V
What I hadn’t allowed for in the rush of getting James off, of earning my living, worrying over Lalage and Hugh and trying to be at home as much as possible, was Lady Vallant. I had literally overlooked her.
She was – this from family hearsay – in a very difficult mood. Even the aunts noticed it: ‘difficult’ was the easy Seagrave contribution. Aunt Emmeline, ever more pessimistic and therefore more definite, put it to mother that ‘the Mater is going to pieces’. I guessed that no sort of solution would be arrived at until our own visits were renewed. They had to be, in common decency, at such a time.
We were not kept waiting long, and it was upon mother that the storm broke. I couldn’t get at what was going on. Once more, mother received our grandmother at our house, went steadfastly to hers, to return white and spent. And I, tired out myself, discounted the whole thing. We’d been through all this before, for years!
Mother’s and Lalage’s resistance wasn’t being strengthened by War work. Every day they went off to Kensington Square to roll bandages and make ‘two by two’ and ‘four by four’ swabs, and would return about the time that I did from office or outside commissions, their lungs full of fluff, with aching backs and ears still full of war and rumour. It was work, light and unheroic, but with such types it was grand stuff for the sustenance of mental bogeys. I, more hardened, found myself, too often, doing the same myself. Also, I was nagged by reproach at not doing the spectacular thing myself – in any direction. I couldn’t drive a car, I was squeamish about blood to useless-point, I knew that the control of numbers of women was beyond my character, which is of that petit point variety that is lost in the mass, or tends, fatally, to over-emphasis of the individual by too great interest, enervating sympathies or unconsidered dislikes which reproached my sense of justice. We needed what I could earn; how much my mother and Lalage needed me no government office would allow for – but it didn’t increase one’s self-esteem.
One day was the counterpart of the other for Lalage and mother; I at least had variety in my tedium. And at night, James to be written to, and, for the first time, reticences to be observed with him lest some quite unconsidered line of mine be the one that should prey on him and lower his efficiency – until he wrote and told me what I was doing and ordered me to tell him every-thing. And then arose the problem of his answers which would be devoured in turn by mother and Lalage. I solved that by telling him to send what we called his ‘Vallant despatches’ on separate sheets inside the demonstrable letter.
Always the last one up, I got into the habit of going round the house at night and listening at the doors of mother and Lalage – for what I hardly knew, save that it satisfied some protective urge of mine, or that if one could catch one of them in grief, one could surprise them into sane explanation. …
CHAPTER XVI
I
I BEGAN to spend my evenings with Raymond Owen. I would see that mother and Lalage were comfortably settled, would leave my destination and its telephone number at their elbow, would often ring them up in the middle of dinner or during the interval at theatre or music-hall.
Owen didn’t like it; he began by chaff and ended by sulks. It was tiresome and I recognized it, and went on doing it. Owen was in love with me. He was what, in discussing the Seagraves with James, I had described as a tremendously real person. He was concrete, and I badly needed tangibility at that time; he made me laugh, by jokes broad and narrow, and my sense of proportion being undermined, I thought that they might restore me by shock tactics, as I told him. He was elderly and I wanted to be looked after myself, for a change. I didn’t even want to know what sort of a character he really was. I was dogsick of probing and introspection and psychology and manœuvring. If I was making mistakes – let ’em all come! I even scrapped my conscience and let him pay for my meals and my theatres. It was being done all round me by my own sex. It seemed to be part of the business of being a woman, in war or peace, and the fact that this sort of gold-digging dependence had always gone against the grain with me and clashed with what principles I’ve got and with all my common sense probably only meant that I was a fool.
Also, he said he loved me, and that was a warmth in itself I was over-eager to believe. He wasn’t even in the army – ‘too ancient and indispensable’ he told me – and I was glad of even that, being wearied of war and trench stories and the whole collection of khaki jokes and catchwords.
And so the band played ‘Dixie’ and I sat there and thought I was as happy as one was ever likely to be.
