Ankle Deep

by Angela Thirkell

  Again they stood silent, thought and feeling suspended, unable to extricate themselves from the circle of their passions. Again the door opened, but this time it was Mrs. Howard, who came in calling, “Will, Will.” She looked about and saw her daughter and her daughter’s friend standing amicably on the hearthrug. “Oh, Mr. Ensor,” she said, “have you seen Will? I can’t find him downstairs.”

  “He was in here just now, looking for you and Fanny,” said the well-mannered Mr. Ensor. “He went out again a moment ago.”

  “Just see if he is there, will you,” said Mrs. Howard, unsuspicious of storm in the air.

  Valentine opened the door, and evidently caught sight of Mr. Howard for he called out, “Is that you, sir? Mrs. Howard is looking for you.”

  “Do you want me, my dear?” asked Mr. Howard, coming back into the room.

  “Yes, Will dear, only to say do get dressed. You are keeping everyone waiting, and we’ve put dinner off once, and these young people have to get to their play. I’ve asked you three or four times already.” It was unlike Mrs. Howard to nag, but she had had a trying evening.

  Mr. Howard took off his glasses with annoying and calculated deliberation, polished them, and put them on again. “I know, Mary,” said he, “and I was just on my way to dress if you hadn’t called me. Now you will make me late, but so be it.”

  He went out; a just man, persecuted, misunderstood. Mrs. Howard made a face of mock despair to Aurea and followed him, to see that he didn’t mislay himself again.

  Aurea sat down inelegantly with a flop.

  “We can’t even quarrel in peace,” she said piteously. So that, thank heaven, they both had to laugh quite naturally, and felt much better.

  “Bad luck, isn’t it?” said Valentine. “Just when you were spoiling for a quarrel.”

  “I’m not,” said Aurea, scenting recriminations. Then she caught Valentine’s eye and had to laugh again. “Oh, well, perhaps I am,” said she handsomely, “but you are, too, and I don’t intend to indulge your whims.”

  “Bless you, child,” said he and was just going to kiss her hand, when what he mentally described as the blasted door opened again and he had to say damn and drop it. It was Mr. Howard and Fanny, in very good spirits.

  “And where is Arthur?” asked his wife.

  Valentine saw that Aurea wasn’t fit to face Fanny, so he stood up, screening her and prepared to skirmish with Fanny.

  “He took Mr. Howard down to show him a new way of warming the car.”

  “And used up half the battery, I’ll be bound,” said the ignorant Fanny. “You’re not looking very cheerful, Val.”

  “It must be the effect of seeing you again,” said the gallant Mr. Ensor.

  “Effect of the telephone, if you ask me,” said Fanny scornfully. “Which of them was it you were throwing over.”

  “Would you like to know?” said Valentine, really terrified that Aurea might take Fanny seriously, and begin to mistrust him again. But his heart leapt as he felt the slightest touch on his hand. He didn’t dare to respond under Fanny’s eagle eye, but he felt safe and comforted.

  “Not a bit,” cried Fanny, “so long as you don’t throw me over for next week.”

  “What are we going to do?” asked Valentine conversationally. By all means let Fanny drivel on so long as it gave Aurea time to recover.

  “Embassy, I think, and I have a fat cousin coming from the country who will do nicely for Arthur.”

  “Why drag Arthur in?”

  Fanny made large innocent eyes. “Oh, my dear, I must. If I were seen going about alone with a gentleman of your reputation, where would mine be?”

  Here Aurea suddenly entered the lists on Valentine’s side. “I didn’t know you had a reputation, Fanny,” she said carelessly.

  Fanny stared. “Bless your heart, I have several. I keep a special one for you.”

  This was rather rude, and meant to be so. Fanny wanted to hint to Valentine that Aurea was rather too proper and babyish for his serious attentions. Aurea felt this. She wasn’t going to mind for herself, but it was going to make Valentine uncomfortable, and this she would not stand. If she chose to hurt Valentine herself, that was one matter, and anyway, it hurt her far more than it hurt him; if Fanny tried to touch him, that was another, and the mother hen in her began to fluffle up its feathers.

