i hear from philip—a new part wanted—i lose my temper—we all lose our tempers.
next morning's post brought the following letter from philip:—
"my dear isobel,
"you need not bother about the dragon—i'll do it. but i wish you would put another character into the piece. it is for clinton. he says he will act with us. he says he can do anything if it is a leading part. he has got black velvet knickerbockers and scarlet stockings, and he can have the tunic and cloak i wore last year, and the flap hat; and you must lend him your white ostrich feather. make him some kind of a grandee. if you can't, he must be the prince, and charles can do some of the travellers. we are going out on the marsh this morning, but i shall be with you after luncheon, and clinton in the evening. he does not want any rehearsing, only a copy of the [203]plan. let alice make it, her writing is the clearest, and i wish she would make me a new one; i've torn mine, and it is so dirty, i shall never be able to read it inside the dragon. don't forget.
"your affectionate brother,
"philip."
there are limits to one's patience, and with some of us they are not very wide. philip had passed the bounds of mine, and my natural indignation was heightened by a sort of revulsion from last night's anxiety on his account. his lordly indifference to other people's feelings was more irritating than the trouble he gave us by changing his mind.
"you won't let him take the woolly beast from me, isobel?" cried charles. "and you know you promised to lend me your ostrich plume."
"certainly not," said i. "and you shall have the feather. i promised."
"if mr. clinton acts—i shan't," said alice.
"mr. clinton won't act," said i, "i can't alter the piece now. but i wish, alice, you were not always so very ready to drive things into a quarrel."
"if we hadn't given way to philip so much he wouldn't think we can bear anything," said alice.
i could not but feel that there was some truth in this, and that it was a dilemma not provided against [204]in aunt isobel's teaching, that one may be so obliging to those one lives with as to encourage, if not to teach them to be selfish.
perhaps it would have been well if on the first day when philip deserted us alice and i, had spent the afternoon with lucy lambent, and if we had continued to amuse ourselves with our friends when philip amused himself with his. we should then have been forced into a common decision as to whether the play should be given up, and, without reproaches or counter-reproaches, philip would have learned that he could not leave all the work to us, and then arrange and disarrange the plot at his own pleasure, or rather, he would never have thought that he could. but a plan of this kind requires to be carried out with perfect coolness to be either justifiable or effective. and we have not a cool head amongst us.
one thing was clear. i ought to keep faith with the others who had worked when philip would not. charles should not be turned out of his part. i rather hustled over the question of a new part for mr. clinton in my mind. i disliked him, and did not want to introduce him. i said to myself that it was quite unreasonable—out of the question in fact—and i prepared to say so to philip.
[205]of course he was furious—that i knew he would be; but i was firm.
"charles can be the old father, and the family servant too," said he. "they're both good parts."
"then give them to mr. clinton," said i, well knowing that he would not. "charles has taken a great deal of pains with his part, and these are his holidays as well as yours, and the prince shall not be taken from him."
"well, i say it shall. and charles may be uncommonly glad if i let him act at all after the way he behaved yesterday."
"the way you behaved, you, mean," said i—for my temper was slipping from my grasp;—"you might have broken his neck."
"all the more danger in his provoking me, and in your encouraging him."
i began to feel giddy, which is always a bad sign with us. it rang in my mind's ear that this was what came of being forbearing with a bully like philip. but i still tried to speak quietly.
"if you think," said i through my teeth, "that i am going to let you knock the others about, and rough-ride it over our theatricals, you are mistaken."
"your theatricals!" cried philip, mimicking me. "i like that! whom do the properties belong to, pray?"
"if it goes by buying," was my reply to this rather difficult question, "most of them belong to granny, [206]for the canvas and the paints and the stuff for the dresses, have gone down in the bills; and if it goes by work, i think we have done quite as much as you. and if some of the properties are yours, the play is mine. and as to the scene—you did the distance in the middle of the wood, but alice and i painted all the foreground."
"then you may keep your foreground, and i'll take my distance," roared philip, and in a moment his pocket-knife was open, and he had cut a hole a foot-and-a-half square in the centre of the enchanted forest, and bobby's amazed face (he was running a tuck in his cloak behind the scenes) appeared through the aperture.
if a kind word would have saved the fruits of our week's hard labour, not one of us would have spoken it. we sacrifice anything we possess in our ill-tempered family—except our wills.
"and you may take your play, and i'll take my properties," continued philip, gathering up hats, wigs, and what not from the costumes which alice and i had arranged in neat groups ready for the green-room. "i'll give everything to clinton this evening for his new theatre, and we'll see how you get on without the fiery dragon."
"clinton can't want a fiery dragon when he's got you," said charles, [207]in a voice of mock compliment.
the fairy godmother's crabstick was in philip's hand. he raised it, and flew at charles, but i threw myself between them and caught philip's arm.
"you shall not hit him," i cried.
aunt isobel is right about one thing. if one does mean to stop short in a quarrel one must begin at a very early stage. it is easier to smother one's feelings than to check one's words. by the time it comes to blows it is like trying to pull up a runaway horse. the first pinch philip gave to my arm set my brain on fire. when he threw me heavily against the cave with a mocking laugh, and sprang after charles, i could not have yielded an inch to him to save my life—not to earn fortunatus' purse, or three fairy wishes—not to save whatever i most valued.
what would have induced me? i do not know, but i know that i am very glad it is not quite so easy to sell one's soul at one bargain as fairy-tales make out!
my struggle with philip had given charles time to escape. philip could not find him, and rough as were the words with which he returned to me, i fancy they cost him some effort of self-control, and they betrayed to alice's instinct and mine that he would have been glad to get out of the extremity to which our tempers had driven matters.
"look here!" said he in a tone which would [208]have been perfect if we had been acting a costermonger and his wife. "are you going to make clinton the prince or not?"
"i am not," said i, nursing my elbow, which was cut by a nail on the cask. "i am not going to do anything whatever for mr. clinton, and i ought to be cured of working for you."
"you have lost an opening to make peace," said an inner voice. "you've given the yielding plan a fair trial, and it has failed," said self-justification—the swiftest pleader i know. "there are some people, with self-satisfied, arbitrary tempers, upon whom gentleness is worse than wasted, because it misleads them. they have that remnant of savage notions which drives them to mistake generosity for weakness. the only way to convince them is to hit them harder than they hit you. and it is the kindest plan for everybody concerned."
i am bound to say—though it rather confuses some of my ideas—that experience has convinced me that this last statement is not without truth. but i am also bound to say that it was not really applicable to philip. he is not as generous as alice, but i had no good reason to believe that kindly concession would be wasted on him.
when i had flung my last defiance, philip replied in violent words of a kind which girls in our class of [209]life do not (happily!) use, even in a rage. they were partly drowned by the clatter with which he dragged his big box across the floor, and filled it with properties of all kinds, from the dragon to the foot-light reflectors.
"i am going by the 4.15 to the town," said he, as he pulled the box out towards his own room. "you need not wait for either clinton or me. pray 'ring up' punctually!"
at this moment—having fully realized the downfall of the theatricals—bobby burst into a howl of weeping. alice scolded him for crying, and charles reproached her for scolding him, on the score that her antipathy to mr. clinton had driven philip to this extreme point of insult and ill-temper.
charles's own conduct had been so far from soothing, that alice had abundant material for retorts, and she was not likely to be a loser in the war of words. what she did say i did not hear, for by that time i had locked myself up in my own room.
