This Real Night

by Rebecca West

  Mr Morpurgo said, ‘Yes, he has gone to Tartary,’ and laid his hand for a second on my brother’s wrist.

  ‘To Tartary,’ repeated Mrs Morpurgo, busy with her lamb cutlet. ‘Is that,’ she asked, as if she were saying something clever, ‘a good place to write a book?’

  Nobody answered her, and she looked up and saw that her husband was staring at her in open rage. She recoiled as if his hatred had a definite range and she wished to retreat beyond it, and sat turning from side to side her large, blunt, handsome head. She had gone further than she had wished; she had meant to be nearly, but not quite, intolerable. Again we could see her telling herself that she had not the slightest idea how she had overstepped the mark. Had she said something so very tactless? And if she had, how could it matter, when there was only this obscure woman, this unknown Mrs Aubrey, these tiresome girls, this schoolboy, to be offended? All this was just more of her husband’s nonsense. Her contempt for him reestablished itself. She shook her head to disembarrass herself of all these absurdities, and went on eating. But her hands were trembling.

  The silence that had fallen once more was broken by a peal of bells, and another, and another.

  ‘Someone’s getting married,’ said Mr Weissbach, bravely jovial, ‘and making no end of fuss about it.’

  ‘I did not know we had a church so near,’ said Mr Morpurgo.

  ‘Did you never happen to notice,’ asked Mrs Morpurgo, ‘that St James was just round the corner?’

  The bells rang on. A remark bubbled in laughter on Marguerite’s lips. Finally, she had to say it. ‘Why, these might be the bells at Captain Ware’s wedding.’

  She had said it. Her two sisters covered their smiling mouths. They looked just like the most horrid girls at school. ‘Why should they be that?’ said Mr Morpurgo, absently.

  ‘Marguerite is talking nonsense,’ said Mrs Morpurgo, ‘she is talking about someone who is getting married in Pau, not in London.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Marguerite, ‘but this is the very day, isn’t it?’

  ‘Who is Captain Ware?’ asked Mr Morpurgo. He was like that. If he heard a name, any name, he liked to know all about the person who bore it.

  Marguerite hesitated. Her sister’s shining eyes dared her to go on. Her own answered, ‘Oh, then, if you think I won’t, I will!’ She continued with the blandness of malice, ‘Why, he’s the handsome captain who’s been teaching us riding all the time we’ve been at Pau. We made great friends with him,’ she finished artlessly, ‘we were so surprised a fortnight ago, when he told us he was going to marry the daughter of the rich old man who owned our hotel. He hadn’t said a word about it, not till the invitations went out. We were asked,’ she said, as if that had been the cream of the jest.

  The governess jerked up her head. She had ceased to look a humbug; and she uttered a sound that was not, ‘Hush,’ but a noble and vulgar ejaculation of disgust, such as I had once heard from a woman in the street who saw a drunken man lurch against a frightened child. The three girls had been staring down at their plates, the corners of their mouths twitching, not merely enjoying their victim’s pain, but acting their enjoyment so that she should feel a second pain. They were indeed very like the worst girls at school. But the governess’s expression of contempt, which sounded as if she had just checked herself from spitting, frightened the girls into a second’s rigidity. They turned to their father almost as if they were expecting him to protect them from her rage, but his eyes were set on Stephanie’s face. I think he felt horror because she had not shown herself different from her sisters. Then he looked at Mrs Morpurgo, who had been in an instant changed from persecutor to persecuted. She was not terrible any longer. She tried to go on eating, but found it hard to swallow, and soon laid down her knife and fork and sat quite still, her chin high and her lids lowered as people do, when they are keeping themselves from shedding tears.

  ‘I wish,’ he said to my mother, ‘that you could see my wife on horse-back. I have never seen a woman look better in a riding-habit. Not even the Empress of Austria. My dear Herminie, I am so very glad that you have come home, so that when I boast of you my friends can see that I am not exaggerating. Now, Weissbach, tell us about your Lorenzetti.’

