by Hugh Walpole
Of course she was clear-headed — she had to be.
“There are only two sorts of people,” she said to Rachel. “Like soup — thick and clear — the Clear ones get on and the Thick don’t.”
May obviously liked Rachel, but was amused by her. Nobody, it seemed to May, showed so nakedly her emotions as Rachel, and yet, also, nobody could produce, more suddenly, the closest of reserves. May, to whom the world had been, since she was six, a measured plain of contest, marvelled at the poignancy of Rachel’s contact with it. “If she’s going to be hurt as easily as this by everything, how on earth is she going to get through?”
Then, as the Munich days passed, May found, to her own delight, Rachel’s keen sense of humour. Munich afforded enough food for it, and finally one discovered that Rachel smiled more readily than she trembled, but she hid her smile because, as yet, she was not sure of it.
“All she wants,” May Eversley concluded, “is to be told things.”
Nobody in the world could be better adapted to give out these revelations. London, to May Eversley, was an open book; moreover, the most stormy of battle-fields on which the combatants fought, were wounded, were slain, were gloriously victorious.
She told Rachel a great deal — a great deal about people, a great deal about sets and parties, a great deal about likes and dislikes. She had on her side one burning curiosity to know about Rachel’s Duchess. “Is she as terrible, so tremendous as people say? Has she such a brain even now? Old Lady Grandon, who was a great friend when they were both girls, says that she wasn’t clever then a bit — rather stupid and shy — but you never know. Jealousy on old Grandon’s part, I expect. They say she’s wonderful still.”
Questions of taste never worried May Eversley, and it did not worry her now that Rachel might dislike so penetrating an inquisition. But at least May got nothing for her trouble. Rachel told her nothing.
May’s final word was, “You care too much about it all — care whether it’s going to hurt, whether it’s going to be frightening or not. My advice to you is, just dash in, snatch what you can, and dash out again. It doesn’t matter a hair-pin what anyone says. Everyone says everything in London, and nobody minds. They’ve all got the shortest memories.”
Rachel, sitting now in her little room and thinking of Munich wondered how completely her own discovery of London would coincide with May’s. May’s idea of it was certainly not Aunt Adela’s. Aunt Adela, Rachel thought, was far too dried and brittle to risk any sharp contact with anything. None of her uncles, she further reflected, liked sharp contacts, and yet, how continually grandmother provided them!
How comfortable all of them — Aunt Adela and the uncles — would be without their mother, and yet how proud they were of having her! For herself, Rachel faced her approaching deliverance with a tightening of all the muscles of her body. “I won’t care. It shall be as May says — and there are sure to be some comfortable people about, some people who want to make it pleasant for one.”
Then there was a tap at the door and Uncle John came in. Uncle John often came in about half-past five. It was a convenient time for him to come, but also, perhaps, he recognized that that approaching half-hour that Rachel was to have with his mother demanded, beforehand, some kind of easy, amiable prologue.
To-day, however, there was more in his comfortable smiling countenance than merely paying a visit warranted. He stood for a moment at the door looking over at her, rather fat but not very, his white hair, his pearl pin, his white spats all gleaming, a rosiness and a cleanliness always about him so that he seemed, at any moment of the day, to have come straight from his tub, having jumped, in his eagerness to see you, into his beautiful clothes, and hurried, all in a glow, to get to you.
“They’re all chattering downstairs — chattering like anything. There’s Roddy Seddon, old Lady Carloes and Crewner and some young ass Crewner’s brought with him and your Uncle Dick looking bored and your Aunt Adela looking nothing at all — and so out of it I came.”
He came over and sat on the broad, fat arm of her chair and looked out, in his contented, amiable way, over the light, salmon-coloured and pale, that now had persuaded Portland Place into silence. His eyes seemed to say: “Now this is how I like things — all pink and quiet and comfortable.”
Rachel leant a little against his shoulder, and put her hand on his knee —
“You’ve had tea down there?”
“Yes, thank you — all I wanted. What have you been doing all the afternoon?”
He put his own hand down upon hers.
“Oh! Aunt Adela and I went to look at grandmother’s portrait.”
“Well?”
“It’s as clever as it can be. To anyone who doesn’t know her, it’s the most wonderful likeness. It’s what grandmother would like herself.”
He caught the note in her voice that threatened the pink security of Portland Place. He held her hand a little tighter.
“In what way?”
“Oh, it’s got the dragons and the tapestry and the purple carpet. All the coloured things that grandmother like so much and that help her so. Why, imagine her for a second in an ordinary room, in an old arm-chair with a worn-out carpet and everlastings on the mantelpiece; what would she do? The young man, whoever he is, has helped her all he can.”
Rachel felt his grasp of her hand slacken a little.
“Yes, I know it’s wrong of me to talk like that. But it’s all so sham. It’s like someone in one of those absurd fantastic novels that people write nowadays when half the characters are out of Dickens only put into a real background. I’m frightened of grandmother — you know I always have been — but sometimes I wonder whether — —”
She paused.
