by Rumer Godden
‘Very well, Paget,’ says Lady Patrick.
‘This way, miss.’
‘I knaw the way,’ says a clear young voice with a trace of a Cornish accent, but Paget’s voice says with icy correctness, ‘If you please, miss,’ and they can hear the rustle of her starched skirts on the flags of the hall. ‘Miss Russell,’ announces Paget as she might have announced ‘Miss Upstart,’ and holds open the door.
The girl on the threshold flinches; clearly she did not expect a room full of people, and formidable people, for they are no more welcoming than Paget. ‘Miss Russell.’ Small and slight, she is as different from the other girls as cheese from chalk and John Henry sits up and rubs the sleep out of his eyes. She is a small girl, so little and slightly built that she makes the others look clumsy; her hair is dark and curls in rings below her hat and above the nape of her neck – ‘It would never grow evenly after the village and I had ringworm,’ says Mrs Quin – a neck that, as she bends her head, nervously fidgeting with her card case, looks to John Henry as small and white and vulnerable as the necks of the little girls at prayers long ago seem to Eustace; small and vulnerable but, ‘when she wanted anything, she would always go straight in and burn herself,’ says John Henry.
Now, though she has flinched, she walks past Paget into the room and straight up to Lady Patrick, but the hand holding the card case clutches it so tightly that her glove splits.
‘Miss Russell? I’m afraid I don’t—’ says Lady Patrick, but in her nervousness, the girl interrupts. ‘Excuse my coming like this, but I felt I had to, as soon as I was back and heard you were all here …’ It trails off. She has seen, too late, that she should not have interrupted; all the conventional phrases die and, ‘I wanted to see the boys so badly,’ she says honestly, ‘that I had to come.’
‘The boys!’ Coming from a grown-up girl it sounds – like a housemaid, thinks John Henry wryly and, as she lifts her eyes to smile at Lady Patrick, he is not surprised there is no answering smile but, ‘Don’t you remember me?’ asks the girl.
It is John Henry who cries, ‘By God! It’s Ripsie!’
There is no mistaking the warmth and welcome in that. ‘Boro! It’s Ripsie!’ and John Henry jumps up and takes Ripsie’s hands, shaking them up and down. ‘How perfectly splendid!’ says John Henry beaming.
A little colour comes into the small face that has been tense and set under the overloaded hat, and Ripsie’s eyes smile gratefully up at John Henry; it is only gratitude, as he is to find out a moment later, when the colour and smile deepen to a true warmth as Borowis unwinds himself from the window seat and comes over. ‘Great Jehoshaphat!’ says Borowis. ‘It is Ripsie.’
John Henry is the same kind young man as he was the kind small boy, pale, too fat, with Quin mouse hair and pale-blue eyes. Not changed at all, thinks Ripsie but, as she answers his questions, she cannot help her eyes stealing to Borowis, dazzled by the height of him, the swagger he has inherited from Jared, his mother’s hair and brilliant brown eyes, though his are good-humoured – and indifferent, John Henry could have told Ripsie. Ripsie does not see the indifference; she only knows that her heart seems to be beating very strangely under her turquoise-blue bodice. Bright turquoise in the daytime! Isabel’s glance has already said that to Margaret, but Ripsie is oblivious of the two girls; she can only see Borowis while, ‘Little Ripsie, grown up!’ says Borowis. For the first time that afternoon he sounds amused.
Lady Patrick and Mrs Loftus Kennedy begin, at once, to talk, but Lady St Omer sits upright, a patch like scarlet rouge on each of her cheeks, though of course she wears no rouge. Then there is a sound, quickly suppressed but still suspiciously like a titter from the piano; Ripsie looks across and recognizes Isabel; instantly, with that uncanny instinct girls have, thinks John Henry, and without Isabel’s saying a word, Ripsie knows that her clothes are wrong.
Isabel and Margaret are in tailored skirts, a little shabby but of fine tweed; their blouses are impeccably laundered and belted and they wear matching pale-blue ties – it is their latest notion to dress as far as possible alike. Margaret’s tie has a gold pin, Isabel’s a small prettily set opal brooch. They look charming, but Ripsie has mistakenly plumped for what she thinks is style and a pretty colour, ‘in the country, in the daytime!’ Now, suddenly, she can imagine Isabel saying that.
She sees their eyes taking in the fussiness of the lace on her turquoise poplin skirt; there is more lace frilled on the sleeves and again, she knows it is a mistake. ‘It looked all right in the shop,’ she says to John Henry afterward.
