Philistia. Allen Grant
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Название: Philistia

Автор: Allen Grant

Издательство: Bookwire

Жанр: Языкознание

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isbn: 4064066246396

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СКАЧАТЬ Your son, I suppose, come home from sea or something? He’s in the fish-curing line, isn’t he, I think I’ve heard you say?’

      ‘I don’t rightly know who ‘ee may mean, Miss Luttrell,’ replied the mother proudly, ‘by a young man lounging about the place; but my son’s at home from Oxford at present for his vacations, and he isn’t in the fish-curing line at all, ma’am, but he’s a Fellow of his college, as I’ve told ‘ee more than once already; but you’re getting old, I see, Miss Luttrell, and your memory isn’t just what it had used to be, dost know.’

      ‘Oh, at Oxford, is he?’ Miss Luttrell chimed on vacantly, wagging her wrinkled old head in solemn deprecation of the evil omen. She knew it as well as Mrs. Oswald herself did, having heard the fact at least a thousand times before; but she made it a matter of principle never to encourage these upstart pretensions on the part of the lower orders, and just to keep them rigorously at their proper level she always made a feint of forgetting any steps in advance which they might have been bold enough to take, without humbly obtaining her previous permission, out of their original and natural obscurity. ‘Fellow of his college is he, really? Fellow of a college! Dear me, how completely Oxford is going to the dogs. Admitting all kinds of odd people into the University, I understand. Why, my second brother—the Archdeacon, you know—was a Fellow of Magdalen for some time in his younger days. You surprise me, quite. Fellow of a college! You’re perfectly sure he isn’t a National schoolmaster at Oxford instead, and that you and his father haven’t got the two things mixed up together in your heads, Mrs. Oswald?’

      ‘No, ma’am, we’in perfectly sure of it, and we haven’t got the things mixed up in our heads at all, no more nor you have, Miss Luttrell. He was a scholar of Trinity first, and now he’s got a Fellowship at Oriel. You must mind hearing all about it at the time, only you’re getting so forgetful like now, with years and such like.’ Mrs. Oswald knew there was nothing that annoyed the old lady so much as any allusion to her increasing age or infirmities, and she took her revenge out of her in that simple retributive fashion.

      ‘A scholar of Trinity, was he? Ah, yes, patronage will do a great deal in these days, for certain. The Rector took a wonderful interest in your boy, I think, Mrs. Oswald. He went to Plymouth Grammar School, I remember now, with a nomination no doubt; and there, I dare say, he attracted some attention, being a decent, hard-working lad, and got sent to Oxford with a sizarship, or something of the sort; there are all kinds of arrangements like that at the Universities, I believe, to encourage poor young men of respectable character. They become missionaries or ushers in the end, and often get very good salaries, considering everything, I’m told.’

      ‘There you’re wrong, again, ma’am,’ put in Mrs. Oswald, stoutly. ‘My husband, he sent Harry to Plymouth School at our own expense; and after that he got an exhibition from the school, and an open scholarship, I think they call it, at the college; and he’s been no more beholden to patronage, ma’am, than your brother the Archdeacon was, nor for the matter o’ that not so much neither; for I’ve a’ways understood the old Squire sent him first to the Charterhouse, and afterwards he got a living through Lord Modbury’s influence, as the Squire voted regular with the Modbury people for the borough and county. But George was always independent, Miss Luttrell, and beholden to neither Luttrells nor Modburies, and that I tell ‘ee to your face, ma’am, and no shame of it either.’

