# The Climber/Chapter 3

CHAPTER III
Lucia's room was a big attic at the top of the house which she had got possession of not without debate. It seemed very odd to both her aunts that she should prefer this isolated room among the roofs to the spare room on the first floor with its thick carpet, its ubiquitous woollen mats, its impenetrable curtains across the pitch-pine windows and the solid suitability of the walnut suite of mid- Victorian date. But Lucia had urged, not without reason (though her real reasons were others), that she could not occupy the best spare bedroom if there was another guest in the house, but would have to transfer her goods on those occasions to the dressing-room adjoining. But if she might have the big attic, she would feel it was her own room in a way that the best spare bedroom could never be. This point of etiquette about the best spare bedroom, though there was practically never a guest in the house (during the last year a cousin of the aunts had spent a night there, because she missed a train), appealed to them, though Lucia's preference seemed to them unusual, and they had certain vague qualms as to whether it was proper for a girl to be cut off like this. A closer examination of these scruples showed them to be somewhat phantasmal, since the impropriety of Lucia's sleeping there with the cook and the housemaid immediately below, and themselves on the floor below that, could not exactly be defined when the girl pressed for a definition. Aunt Elizabeth began several sentences with—"But what would you do if——" but her imagination was not equal to framing a contingency which should embody her objections.
Lucia's real reason for preferring the attic was simple enough. She wanted first of all a greater sense of privacy than could be obtained on the first floor, and she felt also she would be stifled in the heavy solemnities of the best bedroom. She had air and light upstairs, and a small sum of money which was left over ​after the re-investment of her mother's property sufficed to furnish it according to her tastes. The furniture was simple enough, but it was characteristically vivid. The walls were white; there was a crimson drugget on the floor, a plain apple-green writing-table in the window, two big basket chairs with green cushions, and a red-lacquer wardrobe. These things, with the barest apparatus for sleeping and dressing, left the room fairly empty; it was light, full of colour, airy, and private.
It was here that she went to-night with a certain eagerness to be alone at the unusual hour of half-past ten. The process of self-realization which she had spoken of to Maud the night before was like fermenting wine in her brain, and she and this stranger, who was yet herself, were going to be alone together and make their plans. She slipped off her dress, and let her hair make cataracts down her back, and then setting the window looking over the garden wide open, she lit all the candles she had in the room. That was purely instinctive; she scarcely knew that she was doing it, conscious only that she wanted air and light. Then still instinctively expressing herself, she put on a Japanese kimono of old gold and scarlet and threw open the door to this engrossing stranger, herself, whom she was beginning to know. Then suddenly her own image in the glass, brilliant, vivid, gloriously youthful, struck her, and candle in hand she went close up to it, looking at her face slightly flushed, the liquid fire of her eyes, the golden fire of her hair. It was no motive of vanity that dictated this, for vanity, even the most deep-seated, is but a shallow emotion; it was the most intense and eager interest in herself. She looked long and gravely, enthralled at what she saw just because it was herself. Then she said out loud:
"Yes, that's me."
She wanted, she wanted passionately. She wanted to have everything, wealth, position, rank, to have the world at her feet, to be gazed at, admired, envied, and had Mephistopheles, or his feminine counterpart, come in at the moment, the bargain would have been struck the moment he proposed it. As for love, she was quite willing to take it; more than that, she even wanted to be loved with the same passionateness that she wanted everything else, but as for feeling it, or for giving it, she was truly not aware whether it was in her power to do any such thing. Marriage, of course, was necessary for the accomplishment of her desire, and, no doubt, that she should have children would add to the fulfilment of her avarice, but she wanted neither husband nor ​babies in themselves. They, too, like dancing and diamonds, were to be part of her parure, not part of herself.
