Part 20 (1/2)

”It is when a girl begins to go to parties--when she comes out of her home, out of the schoolroom, from being just a little girl----”

”Ah, I know! From the Convent,” said Bice; ”but I never was there.”

”And have you always gone to parties--all your life?” asked Lucy, with wondering eyes.

Bice looked at her, wondering too. ”We do not go to parties. What is a party?” she said. ”We go to the rooms--oh yes, and to the great receptions sometimes, and at hotels. Parties? I don't know what that means. Of course, I go with the Contessa to the rooms, and to the tables d'hote. I give her my arm ever since I was tall enough. I carry her fan and her little things. When she sings I am always ready to play. They call me the shadow of the Contessa, for I always wear a black frock, and I never talk except when some one talks to me. It is most amusing how the English look at me. They say, Miss----? and then stop that I may tell them my name.”

”And don't you?” said Lucy. ”Do you know; though it is so strange to say it, I don't even know your name.”

Bice laughed, but she made no attempt to supply the omission. ”The Contessa thinks it is more piquant,” she said. ”But nothing is decided about me, till it is known how I turn out. If I am beautiful the Contessa will marry me well, and all will be right.”

”And is that what you--wish?” said Lucy, in a tone of horror.

”Monsieur, your brother,” said Bice, with a laugh, ”says I am not pretty, even. He says it does not matter. How ignorant men are, and stupid! And then suddenly they are old, old, and sour. I do not know which is the worst. I do not like men.”

”And yet you think of being married, which it is not nice to speak of,”

said Lucy, with disapproval.

”Not--nice? Why is that? Must not girls be married? and if so, why not think of it?” said Bice, gravely. There was not the ghost of a blush upon her cheek. ”If you might live without being married that would understand itself; but otherwise----”

”Indeed,” cried Lucy, ”you can, indeed you can! In England, at least. To marry for a living, that is terrible.”

”Ah!” cried Bice, with interest, drawing her chair nearer, ”tell me how that is to be done.”

There was the seriousness of a practical interest in the girl's manner.

The question was very vital to her. There was no other way of existence possible so far as she knew; but if there was it was well worth taking into consideration.

Lucy felt the question embarra.s.sing when it was put to her in this very decisive way. ”Oh,” she cried with an Englishwoman's usual monosyllabic appeal for help to heaven and earth: ”there are now a great number of ways. There are so many things that girls can do; there are things open to them that never used to be--they can even be doctors when they are clever. There are many ways in which they can maintain themselves.”

”By trades?” cried Bice, ”by work?” She laughed. ”We hear of that sometimes, and the doctors; everybody laughs; the men make jokes, and say they will have one when they are ill. If that is all, I do not think there is anything in it. I should not like to work even if I were a man, but a woman----! that gets no money, that is _mal vu_. If that is all! Work,” she said, with a little oracular air, ”takes up all your time, and the money that one can earn is so small. A girl avoids saying much to men who are like this. She knows how little they can have to offer her; and to work herself, why, it is impossible. What time would you have for anything?” cried the girl, with an impatient sense of the fatuity of the suggestion. Lucy was so much startled by this view of the subject that she made no reply.

”There is no question of working,” said Bice with decision, ”neither for women, neither for men. That is not in our world. But if I am only pretty, no more,” she added, ”what will become of me? It is not known. I shall follow the Contessa as before. I will be useful to her, and afterwards---- I prefer not to think of that. In the meantime I am young.

I do not wish for anything. It is all amusing. I become weary of the band playing, that is true; but then sometimes it plays not badly, and there is something always to laugh at. Afterwards, if I marry, then I can do as I like,” the girl said.

Lucy gave her another look of surprised awe, for it was really with that feeling that she regarded this strange little philosopher. But she did not feel herself able to pursue the subject with so enlightened a person. She said: ”How very well you speak English. You have scarcely any accent, and the Contessa has none at all. I was afraid she would speak only French, and my French is so bad.”

”I have always spoken English all my life. When the Contessa is angry she says I am English all over; and she--she is of no country--she is of all countries; we are what you call vagabonds,” the girl cried, with a laugh. She said it so calmly, without the smallest shadow of shame or embarra.s.sment, that Lucy could only gaze at her and could not find a word to say. Was it true? It was evident that Bice at least believed so, and was not at all afraid to say it. This conversation took place, as has been said, in the picture gallery, where Lady Randolph and her young visitor had first found a ground of amity. The rainy weather had continued, and this place had gradually become the scene of a great deal of intercourse between the young mistress of the house and her guest.

They scarcely spoke to each other in the evening. But in the morning after the game of romps with little Tom, by which Bice indemnified herself for the absence of other society, Lucy would join the party, and after the child had been carried off for his mid-day sleep, the others left behind would have many a talk. To Lucy the revelations thus made were more wonderful than any romance--so wonderful that she did not half take in the strange life to which they gave a clue, nor realise how perfectly right was Bice's description of herself and her patroness.

They were vagabonds, as she said; and like other vagabonds, they got a great deal of pleasure out of their life. But to Lucy it seemed the most terrible that mind could conceive. Without any home, without any retirement or quietness, with a noisy band always playing, and a series of migrations from one place to another--no work, no duties, nothing to represent home occupations but a piece of _tap.i.s.serie_. She put her hand very tenderly upon Bice's shoulder. There had been prejudices in her mind against this girl--but they all melted away in a womanly pity.

”Oh,” she said, ”Cannot I help you in any way? Cannot Sir Tom--” But here she paused. ”I am afraid,” she said, ”that all we could think of would be an occupation for you; something to do, which would be far, far better, surely, than this wandering life.”

Bice looked at her for a moment with a doubtful air. ”I don't know what you mean by occupation,” she said.

And this, to Lucy's discomfiture, she found to be true. Bice had no idea of occupation. Young Lady Randolph, who was herself not much instructed, made a conscientious effort at least to persuade the strange girl to read and improve her mind. But she flew off on all such occasions with a laugh that was half mocking and half merry. ”To what good?” she said, with that simplicity of cynicism which is a quality of extreme youth.

”If I turn out beautiful, if I can marry whom I will, I will then get all I want without any trouble.”