The Diamond Waterfall

by Pamela Haines

  It must be better to be an alone child than to have a brother like Augustin. Younger than Fräulein, he had just finished his first year at university, but was already in trouble. He spent money that he hadn’t got and twice he’d been in a duel. One of his opponents had almost died, and he himself had a huge disfiguring scar.

  “This alone—we don’t worry, although before he made the fight he is so beautiful. But he does nothing for his studies. Und the money, Alice—I should not say to you this—it walks away from him. …”

  She thought now, she might be better to go and sit with Nan-Nan, who had been Mama’s nurse but who in spite of that was not so very old. Only moody. She complained of too little to do now that she lived in the village as companion to an elderly lady.

  “All I ask for, Miss Alice, is another baby in the cradle.”

  Alice knew she was talking of Papa’s marrying again. Now that it was three years since Mama had died, people did. At first it’d been “If he marries again.” Then, more lately, “When he marries again.” But there were some things one did not think about because they were unimaginable. And Papa, so sad at her going, could not mean ever to replace her. Mama could not be replaced.

  Mama’s going. Before and after. Like the Red Sea of the Bible, divided exactly in two. Before, although everything wasn’t always perfect, at least it was not cold and unkind. After, even if people tried to be nice, it was cold everywhere, and dark.

  Most of all now she missed that sacred half hour in the morning after breakfast, in Mama’s sitting room. Before other people claimed her. Before my lessons began at nine o’clock, when Mama was just up, not even her hair done.

  She talked to me then. She needed me (I think). I wasn’t just a child, an alone child; she used to say, “Alice, you are my friend. Darling, sometimes, you are my best friend.” And then she would take my hand and lay her cheek against it. She would let me brush her hair some days. It had a lovely smell, something like roses but not so sweet. I used to bury my face in it, and laugh. I used to laugh a lot then.

  But perhaps the early evening was better still. Because often I would be alone with her up there: not like other children, having to come down to the drawing room at five o’clock, brought by nurse, on their best behavior. I would sit with her often for a whole hour, she with her feet up on the sofa, resting. From as long as I can remember, she had to rest a lot.

  I had to tell her about my day. “Yes,” she would say, “everything. Of course I want to hear it all.” Then if something wasn’t right—her indignation: “No, no! They shan’t say that, Alice/do that/rob you of that….” She even took sides against Nan-Nan, who had been her own nurse. (“Alice, we shall speak to her nicely, and it will be all right.” And it was.)

  I was allowed to be her friend. Because she wasn’t always happy, I know that. But I would never have asked her. She would say to me, “We shan’t bother today with how I feel. We mustn’t ever bother with that. This is your time, Alice.”

  Sometimes she complained, very slightly: her head ached, she was a little tired…. Sometimes Mrs. Anstruther, Aunt Violet, came to see her. Her friend. (My friend. Since Mama went, she’s been mine too, although Papa doesn’t like her very much.)

  She thought now, standing quite still, I might go and see Aunt Violet. She wasn’t a relation but she had been told to call her Aunt Violet. She was a Roman Catholic, which Papa didn’t like. He said Romanists were bad on the whole—though not as bad as Jews. She heard him say once to Mama, “Violet is a bad influence on you.” But she, Alice, had never been forbidden to go and see her. She could talk to her about Mama. Now, when things got too bad, she would say to herself, “I can go to Aunt Violet.”

  The evenings Mama went out, or people came. Dinner parties. Mama would say of those evenings, “Something I have to do, for your Papa. People can’t choose, Alice, what they must do.” She’d come in to see me when she was dressed—always with so many jewels. Sometimes even, the Diamon Waterfall. Then, after she’d kissed me good night, she would take my hand in hers and, half closing it, fill it with kisses. “Shut your hand up quick, and they will last all night.” (And they did, they did.)