      ‘Well, well, Mrs. Oswald,’ said the old lady, shaking her head more violently than ever at this direct discomfiture, ‘I don’t want to argue with you about the matter. I dare say your son’s a very worthy young man, and has worked his way up into a position he wasn’t intended for by Providence. But it’s no business of mine, thank heaven, it’s no business of mine, for I’m not responsible for all the vagaries of all the tradespeople on my brother’s estate, nor don’t want to be. There’s Mrs. Figgins, now, the baker’s wife; her daughter has just chosen to get married to a bank clerk in London; and I said to her this morning, “Well, Mrs. Figgins, so you’ve let your Polly go and pick up with some young fellow from town that you’ve never seen before, haven’t you? And that’s the way of all you people. You marry your girls to bank clerks without a reference, for the sake of getting ’em off your hands, and what’s the consequence? They rob their employers to keep up a pretty household for their wives, as if they were fine ladies; and then at last the thing’s discovered, there comes a smash, they run away to America, and you have your daughters and their children thrown back again penniless upon your hands.” That’s what I said to her, Mrs. Oswald. And how’s YOUR daughter, by the way—Jemima I think you call her; how’s she, eh, tell me?’

      ‘I beg your pardon, Miss Luttrell, but her name’s not Jemima; it’s Edith.’

      ‘Oh, Edith, is it? Well to be sure! The grand names girls have dangling about with them nowadays! My name’s plain Catherine, and it’s good enough for me, thank goodness. But these young ladies of the new style must be Ediths and Eleanors and Ophelias, and all that heathenish kind of thing, as if they were princesses of the blood or play-actresses, instead of being good Christian Susans and Janes and Betties, like their grandmothers were before them. And Miss Edith, now, what is SHE doing?’

      ‘She’s doing nothing in particular at this moment, Miss Luttrell, leastways not so far as I know of; but she’s going up to Oxford part of this term on a visit to her brother.’

      ‘Going up to Oxford, my good woman! Why, heaven bless the girl, she’d much better stop at home and learn her catechism. She should try to do her duty in that station of life to which it has pleased Providence to call her, instead of running after young gentlemen above her own rank and place in society at Oxford. Tell her so from me, Mrs. Oswald, and mind you don’t send the tea dusty. Two pounds of your best, if you please, as soon as you can send it. Good-morning.’ And Miss Luttrell, having discovered the absolute truth of the shocking rumour which had reached her about Edith’s projected visit, the confirmation of which was the sole object of her colloquy, wagged her way out of the shop again successfully, and was duly assisted by the page-boy into her shambling little palsied donkey-chair.

      ‘That was all the old cat came about, you warr’nt you,’ muttered Mr. Oswald himself from behind his biscuit-boxes. ‘Must have heard it from the Rector’s wife, and wanted to find out if it was true, to go and tell Mrs. Walters o’ such a bit o’ turble presumptiousness.’

      Meanwhile, in the little study with the bow-window over the shop, Harry and Edie Oswald were busily discussing the necessary preparations for Edie’s long-promised visit to the University.

      ‘I hope you’ve got everything nice in the way of dress, you know, Edie,’ said Harry. ‘You’ll want a decent dinner dress, of course, for you’ll be asked out to dine at least once or twice; and I want you to have everything exceedingly proper and pretty.’

      ‘I think I’ve got all I need in that way, Harry; I’ve my dark poplin, cut square in the bodice, for one dinner dress, and my high black silk to fall back upon for another. Worn open in front, with a lace handkerchief and a locket, it does really very nicely. Then I’ve got three afternoon dresses, the grey you gave me, the sage-greeny aesthetic one, and the peacock-blue with the satin box-pleats. It’s a charming dress, the peacock-blue; it looks as if it might have stepped straight out of a genuine Titian. It came home from Miss Wells’s this morning. Wait five minutes, like a dear boy, and I’ll run and put it on and let you see me in it.’

      ‘That’s a good girl, do. I’m so anxious you should have all your clothes the exact pink of perfection, Popsy. Though I’m afraid I’m a very poor critic in that matter—if you were only a problem in space of four dimensions, now! Yet, after all, every man or woman is more of a problem than anything in x square plus y square you can possibly set yourself.’

      Edie ran lightly up into her own room, and soon reappeared clad resplendent in the new peacock-blue dress, СКАЧАТЬ