“Whether there’s anything really to be frightened of. And yet the relief when I can get off this half-hour every evening — the relief even now when I’m even grown up — oh! it’s absurd!”
“Well, my dear, you’re coming out, you’re going to break away from all of us — you’ll have your own life now to make what you like of.”
“Yes, that’s all very well. But I’ve been brought up all wrong. Most girls begin to come out when they’re about ten and go on, more and more, until, when the time actually comes, well, there’s simply nothing in it. I’ve never known anyone intimately except May, and now at the thought of crowds and crowds of people, at one moment I’d like to fly into a convent somewhere, and at the next I want to go and be rude to the lot of them — to get in quickly you know, lest they should be rude to me first.”
Now that she had begun, it came out in a flood. “Oh! I shall make such a mess of it all. What on earth am I to talk about to these people? What do they want with me or I with them? What have I ever to say to anybody except you and Dr. Chris, and even with you I’m as cross as possible most of the time. Grandmother always thought me a complete fool, and so I suppose I am. If people aren’t kind I can’t say a word, and if they are I say far too much and blush afterwards for all the nonsense I’ve poured out. It doesn’t matter with you and Dr. Chris because you know me, but the others! And always behind me there’d be grandmother! She knows I’m going to be a failure, and she wants me to be — but just to prove to her, just to prove!”
She jumped up, and standing in front of the window, met, furiously, a hostile world. Her hands were clenched, her face white, her eyes desperate.
“ — Just to prove I’ll be a success — I’ll marry the most magnificent husband, I’ll be the most magnificent person — I’ll bring it off — —”
Suddenly her agitation was gone — she was laughing, looking down on her uncle half humorously, half tenderly.
“Just because I love you and Dr. Chris, I’ll do my best not to shame you. I’ll be the most decorous and amiable of Beaminsters. — No one shall have a word to say — —”
She bent down, put her arms round his neck, and kissed him. Then she sat down on the edge of the arm-chair with her hands clasped over his knee. Uncle John would not have
loved her so dearly had he not been, on so many occasions, frightened of her. She was often hostile in the most curious way — so militant that he could only console himself by thinking that her mother had been Russian, and from Russia one might expect anything. And then, in a moment, the hostility would break into a tenderness, an affection that touched him to the heart and made the tears come into his eyes. But for one who loved comfort above everything Rachel was an agitating person.
Now as he felt the pressure of her hands on his knees, he knew that he would do anything, anything for her.
“That’s all right, Rachel dear,” was all that he could say. “You hold on to me and Christopher. We’ll see you through.”
The little silver clock struck six. She got up from the chair and smiled down at him. “If I hadn’t got you and Dr. Chris — well — I just don’t know what would happen to me.”
Meanwhile Uncle John had remembered what it was that he had come to say. His expression was now one of puzzled distress as though he wondered how people could be so provoking and inconsiderate.
He looked up at her. “By the way,” he said, “it’s doubtful whether mother will see you this evening. You’d better go and ask, but I expect — —”
“What’s happened?”
“I may as well tell you. You’re bound to hear sooner or later. Your cousin Francis is back in London. He’s written a most insulting letter to your grandmother. It’s upset her very much.”
“Cousin Frank?”
“Yes. He’s living apparently quite near here — in some cheap rooms.”
May Eversley had, long before, supplied Rachel with all details as to that family scandal.
Rachel now only said: “Well, I’ll go and see whether she would like me to come.”
For a moment she hesitated, then turned back and flung her arms again about her uncle’s neck.
“Whatever happens, Uncle John, whatever happens, we’ll stick together.”
“Whatever happens,” he repeated, “we’ll stick together.”
His eyes, as they followed her, were full of tenderness — but behind the tenderness there lurked a shadow of alarm.
CHAPTER III
LADY ADELA
“At first it seemed a little speck, And then it seemed a mist; It moved and moved, and took at last A certain shape, I wist.”
The Ancient Mariner.
I
Lady Adela had returned from that visit to her mother’s portrait with a confused mind. She was not used to confused minds and resented them; whenever so great an infliction came upon her she solved the confusion by dismissing it, by leaving her mind a blank until it should take upon itself to be clear again. To obtain that blank an interval of reflection was necessary, and now, to-day, that had been impossible. On returning, she had been instantly confronted by a number of people who required to be given tea and conversation, and no time had been allowed her in which she might resolve that her mind should be cleared.
Her confusion was that the portrait of her mother was precisely like, a most brilliant affair, and yet wasn’t like in the least. Further than that, in some completely muddled way, it was in the back of her mind that her mother, suddenly, this afternoon, presented herself to her as not entirely living up to the portrait, as being less sharp, less terrible, less magnificent. Horror lest she should in any way be doubting her mother’s terror and magnificence — both proved every day of the week — lay, like a dark cloud, at the back of her confusion.
She could not, however, extract anything definite from the little cluster of discomforts; old Lady Carloes and Lord Crewner, a young thing that Lord Crewner had brought with him, and her brother Richard were all waiting for tea, and floods of conversation instantly covered Lady Adela’s poor mind and drowned it.
