She waited until the tirade was over, her clear, somewhat melancholy eyes fixed on the Jew’s animated face. He always threw her mind into a chaos. Then he suddenly became tranquil and, touching the back of her hand with his forefinger, spoke a few words which she remembered.
‘You are obstinate. That is a good thing to be. But think sometimes, “There – are – some – things – I – cannot – do” and you will go farther. You will not waste so much time. Because you have not all natures you cannot be all things; because you cannot be good, bad, selfish, self-denying, religious, blasphemous and so on, you cannot do all things.’
‘I can be all those things.’
‘For a little while; not consistently.’
‘Then I may have a mood when I can play Chopin.’
He shrugged his shoulders: ‘Perhaps; I think not. You are not cynical. It isn’t your direction. There – are – some – things – you – cannot – do! And plenty of very good ones that you can. Stick to those. Remember. What a lecture! There is Leyden.’
Someone was knocking at the door. Phoebe gathered up her music and put on her gloves. The Jew was dragging the curtain across the window.
‘I’ve given you too long,’ said he briskly; in a totally different, more everyday, and less arrestingly sincere tone. ‘Hurry up. Come in, Leyden.’
There entered a tall spectacled boy of nineteen in a blue, tight-waisted overcoat. He was carrying a violin case and looking at the ground as though overcome by shyness. He brought with him a faint odour of eucalyptus.
‘Please, Mr Cohen, I want to ask you a favour. Will you give me my lesson another time.’ He was a Dutch boy, speaking English correctly, but in a stiff, toneless voice. He was blushing; the Jew looked at him in amusement, for it was the first time Leyden had ever asserted himself in that room.
‘All right,’ he said, ‘I’ll give you an hour tonight – nine to ten.’
‘Thank you so much – I am greatly obliged.’
He stood, painfully embarrassed by a belated idea. Ought he to have greeted Phoebe? They had spoken several times. He felt he had been rude. The old man was looking at him sardonically…. With a great effort he opened the door for her. It was difficult to speak with Mr Cohen listening, so obviously listening.
‘You are going home, Miss Kilminster?’
‘Yes. Goodbye,’ she said, confused.
‘May I walk with you?’
‘Oh, yes, of course!’
Mr Cohen was positively laughing.
‘Goodbye,’ they all cried at once. Leyden shut the door with a bang. He had to open it again to free a corner of his coat. He stood with Phoebe at the head of the bare, draughty stairs which wound down into darkness between cold, blue walls. She gave him a shy glance, arranged her glove, and led the way. Leyden watched her fair plaits swing against her shoulders.
When they were outside he gently took possession of her music case.
‘I shouldn’t like to live in a churchyard,’ she began as they descended the steps. These were no more than nervous words meaning nothing, for she loved the elegant town-house, and its row of sedate neighbours, which looked across the green turf to the church.
‘Oh yes, I would like to live here. It seems to me to be beautiful and nobody is buried here now.’
It was slightly misty. She raised her eyes to the tall spire going up, up into the sky, still smouldering from a fiery sunset. They walked in silence for some minutes, Leyden carrying the music case. Her face was happy. How did she guess the boy had put off his music lesson in order to walk with her? She knew it. And so did the master, but luckily Leyden was not aware of this, or he would have smarted with humiliation.
It was not far to Phoebe’s home. He realised that he must speak at once.
‘So you are going to Paris, Miss Kilminster?’
‘Yes; after Christmas; my grandmother is taking me.’
‘You have left school?’
‘Oh yes. We – my grandmother and I – don’t believe in schools for old people.’
‘Oh… oh,’ Leyden laughed. His cheeks were rosy from the cold and his spectacles were dim. Phoebe noticed that the mist had already damped his thick rough hair. He wore no hat.
‘But you tell – told me that you do not speak French very well. What will you do?’
‘I shall say “yes” or “no”.’
‘And suppose that you wish to buy something?’
‘I shall draw a little picture of it.’
‘Bravo,’ exclaimed he, laughing again. They were very near the grandmother’s house.