Nor was her scheme to lack its intellectual triumphs. She must have wit, so that the world hung on her words as it must hang upon her beauty, and she must make la pluie et le beau temps in the world of art, by her approval or censure, just as she must set the fashions by her gowns. It would be musicians whom she would ask to her opera-box, who came with her for love of music, just as in the theatre she would be the centre of those of critical and dramatic acumen. In the intoxication of ambition that was on her at the moment she felt herself despising the ordinary woman of the world, to whom a quantity of smart gowns worn at a quantity of smart parties is sufficient to make a success of a season, those who went from party to party with nothing in their heads but what they were going to do next. She would be kind, too, philanthropic, ready to place herself and her time at the service of suffering, since it was undeniably in the fashion to work hard and to be charitable. Besides, she felt that if she really had all she wanted, she would be kind in nature not only for show. Happiness, the gratification of ambition, the gaining what one wants, she was convinced was a great softener of the heart.
Then for a moment a shadow fell across the projeted path—what afterwards? What when she had got all she desired, when age began to tarnish the gold of her youth, when the leanness of accomplished ambitions began to wrinkle her soul? But the doubt was no more than the shade cast by a passing cloud on a day of windy spring, and it had gone almost before she knew it was there. It would be early enough to think of that at the end of fifty years; it was sheer waste of time to consider it now. Besides, she felt she would pay any price for what she meant to have, provided only the bill was sent in afterwards, presented to her at the end of life, as the waiter brings the account at the end of dinner. She would have dined, that was all that mattered, and in whatever form the waiter came, and whatever astounding indebtedness he brought with him, it could not but be cheap. Only let her have everything, and she would pay whatever was demanded.
But for a moment more the shadow gave her pause, and she thought more closely to see whether in her heart of hearts she reserved anything, or whether, like Faust, she would sign her very ​self away. But she found nothing which really seemed to her to weigh as heavily as what she wanted, her success, her happiness. She was not cruel, yet if it was necessary that the unhapiness of others was the coin by which she purchased her own, she would pay it. She would not like sacrificing others—she would hate it—but if someone had to suffer to enable her to enjoy, she knew that she would not forgo her chance. If Aunt Catherine or Aunt Elizabeth, for instance, had, by some mysterious bargain, to pay for her pleasures … well, they had had their lives, they had had their chances too, at best there were but a few grey years remaining for them; and they were not every happy, probably, even as it was.… Or if, in the same way, her own gain had to be anybody else's loss, she knew really what her choice would be, even if the loss was to one she really was devoted to—even if it were Maud's loss, for instance? Then she swept those thoughts away; they were but figments of imagination. Yet in spite of that, she knew that morally, potentially, she had chosen. Her thoughts, it may be, had been talking nonsense to her; asking her child-questions—"What would you do if——?" and then putting some outrageous contingency before her; but for the moment, at any rate, she had taken these child-questions seriously, and answered them to the best of her ability.
A light wind blew in from the garden, bearing with it the warm scent of night-smelling flowers from some garden that had prospered better than that of Fair View, and she paused by the window looking out on to the darkness. At first her eyes, accustomed to the illumination in her room and its white reflecting walls, could see nothing but the large empty darkness; but soom forms of things defined themselves and took shape and a little colour. Above in the velvet vault the stars burned hot and close in the warm air, below the long railway embankment made a sharpt black line across the sky. On each side stretched parallel brick walls enclosing strips of garden belonging to neighbouring houses, all just alike, all narrow and confined. But of them all the one immediately below seemed to her most intolerably tedious. She knew every inch of it, and it was all dull and unlovely. The flower-bed under the wall was black, the lawn was black, but across it in a curve stretched the white line at the top of the tennis-net, and the post showed black across the grey of the gravel walk. From the house itself there shone a pale glimmer of light from Aunt Elizabeth's window, and even as she looked it was extinguished. Aunt Elizabeth had gone to bed. And in the morning ​Aunt Elizabeth would get up and do her worsted work, and live over again the triumph over the Demon. In a few month's time there would be the unparalleled excitement of alternate Tuesdays, and then they would to to Sea View. And in a few years' time everybody would be dead.
