Leila Delmar, following her hostess, directed an expressive pantomime of raised eyebrows and grimacing mouth towards the two girls.
“Oh dear!” said Delphine, nearly in tears. “Is your mother vexed? I’m so awfully sorry, Sophie. I thought it was all settled about my being sent to the station, but I’m afraid she isn’t pleased.”
“I don’t think it’s that. She was rather — vexed — about something else. Nothing to do with you, Delphine.”
“Nothing to do with you either, I shouldn’t think,” declared Delphine. “I know she was saying awfully nice things about you to Bat at dinner last night, because I could hear some of them.”
Was it only last night, at dinner-time, thought Sophie amazed, that she had actually thought herself, and been thought by Clarissa, engaged to Bat Clutterthorpe?
“I’d better go and get on my hat, I suppose,” said Delphine. “I wish I had a car of my own, like everybody else, or that somebody else was going by train. It’s horrid, being the only one. What’s Bat doing?”
What, indeed?
“I don’t know,” said Sophie.
Fitzmaurice was the only person who joined his daughter, ten minutes later, in the hall when the car was brought round to the door. He received Delphine’s embarrassed good-byes with his customary off-hand jocosity, and an unconvincing pretence of going to find Clarissa.
“Where has everybody disappeared to, now I come to think of it? Where’s Bat — and Delmar? I thought the Delmars were off directly.”
“She’s with mummie.”
“That means we shan’t see either of them for a couple of hours or so,” Fitzmaurice said disconsolately. “When once two women start talking together—”
“Well,” said Delphine for the third or fourth time, “I — I really think I’d better go. Please say good-bye to your mother for me, Sophie. I’ve enjoyed myself too terribly.”
She was on the verge of tears.
She and Sophie kissed perfunctorily.
“Here’s Bat,” Fitzmaurice announced. “That’s one more to speed the parting guest, anyway.” He glanced at his daughter as he spoke, and sketched the shadow of a ribald wink that almost caused Sophie, already overwrought, to break aloud into nervous laughter.
“Good-bye, Delphine. See you in London or somewhere,” said Bat, and added before the door of the car had closed behind her, “Not that I came down in order to say anything so futile, as you may suppose.”
He looked directly at Sophie.
“I came to find you, as a matter of fact.”
“I’m off,” remarked Fitzmaurice crudely.
Sophie felt defenceless.
There was no help for it, she well knew. Bat had every right to come and find her, and to cause her to spend an unpleasant half-hour if he so wished.
Sophie had little doubt that he did so wish. “Let’s go out,” she suggested, with a faint hope that things might seem less grievous out of doors.
“Why?” asked Bat, coldly and disconcertingly.
She could offer him no reason.
“I think let’s go into the library.”
She followed him without any demur.
In the library they sat down solemnly in two arm-chairs facing one another.
Sophie was suddenly and absurdly reminded of one of Lucien’s favourite quotations:
. they were looking at one another with your Mamma’s parasol between them seated on two chairs like mad bulls...”
She drove her teeth into her lower lip, in terror lest she might actually be going to laugh.
“I don’t wonder,” said Bat Clutterthorpe, his voice unexpectedly mild, “that you can’t look me in the face.”
Sophie immediately did so, and an immense relief invaded her.
Bat wasn’t going to mind.
“Oh, Bat! I do know that I’ve behaved badly — but I believe you’re going to forgive me, aren’t you?”
He blinked at her.
“My dear, I can’t imagine why you didn’t tell me from the word Go that your heart, as the saying is, was another’s. I might have thought it odd that you should have pitched on a lad you’ve known in the most revolting nursery phases — but at least I shouldn’t have forced my attentions on you and, incidentally, have involved us both in the most ghastly orgy of explanations with our respective parents. That’s much the worst of it.”
“Yes, isn’t it?” Sophie agreed. “I ought not to have told mummie — especially after I’d asked you not to say anything — but she was annoyed about something, and I — I just said it to please her.”
