Her room, which took up the whole of one wing, had windows on either side of it so that she could look out on to the lawn, the garden or the stable roofs. It was a vast place, smelling faintly of camphor, and filled with sofas and chairs covered with a bird’s-eye chintz. At first sight there seemed to be no bed in it at all. Long ago there used to be a large four-poster, but when Otho died she banished it and put in a corner a small box ottoman, very hard, narrow and uncomfortable but blatantly single, as though she could not enough assert her right to sleep alone for the rest of her life. Over the mantelpiece hung a large portrait group of Otho, herself, and the Rivaz collection, painted in a manner of an eighteenth-century conversation piece. It had been done about the time that she used to lie awake listening to the clocks, but there was nothing in her portrait to indicate this. Her Titian hair was flung up from her forehead into an elaborately waved confusion which ended in a coil very far down on the back of her neck. In the approved manner of the day she presented the torso. She was presenting it to Otho who, for his part, was strenuously pointing out a fine copper beech upon the north side of the lawn. Clinging to her skirts was that infant Dominick, begotten in the swamps of Africa, whose Rivaz bull neck made him so creditable an olive branch. Mathilde, also with a bull neck, leant affectionately upon her father’s arm, and completed the foreground section of the group. The swarthy Charles, the Celtic Lionel and the golden Julian were kept busy with a pony in the rear, while Laura and Beata, red-haired like their mother, gambolled with a puppy.
There were a great many other pictures: pastel portraits of all the children, and water-colour sketches of Lough Ashe, Geraldine’s old home, done by her twin sister, Helena. And there was a small Benozzo Gozzoli, a Martyrdom of St. Stephen, which Otho had given her after Dominick was born.
Beside the ottoman couch, on a small table, a spirit lamp was burning. She had just lighted it when poor Aggie began bumping about on the stairs. It was her habit to make tea several times during the night. Even in youth she had been but a light sleeper, and now, in old age, she scarcely shut her eyes. The long hours spent alone among her pictures and chintz sofas would have been rather tedious if it had not been for these cups of tea. She seldom lay down on the bed, but would wander round the room with a rug, perching, now in one chair, now in another, like an old bird on a bough. She would doze off for a few minutes and then drink more tea until the first grey light began to struggle with the flame of her candle and she could reasonably call it morning. Then, putting on another cap and a slightly thicker shawl, she would sit down to her writing table and begin letters to her children, to Lionel in China, to Mathilde in Rome, to Dominick in Egypt, and sometimes, absently, to ‘My darling Julian’ or ‘My dearest Charles’ before she remembered that they were in Heaven. An odd, roosting nocturnal life she led up there among her chairs and sofas.
When she had drunk her tea she went impatiently to one of the windows to see whether it was night or day, and found the world midway between the two. Darkness had vanished and the light was elfin. It came from nowhere and lay over the trees and stable roofs with a bluish pallor, destroying all colour and making everything look flat. On the roof immediately below her slept Solange and Marianne in a couple of camp beds. Their bodies were shapeless lumps under the tossed army blankets and their pillows looked dingy, but their tender faces, turned up to the sky, were like sleeping flowers. The grandmother gazed down at them for a long time, pondering. A deep sigh escaped her. For Marianne asleep made her think of a garden in the early morning, when no footstep has marked the cool sparkle of the grass. Her face was smooth and blank, with its innocent eyelids, and her young breast under the blanket rose and fell serenely. But her soul was not far away, for when a little wind, the first wind of dawn, blew down from the hills and fanned her hair, she stirred and smiled in her sleep. Turning on her back she flung out a hand as if to a friend who had kissed her.
“Soon, very soon now,” sighed the old woman at the window. “Whose kisses will wake her to-morrow? The first time and the last time. What agony!”