The rattling on of an approaching train, getting rapidly louder, caught her ear, and the next moment with a shriek the engine belching fire, followed by its train of illuminated carriages, tore past along the embankment, swift and alive, carrying its fortunate freight at top speed by the sleepy town. That was the contrast Lucia wanted; even though the tennis-net drooped in the garden, and Aunt Elizabeth had gone to bed, out in the world there was life and movement day and night.
Though it was late before she went to bed, she woke next morning every early, and found that her mind flew back like an uncoiled spring to the train of thought and that study of herself which had so occupied her the night before. Already, by that strange assimilative process of the mind which goes on in sleep, that which had been almost revelation to her the night before was familiar now, and part of her, and those flashes of consciousness of herself and her own nature had passed in the very tissues of her brain. The feverish excitement of her discoveries was over, and in the cool pearliness of dawn she thought of it all quietly, and turned her mind to the practical consideration which it suggested. And the first practical consideration was this.
Opportunities, occasions of being able to realize one's desires, she saw, certainly came from without, but she had hitherto neglected to be at home, so to speak, to opportunities. Narrow and tedious as she felt her life here to be, she had herself assisted in adding to the tediousness at which she so rebelled, by making the worst of it, not only in mental attitude, but in her practical aloofness from such humdrum life as there was. She must change all that, for she whose determination now was to get from life all that life had to offer, had up until now been doing the very opposite down in Brixham; and having assumed that it offered nothing at all, it was not surprising that she found nothing here. She had not troubled to look and search in this room, simply because she had believed it to be quite dark. She had been so occupied in wondering at the futilities in which Aunt Elizabeth's days were passed, that her own had been just as futile. That was bad practice for one who was going to press the last ounce of pleasure out of life ​Besides—though it appeared wildly improbable—little opportunities which might lead to the big opportunities might be floating about even here; she must be on the look-out for everything, snatch everything no, that was not the word, put out her hand to everything very gently, and then catch hold of it very tight.
Lucia smiled to herself as she made this verbal alteration in her thought, and got out of bed, for she was too wide awake to care to go through drowsy processes to make her sleepy again, and tiptoed downstairs to her bath, putting her sponge at the bottom below the tap, so that the noise of the water splashing in should not rouse the aunts. Yet it was not quite kindness or the desire not to break their rest that dictated the consideration of this; she wanted the sense that nobody else was awake.
She dressed quickly and went out, feeling a thrill of delight in the fact of being alone and awake in this translucent dawn, while the sleepy town still dozed abed, and her quickened perception of herself seemed to have vivified her all through, so that it was with an unsealed and kindled eye that she saw the familiar places at which she had looked a hundred times without seeing them. She turned her back on the town, and struck upward across a couple of fields that led to the great hump of down that overlooked the city. Here in the meadows the grass was still covered with the seed-pearls of the dew, though the sun was risen, and as she walked there was thrown round the shadow of her head a pale iridescence that accompanied her as she moved. Buttercups spread their gold on the green velvet of the fields, and in the hedges the leaves of the hawthorn were varnished with the dew, and cascades of starry blossom, vigorous and refreshed by the night, were spilled and sprayed over them. Then still mounting, she came to the down, all carpeted with thyme and cushions of rockrose, and stiff and springy to the feet with its short closegrowing grasses. Harebells trembled on wire-like stalks, and over all had been thrown the magic shuttle of the gossamer webs. Then turning round, Lucia looked over the hollow that held the town itself. Night-mists and the lighting of early fires half shrouded it in skeins of bluish vapour, but the taller houses and spires pricked through this covering and stood gilded with the early sunlight. Even as she looked the veils of vapour got gradually more and more suffused with the Eastern fire until they were withdrawn, and vanished in the glory of the mounting sun.
