‘Because then his objections to Juchs would be greater than his wish to marry you?’
‘Yes,’ said Dolly, smiling. ‘It would mean,’ she went on, ‘that he wasn’t fond of me enough.’
‘And you wouldn’t mind?’
Her eyes widened a little. ‘Why should I mind?’
‘No. I suppose you wouldn’t, as you’re not in love.’
I then remarked that, though I could understand her not being in love with a man my uncle’s age, it was my belief that she had never in her life been in love. Not even with Siegfried. Not with anybody.
Dolly said she hadn’t, and that she liked people much too much to want to grab at them.
‘Grab at them!’
‘That’s what your being in love does,’ said Dolly. ‘It grabs.’
‘But you’ve been grabbed yourself, and you liked it. Uncle Rudolph is certainly bent on grabbing you.’
‘Yes. But the man gets over it quicker. He grabs and has done with it, and then settles down to the real things, — affection and kindness. A woman hasn’t ever done with it. She can’t let go. And the poor thing, because she what you call loves, is so dreadfully vulnerable, and gets so hurt, so hurt—’
Dolly began kissing me and stroking my hair.
‘I think though,’ I said, while she was doing this, ‘I’d rather have loved thoroughly — you can call it grabbing if you like, I don’t care what ugly words you use — and been vulnerable and got hurt, than never once have felt — than just be a sort of amiable amoeba—’
‘Has it occurred to you,’ interrupted Dolly, continuing to kiss me — her cheek was against mine, and she was stroking my hair very tenderly— ‘that if I marry that dear little uncle of yours I shall be your aunt?’
October 13th.
Well, then, if Dolly is ready to marry my uncle and my uncle is dying to marry Dolly, all that remains to be done is to remove Mrs. Barnes for an hour from the hall. An hour would be long enough, I think, to include everything, — five minutes for the proposal, fifteen for presenting Siegfried, thirty-five for explaining Juchs, and five for the final happy mutual acceptances.
This very morning I must somehow manage to get Mrs. Barnes away. How it is to be done I can’t think; especially for so long as an hour. Yet Juchs and Siegfried couldn’t be rendered intelligible, I feel, in less than fifty minutes between them. Yes; it will have to be an hour.
I have tried over and over again the last few days to lure Mrs. Barnes out of the hall, but it has been useless. Is it possible that I shall have to do something unpleasant to myself, hurt myself, hurt something that takes time to bandage? The idea is repugnant to me; still, things can’t go on like this.
I asked Dolly last night if I hadn’t better draw Mrs. Barnes’s attention to my uncle’s lovelorn condition, for obviously the marriage would be a solution of all her difficulties and could give her nothing but extraordinary relief and joy; but Dolly wouldn’t let me. She said that it would only agonise poor Kitty to become aware that my uncle was in love, for she would be quite certain that the moment he heard about Juchs horror would take the place of love. How could a dean of the Church of England, Kitty would say, bring himself to take as wife one who had previously been married to an item in the forbidden list of the Tables of Affinity? And Juchs being German would only, she would feel, make it so much more awful. Besides, said Dolly, smiling and shaking her head, my uncle mightn’t propose at all. He might change again. I myself had been astonished, she reminded me, at the sudden violent change he had already undergone from unction to very nearly swearing; he might easily under-go another back again, and then what a pity to have disturbed the small amount of peace of mind poor Kitty had.
‘She hasn’t any, ever,’ I said; impatiently, I’m afraid.
‘Not very much,’ admitted Dolly with wistful penitence. ‘And it has all been my fault.’
But what I was thinking was that Kitty never has any peace of mind because she hasn’t any mind to have peace in.
I didn’t say this, however.
I practised tact.
Later.
Well, it has come off. Mrs. Barnes is out of the hall, and at this very moment Uncle Rudolph and Dolly are alone together in it, proposing and being proposed to. He is telling her that he worships her, and in reply she is gently drawing his attention to Siegfried and Juchs. How much will he mind them? Will he mind them at all? Will his love triumphantly consume them, or, having swallowed Siegfried, will he find himself unable to manage Juchs?