Turning back to her room, where the candle flame still fought back the day, she settled to rest for a moment on a sofa by the writing-table. And she prayed that Marianne might not, at any rate, grow into a Laura or a Philomena, wasting the precious years. For the interval between the first time and the last is very short, and when it is gone it is gone for ever. These poor young women all talked too much. For Aggie she could find excuses, for Aggie was, as it were, making hay in the twilight. But for Philomena and Laura she had nothing but contempt. They wanted these Potts and Ushers, did they? Such names too! But why talk about it? Geraldine had never talked except perhaps a little at first when, in her inexperience, she had found it necessary to confide in Helena. She remembered going out in a boat to the summer-house on the island at Lough Ashe. It was a Sunday afternoon in September, soon after she had been married to Otho, and he had sent her on a visit home while he took a trip down the Amazon. She had enjoyed her freedom. The young cousin whom she had always wished to marry had been there and they used to row about on the lake. In those days they called it deceiving one’s husband, and she had said to Helena afterwards:
“Do you think it was quite right … on a Sunday?”
Absurd question! But she was hardly older than Marianne. And how the church bells had chimed that Sunday evening, echoing over the water and the bracken and the birch trees of the Island! The bracken was turning and the rowan berries were red, and the bells rang: Ding-dong-right-wrong-ding-dong, and Helena said:
“As long as Otho doesn’t find out.”
For her own part she had always thought it wrong to deceive anybody and she soon learnt to hold her tongue. She had given and taken a great deal of happiness when once she got past spring, that treacherous season of romantic expectation and unfulfilled promise when the sap rises in the trees and the heart is filled with melancholy and a sense of mis-spent youth. Summer is much better than spring, she thought drowsily, because it lasts longer. And Charles, pulling Julian in a little go-cart along the box-edged path of the kitchen garden, was going much faster than she could run even though they were only little boys and not yet in Heaven. She picked up her long skirts and ducked her head under the apple boughs as she ran after them, calling. And her father’s steward, Michael M’Ginty, with his grey whiskers and pot hat, stepped out from a clump of hollyhocks and said solemnly:
“Her leddyship is in the big Markay.”
Because there was a garden party for the Lord Lieutenant and a band was playing by the shores of Lough Ashe, and she must keep the children out of the way. And the cocks and hens were clucking and crowing, and the bells rang across the water: ding-dong-right-wrong——, so loudly that she woke and found that the grey dawn had turned to broad sunlight. Hens were clucking in the stable yard and the bells of Ullmer Church were ringing for an early Celebration to which, out of kindness for Mr. Comstock, she ought to go. But first she would drink some more tea. She blinked at the sunlight, innocently pleased to have slept so long.
15. The Wooden Horse.
The two girls in the camp beds were stirring, awakened by the church bells. Tossing off their blankets they climbed in at the staircase window and scampered up to get their bathing things. It was the moment in the whole day which they liked best, for they could generally count upon getting the pool to themselves.
“And after breakfast,” said Solange, as she tied on her cap, “directly after breakfast, I must get after my poor father, or he’ll slip away without giving me an opportunity. This is probably the turning point of my life. The field-marshal’s baton is going to be taken out of the knapsack.”
“How is your spot?” asked Marianne.
Solange looked carefully in the glass and said that perhaps it was not going to come to anything after all. And then she began to arrange her cap at a more becoming angle.
“You needn’t bother to do that,” Marianne told her. “There won’t be anybody else in the pool.”
“Oh, but there is. I saw somebody going out as we passed the staircase window.”
“Oh, bother! Never mind. It’s probably only Mr. Usher.”
Quite so, thought Solange, as she gave a last tug to her cap. And since Mr. Usher was the most important person in the house one might as well look as decent as possible. Anyone but Marianne would have guessed as much from all this cap-tugging.
It was Ford Usher. He was swimming up and down with a sullen energy and even before breakfast he had the air of a man who is putting in time because his business is at a standstill. His furious strokes sent ripples up on to the grass and the rose petals which had fallen in the night went sailing about like little boats. But his greeting to the girls was amiable enough and he offered to blow up the rubber horse for them. It was a long time since any man staying in the house had been equal to that job.
