The Confessions of a Well-Meaning Woman. Stephen McKenna

tired of everybody else. My sister-in-law Ruth has other qualities, no doubt, but she will not go down to history as one of the great English hostesses … It’s not surprising, perhaps; but, if you’re not born to that sort of thing, wouldn’t you make an effort to acquire it? There must be brains of some kind in the family, or the father could never have made all that money. I always felt a certain responsibility about Ruth; Brackenbury had to marry some one with a little money, and, knowing the sort of girl he’d fancy if I gave him half a chance … I was fourteen years older and knew something of poor Brackenbury’s limitations; when I met Ruth Philpot and found that the money did come from quite a respectable shipping firm in Hull, I said: “Marry her, my dear boy, before you have a chance of making a greater fool of yourself.” And I told him I’d do what I could for her; little hints, you understand … I’m afraid poor Ruth was not a very apt pupil; and Brackenbury, who never had any sense of his position, was a mere broken ​reed. “Assert yourself!,” I used to say. “If you don’t absorb her, she’ll absorb you.” That is the only occasion on which I have ever interfered in matters of the heart, either to guide or check; I look at Ruth Brackenbury and say to myself: “Ann Spenworth, you have your lesson ever before you.” I would not urge or hinder now, even with my own son. Phyllida may try to fix responsibility on me, but I repudiate it—entirely. In the present instance I feel that it is, once again, the sins of the parents … As I felt it my duty to tell them, there wouldn’t have been a moment’s trouble with Phyllida, if she had been brought up differently …

      I? Goodness me, no! Many, many things will have to be unsaid before Brackenbury induces me to set foot in his house again. You know whether I am the woman to stand on my dignity, but, when one’s niece writes one letters in the third person … Indeed I know what I am talking about! “Lady Phyllida Lyster presents her compliments to Lady Ann Spenworth and is not interested in any explanation that Lady Ann may think fit to put forward.” These are the manners of the war. From the very first I urged Brackenbury not to let her work in that hospital; some one had to go, of course; I’m not so foolish as to think that a hospital would run itself without hands, but ​why Phyllida? And, goodness me, if they couldn’t stop her, they might have made a few enquiries, exercised some little control … Christine Malleson is very energetic and capable, no doubt, but you would hardly look for standards or traditions in her; however, she and my Lady Maitland and the rest seem able to carry people off their feet by sheer violence. Now Ruth and Brackenbury are paying for it. And, of course, poor Aunt Ann is to blame for everything. For the present I think it’s best to leave them severely alone. One tries to do what seems to be one’s duty; one puts up with a great many rebuffs; but in the end people must be left, in the homely old phrase, to stew in their own juice …

      I’m really not sure how much is supposed to be known. Phyllida will no doubt tell you her side, simply as a means of attacking me. She works herself into such a state! I told Brackenbury that he ought to send her away for a complete change … I’m sick and tired of the whole thing; I’m sure it contributed to my illness; but, if it is going to be discussed, you’d better hear the truth. The whole time she was working at the hospital, Phyllida did me the honour to make my house her own; and, if I questioned my own wisdom, it was because of Will. He would be home on leave from time ​to time; and, perhaps on account of a curious dream which I had about them at the time of my operation, I was not at all sure that I wanted to see the intimacy increasing ; when he marries, it will have to be some one with a little money, but I do not want to lose him yet and I cannot feel that Phyllida is very suitable … You can imagine, therefore, whether I should be likely to scheme or contrive to throw them into each other’s arms; to intrigue to get rivals out of the way … I have lost the thread.

      Ah, yes! Phyllida! Now, I chose my words carefully: “making my house her own,” not “staying in my charge.” When I went into the nursing-home, I tackled Brackenbury …

      “Please understand,” I said, “that I accept no responsibility. The child goes to and from the hospital when she likes, how she likes. I know nothing of the people with whom she associates there; and, if you like the idea of her coming in at all hours from theatres and dances, I suppose it’s all right. But I can’t stop her,” I said; “I feel it my duty to tell you I can’t stop her.”

      Brackenbury made some foolish rejoinder about Phyllida’s head being screwed on tight or her heart being in the right place. (In that family they express themselves so uncouthly. ​Goodness me, one need not be a blue-stocking to realize that English has a certain dignity.) She was only doing what every other girl did, he said … I’m as democratic as any one, but I wondered what our father would have said to the doctrine that his daughter might do a thing simply because everybody else was doing it …

      You know this Colonel Butler, perhaps? (It’s only brevet-rank; if he stays on in the army, he reverts to full lieutenant only.) I’ll confess at once that I liked him. When he was convalescent, Phyllida brought him to luncheon one day in Mount Street, and I thought him a decent, manly young fellow. I understand he comes from the west of England; and that, perhaps, accounts for the accent which I thought I detected; or, of course, he may simply have been not altogether at ease. (When I commented on it afterwards to Phyllida, she insisted that he was very badly shaken by his wound and the three operations … I think that was the first time I suspected anything; she championed him so very warmly.) I liked him—frankly. Some one quite early in the war said something about “temporary officers” and “temporary gentlemen”—it was very naughty, but so true!—; I said to my boy Will, when Colonel Butler was gone:

      ​“If they were all like him, the army might be proud of them.”

      “All I’ve met are like him,” said Phyllida, “only of course not so much so.”

      I was struggling to find a meaning—Phyllida expresses herself almost as carelessly as her poor mother, but with hardly her mother’s excuse—, when she began to pour out a catalogue of his virtues: he had won a Military Cross and a Distinguished Service Order with a bar, he was the youngest colonel in the army, I don’t know what else.

      “Who are his people?,” I asked.

      A name like Butler is so very misleading; it may be all right—or it may not.

      “I really don’t know,” said Phyllida, “and, what’s more, I don’t care …”

      She was prattling away, but I thought it time to make one or two enquiries. I remember saying to poor Ruth—I forget in what connection; life is one long succession of these needless, irritating little encounters—I remember saying that Phyllida was in the position of a girl with no mother. It’s not that Ruth and Brackenbury aren’t fond of her, but they take no trouble … I asked what our young paragon’s regiment was, and you’ll hardly believe me if I tell you that it was one I had never heard of. Will knew, of course, but then, ​on the staff, these things are brought to your notice …

      “And what is he in civil life?,” I asked.

      Phyllida didn’t know. His father, I think she told me, was a surveyor, and she presumed that he intended to be a surveyor too. And an excellent profession, I should imagine, with the big estates being broken up and the properties changing hands everywhere. Brackenbury had an offer for the Hall—some wealthy contractor … I couldn’t help smiling to think how our father would have dealt with him. Brackenbury let him off far too lightly, I thought, and tried to justify himself to me by saying that it was a very tempting offer … As if they needed money …

      I had made up my mind at the outset to do nothing precipitate. The war has made girls quite dangerously romantic, and any opposition might have created—artificially—a most undesirable attachment. I knew that Phyllida had these young officers through her hands in dozens; and, though I was naturally anxious, I knew that in a few weeks or months our paragon would be back in Flanders or Devonshire—out of Christine Malleson’s hospital, at all events. I commended my spirit, so to say …

      He came to call—Colonel