“It pleased her all right,” Bat agreed. “So much so that she was all for rushing her fences, utterly regardless of common decency. Look at the way she made me telegraph to the old man! That, alone, nearly put me off the whole show.”
“I’m not surprised, Bat.”
“It wasn’t your fault. I knew that all along. And this proves it.”
“Then shall we stay friends?” asked Sophie rather timidly.
“Oh, by all means. I’m all for preserving the peace. There need never have been any trouble at all if only your parent had been kept out of it. By the by, that doesn’t sound desperately complimentary to you, but, honestly, Sophie, I doubt if I’m a marrying man. And I’m perfectly certain that you and Lucien will be able to give a frightfully good account of yourselves if you really do embark on the rash adventure. Only how’s your mamma going to take to the scheme?”
“Not at all,” said Sophie truthfully.
“That’s rather what old Lucien seemed to expect. Well, it’s time, isn’t it, that she learnt you’re both out of leading-strings. Talk about the modern generation — you and Lucien are two prize specimens of Victorian dutifulness, if you ask me.”
“I suppose we are,” Sophie admitted. “But all the same, there’s a difference. They were so terribly miserable, weren’t they? and wanted to break away and couldn’t. I mean — their — well, I suppose they called it their consciences — wouldn’t let them. Lucien and I haven’t got consciences, of course.”
“Then why, in Heaven’s name, haven’t you done something about it before?”
“I suppose,” Sophie said simply, “it hasn’t been worth while. You know what mummie’s like, Bat. It would only have meant the most desperate rows, and one would have had to give in eventually. As she says herself, she’s got all the money and all the power.”
“Still — she’s not young — and you are,” said Bat, in a tone of absolute finality.
“Yes,” said Sophie. And to her, too, that simple statement stood for absolute finality.
Clarissa might have everything else, but Lucien and Sophie had youth.
They were bound to win, and they knew it.
XVI
INDISCRETIONS OF MISS FISH
Miss FISH, when she heard of the circuitous route by which the — comparatively — celebrated Radow had reached her neighbourhood, fell into noisy excitement.
“A situation!” cried Miss Fish affectedly. “Positively, a dramatic situation. My dear Olivia, you have material for a dozen novels. For a play even. The Princesse and her entourage alone — the understanding that I feel certain exists between Lucien Marley and Sophie — and now, this son-in-law — Radow — a well-known musician!”
“A musician,” corrected Olivia. “Is he particularly well known? His Mr. Lawrence says so; but then, that’s his job.”
“Mr. Lawrence told your brother Harry that Radow was a genius.”
“Harry thought Mr. Lawrence himself far more of a genius than Radow in his own way.”
“How can a musical agent be a genius?” said Miss Fish fretfully. “Really, Olivia, I must say that, for a creative artist, you sometimes talk very oddly.” Olivia paid no heed to a reproach that she had often heard before.
“Lawrence seems to be the only person in England, except the people at ‘Anarajapurah’, that poor monsieur Radow knows at all. He arranges his concerts.”
“Naturally,” return
ed Miss Fish, throwing a glance at the corner in which lay the shrouded form of Ferdinand, to remind Olivia that she, too, was not without some inner knowledge of the musical world.
“I wonder if he’ll fall in love with anybody,” she added.
“Elinor,” said Olivia, “what is the matter with you? Why should this poor wretch fall in love with anybody?”
Miss Fish tossed her head defiantly and lit a cigarette, standing with her feet planted rather far apart, in a manly way.
“I can’t help it, my dear, if I shock you. You know how passionately interested I am in Life — and just lately, Life has been almost pure drama. One might be in ancient Greece.”
“I shall begin to wish one was, quite soon,” said Miss King significantly.
“Nonsense, nonsense. You’re coming with me to see monsieur Radow, who is in bed with a weak heart. Mr. Montgomery will go down on his knees to anybody who’ll sit with him and cheer him up.”
“But won’t the Princesse do that?”
“Not all the time. She’s begged people to go. Quite soon, everyone’ll be visiting him.” And Miss Fish added, shamelessly reverting to an earlier train of thought, “What’s to prevent his falling in love, I should like to know? Musicians are notoriously susceptible.”