“Won’t it give you pneumonia?” asked Marianne, as she watched him puffing.
Ford shook his head, not wishing to waste breath on an answer.
“Could it give a person pneumonia?” asked Solange in surprise.
“Some doctor who was staying here once said it could,” answered Marianne. “So grandmamma said that the under-gardener had better always do it.”
Ford took the horse away from his lips in order that he might comment on this. But in time he caught the glint in Marianne’s eye, and saw that no comment was needed. Instead, he said pleasantly:
“You’re so sharp you’ll cut yourself.”
Solange and Marianne, who had not heard this witticism since they left the nursery, both dived to the bottom of the lake in mirthful embarrassment.
“Nice kids,” thought Ford.
The head of Solange bobbed up again and she asked him abruptly if he knew Dr. Eckhardt of Freiburg.
“Why, yes,” said Ford, in some surprise. “He came up to the Guthrie last time he was in London. Do you know him?”
“No. But I want to. I want to go and work under him. Because he’s the best toxicologist in the world.”
“He is,” agreed Ford. “But what do you know about it?”
“Nothing,” said Solange hastily.
She dived again, but Marianne, who was floating and listening, explained:
“She wants to be a toxicologist. But she’s got no money.”
Ford was even more surprised. Seeing her dressed in Marianne’s clothes, and knowing her to be the daughter of Sir Adrian Upward, he had imagined that she must be rich. When she came up again he looked at her with greater interest.
“There are ways and means, you know,” he said.
She had them all at her fingers’ ends; the endowments, and the travelling scholarships, but they were for people with degrees. She had no certificates. For the most part she was self-taught, though she had seized on every opportunity that came her way. But without a degree in science she could not even work at the Guthrie Institute.
“I don’t know about that,” said Ford. “Come up one day and see my department, won’t you? And we could talk it over, perhaps.”
Solange grew pink with pleasure and hoped that Marianne would think it was all because she was going to get a close view of culex pseudopictus.
They sat for a long time on the steps of the diving scaffold. Ford was interested and amused, and as he talked he thought how nice it would be to get back to the Guthrie Institute. For so many weeks it had been spoilt for him, ever since Laura came in one day, and peered at his test tubes, he had worked with one eye on the door. Just as, long ago, he used to sit in his attic at Hampstead with his books in front of him and listen for her foot on the stairs. He would think of her, and then try not to think of her, until body and soul were locked together in a kind of desperate inertia, and his mind began to run upon violent remedies. He could not possibly go on like this. He must put an end to it. He had come to put an end to it, but whenever he tried to bring this necessity before her she would begin to talk about Bechstrader.
“We must be going,” said Marianne, “because the people will be coming out of church, and they take the footpath past this pool to get to the village. It’s the quickest way and everybody uses it for early Service. Grandmamma doesn’t like us to be bathing too blatantly on Sunday.”
Ford climbed reluctantly on to the bank and betook himself into the house. While he was shaving he watched, from his window, a long line of people climb over a stile and go streaming in single file on a path across an uncut hayfield. This communal life of the countryside was a new thing to him, for he had spent his time either in towns or in outlandish places where he encamped as a stranger. He had no roots anywhere. Presently he saw Lady Geraldine coming across the lawn and reflected that she had just been kneeling at the altar on a perfect equality with the yokels in the field. Yet they would touch their hats to her once they were out of church and both gestures were traditional rather than reasonable. And he felt that Laura’s position was immensely strengthened by this mysterious background of tradition. He ought never to have come to Syranwood. He should have sought her out in London and forced the issue there, where they were upon common ground. In London he would have known what to say to her. But in this place she could always escape him by suddenly identifying herself with all those rooted conventions and assumptions of a rural community, and he would find himself, as he irritably put it, up against the whole bag of tricks.
