and chocolates with youthful naïveté, while parties of tourists who have escaped the clutches of an old woman lying in wait for them in the shadow of the chapel door, pause thoughtfully in front of the easels to “see and remark, and say whose?”
I was lying under a tree with the guilty consciousness of no sketch book—watching the swifts wheel and dip in the bright air, and wondering if all the brown dogs resting in the grass belonged to the young painters, when two people passed me, a man and a girl, their heads bent over a book. There was something vaguely familiar in their walk. Suddenly they looked down at me—we stared—opened our mouths. She swooped down upon me, and he took off his immaculate straw hat and placed it under his left arm.
“Katherine! How extraordinary! How incredible after all these years!” cried she. Turning to the man: “Guy, can you believe it?—It’s Katherine, in Bruges of all places in the world!”
“Why not?” said I, looking very bright and trying to remember her name.
“But, my dear, the last time we met was in New Zealand—only think of the miles!”
Of course, she was Betty Sinclair; I’d been to school with her.
“Where are you staying; have you been here long? Oh, you haven’t changed a day—not a day. I’d have known you anywhere.”
She beckoned to the young man, and said, blushing as though she were ashamed of the fact, but it had to be faced, “This is my husband.” We shook hands. He sat down and chewed a grass twig. Silence fell while Betty recovered breath and squeezed my hand.
“I didn’t know you were married,” I said stupidly.
“Oh, my dear—got a baby!” said Betty. “We live in England now. We’re frightfully keen on the Suffrage, you know.”
Guy removed the straw. “Are you with us?” he asked, intensely.
I shook my head. He put the straw back again and narrowed his eyes.
“Then here’s the opportunity,” said Betty. “My dear, how long are you going to stay? We must go about together and have long talks. Guy and I aren’t a honeymoon couple, you know. We love to have other people with us sometimes.”
The belfry clashed into See the Conquering Hero Comes!
“Unfortunately I have to go home quite soon. I’ve had an urgent letter.”
“How disappointing! You know Bruges is simply packed with treasures and churches and pictures. There’s an out-door concert tonight in the Grand’ Place, and a competition of bell ringers to-morrow to go on for a whole week.”
“Go I must,” I said so firmly that my soul felt imperative marching orders, stimulated by the belfry.
“But the quaint streets and the Continental smells, and the lace makers—if we could just wander about—we three—and absorb it all.” I sighed and bit my underlip.
“What’s your objection to the vote?” asked Guy, watching the nuns wending their way in sweet procession among the trees.
“I always had the idea you were so frightfully keen on the future of women,” said Betty. “Come to dinner with us to-night. Let’s thrash the whole subject out. You know, after the strenuous life in London, one does seem to see things in such a different light in this old world city.”
“Oh, a very different light indeed,” I answered, shaking my head at the familiar guide book emerging from Guy’s pocket.
(1910)
NEW DRESSES
Mrs. Carsfield and her mother sat at the dining-room table putting the finishing touches to some green cashmere dresses. They were to be worn by the two Misses Carsfield at church on the following day, with apple-green sashes, and straw hats with ribbon tails. Mrs. Carsfield had set her heart on it, and this being a late night for Henry, who was attending a meeting of the Political League, she and the old mother had the dining-room to themselves, and could make “a peaceful litter” as she expressed it. The red cloth was taken off the table—where stood the wedding-present sewing machine, a brown work-basket, the “material,” and some torn fashion journals. Mrs. Carsfield worked the machine, slowly, for she feared the green thread would give out, and had a sort of tired hope that it might last longer if she was careful to use a little at a time; the old woman sat in a rocking chair, her skirt turned back, and her felt-slippered feet on a hassock, tying the machine threads and stitching some narrow lace on the necks and cuffs. The gas jet flickered. Now and again the old woman glanced up at the jet and said, “There’s water in the pipe, Anne, that’s what’s the matter,” then was silent, to say again a moment later, “There must be water in that pipe, Anne,” and again, with quite a burst of energy, “Now there is—I’m certain of it.”
Anne frowned at the sewing machine. “The way mother harps on things—it gets frightfully on my nerves,” she thought. “And always when there’s no earthly opportunity to better a thing...I suppose it’s old age—but most aggravating.” Aloud she said: “Mother, I’m having a really substantial hem in this dress of Rose’s—the child has got so leggy, lately. And don’t put any lace on Helen’s cuffs; it will make a distinction, and besides she’s so careless about rubbing her hands on anything grubby.”
“Oh there’s plenty,” said the old woman. “I’ll put it a little higher up.” And she wondered why Anne had such a down on Helen—Henry was just the same. They seemed to want to hurt Helen’s feelings—the distinction was merely an excuse.
“Well,” said Mrs. Carsfield, “you didn’t see Helen’s clothes when I took them off to-night, Black from head to foot after a week. And when I compared them before her eyes with Rose’s she merely shrugged, you know that habit she’s got, and began stuttering. I really shall have to see Dr. Malcolm about her stuttering, if only to give her a good fright. I believe it’s merely an affectation she’s picked up at school—that she can help it.”
“Anne, you know she’s always stuttered. You did just the same when you were her age, she’s highly strung.” The old woman took off her spectacles, breathed on them, and rubbed them with a corner of her sewing apron.
“Well, the last thing in the world to do her any good is to let her imagine that” answered Anne, shaking out one of the green frocks, and pricking at the pleats with her needle. “She is treated exactly like Rose, and the Boy hasn’t a nerve. Did you see him when I put him on the rocking-horse to-day, for the first time? He simply gurgled with joy. He’s more the image of his father every day.”
“Yes, he certainly is a thorough Carsfield,” assented the old woman, nodding her head.
“Now that’s another thing about Helen,” said Anne. “The peculiar way she treats Boy, staring at him and frightening him as she does. You remember when he was a baby how she used to take away his bottle to see what he would do? Rose is perfect with the child—but Helen...”
The old woman put down her work on the table. A little silence fell, and through the silence the loud ticking of the dining-room clock. She wanted to speak her mind to Anne once and for all about the way she and Henry were treating Helen, ruining the child, but the ticking noise distracted her. She could not think of the words and sat there stupidly, her brain going tick, tick, to the dining-room clock.
“How loudly that clock ticks,” was all