The same awakened perceptions which had shown her herself made her more alert to see these things. During this last year ​her mind had dozed, partly from laziness, partly from the conviction that everything here was grey and unprofitable, partly, perhaps, her spirit had been like one enjoying the last minutes of sleep and knowing, though instinctively and unconsciously, that the hour of awakening is close at hand. Alert and alive now she certainly was, and she judged and condemned herself for this somnolent year. To make herself complete, to be ready for the fulfilment of her desires, she saw now that this torpor would never do. She had dropped all her Cambridge studies, she had let herself grow rusty in languages, she had scarcely touched the piano in all these months. And worse than all, she had largely lost interest in people; she had labelled Brixham as a town full of "Empties" without really ever troubling to look inside it and see. Very likely she was right, very likely they had all turned into cabbages in this sleepy hollow, but what she had not reckoned with was the risk of turning into a cabbage too.
Lucia had, in addition to the wonderful charm and beauty of bodily presence, a mental gift which is second to none in the securing of a person's aims; she knew her own mind with precision, and had a quiet obstinacy that wore down opposition and obstacles by its unwearying pertinacity. It was not a quality that she wore on her sleeve for all the world to see; on the contrary, she concealed it, showing on the surface only her vivid vitality, her exuberance of spirit which had so charmed Maud, and indeed charmed any to whom she chose to exhibit it. But the unwearying obstinacy was there below it, never asserting itself, never being violent, but being always quite hard and firm like the stone of some soft plum with smooth bloom on its skin, and golden ripeness within. It was only when you bit to the centre, so to speak, that you found it at all. And this morning, standing hatless on the dewy down, in the dawn of the day and the dawn of her womanhood, she bit deep into herself, and found it there, hard and cool.
She brought back with her long sprays of the flowering hawthorn, and before the aunts came down, had put them in water in the two large cut-glass vases that stood in the hall, and would certainly have been described by an auctioneer as "very handsome." This, however, was not a very happy inspiration, for Aunt Elizabeth was instantly seized with such a violent access of hay- fever that the banisters of the stairs, as she came down, shook under the tempest of her sneezing, and Lucia, guessing the cause, took the handsome vases out into the garden, and came ​back with smelling-salts and apologies. Aunt Elizabeth, however, was not sufficiently herself to read prayers, which Cathie did instead, declaiming a particularly unchristian psalm which called down many curses on her enemies, in her impressive voice, while Elizabeth by degrees grew quieter. By breakfast-time she was so far recovered as to be able to say what she thought in choked and quavering utterance.
"It isn't much that you have to remember, Lucia," she said, "nor are there many duties that fall upon your shoulders. But if you could manage to recollect that hawthorn is poison to me, I should be grateful. And unless our eggs are going to be like eggs in salad, you might be so kind as to put the spirit-lamp out."
She unfolded the Daily Telegraph.
"And I felt so happy and well this morning," she added, "what with getting that shade of wool, and Demon coming out last night. But no one considers me, and I'm sure I ought to have got used to it by this time."
A sudden resolve to shake off her reticence seized Aunt Cathie. She was sorry for Lucia, and tried to express it, so as she came back from the side-table with the probably-salad eggs, she made a fierce kind of dab at her, the intention being to lay a sympathetic hand on her arm. Two of the eggs were broken on the floor, and they were not of the necessary consistency for salad. Aunt Elizabeth rose, though she had not begun breakfast.
"I will go and lie down," she said. "Catherine, please order what you like for lunch, if you are not too busy to see Mrs. Inglis. And the carpet was laid down only last winter."
Lucia meantime had been making matters worse on the floor.
"Oh, Aunt Elizabeth, I am so sorry!" she said, "but Aunt Cath—but something jogged my arm. It was most careless of me, and please let me have the carpet cleaned with my money."
Providence had bestowed the gift of irony on Aunt Elizabeth.
"It would be a new use for the coin of the realm to clean the carpet with it," she said brokenly. "If it is not too much, Lucia, might I ask you not to stamp above my head as you did all last night, keeping me awake? Thank you, dear; I shall try to get a little rest."
Lucia and Aunt Cathie were left alone, and when the door had closed, the latter spoke.
"Eat the other egg, Lucia," she observed, "and don't mind Elizabeth. My belief is she slept like a top. Heard her snoring ​myself. And she doesn't mean anything. Cheer up! It was my fault, too. Stupid old goose! Not you—me!"