Oh, I love people to be happy! I love them to love each other! I do hope it will be all right! Dolly may say what she likes, but love is the only thing in the world that works miracles. Look at Uncle Rudolph. I’m more doubtful, though, of the result than I would have been yesterday, because what brought about Mrs. Barnes’s absence from the hall has made me nervous as to how he will face the disclosing of Juchs.
While I’m waiting I may as well write it down, — by my clock I count up that Dolly must be a third of the way through Siegfried now, so that I’ve still got three quarters of an hour.
This is what happened:
The morning started badly, indeed terribly. Dolly, bored by being stared at in silence, said something about more wool and went upstairs quite soon after breakfast. My uncle, casting a despairing glance at the window past which the snow was driving, scowled for a moment or two at Mrs. Barnes, then picked up a stale Times and hid himself behind it.
To make up for his really dreadful scowl at Mrs. Barnes I began a pleasant conversation with her, but at once she checked me, saying, ‘Sh — sh — ,’ and deferentially indicating, with her knitting needle, my reading uncle.
Incensed by such slavishness, I was about to rebel and insist on talking when he, stirred apparently by something of a bloodthirsty nature that he saw in the Times, exclaimed in a very loud voice, ‘Search as I may — and I have searched most diligently — I can’t find a single good word to say for Germans.’
It fell like a bomb. He hasn’t mentioned Germans once. I had come to feel quite safe. The shock of it left me dumb. Mrs. Barnes’s knitting needles stopped as if struck. I didn’t dare look at her. Dead silence.
My uncle lowered the paper and glanced round at us, expecting agreement, impatient of our not instantly saying we thought as he did.
‘Can you?’ he asked me, as I said nothing, being petrified.
I was just able to shake my head.
‘Can you?’ he asked, turning to Mrs. Barnes.
Her surprising answer — surprising, naturally, to my uncle — was to get up quickly, drop all her wool on the floor, and hurry upstairs.
He watched her departure with amazement. Still with amazement, when she had disappeared, his eyes sought mine.
Why, he said, staring at me aghast, ‘why — the woman’s a pro-German!’
In my turn I stared aghast.
‘Mrs. Barnes?’ I exclaimed, stung to quite a loud exclamation by the grossness of this injustice.
‘Yes,’ said my uncle, horrified. ‘Yes. Didn’t you notice her expression? Good heavens — and I who’ve taken care not to speak to a pro-German for five years, and had hoped, God willing, never to speak to one again, much less—’ he banged his fists on the arms of the chair, and the Times slid on to the floor— ‘much less be under the same roof with one.’
‘Well then, you see, God wasn’t willing,’ I said, greatly shocked.
Here was the ecclesiastic coming up again with a vengeance in all the characteristic anti-Christian qualities; and I was so much stirred by his readiness to believe what he thinks is the very worst of poor, distracted Mrs. Barnes, that I flung caution to the winds and went indignantly on: ‘It isn’t Mrs. Barnes who is pro-German in this house — it’s Dolly.’
‘What?’ cried my uncle.
‘Yes,’ I repeated, nodding my head at him defiantly, for having said it I was scared, ‘it’s Dolly.’
‘Dolly?’ echoed my uncle, grasping the arms of his chair.
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‘Perhaps pro-German doesn’t quite describe it,’ I hurried on nervously, ‘and yet I don’t know — I think it would. Perhaps it’s better to say that she is — she is of an unprejudiced international spirit—’
Then I suddenly realised that Mrs. Barnes was gone. Driven away. Not likely to appear again for ages.
I got up quickly. ‘Look here, Uncle Rudolph,’ I said, making hastily, even as Mrs. Barnes had made, for the stairs, ‘you ask Dolly about it yourself. I’ll go and tell her to come down. You ask her about being pro-German. She’ll tell you. Only—’ I ran back to him and lowered my voice— ‘propose first. She won’t tell you unless you’ve proposed first.’
Then, as he sat clutching the arms of his chair and staring at me, I bent down and whispered, ‘Now’s your chance, Uncle Rudolph. You’ve settled poor Mrs. Barnes for a bit. She won’t interrupt. I’ll send Dolly — goodbye — good luck!’
