Perhaps it wouldn't happen after all. Perhaps it could be called oflf. These things were sometimes, weren't they?
I took her back to bed and tucked her in. I gave her hot milk laced with something soporific which Meg knew of, and I left her dozing.
I went back to bed wondering what it would lead to. There was one thing I was certain of. There would be change.
At first it was just a line or two in the papers—rather obscure. The wife of a well-known politician was about to sue for divorce. "It is whispered that a famous actress is involved."
Then in a few days it burst on the world. I heard the newsboys shouting in the streets. "Irene Rushton in divorce case. Well-known politician involved."
My mother shut herself in her room and went through the papers. Janet was triumphant. "There! You see what comes of working for an actress!" she implied. Meg was tight-lipped. All her other ladies had married respectably and not one had taken less than a knight. And now this! "A pretty kettle of fish!" she commented.
Newspaper reporters waylaid my mother. They waited outside the house for her to come home. They invaded the theater. As Meg had said, it was good for the play. People flocked to the theater just to take a look at her.
She carried on as though nothing had happened. She was the complete actress and even took a certain satisfaction in the role she was playing. One day she would be the abandoned scarlet woman, the next the injured innocent, at others the brave woman overtaken by circumstance. In a way she enjoyed it. I believe she would have found a certain satisfaction in any role she conjured up for herself.
She talked to me more than she ever had. Whether she thought I was growing up and should know what was happening or whether it was simply that she missed Everard's company and needed someone to confide in, I didn't know.
Everard had written to her. He said that when this nightmare was over and he was free they would go away together. They could
not marry, of course, because of my father, but he was wondering whether something could be arranged with him.
"Poor Everard," she sighed. "He is the soul of respectability. Imagine what this means to him. It shows how deeply he loves me to become caught up in a relationship like this. Dear, dear Everard! Perhaps one day it will all come out right. But first we have this terrible ordeal ahead of us. We have to be prepared to have our pasts probed, and maliciously too. Oh Siddons, it is going to be such an ordeal for us all."
"Mostly for Everard," I pointed out. "He will lose his career."
She nodded grimly. "He'll have to resign, that's clear. He's been in politics all his life. This will be the end for him."
I thought: The world lost for love! And I wondered how he was feeling now. That he loved my mother dearly I had no doubt; but then, with the love affair kept secret he had been able to pursue his career; he had lived dangerously then, but now the danger had caught up with him.
A gloom had settled on the house. Everything had changed. Only Janet was pleased because she felt that there was a very good chance of Meg's services not being required, and then they could leave at once for Ethel's country paradise.
My mother was playing to packed houses, but when she left the theater one night several hostile voices were raised against her and she was referred to in no uncertain terms as an immoral woman. She, who had been so accustomed to adulation, was very upset.
She wept when she came home and Meg made a special concoction to send her ofif to sleep and I fussed around, brushing her hair and tying it up with pink ribbons before tucking her into bed.
She could be reconciled playing the various parts required for the moment. There was the woman who had sinned against society, the Mary Magdalen with a heart of gold, the innocent who had been brought into the glare of publicity and was wondering what it was all about, the penitent who would live a life of piety from now on . . . all these she tried. But now the cold facts were too stark to be ignored, and as she faced up to the reality of the situation a deep depression settled upon her.
I was sorry for her because I could see that the spoilt child of
nature could not understand why life could be so cruel as to change so completely.
"It will be when the case comes on that the real trouble will start," prophesied Meg.
Janet raised her eyes to the ceiling. "There'll be no holding the newspeople. It'll all come out. They'll make a regular bank holiday of it, you see. A nice thing for us all . . . living in a house where that was going on."
"It don't help to go on like that," retorted Meg. "Her ladyship will come through all right. You'll see."
"Perhaps she'll run away," suggested Janet. "She did that once before."
"It might be a good idea," commented Meg.
The time was passing. We were within a week of the opening of the case. My mother was losing a little of her calmness. She was dreading what might come out in court. I heard Janet and Meg discussing it.
"Tney'll be raking up everything," said Janet. "Her marriage. Why she left him. There'll be some dirty linen washed in public, I shouldn't wonder."
"Goodness me! What won't come out! These people don't always concern themselves with the truth."
"Oh, the truth will be good enough for them, I shouldn't wonder," said Janet with a grim laugh.
My mother was getting really worried now. She had not been well enough to go to the theater for a week and the play had closed down. The tension in the house was almost unbearable. We were all trying to steel ourselves for what was to come.
Then the blow fell. I heard the newsboys crying it out and when I bought a paper the big black headlines danced before my eyes. I felt sick. The scene had changed dramatically. What had been a bad dream had turned into a nightmare.
Sir Everard Herringford was dead.
He had shot himself in the study of his Westminster house.
For the first days a certain morbid excitement prevailed. Meg went out and bought all the papers. We went through them before taking them to my mother.
