Of Laura-Matilda

by Dorothea Deakin

OF LAURA-MATILDA

BY DOROTHEA DEAKIN

Author of "Georgie"

"I HATE a Laura-Matilda girl!"—Rosette's tone was scornful in the extreme.

"A woman should be womanly," said I doggedly.

"You don't mean womanly. You mean Early Victorian, lackadaisical, sentimental, useless, fragile, clinging—"

"Don't stop," I said mildly.

"Perhaps you like a girl to be clinging?"

"Perhaps I do," said I gently. "I've never seen you in a clinging mood, Rosette."

"You never will," she returned smartly.

"Alas, no." I sighed.

"There was Doris Lee. She was your kind of girl. She stayed with us once when my cousin Georgie was here, and nearly drove him mad. She clung to him."

" A nice, gentle girl, Doris Lee," I said affectionately. "The sort of a girl a man can idealize."

"The sort of girl a man runs away from in six months," cried Rosette.

"You're too advanced for me," said I sadly.

"That's what her husband did. She was just the same at school, Laura-Matilda all through, hanging round our necks, leaning on our arms when we went for walks, holding our hands till she nearly drove us mad. All her books were full of dried flowers; all sacred memories; only she'd forgotten what of. I hate sentiment."

"I know you do," said I mournfully.

"I was fond of her in a way," Rosette said. "And I used to have her here with me for the holidays, because she had such a wretched home, full of whining children, and a complaining, peevish mother. I've since thought that she might have tried to do something to brighten that home up, if she'd been any good, instead of spending her holidays in floods of tears. I hate a fool!"

"Poor Doris Lee," said I softly.

"Poor Doris Fiddlesticks!" cried Rosette. "I ought to have known better than to encourage her. I had to send her away at last, because Daddy said he wouldn't stand the way she sat and held my hand—or anybody's hand who'd let her. He said it made him sick. So I gave up asking her in the end. She married the kind of serious young man with ideals, who likes a woman to be gentle and womanly, and dependent, and clinging! And you see the end of it. She's gone into a sisterhood now to wear gray serge for ever, and she always looked impossible in gray."

"I've never known you so vindictive," said I, "so spiteful. What is the matter with you to-day. Rosette?"

Her face was flushed adorably; her eyes sparkling with unshed tears. This my calm, immovable Rosette?

"You said you liked a woman to be womanly, Jerry. You said you admired the Laura-Matilda kind of girl. You were talking at me all the time!"

I stared at her in amazement.

"You are the most womanly woman I have ever known," said I slowly. "But I didn't mean what you mean, Rosette."

"Yes, you did. Besides, how do you know exactly what I meant that you meant? You said you liked a woman to be clinging! You know you did. I'll take jolly good care that I never cling to—" She stopped in time.

"To me?" I asked. "I'm afraid not."

"I'd be ashamed to be dependent and irresolute and bullied and—and—'thank you very much for wiping your shoes on me, dear Sir!' Oh!"

"Rosette!" I caught her hand and held it firmly for an instant. "Listen to me! You shall listen to me, you little fury. I hate Laura-Matilda and always did. The things I like best in you, are your resourcefulness, and your self-sufficiency." I lied boldly, but I daren't tell her the truth. "I admire you tremendously for your pluck, and your presence of mind,and your independence, and all the rest of it. I—I do really."

She took her hand away and eyed me suspiciously.

"All you men like the Early Victorian girl best," said she with a disdainful sniff. "You like a woman to sit at home waiting for you, warming your cross-stitch slippers, with some church embroidery in one hand and a vinaigrette in the other. You like a woman to faint with joy when you throw her a kind word. It shows her sensibility."

"I'm going home," said I quietly. "I shall not stay here to be abused and libeled. You know the kind of woman I like best. I'm going home."

She broke into a pretty, infectious laugh.

"Don't go, Jerry. I'm better now. And I want to tell you about Primula and my brother Myles."

I sighed, that as usual she was prepared to point her moral, and adorn it with a tale.

"I've never heard of your cousin Primula," said I feebly. "I believe you've invented her for the occasion. I don't believe there's no sich person."

"She's a missionary in Borneo now," said Rosette promptly. "But she was a splendid little girl when she was sixteen. Not pretty; but strong, and jolly, and athletic, and the most capable person I have ever known. You should see her take a bicycle to pieces."

