“I quite understand,” said Miss Silver, with equal gravity.
Cliffe approved of her more and more. For one thing she asked very few questions, and none of them personal, for another she did not show surprise at anything that he either told or did not tell her. The reactions of other people to the vagaries of the Princesse had been so frequently those of astonished curiosity that Montgomery now almost found himself expecting nothing else. His appreciation of Miss Silver’s discretion was proportionate.
In addition, she gave him a most excellent lunch that had not at all the air of a lunch cooked and served by a country maid for a solitary lady.
He permitted himself to compliment her on the admirable coffee that was brought to them afterwards, and Miss Silver smiled and admitted that she prided herself on having lived alone for the past twelve years without ever descending to the customary feminine level of tea and a poached egg brought in on a tray. The cook, she added, would be quite willing to remain with the tenant of “Anarajapurah” during her own absence.
“Really? That seems almost too good to be true. Would it — I wonder if you would allow me to see her, now I am here, and perhaps we could clinch the matter at once.”
“By all means.”
She really was wonderful, Cliffe reflected gratefully. He was fully alive to his own absurdity, inspecting a house and garden for which the prospective tenant had already signed a year’s lease, and engaging a cook without instructions from her future employer.
Nevertheless, he did engage her, and congratulated himself on having done so. Neither Alberta nor her mother would think of anything like that. Only Catiche would hear, with intense relief, that there would be servants waiting for them when they arrived.
With earnest gratitude Montgomery made his farewells to his hostess, when they heard the rattling taxi coming up the hill.
“I am looking forward to meeting the Princesse before I go abroad, as she wants to come here as soon as possible, and I can easily arrange to spend a few days with friends in the neighbourhood before I need go up to London.”
“I’m sure that she would like that very much, although the last thing she would wish would be for you to put yourself out in any—”
The last word died away on his lips as the taxi clattered into view, and drew up, with a jarring grind, in front of the door at which Cliffe and Miss Silver were standing.
From the window the long, sallow, anxious face of Catiche, strange beneath an unfamiliar black hat, looked at Cliffe Montgomery. He could see, rather than hear, the words with which she greeted the sight of him:
“Tiens! Voila monsieur Cliffe.”
“Here,” said little Montgomery, with calm despair, “here is the Princesse.”
He stepped forward and opened the door of the taxi.
The Princesse de Candi-Laquerriére sat within, and there was an admission of guilt in her first words as well as in the deprecating smile she gave him.
“I thought I’d better come and see it. I sent you a telegram, but only this morning, so it will be in London — and I meant to telegraph to Miss Silver, but we only caught the train at the last moment.”
“Miss Silver is here,” said Cliffe, not reproaching her because he knew it would be useless.
The Princesse extricated herself from a number of striped scarves, a large Irish frieze cloak, and a basket that apparently contained nothing but books, and got carefully out of the taxi.
Catiche, enveloped in black wool shawls, drew them more closely about her and remained still.
Montgomery introduced the two ladies and heard Miss Silver welcoming her visitor. He turned to the interior of the taxi.
“Does Alberta know that you are in England?”
“The Princesse telegraphed to her, but we drove straight across London and came down here. We go to London this evening — to Alberta’s hotel.”
“I see. This is a very nice house, Catiche. You will like it.” He watched her face rather anxiously. “There are excellent servants, and they will stay with the house.”
“And is there a picture on the stairs of a girl’s head against a gold background? Because if there is not,” said Catiche, with sardonic humour, “the house will not suit us. I can quite assure you of that.”
“Catiche, get out,” cried the Princesse, her voice at its most joyful. “Here is Miss Silver, most kindly offering to let us see everything. Cliffe, you’ll stay and go back with us?”
Cliffe was assisting Catiche to climb backwards out of the taxi. She was neither young nor active, and was hampered further by lengthy and voluminous skirts, and ankles that turned over in their elastic-sided boots.
The Princesse ceremoniously introduced her to Miss Silver, gave fresh orders to the driver of the taxi, and went excitedly into the house.
“I remember nothing — nothing!” she cried, gazing round the hall. “And yet I was here when I was five. I picked primroses in a little wood at the back. The only thing I can remember in the house is a picture that used to hang on the staircase — I wonder if by any chance—”
“I think you were here when my aunt was alive — the one who left me the house. She used to let it furnished, and I know there were a good many pictures.... Can you remember what this one was like?”
Cliffe Montgomery, listening to Miss Silver’s earnest and gentle tones, felt an unwonted rush of something that strangely resembled emotion. It touched him profoundly that she should, with such serious courtesy, such sympathy and understanding, accept the irrational singularities of the Princesse.
On receiving a description of the picture she said at once that it was now in one of the bedrooms, and suggested that it should immediately be inspected. She took the Princesse upstairs. Catiche remained with Cliffe Montgomery.
He ventured, in his deepening security, to show her one or two of the downstairs rooms, and was glad to see, by her silent noddings and brightened glance, that she approved.
“And Mardale?” she said at last. “Are we far from there? Is it likely that we shall see any of them?”
“They are there very little.”
