In any case meant the indiscretion of Alberta’s parent. Olivia felt sorry for Alberta.
“Is that very bad?” she inquired. “Sophie is so charming, she ought to marry someone so very special—”
“This one is not special at all,” declared the Princesse recklessly. And immediately added: “Not that I know anything whatever about him, except that Radow says his piano-playing is terrible, and that Lucien, poor boy, calls him a mountebank.”
“And is she in love with him?” demanded Miss Fish. “No, Olivia, I will not be quiet. Of course, if I’m going too far—”
“Much too far,” said Olivia, and at the same instant the Princesse replied:
“No, no. I am distracted myself, and I know I can trust you both implicitly,” she added, looking at Miss Fish, but speaking for the benefit of Alberta.
“Of course,” said Miss Fish excitedly. “I told Olivia long ago that the whole thing was a plot for a novel, going on before our very eyes. May I be absolutely frank?”
“Yes,” replied the Princesse dejectedly.
Miss Fish, avoiding Olivia’s eye, immediately did become absolutely frank, evidently enjoying herself immensely.
“She’s your granddaughter, of course, and you must stop me if you feel, for one instant, that I’m being tiresome or obtrusive. But one is interested — impersonally interested. Almost as though the ‘Agamemnon’ was being enacted before one’s very eyes.... The first time, the very first time I saw those two beautiful young things together, I said to Olivia, ‘Mark me,’ I said, ‘they were made for one another, and sooner or later they’ll find it out.’”
“You felt that?” murmured the Princesse, gazing at Miss Fish as though fascinated by her vehemence.
“Instantly. And although I do say it myself, I’m never mistaken in things of that kind. I can’t believe that your Sophie should ever have allowed herself to become engaged to any other man.”
“It’s that woman — Clarissa Fitzmaurice. She tyrannizes over them all. I knew her, years ago. She made Fitzmaurice divorce Aldegonde and marry her. He never wanted to, not really. Now she’s making poor little Sophie—”
“Mother!” came again from Alberta.
“Let me speak,” said the Princesse imploringly. Alberta groaned, and went out of the room. “Elinor, we’d better go,” said Olivia. She turned to the Princesse, who was now in tears. “Perhaps if it’s a mistake, Sophie may find it out in time. She’s very young, isn’t she?”
“Quite, quite, quite,” said Elinor, as though she had been the person addressed. “Granted every time. But, my dear Olivia, how” — and her manner now definitely became that of a College Debating Club member— “how is the poor child to discover it unaided?”
“I don’t know, Elinor. But I’m sure that we ought not to take up any more of the Princesse’s time just now. We ought to go home.”
At last Miss Fish allowed herself to be taken away. She walked off, every now and then striking the ground vigorously with her walking-stick, and uttering thoughtful, ejaculatory Oh’s and Ah’s — to which Olivia, who was annoyed, made no rejoinder.
At last Miss Fish observed rather tartly:
“You may as well say it. You feel that I’ve been indelicate — indiscreet? That I thrust myself into the affairs of strangers uninvited.”
“My dear Elinor, don’t exaggerate. If you really want to know what I think, you let yourself be rather carried away — as you sometimes do — but so long as the Princesse didn’t object no one else is entitled to do so.”
“Don’t be a prig,” said Miss Fish, and although she wagged her stick humorously at Olivia as she said it, she did not sound pleased, and raced home at a terrific pace, knowing that her friend would be unwilling, through pride, to ask her to go slower.
Both ladies were out of breath by the time the cottage was reached, and at the foot of the stairs they separated in silence. Elinor spent the remainder of the afternoon in scratchily practising with Ferdinand, whilst Olivia, also in solitude, gardened.