"Any one can take a bicycle to pieces," said I inoffensively. "Even I can do that. It's the putting it together again afterward that—"

"Well, she could anyhow. And she was the best hockey player in the school. When she stayed with us she used to play cricket with my cousin Georgie, and Myles, and bowled them out over and over again. And the runs she got! Even Georgie allowed that she bowled straighter than nine men out of ten."

"After she'd bowled him?" I asked mildly.

"I don't know, but she found out what was the matter with the lawn-mower, and it was more than any one else could do."

"Oiled it?" I asked.

"Don't be silly. She could do everything the boys could do, just a little bit better, and it was then that Myles (he was just twenty-one) found out that women ought to be womanly. His pride was wounded and he began to snub Primula and make her life a misery to her. She hated sarcasm and didn't understand it, and she began to fret about it."

"'Myles hates me,' said she to me one day. 'What can I do to make him like me again?' 'Turn Laura-Matilda,' said I. Poor child she looked completely in the dark.

"'I don't know what you mean,' she said.

"'Laura-Matilda,' said I, 'is a general name for everything silly and sentimental and helpless and useless and die-away and lackadaisical.'

"'Oh!' Poor Primula stared at me. 'I do like Myles,' said she. 'He's ripping good fun, and the boys won't let me join in at anything now. I'm sure I don't play so very badly.'

"'On the contrary,' said I, 'you play everything too well. Women should always do things a tiny bit worse than a man. Primula. You play Laura-Matilda, my dear, and every one will be pleased. Only don't go about putting your arm round my neck, because I won't bear it, and Daddy won't, either.'

"'I'd rather die than do such a rotten thing,' said she, and I was a tiny bit hurt. 'I can't pretend,' she said in her stiff, pig-headed way. 'I'm not a beastly hypocrite.' Her language was quite schoolboyish, you see. I expect she talks Chinese now and Malay and whatever kind of language the Dyaks talk, poor dear.

"'A woman's first duty is to please,' I said, and I looked so solemn that she wasn't sure that it wasn't a bit from the Bible I was hurling at her head. She didn't dare dispute it however deeply she really disagreed. ' If you want to please Myles you must become the kind of woman he admires, or thinks he admires. Don't be a little goose,' said I, and then I explained more fully what I meant. And to do us both justice she was charmed with the idea when she grasped it.

"A great diplomatist is lost to the world in me, Jerry."

"Oh, Rosette, Rosette!" said I sadly.

"We went for a bicycle ride next day." Rosette smiled. "I rode with Georgie in front. I heard Myles telling Primula in a perfectly brutal way that if she wished to scorch like she did last time she could go on alone and order lunch. Primula didn't answer him, but when they came to the first hill (she takes the steepest hills in the county like a bird) she got off at the very foot and walked. Myles was annoyed because he'd got his pace well up, but he had to stop and ask if anything was wrong. She smiled at him, and handed over her bicycle, quite as a matter of course. That was the beginning. Every blessed hill they came to, that girl made him walk, and when they met some inoffensive sleepy cows in a lane, she shrieked and ran into his bicycle. She made him stop for milk and soda every time they passed an inn, and then to crown everything she got a puncture. I've always believed that she did it with a hat pin, but I could never get her to confess."

"Poor Myles," said I.

Rosette laughed.

"Myles was raging. She looked at her flat tire with a helpless little giggle and asked him to mend it. Said she'd rest while he did it, because she felt exhausted with the pace and the heat. The pace! Myles never could do things with his hands and it was hours before they started again.

"That sort of thing went on the whole day and we did have a time. She pretended to be faint once when they were miles from everywhere, and that wretched boy had to go four miles out of his way to get some brandy for her. She threw it in the hedge when he wasn't looking. Myles said he'd never go out with girls again as long as he lived, and before he went to bed that night he told Georgie that the ideal woman was a man's helpful comrade, strong and self-reliant. Primula cried herself to sleep and said she'd never felt so bitterly ashamed, or spent such a wretched day in her life, but it did Myles a power of good."

"There is," said I sententiously, "always a golden mean."

"Yes?" Rosette refused the hand I offered to help her from her low chair. "But if you have to choose—"

"It will not be Laura-Matilda," said I.