A Harp in Lowndes Square

by Rachel Ferguson

  I am told I ‘ought to have seen him thirty-five years ago, he was a beautiful young man’. I have seen him, and on post-cards, and silently disagree. Age had brought out the character in his face and the delicate bony structure, and the knife-line along the jaw and the hint of kindly crows’ feet. Still, there were ways and wigs, and even I saw that the point about this play was that it was an innovation – it preceded by many years that flood of biographic dramas which, pioneer’d by Abraham Lincoln, in 1919, was to be a feature of the 1930’s. One would like to see Furnival complete in the peruke which was on the stand; at present his head, a study in black and white with one white streak that ran across from forehead to crown, was far too modern for ruffles and quizzing-glass. And yet, why not? All the beaux and fops of Bath tossed their wigs aside in off-moments, and Charles II himself had admitted to being ‘a very grizzled old gentleman’ without the shelter of his own tumbling curls.

  And so I sat and watched my grizzled old gentleman.

  VII

  I woke to find him at my side. He smiled down at me, his eyes crinkling.

  ‘Now, try and forgive me. Dear! what tired people we are! Why does one go on?’

  ‘Mr. Furnival, I can’t expect you to believe me, but this is the first time I’ve ever gone to sleep on my job.

  ‘Then I’m really flattered.’

  But I was neither soothed nor amused. What I had done struck me as being neither whimsical nor charming; I was disgusted with myself, and a little apprehensive. If this was going to happen in the future it meant one was sub-standard. …

  ‘It was cheap and slack,’ I rapped.

  He held out to me an acorn-shaped glass. ‘Brown sherry, from the Cock Tavern. Isn’t the colour rather wonderful?’

  One didn’t go on hammering a subject and I took the glass and sipped at the syrupy sunshine. Also, I was immeasurably grateful. He seemed to divine all that. He hitched himself on to the sofa end and the band of brilliants winked on his long leg. ‘I was glad to see you sleeping. You looked as though you needed it badly.’

  I couldn’t meet that and just answered, ‘I’m really quite efficient you know’.

  He shook his head over me. ‘Too much conscience. You must find yourself very difficult to live with … now, we’d both like another glass and we both mustn’t have one. This may feel very innocuous, but believe me it gets there.’

  ‘You are playing this afternoon?’ I flicked my head at the peruke.

  ‘Another special matinee, for the Red Cross. A scene from The Bath Comedy.’

  ‘Do you ever forget your words, Mr. Furnival?’

  ‘Oh, we all have our lapses, you know. My private trouble is that when I dry up I cannot wait for the prompter like a sensible man but go on improvising. It’s a kind of vanity, I believe. Old Tree once enchanted me by exclaiming “Odds Fishikins!” in a costume show at His Majesty’s when he couldn’t lay his tongue to the period oath.’

  ‘And you?’

  ‘Oh, my nicest effort was once in a modern piece. I can always remember the sense of a speech, and its rhythm, but it’s agony when the words go. The line was “You cannot clean a pig-sty with rosewater”, and I said “You cannot clean a pie-dish with newspaper”.’

  I tried to put the glass down to laugh and he took it from me and pressed me back into the chair.

  ‘And did the audience notice?’

  ‘No, bless them, except those who thought it was a biting epigram and were able to feel cynical and disillusioned.’

  The ridge of the biography caught my side and I sprang up guiltily.

  ‘I brought you this.’

  His glance was for me, not at the book in his hand. ‘Can’t you rest?

  ‘No. Now you mention it, I don’t believe I can, any more.’

  He cocked an eyebrow. ‘Any more? … this book, I’m entirely grateful to you. Candidly, how much it may assist matters I don’t know, but not everybody would have thought of bringing it.’

  His eyes on the opened book, he murmured, ‘And so you’re living with your grandmother’. It seemed so much a part of the text, and the firelight and the temporary general security that I did not at once realize it as a personality.

  ‘Oh yes … for a little. Lady Vallant.’

  ‘Vallant … one knows the name.’

