We didn’t see much of Pipson, of course. He is such a great man that he rehearses in theatres between the performances, with the principals. He’s got Katrine two wonderful lines to speak. One is, ‘I’ve never been so insulted in the whole of my life!’ which remark comes into every revue I’ve ever seen, and the other, ‘Well girls, come on, the bathing’s fine this morning!’ and we practise saying it in all the most frightful ways there are. Katrine wants to speak it in a Cockney accent, but mother and I are in favour of ‘Wehlgehls, come on, the bathing’s faine this morning!’ and mother once put on my béret and flung her evening cloak over one shoulder and whipped a walking-stick out of the folds, made a pass at Katrine, and said it like Hamlet, pacing with a Repertory stalk. But Katrine, thinking of the producer, said, ‘You want to soften that, dear, it’s altogether too strong.’ Mother sheathed her stick and declared, ‘It would be awful from the front, quite awful.’
Katrine is picking up the dances quite nicely and we practise them in the garden to the joy of the cook and the incredulity of the Colonel next door, who creeps into his bathroom to watch us, and gleams at us through his monocle, and seems completely astonished, like the man in the Bible. Katrine was very nervous when she first saw him sternly watching us, and missed a step, but the garden is the best and most unencumbered place to rehearse in, and our movements are perfectly decent, so we have invented a place in the scheme for the Colonel, to account for his being there, and we pretend he is a masher left over from the Empire promenade who is trying to seduce Katrine, and that his gleam is one of unbridled desire, and when we’d settled that, Katrine was much more at her ease, and the rehearsals went with a swing.
We took Miss Martin down one afternoon to watch, because we felt it would be good for her general education, and she said ‘But’ all the time she was steering round the barrels, and was rather stunned at the bare legs being directed by a man. I told her the truth: that the girls danced in their skin to save money on washing and darning tights, and that seemed to reassure her, economy being unassailably respectable. But for all that she sat against the wall expecting to be insulted, and appeared to be rather at a loss when nobody attempted to, and shrank when the girls came near her to rest, and talk, and examine the heels of their shoes, and went ‘hoo!’ when one of the cats said, ‘Honest, kid, that’s the second pair I’ve trod over in a week with these B rehearsals.’ Some of the girls say worse things than that, and I have warned Katrine not to tell mother because she mustn’t be worried, and that she may have to say them herself on tour for peace and quiet, but that they aren’t for family use. Katrine is already depressed by the language alone.
Miss Martin took it absolutely sitting because she didn’t understand, and hoo’d solely as a tribute to the bad grammar going about. It has already leaked out that Katrine knows Pipson, and most of the girls assume that she is what they call his ‘friend,’ and have more or less divided, as a result, into two camps already, in which one side is awed envy and the other suppressed spite. We did tell mother about that because we thought she’d love it, and she did. Sheil has begged to see one rehearsal, but I won’t let mother allow her. The girls are nice, good creatures, with a few exceptions, and they would love her in that stridently demonstrative maternal way that the chorus does, but they are not for Sheil.
Katrine leaves us much sooner than we expected, as some dim managerial caprice has decided that final rehearsals are to take place in Bradford, where they open. Pipson has found her lodgings near his hotel, and walked round the question of fleas and bugs so delicately that we had to say them for him, which relieved him a lot, though he still calls the latter ‘what’s-her-names,’ but he has known Katrine’s rooms for years long before he arrived at his present status, – and though they will take nearly two-thirds of her salary he has advised her to engage them. Katrine would really have an easier time all round if she went into retreat in a convent, and far more chances of acquiring merit. She is too excited to feel leaving home, but she will be disappointed at being out of the fun on Hallowe’en. We have missed keeping it for years, since we left Hampton Wick, where we had parties on every imaginable anniversary, and having no proper garden now has made a difference, especially in the matter of guys on the fifth, which were what we called a spécialité de la maison, and famous all over the village for their size and drama.
