Part 63 (2/2)
”She says it destroys our freshness. But let us know each other's names. I am Geraldine Tressillion. Good name for a novel, isn't it?”
and she clapped her little white hands and laughed again.
”That's just what you're made to be--the heroine of a novel,” Clara Herring observed, looking at her admiringly. ”I always think of you when I come across a gay one, with golden hair and blue eyes.”
”I have my good points, I know,” Geraldine rejoined. ”But how about my hips? Too high, alas!”
”Oh, that won't show much while you're slight,” said Clara, looking at her critically.
”Well, I'll make haste and marry me before I'm afflicted with flesh, as I'm sure to become. For I deny myself nothing--I live to eat,”
Geraldine rattled on cheerfully. ”One can't get very fat before one comes out; and I hate a thin dowager. I'm engaged already, you know, but I don't like the man much--don't like him at all, in fact; and my sister says I can do better. She's been married a year, and has a baby. She told me all about it. Mamma imagines we're all innocent. A lady implored her to tell my sister things before she married, but she said she really could not speak to an innocent girl on such a subject.
I don't believe she was ever so innocent herself. A grown girl can't be innocent unless she's a fool; but anyway, it's the right pose to pretend. You've got to play the silly fool to please a man; then he feels superior.”
”But it's hypocritical,” said Beth.
”Yes, my dear. But you must be hypocritical if you want to be a man's ideal of a woman. You must know nothing, do nothing, see nothing, but just what suits his pleasure and convenience; and in order to answer to his requirements you must be either a hypocrite, or a blind worm without eyes or intelligence. Men don't like innocence because it's holy, but because it whets their appet.i.tes, my sister says, and if they're deceived it serves them right. They work the world for their own pleasure, not ours; and we must look out for ourselves. If we want money, liberty, devotion, admiration, and any other luxury, we must pretend. Don't you see?”
”I don't know,” Beth rejoined. ”But, personally, I shall never pretend anything.”
”Then you will suffer for your sincerity,” Geraldine rejoined.
Beth shrugged her shoulders. The turn the conversation had taken was distasteful to her, and she would not pursue it.
There was a pause, then Clara observed sententiously:
”Innocence is not impossible, Geraldine. Surely Adelaide is innocent enough.”
”I said innocence and intelligence were incompatible,” Geraldine answered. ”You don't call Adelaide intelligent, do you?”
”Who is Adelaide?” Beth asked.
”The daughter of a Roman Catholic peer,” Geraldine replied. ”She is eighteen, and her mind is absolutely undeveloped. We think she's in training for a convent, and that's why they don't let her learn much.
Miss Ella Blackburne is a Roman Catholic, and so also is Adelaide's maid; They trot her round to all the observances of her Church regularly, and in the intervals she plays with the kitten. I don't know why she should have been sent here at all, for this is a regular forcing-house for the marriage market. Miss Blackburne expects all her girls to marry well, and they generally do. I should think, Miss Beth, she will be able to make something of you with those eyes!”
”Look at its neck and shoulders, too, and the way its head is set on them!” Clara exclaimed.
”Not to mention its hands and its complexion!” Geraldine supplemented.
”But its voice alone--_soft, gentle, and low_--would get it into the peerage!”
Beth, unused to be appraised in this way, blushed and smiled, rather pleased, but confused.
”How many girls are there here?” she asked, to change the subject.
”Six boarders till you came, but now we are seven,” Clara answered.
”There are some day-girls too, but they are children, and don't count.
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