The Chauffeur and the Chaperon

Excerpt

Sometimes I think that having a bath is the nicest part of the day, especially if you take too long over it, when you ought to be hurrying.

Phyllis and I (Phil is my stepsister, though she is the most English creature alive) have no proper bath-room in our flat. What can you expect for forty pounds a year, even at Clapham? But we have a fitted-up arrangement in the box-room, and it has never exploded yet. Phyllis allows herself ten minutes for her bath every morning, just as she allows herself five minutes for her prayers, six to do her hair, and four for everything else, except when she wears laced-up boots; but then, she has principles, and I have none; at least, I have no maxims. And this morning, just because there were lots of things to do, I was luxuriating in the tub, thinking cool, delicious thoughts.

As a general rule, when you paint glorious pictures for yourself of your future as you would like it to be, it clouds your existence with gray afterwards, because the reality is duller by contrast; but it was different this morning. I had stopped awake all night thinking the same things, and I was no more tired of the thoughts now than when I first began.

I lay with my eyes shut, sniffing Eau de Cologne (I'd poured in a bottleful for a kind of libation, because I could afford to be extravagant), and planning what a delightful future we would have.

"I should love to chop up Phil's type-writer and burn the remains," I said to myself; "but she's much more likely to put it away in lavender, or give it to the next-door-girl with the snub nose. Anyhow, I shall never have to write another serial story for Queen-Woman, or The Fireside Lamp, or any of the other horrors. Oh the joy of not being forced to create villains, only to crush them in the end! No more secret doors and coiners' dens, and unnaturally beautiful dressmakers' assistants for me! Instead of doing typing at ninepence a thousand words Phil can embroider things for curates, and instead of peopling the world with prigs and puppets at a guinea a thou', I can—oh, I can do anything. I don't know what I shall want to do most, and that's the best of it—just to know I can do it. We'll have a beautiful house in a nice part of town, a cottage by the river, and, best of all, we can travel—travel—travel."

Then I began to furnish the cottage and the house, and was putting up a purple curtain in a white marble bath-room with steps down to the bath, when a knock came at the door.

I knew it was Phil, for it could be nobody else; but it was as unlike Phil as possible—as unlike her as a mountain is unlike itself when it is having an eruption.

"Nell," she called outside the door. "Nell, darling! Are you ready?"

"Only just begun," I answered. "I shall be—oh, minutes and minutes yet. Why?"

"I don't want to worry you," replied Phil's creamy voice, with just a little of the cream skimmed off; "but—do make haste."

"Have you been cooking something nice for breakfast?" (Our usual meal is Quaker oats, with milk; and tea, of course; Phil would think it sacrilegious to begin the day on any other drink.)

"Yes, I have. And it's wasted."

"Have you spilt—or burnt it?"

"No; but there's nothing to rejoice over or celebrate, after all; at least, comparatively nothing."

"Good gracious!...