  Rubies, sapphires, emeralds—she wore jewelry always. Even in the daytime. Papa liked her to. Sometimes, alone, with me, she would take it off. “It breaks my back, my neck.” And she would give a little laugh, unclasping a heavy bracelet: “It breaks my wrist too.” But often I wanted her to keep them on because, wearing them, she was beautiful. Without them she wasn’t. She was just lovely, plain Mama, with the little face that crinkled up when she laughed, showing small white teeth.

  Such jewels. They were beautiful all by themselves, without people. It was enough just to look. The stones too: kept in a special room and locked in heavy glass cases. But most beautiful of everything was the Diamond Waterfall. It gleamed not only about Mama’s neck but tumbled as far as her waist, the diamonds fastened together in such a way that they moved as Mama moved. Lovely, so lovely.

  Grandfather had been rich enough to buy the many diamonds it took to make it up. Just as he had been rich enough to build The Towers. Grandmother, Alice was told, had been very very proud of the Waterfall when it was new. Although Aunt Violet wasn’t often rude about other people (she explained to Alice that Catholics were not allowed to be uncharitable) it was she who’d remarked, “Just a little bit vulgar. She wore it, you know, before luncheon.”

  It was Mama who wore it in the painting halfway up the great staircase. She looked frightened and unhappy. Alice thought perhaps she’d known already she was ill. Dying, ill.

  She didn’t look at the portrait often. It was not necessary. She had her own picture, in her own shrine: one like Aunt Violet’s for the Virgin Mary. Hers had a photograph of Mama, taken by Papa. In his youth Papa had been an eager photographer, with his own darkroom. (When I’m old enough, he has said that I may have his camera.)

  In the shrine also: a small bunch of flowers, some heather, a pair of Mama’s gloves (they still held a little of her perfume), and her little gold notebook and gold pencil. Mama had stopped using the notebook when she’d become really ill. In bed all day, too weak even to joke. Her face pale, except for two red spots high on her cheekbones. Toward the end, she was often delirious, each day weaker and weaker.

  Aunt Violet never spoke of that time. “Let’s talk about happier days,” she would say to Alice. “I was so careful with your mother always. We spoke only of happy things.”

  Going out through a side door, she stood awhile in the courtyard. A gardener came by with a barrow, but didn’t turn his head. In the distance she saw Fräulein, carrying a flower basket. She thought of joining her. They might pick flowers together. I might do this, I might do that. Already it was after five. In a very little, it would be the time when once she had used to sit with Mama.

  Mama’s sitting room. It was no use to go in there. It was furnished still, but it was cold, cold, like Mama. It was covered with dust sheets. It waited— for what?

  4

  “Tell me, Miss Greene, what would amuse you? What would you like to do tomorrow? My brother, you see, has persuaded me to stay in Town, a further ten days at the least.”

  Lily looked at him. Ah yes. Sir Robert, Sir Robert Firth. And beside him the smiling, sardonic face of Lionel. But she had not been listening.

  “Some idea for the weekend perhaps?”

  What? What idea? She scarcely heard in her humiliation. She could only think, Everybody knows. They will all have read The Times, the Morning Post They will know. I am humiliated.

  Yet all was glitter in this room, as it had been glitter two months ago when she had been so happy. The Savoy again, but this time a private room for their, quite large, party. Twelve people. Everywhere masses of hateful chrysanthemums. Everywhere extravagances of decor, ordered no doubt by Lionel, whose party it was.

  He was giving the party for his brother, visiting London again now, at the end of the summer. Lionel, in his bright red cummerbund. Ah y
es, he knows, she thought; and I don’t trust him not to suddenly humiliate me further—to send some remark flying the length of the table. The image of the newspaper burned behind her eyes, pricking them. This very morning, the Court and Personal column of The Times:

  An engagement is announced between the Viscount Tristram, son of the late Viscount Matthew Tristram and Mary, Viscountess Tristram, and Miss Augusta Mayhew, only daughter of Sir …

  She had not been able to read on. Just thinking about it now made her tilt her chin higher. She tried to change the anxiety in her eyes to a proud gleam. I do not care.

