Lesbia Newman (1889)/Chapter 4
CHAPTER IV.
An Afternoon at Ruddymere.
Shortly after the occurrences of the previous chapter our four of Dulham vicarage were invited to a large garden party at the country seat of the Marquis of Humnoddie, a few miles distant. The Ruddymere people, like other county families of the neighbourhood, often drove over on a Sunday to hear Mr Bristley’s afternoon lectures, which were always on subjects suited to a cultivated audience. This common point of interest led to a genuine friendship, among the privileges of which Lady Humnoddie, who treated most matters as a joke, reckoned that of chaffing Lesbia about her advanced ideas.
Among the guests was a first cousin of the marchioness, Mr Athelstan Lockstable, a young man who, though not exactly silly, had a curious habit in society, that of dropping the thread of a remark he was in course of uttering, and so losing the bearings of the conversation around him, whilst he ransacked his memory, by the aid of expletives, to find the dropped thread, which he then suddenly sprang upon the company at the very moment most malapropos, regardless of the personality and the prejudices of anyone whom he could button-hole for the purpose, and overwhelm with a fresh batch of expletives expressive of his satisfaction at having caught his lost idea.
Lesbia’s bicycling costume having been perfected by the good taste of her uncle, was now very presentable; accordingly she rode her machine—a new 50-inch one—to Ruddymere, while the others drove in the pony-chaise.
‘Well, dear,’ said the hostess, taking the young girl’s hands in each of her own, ‘you do look sweetly manly to-day. I’ve heard of your doings on the bicycle; got it here, I suppose? Yes; and how are your friends of Frogmore? But, I say, don’t you mind people noticing you wherever you go?’
‘Not a bit, Lady Humnoddie; I’m getting quite a hardened, brazen character. But I get some encouragement too.’
‘Mostly from men, I suppose?’
‘No; I’m corresponding with the Reformed Dress Society, which is composed of ladies. I want to propose the institution of a girls’ bicycle club.’
‘Capital idea! but I suppose you’d reject tricycles with lofty contempt. I’m really thinking of a tandem for Hilda and Friga. My girls are both bitten by the mania. ‘I wish they weren't, but it can’t be helped. But, I say, Lesbie, is it your uncle’s fad or your own?’
‘His in the first place; mine now.’
‘Ah, I guessed as much. Mr Bristley is well known to be a heretic and a sinner.’
This was said in a voice intended to reach the person concerned, who was in an adjoining group.
‘I plead guilty to being a sinner, Lady Humnoddie,’ said he, coming forward, ‘otherwise I should be a better man than St Paul, who called himself the chief of sinners—and very accurately, considering the twaddle he always talked whenever he opened his mouth on the subject of women. But a heretic, no. I take a professional pride in keeping whole and undefiled the Catholic Faith, else without doubt I should perish everlastingly!’
Two of the other parsons of the neighbourhood, who were standing and talking with their backs to the group which the vicar of Dulham had joined, turned round and chuckled at the pompous tone of this last sentence.
‘Your ‘Catholic’ faith, Bristley,’ said one of them, who was an old friend of the Dulham family, ‘is a very whole one, we all know, and I suppose undefiled. It consists, if I mistake not, of uncompromising woman-worship. Well, why not? I’m devoted to the ladies myself. Eh, Lesbia?’
‘You! I’m afraid, Mr Smeeth,’ answered Lesbia, ‘that your precious devotion is mollycoddle.’
‘Pon my sawl—aw—that’s too bad, Miss Newman,’ put in Athelstan Lockstable, who had just joined them. ‘When all these ages poets have been singing the praises of Lawve, you know, and—’
‘Yes,’ she cut him short, ‘poets have been singing, and marriage bells have been ringing, and novel-writers have been scribbling, and nightingales have been dribbling, and troubadours have been sighing, and chaperones have been plying—it’s all quite too utterly awfully chawming, you know. But, for all that, the master passion’s rarely anything more noble that what I call mollycoddle.’
‘You're a funny girl, Lesbie,’ said Lady Humnoddie, ‘a very funny girl altogether.’
‘Perhaps so,’ answered Lesbia; ‘but though you'll say I’m young to judge, I don’t imagine I shall ever be much addicted to mollycoddle.’
‘But come, Lesbia, what is mollycoddle, after all? Do you apply that name to every kind of love?’ asked Mr Smeeth.
‘Oh! by no means, I do not call either tried affection or real woman-worship by that name. Mollycoddle is the feeling experienced by empty-headed young women and emptier-headed young men, when they flirt and spoon and go a courting, like that maiden all forlorn that waked the cock that lived under the thorn, that tossed the cow with the crumpled horn, that ate the dog, that swept the cat, that kissed the rat, that worried the house that Jack built.’
‘Dash my wig, Miss Newman, you're quite one of the —eh—ah—um—what the deuce, eh? what the devil, you know, eh? why, those old Greek whaddy-call’ems, demmy, why demmy, I'll be—.’ And Mr Lockstable subsided into a brown study.
‘So you’ve been to Rome, I understand, Lady Humnoddie,’ said Mrs Bristley, who had been taking tea on another part of the lawn and had come over just too late to hear Mr Lockstable’s commentary on his own text. ‘Were you disappointed in the Easter ceremonies, or not? I asked because my husband said he was a good deal disillusioned when he went about six years ago. I remember he called Holy Week at Rome stale, flat, and unprofitable.’
‘No, you don’t say so? I’m surprised at that, Mr Bristley,’ turning to him. ‘I thought it very novel and amusing. Didn’t you think the Pope’s choir sang well, and weren’t you interested in the vespers of those nuns at the Monte Carlo—I mean Trinita del Monte, up the steps there, you know, not far from the Piazza di San Pietro? I forget what order they belong to—not Benedictines, is it? the something—a—’
‘Amazons, demmy! why demmy, Amazons!’ shouted Mr Lockstable, facing his cousin, with a resounding slap on his thigh. ‘Amazons! demmy, Amazons. ‘There you are!’
Everyone stared.
‘An order of nuns called demi-Amazons!’ exclaimed Lady Humnoddie.
‘Aw, no—not an order of nuns,’ leisurely explained Mr Lockstable. ‘I was thinking of those strong-minded Greek charmers who were something after Miss Newman’s style, eh? But I say, if there ain’t Arthur Guineabush and his cousin Miss Dimpleton at the end of the lawn! I shall cut it, em con. I don’t want to be overwhelmed with any more of that young lady’s pious platitudes,—had enough of them and to spare on Sunday.’
‘And she had enough of you probably,’ observed Lesbia, laughing at him. ‘You very markedly sat upon her piety,—squashed it quite into a ‘platitude.’’
Mr Lockstable slipped off, muttering as he went,—‘Dash my wig, sir, dash—my—wig, sir.’