Page:The Climber (Benson).djvu/151

Rh enough, and most depressingly true. I am made that way, and it's not my fault, and it's no use blaming me. You might as well blame a colt because it isn't a cow. Thank goodness I'm not a cow. There are only two sorts of people: colts and cows. The cows are the good ones, who are quite content, and give quantities of warm, white milk to other people. The rest are colts; they want to kick up their heels and snuff the morning air and neigh, and then run as hard as they possibly can because they have such beautiful limbs. Already, you know, to do me justice, I have run a good long way. Three years ago I was in that awful little Fair View, with the railway embankment behind, and that was all I had, living with two perfectly delightful old aunts, it is true. But to live with aunts wasn't much for a girl who even then wanted the heavenly constellations to stick into her bodice. And the horizon was bounded—except when you were a darling, and gave me a heavenly week in town—by the roofs of the Laburnums and the Hollies and the Pomegranates. How I stifled! It seems to me perfectly incredible that it was me—this me—who used to talk French with one sloppy girl, and play duets with another, while Aunt Cathie beat time. And those were the comparatively palmy days."

Lucia paused a moment; the hour of sincerity was hers; she spoke that which she was.

"Before that," she said—"before that I lived in Brixham, and there was, so I thought, nothing whatever there of any sort or kind. There was, really. There were all the materials of what I have called the palmy days, but for a year or two I lived there—this identical, actual I—without seeing anything that broke the endless grey monotony of my days, or any way of escape. And what pleasant memories and associations were mine! A home broken up, a father dying in disgrace. Maud, it is awful to confess it, but all that really went on in my emotions concerning him was something very like hate. Otherwise I had no emotions except always the frantic sense of wanting, and the utter incapability of ever getting. I held Aunt Elizabeth's skeins of brown wool—oh, everything was brown—and she made head-rests of them, because antimacassars was a vulgar word. I know it was quite suitable, really; she had an antimacassar mind, and warded life off. Yes, that's what she did, she warded life off—shut the windows and drew the curtains so that by no chance could it ever come in. Then she sat down and played Miss Milligan. After which, Miss M. being shy, and not wishing to