II
My search for news of Miss Chilcot took me nearly three months. It was done in my free time, and that again had to be occasionally given to mother and Lalage. I hoped that no necessity for downright lies would arise, but for years now the family was more or less broken to my work which was apt to take me, within limits, to the most unlikely places at unconventional hours, what with rush orders and general keeping of faith with our clients.
The office had been enlarged, more trained staff and paying pupils admitted, and I had drifted into a semi-official position and was considered reliable, which I valued.
I began the hunt in Rosary Gardens to find, as I had expected, that the house had changed hands three times since Captain Chilcot’s day.
So, she was a soldier’s daughter? ‘A fighting chin’, James had said. …
The house-agents were as helpful as was possible. When had the Chilcots left? And the books for 1883 were brought down from upper shelves.
We traced him to a villa in Chiswick; the Chiswick agents believed he had moved to a certain address in Barnes. I found it; small and pretentious, in the Tube station style of architecture. The captain had died there in 1890 (that would be about the time that Lalage, James and I were toddling about the garden of our old home, when every pulled radish was an adventure and the apple trees seemed two hundred feet high). In this house-agent’s office there was a chill, and a tendency to shrugged shoulders which I took to be an indication that the memory of the captain was not revered. I thought rapidly that his descending scale of accommodation could only mean money trouble, and hinted it. The captain had, in point of fact, died owing money.
And the family? Scattered, it was supposed. Wasn’t there one who was governess to a Lady Vallant? Which one would that be, Miss Buchan?
That meant a letter to Hutchins. The Christian name was Alma; and a letter to the agents. Miss Alma Chilcot.
At this point I drew blank. In the end it was my own work which put me indirectly on the track. I had offered to take a parcel of typescript to Holland Park Avenue and (as usual) the number I wanted was the only one that seemed to be non-existent. I turned back and secured a description of its locality from a baker’s shop, and it was while I was climbing the steps that it occurred to me that shops selling necessities were my possible link with the Chilcots. The captain may have got into arrears with his rent, but the need for loaves went on for ever. I promised myself that baker’s shop on the first opportunity.
When I went to the shop a week later I learned that it had changed hands only two years ago (and heaven only knew how many times before that). I was tired and dispirited and went into the little back room – a badly converted tea-lounge, all paper fans and advertisements of tea and fancy bread, and no cloths on the unsteady tables, and had a cup of tea and a cake that tasted of old hatboxes. I began to take it for granted, always my way, that these obstacles were a hint from fate that the Chilcot episode was closed to myself as an individual; also I was saddened a little because that morning I had read Peter’s name among the list of officers killed. Peter, whose country wedding I had planned, whose very flowers I had raised! Had he, I wondered, had time for any love in his life since that disarming and impertinent effort towards me?
And then, again in my way, it occurred to me that bakers’ were not the only shops which dealt in necessities, and I paid and left and found the grocer nearest the Chilcot house. Actually, there were two shops, and I stood near th
em and waited for a sign, and requested God to do something about it under my breath – I never thought that by going to both shops in turn I should find out something or nothing in any case. I chose the nearest shop because in the window a large tabby so like dear dead Penny, was asleep on a sack of dog-biscuits, its striped arm bound like a ribbon round its face, a fat, smug smile on its patent-leather lips. Also, the proprietor, glimpsed over a wall of tinned fruit, was old and pleasant, and one always turns in preference to age.
I bought a pound of barley (the Chilcots were beginning to become rather an item in my budget) and then got started. The old man remembered the Chilcots well. A great loss, the captain. A real gentleman, not one of these jumped-up dogs. The Miss Chilcots often came in for this and that. Your ma’s governess? There now! He had heard that one of ’em was dead and the others gone to live in the country with relatives. Scattered, like. Two of ’em had set up together in rooms in Barnes, but that was – it must be – fifteen years past, and he hadn’t heard nothing since. The address of the rooms? Oh yes, when they was here they still dealt with us for bits of things, but the orders got very small. …
I left with my warm and grateful thanks and went to the address he had given me. The house, in a cul-de-sac, was two-storied; children, immune, chalked up cricket stumps on the end wall, and the visiting tradesmen were carts peddling firewood and flabby greens.