Aunt Catherine's teeth were troublesome, and she dipped her toast in her tea.
"Poor Elizabeth!" she added. "You never can tell. Besides, egg comes out. I've spilled egg often, and not a trace of it. What happens to napkins, eh?"
And all the time the poor soul was yearning to say tender, womanly things. But she did not know how. That knowledge was one that had not come to her with years, but the longing for it had not lessened with the increase of them.
But Lucia this morning perceived something new about Aunt Cathie. She saw, and that for the first time, that Aunt Cathie wanted to say things, whereas hitherto she had only known that she did not do so. That dab on her arm which had occasioned the catastrophe with the eggs she suddenly perceived had been an effort, however unsuccessful, to say something, or if not to say, to express a feeling. She cracked the remaining egg, then stopped.
"Aunt Cathie, do eat this," she said. "I don't want it a bit. Or I could ring the bell and get another."
"Better not," said Aunt Cathie. "Elizabeth would ring to find out what you had rung for. Eat it up. You've been for a walk, I suppose, else where did you get that unfortunate hawthorn? I haven't."
"Yes. I am rather hungry," said Lucia.
"Well, eat, then. Growing girl."
Really, Aunt Catherine was so brusque that it was almost impossible to conduct conversation. But Lucia felt both expansive this morning and interested.
"Tell me, Aunt Cathie," she said, "what did you want to say when you jogged my arm? You can say it aloud now, you see, as Aunt Elizabeth has gone. At least, I suppose that it was because she was here that you didn't say it, but did it instead."
That was an unfortunate phrase; it stung, though Lucia did not mean it to, instead of caressing, and Aunt Cathie's shy, timorous tentacles withdrew instead of advancing.
"Don't know what we are talking about," she said. "Pass me the paper, Lucia. Nothing ever happens, though, does it?"
But though Aunt Cathie was easily scared off the slightest advance towards confidence, for the very reason that she so nervously yearned to show herself to Lucia, the girl found not the ​slightest difficulty in giving her aunt certain of the conclusions of her morning walk.
"I had a good long think this morning, Aunt Cathie," she said, "and I should like to tell you about it. I found out that I was an idle, lazy little brute, and that I had been wasting my time most abominably during this last year. Now I'm going to behave differently. I suppose you don't talk French, do you?"
Aunt Cathie dropped her paper at this very surprising question.
"Bless me, no! Haven't looked at a French book since I was a girl," she said. "It's hard enough to say what you want in English, without bothering about other tongues. Besides, what good could French be to me? We had a French governess once at home, but she was sent away for picking out the marks from your grandmamma's linen and putting in her own. Your grandmamma often said she wouldn't wonder if she was a spy."
These almost international complications had led Aunt Cathie away from the original question, and she returned abruptly.
"About French?" she asked.
"Oh, it was only that French was one of the things I was going to work at," said Lucia, "and I thought, if you knew French, we might make a vow only to talk French to each other three days a week or something. But if you don't know it, conversation would be limited."
There was no gainsaying this, but Aunt Cathie wanted to learn now.
"And what else?" she asked. "Sketching, now? I used to sketch. We might go sketching. Your Aunt Elizabeth and I both belonged to a sketching club, and learned touches for trees."
"Touches for trees?" asked Louisa.
"Yes, different-shaped pencil marks indicating the foliage of various trees. Elizabeth learned seven touches, but I never mastered more than five. So I could never draw plane-trees, of which there were a quantity at home. And singing, too—had you thought about singing? I might help you there. I had what is called a veiled contralto."
Aunt Cathie was getting less brusque and more accessible every moment, but, becoming suddenly conscious of it herself, she withdrew altogether. She must not seem to be forcing herself on Lucia. But she made one more advance before she retired.
"I'll get the piano tuned," she said. "Let me glance through the paper. Hum! Death of Lord Brayton. Serve him right. Drink and smoke."
​"Did he die young?" asked Lucia. "And who was he?"
