Unfinished Portrait

by Christie, writing as Mary Westmacott, Agatha

  Peter Maitland was tall and dark. He was shy, but concealed it under a lazy pleasant manner. The Maitlands were all much the same, good-natured, companionable, and easy-going. They never hurried themselves for anyone or anything. If they missed a train – well, there would be another one some time. If they were late in getting home for lunch – well, they supposed someone would have kept them something to eat. They had no ambitions and no energies. Peter was the most marked example of the family traits. No one had ever seen Peter hurry. ‘All the same a hundred years hence,’ was his motto.

  Ellie’s wedding was a typical Maitland affair. Mrs Maitland, who was large and vague and good-natured, never got up till midday and frequently forgot to order any meals. ‘Getting Mum into her wedding garments’ was the chief business of the morning. Owing to Mum’s distaste for trying on, her oyster satin was found to be uncomfortably tight. The bride fussed round her – and all was made comfortable by a judicious use of the scissors and a spray of orchids to cover the deficiency. Celia was at the house early – to help – and it certainly seemed at one point as though Ellie was never going to get married that day. At the moment she should have been putting the final touches to her appearance, she was sitting in a chemise placidly manicuring her toenails.

  ‘I meant to have done this last night,’ she explained. ‘But somehow I didn’t seem to have time.’

  ‘The carriage has come, Ellie.’

  ‘Has it? Oh, well, somebody had better telephone to Tom and tell him I shall be about half an hour late.’

  ‘Poor little Tom,’ she added reflectively. ‘He’s such a dear little fellow. I shouldn’t like him to be dithering in the church thinking I’d changed my mind.’

  Ellie had grown very tall – she was nearly six foot. Her bridegroom was five foot five, and as Ellie described it, ‘such a merry little fellow – and a sweet little nature.’

  While Ellie was finally being induced to finish her toilet, Celia wandered into the garden, where Captain Peter Maitland was smoking a placid pipe, not in the least concerned by the tardiness of his sister.

  ‘Thomas is a sensible fellow,’ he said. ‘He knows what she is like. He won’t expect her to be on time.’

  He was a little shy talking to Celia, but, as is often the case when two shy people get together, they soon found it easy to talk to each other.

  ‘Expect you find us a rum family?’ said Peter.

  ‘You don’t seem to have much sense of time,’ said Celia laughing.

  ‘Well, why spend your life rushing? Take it easy – enjoy yourself.’

  ‘Does one ever get anywhere that way?’

  ‘Where is there to get to? One thing is very like another in this life.’

  When he was at home on leave, Peter Maitland usually refused all invitations. He hated ‘poodle faking’ he said. He did not dance, and he played tennis or golf with men or his own sisters. But after the wedding he seemed to adopt Celia as an extra sister. He and she and Janet used to do things together. Then Ralph Graham, recovering from Celia’s refusal, began to be attracted to Janet, and the trio became a foursome. Finally it split into couples – Janet and Ralph and Celia and Peter.

  Peter used to instruct Celia in the game of golf.

  ‘We won’t hurry ourselves, mind. Just a few holes and take it easy – and sit down and smoke a pipe if it gets too hot.’

  The programme suited Celia very well. She had no ‘eye’ for games – which fact depressed her only a little less than her lack of ‘a figure’. But Peter made her feel that it didn’t matter.

  ‘You don’t want to be a pro – or a pot hunter. Just get a little fun out of it – that’s all.’

  Peter himself was extraordinarily good at all games. He had a natural flair for athletics. He could have been in the front rank but for his constitutional laziness. But he preferred, as he said, to treat games as games. ‘Why make a business of the thing?’

  He got on very well with Celia’s mother. She was fond of all the Maitland family, and Peter, with his lazy, easy charm, his pleasant manners, and his undoubted sweetness of disposition, was her favourite.

  ‘You don’t need to worry about Celia,’ he said when he suggested that they should ride together. ‘I’ll look after her. I will – really – look after her.’

  Miriam knew what he meant. She felt Peter Maitland was to be trusted.