But this year, Sheil is old enough to join in too and stay up late, at least, that is the official excuse. Actually, I am pining for an illuminated gourd-head with a jagged grin, and for the black cats and witches on the table, and I wanted to see if the young man in Miss Martin’s bedroom would crop up in the looking-glass rite, and how she would cope with him if he did. Being a thoroughly good woman, her mind is probably not very clean, so I expect she would look self-conscious, and think any woman awful who didn’t look the same way when eligible males were offered her by the spirits, who, I must admit, are apt to be rather heavyhanded in their ideas of humour. I often wonder if Miss Martin wants to be asked about him, and I would ask like anything if it would please her, though it would be terrible if she wanted to be all-girls-together with me about him, and I sometimes think there is an all-girls-together side of her, if one could get down to it. Katrine can’t imagine why I am interested in what she calls the Martin’s Rogues’ Gallery of portraits. She doesn’t see that, with people like Miss Martin, photographs take the place of speech and give the outsider clues to their lives. But then, Katrine can’t imagine what it must be like to be suppressed in any sort of way, whereas I can. She fell in love with our fishmonger when she was eleven, and made a hero of him, and one morning she happened to go into the shop when he was rating the cashier for a muddled order, and she came home quite pallid and said she had now got to the age when all desire shall cease, which was the last verse she had learnt, and mother would have shrieked, except for hurting her feelings.
Sometimes I look forward to that time, myself, as love goes on for ever, and the sex part is only an interlude, and, except for making babies, doesn’t really matter anything like as much as people pretend. It is merely expedient, while love has no fish to fry, which gives one persons in one’s life like Saffy and Toddy.
Katrine was so miserable at the idea of our having a Hallowe’en party without her that we promised we would give it up, and mother suggested one on the first of November, as it is All Souls’ Eve, which didn’t seem to us to be a legitimate excuse for pumpkins, so we gave up that idea too.
I wonder, if I were dead and allowed to return once a year, whether I should like best to look in at windows I knew and see the living having fun and playing games, or whether I should feel less forgotten if they were sitting there being sad about me? All Souls’ Eve should never have been put into November, because of the little chilly doubts in the hearts of the dead. They should have been allowed to come to us in high summer, when the air is still, and smelling of hot grass and sweet peas, and the moon is large and bland.
Father came back, once, but only once, and very naturally, so as not to frighten us. He was sitting all the evening in the library and was wearing one of his old lounge suits I had forgotten, but remembered at once because of the ink-stain on the sleeve that the cleaner couldn’t get out. It’s upstairs in a cupboard still. He looked up, very kind and pleased to see us when we took it in turns to peep in at the door, and we brought him our best toys and put them where he could enjoy them, and mother put us into our new party dresses for him to see, and told us to tell him everything we were doing, but not to mind if he didn’t answer.
We know now that what Miss Martin would call ‘ghosts’ can speak to one if they want to. Why father only came to see us once, I don’t know, but I expect that he knows we are always here, if wanted.
Katrine’s last days with us are passing, and yet they can’t seem to strike through to me, because of the Toddingtons. I told her so, and she understood at once. Lady Toddington has made her return invitation, and when It was imminent I was afraid. Once more the
monstrous social occasion must be gone through – even for Sheil, with whom Austen Charles has long been a familiar, and if any hitch occurred, one couldn’t guess what would happen. We can’t afford another Saffyn death . . .
I believe Sheil is suspicious about Saffy. We have, at last, re-established him (he came to lunch last week, rather suddenly), but during that time of silence, after Yorkshire, I wonder? I rather think children sense death as cats and dogs do family departure.
That was partly why it was so important that Toddy should take to Sheil. He must love her for two . . . and at last, we had assembled the conditions; Mildred, mother, Sheil and me at the Toddingtons’ house, with Toddy expected home any minute. All as it had been a hundred times before . . . with myself in the strange rôle of guide. Literally, anything might happen. All I could reckon on in advance was the known attraction of Lady Toddington for Sheil.
