A Proper Education for Girls Read Free

She also suspected that the heat in the hothouse made him sweat uncomfortably, and the humid atmosphere caused his beard to frizz, which he hated. It was for this reason that she kept the heating turned up as high as the plants could tolerate. She also knew that the real reason her father had lost all interest in his botanical collection was because of Lilian. For Lilian, the conservatory and the exquisite beauty of the plants it housed had been a Garden of Eden.
    Unlike Mr. Talbot, his elderly aunts and his aged mother found the heavy warmth of the hothouse comforting. Over time, they hadcolonized this man-made jungle with the trappings of a civilized parlor, so that among the foliage there lurked numerous armchairs, sofas, and footstools. There was also a surprising number of tables—side tables, card tables, writing desks, a rosewood dining table, even a sideboard. It was like finding a drawing room in the middle of a rain forest.
    Now, Mr. Talbot's female relatives settled down into their customary chairs and settees and busied themselves with their usual pastimes; Aunt Lambert took up a book, Aunt Rushton-Bell shuffled a pack of playing cards, Aunt Pendleton untangled a skein of jasmine from the leg of her writing table and rescued her inkwell from the clutches of a nameless creeper. Old Mrs. Talbot closed her eyes, exhausted by the trek through the foliage. Aunt Statham rummaged about beneath a huge dining table. Its surface was littered with jars of water and turpentine, some sprouting brushes, some silted with a spectrum of pigments.
    “What are you doing, Aunt?” said Alice.
    “Something I should have done a long time ago,” replied Aunt Statham. She lowered herself onto a sofa scarred with bursting welts of horsehair and liberally smeared with red paint. It teetered with canvasses, stretched flat onto wooden frames or rolled up into tubes. “I have decided to retire from painting. The light in here is impossible. The plants have grown so huge that I can hardly see what I'm doing. And my eyesight is going, of course.”
    “I can prune everything back,” said Alice.
    “It's my fingers too. They're so stiff, you know. And they shake a little too much these days. I can hardly hold the brush steady.”
    “You never could, dear,” murmured Aunt Lambert.
    “Besides,” continued Aunt Statham, ignoring the interruption, “my paintings are everywhere. DaVinci has made his bed out of a canvas—he couldn't get to his basket anymore.” She pointed to the large orange tomcat coiled on a sagging painting situated above a hot-water pipe. “Would you move him, my dear, and stack that picture with the others? I'm going to get Sluce to take the whole lot up to the attic.”
    The cat opened acid yellow eyes and glared at Alice's approaching hands. She raised it gingerly as though it were a hotcake, and placed it, still curled in a ball, onto a stool.
    To her surprise, the cat had been sleeping on her sister's face.
    “I'd forgotten you'd painted Lilian,” she said, dusting the portrait free of hairs. “You must have done this just before she left.”
    “Yes,” said Aunt Statham. “I never finished it. She's supposed to be holding an orchid—you know how she loved them—but I couldn't get the hands right. Or the orchid. It was Lilian who could paint flowers. You know that. Of course, she didn't paint anything else, so it's not surprising she was good at it. She did some beautiful pieces. What a pity your father put them all on the fire.”
    “I have one or two hidden away,” said Alice.
    “Quite right. Just don't let your father know, or he'll have them off you in a trice! It's unfortunate that you don't paint yourself, my dear, or I could have bequeathed my materials, and my paintings, to you. But then, not everyone is gifted with the artistic genius. You have the right idea. Accept your limitations and try photography instead. There's no skill required to do that, is there?”
    “A little.”
    “But