XVII
CLIFFE MONTGOMERY DEFEATED
IT was as impossible for the Princesse to refrain from talking as it was for Miss Fish to refrain from asking questions. Consequently, it was no later than the following morning that Miss Fish again walked up to “Anarajapurah” and found herself, to her own immense satisfaction, taking part in a kind of family council, of which the component parts were held together by the passionate earnestness of the Princesse. It was she, alone, who had compelled the presence of Alberta, outraged and resentful; that of Radow, philosophically indifferent; that of Cliffe Montgomery, dumb and gloomy under the weight of an unspoken conviction that he was going to be sent somewhere or told to do something. Even Catiche was constrained, by the burden of past experience, to hover in and out of the room, noiseless in her black felt slippers, mysteriously nursing a small silver jug, haloed by the thin, curling, aromatic steam of the tisane within.
The Princesse sat in the drawing-room, absently caressing the black cat, Tarzan, on her lap.
“The question is,” said Miss Fish, always definite, “firstly, do we know that these young people really care for one another; and secondly, what chance is there of their being permitted by Mrs. Fitzmaurice to marry one another?”
“They love one another,” said the Princesse, very pale. “Lucien told me so days ago — and little Sophie has had the courage to say that she will not marry the other one — the mountebank.”
“Who say that he play by ear,” Radow added, in a tone expressive of disgust.
“Quite,” said Miss Fish, who never played by ear herself, and was gratified at finding that those who did so were not, apparently, well thought of by professional musicians. “Now, is Lucien — if I may be allowed to call him so — ?”
“Anything you like,” said the Princesse dejectedly —
“Is Lucien in a position to marry without his mother’s consent?”
“Financially, not at all. They could have everything I have in the world,” said the Princesse, looking at the clock, and then at her wedding-ring, “but it would really be no use.”
“None,” said Montgomery repressively. He could remember — and he wished he could hope that the Princesse remembered — other occasions in the past when she had been ready to dispose of everything that she had in the world for somebody else’s benefit, and the resultant inconveniences.
“I could live on a crust,” the Princesse announced rather resentfully. “A tiny little roof over my head — perhaps in Rome, or — No,” — she glanced at Alberta— “perhaps not Rome. I don’t really mind where so long as there’s sunshine. Why not the south of France or Spain? I eat nothing, do I, Catiche?”
“Nothing,” Catiche assented gloomily.
“Stewed fruit and a cup of coffee. When I was a girl in Russia, I remember—”
“Mother, we were talking about Lucien Marley and Sophie.”
“I know, darling. I am talking about them. I wish we could think of something. Alberta, couldn’t they go to America?”
“America?”
“Isn’t everything much easier there?”
“Things aren’t easy anywhere without any money. I suppose Lucien could get some kind of job. I don’t know what he’s fit for.”
“Nothing,” said Radow, shaking his head. “He can do nothing that earns money.”
“The English system of education...” Elinor Fish said, and she talked for three and a half minutes, not noticing whether anybody was paying attention to her or not. “However, that’s hardly to the point at the moment,” she ended up. “We are dealing with a specific case. The solution to the whole problem would appear to be that Lucien should make himself financially independent of his mother.”
“He couldn’t do it,” observed Montgomery. “Not all in a moment. And they’ve both been brought up to all the habits of wealth.”
“Pooh!” ejaculated the Princesse. “So was I. When I married, the consent of the Tsar had to be obtaine
d.”
“That would, I think, be easier to get than that of Clarissa Fitzmaurice. I know her of old.”
“So you do, Cliffe. I think,” said the Princesse, “that you had better go and see her.”
“No, no.”
“Someone has got to talk to her.”
“She wouldn’t listen to me. I shouldn’t do any good.”
“Indeed, my dear Cliffe,” said the Princesse affectionately, “I’m certain that you don’t realize your own influence.”
“It’s not fair to ask him, though,” put in Alberta.
Cliffe and the Princesse looked equally astonished, and little Montgomery, after a momentary pause, remarked:
“I will go. Not that I think it will do good; but I’ll see Clarissa.”
“Probably,” Miss Fish suggested hopefully, “it may be possible to persuade Mrs. Fitzmaurice that if she refuses her consent, her son will do without it. After all, he is of age, and there is no real reason why he and Sophie should not marry.”
“She has always been tyrannical,” Cliffe asserted. His thoughts went back to a certain cafe in Brussels, and he heard again the plaintive voice in which Reggie Fitzmaurice had said: “The thing I’m afraid of is that she means to marry me.”
