Miss Whittaker

“ And out of this conversation there arose in Regina Whittaker’s mind an idea that, after all, another decade had gone by, and she was still wasting her life.
“I asked myself a question at twenty,” her thoughts ran. “I asked it again at thirty, and now I have touched my fortieth birthday, here I am asking it yet once more. I have fulfilled the functions of wife and mother, and nothing else. Yet I am an extraordinary woman, far out of the common in intelligence, brain power, logic, and in all mental attributes. It only shows me that the time is not yet ripe for woman to become the equal of man. ”

“ I have had considerable experience in the course of a long life—longer than either of yours—and I really feel convinced that Miss Whittaker, whom I know quite well, is as good and nice a girl as you could wish to find. ”

“ This lady is going down to choose a toque.”
Two minutes later Regina found herself following Madame Florence down the stairs leading to the first floor.
“Good afternoon, Madame Clementine,” said Madame Florence, cheerfully, “I have brought you a new client. This is Mrs. Alfred Whittaker—so well known—all women know the name of Mrs. Alfred Whittaker. I have been arranging her hair, and I want you to crown my efforts with the prettiest toque you have in your show-rooms.”
[Pg 208]
CHAPTER XXIV RUMOR
Have you ever noticed how a lie spreads and grows as it flies along? ”

“ Whittaker and Julia went up to town and lunched with the noble Alfred. They lunched at a very cosy little restaurant not a thousand yards from Charing Cross. A spoonful of white soup, a scrap of salmon, a serve of chicken stewed in the French fashion in the pot, and some asparagus, washed down by some excellent white wine, and followed by a black coffee and a liqueur, made the trio very much inclined to look on the rosy side of life. Then they got into a hansom, Julia sitting bodkin-wise, and drove off to the jeweler’s at which Mrs. Whittaker had decided that they would buy Maudie’s earrings. ”

“ They continued gazing at the mysterious building in deep doubt for some time, till, just as Helm’s patience was exhausted, the big door flew open once more, and forth rode, in all the splendor of an Indian princess, Ruby Roland, bewildering in her beauty, and, wheeling her horse sharp round to the right, galloped off up the street, followed by her retinue of chiefs, among whom the little adjutant could be seen, with a tall chief on each side of him, as the cavalcade dashed out of the hall and down the steps, all mounted as they were, like a whirlwind. ”

“ So presently Regina found herself sitting in a hansom with Julia beside her.
“I say, mother,” said Julia, as the cab started from the doorway, “that was a little awkward, wasn’t it? And how silly of Maudie! I really thought she had more sense.”
“Not one word of this to your father,” said Mrs. Whittaker in the same tone of fierce repression. “You children are quite mistaken, I understand it perfectly. You will not speak to your father of our having seen him? He would not be able to explain the circumstances to you.”
“Oh, certainly, not if you don’t wish it, darling. ”

“ Lord Peter asked a question or two about the family.
“Well, sir, I can’t say as I knows much about that. We always understood as Miss Whittaker had quarrelled with her people on account of comin’ here and settin’ up for herself. It wasn’t usual in them days for girls to leave home the way it is now. But if you’re particularly interested, sir, there’s an old gentleman here as can tell you all about the Whittakers and the Dawsons too, and that’s Ben Cobling. He was Miss Whittaker’s groom for forty years, and he married Miss Dawson’s maid as come with her from Norfolk. ”

“ Let there be no mistake about the Whittaker girls. They were not in any way deceived or blinded by their mother’s partiality for them.
“There is one thing you and I have got to make up our minds to, Maudie,” said Julia, the day after they had had the little serious talk with their mother. “It’s one thing to climb up a wall, it’s another to topple over on the other side. If we don’t look out what we are doing, we shall topple over the other side of our wall.” ”

“ If you bring girls up, dear lady, to run quite wild, do you not think that you do away with their domesticity, that most precious quality of all women?”
“I am only too anxious to do away with their domesticity,” said Mrs. Whittaker, quietly but very firmly. “You see, Mrs. M’Quade, I am no ordinary woman myself. I have had the education of a man. I have a man’s brain. ”