But the orders got very small. …
The landlady was uninterested and naturally suspicious on general grounds. She was impervious to any appeal to sentiment and gave me her facts with a businesslike acceptance of indigence one could not break down. The elder Miss Chilcot had had some ‘help’, she knew, from ‘a charity’; that evidently lowered her in the woman’s eyes although it paid her claims against the sisters. ‘The other one’ – yes, Alma – had refused public assistance (which also roused the staid contempt of the landlady) and had ‘gone out’ every morning ‘at addressing envelopes’ and such until she broke down, like. She was now in The House.
Which workhouse, and when?
Two-three years now, it must be. ‘The old one’ had gone away, she didn’t know where.
III
Another week went by before I could visit the workhouse. I had written to the authorities and described myself to the porter at the gates as an old friend.
I supposed it was because I was a bit run down that my legs trembled, that, or the endless stairs. Nobody barred my entrance into the infirmary, indeed the door of her ward was ajar and I walked in. My work had made me used to every description of strange door, of enquiry, answer and mistake, and just as I was walking slowly – trying not to stare at the faces in the iron beds spread with their scarlet blankets, yet not to miss the face I had memorized from the photograph – the Sister advanced and stopped me.
‘Yes, you may see her, but don’t stay long.’
I had already my permission from a higher authority, but I controlled my anger. This woman was queen of her dunghill, after all.
‘Is she … ill?’
‘Excuse me, but who are you?’
Explanation again: one must be patient.
‘Oh yes, very well. You must expect to find a great change.’
IV
Miss Chilcot’s bed was in the farthest corner; it gave her a fractionally greater share of privacy for which I was thankful for both our sakes. Looking down at her as she lay there, unpropped by pillows as were most of the other inmates, one’s thoughts were in too great a flurry to allow of decision as to whether she was wonderfully like her photograph, or a total stranger unfamiliarized in one’s mind by overlong pondering and speculation. And the social side and manner of approach was clamouring for immediate attention.
She spoke to me with a quiet acceptance of my visit, her own environment, and a backwash of authority which delighted me. She contrived, in that public ward, to surround one with the four walls of social security. It was only when I told her who I was that her manner became vulnerable and she answered me as though, if possessed of the physical strength, she would have forced herself upright on her pillow.
From then on it was she who was the questioner. It was her right. And her thanks, hurried in absently in parenthesis, for my thought for her, was evidently only tribute to ingrained courtesy. She was subtly my hostess, and, whether by politeness or impassioned interest, the family news must be heard by her; outlines of Vallants, Seagraves and Verdunes, while my eyes flicked to my wrist-watch and I cursed the ramifications of the clan.
I saw fairly soon that it was going to be wellnigh impossible to get from her that for which I had come. This was a woman, once more and for fifteen minutes transported to her own world and class, speaking its language. Also, she wished to talk and talk about mother, our home, James and Lalage and even me. And that too was her right.
Only once did I deliberately abandon manners and interrupt her.
‘You remember my grandmother well, of course? She is still alive.’
No comment, only a pause. ‘Does your dear mother see her often?’
I said yes, grimly enough, and then, quite desperately, for there were but a few minutes more, ‘My elder sister is said to be very like aunt Myra.’
The pause was longer and her breathing heavier. And even then she put me at the disadvantage with another question:
‘Does Mrs. Buchan speak much of your aunt?’
Well – I might as well let her have it and lay the foundations for our next meeting, leaving Miss Chilcot a week in which to assemble, remember and inform.