‘You would do better to carry a dictionary, mademoiselle. Regardez!’
On his open hand, extended towards her, lay two tiny red volumes, smaller than a match box. ‘Look at them,’ he said hoarsely. He cleared his throat. ‘They are for you.’
Phoebe was so startled, so acutely embarrassed, and so delighted, that she was absolutely dumb. Look what began to happen when you were seventeen!
‘Oh monsieur c’est trop! Vous êtes vraiment trop bon,’ was all she could utter in her confusion, while Leyden dropped the music case and one dictionary.
‘Thank you very much,’ Phoebe continued enthusiastically.
‘It is nothing. It makes me very pleased.’
Then he handed her both dictionaries, and made her a bow. Their two bright laughing faces were curiously childish and expectant. They were soon at the grandmother’s steps. Phoebe took her case and turned on the bottom step to say goodbye. He had laid one hand in its woollen glove on the narrow iron railing, and so, he looked up at her.
‘Au revoir, Miss Kilminster. I shall see you perhaps, next Monday?’
‘Yes…’ she replied uncertainly, ‘yes, yes. Goodbye,’ and she ran up the stairs trembling.
‘Thank you,’ she called again as she opened the door. Leyden smiled and walked away with a manly stride.
Phoebe rushed upstairs to her room, tore off her hat with some of Dorothy’s impetuosity and flung herself into a chair, her elbows on the windowsill. The garden below was full of dead leaves. There was a bare fig tree, and one frosty red rosebud hanging heavily from the bush.
‘He is too young,’ she thought wildly, and all the time she was smiling a lovely, absent smile. Her expression suddenly changed, but before it was clearly defined her eye fell on the clock. It was nearly five, and she would be late for tea. She went to the mirror, took off her coat, and combed the top of her head. There she stood in a narrow dark dress, a tall figure which promised grace.
* * *
Phoebe’s grandmother was sixty-seven years old. She was the widow of a Cardiff doctor who had had a large practice, worked indefatigably, and managed to leave her very comfortably off. Her father had been a Welsh farmer, yet love of luxury and delight in all beautiful things was born in her. From her, Phoebe inherited her lovely voice, though it would never be as fine as the grandmother’s had been in its prime.
The doctor, who was passionately devoted to music, had trained his wife to sing. In his youth he taught in a Sunday school, and at a picnic party of his pupils he noticed a newcomer, a little wild girl in a red frock, who was dancing and shouting like a creature possessed. He watched her; presently she joined in a singing round game, always making more noise than all the others put together. He pointed at her: ‘You, little girl in red, stop shouting and sing properly.’
Afterwards he caught hold of her as she was running past him.
‘What is your name?’ he asked, looking at her earnestly.
‘Eirian Thomas.’
‘Well, Eirian, how old are you?’
‘Twelve.’
She was a small child. He had not guessed she was so old.
‘Listen to me. Eirian, and stand still while I speak to you. There’s plenty of time for play. You can sing very well, so do not shout so much. Go and learn a song.’
She ran off laughing.
The young doctor noted her comings and goings until she was fifteen years old. One day he w
ent quite a long way to her father’s farm on purpose to ask her if she would sing in a competition next day. He thought she had grown more serious; she was studying, a table was littered with her books.
He was surprised when she actually turned up at the competition. She was just the same fascinating, laughing girl, always moving, her curly hair standing out all round her head.
The accompanist did not take her seriously. He refused to play for her.
‘Go away. You can’t sing,’ said he with a frown.
‘I’ll play for you,’ said the doctor.
She sang four bars of an old religious song and then broke down in tears. The competition was won; she possessed a rare contralto.