“One reason we’ve come is that she wants to see Sophie Fitzmaurice, I know.”
Montgomery shook his head disapprovingly. He knew very well that the Princesse could never resist even the most distant possibility of a dramatic situation. It was partly for that reason that he had always opposed her coming to England, where she would, he felt certain, find herself almost alone in her predilection.
When she reappeared with Miss Silver, he was, however, able to lay aside his disapproval and faint anxiety. The Princesse was radiant.
She had seen the picture — just as she remembered it — and had also recognized a red lacquer screen, behind which she had once played hide-and-seek. Cliffe perceived in a moment that she was now persuaded that she had fully inspected the house, and found it all that could be desired.
The square-headed black cat, Tarzan, completed her happiness.
A slower, much less intense, satisfaction was visible behind the sallow gravity of Catiche, as the superior amenities of “Anarajapurah” became more and more manifest to her. Finally, a certain hopefulness, such as he had not felt for years, took possession of Cliffe Montgomery himself.
Did it not at last seem possible that they were to have a happy, an undisturbed summer, in a spot so peaceful that even the Princesse would be unable to attract calamity?
He said good-bye to his hostess feeling a little as though, when they came back, their guardian angel would have gone. He heard the Princesse expressing her hope of seeing Miss Silver again, and then they discussed the question of dates. He felt glad when it was finally arranged that the Princesse should come to “Anarajapurah” a fortnight before Miss Silver was to leave the neighbourhood.
The taxi rattled them all back to the station once more, leaving so small a margin of time to spare that the Princesse’s suggestion of sending a telegram to Alberta was left unregarded.
“Charming,
” said the Princesse. “Miss Silver is charming. I liked her so very much. And the house is exactly as I remembered it, and so is the garden.”
A moment later she burst out laughing.
“Now I come to think of it, I never saw the garden, did I? But it doesn’t matter, I can remember it, more or less. I once found a purple crocus on the lawn, when I was five.”
VI
MARDALE
IT was the last week of June when Clarissa Fitzmaurice at length obeyed the behest of Sir Stephen Frass-Cunningham, and went to Mardale. Up to the very last moment, Sophie had been afraid that she would change her mind. More than once she had threatened to, saying that the neighbourhood was the most impossible one in England, and that Sophie would lose touch with everybody.
“Once you lose touch, you’re done,” said Clarissa, fixing her large eyes on Sophie with an air of horror. “Always remember that. There’s simply no such thing as coming back again once you’ve dropped out. There are new people coming on all the time, and you find you’re forgotten. Or if anyone does remember you, they think something queer has been happening.”
Sophie made the little inarticulate murmur that served her so often.
She had never been allowed to spend more than a few days at Mardale in the summer since the school holidays when she and Lucien had been thirteen and fourteen years old. Both of them retained the happiest memories of those holidays.
On the first morning after their return they met, like conspirators, before breakfast.
“Mummie’s having hers upstairs when she rings, and Foster thinks that may not be for ages, because she was so tired last night and couldn’t get to sleep,” Sophie said.
“Then look here — we’ll go out, shall we? Directly after breakfast, I mean. There isn’t anything you’ve got to do?”
“Not yet,” said Sophie, smiling. “I mean, mummie hasn’t told me anything about how I’m to spend my time here, yet. She will, I expect.”
“No doubt,” Lucien returned. “So let’s make the most of freedom while we have it. Can you eat breakfast very quickly?”
“Very,” said Sophie.
Fitzmaurice had not come with them. He was racing, with Clarissa’s money, and Clarissa’s reluctant consent. He was the only person who took money from her and from whom she did not exact obedience in return.
Sophie and Lucien went out of the house together soon after ten o’clock. Sophie’s little pale-gold head was uncovered, and she wore a light-green muslin frock with a spotted green scarf demurely knotted in front.
“Will that hurt if we climb a stile, or anything?” Lucien inquired.
“Probably. It’s bran-new. I had to get a whole lot of bran-new things for the country, although this place is supposed to be miles and miles from anywhere, with nobody who matters to see what one looks like.”
“Well, well,” Lucien consoled her, “I’m here, and I see what you look like, and I think you a perfect darling. So will the tenants when I take you round the countryside to call on them.”
“It’ll be heavenly. Where are we going to now, Lucien?”
“Do you want to go anywhere specially?”
He was looking at her as he spoke and their eyes met.
“Do you?”
“Yes.”
“Is it the same as I want?”
“I expect so.”
They broke into laughter.
“Let’s say it together,” Lucien proposed. “One — two — three—”
“The Common!” they both exclaimed at the same instant.
It lay about a mile away from the park gates — an isolated tract of common land, bordered by clumps of Spanish chestnut, and thick with gorse and bramble-bushes. A small, disused quarry, half-way down a steep slope, had been their favourite playing-place as children.
“Do you remember how we thought no one but us had ever discovered the quarry?”
“Yes, and do you remember the day we smoked cigarettes there and you hated it?”
“So did you, if the truth were told, only you pretended not to mind.”
They felt that, once more, they were spending the summer holidays together away from school.
