There was a great deal in the papers about “The Fraser Expedition” during the next few weeks. Their adventures caught the imagination of the public. There were photographs of the desert, photographs of the camp, photographs of the sites of the proposed airplane depots, and photographs of the explorers themselves. People were talking about the expedition and discussing the practicability of the scheme (so Mr. Howard informed us) and wherever the subject was discussed the name of Garth Wisdon was mentioned with respect. He was the hero of the hour. There were a dozen theories as to how he met his death—we shall never know the truth—but everybody seemed to agree he had met it nobly, like the brave Englishman that
he was.
Clementina and I devoured all the accounts in the papers with interest and pride. Her admiration for her father was profound. It was the first thing that brought her real comfort in her sorrow. I, too, was comforted by my pride in Garth. I realized that this was the kind of death Garth would have chosen. He would have chosen to die alone, far from civilization; he would have chosen to die on his feet with his gun in his hand. I remembered that he had said to me, “It does not amuse me to kill animals that have never harmed me.” It did not appeal to him to hunt a defenseless animal, but this lion that he had gone out to kill was neither harmless nor defenseless. It had carried off one of the porters already and might do so again now that its taste for human blood had been whetted. This lion was an enemy worthy of his steel, and he had gone out to meet it gaily with a laugh and a joke on his lips.
Garth’s end was in the Wisdon tradition, the great Wisdons of the past had died for their country, fighting for her honor or exploring for her welfare. They had died face to face with their enemies just as Garth—the last of the line—had done. There were pictures of Wisdons hanging on the walls in the library and the dining room and in the hall. Men with stern faces and determined mouths, men with smiling mouths and straight-gazing keen eyes, they all looked down from the walls upon Clementina and me as we sat at dinner or moved about the house. For some reason I was more conscious of them after Garth’s death, and Clementina must have felt the same.
“It’s a pity I wasn’t a boy,” she said one day, looking up at the ancestor who had died at the taking of Quebec.
“You are a Wisdon,” I told her, answering her thought. “Whether you are a boy or a girl you have their blood in your veins just the same. It is a fine heritage and you can well be proud of it. Perhaps someday you will have a son.”
“If I ever have a son I shall call him Wisdon,” she said. “But it’s a pity, all the same.”
I realized that if I were going to write Garth’s book I should not have time to give Clementina her lessons—it would be impossible to do both these things adequately. And this brought me face to face with a problem—should I engage a governess for Clementina, or should I send her to school? I thought it over carefully, and the more I thought about it the more sure I became that Clementina ought to go to school. She required the companionship of other girls, and the discipline of school life. I had brought her out of her shell (she was much more like a normal child than she had been) but I saw quite clearly that she had idiosyncrasies which I could never eradicate, and which never would be eradicated unless she had girls of her own age to tease her and chaff her and chivvy her about. I did not come to the decision to send Clementina to school without a struggle. She would hate it at first, and I would hate it all the time—we were friends now. I would miss her, the house would be too dreary for words without Clementina—but the child’s welfare was the important thing. I wanted her to be a whole woman, not a crank.
Mr. Ponsonby agreed with me, and we found a girls’ school about twenty miles from Hinkleton which was run by a woman with a positively alarming array of letters after her name. I went over and saw Miss Scales and found her a sensible, cultured woman—I liked her at once and I liked the school. It was comfortable but by no means luxurious, and I thought it would suit our purpose admirably. We arranged for Clementina to go there after the Christmas holidays.
Clementina was anything but pleased at my arrangements for her welfare. She retired into her shell, not sulking, but simply withdrawing the essential part of her soul from contact with the world. I left her alone, it was the only way I could deal with these moods of hers; but I reflected that school would deal with them less gently and that this would be all to the good. After a few days of silent contemplation Clementina came to me and broached the subject herself.
“Aunt Charlotte, why must I go to school?”
“It’s good for people.”
“But I shall miss the hunting.”
“Your father missed the hunting when he went to school.”
“He was a boy.”
“You said it was a pity you were not a boy.”
“That’s not the point,” she said, and of course it wasn’t. “Boys have got to go to school, but girls needn’t. If you won’t have time to teach me why can’t I have a governess?”
“You could, of course,” I said. It was no use to be anything but frank with Clementina, and, after all, a reasonable being deserves the truth. “You could stay at home and have a governess, but I do want you to go to school. I was never at school myself and it is a drawback. I did not think so at the time for I loved my lessons with my father, but I found it a drawback afterward. I found I knew less of the world than other women. Lessons are not everything. You learn about other girls at school, and you learn to get on with people and to rub shoulders with people you don’t like without minding, or at least without showing that you mind. I don’t want you to be like other girls under your skin, but I want you to be more like other girls on the surface. It will be so much easier for you afterward—life will be easier.”
“I shall never be like other girls.”
“Perhaps not, but you will learn to appear like them.”
“I shall hate it.”
“So shall I. But we shall both know we are doing the right thing,” I replied firmly.