It was then that he told me about his educational experiment. He had sent an Irish peasant’s son, Roderick Stranahan, first to school in Galway and afterward to university in Germany. “And now I’m considering a second experiment,” he added with enthusiasm. “I have an interesting young tenant called Drummond, and I suspect he might benefit from being sent to study at the Agricultural College. Oh, it would benefit me as well as him!” he explained quickly when I commended him on his altruism. “He would return a more enlightened farmer and spread his enlightenment among my other tenants, who are all hopelessly backward in agricultural matters.”
Agriculture was Edward’s chief interest after politics, but as it was not a subject that interested me it seldom provided us with a topic of conversation.
Meanwhile, I was growing no closer to penetrating the steel-plated politeness of Edward’s acquaintances, and eventually I became so dismayed that I even summoned the courage to complain to him. But that was a waste of breath. He merely denied my difficulties existed and assured me that everyone constantly told him how delightful I was.
“I’m so glad,” I said, trying to sound cheerful, but I was plunged into worse gloom than ever. I knew that after all my extensive research I could no longer attribute my failure to my ignorance of English life, so I was forced to assume that my great sin lay in being an eighteen-year-old foreigner. Nothing could alter my age, but I decided that perhaps I could be a little less foreign.
“I’ve made up my mind to be more English than the English,” I said one morning to Patrick. Edward had already gone to the library to dictate letters to his secretary, but Patrick and I were still lingering in the dining room. “I’m going to learn to speak with an English accent.”
“The English have no accent,” said Patrick, astonished. “They speak English. It’s foreigners who have the accent.”
“Oh, bunkum!” I said, hardly knowing whether to laugh or cry, but when he giggled and said how amusing I was I realized tears would be out of place.
“Anyway,” he added, “why do you want to change? The English don’t like foreigners who try not to be foreign. It’s not playing the game at all.”
“But what am I to do?” I wailed, feeling utterly defeated by English insularity.
“Why do anything?” said Patrick. “I think you’re awfully nice just as you are.”
“No one else seems to think so,” I said morosely. “I’ve been here a whole month now, and everyone still seems to think I’m no better than a creature at the zoo.”
“A month is no time at all!” protested Patrick, but unable to reply, I fled from the room, rushed upstairs, drew the curtains around the fourposter bed and burrowed inside under the comforter. There I gave way to the most abject self-pity and wept until I was exhausted. Presently I felt better. Sitting upright in bed, I remembered how in New York people had either ignored me or else hissed behind my back that it was a pity I was so plain. At least now, thanks to Edward, I was never ignored, and I always took care to dress fetchingly. Drawing the curtains once more, I left the bed and inspected my shape in the looking glass. Nothing showed; it was too soon, but the thought of the baby was so cheering that I no longer minded the middle-aged English regarding me as a juvenile freak. In fact I was even able to concede that Patrick was right and I had been expecting too much too soon.
Later I felt proud that I had reasoned myself into such a philosophical frame of mind, but nevertheless when Edward mentioned that evening that it was time for us to go down to the country, I at once longed to exchange the stultified grandeur of London for the pastoral peace of Woodhammer Hall.
III
One of the most dispiriting aspects of my introduction to London society had been that I had found it an ordeal even though the majority of people were out of town following the parliamentary recess. If I had been intimidated by the minority, how would I survive next year’s Season, when I would be obliged to cope with society en masse? However, I put such gloomy speculations behind me when we left London and began to look forward to my first glimpse of Warwickshire.
Edward’s annual travels, like those of other members of his class, usually fell into a steady pattern. When Parliament was sitting he would remain in London, his stay broken only by occasional lightning visits to Woodhammer or Cashelmara, but when Parliament rose he would retire to Ireland for a couple of months. Returning to England in October, he would respond to invitations to visit his friends before he journeyed to Woodhammer Hall, where he in his turn would issue invitations, look over his estate and indulge his passion for hunting. At Christmas it was time for Ireland again, but he would be back in London by mid-January, when Parliament usually reconvened. However, I had thoroughly disrupted his habits that year, first by marrying him in June in the middle of the Season, then by taking him away for three months on our honeymoon and finally by becoming pregnant and making the long journey to Ireland impracticable. Since I felt so well I had been willing to go, but Edward had refused to entertain the idea.
“Cashelmara is much too remote for you at present,” he said at once, “and if you had any kind of mishap God knows how long it would take to summon the nearest doctor. No, you must remain in England for the next few months.”
He had even suggested I might prefer to stay in London until after the baby was born, but the thought of foregoing my escape to the country appalled me.
“The country air will be so bracing,” I said winningly, “and besides, we shall be back in London by January, shan’t we?”
So with my doctor’s grudging consent we departed in November for Woodhammer, and I prepared myself for two months of bliss.
But I was not accustomed to country living. After a life spent in New York I found my pastoral peace frighteningly quiet and the leisured pace of life positively sepulchral.
