The optimist

The ship swung slowly away from the side of the wharf. Several people on board then said, “Well, we’re off at last!” to several other people who had only been thinking of saying it.

Owen Quentillian remembered another, longer, sea-voyage taken by himself at an early age. Far more clearly he remembered his arrival at St. Gwenllian.

It was that which he wanted to recall, aware as he was of the necessity for resuming a connection that had almost insensibly lapsed for several years.

He deliberately let his mind travel backwards, visualizing himself, a disconsolate, shivering morsel, being taken away from Papa and Mamma at the very station itself, and put into an open pony-cart beside Miss Lucilla Morchard.

The conversation between them, as far as he could recollect it, had run upon strangely categorical lines.

“Who are you?”

“I’m Canon Morchard’s daughter. You can call me Lucilla.”

“How old are you?”

“I’m fifteen, but you shouldn’t ask grown-up persons their age.”

“Oh, are you a grown-up person?”

“Of course I am. My mother is dead, and I look after the house and the children, and now I’m going to look after you as well.”

Lucilla had smiled very nicely as she said this.

“How many children are there?”

“Three, at home. My eldest brother is at school.”

“What are the names of the other ones?”

“Valeria and Flora and Adrian. Valeria and Flora are sometimes called Val and Flossie.”

He had discovered afterwards that they were seldom called anything else, except by their father.

“Why don’t Papa and Mamma come in this little carriage too?”

“Because there wouldn’t have been room. They will come in the brougham, later on.”

“They won’t go back to India without saying good-bye first, will they?” he asked wistfully.

He had known for a long time that Papa and Mamma were going back to India and leaving him at St. Gwenllian.

“No, I promise you they won’t do that,” had said Lucilla seriously.

Owen had felt entirely that her word was one to be relied upon. Very few grown-up persons gave him that feeling.

He remembered extraordinarily little about the house at St. Gwenllian. It was large, and cold, and there were a good many pictures on the walls, but the only two rooms of which he retained a mental photograph were the schoolroom, and the Canon’s library.

He saw the latter room first.

Lucilla had taken him there at once.

He remembered the books against the wall--numbers and numbers of books--and the big black writing table, with a small bowl of violets next to a pile of papers, and above the writing-table a finely-carved ivory figure, crucified upon a wooden cross, set in a long plaque of pale-green velvet.

Lucilla had seemed to be disappointed because her father was out.

“He said he did so want to be here to welcome you himself, but he is always very busy. Some one sent for him, I think.”

The youthful Owen Quentillian had cared less than nothing for the non-appearance of his future host and tutor. The prospect of the schoolroom tea had touched him more nearly.

But the schoolroom tea had turned out to be a sort of nightmare.

Even now, he could hardly smile at the recollection of that dreadful meal.

Eventually Val and Flossie had resolved themselves into good-natured, cheerful little girls, and Adrian into a slightly spoilt and rather precocious little boy, addicted to remarks of the type hailed as “wonderful” in the drawing-room and “affected humbug” in the schoolroom.

But on that first evening, Val and Flossie had been two monsters with enormous eyes that stared disapprovingly, all the time, straight at Owen Quentillian and nobody else. Adrian had been an utterly incomprehensible, rather malignant little creature, who had asked questions.

“Can you see colours for each day of the week?”

Quentillian wondered whether he had looked as much alarmed as he had felt, in his utter bewilderment.

“_I_ think Monday is blue, and Tuesday light green, and Wednesday dark green,” Adrian had then proclaimed, triumphantly, and casting his big brown eyes about as though to make sure that his three sisters had heard the enunciation of his strange creed.

“Adrian is not a bit like other little boys,” one of them had then said, with calm pride.

Owen Quentillian, unconscious of irony, had ardently hoped that she spoke truly.

Adrian had pinched him surreptitiously during tea, and had laughed in a way that made Owen flush when they had asked him what India was like and he had answered “I don’t know.”