The doctor began to teach her, but there came an interlude in their relationship, a long interlude, when the doctor was forgotten, and the voice unused. This bit of romantic history, both fantastic and pathetic, did not lead to marriage, and when it was over, remained absolutely secret and unguessed by people who knew her really well. She never alluded to it. It developed her cultured tastes and deepened her naturally quick observation. She became a singularly loving and sympathetic woman whose marked virtues of charity and human kindliness were tinged by impatience. At the age of twenty-four she married her doctor. He taught her much besides singing. After her marriage she refused to give concerts and could hardly be prevailed upon to use her voice in public at all. To a very few she was known as the Welsh Nightingale. When the doctor died she gave it up altogether. At her present age she was still a vital impulsive person who was happy in her own company. Phoebe was the only grandchild in whom she took any interest. Even she had no idea of Eirian’s astonishing past. Her only confidant died with the doctor.
* * *
When Phoebe entered the drawing room she found her grandmother entertaining a visitor. This was a lady verging on middle age, wearing a fur coat which was pushed back from her shoulders, and talking in a plaintive voice while she held her tea cup close to her face.
‘All those monstrous bungalows on our beautiful road,’ she was saying as if concluding a long speech: ‘a group of splendid old elms are to come down next. There’s no end to it.’
Eirian nodded and gazed at the woman’s arched eyelids, and dolefully drooping mouth. Phoebe advanced, shook hands, and taking some bread and butter, sat down on a stool.
When the visitor had gone, Eirian opened the glass door leading into the garden and called the dog. There was a smell of dead leaves mingling with wood burning on the hearth. The room was papered in dull old gold, the carpet was like soft golden moss, the furniture, of which there was little, was solid and old. There were no pictures and few ornaments save a large Buddha, the size of a small child, in gilded wood sitting tranquilly on a chest.
Eirian shut the door.
‘If he wants to come in now he can go through the kitchen,’ she said, smiling at Phoebe. She took up a book. She was a very small woman, whose tiny, tintless face was thin and seamed. The eye sockets were peculiarly deep and age did not seem to have affected her charming blue eyes… her hair was still bushy. After all she was the little girl in the red dress who danced so wildly.
Eirian rang the bell. The tea things were removed by a morose-looking parlour maid with a fringe, whose cap was askew.
Eirian took a letter off the mantelpiece and passed it to Phoebe remarking: ‘From your mother. Something wrong, as usual. You’d better read it, I think.’
She went back to her book. Phoebe opened the letter which was very long and rather untidily written.
‘MY DEAR MOTHER,
Please send Phoebe home at once. I don’t see why I should be expected to bear everything alone, and really, she has had an easy time for two years, while I have had to put up with it all by myself. Matt’s conduct has been most annoying, although until lately he has not drunk nearly so much. Now it’s beginning all over again, for never, in all our unhappy married life has he been so inconsiderate and sharp tempered as he has during the last three weeks. He drinks again, and shuts himself up alone. Really, he looks ghastly, and I’m quite prepared to admit that it may be due to illness but it isn’t my fault, and I don’t see why I should have to put up with it any longer by myself. Phoebe ought to come back and see if she can do anything.
‘Yesterday, after sulking all day on something, and looking like a corpse, there was an insane outburst when he went for Philip and Rosamund and me, until both of them were crying and I hit him with the hearth brush. Then he stalked out of the room and sat in the hall with his head in his hands. By that time I was crying myself. I went to him and asked him what on earth was the matter. He said, “nothing, Dolly,” and when I begged him to tell me, absolutely screamed at me and ran upstairs shouting, “Leave me alone, or I’ll get out of all this for good”; who could stand such treatment from their husband? Do you think he could have been threatening suicide?
‘Today he has not left the little room he has upstairs; the door is locked and he has had no food, although I carried up a tray myself. I’m sure he is drinking. It isn’t fair on me and the children.
‘To tell you the absolute truth, I sometimes wonder if he isn’t going out of his mind. It sounds dreadful, but, if you had been through some of the scenes I have, you would probably believe me.
‘The other night he came into my bedroom at two o’clock in the morning and woke me up. He was fully dressed and sat on the end of my bed. He was holding his head, and without a doubt he had been drinking. I remember what he said, because it seemed so irrelevant and ridiculous: “Don’t you think it is easier to bear going without something all your life than if you find it and lose it?”