“There isn’t anybody young enough within miles,” said Olivia rather unkindly. “Besides, he’ll go away directly he’s well enough. His Mr. Lawrence will take him away.”
“Not too soon, I hope,” said Miss Fish with great sincerity. “Now, will you, or will you not, come with me and see how he’s getting on?”
“I will, if you like, and if you’re sure that they really want visitors?”
“I’m positive. He’s really quite on poor little Mr. Montgomery’s mind.”
“In that case,” said Olivia, and set off with Miss Fish to try and take monsieur Radow, at least temporarily, off Mr. Montgomery’s mind.
Coming down the hill, as they went up it, they met Phyllis King with her two children.
Rosalind and Orlando looked, as usual, calm and good and not very much interested in anything at all, but their mother’s face wore an expression of animation.
“We’ve been up to see monsieur Radow. He’s getting on splendidly and he likes to have visitors.”
“What did I tell you, Olivia?” ejaculated Miss Fish.
“He’s so interesting, too, and always ready to talk. Harry,” said Phyllis King in rather a surprised voice, “has come quite to like him, and, as you know, he doesn’t as a rule like foreigners at all, even abroad. And, of course, he doesn’t in the least understand a man being a violinist; but he’s got quite to like Radow. (One calls him that, somehow — he seems to expect it.) Harry goes and sees him every morning, and they talk about the stabilization of the franc and things like that. It’s all quite a success. He simply loves people to come and talk to him.”
“Excellent!” said Miss Fish briskly. “We’re on our way now.”
“We mustn’t stop you. Come along, children — we must run home.”
The brown boots of Orlando and Rosalind paced away with unaltered deliberation on either side of their parent. It seemed improbable that they would ever run, or jump, or climb trees.
The hall-door of “Anarajapurah” was open as usual, and Cliffe Montgomery — and this, also, was as usual — was hanging about in the hall, with his air of hourly expecting a crisis. He seemed glad to see the two visitors, explained that the Princesse was writing letters, but would like to see them before they left, and conducted them upstairs to the invalid’s room.
It was a square, pleasant room, with cream-coloured walls and faded yellow chintzes. In the middle of the room, on a tall mahogany bed with a silk patchwork quilt folded across the foot of it, monsieur Radow, wrapped in an orange dressing-gown, reclined against pillows.
“Two visitors have come to see you,” Cliffe Montgomery announced at the door. “Miss King, whose brother you know, and Miss Fish.”
Monsieur Radow, from the pillows, bowed until a long lock of his black hair fell forward over his face. He replaced it patiently — a gesture that he was obliged to repeat frequently, for he was constantly moving his head about, and his rebellious piece of hair was as constantly falling down.
“I have already made friends with your brother,” he said to Olivia, his face pleased and eager as a child’s. He was, Olivia felt, very like a child altogether. It would surely be as easy to please, amuse, or disappoint him as if he were an intelligent, rather over-sensitive child.
“You play the violin,” said Elinor Fish, suddenly pointing her finger at him.
The brightness faded out of Radow’s too expressive face.
“Yeh. I am the violinist,” he replied curtly. And he added, with an imploring glance towards Olivia, as though already he perceived that imploring glances would be lost upon Elinor Fish:
“We will not talk about that, no? I am here, the first time I stay in English country-houses. I like to learn about them.”
To hear that anyone liked to learn about anything was always the signal for Miss Fish to begin to teach them about it.
In a moment she was launched.
“The social system by which life is conducted in the English country-side...” said Miss Fish in her clear, incisive, platform manner — and Olivia allowed her thoughts to wander. At intervals she dimly heard an assent, or a question, from the direction of the bed.
Radow looked much younger than he could possibly be, and had an air of helplessness. It was difficult to visualize the setting to which he really belonged, but Olivia felt certain that it was nothing that remotely resembled his bedroom in the virginal house of Miss Grace Silver.
