In the Mountains Part 8

The sun goes on blazing, and we go on sitting in the shade in a row.

Mrs. Barnes does a great deal of knitting. She knits socks for soldiers all day. She got into this habit during the war, when she sent I don't know how many pairs a year to the trenches, and now she can't stop. I suppose these will go to charitable inst.i.tutions, for although the war has left off there are, as Mrs. Jewks justly said, still legs in the world.

This remark I think came under the heading Dolly in Mrs. Barnes's mind, for she let her glance rest a moment on her sister in a kind of affectionate concern.

Mrs. Jewks hasn't said much yet, but each time she has said anything I have liked it. Usually she murmurs, almost as if she didn't want Mrs.

Barnes to hear, yet couldn't help saying what she says. She too knits, but only, I think, because her sister likes to see her sitting beside her doing it, and never for long at a time. Her chief occupation, I have discovered, is to read aloud to Mrs. Barnes.

This wasn't done in my presence the first four days out of consideration for me, for everybody doesn't like being read to, Mrs. Barnes explained afterwards; but they went upstairs after lunch to their rooms,--to sleep, as I supposed, knowing how well they do that, and it was only gradually that I realised, from the monotonous gentle drone coming through the window to where I lay below on the gra.s.s, that it wasn't Mrs. Barnes giving long drawn-out counsel to Mrs. Jewks on the best way to cope with the dangers of being Dolly, but that it was Mrs. Jewks reading aloud.

After that I suggested they should do this on the terrace, where it is so much cooler than anywhere else in the afternoon; so now, rea.s.sured that it in no way disturbs me--Mrs. Barnes's politeness and sense of duty as a guest never flags for a moment--this is what happens, and it happens in the mornings also. For, says Mrs. Barnes, how much better it is to study what persons of note have said than waste the hours of life saying things oneself.

They read biographies and histories, but only those, I gather, that are not recent; and sometimes, Mrs. Barnes said, they lighten what Mrs.

Jewks described in a murmur as these more solid forms of fiction by reading a really good novel.

I asked Mrs. Barnes with much interest about the novel. What were the really good ones they had read? And I hung on the answer, for here was something we could talk about that wasn't either the situation or the view and yet was discreet.

'Ah,' she said, shaking her head, 'there are very few really good novels. We don't care, of course, except for the very best, and they don't appear to be printed nowadays.'

'I expect the very best are unprintable,' murmured Mrs. Jewks, her head bent over her knitting, for it was one of the moments when she too was engaged on socks.

'There used to be very good novels,' continued Mrs. Barnes, who hadn't I think heard her, 'but of recent years they have indeed been few. I begin to fear we shall never again see a Thackeray or a Trollope. And yet I have a theory--and surely these two writers prove it--that it is possible to be both wholesome and clever.'

'I don't want to see any more Thackerays and Trollopes,' murmured Mrs.

Jewks. 'I've seen them. Now I want to see something different.'

This sentence was too long for Mrs. Barnes not to notice, and she looked at me as one who should say, 'There. What did I tell you? Her name unsettles her.'

There was a silence.

'Our father,' then said Mrs. Barnes, with so great a gravity of tone that for a moment I thought she was unaccountably and at eleven o'clock in the morning going to embark on the Lord's Prayer, 'knew Thackeray. He mixed with him.'

And as I wasn't quite sure whether this was a rebuke for Dolly or information for me, I kept quiet.

As, however, Mrs. Barnes didn't continue, I began to feel that perhaps I was expected to say something. So I did.

'That,' I said, 'must have been very--'

I searched round for an enthusiastic word, but couldn't find one. It is unfortunate how I can never think of any words more enthusiastic than what I am feeling. They seem to disappear; and urged by politeness, or a desire to please, I frantically hunt for them in a perfectly empty mind.

The nearest approach to one that I found this morning was Enjoyable. I don't think much of Enjoyable. It is a watery word; but it was all I found, so I said it. 'That must have been very enjoyable,' I said; and even I could hear that my voice was without excitement.

Mrs. Jewks looked at me and smiled.

'It was more than enjoyable,' said Mrs. Barnes, 'it was elevating. Dolly used to feel just as I do about it,' she added, her eye reproachfully on her sister. 'It is not Thackeray's fault that she no longer does.'

'It's only because I've finished with him,' said Mrs. Jewks apologetically. 'Now I want something _different_.'