“What a morning!” said Lucien. “What a day! What a place!”
“Isn’t it all perfect,” Sophie assented joyously.
They found their quarry, and sat on the sun-warmed ground, leaning against a bank honeycombed with rabbit-holes.
“To think,” said Sophie, “that we’ve spent June in London so often, and all the time it’s been like this down here.”
She scooped a little heap of loose red earth up in her fingers and began to pat it into a little mound.
“Sophie, what happened to Miss Bell?”
“She went at the end of a month. Mummie found her another job.”
“Making no mention, I suppose, of the episode?”
“None, so far as I know. She’s not going to get another secretary till we go away in September, and I’ve a dreadful feeling that she’s going to make me her secretary till then.”
“My poor little child!” said Lucien, gently taking possession of her hand. “And a little bit poor Clarissa as well, do you think?”
“I can type,” Sophie returned with dignity.
“But can you spell?”
They were children together again, understanding one another with the effortless, unconscious intimacy of the nursery.
It was past twelve o’clock when Sophie suggested that they ought to go home.
They got up reluctantly.
“Listen!” Sophie said. “Do you hear a most marvellous bird singing? Could it possibly be a — a nightingale?”
Lucien shook his head, smiling at her.
“I’m sure it couldn’t. A sedge-warbler, most likely. But I don’t really know. I wish we lived in the country!”
“We shall, for this summer,” she reminded him. “And, perhaps, later on. You’ll be able to, if you want to.”
“So will you.”
She made no reply, and they turned away from the common and retraced their way along the lanes to the stone-pillared entrance to Mardale.
A long avenue, fragrant with limes, led to the house. It was stone-built, a double flight of stone steps descending on either side of the front door. To the left of the main building ran a stone colonnade, ending in a glass orangery, and on the other side was the new additional wing added by Clarissa. Green was gradually creeping up its stone sides, but it would be long before it attained to the air of maturity that characterized the rest of the house, rich with ancient magnolias, lemon-verbena and a massive, twisted stem of wistaria.
As Lucien and Sophie went up the steps, Clarissa’s maid was crossing the hall.
She paused when she saw them.
“Madam has been asking for you, Miss Sophie.”
“Oh — Shall I go to her?”
“She will be downstairs almost directly. In the library, she said, Miss Sophie.”
“Thank you, Foster,” said Sophie, with a little sigh. The maid passed on and Sophie turned to Lucien.
“Are you going to have any special room for yourself here?” she asked.
“I’m going to have the old nursery, and so are you,” he replied decisively. “And if Clarissa wants you to do her letters and things, you can do them up there.”
“Come with me and say good morning to her, Lucien.”
“Darling, must I really?”
They were still in the square, cool hall, dark with panelling, and scented with roses and potpourri, and at that moment Clarissa came down the stairs.
“Good morning, children,” she called, and it was instantly evident that she was in an excellent humour. “Have you been to look at the gardens? I’m going round the whole place this afternoon. You’d better come with me, Lucien. I want to find out exactly who’s got to be sacked and who can stay.”
As she spoke the last sentence, Mrs. Fitzmaurice laughed. Her sense of humour was of a curious description, embracing the
broadly farcical or the grossly indecent. At jests of these descriptions her laughter was spontaneous and hearty. Otherwise, it was apt to sound, as now, oddly perfunctory and lacking in any quality of infectiousness.
Sophie and Lucien both smiled politely, but without any amusement.
“Sophie, my child, where’s your hat? It’ll ruin your skin to be out in the sun without one. Either that or a parasol another time, please.”
She led the way into the library, where the writing-table was already strewn with evidences of her presence.
“Now then, I’d better tell you both what’s happening. (Stand, Sophie, don’t sit — you’re bound to put on weight down here.) I’m going to devote the whole of this week to going through the estate business. There’s a ghastly amount to be looked into, far more than anyone realizes, and you may thank your stars, Lucien, that you’ve got a mother with a head for business.”
“Hadn’t I better learn something about the estate myself?” Lucien suggested mildly.
“Certainly you had. When I know where I am I’ll take you through things myself. The agent is coming here this afternoon, and probably every day this week, and I shall go into everything with him.”
“Is the agent still Mr. King?” Sophie inquired.
“And what do you know about Mr. King?” Clarissa demanded, with good-humoured sharpness.
“Only that I remember him when we were children — a tall, thin man, who used to stay to lunch sometimes.”
“Yes, I remember him too,” Lucien supported her.
“Well, he’s likely to have to stay to lunch again, I suppose, as he tiresomely lives at the other end of the county, and only comes over two days a week. He’s had the agency for years, but I shan’t hesitate to make a change if I find he’s been getting slack.”
Lucien made a movement as though about to speak and then checked himself. Sophie felt that she knew as well as he did what it was that he wanted to say.
But what would be the good of suggesting that if the agent had been getting slack, the fault was their own for leaving the place untenanted? It was with Clarissa’s money that the agent was paid, and that Mardale was kept in order. She could dismiss him if she chose: she did not permit interference, far less advice, from her son.
Collected Works of E M Delafield Page 326