  Before she could answer, Arthur came in, to be greeted by his wife with, “Oh, here you are. Where have you been?”

  “Downstairs,” said Arthur. He was already suffering considerable remorse for having upset Aurea so much, and longing to make it up to her in some way. If only there were a dragon or a drunken man in the drawing-room, that one could fight on her behalf. He realized, with great discomfort, that he had been quite thoughtless and unkind. It was far better for the goddess to stay where she was. If she had come to life it would all have been extraordinarily inconvenient. Now she would always be for him a thing exquisite and apart. And he would always know — though in this he was perfectly incorrect — that the goddess would have loved him if she had dared, that she would always think tenderly of him from her starry sphere; and that there was now no need for Fanny to know anything. How very much annoyed Aurea would have been if she had been able to see his thoughts.

  It is unfortunate that the backwash of our holier and deeper emotions often has no other visible token than a very bad temper, and a tendency to quarrel with everything that is not connected with the adored object. How often have we not emerged from a theater, blinking and fuddled by poetry, beauty, romance, only to fall straight into an ignominious row with a taxi-driver or a waiter from whom our higher feelings are hidden. Just so was Arthur, emerging from his dream, like an infuriated owl, and this was not the moment to cross his path. He will return to his Fanny unscathed, but let his Fanny beware how she treads for this one evening.

  Valentine was asking Mrs. Howard if he might call on her later. “I wouldn’t like to lose sight of you altogether,” he said, “after you have been so kind to me.”

  “Why, of course. Will has always wanted to hear about those excavations. We are hoping to get to Rome ourselves perhaps in the autumn. I suppose you won’t be there?”

  “I’m afraid not,” said Valentine, his words nearly drowned by the booming of the Howards’ rather frightening gong.

  Mrs. Howard became agitated. “We really won’t wait much longer for Will, or you young people will be late for the play. Aurea, do you think your father is dressing?”

  “I think so, mother.”

  Mrs. Howard began to fiddle with the fire. She and her husband, an outwardly united couple, liked to take every opportunity afforded by one another’s absence to arrange a fire as it really should be arranged.

  Fanny, looking around for trouble, cast a proprietary eye on her husband. It was quite long enough since she had seen him for her to want him to account for the way he had spent his time.

  “Arthur,” she said, so suddenly that her husband jumped, “what were you and Aurea talking about while I was out of the room? She looks quite pale.”

  Before Arthur could collect his wits, Aurea had rushed to the breach, sword in hand. In a very clear voice she said, “We were talking about old days, Fanny — when Arthur and I were young — before either of us was married.”

  “How romantic,” said Fanny, looking curious.

  “It was romantic,” said Aurea, still alarmingly distinct. “And that’s why I’m looking pale. It was even more romantic, Fanny, than you can understand.”

  So saying, she went over to her mother who, quite unnecessarily wrestling with a log, had not noticed the battle, and offered her help. It is always doubtful whether Fanny could feel a rebuff, for all her superficial quickness of wits. “It seems to have upset her, anyway,” she remarked hopefully to the two gentlemen. “Arthur, what were you saying to her?”

  Arthur, still in a dream of sentiment, penetrated with gratitude to the goddess who had so unexpectedly left her machine to come to his assista
nce, was for an instant quite seriously angry with his Fanny. “For once in your life, Fanny,” he said coldly, “will you mind your own business?”

  He went over to the fire, and began to hinder Mrs. Howard and Aurea in their work of reconstruction.

  Fanny looked blankly about her. “Ill-mannered churl,” she remarked, not without heat. Then, slipping her arm through Valentine’s, she said, “Val, you are a gentleman. What was it all about? Or,” she added, struck by a sudden thought, and fixing her piercing gaze on him, “was it you that upset Aurea?”

  “My dear Fanny,” said Valentine very courteously, extricating himself at the same time from her arm, “I am glad you think I am a gentleman, and I should always wish to be mistaken for one, but, if I may presume upon an acquaintance of many years’ standing, I quite agree with Arthur’s last remark.”

  He went over to the piano and turned over some music. Fanny, aghast, stood by herself in the middle of the room. She could not have kept silent long, but an end was put to this unbearable situation by Mr. Howard who, standing framed in the open door, said in an accusing voice to the world in general, “The gong went some minutes ago.” So they all went down to dinner.

