Mark Dunn - We Five

“Have you been looking at that book again, Mrs. Colthurst?” asked Jane, with a wag of the finger.

Mrs. Colthurst coloured. “The illustrations are really quite remarkable, and I must confess I take great inspiration from the assiduity of the superfamily Scarabaeoidea. Every one of us should apply ourselves to our tasks in the manner of our insect friends, the hard-working beetles.”

After Molly and Maggie had left on their appointed morning errands and Mrs. Colthurst had returned to her little office alcove to balance the accounts, Ruth and Jane and Carrie smiled amongst themselves. Jane rolled back her eyes with especial delight. “I cannot say I fault the woman for her love of curious books, but it is her enthusiastic admiration for dung beetles which I cannot completely fathom.”

Ruth defended the honour and worth of her employeress. “The comparison is a fair one, Jane. Let us not be uncharitable, simply because the insect happens to be coprophagous.”

Carrie bridled up. She tossed aside the black bombazeen cloak she was making for Mrs. Evers, who had asked for mourning weeds in anticipation of her husband’s demise. (Mrs. Colthurst had well nigh refused to accept the commission; Mr. Evers seemed in robust health, but Mrs. Evers, having received a premonition of her husband’s premature passing in a dream, insisted it would serve for her to be sartorially provident.) “I must say, Ruth, that it is a burden to be the constant recipient of so many words which cannot be understood except by the one who has just said them.”

Jane threw up a hand to silence her friend and co-worker. “We’re fortunate to have Ruth here to improve our vocabularies, Carrie. Now if you’d been paying the least bit of attention you would know the meaning of the word from the context in which Ruth used it.”

Carrie picked up the cloak and resumed her work. “It is too much with which to tax the brain so early in the day.”

“My word, Carrie!” protested Ruth in a tone of playfully contending vexation, “you tax your brain each and every time you visit a new piece of music upon the page. You are no sloth. What I wager you are at this moment is tetchy and irritable, and I should like to know the reason why.”

“Then I shall tell you why,” replied Carrie, setting the cloak aside to look at Ruth with a flashing eye. “You are like the cat that cannot decide if it wishes to go inside or out. You have now changed your mind three times about whether you will be coming along with us on the picnic on Sunday. Or is it four? I cannot keep track of which side of the door you are clawing at any given moment.”

Jane spoke before Ruth had opportunity. “She is in. She will remain in. Won’t you, Ruth?”

“I’ll go,” said Ruth with a bland sigh. But almost instantly her voice stirred, the colour returning to her face. “Though may I ask, Carrie, why it should be any concern of yours? Must the five of us always do everything together? Except, of course, for those things you do not wish to do. May I remind you that last night it was Jane and me who stopped here for four hours more whilst you and Maggie and Molly skipped merrily home?”

“That isn’t the same at all,” returned Carrie in slightly puling rebuttal. “The three of us have parents who would fidget and worry if we were abroad past dusk. Neither you nor Jane has a mother or father whose feelings must be considered.”

Ruth did not pursue her side of the argument, which would have put to Carrie that Mr. Mobry and his sister treated her as their own child and that Jane’s brother, for all his defects of character, was still her brother, and must by definition care if she be gone too long without an appropriate explanation (although truth be told, Jane had said that upon her return to their apartments the previous night, Higgins was nowhere to be found, and perhaps had no idea she’d even been delayed).

Jane signed to Ruth that she would speak now and she did so in a soft and conciliatory tone. “Dear, sweet Carrie: you must tell Ruth and me what has really put you in such a state of distemper this morning. It cannot only be the fact of Ruth’s vexing indecision. It simply isn’t like you to be so petulant and difficult.”

Carrie nodded. She closed her eyes to gather her thoughts and then opened them fully to convey the following: “Yesterday after I was left at my doorstep by Molly and Maggie, and as I was fumbling for my latchkey, who should I discover coming out from behind the poplar tree next to the house but one of the young men with whom we will be picnicking on Sunday! His name is Holborne. I was startled that he would take such liberties to introduce himself since we had not, as of yet, been properly presented to one another, but he made bold not only to present himself to me but also to insinuate an intimacy with me, which I will not portray. In fine, he was quite rude and disrespecting of all propriety and I could not understand why he would accost me in such a manner until that moment in which he finally chose to explain himself.”

Jane and Ruth both stood as one, and, as if the movement had been rehearsed beforehand, lifted their chairs and brought them round to Carrie’s table with great alacrity and immoderate anticipation of the next paragraph of their friend’s intriguing unbosoming.

Carrie lowered her voice, with Jane and Ruth now situated in close proximity. “He said it was decided that he and his fellow millhands — the ones with whom we will be spending Sunday after noon — should each select one of us to affix himself. But it so fell out that there was some disagreement as to which would have me, for, apparently, both Holborne and one of his mill-mates had heard my singing voice one after noon as we were walking home, and were quite taken with it, and he found it incumbent upon his interest in both me and my tuneful voice to obviate any unpleasant rivalry between the two come Sunday. For this reason he said he was forced to make a preemptive sally, and though he sought my forgiveness for the impropriety, it could not be helped. He desired, beyond anything else, to possess my exclusive attention and companionable society this coming Sunday.”

“And what did you say to that ?” sought Jane, her voice quavering with excitement.

“He is a very good-looking fellow. I have seen the others as they take their luncheon before the shoe shop. I must say it is his looks which appeal to me the most. And here is something that pleases me, as well: that he should wish to break every rule of propriety to have me.”

“And does he ‘have’ you?” asked Ruth. Her interest in the upshot to Carrie’s story was equal to Jane’s, but fraught with far less passion of feeling. Jane, for her part, had observably placed herself vicariously (and palpitatingly) into Carrie’s shoes, whereas Ruth’s investment was largely academic.

“He does have me!” ejaculated Carrie. “He does! I was all but overcome by his impertinent ministrations. Subsequently, I acceded without hesitation to his terms of engagement on Sunday.”

“Setting aside the indiscretion of his loutish behaviour,” said Ruth, “I have yet to glean, then, how this can be construed as anything but a good thing for you.”

Carrie’s elation was now supplanted by a look of sudden trepidation. “Oh, but what if the other fellow will not be satisfied by my choice? What if he means to contend for me? Perhaps blows will be exchanged, grievous injury inflicted!”

Ruth emitted a loud groan, which sounded as if her throat were being scoured. “Carrie Hale, sometimes the things you say make the inanities our friend Molly occasionally spouts sound like pearls of wisdom. This is what troubles you? That two men may fight over you? You, who hasn’t spoken a single syllable to any man who wasn’t transacting business with you from behind a shop counter or asking you courteously to mind the dung his horse had just deposited in your path within the lane!”