“There’s no need for you to pay or receive calls now that your condition is more advanced,” said Edward firmly after our arrival. “You must take every opportunity to lead a quiet secluded life.”
“Just like a nun!” I exclaimed, smiling to hide my despair. “Dearest, I would so like to meet more of your friends. Couldn’t we give just a tiny dinner party or two?”
So there I was again, thrust among the elderly English, who exuded their familiar glacial politeness, but this time I had no one to blame but myself. Edward was insistent in keeping our social activities to a minimum, and while he was out all day hunting and Patrick was closeted with his new tutor, I occupied myself by writing long letters to America and trying not to feel too homesick for New York.
It was not that I disliked Woodhammer, which was a mellow, beautiful house with tall chimneys and a formal Elizabethan garden. It was not even that I disliked England. The countryside around Woodhammer was filled with the quaintest little homes and villages. The village cottages had thatched roofs, and the churches, built of gray stone, were all hundreds of years old. Warwick too was a striking town, with whole streets of half-timbered houses and a castle so exactly like an illustration in a book of fairytales that at first I could hardly believe it was real. The English countryside was certainly good to look at and easy to admire, but it was, just as everyone says, very misty and damp, and the English for some reason are quite unable to heat their houses properly. I spent most of my leisure hours at Woodhammer hunched over a fire beneath three thick woolen shawls. All the servants thought I was eccentric, but fortunately pregnant women can be excused all manner of extraordinary behavior.
Another aspect of life at Woodhammer that annoyed me was the food. There was no variety of vegetables, only a nauseatingly high incidence of suets, pastries and potatoes. Once I even saw suet pudding, pastry and jammed potatoes all together on the same plate—touching one another. But when I tried to explain my repulsion to the servants they looked totally baffled.
This was not the first time I had been aware of the fundamental difficulty in communicating with the English. Communication should have been so easy since we were all supposed to sp
eak the same language, yet frequently I could not understand a word they said, and even more frequently they would listen to me with that polite glazed expression which meant they understood me no better than I understood them. Now after many years I have adjusted my vocabulary so that I use few American words, but when I first arrived in England I must have been constantly using phrases which had either never been used in England or else had fallen into disuse at least a hundred years before.
However, despite these trials I eventually began to feel the English were becoming familiar to me. I knew by this time, for instance, that Edward’s friends would not talk about the same subjects as Francis’ friends would talk about in New York. New Yorkers are always talking about Europe. It is Europe this, that and the other. European fashions are awaited with bated breath, European news is discussed with great solemnity, European art and drama are imported to become the talk of cultural circles. Nobody mentions the word “Europe” in England; England is not considered part of Europe, and the other European countries are referred to (pityingly) as “the Continent,” a large and of course inferior land mass somewhere to the east of the White Cliffs of Dover. English people go to the Continent to travel, to observe and occasionally to fight the French. Lesser English people go there to trade, but that is all done very tastefully, and few people speak of it. The English on the whole do not talk of the Continent. They talk of empire, scientific progress and politics. Unlike America, where no one of any breeding meddles in the political arena, politics in England is regarded as an exquisitely civilized game for the upper classes, not quite as jolly as fox hunting but affording all the pleasures of a smart select club while also offering the opportunity to Do One’s Duty to the Masses. The English regard themselves as very, very civilized, possibly the most civilized race that God has ever been sensible enough to put in charge of the rest of the world, and the sooner a foreigner agrees to acknowledge the truth of this the sooner he will be accepted by English society.
“How well you’ve settled down here!” said Edward to me kindly as we prepared for Christmas. “Don’t think I’ve been unaware of all the difficulties you’ve encountered.”
But despite his awareness we were nearing the brink of another crisis, and my difficulties were by no means at an end.
Christmas is an emotional time for an immigrant. On the whole I had managed to overcome my periodic bouts of homesickness with tolerable success, but as the December days slipped past I was consumed with a longing to see my old home resplendent in snow and icicles. I was still recovering from the English ignorance of Thanksgiving, our unofficial but widely celebrated family festival at the end of November, and when my family’s presents and Christmas letters arrived it was almost more than I could bear.
Francis wrote me a long affectionate letter, and I shed so many tears over it that in the end I had smudged every line of his handsome handwriting. Blanche wrote to me, Amelia wrote to me (I never thought I would ever be touched to receive a letter from Amelia), my nephew Charles wrote to me and even my niece Sarah wrote to me. Sarah, ten years old and the apple of Francis’ eye, did not care to write letters, but she wrote two whole pages about all the parties to which she had been invited and all the dresses she intended to wear, and I found myself weeping all over again. Fond as I was of Charles, I was fonder still of Sarah—but that was because she was so like her father.
Blanche told me who had married or separated, Amelia told me which families had gone bankrupt and Francis told me how much money he was making. It was all deliciously un-English, and I caught a cherished glimpse of the brash tapestry of New York so far removed from dull, demure, decorous Woodhammer Hall.