“She has always been tyrannical,” he repeated, “and because she has inherited money and has unlimited determination, she has always won. Besides, Clarissa is wonderfully thick-skinned. She isn’t vulnerable anywhere.”
“That means,” the Princesse interposed decisively, “that she is incapable of affection.”
To the surprise of them all, Radow, coming out of his abstraction, answered her.
“She has an affection, yeh. She has an affection for the animal Fitzmaurice. Why, it is impossible to say. But for Fitzmaurice she has an affection.” Miss Fish, in her logical Oxford way, began:
“On what grounds, exactly—” but nobody took any notice. It was evident that all of them, from the Princesse, large-eyed and earnest, to the hovering Catiche, accepted Radow’s statement as an authoritative one. They were prepared, in affairs of the emotions, to trust solely to intuition.
Very well. Elinor, who had adopted the singular household almost with frenzy, gallantly put aside the convictions of a lifetime. They were all very odd, but they were artists — they were talented — probably they knew. She, too, would trust to intuition, even though it was the intuition of anybody so incompetent in the affairs of life as she rightly judged the Roumanian violinist to be.
“Talk to Fitzmaurice, not to Clarissa. It is only Fitzmaurice that can make her change her mind.”
“But are you sure, Raoul?” asked Alberta. Down went monsieur Radow’s plume of hair, as he violently signed assent.
“Yeh. I stay at Mardale, and see everything.
Even to the infidelity of Fitzmaurice—”
“But then—”
“Clarissa is jealous. So I know that she love him. If a woman can still be made jealous,” said Radow instructively, “it means that she still love the man.
Clarissa is even jealous because Fitzmaurice is fond — a little fond — of Aldegonde’s child, Sophie.”
“Cliffe,” said the Princesse hopefully, “you know Fitzmaurice — you’ve often managed Fitzmaurice for us before. You must see him, and you must make him talk to Clarissa. If he’s fond of Sophie, he will want her to be happy.”
“He’s only fond of himself, unless he’s changed a good deal,” said Alberta.
Back again at this question of fondness! Miss Fish could not help reflecting that it was all very un-English.
She looked intelligently from one to the other of them, ready with many practical suggestions. But for a long time they went on talking, round and round the subject, and with many interpolated reminiscences from the Princesse. Catiche, having taken away the tisane as mysteriously as she had brought it, reappeared with cups of strong black coffee. Everybody, except Cliffe Montgomery, drank some, and Catiche, then, without a word, produced a cup of mint-tea and handed it to him.
Then she went away, and her departure, noiseless and unobtrusive as it was, seemed somehow to break up the conference.
The only solid facts that Elinor — who did, undoubtedly, like solid facts — took away with her, were Cliffe Montgomery’s decision to seek Fitzmaurice, and Radow’s announcement that his Mr. Lawrence had summoned him back to London and that he would have to go there next week.
“And if you ask me,” said Miss Fish, in her favourite but inaccurate phrase, “they won’t be so very sorry to see him go. Mind you, I think he’s delightful in many ways — and a first-class musician, no doubt — but as a visitor! — Besides, my dear Olivia, his health must really be very odd. Bed and a heart-attack one day, and quite ready to go off to London the next.”
“Temperamental — like his mama in Roumania,” suggested Olivia.
“Let us,” said Miss Fish, very bright and inspired, “give a party before he goes.”
Olivia, who knew that she had been definitely cross with Elinor the day before, was ready to agree, and in a moment, as it seemed, they were deeply involved in the party.
Their neighbours from “Anarajapurah” would constitute the bulk of the party. Harry King and Phyllis were naturally to be included, and Miss Fish hazarded an optimistic hope that Lucien Marley might bring Sophie.
“We will clear out the Studio,” said Miss Fish, who thus designated a large outbuilding in which stood a carpenter’s bench and her own woodcarving accessories.