  Chapter 9

  Reading aloud has occasioned more displays of temper than perhaps any other diversion, except croquet. Some are born to read aloud, or to be read aloud to; others are not. The gulf is fixed. The scorn of natural readers for bad readers is deep; but no less profound, and possibly less snobbish, is the scorn of bad readers for people who are affected enough to read clearly and distinctly. The contempt which is felt by people who don’t like being read aloud to for people who are dull and tame-spirited enough to enjoy it, is only equaled, or excelled, by the despising attitude of people who like to be read to while they paint, or work, or even sit comfortably doing nothing after dinner, for those who get restive and bored. The two cannot be reconciled. In one way the anti-reading-aloud camp is the more united, for it desires neither to read, nor to be read aloud to; whereas the pro-reading-aloud supporters may be divided into those who prefer to read and those who had rather be read to. To us, as pro-reading-alouders, the most maddening experience possible is to be read to by a bad reader; one who hesitates, who cannot catch the drift of a sentence before he has finished it, who drops his voice at the end of a sentence, who ignores or misuses punctuation, who mumbles, who sounds all the while ashamed of what he is doing, who hurries through a hateful task, who reads as though he had laid a wager to make himself unintelligible, who, in short, exhibits what we should call qualities of ill-educated oafishness.

  Not such were Mr. and Mrs. Howard. Both had been brought up on reading aloud, and both exercised the humane art frequently. Sometimes Mr. Howard, laying aside his pipe, would read to Mrs. Howard, while she sewed, until her eyes softly closed. Sometimes Mrs. Howard, laying aside her sewing, would read aloud to Mr. Howard till he sank into a peaceful slumber. Sometimes again, Mr. Howard would read himself into a coma, nodding himself asleep as the book fell from his nerveless hand. Or again, Mrs. Howard, taking the book from her husband, would read more and more slowly, till sheer rubbish issued from her lips and her voice trailed away into nothingness. And there were occasions when both were to be found asleep, reader and read-to, lulled by the sound. For a time the Howards had dined once in each alternate week with two old friends, who in their turn would dine with the Howards in the intervening week, for the express purpose of reading aloud after dinner. Aurea always said, and apparently no one was able to contradict it, that if she happened to assist at one of these readings there would be four people asleep by the end of the evening.

  At any rate, reading aloud was a long established pastime in the Howard family, and Mr. and Mrs. Howard had a kind of secret mental score against each other for falling asleep in an active or passive capacity.

  On the evening which we have been describing Mr. Howard was reading aloud after the theater party had gone off, while Mrs. Howard reclined on the sofa. This attitude, conducive to repose, gave Mr. Howard an unfair advantage. From time to time he looked cautiously over his spectacles to see if his wife was still awake. When her closed eyes and peaceful breathing announced that Mr. Howard had scored again, he looked at her with some triumph, and repeated the last sentence he had been reading in a loud and patient voice. Mrs. Howard gave a slight start and came awake suddenly.

  “Asleep as usual, Mary,” said Mr. Howard carelessly.

  But Mrs. Howard unfairly took the wind out of his sails by remarking, “It is such a rest, dear, to go to sleep while you read. Don’t you find the same when I am reading?”

  “No,” answered her husband indignantly. “I don’t sleep during your reading, Mary.”

  “Perhaps you are on the lookout for my mistakes, and that keeps you awake.”

  “You don’t make mistakes, dear,” said Mr. Howard, feeling that the victor could afford to be generous.

  “But you do go to sleep,” said his wife with female injustice. “And what’s more, you know you go to sleep yourself while you are reading aloud.”

  “I think not,” said Mr. Howard shortly.

  “Sorry, Will, but you do,” said she sitting upright. “What’s the time?’

  “Nearly eleven.”

  “Time for bed,” said Mrs. Howard, in an offhand way, hoping to catch her husband unawares. To her annoyance he replied, “But Aurea hasn’t come in yet.”

  “She might be late, dear. I don’t think we’ll sit up.”