“Does Francis mention the political situation?” asked Edward, realizing that I was yearning to talk about my family, and I said in a great rush to keep the tears at bay, “No, not much, except that he’s afraid Lincoln might win the election, and he’s shuffling his investments around just in case the market slumps. He doesn’t like to think what will happen if there’s a war. Everyone’s buying clothes in case the price of cotton goes sky-high, and everyone’s giving parties in case the worst happens, and some neighbors of ours gave a fancy-dress ball where champagne ran from a solid-gold cupid fountain in the lobby.”
“Dear me,” said Edward, “I hope they contrived to chill the champagne.”
No husband could have been kinder to me than Edward during those difficult days, and I was just thinking for the hundredth time that a happy marriage made even the worst variety of homesickness endurable, when two important items of news from abroad reached Woodhammer. The first was that Lincoln had won the presidential election, and the second (of far more importance to me in my present state) was that Edward’s daughter Katherine, prostrated by the sudden death of her husband, had begged Edward to leave immediately for St. Petersburg to bring her home.
IV
“You can’t go!” I cried. “The baby—I couldn’t travel with you … Christmas … you’d never be back in time …” To my shame I burst into floods of tears. I was beginning to suspect that pregnancy was more than partly responsible for my weepiness those days, for, as I have already mentioned, I am not usually the sort of female who needs only the slightest excuse to burst into tears.
“I’m behaving abominably,” I said. “I know I am, but I can’t help it. I’m sorry for Katherine, but I don’t want you to go.”
“I don’t want to go either,” he said. “Do you think I would spend Christmas away from you if I could possibly help it? But Katherine’s my daughter. She’s been bereaved; she’s ill and asking for my help. I have a duty to her.”
“What about your duty to me?” I burst out, and rushed from the room before he should mistake my panic for anger and lose his temper. In the bedroom I again hid behind the curtains of the fourposter and prepared to weep myself into a state of exhaustion, but before I could shed a tear I felt a small tremor in the farthest recesses of my body. I sat up in great excitement. Presently the baby fluttered again, and after that I became much less cowardly and even moderately brave. When Edward appeared a moment later to console me I rushed into his arms and once more tried to apologize.
“I shan’t be so alone after all,” I said, explaining what had happened, and so a quarrel was averted, and the next day he departed reluctantly for St. Petersburg. I think even then he might have changed his mind at the last moment, but I was so determined to make amends for my childish behavior that I almost pushed him out of the front door when the time came for us to say goodbye. But afterward as I stood on the porch steps and watched the carriage roll away down the drive I did feel very low in spirits and might have felt lower still if Patrick had not slipped his hand affectionately into mine.
“I shall look after you until Papa comes back,” he said, giving my fingers a reassuring squeeze. “We’ll have a lovely Christmas together, you’ll see.”
He really was the most delightful boy.
Chapter Two
I
PATRICK’S TUTOR, AN ELDERLY, desiccated little man called Mr. Bull, had agreed to forego his Christmas holiday that year in order to supervise Patrick during Edward’s absence. But Edward had barely been gone an hour before Patrick produced a drawing which showed Mr. Bull leering at an insouciant cow and hung the picture from the dining-room chandelier for all the servants to view.
“That was a very silly thing to do,” I said sternly when he reappeared some hours later after playing truant from his lessons. “Mr. Bull was furious, and he’s going to complain to your father.”
“Papa’s used to my tutors complaining,” said Patrick irrepressibly. He yawned. “I hate tutors. My friend Derry Stranahan says people become tutors only when they can’t become anything else.”
As a punishment Patrick was set a long translation from Caesar’s De Bello Civili, but after a morning’s labor he emerged only with six clever sketches of Julius Caesar fighting Gnaeus Pompey. Caesar was tall and fair-haired like Patrick, while Pompey bore a most unfortuna
te resemblance to Mr. Bull.
“Do you want to get into trouble with your father, Patrick?” I asked, puzzled.
“No, but I think Latin is such an awful waste of time. My friend Derry Stranahan says it’s morbid to keep a dead language alive long after it should have been allowed to die a dignified natural death. Would you like to see some of my other drawings?”
He was certainly clever with a pencil. I did not think his watercolors were exceptional—Blanche painted a better watercolor than he did—but he did draw well. More remarkable than any picture, however, were the woodcarvings he showed me. He carved birds and animals. Sometimes they were single carvings and sometimes they were part of a motif on a panel of wood. He worked in a tiny room in the attics where the sawdust lay thick upon the floor, and although his early work was crude he had clearly improved with practice. There was a delightful study of a cat with kittens and another of a setter with a pheasant between his teeth.
“You’re very clever,” I said truthfully, trying to imagine what Edward thought of his son’s artistic inclinations.
“It’s easy to be clever at something you like to do,” said Patrick. “I’m very stupid at things I don’t like.” He smiled at me shyly. “Do you really like my carvings?”
“Very much.” Instinct made me refrain from asking him directly what his father thought of them. “Have you shown your carvings to anyone else?”
Cashelmara Page 13