That he had once prevailed was of little significance, for then she had been, not at Syranwood, but on Hampstead Heath. Otherwise it could never have happened, and it seemed to him sometimes as if her whole policy, in bringing him down to the country, was to make him understand this. If he were to stay much longer he would begin to doubt if it had happened at all. His memory of that final episode had always been curiously uncertain. No clear picture came back to him, only the knowledge that he had been quite mad about her and that his passion had ended in a delirium from which he had emerged unsatisfied. Perhaps they were both too young and inexperienced, and he had been in too much of a hurry, afraid that she might escape him. He remembered his desire and he supposed that he had got what he wanted, but the achievement had eluded him.
But she must know. She must remember. And with that memory in her mind she must either hate him or want him back. Unless, and this suspicion occasionally crossed his mind, she simply wanted to punish him for a humiliation which she had never forgiven. In which case he was playing into her hands, writhing and plunging like a hooked fish while she mocked him with gentle advice. A violent spasm of rage shook him. His hands trembled and he cut his chin, which bled profusely.
“I can’t even shave in this damned place,” he thought. “In monsoons, yes. I’m O.K. in a monsoon. Take more than a monsoon to start me hacking myself about. But here! I shall cut my throat next if I’m not careful. Now I’ve made a mess of the towel. Oh well, serve ’em right.”
When he had staunched the cut and changed his collar he went back to his post of observation by the window. Laura was on the lawn now, talking to Mrs. Comstock, the Rector’s wife. They carried Prayer Books in their hands and their faces were devoutly pensive. He could hardly believe his eyes. Though he was himself an agnostic, he had a puzzled respect for believers, especially if they were women. She had been taking the Sacrament, and only the God to whom she knelt could know what to make of it. But perhaps she was not as wicked as she seemed. Perhaps she did not mean to be so cruel. Even if she loved him as much as she said she did, there might still be some excuse for her ambiguities. For, after all, he was asking a great deal. She would have to give up ‘all this’ for him and his £500 a year. Her courage might well fail her, as his did when he seriously thought about it. £500 a year was probably not enough, and he would not have blamed her for saying so. But that was the one thing which she could never be induced to say.
Presently she looked up and caught sight of him at his window. And her smile, as she waved to him, was friendliness itself. He could not keep away from her. He went down meekly to join her and
they strolled about the garden, stopping to look at the withered, untidy mass that had been night stocks the evening before. His pain and bewilderment made his face look a little more wooden than usual, but only his mother would have noticed it.
Laura still held her Prayer Book, but he averted his eyes from it, as if it was a talisman which she was using against him. And it was. For he could not ask her if she remembered Hampstead Heath while she brandished it in his face. So he listened in dumb rebellion while she talked about the little old chapel on the downs which was to be restored with the money collected for the Ullmer War Memorial, and of the windows to Julian and Charles which her mother was giving, and how she would like to show him the designs. She was very gentle, and very much wrapped up, for the moment, in her family. All through the languors of a fully choral Celebration she had been pondering upon their mournful case and she wanted to make him understand that it was as hard for her as it was for him.
“We’ll go up to the chapel this afternoon,” she said. “It’s a lovely walk.”
Ford jerked his head despairingly and said that a lovely walk would be of no use to him.
“Ford! You’re not making it easy …”
“I didn’t come down here to go walks. I came to talk to you. I must know what you want to do.”
“Dear Ford, I’ve told you. I can’t do what you want.”
“Why not?”
She looked down regretfully at her Prayer Book.
“Because of Alec,” she murmured.
“You don’t love him.”
“He’s my husband.”
Ford picked a rose and began savagely to tear the petals off. The gesture annoyed her and she took it away from him, saying:
“Don’t.”
“What do you mean? He’s your husband. If you mean the vows you made in church, well, you’ve broken them already. You promised to love him and you don’t. You did it against your will. You told me so yourself. Even church people don’t call that a marriage. Is it religion that’s worrying you?”
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