‘What shop?’ John Henry is withering.
‘I never did know how to dress,’ says Mrs Quin. Mrs Quin does not mind, but this afternoon Ripsie feels that the whole room is looking, even at her shoes, and she flinches as she sees Isabel lift a significant eyebrow at Margaret. Are coloured shoes not all right then? Finally they look at her hat and it is too much for them. In a spasm of giggles Margaret turns to the piano and Isabel quickly pretends to change the music, but Ripsie can see their shoulders shaking. ‘Well, was it a whole pheasant on top?’ asks John Henry.
Lady Patrick does not ask Ripsie to sit down nor does she introduce her, but John Henry resolutely takes her elbow and breaks in on the talk. ‘Have you met Isabel’s mother? Aunt Vera, this is a friend we knew when we were children. Lady St Omer—’ but Lady St Omer rises.
‘Pat, I have to go,’ she says as if she were stifling. ‘Will you ring? No, I will find my own things.’ Lady Patrick flashes a warning at John Henry, but he goes on resolutely. ‘Isa, you remember Ripsie.’
‘I remember you,’ says Isabel with a sweet smile. ‘I was always so sorry for you, having to use the back stairs.’
‘But where have you been?’ asks John Henry coming between this and Ripsie and, ‘Yes, where have you been all this time?’ asks Borowis. ‘Where did you go?’
‘To school,’ says Ripsie innocently, and Lady St Omer stops by the door.
When Ripsie disappears from St Probus, seven years ago, there is village gossip; her mother has died, the vicar’s sister takes her in, and the vicar brings certain pressures to bear; the gossip spreads and speedily reaches China Court, travelling the usual way through the kitchen, the servants’ sitting room, and upstairs to Polly. It is Polly who tells Lady Patrick.
‘Why is Harry St Omer paying for that child’s schooling?’ Lady Patrick asks Jared.
Jared shrugs sulkily. ‘Has to, I expect,’ and Lady Patrick looks white.
‘He too?’ she whispers.
‘Don’t be silly,’ says Jared brusquely. ‘Harry has a reputation all over the county,’ but it is as if a darkening has shadowed the room and, ‘Men are hideous! Hideous!’ says Lady Patrick.
‘But it isn’t Ripsie’s fault,’ John Henry argues when his mother tells him this.
‘No, but you can see how outrageous it was for her to come when guests were here.’
‘Our guests will have to get used to her,’ says Borowis.
‘No, Boro,’ says Lady Patrick.
‘Yes,’ says Borowis, looking his mother straight in the eye, but this is to come and now Mrs Loftus Kennedy rises and, going to the two girls at the piano, quietly takes them by the arms, propelling them toward the conservatory. Isabel does not want to go – enjoying the fun, thinks John Henry fiercely; there is no cruelty like the cruelty of girls to girls, he thinks. Lady St Omer has gone and Lady Patrick stands in glacial silence by the fireplace. John Henry racks his brains for something to say, but the silence nonplusses him. Borowis, he can see, is highly amused. The silence goes on until, ‘I think I should go now,’ says Ripsie.
Lady Patrick inclines her head. ‘John Henry, please ring,’ but suddenly Borowis has had enough. Lordly in his height, he looks down at Ripsie and smiles, that peculiarly brilliant and genuinely sweet smile that, as John Henry knows, undoes everyone. ‘Rip, do you still ride?’ asks Borowis.
‘No. No, I don’t.’
‘Remember how you fell off Basket? We didn�
�t think anybody could, she was so wide. Never mind. I can teach you properly now. I have a new little mare.’
‘Like Mirabelle?’ She is Ripsie once more, unafraid and independent.
‘Come and see,’ and he holds out a hand.
‘Borowis, you have to drive Isabel—’
‘Oh, Isa’s all right,’ says Borowis easily. ‘Jod can take her or I will come back,’ and it is Borowis, not Paget, who holds open the door for Ripsie.
‘You shouldn’t have come,’ says John Henry.
He has followed Ripsie and Borowis, ‘like a burr’ he says despising himself, but he knows he must not leave Borowis alone with Ripsie. ‘Hasn’t the conscience of a tinker,’ says John Henry. Under Borowis’s easy warmth is the same inability of his father, Jared, to love loyally, the untouchedness, perhaps of Damaris, and perhaps of that legendary sailor who begot Great-Uncle Mcleod and sailed away; it is like breaking oneself against a stone wall or catching at mist and it is a streak not found in the other Quins who, unimaginative though they may be, are always kind, always loving. John Henry knows this in his very bones, but Ripsie has no eyes or ears for him. She is chattering to Borowis, the hurt in the drawing room might never have been and Borowis, John Henry can see, is charmed. He can smell trouble and, moodily, he kicks the side of the loose-box.