  VIII

  I ground my palms together. Inwardly I was crying, ‘Not here! If she gets in here as well then I am done’. And I think that if his expression had become grave, or his manner wary, above all if he had changed the subject with obvious tact, I should have despaired, but even allowing for the fact that his profession included the control of feature, I believed that there was nothing to disturb me in his look.

  ‘She was rather a beauty in her day, wasn’t she?’

  So that was all … I relaxed. ‘Oh yes.’ I could have enlarged upon that side of things, on her fear of air-raid and facial damage, on her bursting wardrobe, but I would fight clean, and regard my silence as fair payment for my own relief. Furnival was only a man, and a stranger.

  ‘I think we will reverse our decision and have some more sherry. But only half a glass each. So …’ Evidently my face had been doing things on its own, giving me away at mention of the old woman.

  ‘I wonder why total abstainers are so often alarming, unlovable and humourless?’ He sat down close to me and gave me – it reminded me sharply of James – his entire attention. ‘Now tell me: don’t you find it very difficult to combine being a gentlewoman with business?’

  I thought, ‘No, you don’t! If this is an approach, I’m not having any. I don’t happen to have had to cope with any actor’s-charm business before, but I can quite imagine that it would be ten times more clever and concentrated than the ordinary man’s.’ At the same time, one might as well plumb disillusion from the start. …

  I said, ‘Oh, I suppose so’, and he sighed and looked at his shoe buckles. I felt squarely put in the wrong, for once, and made as instant an amend as possible. ‘You mean that the two qualities clash?’

  ‘Of course. And the eternal tragedy of gentlewomen is that they give a hundred per cent value for ten per cent return. Full measure, pressed down, and nobody thanks ’em.’

  ‘My God! that’s true.’

  ‘Ahh …’

  He’d got that from me, but somehow it wasn’t just pumping. Yet I meant to be under no misapprehensions; would judge him by the most exacting standards, and impute to him the lowest motives. One got on best, that way, in the long run … and I would never more be lulled by trusting into any complication. I would, for the present, begin by envisaging the possibility that this social atmosphere of sherry and small talk was tribute to Lady Vallant and Lowndes Square. She should serve me that way, by putting vulgar suspicion before me. And I would face up to his attraction, first as last: that makeweight which, in dealing with men as fellow humans, so unfairly confuses the issues if you let it. And before the task of describing charm one throws up one’s hands. How can one expect to convey that a laugh, a walk – even a personal way of clearing the throat between sentences, can possess actual beauty? I only know that sometimes I have caught my breath at the sight of Cosmo’s walk across a room, have often set myself, since, to discover it elsewhere that there should be no mistake at all, and found it never, except – faintly emphasized and conscious – in other men of the stage. But of course there is no getting over the fact that men like Cosmo Furnival who have spent a lifetime on the stage at a time when it was a profession and not a hobby acquire a mellow grace and flavour the young ’uns will never catch up on. Fumed oak against chippendale. And more’s the pity for the modern theatre, with its catchpenny popularities and get-rich-quick methods. Since meeting Furnival, I know that a man must love his art, and sweat for it, and be by it brought low – even unto fish and chips in Bradford and a combined room in Highbury New Park (or perchance Kennington Road), and so cleansed, and that his religion must be ‘What can I put into the theatre?’ not ‘What can I get out of it
?’

  I wanted to go on talking to him, to listen to his voice, which, quite apart from anything he said, was what Claude would term ‘well worth the price of admission’, and so I announced, instead, ‘I’m keeping you. Oughtn’t we –?’ and I put the script of the play upon the dressing-table.

  ‘You’re being very efficient, this morning, but no doubt you are perfectly right.’ He put a chair for me, supplied us with pencils and we got to work.

  I was to find out that Cosmo Furnival’s mental processes were as sharp and clear – as his ankle bones! In his quiet, suave way, he knew exactly what he wanted and saw that he got it. It often reminded me of the clash between Irving and Ellen Terry over her desire to wear black as Ophelia, except that, having got his way, Cosmo would go off and chuckle silently to himself. If one tried to catch him at it he would swerve upon one and look attentive and civil, and bend above one, deliberately exploiting his height, and make one feel a fool. As they say, one couldn’t get past him over anything. I have seen him at his desk deep in correspondence at the fluttering in of some actress armed with her beastly little yap-dog, and although I swear that Cosmo hadn’t glanced up, he murmured ‘You are looking most delightful and charming Mary, but … the dog, you know. The barking … and … ah … other possible manifestations. I must sincerely apologize to you for the obscurity of the notice in the entry prohibiting the presence of pets at rehearsals. It shall be placed more prominently. Most thoughtless of me.’