“ Never mind. We’ll get the Whittaker woman yet.”
“Always provided it was the Whittaker woman. After all, Mrs. Cropper may have been mistaken. Lots of people do change their hats in cloak-rooms without any criminal intentions.”
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“Oh, of course. Miss Whittaker’s supposed to be in the country with Miss Findlater, isn’t she? We’ll get the invaluable Miss Climpson to pump the girl when they turn up again. Meanwhile, what do you think of Mrs. Cropper’s story?” ”

“ CHAPTER III YE DENE
There is something very alluring in the idea of kicking down conventions, yet if this be carried too far, it is possible that all the feminine virtues will follow suit. A woman bereft of all the feminine virtues is as pitiable a sight as a head which has been shorn of its locks.
A couple of years went by, and again the circumstances of the Alfred Whittakers were improved. For the old lady whose husband had courted her for seven long years was taken ill and quite suddenly died. Her death affected and upset Regina very much. ”

“ I have worked long enough; I think I want to be a little more in my own home—I’m not so young as I was.”
“You’re worn-out, that’s about the English of it,” said Alfred Whittaker, putting his knife and fork on his plate and sitting back. “As long as it amused you it was all right; it was as good as spending your life in running from one hot, stuffy party to another. Cut it, my dear, cut it. There’s one axiom in business that never fails, ‘cut your loss’—at least, I have never known it fail yet. By-the-bye,” he said, “I have brought you a little present.”
Regina almost screamed aloud. ”

“ Now Miss Dawson—that was her friend as lived with her—over at the Manor beyond the stone bridge—she was more timid-like. She’d go by the gates, and we often used to say she’d never be riding at all, but for bein’ that fond of Miss Whittaker and not wanting to let her out of her sight. But there, we can’t all be alike, can we, sir?—and Miss Whittaker was altogether out of the way. They don’t make them like that nowadays. ”

“ There has been a most determined attempt to throw suspicion on an unfortunate relative of Miss Whittaker’s—a black Nonconformist parson, with the remarkable name of Hallelujah Dawson. He has certain pecuniary claims on Miss Whittaker—not legal claims, but claims which any decent and humane person should have respected. She didn’t respect them, and the poor old man might very well have been expected to nurse a grudge against her. ”

“ Then, when Vera Findlater was dozing in the sunshine, our theory is that she murdered her—either with chloroform or—more likely, I fancy—by the same method that she used upon her other victims, whatever that was. Then she struck her on the head and produced the other appearances suggestive of a struggle, and left on the bushes a cap which she had previously purchased and stained with brilliantine. I am, of course, having the cap traced. Miss Whittaker is a tall, powerful woman—l don’t think it would be beyond her strength to inflict that blow on an unresisting body. ”

“ And Miss Whittaker, she says, ‘’Ave the meet at the Manor, Colonel,’ she says, ‘it’s the last meet I’ll ever see, perhaps,’ she says. And so it was, poor lady, for she ’ad a stroke in the New Year. She died in 1922. That’s ’er, sitting in the pony-carriage and Miss Dawson beside ’er. Of course, Miss Whittaker ’ad ’ad to give up riding to ’ounds some years before. She was gettin’ on, but she always followed in the trap, up to the very last. ’Andsome old lady, ain’t she, sir? ”

“ There was a little waiting-room hard by the ticket office and Regina turned sharply round and took refuge in this dingy little retreat.
[Pg 269]
“My dear!” said the lady who had been listening to the one who had mentioned Mr. Whittaker’s name, “you have done the most awful thing you ever did in your life. Mrs. Whittaker was standing just behind you, and she heard every word you said.”
“Poor woman! Did she, really? I am sorry! Well, I never believe in making mischief between husband and wife, but it’s a shame, and I do think that a man who is carrying on a double game ought to be found out.” ”

“ I would rather have been the mother of boys, but as I have proved to be only the mother of girls, I will try to make those girls what I have missed being myself. They shall be out of the common; they shall belong to the New Womanhood; they shall be brought up at least to be the equals of men.”
Now by this time the “something in the city” on which Regina and Alfred had started housekeeping had resolved itself into a very solid and prosperous position, though Alfred Whittaker—make no mistake about it—was not, and was never likely to be, a millionaire, or even a very wealthy man. ”

