston to meet me. As soon as she saw my face at the carriage window she left Stenson and flew up the platform like a pretty tame animal, and when I alighted hung on my arms and frisked and gamboled around me in excess of joy.

"So you are glad to have me back, Carlotta?" I asked, as we were driving home.

She sidled up against me in her terrier fas.h.i.+on.

"Oh, ye-es," she cooed. "The day was night without you."

"That is the oriental language of exaggeration," I said. But all the same it was pleasant to hear, and the soft notes of her voice coiled themselves, as music sometimes dus, around my heart.

"I love dear Seer Marcous," she said.

I put my arm round her waist for a moment, as one would do to a child.

"You are a good little girl, Carlotta. That is to say," I added, remembering my responsibilities, "if you _have_ been good. Have you?"

"Oh, so good. Antoinette has been teaching me how to cook, and I can make a rice pudding. It is so nice to cook things. I like the smell. But I burned myself. See."

She pulled off her glove and showed me a red mark on her hand. I kissed it to make it well, and she laughed and was very happy. And I, too, was happy. Something new and fresh and bright has come into my life. Stenson is an admirable servant; but his impa.s.sive face and correct salute which have hitherto greeted me at London railway termini, although suggestive of material comfort, cannot be said to invest my arrival with a special atmosphere of charm. Carlotta's welcome has been a new sensation. I look upon the house with different eyes. It was a pleasure, as I dressed for dinner, to reflect that I should not go down to a solemn, solitary meal, but would have my beautiful little witch to keep me company.

July 22d.

It appears that her conduct has not been by any means irreproachable.

Miss Griggs reported that she took advantage of my absence to saturate herself with scent, one of the most heinous crimes in our domestic calendar. _Mulier bene olet dum nihil olet_ is the maxim written above this article of our code. Once when she disobeyed my orders and came into the drawing-room reeking of ylang-ylang, I sent her upstairs to change all her things and have a bath, and not come near me till Antoinette vouched for her scentlessness. And "Ah, monsieur," I remember Antoinette replied, "that would be impossible, for the sweet lamb smells of spring flowers, _de son naturel_." Which is true. Her use of violent perfumes is thus a double offence. "There is something more serious,"

said Miss Griggs.

"I can hardly believe there can be anything more serious than making one's self detestable to one's fellow-creatures," said I.

"Unless it is making one's self too agreeable," said Miss Griggs, pointedly.

I asked her what she meant.

"I have discovered," she replied, "that Carlotta has been carrying on a clandestine flirtation with the young man who calls for orders from the grocer's."

"I am glad it wasn't the butcher's boy," I murmured.

Miss Griggs giggled in a silly way, as if I were jesting. At my stern request she recovered and unfolded the horrible tale. She had caught Carlotta kissing her hand to him. She had also seen him smuggle a three-cornered note between Carlotta's fingers, and Carlotta had definitely refused to surrender the billet-dour.

"What is the modern course of treatment," I asked, "prescribed for young ladies who flirt with grocers' a.s.sistants? In Renaissance times she could be whipped. The wise Margaret of Navarre used to beat her daughter, Jeanne d'Albrecht, soundly for far less culpable lapses from duty. Or she could be sent to a convent and put into a cell with rats, or she could be bidden to attend at a merry-making where the chief attraction was roast grocer's a.s.sistant. But nowadays--what do you suggest?"

The unimaginative creature could suggest nothing. She thought that I would know how to deal with the offence. Perhaps preventive measures would be more efficacious than punishment. But what do I know of the repressory methods employed in seminaries for young ladies? Burton in his "Anatomy" speaks cheerfully of blood-letting behind the ears. He also quotes, I remember, Hippocrates or somebody, who narrates that a n.o.ble maiden was cured of a flirtatious temperament by wearing down her back for three weeks a leaden plate pierced with holes. This I told Miss Griggs, who spoke contemptuously of the Father of Medicine.

"He also recommends--whether for this complaint, or for something similar I forget for the moment--" said I, "anointing the soles of the feet with the fat of a dormouse, the teeth with the ear-wax of a dog; and speaks highly of a ram's lungs applied hot to the fore part of the head. I am sorry these admirable remedies are out of date. There is a rich Rabelaisianism about them. Instead of the satisfying jorums of our forefathers we take tasteless pellets, which procure us no sensation at the time, and even the good old hot mustard poultice is a thing of the past."

"But what about Carlotta?" inquired Miss Griggs, anxiously.

That is just like a woman, to interrupt a man when he is beginning to talk comfortably on a subject that interests him. I sighed.

"Send Carlotta up to me," I said, resignedly.

Another morning's work spoiled. I turned to my writing-table. I had just transcribed on my MS. the anecdote told with such glee by Machiavelli about Zan.o.bi del Pino, a sort of Admiral Byng of the early fifteenth century, who was locked up and given nothing to eat but paper painted with snakes, so that he died, fasting, in a few days. I had an apt epigram on the subject of Renaissance humour trembling on my pen-point, when Miss Griggs came in with her foolish gossip. I am sure the plat.i.tude I wrote afterwards is not that original flash of wit.

Carlotta entered and crossed the room to the side of my writing-chair, her great dark eyes fixed on me, and her hands dutifully behind her back. She looked a Greuze picture of innocence. I believed less than ever in the enormity of the offence.

"Do you know what you're here for?" I asked, magisterially.

She nodded.

"Then you _have_ been making love to the young man from the grocer's?"

She nodded again. I began to conceive a violent dislike to the grocer's young man. It was one of the most humiliating sensations I have experienced. I think I have seen the individual--a thick-set, red-headed, freckled nondescript.

"What did you do it for?" I asked.

"He wanted to make love to me," replied Carlotta.

"He is a young scamp," said I.

"What is a scamp?" she asked sweetly.

"I am not giving you a lesson in philology," I remarked. "Do you know that you have been behaving in a shocking manner?"

"Now you are cross with me."

"Yes," I said, "infernally angry."

And I was. I expected to see her burst into tears. She did nothing of the kind; only looked at me with irritating demureness. She wore a red blouse and a grey skirt, and the audacious high-heeled red slippers. I began to feel the return of my early prejudice against her. n.o.body so alluring could possess a spark of virtue.

"You ought to be ashamed of yourself," said I. "I make many allowances for your lack of knowledge of our Western customs, but for a young lady to flirt with an ugly red-headed varlet of the lower orders is reprehensible all the world over."

"He gave me dates and dried fruits with sugar all over them," said Carlotta.

"Stolen from his employer," I said. "I will have that young man locked up in prison, and if you go on receiving his feloniously obtained presents they will put you in prison too, and I shall be delighted."

Carlotta maintained her demure expression and extracted from her skirt pocket a very dirty piece of paper.

"He writes poetry--about me," she remarked, handing me what I recognised as the three-cornered note.

I took the thing between finger and thumb, and glanced over the poem. I have read much indifferent modern verse in my time--I sometimes take a slush-bath after tea at the club--but I could not have imagined the English language capable of such emulsion. It was execrable. The first couplet alone contained an idea.