‘I said, “What do you mean?” He repeated the words. I may not have given them exactly as he spoke them, but almost. It was very involved, and he spoke as though he were talking in his sleep. I was very tired. I sat up and tried to get him to say something reasonable. I asked him if this business of Easter were worrying him and he answered, “Good God, no! Why should you think that?” Then he got up and went to the window for air. He said he felt as though great stones were falling on his head. All this at two in the morning! At last he went out.
‘I haven’t told you what happened here last week. As though we haven’t enough trouble of our own, Easter must go and have an appalling row with his wife, which has resulted in her formally suing for a separation or something of that sort. I think she is a very foolish, weak-minded, hysterical woman – just the sort of person to make trouble wherever she goes. I imagined Matt might be upset in case he has to be a witness, as he saw her directly afterwards. It is so annoying to be mixed up in servants’ affairs. All terribly unpleasant. The summons was served on Easter the day before yesterday in our yard. Matt said he saw the constable talking to Easter and handing him the summons. Easter tore it up and cursed and swore he would not go, but afterwards he seems to have told Matt he would. The case will come off next week.
‘I tried to make Matt tell me what he saw the night of the row and he said he had heard a woman scream, and gone downstairs and found Easter’s wife in the pantry, crying with her child in her arms and half her hair cut off. He gave her some brandy. Then he looked at me and said: “but you’ll know all about it soon enough.” Certainly I shall; I mean to go to the police court next week and hear everything. This isn’t all. It appears that in addition to being a rotten servant, this man Easter is a perfectly terrible licentious brute. He’s been carrying on with women at Pendoig, and here, in our own village. There’s a farm labourer whose wife has just had a baby he swears is Easter’s, and if ever he has a chance to get at him he’ll kill him. One thing, he oughtn’t to be hanged for doing it.
‘This is a dreadful letter. I tell you, mother, I wish I’d never been born, except for dear, dear Philip who is, thank heaven, very well. But even he spends his time playing with Easter’s odious little boy Shannon, a horrible foxy-haired little brat who is to be found all over the house, even in the drawing room. I thought I’d break that up,
anyway, so I ordered Phil to have nothing more to do with him, and Phil wouldn’t kiss me, wouldn’t come near me, even began to jeer at me, until, on Matt’s advice, I gave way, like a fool. Then I got a governess for Phil. He actually refused point-blank to do any work unless the child was there too. So imagine it, there he sits with his dirty little hands in a box of letters all the morning. And Miss Mason doesn’t object at all.
‘I tell you, we shall be well rid of that brood, for I forgot to say Easter took himself off after receiving the summons and hasn’t come back. Good riddance! I always told Matt to sack him, then all this would never have happened.
‘So please send Phoebe back to cope with her father. I can’t. She can go back later. After all, she’s seventeen. With love.
‘DOROTHY.’
Phoebe folded up this letter carefully and restored it to the envelope. She sat fingering it for a long time. She had turned very white; her face was liable to sudden changes, which seemed almost to transform her features so that one would hardly have recognised the young girl who had been laughing with Leyden in the street.
‘Well?’ said Eirian.
Phoebe passed her the letter and began to thread her fingers in and out of her long plaits.
‘I must go home,’ she said.
Eirian marked her place in the book with her handkerchief, and laid it down on her knees. She watched Phoebe steadily.
‘Do you really think it’s necessary? Can you do anything?’
‘I don’t think I can, Grannie, but I’d better go.’
‘You evidently take it more seriously than I do.’
‘It is serious.’
‘Of course… if your father really is ill. Your mother won’t be of the smallest use – in fact, she’ll make everything ten times worse. But this business of the servants seems to me quite unimportant. Sooner or later one always experiences these things. Your grandfather had a coachman very like this man, who used to get drunk and beat his wife. Your grandfather once got out of the carriage and thrashed him. I was there, and it didn’t upset me. Dorothy has lost her head. Who is this Easter?’
Turf or Stone Page 17