“ But he was a sensible young man and did not see the force of burning the candle at both ends, so that he stayed a great deal more at home in the [Pg 112] evenings than many a young man of his age and general proclivities would have done; and thus it was that he came somehow to fall in love with Regina Whittaker’s eldest girl. And, as I said, the news fell upon the Whittaker family like a bombshell.
Not that they were displeased! Mr. and Mrs. Whittaker had been too happy in their own married life to grudge either of their girls entering upon the same joys. ”

“ There is, Vera, I assure you, there is something. Bending over her chair he lightly brushed the back of her head with his lips. When he had departed, the tears coursed slowly down the lonely woman's chubby cheeks. Mr. Whittaker, stern, unyielding in the matter of his prejudices, with a firmly fixed idea that a wife's place was in her home, had ruled her with his strong will, and now Paul Moody was able, she had discovered, to rule her by his very nonchalance. Well, she reflected, to salve the pain of the knowledge, men must work and women must weep. ”

“ Here, drink this down; it will pull you together better than anything else.”
He was an old-fashioned man, who believed in a glass of port, and Regina, with unwonted meekness and the same happy feeling of being ministered to that she had felt in the pastry-cook’s shop, obediently swallowed the pleasant potion.
“I shall be very glad,” Alfred Whittaker continued, “when we are off on our holiday, for I never felt the need of one so badly as I do this year. I suppose it is the excitement of Maudie’s wedding, but I can’t bear to see you looking as you do now.” ”

“ Whittaker scrupulously withdrew from the window. He had no desire to overhear their conversation. But his eyes were fierce with a sudden anger. The very attitude of the new-comer—his respectful, and yet patronizing, manner of removing his hat—clearly showed that he was a lover, perhaps a favoured one. And the American, who, with all his knowledge of the world, knew so little of women, stood in the middle of the room wrapt in thought. It seemed hardly possible that a woman of Miss Cheyne's intelligence, a woman no longer in the first flush of girlhood, should fail to perceive the obvious. ”

“ Well, sir, since you came here—curse your pretty baby-face—I have met her, and I have found that she loves you; she, the pearl of all beauty and nobility, is fool enough to cast away the treasures of a love, which I would die to possess, on an insolent youngster like you, who values it not, and makes a jest of her name. For these things I am going to kill you, boy, and just so I shall kill every man that comes near Ruby Roland. She may never love me, but, by the eternal heavens, I swear she shall never love another. ”

“ Albert Whittaker toiling and fagging and slaving for other people’s glorification. [Pg 71] I don’t see the force of it. It seems to us,” she went on, with a certain air of severity which ought to have amused Regina, but did nothing of the kind, “it seems to us that you get the worst of it in every way. We think, mother, that you ought to be very glad that we have come home to take care of you.”
“Oh! Then you,” said Regina, with a tinge of sarcasm in her tones, “you and Maudie are to have all the independence, and I am to be taken care of? That is very kind of you. ”

“ Alfred Whittaker rejoined; “there’s nothing in that, my dear girl, provided he makes his sausages good and wholesome and enough of ’em. But I was afraid it would be a bit of a blow to you.”
“My daughter—my daughter married to a sausage-maker!” Regina repeated.
“Now, come, come, Queenie, you mustn’t—you mustn’t—hang it all, I don’t know what you mustn’t do! The girl fancies the boy, and he has plenty of money. He’s a nice, gentlemanly chap, and she’ll live in style. He’s going to have a motor car; she’ll live in far better style than we’ve ever done.” ”

“ He liked his rector to come to him as an open-handed, clean-living man on whom he could depend for contributions suitable to his style of living. He liked to be able to take his wife to a theatre, and to dine her beforehand, and to give her a bit of supper afterwards. He liked to go to the seaside for August, and to take a trip to Paris at Easter if he was so inclined. And, above all things, Alfred Whittaker liked a good dinner, a pretty, tasteful table, and a neat handmaiden to wait upon him. To do him justice, he never lost his early admiration for Regina. ”