  He was saying, ‘I see Queen Victoria having to come right out’.

  ‘But – couldn’t Gladstone speak to her through the door?’

  His smile at me was the exact equivalent of a pat on the head.

  ‘Miss Buchan, have you ever heard an audience laugh in the wrong place?’

  ‘Yes. It’s awful.’

  ‘It is worse than awful, it is a tragedy to actor and author, and may spell finis to a play.’ He screwed his monocle into his eye. ‘A certain margin of stupidity one must allow to every audience, but one must positively not play into their hands by inviting ridicule. I see you don’t quite get me. Now may I show you what it would sound like if we pursued your plan? You see, I’d so like you to be interested in your work with me.’ He went to the door and set it ajar, then retreating, poddled towards it and conducted a dialogue largely extempore in which the State squabble was reduced to a loud protest from Gladstone and remote, offended gobblings from the Queen. I couldn’t even laugh. I saw what he meant, and said so. He smote his hands and tossed them into the air. ‘The audience isn’t going to care tuppence what the Censor allows or doesn’t allow; all it will imagine is that our late dear queen is in one of several intimate inabilities to receive. The real damage is that the Imperialistic atmosphere is killed dead – yes, Murton?’

  ‘What will you take for lunch, sir?’

  ‘Sole, a bottle of sauterne and some Brie – ripe. For two.’ He turned to me. ‘You’ll lunch with me?’

  ‘Thank you, but I must get back.’

  ‘Then half a bottle, Murton, and phone through to the garage, I want the car round now.’

  ‘Very good sir.’ The man vanished.

  ‘I wish you’d stay. Must you be quite so conscience-struck, all the time?’

  ‘No, it isn’t that exactly, but–’ I hadn’t quite meant to say it – ‘when one’s meditating a mean thing …’

  ‘Mean? You? I don’t believe it.’

  It came spontaneously, even I sensed that. It would warm one later, privately.

  ‘I think it’s true; justified a thousand times or I hope I shouldn’t be doing it. Perhaps “a betrayal of hospitality” would be a better expression.’

  He looked down on me. ‘I give it up! Then … tomorrow at eleven, here, if that will suit you? My car’s waiting for you, and forgive my mentioning it, but don’t tip the chauffeur. I pay him thumping good wages and he quite understands I don’t intend to have my friends victimized, shelling out in the end more than they would for a taxi.’

  ‘Oh but I can’t not!

  ‘Oh yes you can. Now, please. Do believe me. Promise?’

  ‘Very well.’

  As I stood in the hall of Vallant House, it seemed to me that the children’s storey would like to know about Cosmo Furnival. It was, to me, as if those top rooms would be reassured as to my goodwill if I told them – a sort of testimony as to character! But go into Myra’s bedroom again so soon I could not. And yet it was that room, somehow, that would be most relieved of all. …

  CHAPTER XXIII

  I

  AT luncheon, my grandmother was what aunt Sophia calls difficult and aunt Emmeline going to pieces; she was offended and impertinent by turns, and intolerable to the footman, on whose behalf I soon began to have sympathetic nerves. She told me with what sounded like bitter sarcasm that I was ‘looking very handsome’ and enquired as a corollary in whose motor I had returned. On being informed, she merely said ‘Waste of time: you can’t marry him’, before the butler, at which it occurred to me that possibly I had given her too much rope over trifles all this time, and I deliberately caught Hutchins’ eye and smiled at him. The old man met it quite admirably with a slight, shocked shake of the head which conveyed perfectly both the terms on which we mutually stood and an assurance that he had, in his time, weathered the table through many similar crises.