'Dolly and I,' explained Mrs. Barnes to me, 'don't always see alike. I have a theory that one doesn't finish with the Immortals.'

'Would you put Thackeray--' I began diffidently.

Mrs. Barnes stopped me at once.

'Our father,' she said--again my hands instinctively wanted to fold--'who was an excellent judge, indeed a specialist if I may say so, placed him among the Immortals. Therefore I am content to leave him there.'

'But isn't that filial piety rather than--' I began again, still diffident but also obstinate.

'In any case,' interrupted Mrs. Barnes, raising her hand as though I were the traffic, 'I shall never forget the influence he and the other great writers of the period had upon the boys.'

'The boys?' I couldn't help inquiring, in spite of this being an interrogation.

'Our father educated boys. On an unusual and original system. Being devoid of the cla.s.sics, which he said was all the better because then he hadn't to spend any time remembering them, he was a devoted English linguist. Accordingly he taught boys English,--foreign boys, because English boys naturally know it already, and his method was to make them minutely acquainted with the great novels,--the great wholesome novels of that period. Not a French, or Dutch, or Italian boy but went home--'

'Or German,' put in Mrs. Jewks. 'Most of them were Germans.'

Mrs. Barnes turned red. 'Let us forget them,' she said, with a wave of her hand. 'It is my earnest desire,' she continued, looking at me, 'to forget Germans.'

'Do let us,' I said politely.

'Not one of the boys,' she then went on, 'but returned to his country with a knowledge of the colloquial English of the best period, and of the n.o.ble views of that period as expressed by the n.o.blest men, un.o.btainable by any other method. Our father called himself a Non-Grammarian. The boys went home knowing no rules of grammar, yet unable to talk incorrectly. Thackeray himself was the grammar, and his characters the teachers. And so was d.i.c.kens, but not quite to the same extent, because of people like Sam Weller who might have taught the boys slang. Thackeray was immensely interested when our father wrote and told him about the school, and once when he was in London he invited him to lunch.'

Not quite clear as to who was in London and which invited which, I said, 'Who?'

'It was our father who went to London,' said Mrs. Barnes, 'and was most kindly entertained by Thackeray.'

'He went because he wasn't there already,' explained Mrs. Jewks.

'Dolly means,' said Mrs. Barnes, 'that he did not live in London. Our father was an Oxford man. Not in the narrow, technical meaning that has come to be attached to the term, but in the simple natural sense of living there. It was there that we were born, and there that we grew up in an atmosphere of education. We saw it all round us going on in the different colleges, and we saw it in detail and at first hand in our own home. For we too were brought up on Thackeray and d.i.c.kens, in whom our father said we would find everything girls needed to know and nothing that, they had better not.'

'I used to have a perfect _itch_,' murmured Mrs. Jewks, 'to know the things I had better not.'

And Mrs. Barnes again looked at me as one who should say, 'There. What did I tell you? Such a word, too. Itch.'

There was a silence. I could think of nothing to say that wouldn't appear either inquisitive or to be encouraging Dolly.

Mrs. Barnes sits between us. This arrangement of our chairs on the gra.s.s happened apparently quite naturally the first day, and now has become one that I feel I mustn't disturb. For me to drop into the middle chair would somehow now be impossible. It is Mrs. Barnes's place. Yet I do want to sit next to Mrs. Jewks and talk to her. Or better still, go for a walk with her. But Mrs. Barnes always goes for the walks, either with or without me, but never without Mrs. Jewks. She hasn't yet left us once alone together. If anything needs fetching it is Mrs. Jewks who fetches it. They don't seem to want to write letters, but if they did I expect they would both go in to write them at the same time.

I do think, though, that we are growing a little more intimate. At least to-day we have talked of something that wasn't the view. I shouldn't be surprised if in another week, supposing the hot weather lasts so long, I shall be asking Mrs. Barnes outright what it is Dolly did that has apparently so permanently unnerved her sister.

But suppose she retaliated by asking me,--oh, there are so many things she could ask me that I couldn't answer! Except with the shameful, exposing answer of beginning very helplessly to cry....

_August 24th._

Last night I ran after Mrs. Jewks just as she was disappearing into her room and said, 'I'm going to call you Dolly. I don't like Jewks. How do you spell it?'

'What--Dolly?' she asked, smiling.

'No--Jewks.'