‘No … no, she doesn’t. Never did. That’s what I came to you about, Miss Chilcot. Grandmother is harrying mother, always has, I believe. I dislike her, and so does James … oh, there’s no time to tell you! … she seems to leave the aunts alone. …’
Miss Chilcot’s small veined hands were clenched on the counterpane.
‘She needs standing up to … Lady Vallant.’
‘Please! What? I can’t hear you,’ I implored.
‘… I failed. I blame myself very bitterly for cowardice.’
‘You! I know better!’ I looked at her. ‘Whatever you did was right.’
She flushed a very little. ‘Thank you, my dear, but you’re wrong … you must tell me what it is you want of me.’
‘Everything. I don’t understand the situation. What really happened to Myra? Why is she never spoken about? The Verdunes … aunt Emmeline has spoken of her to them … naturally, you know … but we’re always treading on eggs. It’s – getting on my nerves… if we were on the usual bad terms with mother it wouldn’t matter. But we aren’t. …’
She was thinking. ‘I’m so sorry. It’s not right that you should be touched, as well, by it.’ She followed another line of thought.
‘Does your mother know you are seeing me?’
‘No.’
‘Ah! I don’t like that.’
‘You can’t like it less than I do,’ I flared, ‘but if it’s something about that cursed old Vallant woman that a little trouble and horse-sense will –’
‘S’sh!’
‘I’m sorry, but we owe her nothing, except grudges.’
There was evidently a look on my face that got through to her.
‘I’m not at all surprised, only – pained. And – are you quite sure you aren’t making a mountain out of a molehill? … Are you not perhaps, expecting something sensational that mayn’t be there?’
‘I’ve got to the stage when I’d almost rather it were. I’m standing the war and James at the war –’
‘Would you believe me if I told you that I don’t know about your aunt Myra?’ (even then she retained her ceremonial prefixes) ‘that I was never altogether sure… I’m sorry, Miss Buchan, this I’m afraid has upset me … a little. Come and see me if you will next week. I have much to decide. It’s so difficult. Disloyalty … she was my employer… but it’s your dear mother one must think for. One isn’t prepared to make mischief.’
The ghost of a hint
has always brought me to my feet. In face of this I left at once.
V
I walked slowly down the tiled passage, oppressed by self-reproach in that I had ignored Miss Chilcot all these years and then only come into the remains of her life to add my trouble to all hers. I had, as usual, forgotten to allow for the impingement of personality on my own, was already weakened by it in my purpose, while the truth that I had only heard of her a few months ago somehow made no difference at all. The fact, to me, remained that she was always there, and that I had neglected her. That I had made my entrance again at the wrong time in another’s life and couldn’t accept it hardily, or even help. And there was the business of whether to give mother a chance to see her. Miss Chilcot had never even hinted at that, which was possibly characteristic. It would give immense, immediate, and probably mutual pleasure; on the other hand, my sudden production of her old governess would require full explanation, and my instinct was against it. Luckily, Miss Chilcot hadn’t asked how I came to hear of her, had obviously taken for granted some stray Verdune gossip as having been my clue to herself. And I wished that the orange-and-black tiles of the floor wouldn’t run together so, while the very air seemed to buzz like an electric bell. I knew I mustn’t have any sort of collapse inside this building at any rate, or someone would send me home in a taxi and I might be betrayed into saying things.
I found a chair outside one of the wards and sat on it and was prudent about hanging my head down. Through the door I saw the doctor going his rounds, and later would enjoy the way he did it; even the Sister had to drop attendance on him in sheer panic for her dignity and deferential perquisites. He gave the impression of knowing the red-tapery and etiquettes of hospitals, of having served and scrapped them. He strolled but his eye assimilated: he hissed between his teeth or sang semi-sotto voce the hits from revues. One liked it because the old women did not patently adore him or turn wistfully to him or smile at him with pale, dim eyes of trust. They simply ‘took him sitting’ except for sundry bold crones who called out intimate details of their innards, upon which he merely said:
A Harp in Lowndes Square Page 13