Sketches in Lavender, Blue and Green | Page 5

Mrs. Eppington was
conventionally moral; Edith had been thinking for herself, and thinking
in a bad atmosphere. Mrs. Eppington, grew angry at the girl's
callousness.
"Have you no sense of shame?" she cried.
"I had once," was Edith's reply, "before I came to live here. Do you
know what this house is for me, with its gilded mirrors, its couches, its
soft carpets? Do you know what I am, and have been for two years?"
The elder woman rose, with a frightened pleading look upon her face,
and the other stopped and turned away towards the window.
"We all thought it for the best," continued Mrs. Eppington meekly.
The girl spoke wearily without looking round.
"Oh! every silly thing that was ever done, was done for the best. I
thought it would be for the best, myself. Everything would be so simple
if only we were not alive. Don't let's talk any more. All you can say is
quite right."
The silence continued for a while, the Dresden-china clock on the
mantelpiece ticking louder and louder as if to say, "I, Time, am here.
Do not make your plans forgetting me, little mortals; I change your
thoughts and wills. You are but my puppets."

"Then what do you intend to do?" demanded Mrs. Eppington at length.
"Intend! Oh, the right thing of course. We all intend that. I shall send
Harry away with a few well-chosen words of farewell, learn to love my
husband and settle down to a life of quiet domestic bliss. Oh, it's easy
enough to intend!"
The girl's face wrinkled with a laugh that aged her. In that moment it
was a hard, evil face, and with a pang the elder woman thought of that
other face, so like, yet so unlike--the sweet pure face of a girl that had
given to a sordid home its one touch of nobility. As under the
lightning's flash we see the whole arc of the horizon, so Mrs. Eppington
looked and saw her child's life. The gilded, over-furnished room
vanished. She and a big-eyed, fair-haired child, the only one of her
children she had ever understood, were playing wonderful games in the
twilight among the shadows of a tiny attic. Now she was the wolf,
devouring Edith, who was Red Riding Hood, with kisses. Now
Cinderella's prince, now both her wicked sisters. But in the favourite
game of all, Mrs. Eppington was a beautiful princess, bewitched by a
wicked dragon, so that she seemed to be an old, worn woman. But
curly-headed Edith fought the dragon, represented by the three-legged
rocking- horse, and slew him with much shouting and the toasting-fork.
Then Mrs. Eppington became again a beautiful princess, and went
away with Edith back to her own people.
In this twilight hour the misbehaviour of the "General," the importunity
of the family butcher, and the airs assumed by cousin Jane, who kept
two servants, were forgotten.
The games ended. The little curly head would be laid against her breast
"for five minutes' love," while the restless little brain framed the
endless question that children are for ever asking in all its thousand
forms, "What is life, mother? I am very little, and I think, and think,
until I grow frightened. Oh, mother, tell me, what is life?"
Had she dealt with these questions wisely? Might it not have been
better to have treated them more seriously? Could life after all be ruled
by maxims learned from copy-books? She had answered as she had
been answered in her own far-back days of questioning. Might it not
have been better had she thought for herself?
Suddenly Edith was kneeling on the floor beside her.
"I will try to be good, mother."

It was the old baby cry, the cry of us all, children that we are, till
mother Nature kisses us and bids us go to sleep.
Their arms were round each other now, and so they sat, mother and
child once more. And the twilight of the old attic, creeping westward
from the east, found them again.
The masculine duet had more result, but was not conducted with the
finesse that Mr. Eppington, who prided himself on his diplomacy, had
intended. Indeed, so evidently ill at ease was that gentleman, when the
moment came for talk, and so palpably were his pointless remarks mere
efforts to delay an unpleasant subject, that Blake, always direct bluntly
though not ill-naturedly asked him, "How much?"
Mr. Eppington was disconcerted.
"It's not that--at least that's not what I have come about," he answered
confusedly.
"What have you come about?"
Inwardly Mr. Eppington cursed himself for a fool, for the which he was
perhaps not altogether without excuse. He had meant to act the part of a
clever counsel, acquiring information while giving none; by a