They do not notice him at all. Borowis is showing Ripsie how to hold her hand while she offers the mare some sugar.
‘Don’t curl your fingers round, you will get them nipped,’ he says and protects them with his hand. ‘Tiny,’ says Borowis, looking down at them.
It is not for long. ‘Mr Borowis, her ladyship would like you to go to her in the morning room,’ but Ripsie does not care. He came with me, he left Isabel for me, and she puts her cheek against the new mare’s neck, against the sheen of the close hairs, and sings a little tune. It sounds so happy that John Henry becomes extraordinarily cross. ‘You shouldn’t have come,’ he says.
‘I know,’ says Ripsie and shuts her eyes contentedly. John Henry watches the shadow that her eyelashes make on the whiteness of her skin, and such a lump comes in his throat that he has to be unkind to her or choke.
‘Boro is going to marry Isabel,’ he says.
‘They are not engaged.’
‘They will be. Her father’s in Egypt now. Boro is going out as his A.D.C. She will have at least ten thousand a year,’ he says, repeating what he has heard steadily since his nursery days with Polly.
‘She’s ugly,’ says Ripsie. ‘Boro won’t marry anyone ugly.’
‘And you think you are pretty,’ says John Henry and baits her as he would have done as a schoolboy. ‘Girls don’t make calls on their own.’
‘I know,’ says Ripsie again. ‘Miss Porter, where I was at school, once wrote a book of etiquette, and every girl was given a copy when she left. It was called The Ladies’ Science of Etiquette.’ She has opened her eyes and is laughing. “‘Young ladies, of course, do not call,’” she quotes, “‘unless accompanied by an older person.” Well?’ and her chin comes up again. ‘I have no older person. I’m earning my living,’ says Ripsie. ‘Helping here in the school. That’s disgraceful, isn’t it? “A married sister, a brother, or mother or father,’” she mocks. ‘My mother has been dead for years, and I haven’t a father. We all know that.’
‘Shut up,’ says John Henry as the old pity stirs.
‘A book of etiquette is very useful,’ says Ripsie, stroking the mare’s neck. ‘It lets you know exactly how you are treated and it tells you when to leave before you have the shame of being asked to, before you are thrown out,’ and in misery she flings at him, ‘What was I to do? I couldn’t hang round the gate as I used to, could I?’
‘So you walked straight into the lion’s den. You little fool.’
‘I would have walked into twenty dens to see him.’ She does not say it, but John Henry knows that without being told; he remembers the chough’s cliff; but now his taunts have gone home; tears steal down her cheeks that are very wan and tired under the ridiculous hat that has slipped to one side as she leans against the mare. John Henry holds out for perhaps a minute, the longest he can ever bring himself to be unkind to Ripsie, then he sighs and gathers her to sob against his solid and comfortable chest – and she doesn’t even know it is me, thinks John Henry.
‘Then, is being young wanting what you haven’t?’ asks old Mrs Quin. ‘And being old, accepting what you haven’t? Oh, just for once,’ she cries, ‘I should like to make it come true for somebody young, while they are young,’ but, ‘Crying for the moon,’ Polly would have said and, almost always, ‘Want must be your master,’ says Polly.
‘Going to Italy!’ Eliza puts down the hated sewing, hemming sheets, turning sides to middle, while Anne looks up startled. ‘Italy, before you both sail for New York!’
A gulf is separating Damaris from her sisters. When she turns her head there is a glitter; she is wearing a pair of diamond earrings that Mr King Lee calls ‘earbobs’, while her ring is an emerald clasped with two golden hands. Mr King Lee sends down from London a set of luggage with a white jewel box and white leather writing case – ‘for Damaris who doesn’t care for jewels and who never writes a letter,’ mocks Eliza. They are all initialled in gold: D.K.L. and Damaris looks at those initials in terror. There is an enamelled travelling clock, a gold pen and pencil, besides hampers from Fortnum and Mason’s, a case of wine; and Damaris is to go up to London with Adza to be dressed.
‘I am dressed,’ says Damaris.
‘This is your trousseau.’
