to pay a call all by himself! It appeared that he had been the only man there, and when Rosalie’s mother said, “I wonder you didn’t feel shy, Harold,” he said with a funny sort of “Haw” sound in his voice, “Not in the least. Haw! Why on earth should I feel shy? Haw.” He had evidently very much entertained the party. The more he talked about it the more Rosalie noticed the funny “Haw.” “They must have been very glad you came,” Rosalie’s mother said.
Harold put the first and second fingers of his right hand on his collar and gave it a pull up. “I rather—haw—think they were,” Harold said. “Haw.”
Rosalie gave that blink.
Years afterwards, when she was grown up, a grown man boastfully said something in her presence, and in a flash were recalled father dissecting a herring, Robert holding his breath till he nearly burst, Harold hitching up his collar and with the “haw” sound saying, “I rather think they were.” In a flash those childhood scenes, and instantly with them interpretation of the funny feeling and the blink that they had caused: they had been the rooting in her of a new perception added to the impregnably rooted impression of the wonder and power of men—the perception that men knew they were wonderful and powerful and liked to show off how wonderful and powerful they were.
They were superior creatures but they were apt to be rather make-you-blinky creatures; that was the new perception.
On the day after her eighth birthday, the birthday itself being a treat and a holiday, Rosalie began to do lessons with Hilda. Hilda, at sixteen, had “finished her education” as had Anna and Flora at the same age. Harold, who had been a boarder at a Grammar School, had stayed there till he was eighteen; and Robert, ultimately, continued at Helmsbury Grammar School till he was eighteen. It was apparent—and it was another manifestation of the greater importance of males—that boys had more education to finish, or were permitted longer to finish it, than girls.
The school at which Anna, Flora and Hilda thus in the eight years between leaving their mother’s knee at eight and completing their education at sixteen, learnt everything it was possible to know, was kept by two very thin ladies called (ungrammatically) the Miss Pockets. The Miss Pockets were daughters of the former vicar of St. Mary’s and inhabitant of the rectory, and on their father dying and Mr. Aubyn coming, they established themselves in a prim villa near-by and did what they called “took in pupils.” They were very thin, they had very long thin noses, they were always very cold, and from the sharp end of the long thin nose of the elder Miss Pocket there always depended, much fascinating Rosalie, a shining bead of moisture.
Rosalie’s chief recollection of the Miss Pockets was of being constantly met by them as she approached the age of eight, and of them always, on these occasions, fondling icy hands about her neck and saying to her father or her mother, “And when will our new little pupil be coming to us?”
But no direct reply was ever given to this question, either by Rosalie’s mother, who was always made to look uncomfortable when it was asked by the Miss Pockets, or by Rosalie’s father who always seemed to jut out his nose at it and make the Miss Pockets look thinner and colder than ever.
On the morning of her eighth birthday, Rosalie received from the Miss Pockets by post an illuminated text provided with a piece of red cord for hanging on the wall and inquiring, rather abruptly,
“Who Hath Believed Our Report?”
Rosalie thought at first this was a plaintive question directly from the Miss Pockets in their capacity as school-teachers and therefore as licensed makers of reports; but immediately afterwards saw “Isaiah” printed under it in discreet characters—
“Who Hath Believed our Report?—Isaiah.”
and concluded that it was Isaiah who had believed it. On the back was written in the tall, thin handwriting of the Miss Pockets, “To our dear little pupil Rosalie, on her eighth birthday, from Agnes and Lydia Pocket.”
In the afternoon, the Miss Pockets called at the rectory and there was evidently some high mystery about their visit. Rosalie was in the study looking for a drawing pin wherewith to affix her illuminated card to the wall. Hilda ran in. “The Miss Pockets. Where’s father? Come out,” and Rosalie was hurriedly run out and shut into the dining-room, leaving the vindication of Isaiah in the matter of the report on the table. Opening the door to a chink, Rosalie saw the Miss Pockets, shivering, the permanent decoration on the nose of the elder Miss Pocket very conspicuous and agitatedly swinging, ushered into the study, and presently her father follow his jutty nose into the study after them, and very shortly after that the Miss Pockets driven out as it were by the jutty nose and looking thinner and colder than ever before. Miss Lydia Pocket, who had lost the appendage to her nose and looked curiously undressed and indelicate without it, was saying feebly, “But it was understood. We always thought it was understood.”
They shuddered away; and when Rosalie went into the study immediately afterwards to recover her card, there was upon the word Isaiah, as though somebody had literally thrown doubt upon his belief of the report, a large damp spot.
On the following day, Rosalie began lessons with Hilda.
CHAPTER V
The lessons with Hilda period lasted till Rosalie was twelve. “Take her off your mother’s hands. That’s what you’ve left school for,” was her father’s instruction to Hilda; and so there was Rosalie, put out from her mother’s knee to the schoolroom like a small new ship out from the haven to the bay; and there was that small mind of hers come in to the company of Hilda and of Flora and of Anna with the obsession that men were infinitely more important and much more wonderful than women. She knew now that the world did not belong to men in the literal sense, but belonged, as her mother had instructed her, to God; but she knew with the abundant evidence of all that went on about her that everything in the world was done for men and that women were largely occupied in doing it; and she knew, from the same testimony, that men were much more interesting to watch than women, rather in the way that dogs were much more interesting than cats. Men, like dogs, were much more satisfactory: that was it. Her mind was throwing out feelers towards the wonders of the world and this was the feeler that was most developed. She came to her sisters very highly sensitive to the difference between men and women. And her sisters showed her the difference.
Anna was twenty then. Anna had “finished her education” four years ago. She had left school “to help your mother in the house”; and when Flora, two years later, finished her education and left school for the same purpose, she found Anna grooved in the business of helping her mother in the house and she was not in the least anxious to help Anna out of the grooves and herself become imbedded in them.
This annoyed Anna.
Rosalie used to hear Anna say to Flora a dozen times a day, “I really don’t see why you should be the one to do nothing but amuse yourself all day long. I really don’t.”
Flora used to say, “Well, you’ve always done it”—whatever the duty in dispute might be—“so why on earth should I?”
Then either Anna’s face would give a twitch and she would walk out of the room, or her face would get very red and there would be a row.
Or sometimes Flora to Anna’s “I really don’t see why—” would say enticingly, “Don’t you?”
“No,
