Part 23 (1/2)

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.