‘Can’t Miss Dawnay make it?’
Miss Dawnay comes each year, since the Brood are children, to make the girls dresses; the dummy she uses frightens Tracy up in the attic nearly ninety years later. ‘Why can’t Miss Dawnay …’
‘It wouldn’t be fit.’
A thought strikes Damaris. ‘Mother, is Mr King Lee paying for my clothes?’
‘He has made an arrangement with your father. Mr King Lee is a very rich man, Damaris. We could not compete …’
Damaris grows paler and more silent.
‘It is a heaven-sent match for you, my dear.’
‘Yes, Mother.’
‘You have made your father very happy.’
‘Yes, Mother.’
Once, Damaris tries to end it. ‘I shan’t be able to bear it, Mother, I shan’t. I shall run away,’ but, ‘Think of your sisters,’ urges Adza. ‘Think what you can do for them. What chance have they here, and you know Eliza …’ Damaris submits and, as in a bad dream, is taken up to London and comes back even more silent, a look of strained paleness under her tan. ‘She has lost her glow. Isn’t she well?’ Mr King Lee fusses, and asks Adza to give her iron and make her drink a glass of claret after her lunch and dinner. Damaris, with a trapped look in her eyes, takes the iron, drinks the claret, and a basket of white roses comes down from London and is driven over to St Probus by the railway carrier.
She tries the citadel itself. She comes to Mr King Lee in the conservatory. ‘Mr King Lee—’
‘Thomas.’
‘Thomas,’ she corrects herself. ‘Thomas …’ but he is not listening, he is looking at her. That look of his is probably in the house still, it is so passionately in love, and, meeting it, Damaris knows that it must overpower her.
Still she tries. ‘Thomas …’ and she blurts out, ‘I do not love you, Mr King Lee.’ It sounds like a line from a stilted novel and she says it again, earnestly, ‘I don’t love you, Thomas.’
‘I know you don’t,’ says Mr King Lee, quite undisturbed.
‘Then?’
‘I love you. That will do for the present. Kiss me,’ says Mr King Lee.
‘Italy!’ says Eliza now.
‘Yes,’ says Damaris hopelessly. ‘We were going through France, but because of the war we can’t.’ The Siege of Paris is taking its terrible course, but this is as far as it affects St Probus. ‘We go by sea to Genoa.’ Damaris sounds more hopeless still. ‘He wants me to see Rome
,’ she says, tears in her voice, ‘perhaps even Athens before we go – home.’ Damaris says that word as if it appalled her but, ‘Rome! Athens! And I have to stay here in St Probus,’ says Eliza.
Once Eliza thinks she sees a way of escape. Great-Uncle Mcleod dies; Mcleod the Second, then, must be alone in Canton and, ‘Can’t I go out and keep house for him?’ asks Eliza.
‘Certainly not!’ The shocked tone in Adza’s voice rivets Eliza’s attention at once. Adza has no intention of telling anything more, but she is no match for Eliza. There are persistent and skilful questions, until at last Adza is betrayed into saying, ‘He has not been with your uncle for years.’
‘Why?’
‘They had a – disagreement.’
‘Why?’
‘Hush, dear,’ but Eliza soon ferrets it out: Mcleod the Second, their own brother, is living with a Chinese woman, not a wife but – Adza can hardly bring herself to whisper it – ‘a concubine.’
‘I thought they were only in the Bible,’ says Eliza.
She is amused, but Anne has dropped her sewing. ‘Poor soul! Poor woman!’ says Anne and she sits looking far out of the morning room, all the way to China. ‘Those poor ignorant teeming millions. Think of their plight, Liz. Just think!’ But Eliza is thinking of Eliza. ‘I would willingly be a concubine to get to China,’ she says and now Damaris is to go to Rome, Athens, America. ‘I didn’t know I could be so unhappy,’ says Eliza.
‘I didn’t know I could,’ says Damaris.
Damaris’s wedding dress, wrapped in blue paper, is in the oak chest in the Porch Room. Made by Worth it is, as Cook predicted, of satin. ‘Windsor satin!’ Adza has not heard of that before, cream-white Windsor satin draped over a lace underskirt, the overskirt with crenellated edges, softened by frilled lace, with twisted cords and tassels where the fullness begins at the back of the skirt. The veil is Brussels lace; ‘She wore it draped over the skirt of a white ball dress when she went to the Embassy Ball,’ Adza tells everyone when a letter comes from Mr King Lee in Rome. Damaris herself never writes.