One of the difficulties is that Mildred has always tended to be the pawn in our game. Her creation was of necessity a more vague affair than Toddy’s. She formed piecemeal, and I think it possible that if we hadn’t known she existed we might never have created her at all. But we played fair. It took a year to get her into definite shape, and Sheil will have remembered that, and our early struggles with her hostess’s personality; would remember that in Skye she herself had put Lady Toddington’s age at eighty-four. Even Lady Toddington’s tea with us hadn’t been much help in materialising her, since, for the time, we were transformed into handers of cake to a visitor – our own familiar Mildred! And so, we had filed in after mother into the Toddington drawing-room. Sheil, in her elf-green frock, sat on a gilt chair, her little paws decorously folded, her eyes upon the door in a shameless waiting for Toddy that, mercifully, only we could interpret. It was the face seen in boxes before the entrance of the leading man. Mother, of course, was being social and brittle and what Katrine and I call Martinesque, and I handed Lady Toddington’s cups with my mind a chaos. It only occurred to me on our way home that the obvious thing would have been to have put that work on to Sheil.
‘Let me see, you have another girl, haven’t you?’ said Lady Toddington.
Sheil started. Inevitable, these jars. I couldn’t protect her against them. She has heard Toddy distantly squabbling with Katrine so often (‘Who is this lady? Introduce me, if you please’), and revelled in the way Katrine riles him, and I knew that everything poor Mildred said was liable to shatter something. Sheil will have to go through it. It’s the price of reality. Only, she is so young . . .
And reasonably soon, there was Toddy’s step on the stairs. He went the round of us, and then shook hands with Sheil very kindly, no jot of courtesy abated because she was her age, but she went white. I almost got up. His eye was on me. It was my unfair advantage. I balanced my cup, and somehow put my plate in safety. Inside me I was shouting, ‘Don’t you remember? It’s Sheil.’
Sir Herbert said, ‘Mildred, I’m going to ring for some more tea. Mine is a little cold; I’m afraid I was rather late,’ and Sheil caught my eye and considered the remark, her head on one side. I made the excuse of cakes the opportunity for leaning over her.
‘He’s got to say things. All by himself,’ I reminded under my breath, and the strained look on her face passed.
‘But – he’s being rather a pompadour,’ she whispered.
‘Then make the most of it. You know he “pomps.” Think of the scene he had with Katrine last week!’
Sheil laughed aloud. Lady Toddington put a plate down, abruptly, and Sir Herbert came over to us, swept off his pince-nez, at which gesture Sheil beamed.
‘I believe I have to thank a certain young lady for a bunch of violets. It was very sweet and kind of you.’
Sheil leant forward, earnestly. ‘Did you show them to Henry?’
‘Henry?’
‘She means Mr , I’ve forgotten his name. Your Associate,’ I put in, helplessly.
‘Nicholls,’ prompted Sheil.
‘Mathewson. No. I don’t think I gave him the opportunity. A lady’s gift, you know . . . ’ ‘Katrine said he’d say you oughtn’t to accept them, and that I was a Very Strange Young Person. But Katrine isn’t interested in him. She doesn’t know what a dear he really is,’ Sheil explained.
‘He is a very charming fellow,’ admitted Sir Herbert.
‘Isn’t he!’ said Sheil. ‘It must be so more than wonderful for you to have him choose you your favourite lunch things. Is he very disappointed when you go out to the Garrick or the Athenelium?’
Sir Herbert suddenly shook. ‘I should think he’s thankful to be rid of me. I’m rather a terrific old party, you know.’
Sheil nodded. ‘You always say that.’
‘But I don’t lunch out very much.’ (Here I forgot my policeman rôle, and leant forward myself.) ‘Sometimes I just have a chop sent in to my room, but far more often I lunch in the Judges’ Mess. The ABC. does the catering.’
‘Yes,’ I answered, ‘cod and shrimp sauce, one-and-two the plate.’
Sheil beamed again. ‘The lambs’ tongues are one-and-two as well. We think they ought to be tenpence. But perhaps the Law tongues for the Judges are special and different.’
‘Dear me,’ responded Sir Herbert, ‘you’ve been reading the menu in the hall.’
‘Oh yes. Deirdre always tells us what you’ve had, only of course she thought the menu was only for barristers and people that it didn’t matter what they ate. You see, we never thought of you and boiled cod.’
The wintry smile was very kind. ‘My dear, I assure you I eat the most ordinary things.’