During the first days after Everard's death the matter dominated the front pages with pictures of him, an account of his prospects, which I could not help feeling were made more brilliant in death than they actually were in life. A possibility of becoming prime minister had become a certainty; his witty and pungent remarks in debate were quoted. "All lost for the love of a woman" ran one headline; and when that woman was Irene Rushton there was more ammunition with which to excite the disgust or sympathy of the reader, whichever would be more appealing at the time. In fact Everard was a kind of martyr in one paper "caught up in the fever of passion, the husband who had cared for an invalid wife for years and then had fallen deeply in love with one whose charm was known to the world." On the same day he was the philandering scoundrel who had deceived his colleagues into thinking he was a man of honor.
I think a certain cynicism crept into my nature at that time which I never really lost. I was only fourteen but I was not so inexperienced as to think those colleagues who were now so devastated by the revelations had not been unaware of the relationship between Everard and my mother all along. She was too well known for it to have escaped unnoticed. Moreover, he had been so often at the theater. It was only when his wiie decided to sue for a divorce that it became so shocking.
There was a lesson to be learned. In the world's eyes, to sin is mildly regrettable; to have the sin exposed is unforgivable. In other words the sin itself is not to be deplored; it is only bringing it into the open that is so shocking.
Everard had, it seemed, thought the best way for all was to remove himself. My mother wept and said he had done it to save her. I did hear something about some indiscreet letters she had written to him, which he had preserved and which had fallen into the hands of lawyers. It seemed to me, knowing what I did of him, that he would think the noble thing to do was to take his hfe.
There were pictures of Herringford Manor, Everard's country house in the Midlands. It had been photographed in dark conditions. If it
wasn't actually raining at the time it was going to at any moment. But the manor in which the invalid wife lived had
to look gloomy, so that was how they took it—a big, gray-stone building—gaunt and sinister. Yet I could imagine it with shrubs in flower on the lawns and the sun shining on gray stone—a very different picture. But it was the House of Tragedy and it had to look the part.
Such stories are, of course, nine-day wonders. People's lives are broken and they have to live with the results, but as far as the interest to the public is concerned that, fortunately, is fleeting.
In a week or so there was no more mention in the papers of what was called the Herringford-Rushton affair. Everard was dead; he could no longer delight and disconcert the Commons with his pungent wit; he would no longer attend the theater and come home with my mother, advise her on her financial affairs and generally give her the benefit of his wisdom. She was bereft. Thanks to Everard she was not absolutely penniless. He had very wisely invested the little money she had, but it was not enough to live on without the salary she received as an actress—and she was extravagant.
She would have to work very soon, she said; and she was uneasy as to what her reception would be. She could never endure not being idolized. A hostile audience, I knew, would unnerve her. To see her make her appearance and hear the audience gasp with pleasure before the burst of applause, and to watch the look of happiness on her face, had moved me on those occasions when I had seen her on the stage. I wondered what would happen if that appreciation was not given—or worse still, hostility was shown. I think that was what she feared.
There were long sessions with Tom Mellor. I could see when Janet brought him in that he was not his usual confident self. He did not shout as he had in the past: "I've got it, Reeny. This is itr Toby and I used to laugh about it and it had become a catch phrase with us. This time Tom was quite serious. He was shut in the drawing room with my mother for a long time.
It was not a very successful meeting, I gathered after he had gone.
My mother shouted as I went to join her: "The provinces! Can you see me in the provinces! That's what that fool suggests. 'Give
them a rest, Reeny/ he says. 'That's what they want... a rest.* A rest from me. Did you ever hear such nonsensel"
For several days she raved against Tom. What sort of agent was he? He was trying to stop her appearing in the West End.
We soothed her—Meg and I—as best we could. This, I realized, was almost as great a blow for Meg as for my mother. When she thought of those ladies she had looked after now sporting their coronets and their strawberry leaves she was appalled to think she had given the best years of her life to an actress whose agent suggested the provinces.
All the same, nothing else was in sight for my mother, and the gloom in Denton Square was as thick as a pea-soup fog.
Then the aunts arrived.
The letter was addressed to my mother, and I took it in with her breakfast tray. The handwriting was firm and large and I was hoping that it was a suggestion for a new play, which would be exactly what she wanted.
I sorted out the bills which had come by the same post and went in to my mother.
She was sleeping; she had looked a little older during the last weeks but in sleep she still had the appearance of a child. I put down the tray and kissed her hghtly. She opened her eyes and smiled wanly. I packed her around with pillows and set the tray, with the letter propped on it, before her. She seized it immediately.
''Who on earth . . ." She slit the envelope and read, and as she did so a grim smile played about her lips. Suddenly she burst out laughing.
"Here, listen to this:
"'Dear Irene,
We have, of course, heard of the distressing happenings, and although it is so long since we have seen you we do not forget that you are of the family. We should like to call and see you at four o'clock on the twenty-third. . . .'"
She grimaced and said: "Good Heavens, that's todayl"
"'We are staying at Browns' Hotel for a few days before returning to the Grange and it has occurred to us that, in view of what happened, you may be in need of help and advice. There is the chUd to think of.'"