  He knew a little of how the land lay between Celia and her major. Vaguely, in a delicate way, he gave her advice.

  ‘A girl like you, Celia, ought to marry a fellow with a bit of the ‘oof’. You’re the kind that wants looking after. I don’t mean you ought to marry a beastly Jew boy – nothing like that. But a decent fellow who’s fond of sport and all that – and who could look after you.’

  When Peter’s leave was up and he rejoined his regiment, which was stationed at Aldershot, Celia missed him very much. She wrote to him, and he to her – easy colloquial letters that were very much like the way he talked.

  When Johnnie de Burgh finally accepted his dismissal, Celia felt rather flat. The effort to withstand his influence had taken more out of her than she knew. No sooner had the final break occurred than she wondered whether, after all, she didn’t regret … Perhaps she did care for him more than she thought. She missed the excitement of his letters, of his presents, of his continual siege.

  She was uncertain of her mother’s attitude. Was Miriam relieved or disappointed? Sometimes she thought one and sometimes the other, and as a matter of fact was not far from the truth in so thinking.

  Miriam’s first sensation had been one of relief. She had never really liked Johnnie de Burgh – she had never quite trusted him – though she could never put her finger on exactly where the distrust lay. Certainly he was devoted to Celia. His past had been nothing outrageous – and indeed Miriam had been brought up in the belief that a man who has sown his wild oats is likely to make a better husband.

  The thing that worried her most was her own health. The heart attacks that she once suffered from at long distant intervals were becoming more frequent. From the humming and hawing and diplomatic language of doctors she had formed the conclusion that while she might have long years of life in front of her – she might equally well die suddenly. And then, what was to become of Celia? There was so little money. How little only Miriam knew.

  So little – little – money.

  COMMENT BY J.L.

  It would strike us in these days: ‘But why on earth, if there was so little money, didn’t she train Celia for a profession?’

  But I don’t think that would ever have occurred to Miriam. She was, I should imagine, intensely receptive to new thought and new ideas – but I don’t think that that particular idea had come her way. And if it had, I don’t think she would have taken to it readily.

  I take it that she knew the peculiar vulnerability of Celia. You may say that that might have been altered with a different training, but I don’t believe that that is so. Like all people who live chiefly by the inner vision, Celia was peculiarly impervious to influences from outside. She was stupid when it came to realities.

  I think Miriam was aware of her daughter’s deficiencies. I think her choice of reading – her insisting on Balzac and other French novelists – was done with an object. The French are great realists. I think she wanted Celia to realize life and human nature for what it is, something common, sensual, splendid, sordid, tragic, and intensely comic. She did not succeed, because Celia’s nature matched her appearance – she was Scandinavian in feeling. For her the long Sagas, the heroic tales of voyages and heroes. As she clung to fairy tales in childhood, so she preferred Maeterlinck and Fiona MacLeod and Yeats when she grew up. She read the other books, but they seemed as unreal to her as fairy stories and fantasies seem annoying to a practical realist.

  We are as we are born. Some Scandinavian ancestor lived again in Celia. The robust Grannie, the merry and jovial John, the mercurial Miriam – one of these passed on the secret strain that they posses
sed unknown to themselves.

  It is interesting to see how completely her brother drops out of Celia’s narrative. And yet Cyril must often have been there – on holidays – on leave.

  Cyril went into the army and had gone abroad to India before Celia came out. He never loomed very large in her life – or in Miriam’s. He was, I gather, a great source of expense when he was first in the army. Later he married, left the army, and went to Rhodesia to farm. As a personality he faded from Celia’s life.

  8 Jim and Peter

  1

  Both Miriam and her daughter believed in prayer. Celia’s prayers had been first conscientious and conscious of sin, and later had been spiritual and ascetic. But she never broke herself of her little-girl habit of praying over everything that happened. Celia never went into a ballroom without murmuring: ‘Oh, God, don’t let me be shy. Oh, please God, don’t let me be shy. And don’t let my neck get red.’ At dinner parties she prayed: ‘Please, God, let me think of something to say.’ She prayed that she might manage her programme well and dance with the people she wanted to. She prayed that it might not rain when they started on a picnic.