"Seems to have been eighty-three. Lived at Brayton, three miles away. Immense property for somebody. Hadn't got children."
Aunt Cathie was one of those newspaper-readers, who must be numerous considering the care and plentifulness with which they are catered for, who are intensely interested in the doings of people they have never seen, and indeed never heard of except through the medium of the daily press. Her trenchant comment on Lord Brayton's death, indeed, was founded on more than this, for she had once seen his lordship standing in the window of the County Club with a glass of what was probably brandy-and-soda in one hand, and an unmistakable cigar in the other. But she was equally interested in mere names, and before leaving the table read through various lists of guests at different dinner-parties in town, and observed that there was a great deal going on. But with Elizabeth lying down upstairs, the duty of ordering dinner and making the daily inspection of the larder fell upon her, and since this had to be done immediately after breakfast, before the tradesmen called, she had little time to spare for the paper. Indeed, she did but glance at the Court Circular.
"Edgar Comber," she observed as she got up. "Never heard of him."
"What about him?" asked Lucia quietly.
"Succeeds Lord Brayton. Second cousin twice removed. Elizabeth and I used to go to the garden-parties at Brayton, when Lady Brayton was alive. Sweet woman. Gored by a mad bull."
Lucia sat for a minute longer after Aunt Cathie had announced the tragic end of the late Lady Brayton with such dramatic suddenness; but it was not that which occupied her mind, nor yet the question of French, or of Aunt Cathie's veiled contralto. How odd it was that this name should again be brought before her! Since Maud had spoken of him two days ago, in that intimate midnight talk, she had often thought of him, had recalled his appearance, his manner, his conversation with growing distinctness. And again now, as if a light had suddenly been turned up, his image became more vivid. Really Maud had chosen very well: an immense property, so Aunt Cathie had said, and a peerage, both exceedingly good things in themselves, and quite admirably suited the one to the other. She wondered if Maud had known all along that he would be possessed of such ​desirable adjuncts. It was almost impossible that she should not: in London everybody knew everything about other people. Maud would be wealthy too: she was the only child of very rich parents, and—yes, Lucia was delighted that so fair a prospect opened for her friend. True, there was not the slightest reason, so far as she knew, to suppose that this fortunate young man was in the least degree tenderly disposed toward this attractive young woman, but Maud was just the sort of girl whom that kind of man liked. He talked a good deal about slightly improving subjects, and Maud listened so well. She listened as well as he talked. And for herself—well, she had determined to polish up her French, and make the most of herself and other things. But what luck other people had! What short cuts to all that made life pleasant!
Aunt Cathie meantime ordered lunch and dinner, and went into the writing-room to finish reading her paper. After that she had certainly one, and probably two, letters to write, so that she would barely get through her work before it was necessary to go into the garden at twelve and walk round with Johnson. This was done every day, Aunt Cathie going in front, and Johnson tottering behind her, to take her orders. On most days, it was true, nothing particular passed, for when strawberries were clearly green on Tuesday it was impossible that there would be much to say about them on Wednesday, except to remark that they were green still. Also, as she had alluded to the bareness of the famous border every day for the last fortnight, and he had said that it was the cold spring that made it so backward, but that a few hot days would do wonders with it, nothing much remained for discussion. To-day, however, she had the news that the lawn-tennis court would not be used for tennis again till after the alternate Tuesdays in July, and there would be the question of sowing a little grass seed on the barest places. Johnson was sure to discourage this, as he always did when increased exertions on his part were incident to any scheme, and would probably say that he never knew of any good coming from sowing grass at the end of May, and that the price of it this year spelled ruin. In fact, in view of the disputation likely to occur this morning, it would be well to get out by a quarter to twelve, since he went to his dinner at half-past, and Aunt Cathie put down on her memorandum slate "Johnson 11.45," and underlined it.