  “Miss Greene, I know I sound like a deuced newspaper reporter”—there was the Honorable Freddie Moore, leaning forward eagerly, his turn to speak to her (it could not be about that; it must not be)—“is it true that George Edwardes is after you, and means you to star in his next…. The thing is that I should so like to be the first to know, officially.”

  I do not care.

  She had read the announcement alone in her bedroom over breakfast. At first, she hadn’t believed it. She peered more closely. The name could be mistaken, but—no, it was not a mistake. And who was she? Miss Augusta Mayhew. Some little girl …

  She had sat there, disbelief, anger, and humiliation struggling inside her. Her heart: she felt as if it had barely room to beat. I expect a letter, she thought. He will write, surely. Or he has written and I have not received it. Perhaps he will even write and say that he knows nothing of it—that it is the Mayhews, Augusta’s family, who have announced a marriage. She had heard of such mistakes. Only recently—a prank played on some young man by his friends. An enemy, too, could do it. Soon perhaps there would be another announcement. And in it the wonderful words “… will not now take place.”

  Then the fresh waves of humiliation: “… will not now take place.” But it is Lily Greenwood, shopkeeper’s daughter, it is my wedding which will not take place. The pain was such that in her anger she could not remember how much, or even if, she had loved Edmund. The image of his face flashed past and together with it all the days of early summer, Jubilee summer. Of happiness. Of being wanted. She had been secure in her hopes. He had promised, had he not? But then—not exactly …

  But perhaps exactly enough? Still in her wrap, she had hurried over to the drawer where the letters were kept. They were tied with white ribbon, as if, she thought contemptuously, I were a silly young girl.

  They hurt. How they hurt. But trying to calm herself, she thought, I’ll read them through now a second time, but as though written to someone else. Her head was suddenly hard. Dad’s daughter.

  The letters, they showed a progress through that summer, marking the enchanted moments, the highlights, where pride and vanity could not now be separated from notions of love. She tried to tell herself now, It is only my pride. But then she thought, I have a right to that pride. I have earned it….

  Each letter, and how many there seemed now, for she had kept each note, even the hastiest (“half-past 2 A.M…. Dearest, I have been away from you only fifteen minutes and already I am dreaming of my dearest Lily and our next happy meeting!”). Had kept all of them just for the proud thrill of his, in truth, rather badly formed hand. Read now, one by one, they formed a chapelet, a commentary on that summer.

  Hurry on, and pass this one. Ironic now, referring to the evening out with Lionel when she had met Sir Robert for the first time.

  Dearest, I know that when I am away my darling goes out with others. I think perhaps I must try never to go away unless with you —And yet I know when you are out at supper with others, that you are all the time thinking of me, as I am of you (and last evening in the hansom! Your lips are not cherries but strawberries, and that is why I crushed them. I wish, dearest, that I was a poet and not just a silly twenty-three-year-old man about town.).

  And so on and so on—until August, and his departure abroad. He had had no choice about that. He had told her, again in a letter:

  “… I know, dearest, that you could take a holiday this summer—You mentioned it would be possible. And I would have liked to invite you….” But she had not thought much about it because of the hint—reading between the lines—that soon they would be together always. She would become Viscountess Tristram. There would be the headlines, “Carlton Star Weds Peer.” And the customary nonsense: “… one of the loveliest flowers adorning our English stage has been plucked by the aristocracy….”

  “I wanted to invite you,” he told her again later (his hand over hers beneath the tablecloth). “The trouble is—Mother.”

  Lily had thought, I should have guessed. Earlier she’d said to herself, There will be trouble there. But she had thought herself equal to it. After all, his mother would be the dowager only. I would have always, in the end, the last word.

  “… Mother. She hasn’t been strong, or well, since Father’s death. The shock. And upsets over the Will, and claimants. She would like to go to Austria or Germany, you see.” His dear face, the vivacity dimmed but shining with affection, with anxiety to please. (Might not that be, even now, the trouble?) “She wants me with her, although a great friend, Lady Bartlett, goes with her sons, and I believe too an aunt of mine. It will be good for her in the mountains. …”

  Lily remembered that she had hoped even then that it was not too late to change…. She had said to him, saucily enough:

  “Has she ordered you, Edmund? Is it a command?”