  After luncheon it seemed as if we were going to have a good time after all. We crossed the landing and went into a library, the first of a line of small rooms that ran along the side of the house. There Mr Morpurgo said to Richard Quin, ‘You would like to stay here and look at the books, wouldn’t you?’ Richard Quin nodded. He was quite white, which was strange, for usually when anything disagreeable happened, he did a conjuring trick in his mind and it vanished. But of course it would have been hard to annul Mrs Morpurgo and her daughters. ‘On that stand,’ said Mr Morpurgo, ‘there is a Book of the Hours with very lovely pictures in it. Sit on that stool and look at it. Or take anything you want from the shelves, and ring if it is too heavy for you to handle by yourself.’ He laid his arm round my brother’s shoulders and for a second I saw them as men together, men in over-womened families, who found comfort in each other. Then the rest of us went on through another room lined with cabinets full of porcelain figures, into a corner room, flooded with light from windows in the two outside walls, and hung with silk neither quite grey nor quite blue. There were some very comfortable chairs there, and we sat down and drank black coffee, which I did not think nice at all, out of little ruby red cups encrusted with gold which were very nice indeed. The three girls sat at the other side of the room in sallow and restless silence. Their governess was not with them. She had broken away on the landing, and we had seen her hurrying up the staircase to a higher floor, her elbows held well out from her body as she lifted her skirts to clear the steps, a kind of fish-wife vigour and freedom about her which she had not seemed to possess when she had first glided into the dining-room. Mrs Morpurgo took her coffee and drank it by the window, moving her head as if to see something in the street below.

  Mr Morpurgo put down his cup and said to the footman, ‘Please set up the easel, but first ask Mr Kessel to be kind enough to come here,’ and told us with happy smugness: ‘You may think this a dull room, but it is designed to fulfil a special purpose. There is a cold light from the north and from the east, and the walls and the carpet are of no particular colour, so that an object can be seen quite clearly, without any reflected colours spoiling its own. And I brought you here because I want you to see some things from the collections my father and mother started. But I will not be the showman for some of the things you might like best, for Herminie knows more about them than I do. My dear, you had better show them my mother’s collection of Chelsea and Bow, you have far more feeling for that sort of thing than I have.’

  Mrs Morpurgo whirled round. ‘Alas, there’s no question of that!’ she exclaimed. To my astonishment she was no longer pitiful, she was once more a brass band, she had not been abandoned to grief as she stood hiding her face by the window, she had been recovering her faculty for insolent surprise. ‘No, indeed! How I wish there were! But the girls and I have to go to a charity fete at Gunnersbury Park. The Rothschilds, you know,’ she explained to Mamma, meaning that she was sure Mamma did not know. ‘It’s in aid of all those poor horses somewhere. The Rothschilds are very fond of horses. I said I’d go so long ago that I can’t possibly not keep my promise.’ It appeared then that she was no more able to keep her private thoughts when they were to her own disadvantage than when they assailed other people. Her expression now made it plain that what she had just said was not true, that she thought her husband would perceive this, and that now she was improvising. ‘To tell the truth,’ she said, ‘I’m being punished for my dishonesty. I wrote from Pau saying I would be pleased to come to this wretched fête, thinking I hadn’t a ghost of a chance of being back here for months, because of Mamma’s illness, so that I’d seem good-natured, and have a perfect excuse when the time came, because I’d be out there in the Pyrenees, hundreds, or is it thousands, of miles away. But here I am, and
Lady Rothschild’s telephoned twice since she saw in The Times that I was back again. I can’t, I really can’t, disappoint her,’ She paused, quite relaxed. But as Mr Morpurgo said nothing to break the silence, her handsome features broke their ranks again, she looked disturbed. ‘I suppose you’re not going to maintain,’ she said bitterly, ‘that we’re in a position to snub the Rothschilds? And we have to start early, it takes hours and hours to get out to Gunnersbury.’ She appealed to my mother for sympathy. ‘Isn’t it tiresome when one’s friends live neither in town nor in the country? One has to set out in one’s car for a journey one should go by train, but trains don’t go to such suburban places. Well, we must go now. I know you will understand, Mrs Aubrey. And so should you, Edgar.’ Again it was apparent that she was a little frightened by her husband’s continued silence. ‘I told you all this. Long ago. I really did. I told you that I had an engagement early this afternoon. Always, from the first, I said, “Luncheon, luncheon I can just manage, but I will have to leave immediately afterwards.”’