  Lady Vallant said measuredly, ‘When you have quite done ogling my manservant we will have the sweet’. And by a hairsbreadth I let even that pass, for I suddenly realized that she could not tolerate any hint of sympathies going on elsewhere, above all, any sub rosa alliances. It could be engrained autocracy or fear. …

  And one couldn’t even campaign against her as one having committed flagrant vulgarity; it was all too assured and superb and outrageous for that. The pearlie queen on her donkey-barrow can never be vulgar. It is only when you get into the queasy timidities of those suburbs which would draw their very skirts from the buttoned, feathered, chy-iking donah that you achieve vulgarity.

  I suppose everybody in that house was always glad when luncheons and dinners were over, and when one thought of the years in which that sort of thing had been going on!

  After luncheon Lady Vallant adjourned to the drawing-room, there to sit until tea, unless the carriage was ordered round and she paid calls. Satin skirts pinched up, she was already ascending the stairs.

  In the hall I found the young footman with crumb-brush and tray who wellnigh leapt into the air on seeing me. I suppose he assumed I had vanished upstairs with the old lady. He was more or less openly blubbering. The shock of encounter was mutual. I stopped.

  ‘Henry, is it her ladyship that you’re upsetting yourself about?’ The boy gulped and muttered. ‘Because, don’t. It isn’t worth it. She – I mean, it wasn’t you she was scolding, it’s just her way.’

  The fat being in the fire he faced me. ‘Beg your pardon, miss, but I ’ate that old lady.’

  ‘Yes. Well, what about going?’

  ‘I couldn’t face the row, miss.’

  ‘Oh, nonsense. Why, it’d be over in ten minutes.’ Why is it one can always see straight for others, never for oneself? ‘Besides, you haven’t done anything; you know, I think you’re an excellent footman, if I may say so.’ I did. My varied experience in dining and lunching had taught me that. Trained by Hutchins he was deft, quiet and anticipatory, never kept you waiting or tweaked your plate away before you had finished, or fidgeted you at chair back or sideboard, and he could pitch his eye in the right place during courses. ‘If you want to leave, go up now and tell her ladyship you wish to make a change.’

  ‘It don’t give a man a chance, picking on ’im, and before company too.’

  ‘I quite understand that. You go down and tuck in a good lunch and then put it to Lady Vallant.’ A thought struck me. I counted upon my position in the household for it to pass muster. ‘Henry, are your meals satisfactory?’

  ‘Mr. Hutchins sees to that, miss. And cook.’

  The ol
d gang, operating again … this time, united. But then servants, unlike growing children, could fight for their own hand. …

  ‘Her ladyship thinks she keeps an eye on everything, but she don’t know half what goes on.’ The boy had, by now, quite lost touch with diplomacy, had completely forgotten my own relationship to his employer. Involuntarily I smiled. ‘You’d better not tell me too much, Henry.’

  And after all, he put it off for weeks; it was almost as if he had caught the germ of our family inertia. Like us, when he acted it would be suddenly and clumsily, with amazement that the affair was simple after all, and plenty of self-scourging that he hadn’t done it before. The house itself discouraged action, and it was time that one coped with that, for by now, as missionaries say, I ‘knew the field’ as much as one was ever likely to.

  Going upstairs, I was thinking, as I had thought before, that as a Vallant granddaughter, I was once-removed from the house’s slaveries, vulnerable at least through my own choice, by having ranged myself on the side of my mother and Myra.

  I went up to my bedroom and from my locked trunk took out and re-read the Chilcot letter.

  II

  It was past twelve o’clock that night before the coast was clear. Those thick Victorian carpets have their uses and I achieved passage and the staircase outside my grandmother’s bedroom in absolute silence. I took candlestick and matches with me and thought how thoroughly and generously the house would burn if an accident occurred. But it mustn’t burn. I had something to discover, and was extra careful in my disposition of the light. Besides, burning down wasn’t always any good at all for a certain type of trouble.

  I sat in the middle of the staircase which led from drawing-room to hall and remembered our discussion in the little Soho eating house. It was the site of events which counted. And here I was, on the site. Fragments from the Chilcot letter came back to me. My sealed orders.