The first letter was to the ironmonger's about the ​mowing-machine. It had never cut well, and the blades had been resharpened so frequently as to have made it economical by now to lave got a new one long ago. This letter was designed to have a sharp edge to it, and began, "My gardener informs me that.…"
Aunt Cathie's attention tended to wander before she got any further than this, and she began, in association with her conversation with Lucia, to draw "touches" on a half-sheet of paper, seeing if she remembered them. The pine-tree touch was easy, and tremendously effective, but she got confused between the elm-tree touch and the oak-tree touch. But after all Lucia had not shown any great interest in the touches; if anything, she seemed a little amused at the idea.
Aunt Cathie left her letter and got up. In the book-case opposite her, on the shelf above the dictionary of the Bible and the published sermons of her father, was a dingy line of school books, with their backs in the condition that would seem to show that they had been much used for the acquiring of knowledge, and it was necessary for the most part to open them in order to find out what they were. The first was a book of physical geography, and it came upon her with the sense of a long-forgotten memory that the Amazon was four thousand miles long, while the Thames (the longest river in the British Isles) was only two hundred and thirty-five miles. Indeed, the physical geography seemed to be written in order to belittle the English nation. Ah—London was the largest town in the world; that was better.
But it was not the physical geography that she was looking for, nor yet the "Shorter History of England," nor the Old Testament Maclear, but she found what she sought at last, a thin book with a brown cover, that reminded her of the French governess who was probably a spy. Definite articles le, la, les, indefinite articles un, une (no plural). "The article agrees with the noun in gender and number." She remembered that, too, now she read it again. Then further on, "The verb agrees with the subject in number and person"; further on again something terribly difficult about the verbs which conjugate not with avoir, but with être—e.g., "Il est parti pour Paris." She had got certainly as far as that, for she remembered it now.
Aunt Cathie sat down again, with a little flush of excitement, and pushed her letter, with its projected acerbity of tone, aside. What fun it would be to work away quietly at French for a week or two, polishing up and recollecting what no doubt would come ​back quite easily to her, and then at the end astounding Lucia by the profundity of her knowledge. It must be secretly done, though; the whole point of it would be to let it all burst upon Lucia. Really, there were few days (except on those immediately preceding the alternate Tuesdays) in which she could not snatch half an hour or so from her other occupations and devote them to French. There were only forty-two lessons in Gasc; she could manage one a day, so that before they went to Sea View she would be firmly grounded in Gasc. Indeed, on many days she might be able to manage more than half an hour: to-day, for instance, she could quite well write that stiff letter to the ironmonger after lunch, when she usually rested, and devote all the time till 11.45 to making the earlier lessons her own again. But Gasc appeared to be in smaller and less legible print than it used to be, and she put on her spectacles.
"Astonish Lucia," she said out loud in her gruffest voice, before plunging into these forgotten intricacies.
Upstairs in the meantime Elizabeth, after lying down on her sofa for half an hour, began to get restless and also hungry, since she had had no breakfast. Moreover, she had not read the paper, and she was also burning with practically untameable curiosity to see whether Catherine and Lucia had tried to clear up that fatal fricassee of egg on the dining-room carpet, or had let it dry, to be taken out with ammonia afterwards. It would be just like them to scrape it off while still wet, and so make matters really serious. Resting, in fact, soon became impossible, and she stole downstairs without feeling she was running any foolhardy risk of detection, since Catherine would certainly have gone to the writing-room by now, and Lucia would be either in her own room or out in the garden. Also she must have bread and butter at the very least; what she wanted was an egg beaten up with milk. That was harder of access: bread and butter and milk she could still get from the dining-room. The tea, however, would have been standing too long.
She reached the dining-room undetected, and flew to the egg-stain. She might have guessed; it was already driven into the carpet by the ill-directed efforts of a zealous hand. The energy with which it had been done seemed to point to Lucia; the clumsiness to Catherine. But bread and butter was still there, milk was still there, and with these she could stay the pangs of her hunger, and appear at lunch in the martyr-guise of one who had not breakfasted. But delay was dangerous, and she left the room ​again with a cup of milk, and a sufficiency of bread and butter, hoping to regain the privacy of her room without discovery.