  “I shall sit up, Mary. It is her last night.” Mrs. Howard’s heart sank. She knew her Will so well. If he wanted to see Aurea alone, he was capable of sitting on in the drawing-room till Mr. Ensor was forced to leave. It would never even occur to him that he might more tactfully go and sit in his warm study for a bit. She tried persuasion.

  “That’s exactly why I didn’t want to sit up,” she said. “She is so tired, and she will want to go straight to bed, poor child.”

  Then Mr. Howard made one of his more annoying descents from his heights.

  “Is Ensor bringing her home?” he asked. Mrs. Howard could have bitten him with great pleasure. She had fondly hoped that, having unburdened his mind about Mr. Ensor, he would now leave his daughter alone. She said in an unconcerned way that she supposed so. Mr. Howard took off his glasses, folded them up, and put them away. He then relighted his pipe and said, “Mary, I am much concerned.”

  “What about, Will?”

  “About Aurea and Ensor.”

  Mrs. Howard gnashed her teeth inwardly, if this is physically possible. Will was in that mood when he would have more joy over one sinner that didn’t repent than his family could possibly bear. And such a very mild, milk-and-water sinner, too. With a blank expression, she asked her husband why he was concerned. Mr. Howard, after a slight hesitation, said, very conclusively and comprehensively, that he did not approve.

  “But, Will dear, there is nothing particular to approve or disapprove.”

  Mr. Howard, in the manner of an Inquisitor handing over a relapsed heretic to the secular arm, said that Aurea was not behaving well. Mrs. Howard again gnashed her teeth in silence, and also foamed invisibly at the mouth.

  “Dear Will,” she said, “I think Aurea is behaving as well as she possibly can.”

  Mr. Howard, hurt at his wife’s want of concurrence, said that of course no one regarded his wishes or opinions in the matter.

  “But they do. Aurea does. We all do. You must make allowances.”

  If Mr. Howard secretly knew that he was being unreasonable, he had no intention of admitting it. His conscience told him that if he had wanted to make a protest he should have made it a good deal earlier, instead of waiting till Aurea’s last day at home. His common sense also told him that he would have done far better to let well alone, but his unhappy urge to create mental discomfort was too strong. There was some inherited twist in his mind which gave him vague discomfort if other people were enjoying themselves in their own way. To him the gods of unhappines
s and ill-luck appeared to need frequent propitiation, and they could best be served by making oneself and everyone else unhappy now, in case they were in any event going to be unhappy later, which sounds illogical, but to self-tormentors is full of sound sense. So all he said was, “No, Mary. There are such things as right and wrong, and I don’t like to feel ashamed of my own daughter.”

  “Will, you are too unreasonable. Why on earth should you feel ashamed?”

  This was a difficult question to answer. There really was no reason at all, so he was reduced to saying, “It isn’t what I should have expected.”

  This was more than Mrs. Howard could bear. “Well, Will,” she replied rather sharply, “I have never noticed that things did happen particularly as one expected, and I certainly don’t know what it was you were expecting, but if it included such a darling attractive creature as my Aurea going through life without anyone taking any notice of her, it’s high time you expected something else.”

  Mr. Howard was so taken aback by this onslaught that he pulled out his glasses and put them on, with a vague idea of sheltering behind them.

  “My dear,” he expostulated.

  “You must realize,” continued she, in the same unpleasant way, “that young women now are rather different from what I was as a young woman.”

  “I should hope so,” said Mr. Howard fervently, and then wondered if that was what he meant.

  “Kindly meant, doubtless,” said his wife. “And even I was not without admirers.”

  “Of course, my dear, of course. But this, you must admit, is different.”

  “Different?” said she pugnaciously. “I don’t know that it is. The only difference I can see is that I had plenty of swains and flirted with them all, because I loved you so much that I felt quite safe.” As her husband made a gesture of dissent she added hastily, “Oh, yes I did, Will, and you had to put up with it, and very nicely you did it. But poor Aurea doesn’t flirt — she often doesn’t realize that people are attracted by her and that puts them off — and when she does care for anyone it’s rather cataclysmic. Of course, I wish as heartily as anyone that they had never met, but there it is and can’t be helped, and most unfortunately there isn’t any one like you that she can care for all the time.”