  Miriam’s prayers were more intense and more arrogant. She was, in truth, an arrogant woman. For her darling she did not ask, she demanded things of God! Her prayers were so intense, so burning, that she could not believe they would not be answered. And perhaps most of us, when we say our prayers have been unanswered, really mean that the answer has been No.

  She had not been sure whether Johnnie de Burgh was an answer to prayer or not, but she was quite sure that Jim Grant was.

  Jim was keen on taking up farming, and his people sent him to a farm near Miriam on purpose. They felt that she would keep an eye on the boy. It would help him to keep out of mischief.

  Jim at twenty-three was almost exactly like Jim at thirteen had been. The same good-humoured, high-cheekboned face, the same round, intensely dark blue eyes, the same good-humoured, efficient manner. The same dazzling smile, and the same way of throwing back his head and laughing.

  Jim was twenty-three and heart whole. It was spring and he was a strong, healthy young man. He came often to Miriam’s house, and Celia was young and fair and beautiful, and since nature is nature, he fell in love.

  To Celia, it was another friendship like her friendship with Peter Maitland, only that she admired Jim’s character more. She had always felt that Peter was almost too ‘slack’. He had no ambition. Jim was full of ambition. He was young and intensely solemn about life. The words ‘life is real, life is earnest’, might have been written for Jim. His desire to take up farming was not rooted in a love of the soil. He was interested in the practical scientific side of farming. Farming in England ought to be made to pay much better than it did. It only needed science and will power. Jim was very strong on will power. He had books about it which he lent to Celia. He was very fond of lending books. He was also interested in theosophy, bimetallism, economics, and Christian Science.

  He liked Celia because she listened so attentively. She read all the books and made intelligent comments on them.

  If Johnnie de Burgh’s courtship of Celia had been physical, Jim Grant’s was almost entirely intellectual. At this time in his career, he was simply bursting with serious ideas – almost to the point of being priggish. When Celia liked him best was not when he was seriously discussing ethics or Mrs Eddy, but when he threw back his head and laughed.

  Johnnie de Burgh’s love-making had taken her by surprise, but she realized Jim was going to ask her to marry him some time before he did.

  Sometimes Celia felt life was a pattern: you wove in and out of it like a shuttle, obedient to the design imposed upon you. Jim, she began to suppose, was her pattern. He was her destiny, appointed from the beginning. How happy her mother looked nowadays.

  Jim was a dear – she liked him immensely. Some day soon he would ask her to marry him and then she would feel as she had felt with Major de Burgh (she always thought of him as that in her mind, never as Johnnie) – excited and troubled – her heart beating fast …

  Jim proposed to her one Sunday afternoon. He had planned to do so some weeks beforehand. He liked making plans and keeping to them. He felt it was an efficient way of living.

  It was a wet afternoon. They were sitting in the schoolroom after tea. Celia had been playing and singing. Jim liked Gilbert and Sullivan.

  After the singing they sat on the sofa and discussed socialism and the Good of Man. After that, there was a pause. Celia said something about Mrs Besant, but Jim answered rather at random.

  There was another pause, and then Jim got rather red and said:

  ‘I expect you know I am awfully fond of you, Celia. Would you like to be engaged, or would you rather wait a bit? I think we should be very happy together. We’ve got so many tastes in common.’

  He was not so calm as he sounded. If Celia had been older she would have realized this. She would have seen the significance of the slight tremble of his lips, the nervous hand that plucked at a sofa cushion.

  As it was – well, what was she to say?

  She didn’t know – so she said nothing.

  ‘I think you like me?’ said Jim.

  ‘I do – oh, I do,’ cried Celia eagerly.

  ‘That’s the most important thing,’ said Jim. ‘That people should really like each other. That lasts. Passion’ – he got a little pink as he said the word – ‘doesn’t. I think you and I would be ideally happy, Celia. I want to marry young.’ He paused, then said: ‘Look here, I think the fairest thing would be for us to be engaged on trial, as it were, for six months. We needn’t tell anyone except your mother and mine. Then, at the end of six months, you can make up your mind definitely.’