  ‘I do not remember that,’ Mr Morpurgo answered pleasantly enough. ‘But very well, go. We will get on very well by ourselves. I have sent for Mr Kessel and he will look after us, and Mr Weissbach,’ he said smiling, ‘can fill in the gaps. So you and the girls can say goodbye, and go off to give the poor horses what you might have given to us.’

  ‘I need not go this minute,’ said Mrs Morpurgo, suddenly timid.

  ‘Oh, you had better not wait any longer,’ her husband told her. ‘Gunnersbury Park is certainly a long way off, as you say, and if you leave later you may disturb the Aubreys when they have settled down to looking at the things.’

  When she and her daughters had left, the time and the place came to their own. We became aware of a fine day looking in at the windows, and of the great ugly, competently capacious house which pretended to be a palace, but was something better, a complex of store cupboards stocked with celestial sorts of jam. ‘My father and mother collected all sorts of things, but hardly any pictures except what they brought back from the Continent when they’d been travelling; the rest I’ve found,’ said Mr Morpurgo comfortably. ‘But I keep up the original collections, I even add to them, I like to keep things going. One must,’ he sighed, ‘keep things going. There are the bronzes, I’m fond of the bronzes. They’re all over the house. When you see a bronze about, Rose, go up and look at it, it’s probably good. There’s a copy of a classical Andromeda by a man called Bonacolsi Antico who worked at Mantua, and that’s something more than the original. And I’ve got a room full of prints, but I don’t believe you’d care for them, though probably that’s because I don’t care for them myself. My father loved them, but then he loved technicalities and I hate them. The first impression, the second impression, the third impression, it puts one in touch with the artist’s troubles. I like objects which pretend to have been laid like an egg. Don’t you agree, Weissbach?’

  ‘I do indeed,’ said Mr Weissbach. But he was in a state to agree to anything. As soon as he had been given his coffee-cup he had sat down next to Cordelia, and had minute by minute grown more rosy and contented, while she had assumed the character which had been hers on the concert platform, and became a remote and dreaming child, unaware of her own loveliness, and terrified lest someone should be unkind to her, since, so far as she knew, she had no claim on the world’s kindness. He rose and said to Mamma, ‘With your permission I am going to take Miss Cordelia - what a lovely name! - into the next room and show her the English porcelain.’ Mamma assented without enthusiasm and indeed uttered a faint moan when he turned as he led Cordelia over the threshold and said richly, ‘I feel I’m doing something most appropriate, there are at least two charming figures here which are quite in Miss Cordelia’s style.’

  Then the footman returned with Mr Kessel, who was a little old man in a black suit, who bowed obsequiously to Mr Morpurgo and then fixed him with a small tyrannical eye. No, he had not brought the Gentile de Fabriano, he had not been sure that that was really the picture which was wanted. He was sullen as a child asked to share his toys. As he turned to go back for it, the footman began to put up the easel and Mr Morpurgo asked if it could be set nearer Mamma so that she would not have to leave the sofa when the picture came. Mr Kessel paused on the threshold to say that the footman had been placing the easel on the very spot at which, as had been established by experiments he had carried on during the first five years after the house was built, a picture could be shown to best advantage, and if Mr Morpurgo had any reason to think that there was a better spot he would be glad to know it. Mr Morpurgo said quickly that it did not matter where the easel was, and Mamma said she could easily move, but the young footman was annoyed, he clicked his tongue before he could stop himself.