My mother looked at me and nodded. "You!" she said. "The letter is signed Martha Ashington. This is your aunt. The 'we* is not royal. There are two of them. Martha and Mabel and Mabel moves in Martha's shadow."
She turned to the letter. "There is a P.S.
" 'We have a proposition to make and shall discuss this when we see you.'"
I was excited at the prospect of seeing some of my relatives, but my mother sighed resignedly.
"Just like them," she said. "It's rather imperious, don't you think? 'We should like to call at four.' How do they know that I shall be here? I have a good mind to be out. That would be amusing. Suppose Meg told them: 'You would need to make an appointment to see Miss Rush ton.'"
"But don't you want to hear this proposition?"
"I am sure that anything that came from them wouldn't appeal to me."
"It must be years since you've seen them. Perhaps they've changed."
"Not the Misses Ashingtons of this world. They remain pillars of virtue from nine till ninety."
"They are at least my father's sisters."
She looked at me pensively. "Perhaps I'd better be here. I should plait your hair. It would look tidier that way. What they'll make of you, I don't know." She was overcome with mirth at the idea and I was pleased to see her laugh as she hadn't for some time.
We spent half the day preparing for them. Janet baked scones and cakes. Meg was glad to dress my mother once more for a part because it was clear that she regarded the coming encounter as a scene from a play. She talked about the two aunts quite a lot that morning and gave impersonations of them: Martha, the domi-
neering one like a man-o'-war going into battle, and Mabel, slightly less formidable but in herself a force to reckon with.
"I spent those weeks in Ashington Grange before we left for Ceylon," she said, "and it seemed like years. Oh, very very proper they were. Everything they did was according to the rules. It was one of God's jokes to give them Ralph as a brother. Ralph was the sort who did everything exactly opposite from the rules laid down by the book. It was rebellion against the influence of his sisters and that grim old Grange."
I was very eager to see them. I wore a dark-blue serge dress with white piqu6 collar and cuffs and my hair was as tidy as it could be in two staid plaits tied with navy-blue ribbon.
Precisely at four o'clock the cab drew up at the door and the two aunts descended. They were dressed in black (like two black crows, my mother said afterward); they were tall and very upright. They looked ancient to me but that was probably due to my youth. I think at the time they must have been in their fifties. Martha was two years older than Mabel.
Martha—I picked her out at once—marched (the only term to describe her military approach) to the front door with Mabel very slightly in the rear. Even the knock on the door was like a peremptory command to open. They were taken to the drawing room by Meg and I waited for the summons to appear, which I knew would come soon. It did.
As I entered it was clear that this was the moment they had been waiting for. I was aware of two pairs of lively dark eyes studying me—that and the jangling jet ornaments they wore. Beads rose and fell over their considerable bosoms and hung from their ears and they both wore large cameo brooches at their throats. Their long black skirts swept the floor.
"So this is the child. Sarah, I believe."
I met the full stare of those piercing dark-brown eyes boldly.
"Yes," I answered, "and you are my Aunt Martha, I believe." I turned to the other one. "And you are my Aunt Mabel."
Aunt Martha seemed rather pleased with my ready response and went on: "It has been a great regret that circumstances have prevented our meeting before."
"Circumstances" was of course my mother seated on the sofa
looking exquisitely lovely—dressed
for the part—in a lavender-colored chiflFon tea gown which she had worn in some play. She kept the clothes she liked and I believed when she put them on assumed the role she had had when wearing them. This one, I remembered, was a beautiful girl of humble origins who had married a man of wealth and had had to face his family. Having seen the play several times, I knew what her attitude would be. Charming, incorruptible, whimsical with a slightly roguish attitude towards unsympathetic relations.
They ignored her and Martha said to me: "Well, at this time we thought the hatchet should be buried. We know what has been happening here"—Mabel's head shook a little in a gesture easily recognizable as disgust and disapproval—"and we thought it our duty to come and see, at least. We do have a proposition."
"I am sure my mother and I will be interested to hear it," I said. "And it is good of you to come."
Aunt Martha looked as though she really did possess a halo, which was probably invisible to my eyes, having been brought up as I had. "It was our duty," she said quietly.
Janet brought in the tea rather ungraciously.
"You do the honors, dear child," said my mother.
The eyes of the aunts followed me and I felt an urge to show them that although ours was a theatrical household and we had just been involved in a major scandal, we knew how to behave. I, too, was playing a part. It helped in a situation which might prove awkward.
"Cream? Sugar?" I asked—first Aunt Martha, then Aunt Mabel, then my mother.
My mother grimaced at me when I took hers to her.
"You have changed little, I can see, Irene," said Aunt Martha.
"Thank you. Miss Ashington. So have you."
"We have been very distressed," put in Mabel. "We kept the papers away from the servants. . . . It's a mercy that the name Ashington was rarely mentioned."
"One advantage of leading a professional life," said my mother lightly.
"What we have really come to find out," said Aunt Martha quickly, "is how you are placed"
The Spring of the Tiger Page 5