When she again turned her attention to the conversation, Elinor Fish was asserting her intention of coming to play chess with monsieur Radow, of reading aloud to him, and of teaching him to cane chairs.
Monsieur Radow, strangely, was looking pleased and gratified, and murmuring his assenting “Yeh” in antistrophe to Elinor Fish’s periods.
“And you’ll have other visitors as well. Mrs. King has been here to-day, hasn’t she, with the children?”
“Yeh — she is very kind, like everyone.”
“And you like children?” Elinor asserted optimistically.
“No,” said monsieur Radow.
“No?”
“No.”
“Not at all?”
“Not at all.”
Miss Fish looked disappointed, and there was a short silence.
“But I have a child,” suddenly announced the violinist. “Grown-up. The child of my wife, that is. My child-in-law.”
“Stepchild,” amended Miss Fish automatically. “In Roumania?” she added kindly.
“No, no. Here, at the house of Mrs. Fitzmaurice at Mardale. Sophie Fitzmaurice.”
Elinor ejaculated something that sounded like “My God,” although she seldom made use of expletives, and became brick-red from excitement.
“To think I never saw it — but of course — Olivia, did you see it?”
“Yes,” said Olivia repressively, although she had actually only seen it a moment before Miss Fish had spoken. “We have both met Sophie three or four times,” she added, turning to Radow. “She is a such a pretty girl.”
“Yeh. More pretty than her mother, I think. She is coming here to see me.”
“Is she?” was all that Olivia could think of to say.
“So is the young Marley.”
“Yes?”
“But not the others,” said Radow, shuddering and momentarily closing his eyes. “No, no. The young man that play by ear — my God — that tap on the piano and sing — Christ, no! Not that one. He ask me, just like that, will I play after dinner?”
Radow mimicked the inquiry in an abominable falsetto.
“What did you answer?” said the irrepressible Miss Fish, recovering.
“Me? Nothing. What does one answer to a lunatic?” monsieur Radow coldly inquired. “I look at him, and I
say, ‘Vous etes fou, non?’ Just that. Nothing more.”
It seemed enough.
Monsieur Radow’s large eyes, gazing — staring, indeed — at Olivia, were full of a thoughtful distress.
In another moment, Olivia feared, he would be perfectly capable of beginning to cry. And Elinor, for all her cosmopolitan sympathies, would never be able to stand that, for the one thing that could — and invariably did — disconcert her was any display of emotion.
“When is your friend Mr. Lawrence coming back?” Olivia said quickly, in order to distract him.
Radow shrugged his shoulders.
“I don’t know. Lawrence is everywhere. One day London, another day Pernambuco. One day he will arrive here, and perhaps he take me away.”
“Not yet, let’s hope,” said Miss Fish cordially. She began, as was her wont, to make plans vehemently.
Monsieur Radow and Olivia assented, but Olivia at the same time stood up to show Elinor — who seldom saw these things for herself — that the visit had lasted long enough.
Even then, it was only with difficulty that she stemmed Elinor’s good-byes, that had become entangled with information about the League of Nations, and went with her downstairs to see the Princesse.
“Thank you for coming,” said the Princesse. “He likes visitors. Nothing else distracts him. He never reads. He doesn’t like the cat. He doesn’t even care for illustrated papers. I wish his Lawrence would come back and take him away to London.”
Her voice was so full of unwonted exasperation that they looked at her in surprise. Miss Fish, additionally indiscreet, also looked at Alberta, silent in a corner, thus making it evident that she wondered whether there had been a disturbance between the Princesse and her daughter.
“Oh!” said the Princesse, wringing her hands together suddenly. “Radow says that Sophie — Sophie Fitzmaurice — is engaged to be married.”
“To Lucien Marley?” shrieked Miss Fish.
“No, no. That’s the dreadful part of it. Not to Lucien. To a most fearful, detestable young man — very rich — Lord Clutterthorpe.”
“Mother!” Alberta’s husky voice held an agony of remonstrance. “You haven’t even seen him. And in any case...”
Collected Works of E M Delafield Page 337