  “Not a command—just a plea, darling. She asked in such a way…. She said, and she’s right, dammit, that Father would have wished—that she expected. … So, how not?” He had looked pathetic, torn both ways, distressed and (how to think of that now?) so terribly, terribly in love with her.

  That same night he had written a letter which she first saw on opening her eyes, which she had read over her coffee, wearing, she remembered now, her new negligee with its neck of coral swansdown.

  Perhaps I wasn’t able to say earlier this evening, when your dear sweet face was looking at me. I could not say how very, very much I am going to miss my dearest—except that I know she will understand. Soon we shall be together again. And next time—who knows, forever? You do understand, my darling? It is not just the duty I owe my mother—but even more, my Father. A man, that King, Country, and Empire could all have been proud of. I could not let him down, could I?

  Their last supper together, at Gatti’s. The promises of undying love, of daily thoughts. The drive back to her house in the hansom cab, his importuning, her fear that she might yield….

  And then the long weeks: the rest of July, half of August. Letters had come. Shorter it was true, but no less protesting. Gifts. How was she to know, how could she ever have known? In the middle of August, his note:

  I have been ill—the result of a fall. My wrist was sprained and they think it quite serious [he wrote with his left hand. It looked like an old man’s wavering]. I do not know who I can get to write for me. How could I dictate to some amanuensis all the love I feel for my darling Lily, the loveliest flower…. This has taken nearly two hours to write [he told her]. I cannot, dearest, do this very often. Shall you take the silence for my love? Do you still receive flowers three times a week? I have wired that you should receive grapes now, and a fruit basket each weekend….

  Had it been the truth—that damaged wrist? She had never questioned it. But now … The silence had seemed long after the habit of receiving notes, letters. He wrote once more with his left hand. The wrist, he said, was not improving. “Next week, I will try to write again. I have some news….”

  He had not written. Indeed he had had news. News which surely she might have expected to hear from him?

  “An engagement is announced between …” The truth had not been too difficult to discover. Even in the little time she had had since yesterday (and she had sent out at once for gossip papers. A picture of Augusta in The Queen: “A blushing rosebud, soon to be a blushing bride. The wedding, planned for November …”) she had learned that she was the go
ddaughter of Lady Bartlett (that mother of sons …) and had joined them at the end of July. For the rest—Lily thought, I can imagine it all. Certainly Augusta would be different, younger, well connected, suitable (oh, how suitable). And —proximity. There was nothing to beat proximity….

  The story was an old one. But it would not do. I am a woman scorned, she thought now, in the private dining room in the Savoy, lifting her wineglass, sipping without tasting. He has behaved very badly. And why, in God’s name, why should he get away with it?

  She turned to her neighbor, Colonel Crossley-Payne, and very lightly touched his arm. She smiled sweetly.

  “Dear Colonel, please, the name of your solicitors? A person you could —recommend? You see, I have a problem of a”—and she smiled again—“a rather delicate nature.”

  She was up early next morning. Nothing came for her by the first mail. She took a cab and was in the City just after ten. The solicitors were in the shadow of St. Paul’s. She was able to see Colonel Crossley-Payne’s man at once. He was amiable, grizzle-haired and portly, with a wide smile. His frock coat strained whenever he leaned forward at the desk.

  “… My dear Miss Greene, cases of this nature …” He rubbed his hands. “Er … Some experience … A good barrister … I have in mind a Q.C. who cannot be too highly recommended—if he is free and will take the brief. Essential, of course, that counsel be first-class … these cases can be—Not to say tricky …”

  She was in it now, and could not back out. She could see events, already out of her hands, moving faster and faster.

  “You have the letters with you, Miss Greene?” A strange man, hands unknown to her, reading Edmund’s schoolboyish phrases. There was something wrong. She felt suddenly weak—last night she had scarcely slept— wanted to snatch them back, saying, “But these are private.” After all, if Edmund was happy, what did any of it matter?