  Celia reflected a minute.

  ‘Do you think that’s fair? I mean, I mightn’t – even then –’

  ‘If you don’t – then of course we oughtn’t to marry. But you will. I know it’s going to be all right.’

  What comfortable assurance there was in his voice. He was so sure. He knew.

  ‘Very well,’ said Celia and smiled.

  She expected him to kiss her, but he didn’t. He wanted to badly, but he felt shy. They went on discussing socialism and man – not perhaps quite so logically as they might have done.

  Then Jim said it was time to go, and got up.

  They stood for a minute awkwardly.

  ‘Well,’ said Jim, ‘so long. I’ll be over next Sunday – perhaps before. And I’ll write.’ He hesitated. ‘I – shall – will you give me a kiss, Celia?’

  They kissed. Rather awkwardly …

  It was exactly like kissing Cyril, Celia thought. Only, she reflected, Cyril never wanted to kiss anybody …

  Well, that was that. She was engaged to Jim.

  2

  Miriam’s happiness was so overflowing that it made Celia feel quite enthusiastic over her engagement.

  ‘Darling, I’m so happy about you. He’s such a dear boy. Honest and manly, and he’ll take care of you. And they are such old friends and were so fond of your dear father. It seems so wonderful that it should have come about like this – their son and our daughter. Oh, Celia, I was so unhappy all the time with Major de Burgh. I felt somehow that it wasn’t right … not the thing for you.’

  She paused and said suddenly:

  ‘And I’ve been afraid of myself.’

  ‘Of yourself?’

  ‘Yes, I’ve wanted so badly to keep you with me … Not to have you marry. I’ve wanted to be selfish. I’ve said that you would lead a more sheltered life – no cares, no children, no troubles … If it hadn’t been that I could have left you so little – so very little to live upon, I would have been sorely tempted … It’s very hard, Celia, for mothers not to be selfish.’

  ‘Nonsense,’ said Celia. ‘You would have been dreadfully humiliated when other girls got married.’

  She had noted with some amusement her mother’s intense jealousy on her behalf. Were another girl better
dressed, more amusing in conversation, Miriam immediately displayed a frenzied annoyance quite unshared by Celia. Her mother had hated it when Ellie Maitland got married. The only girls Miriam would speak kindly of were girls so plain or so dowdy as not in any way to rival Celia. This trait in her mother sometimes annoyed Celia but more often warmed her heart towards her. Darling thing, what a ridiculous mother bird she was with her ruffled plumage! So absurdly illogical … But it was sweet of her, all the same. Like all Miriam’s actions and feelings, it was so violent.

  She was glad her mother was so happy. It had indeed all come about in a very wonderful way. It was nice to be marrying into a family of ‘old friends’. And she certainly did like Jim better than anyone else she knew – much, much better. He was just the kind of man she had always imagined having as a husband. Young, masterful, full of ideals.

  Did girls always feel depressed when they got engaged? Perhaps they did. It was so final – so irrevocable.

  She yawned as she picked up Mrs Besant. Theosophy depressed her too. A lot of it seemed so silly …

  Bimetallism was better …

  Everything was rather dull – much duller than it had been two days ago.

  3

  There was a letter on her plate next morning addressed in Jim’s handwriting. A little flush rose in Celia’s cheek. A letter from Jim. Her first letter since …

  She felt, for the first time, a little excited. He hadn’t said much, but perhaps in a letter …

  She took it out in the garden and opened it.

  Dearest Celia [wrote Jim]: I got back very late for supper. Old Mrs Cray was rather annoyed but old Cray was rather amusing. He told her not to fuss – I’d been courting, he said. They really are awfully nice, simple people – their jokes are good-natured. I wish they were a little more receptive to new ideas – in farming, I mean. He doesn’t seem to have read anything on the subject and to be quite content to run the farm just like his great-grandfather did. I suppose agriculture is always more reactionary than anything else. It’s the peasant instinct rooted in the soil.