Aunt Elizabeth was somewhat near-sighted, and as she crossed the hall again after her predatory visit to the dining-room, she did not observe that at this particular moment Lucia was just about to enter through the glass-door leading from the garden. Indeed, the poor lady was otherwise occupied, for some malignant wandering sprite from the hawthorn which her niece had brought in from her morning's walk suddenly assailed her nose, and she had barely time to set down her cup of milk on the stairs and stifle her face in her handkerchief before she was again shaken by those odious convulsions, and as for the piece of bread and butter she had taken with her, it flew from its plate with incredible violence and pitched (luckily butter upwards) on the landing six stairs higher. Then, indeed, she glanced hastily at the garden-door and at the door of the writing-room, and she still seemed to be unobserved. Lucia, in fact, had swiftly retreated into the garden again, and, had her aunt known, was biting her handkerchief in an agony of suppressed laughter, for the parabola described by the bread and butter was of a legitimately humorous character. Also she expected developments at lunch.
Elizabeth felt better after her milk and bread and butter, but still very much ill-used. She had had two spasms of hay fever, egg had been plastered into the dining-room carpet, and Catherine no doubt had taken the morning paper to the writing-room, so that unless she abandoned her role of fasting invalid, she would be without employment till lunch, since she had no book of any description in her bedroom. But to her the fact of appearing ill-used was more vital than the inconvenience of feeling so, and since she no longer felt the inclination to close her eyes, she looked out of the window, discreetly hidden behind the fringe of her blind, which she had drawn down. Lucia was in the garden, walking up and down the gravel path, and reading some book. Before long Catherine joined her with the paper, which Elizabeth so much wanted, in her hand. This she laid down on a garden-seat, and the two held consultation over the flower-beds. There was a breeze even in the brick-confines that morning, and presently the paper began to stir and flutter. Soon a leaf of it fell on to the lawn.
This was too much; she rang the bell, and lay down on her sofa.
"Jane," she said faintly, when it was answered, "please ask ​Miss Catherine if she and Miss Lucia have quite finished with the morning paper. If they have quite finished quite ask them to be so good as to let you bring it up to me."
"Yes, 'm," said Jane, "and shall I take the cup and plate away?"
Elizabeth was disconcerted only for a moment.
"Yes," she said. "You should have taken them away at breakfast- time when you did the room. Do not tell me you did not see them; you would, of course, have removed them if you had."
That was adroit; it was really adroit. Also it made her feel as if Jane had indeed forgotten to take them away earlier in the morning, and that she herself had magnanimously refrained from finding fault.
She spent a pleasant hour over the paper, and by lunch time had quite got to feel that she had not breakfasted at all. And she went downstairs, putting one foot and then the other on to each step, weak and tried, it is true, but full to the brim of Christian forbearance.
There was hash for lunch, and the weather being very warm, the hash, like the worm that has never yet come under the observation of naturalists, had turned a little. Elizabeth put it from her.
"No doubt one is best without meat in this hot weather," she said faintly, "but with no breakfast either—Catherine, remind me to speak to the butcher. Lucia love, you would be wise not to attempt the hash. There should be some cold meat in the house."
"There isn't," said Cathie. "Besides, the hash is all right. Stuff and nonsense, Elizabeth!"
"You are luckier in the selection of pieces for yourself than in pieces for me," observed Elizabeth. "It is no matter at all. But not having eaten to-day, I looked forward to my lunch."
Lucia looked up at Aunt Cathie. Her face wore an expression of hard indifference, which it was her habit to assume involuntarily when she was distressed. Aunt Elizabeth's martyred sigh completed Lucia's resolution.
"But I saw you going upstairs about eleven with a cup of milk and some bread and butter, Aunt Elizabeth," she said.
Aunt Elizabeth was exposed, and she knew it. She became wonderfully dignified.
"I make no complaints," she said. "A little pudding, if there is some, and a little bread and cheese is amply sufficient, and will make a meal of which many poor people would be glad."