The Long Drawing-room, where they now were, was long and narrow, with two large open fireplaces, a great deal of old furniture rather faded and very handsome, silver that gleamed against the dark wall-paper, one big portrait of the Duchess, painted by Sargent twenty years ago, and high windows shut off now by heavy dark green curtains.
The Duchess, it was understood, did not approve of electric light and the house therefore disdained it. Parts of the room were lighted by candles placed in heavy old silver candlesticks. Round the fireplace at the farther end of the light shone and glittered; there the tea-tables stood, and round about them the company was gathered.
The rest of the room, hung in dark shadow, stretched into black depths, lit only now and again by the gleam of silver or glass as the light of the more distant fire flashed and fell.
The voices, the clatter of the tea-things, these sounds seemed to be echoed by the darker depths of the farther stretches of the room.
Lady Carlos was eighty, extremely vigorous, and believed in bright colours. She was dressed now in purple, and wore a hat with a large white feather. Her figure was bunched into a kind of bundle, so that her waist was too near her bosom and her bosom too near her chin and her chin too near her forehead.
It was as though some spiteful person had pressed all of her too closely together. But this very shapelessness added to her undoubted amiability; her face was fat and smiling, her hair white and untidy, and she maintained her dignity in spite of her figure. Nobody knew anything with certainty as to her income, but she was charitable, and ran a little house in Charles Street with a great deal of ceremony and hospitality. Her husband had long been dead and her two daughters had long been married, so that she was happy and independent. Many people considered her tiresome because her curiosity was insatiable and her discretion open to question, yet she was a staunch Beaminster adherent, an old friend of the Duchess, and saw both this world and the next in the proper Beaminster light.
Lady Adela depended on her a good deal, at certain times: she had forseen that the old lady would come to-day; she had heard of course of Frank Breton’s arrival in town, she would demand every detail; Lady Adela knew that the account that she gave to Lady Carloes would be the account that the town would receive.
By the fire Lord Richard, Lord Crewner and the nondescript young man were talking together. Lady Adela caught fragments. “But of course Dilchester is incautious — when was he anything else? What these fellows need — —”
That was her brother.
And then Lord Crewner, who believed that the windows of White’s and Brook’s were the only courts of Ultimate Judgment. “That’s all very well, Beaminster, but I assure you, they were saying last night at the club — —”
As far as all that was concerned Lady Adela flung it aside. She must attend to Lady Carloes, she must give to her the version of Frank Breton’s arrival that her mother would wish her to give. But what was that version? And was her mother really to be depended upon?
At so terrible a flash of disloyalty Lady Adela coloured. — Why were things so difficult this afternoon? And why had she ever gone to that picture-gallery?
Lady Carloes had, however, not yet arrived at Frank Breton. She never paid a visit anywhere without tabulating carefully in her mind the things that she must know before leaving the house. Her theory was that she was really very old indeed, and couldn’t possibly live much longer, and that no moment therefore must be wasted. The more news that she could give and receive before her ultimate departure, the more value would her life have in retrospect.
She never went definitely into the exact worth that all the gossip that she collected might have for anybody or anything; as with any other collection it was pursuit rather than acquisition that fired the blood. At the back of her old mind was a perfect lumber-room of muddle and confusion — dusty gossip, cobwebs of scandal, windows thick with grime and tightly closed. There was no time left now to do anything to that. Meanwhile every day something was purchased or exchanged; muddle there might be, but, thank God, nobody knew it.
“You must be very busy about the ball, my dear.”
“Yes — it means a great deal of work. It’s so long since we’ve had anything here, but Nor
ris is invaluable. You don’t find servants like that nowadays.”
“No, my dear, you don’t. But, of course, it will go off splendidly. We’re all so anxious that Rachel shall have a good time. It’s the least we can do for your mother.”
At the mention of Rachel Lady Adela’s thoughts straightened for a second; that was where the confusion lay. It had been Rachel’s attitude to the portrait that had caused Lady Adela’s own momentary disloyalty. Of course Rachel hated her grandmother. Lady Adela made a little sound with her fingers, a sound like the clicking of needles.
“As far as Rachel is concerned nobody can tell possibly how she’s going to take it all. I don’t pretend to understand her.”
Lady Carloes found this interesting — she bent forward a little. “We’re all greatly excited about her. You’ve kept her away from all of us and one hears such different accounts of her. And of course her success is most important — as things are just now.”
Lady Adela answered, “I can tell you nothing. She isn’t in the least like any of us, and I don’t suppose for a moment that she’ll listen to anybody. She made a friend of May Eversley in Munich, and I don’t think that was the best thing for her. But you know — I’ve talked about this to you before.”
Not only had Lady Adela talked; all of them had done so. In the Beaminster camp this appearance that Rachel was about to make was of the last importance. There were enemies, redoubtable enemies, in the field. Rachel Beaminster’s bow to the world was for the very reason that all the world was watching, a responsibility for them all.
But there were many rumours. Rachel was not to be relied upon — she hated her grandmother, she was strange and foreign and morose. Lady Carloes was not happy about it, and Lady Adela’s attitude now was anything but reassuring.