And hurriedly kissing him I hastened upstairs to Dolly’s room.
Because of the door leading out of it into Mrs. Barnes’s room I had to be as cautious as I was last night. I did exactly the same things: went in on tiptoe, took hold of her firmly by the wrist, and led her out without a word. Then all I had to do was to point to the stairs, and at the same time make a face — but a kind face, I hope — at her sister’s shut door, and the intelligent Dolly did the rest.
She proceeded with a sober dignity pleasant to watch, along the passage in order to be proposed to. Practice in being proposed to has made her perfect. At the top of the stairs she turned and smiled at me, — her dimple was adorable. I waved my hand; she disappeared; and here I am.
Forty minutes of the hour are gone. She must be in the very middle now of Juchs.
Night.
I knew this little house was made for kindness and love. I’ve always, since first it was built, had the feeling that it was blest. Sure indeed was the instinct that brought me away from England, doggedly dragging myself up the mountain to tumble my burdens down in this place. It invariably conquers. Nobody can resist it. Nobody can go away from here quite as they arrived, unless to start with they were of those blessed ones who wherever they go carry peace with them in their hearts. From the first I have felt that the worried had only got to come here to be smoothed out, and the lonely to be exhilarated, and the unhappy to be comforted, and the old to be made young. Now to this list must be added: and the widowed to be wedded; because all is well with Uncle Rudolph and Dolly, and the house once more is in its normal state of having no one in it who isn’t happy.
For I grew happy — completely so for the moment, and I shouldn’t be surprised if I had really done now with the other thing — the minute I caught sight of Uncle Rudolph’s face when I went downstairs.
Dolly was sitting by the file looking pleased. My uncle was standing on the rug; and when he saw me he came across to me holding out both his hands, and I stopped on the bottom stair, my hands in his, and we looked at each other and laughed, — sheer happiness we laughed for.
Then we kissed each other, I still on the bottom stair and therefore level with him, and then he said, his face full of that sweet affection for the whole world that radiates from persons in his situation, ‘And to think that I came here only to scold you!’
‘Yes, Uncle Rudolph,’ I said. ‘To think of it!’
‘Well, if I came to scold I’ve stayed to love,’ he said.
‘Which,’ said I, while we beamed at each other, ‘as the Bible says, is far better.’
Then Dolly went upstairs to tell Mrs. Barnes — lovely to be going to strike off somebody’s troubles with a single sentence! — and my uncle confessed to me that for the first time a doubt of Dolly had shadowed his idea of her when I left him sitting there while I fetched her —
‘Conceive it — conceive it!’ he cried, smiting his hands together. ‘Conceive letting Germans — Germans, if you please — get even for half an instant between her and me!’ — but that the minute he saw her coming down the stairs to him such love of her flooded him that he got up and proposed to her before she had so much as reached the bottom. And it was from the stairs, as from a pulpit, that Dolly, supporting herself on the balustrade, expounded Siegfried and Juchs.
She wouldn’t come down till she had finished with them. She was, I gathered, ample over Siegfried, but when it came to Juchs she was profuse. Every single aspect of them both that was most likely to make a dean think it impossible to marry her was pointed out and enlarged upon. She wouldn’t, she announced, come down a stair further till my uncle was in full possession of all the facts, while at the same time carefully bearing in mind the Table of Affinity.
‘And were you terribly surprised and shocked, Uncle Rudolph?’ I asked, standing beside him with our backs to the fire in our now familiar attitude of arm in arm.
My uncle is an ugly little man, yet at that moment I could have sworn that he had the face of an angel. He looked at me and smiled. It was the wonderfullest smile.
‘I don’t know what I was,’ he said. ‘When she had done I just said, “My Beloved” — and then she came down.’
October 15th.
This is my last night here, and this is the last time I shall write in my old-age book. To-morrow we all go away together, to Bern, where my uncle and Dolly will be married, and then he takes her to England, and Mrs. Barnes and I will also proceed there, discreetly, by another route.