“But tea in the sitting-room,” said Olivia firmly. She reflected with guilty thankfulness that, owing to Radow’s presence, there could be no question of Ferdinand — for the jocose humility of Elinor, in regard to her own playing, did not go so far as to prevent her from performing whenever she was requested to do so. And although Olivia was not especially musical, she had disturbing recollections of hearing Elinor and Phyllis King on such occasions.
“A — A — A — !” ringingly from Miss Fish, and A — A — A — obediently from Phyllis at the piano, and then Ferdinand, wailing a slightly different version of A until he and the piano were in accord. And the subsequent murmured protests from Phyllis King taking off her rings: “Not all those sharps, Elinor....”
“... Five sharps no more difficult than one, my dear Phyllis. Simply remember what key you’re in...” and finally “Ready?” and the spirited dashing away of Miss Fish upon Ferdinand, wielding her bow with an action that reminded one of a high-stepping circus horse. At the close of the performance one felt oddly out of breath from sheer sympathy with the accompanist, who had had to follow Ferdinand’s erratic scramblings, and had actually kept pace with them from the first note to the last, although some of the intermediate ones had been a little rushed.
“I don’t believe, Olivia, that you have been listening to a word I’ve been saying!” cried Miss Fish, in high indignation.
Little Montgomery, disliking his errand with the profound and fatalistic dislike so often inspired in him by the commands of the Princesse, nevertheless delayed not at all in executing it. An embittered recollection, that would never wholly die, of the many occasions in the past on which he had waited, always at length and often in vain, for Fitzmaurice to keep an appointment, caused him to go to Mardale, after informing himself by telephone that Fitzmaurice would see him there, at the hour of eleven. At eleven, in his wife’s country-house, Cliffe hoped, with cold disapproval, that Fitzmaurice would be entirely sober.
He had expected to be kept waiting, but was shown at once into a small sitting-room behind the library where Fitzmaurice was allowed an enormous writing-table at which he never wrote, a number of leather arm-chairs and a telephone, and a collection of sporting prints.
“Bring in the whisky-and-soda,” said Fitzmaurice to the servant in the same breath as he greeted his visitor.
There was no embarrassment about Fitzmaurice. There never had been, Cliffe Montgomery reflected. He offered his caller a drink, and poured it out without waiting
for a reply, and then raised his own glass with “Here’s how!”
“Like old times,” he suggested affably. “Do you remember the fines we used to get through in Brussels, years ago? Seems like a dream sometimes, those old days — or, perhaps, I ought to say a nightmare. Rum, isn’t it, the way things alter?”
“Circumstances,” said little Montgomery solemnly.
“Yes, by God. Or, you might say, Clarissa. D’you remember how dead scared I was when I first saw she really meant business?”
If Montgomery remembered — and he most accurately did — Clarissa’s house did not appear to him to be a suitable place in which to indulge in such reminiscences.
“You and Aldegonde were very much better apart,” he pointed out austerely. “And I suppose that what you did has — has turned out satisfactorily.”
“What Clarissa did, you mean.”
“Satisfactorily for yourself. But what about Sophie?”
“Sophia?” said Fitzmaurice in tones of astonishment. “Clarissa’s done every single thing for Sophia! I will say that for her. Given her clothes and an education, and treated her exactly as if she were her own mother. In fact, she’s done a dam’ sight more for her than poor Aldegonde would ever have done.”
“Yes, I can see all that,” Montgomery conceded, sacrificing his loyalty to Aldegonde’s memory to his strict sense of justice. “I do see that. And I can even see reasons why she doesn’t want Sophie to marry her son.”
It was safe, he felt, to assume that Fitzmaurice would not perceive himself in the light of one such reason, and a major one at that.
“I told her all along,” Fitzmaurice declared, “that those two kids might fall for one another. That’s why she’s always made such a point of this brother and sister business. Rammed it down their throats, absolutely. I suppose she overdid it, rather. The fact is, she’s all out for society with a capital S, is Clarissa. She wanted Sophia to make an absolutely first-class marriage, and wipe the eye of all the other mothers. As for the boy, Royalty would be only just good enough for him.”
Collected Works of E M Delafield Page 338