A Harp in Lowndes Square

by Rachel Ferguson

  Myra was lame from birth … did you know? … then came a cracking sound and a cry, two cries, I think … Lady Vallant would not have her in the drawing-room … Oh God! one ought to be hardened to it all, by now, but I buried my head in my hands and tried to remember I was here on business. On Myra’s business.

  Mean? You? I don’t believe it. I’d forgotten that. It was a beautiful voice saying a beautiful thing to one, no longer ago than that morning. Mentally I clung to it. But one mustn’t go that road about Cosmo Furnival; waste of time and life and feeling, also incredible that he meant it. One would see him to-morrow. The hall was so still. Large houses, it seems, have the gift of silence. Nothing to hear but the muffled toot of taxis. I was – oh curse it – beginning to be afraid. I exercised my mind with the first thing to hand. Mr. Gladstone, we would prefer your meaning quite unwrapped. Bless Mr. Gladstone and his unwrapped meaning! The front door with its oval panels was just such a door as he might have come in at, dashing down inverness and top hat which, I felt sure, was a size too large for him, as was our vicar’s in the village in the old days. One’s hands were shaking. Those stairs are beastly cold. James off to his prep school, telling me that in our Campden Hill home. Suddenly I was glad of the chill and the trembling. I thought it meant that things were beginning to move, guessed that They were coming. I didn’t pray because, quite plainly, all set forms of prayer eluded me; I just said over, instinctively, the names of those on earth whose various associations brought me comfort by day. ‘James … mother … Claude … Cosmo.’ I left out Lalage, I remembered later, and wondered why. But I was to find out.

  Already the air was beginning to vibrate – a sort of buzzing and undulating – in which one knew that one must keep control of one’s very thought, and then I was aware, without seeing, that people were passing me. I ducked ridiculously, and this I swear: that as they went by, their mood no less than their bodies went through me, and it was Vere Buchan who experienced two closely-following emotions. The words did not so much present themselves as the sense, which poured through me. So, I thought, ‘I am pretty to-night, more girlish than she is’, and ‘We shall get no partners. Just like her to send round the carriage too late. I will dance and I will be a success’.

  Remorseless, nervy and ill-humoured.

  The faint crack – it seemed to come from the banister rail above me – went through my immediate consciousness and suddenly (Oh, I admit I muffed it all, that first time), there was a humming of voices, more like a change of vibration in the air; the stair on which I sat gave sharply and all the nerves in my body twanged. In the flame of my candle I saw for a matter of seconds, imperfectly and incompletely, as at Hampton Court, a strip of white nightdress and a small foot. It was on the stairs below me. In those seconds I was to be momentarily a third person, and I instantly knew (and shall never forget) what it was to be without love and without hope. I thought ‘My life is over, and I know hate’.

  III

  And, tangibly, in my own self, I almost knew despair. I sat on those stairs and told myself that I had failed; I had at most confirmed suspicion, not from the little I had seen so much as from my sensations at the passing and their temporary possession of my brain, of those three figures. But I had proved nothing that wasn’t in the Chilcot letter already.

  I was never sure. And neither was I.

  It then occurred to me that there was, perhaps, a little more to be gleaned, and I made myself go down to the hall and re-ascend that flight.

  The picture evidently had not entirely faded, for just as one passes through a fog belt to clear weather, I too passed through sensations on my way. A faint twist of physical pain on the fourth step from the bottom one; two steps farther and it was gone. It was on the topmost step of all that suddenly, sometimes separately, sometimes merging, two intensities of feeling rushed into me and battled for my possession till I staggered.

  At that moment I would have enjoyed depriving Lalage of Hugh, seeing and savouring her tears. I spared a hope that James would be killed, and while sick with compassion and that hate which is a holy thing I was praying, deliver us from evil.

  And then I was filled with an emotion which revolted me more than the first, and I was just a coward, surprised, wrapped in mean anxiety for its future.

  I suppose I leant too heavily upon the banister, that is a sound, official explanation of the ascending light which illumined the wall below, and, turning, flickeringly picked out that dado of china parrots at my back. The sight of the candle held up by Hutchins somehow shook me more acutely than what I had just been through. Perhaps it was the too-sudden impact of physical upon psychic … or the look on his face. He should have been a ridiculous figure enough, dishevelled, alarmed and blinking, portly in dressing-gown and pyjamas, except that when you saw the type of alarm in his eyes even the last ditch of hysteria was denied you. But I had, it seemed, a few remnants of consideration left.

  ‘Miss Vere!’

  ‘It’s all right, Hutchins, I couldn’t sleep and I badly wanted a drink. If you’d like to save my life get me some whisky.’ It was just luck that I didn’t happen to say brandy, the implications of a need for brandy morbidly excite all servants, as telegrams do.

  Blessed are the burglars. Hutchins, if questioned by myself, could riposte with that. He led the way into the dining-room and mixed me a drink, and indeed I was glad of it. His hands were shaking and like a fool I let common humanity get the upper hand and asked him to have some whisky too. It tore down his respectable defence, showed him at once that I had seen that in his expression which wasn’t accountable on the score of thieves. He took a drink, excusing himself, as I might have foreseen.

