ALICIA'S DIARY
CHAPTER I.--SHE MISSES HER SISTER
July 7.--I wander about the house in a mood of unutterable sadness,
for my dear sister Caroline has left home to-day with my mother, and
I shall not see them again for several weeks. They have accepted a
long-standing invitation to visit some old friends of ours, the
Marlets, who live at Versailles for cheapness--my mother thinking
that it will be for the good of Caroline to see a little of France
and Paris. But I don't quite like her going. I fear she may lose
some of that childlike simplicity and gentleness which so
characterize her, and have been nourished by the seclusion of our
life here. Her solicitude about her pony before starting was quite
touching, and she made me promise to visit it daily, and see that it
came to no harm.
Caroline gone abroad, and I left here! It is the reverse of an
ordinary situation, for good or ill-luck has mostly ordained that I
should be the absent one. Mother will be quite tired out by the
young enthusiasm of Caroline. She will demand to be taken
everywhere--to Paris continually, of course; to all the stock shrines
of history's devotees; to palaces and prisons; to kings' tombs and
queens' tombs; to cemeteries and picture-galleries, and royal hunting
forests. My poor mother, having gone over most of this ground many
times before, will perhaps not find the perambulation so exhilarating
as will Caroline herself. I wish I could have gone with them. I
would not have minded having my legs walked off to please Caroline.
But this regret is absurd: I could not, of course, leave my father
with not a soul in the house to attend to the calls of the
parishioners or to pour out his tea.
July 15.--A letter from Caroline to-day. It is very strange that she
tells me nothing which I expected her to tell--only trivial details.
She seems dazzled by the brilliancy of Paris--which no doubt appears
still more brilliant to her from the fact of her only being able to
obtain occasional glimpses of it. She would see that Paris, too, has
a seamy side if you live there. I was not aware that the Marlets
knew so many people. If, as mother has said, they went to reside at
Versailles for reasons of economy, they will not effect much in that
direction while they make a practice of entertaining all the
acquaintances who happen to be in their neighbourhood. They do not
confine their hospitalities to English people, either. I wonder who
this M. de la Feste is, in whom Caroline says my mother is so much
interested.
July 18.--Another letter from Caroline. I have learnt from this
epistle, that M. Charles de la Feste is 'only one of the many friends
of the Marlets'; that though a Frenchman by birth, and now again
temporarily at Versailles, he has lived in England many many years;
that he is a talented landscape and marine painter, and has exhibited
at the Salon, and I think in London. His style and subjects are
considered somewhat peculiar in Paris--rather English than
Continental. I have not as yet learnt his age, or his condition,
married or single. From the tone and nature of her remarks about him
he sometimes seems to be a middle-aged family man, sometimes quite
the reverse. From his nomadic habits I should say the latter is the
most likely. He has travelled and seen a great deal, she tells me,
and knows more about English literature than she knows herself.
July 21.--Letter from Caroline. Query: Is 'a friend of ours and the
Marlets,' of whom she now anonymously and mysteriously speaks, the
same personage as the 'M. de la Feste' of her former letters? He
must be the same, I think, from his pursuits. If so, whence this
sudden change of tone? . . . I have been lost in thought for at least
a quarter of an hour since writing the preceding sentence. Suppose
my dear sister is falling in love with this young man--there is no
longer any doubt about his age; what a very awkward, risky thing for
her! I do hope that my mother has an eye on these proceedings. But,
then, poor mother never sees the drift of anything: she is in truth
less of a mother to Caroline than I am. If I were there, how
jealously I would watch him, and ascertain his designs!
I am of a stronger nature than Caroline. How I have supported her in
the past through her little troubles and great griefs! Is she
agitated at the presence of this, to her, new and strange feeling?
But I am assuming her to be desperately in love, when I have no proof
of anything of the kind. He may be merely a casual friend, of whom I
shall hear no more.
July 24.--Then he IS a bachelor, as I suspected. 'If M. de la Feste
ever marries he will,' etc. So she writes. They are getting into
close quarters, obviously. Also, 'Something to keep my hair smooth,
which M. de la Feste told me he had found useful for the tips of his
moustache.' Very naively related this; and with how much
unconsciousness of the intimacy between them that the remark reveals!
But my mother--what can she be doing? Does she know of this? And if
so, why does she not allude to it in her letters to my father? . . .
I have been to look at Caroline's pony, in obedience to her
reiterated request that I would not miss a day in seeing that she was
well cared for. Anxious as Caroline was about this pony of hers
before starting, she now never mentioned the poor animal once in her
letters. The image of her pet suffers from displacement.
August 3.--Caroline's forgetfulness of her pony has naturally enough
extended to me, her sister. It is ten days since she last wrote, and
but for a note from my mother I should not know if she were dead or
alive.