‘Mother says you do, but it’s wonderfully difficult to believe.’ Here the maid came in with the tea, and Sheil concentrated upon her. ‘She’s not very like Henderson,’ she mused, ‘but that doesn’t matter a terrible lot.’ Ming waddled in, but to her, forewarned, he was so much dog with no element of surprise. Sir Herbert asked her ‘if she had some pet?’ and the formal, familiar phrasing, together with his outrageous ignorance of Crellie, caused in both of us a Freudian ‘conflict,’ and I thought it was probably time to steer the conversation from anything unfortunate. Sheil, in her present state, was capable of describing his habits after a full meal . . .
‘Yes. Crellie. A wire-haired terrier,’ I replied, and at this insane description Sheil looked reproachful. She put a little paw on his knee. ‘Does Ming do anything interesting?’
‘No,’ answered Sir Herbert, promptly.
‘We thought perhaps he wouldn’t, though Katrine said she was certain he tooled leather, or hammered on copper. It’s Bottles we really love, you know.’
‘Bottles? Bottles of what, pray?’
‘Your Bottles. The fox-terrier. Does he still go for walks with you round the Square after dinner?’
I waited and let them have it out. There was nothing else to do. It had to come, sooner or later.
Sir Herbert put his hand over hers. ‘Aren’t you confusing me with someone else, dear?’ Sheil’s eyes hardened, and he looked anxiously at me. I urgently sent him his cue, and he seemed to recognise an SOS.
‘Bottles . . . m’m . . . what a delightful name for a dog! I feel I have missed a lot in not having a Bottles. And what does Crellie – is it? do?’
‘Oh, nothing,’ answered Sheil distantly.
‘He’s rather High Church,’ I said, recklessly, ‘and after he was the Pope, he used to take the services at St Albans, Teddington, though it never quite came down to confessions.’
Sir Herbert made one of his Bench faces, and then shook again.
‘A Dominican,’ he suggested, ‘a watchdog of the Lord. Well . . . I can conceive that to confess to a terrier would be better than silence, if one loved the beast.’
‘I don’t want to be rude, but I couldn’t confess to Ming,’ Sheil piped.
‘Whyever not?’ asked Lady Toddington, who was busy conducting a temporary vacuum with mother. ‘He’s a temple dog!’
‘Bravo, Mildred!’ answered Sir Herbert, dryly, and her face g
rew pink.
‘Well – he is!’
‘And don’t say “whyever,”’ I murmured, not daring to catch anybody’s eye.
‘Well, what I always think is: there’s nothing like a dog for company,’ announced Lady Toddington, and at this I hastily looked out of the window and dragged Sheil to it as well. ‘A man with a funny hat,’ I quavered aloud, giving her a hard pinch, and we surveyed the empty street and went on laughing. But Sir Herbert joined us. ‘I see no such person,’ he remarked austerely. ‘He’s gone,’ I answered firmly.
‘And aren’t you coming to talk to me, Sheil?’ asked Lady Toddington.
Sheil went at once. I’m always so thankful that ‘in spite of all temptations’ she isn’t a little drawing-room beast. Meanwhile, much as I love her, I had got Toddy to myself.
14
It was very difficult to believe that he was so near to one that one could touch him. All the others have been so diversely inaccessible. And, for the first time, there were p’s and q’s to be remembered, and one’s age telling against one.
‘My very dear child’ . . . he’d said that so often and written it, in his letters. And now I was, I suppose, Miss Carne.
And then I looked him in the eye, and saw that I wasn’t doomed to that. Something was coming.
He said, ‘Did I hurt your sister’s feelings about the dogs?’ ‘It’s too long to explain. But we forgot you didn’t know about Crellie and Bottles.’
‘We?’
‘Yes. She forgot more than I did, of course. But I’m in it, too.’
He absently swung his pince-nez. ‘A game?’
‘Let’s call it that.’
‘It sounds full of possibilities. A game . . . m’m . . . and I didn’t play nicely. One would like to please her. What a singularly attractive small person it is! But why she is interested in me is really baffling.’
‘You mean: “To-day, I gave the mother of an unwanted baby penal servitude for throwing it over Blackfriars Bridge, and yesterday I sent a man to the gallows.”’
The Brontes Went to Woolworths Page 9