  As soon as Mr Kessel had gone, Mr Morpurgo said in an undertone to the footman, ‘Ah, Lawrence, you must remember that you will be old some day,’ and when we were alone he sighed, ‘What am I to do with Kessel? He is a pest about the house, and I do not know what to do with him. It is an odd story. He is a Russian of German descent, the great-great-grandson of a Dresden silversmith who went to Russia in a party of craftsmen imported by Peter the Great. But I cannot send him back to Russia, for it is forty years since he left it and nobody he knew will be alive. He worked at his hereditary craft at Fabergé’s, and then was sent over here to bring the Russian Embassy a new set of table silver Fabergé had made for it, and to do some repairs to a famous silver table equipage they had, a glorious thing with elephants. He liked England so well that he decided to stay here, and worked for Spink’s for a time, and got interested in all sorts of works of art outside his own line, and presently came to my father and mother to look after their collections. That was while we still had our old house in Portman Square. I wish we had never left it. I have told you why my father built this barrack, and it has to be respected, yet I have never felt life to be very lucky here. But what has amused me always about Kessel’s story is that he decided to stay in England after a fortnight spent in Stoke Newington, where the Russian Embassy boarded him out so that he could be near some special workshop. I think this must be the sole occasion when the charms of Stoke Newington have detached a single soul from its allegiance to its native land. But what a fool I am! Kessel probably stayed here not because he liked London, but because something had happened to him which made him dislike St Petersburg. Clare, why are you tearing yourself in two by trying to listen to what I say and at the same time give the most frenzied attention to what you can see in the mirror?’

  ‘Edgar, you must forgive me,’ breathed Mamma, ‘I am sorry for that poor old Russian and it is wonderful to hear how careful you are for all your people, but the door to the next room is open, and I can see the reflection of Cordelia and Mr Weissbach, and I feel I ought not to take my eyes off them; he may be very nice, I am sure he is very nice, but he is so remarkably like King Edward.’

  ‘Clare, Clare,’ laughed Mr Morpurgo, ‘you don’t understand your children. You know that Cordelia is a very proper little girl, but not I think that she is also a little prizefighter in disguise, who would knock Mr Weissbach into the ropes if he offended her sense of propriety, and would have done the same by King Edward if he had earned it. But Mr Weissbach won’t do anything he shouldn’t because he hopes to sell me a great many more pictures. Cordelia’s virtue is being safeguarded not only by her own ferocity, but by a number of long dead Florentines and Siennese, who might not have been on that side had they been still alive. But I’ll sit beside you and watch them, just in case poor Weissbach should forget himself and have two ribs and a collar-bone broken.’

  He poured himself out another cup of coffee and sat down on the sofa, still laughing. ‘Clare, it is so pleasant to be with you, I forget all my troubles. This is just like the very first day I met your mother, Rose. She cheered me up then when I was feeling very sad. Has she ever told you about it?’

  ‘No, please tell me now,’ I answered with avidity, and Mamma leaned for
ward eagerly. He was constantly alluding to his first meeting with her, and she retained no recollection of it whatsoever. But we were never to be enlightened. Mrs Morpurgo was with us again.

  ‘Sit down, my dear,’ said her husband.

  She remained standing. ‘I wanted,’ she said hesitantly, ‘to explain something that may have puzzled you at luncheon.’

  ‘I don’t remember anything happening at luncheon which I didn’t perfectly understand,’ said Mr Morpurgo.

  ‘The girls were giggling,’ said Mrs Morpurgo, sadly.

  ‘Why, Herminie, you should not have bothered to come back to talk of this!’ He looked up at her tenderly. He could not bear her to be sad. ‘Yes, the girls were giggling, and I did not like it. They had some private joke, and I suspected it was an unkind one. But there was no reason for you to give it another thought.’

  ‘But I wanted to explain what it was all about,’ said his wife. ‘I knew you would be annoyed, who wouldn’t have been? But it was just a piece of schoolgirlish nonsense. Marguerite and Marie Louise have been teasing Stephanie for months because they said she had fallen in love with this Captain Ware. He was a handsome fellow. In his way. And they pretended that she was upset when he suddenly announced that he was getting married. But of course there was nothing in it at all. Nothing.’

  Mr Morpurgo made no reply, and Mrs Morpurgo continued to stand beside us, swaying backwards and forwards on her high heels. ‘I thought I had better tell you what was behind it all,’ she said.

  ‘Will you not sit down, Herminie, my dear?’ said Mr Morpurgo at last. ‘I am sorry you have vexed yourself about this business. You are wrong, quite wrong, in thinking that I had not grasped what had happened. Handsome riding masters have always existed and will always exist, and they have a right to existence, because they redress the balance of nature, which swings too much the other way. There are so many men like me who are not handsome, and do not become any better looking when they get on a horse. I assure you that I am not angry with Stephanie for her flight of fancy. It was most natural. I am only sorry that she should have suffered some distress. For I know quite well that you are not telling me the truth.’