So are the wanderings of Mrs. Barnes and Dolly ended, and Mrs. Barnes will enter into her idea of perfect bliss, which is to live in the very bosom of the Church with a cathedral almost in her back garden. For my uncle, prepared at this moment to love anybody, also loves Mrs. Barnes, and has invited her to make her home with him. At this moment indeed he would invite everybody to make their homes with him, for not only has he invited me but I heard him most cordially pressing those peculiarly immovable Antoines to use his house as their headquarters whenever they happen to be in England.
I think a tendency to invite runs in the family, for I too have been busy inviting. I have invited Mrs. Barnes to stay with me in London till she goes to the Deanery, and she has accepted. Together we shall travel thither, and together we shall dwell there, I am sure, in that unity which is praised by the Psalmist as a good and pleasant thing.
She will stay with me for the weeks during which my uncle wishes to have Dolly all to himself. I think there will be a great many of those weeks, from what I know of Dolly; but being with a happy Mrs. Barnes will be different from being with her as she was here. She is so happy that she consists entirely of unclouded affection. The puckers from her face, and the fears and concealments from her heart, have all gone together. She is as simple and as transparent as a child. She always was transparent, but without knowing it; now she herself has pulled off her veils, and cordially requests one to look her through and through and see for oneself how there is nothing there but contentment. A little happiness, — what wonders it works! Was there ever anything like it?
This is a place of blessing. When I came up my mountain three months ago, alone and so miserable, no vision was vouchsafed me that I would go down it again one of four people, each of whom would leave the little house full of renewed life, of restored hope, of wholesome looking-forward, clarified, set on their feet, made useful once more to themselves and the world. After all, we’re none of us going to be wasted. Whatever there is of good in any of us isn’t after all going to be destroyed by circumstances and thrown aside as useless. When I am so foolish — if I am so foolish I should say, for I feel completely cured! as to begin thinking backwards again with anything but a benevolent calm, I shall instantly come out here and invite the most wretched of my friends to join me, and watch them and myself being made whole.
The house, I think, ought to be rechristened.
It ought to be called Chalet du Fleuve Jordan.
But perhaps my guests mightn’t like that.
THE END
VERA
Published in 1921 by Macmillan, t
his novel was labelled “feminist propaganda” by the reviewer in the Daily Telegraph, as it satirises the “modern marriage” of the day. However, both von Arnim and numerous of her literary acquaintance regarded this novel as her high water mark. The author used her disastrous second marriage to Earl Russell as the basis for the story and the novel has often been cited as a predecessor to Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca.
We meet the leading female character in this story – Lucy Entwhistle – in the hours after the death of her invalid father. They had only recently moved to Cornwall, where Lucy would continue to care for him, but the West Country air did not have the opportunity to improve his condition. Quite by chance, on the day her father died, Everard Wemyss meets Lucy as he walks past the rented Entwhistle home, consumed by his own negative thoughts of the death of and inquest for his wife only a fortnight before. Seizing the opportunity of a distraction from his own self pity and loneliness, Wemyss steps into Lucy’s life and takes over the role of doting family friend, organising the funeral and acting as her de facto protector. Their recent bereavements create a mutual bond between them, but with one shadow hanging over it – Wemyss’ wife, Vera, died in mysterious circumstances. In addition, sinister character traits soon surface in Wemyss. Although he barely knows Lucy, he becomes deeply jealous of the influence Lucy’s sweet natured aunt has over her, who is encouraging her to leave Cornwall straight away and spend the summer with her elsewhere. Using a form of emotional blackmail, he talks Lucy into a secret engagement before she leaves.
Aunt Entwhistle becomes in turn curious and then uneasy about Lucy’s friend and is astonished by the passion with which Lucy is willing to defend Wemyss, once their engagement is revealed. That her brother’s naïve, diminutive and shy daughter should defend this increasingly abrasive, predatory man with such feeling is a shock to the Aunt and the manner of Vera Wemyss’ death is a concern to her. Wemyss dismisses her questions impatiently, but undeterred, Aunt Entwhistle decides to investigate Vera’s death herself and despite her best efforts to graciously accept Wemyss as her future nephew in law, she remains unconvinced.
Delphi Collected Works of Elizabeth von Arnim (Illustrated) Page 242