  ‘It was seeing you on those stairs, Miss Vere.’

  I just nodded and finished my whisky. He watched me going upstairs, lighting me with his candle, not stirring until I had disappeared.

  I wrote to James all the rest of the night and was careful to turn off the light a few minutes before the maid was due with my hot water. I knew I was almost at the end of my tether.

  I re-read bits of my letter. ‘… and it looks as if, tonight, I had been aunt Sophia and Emmeline … and Myra, too. I suppose the last two people I became were Vallant and Miss Chilcot? Or would the good one have been mother, or Hutchins, do you think? I didn’t see properly, oh! it’s infuriating! You’ve got to remember I was only a feeling. I guessed Sophia and Emmeline because, with them, it was all dress and looks … Hutchins discovered me, and hated it for me though he said nothing you could take hold of. …’

  And on the breakfast table was a letter from Lalage. Hugh had been slightly gassed and was coming home at once.

  I was too drained to know what I felt about that; like a glass which has been breathed upon – and had I not been? – I felt blurred all over. But I must have made the small, involuntary sound of surprise for Lady Vallant asked me what was the matter. I told her, and she said, penetratingly for her, ‘That should make the marriage easy’, then she added, ‘Your sister shall be married from here’.

  There is a type of thought which screams. Hitherto I had met it only over trivialities: over the unwanted visitor, the bore or the guest who, having risen, will not make a clean exit, but wanders stickily about the room fastening on to any pretext of opened novel or new cushion for creation of further delay. This time, my thought was a scream of denial. ‘Never, if I can prevent it. Never, never, never.’

  And even that one couldn’t take to mother. If she too balked at the sheer idea of Lalage’s wedding from Vallant House it would be on her own grounds, by reason of private memory, or – for public use – by a pot-pourri of semi-humorous, sub-acid distaste. It was a Vallantish touch which worked out so that our grandmother offered an unprecedented and costly favour and I was to be the one to deny it to Lalage without explanation.

  CHAPTER XXIV

  I

  I WORKED in Furnival’s rooms for nearly three weeks after that, going to the theatre every morning, to the enormous satisf
action of the good Miss Royal. Sometimes Furnival was there and sometimes not. On the latter occasions the key was handed to me by the sergeant.

  It was impossible not to be interested in the work, although my life, then, was in such a confusion that I couldn’t give my all to it, or when I did, felt that my hand was removed for just so long from Vallant House politics and that something, as a result, might get the better of us… In one of the intervals where the scales dipped to Furnival, I even wrote in some lines which I considered would improve the play. I really never believed that anyone would notice – the author certainly didn’t and said ‘Look here, where I’ve made Gladstone say –’ and quoted my speech. Furnival, leaning on the window, accepted it charmingly, and when the other had left, screwed his monocle into his eye and murmured ‘The G.O.M. was in a very talkative mood that morning, wasn’t he?’ and began to walk up and down the room and I knew he had found me out. I said ‘I’m sorry’, and took up the blue pencil. He took it from my fingers. ‘Oh, but you wrong me. I liked the lines, and our friend’s face when he read them’, – here the crowsfeet rayed round his eyes – ‘was what is too often quite erroneously termed “as good as a play”. Now tell me: honestly, do you think I should come better sitting down or standing up in this bit here?’ and he dabbed at a speech quite four inches long.

  I laughed a little. ‘I think you’d look right whatever you did’. I enjoyed saying that. It isn’t often that one can combine raps over knuckles with absolute truth. And then I shot a glance at him and saw I’d hurt him. It was something about his lips that gave the show away so that, for the moment, he looked the age with which the person, unenglamoured by memory and seeing him for the first time, would debit him. Well, it wouldn’t do him any harm. I, of all people, wasn’t there to establish too great a personal relation, and if it alienated him that was all to the good and would make our ultimate dissolution of partnership in the work more smooth. All my experience went to show that this was the line to take; tactics which conflict with one’s impulses commonly are. But Furnival had hired my fingers and intelligence, not my impulses.

  It wasn’t as easy as it sounds. So often, sitting there, cutting out slabs of bombast, typing in fresh lines, I thought ‘if he takes no notice of me I shall die of disappointment and if he flirts with me I shall despise him at once’.

  Of course one loved him. Frankly I don’t see how anyone could help it. These rare, irresistible old wretches are usually absolute fakes, au fond, but I had to admit that, so far, I hadn’t succeeded in tripping him, for all my suspicion and alert disparagements. The knowledge that I loved Cosmo neither surprised nor troubled me. I have never been able to credit those women who, whether in plays or books, fall in love quite suddenly, and the women who, after prolonged, sparring association with a man, realize with a shock of incredulity that their heart has been insidiously won are, to me, damned liars. I am certain that every woman knows whether she loves or is in love, and nearly every woman could tell you exactly when it all began, and more, whether at first glance she is capable of doing it at all. In my case Cosmo had rather put my eye out by bringing with him a tradition of attraction and success with women against which one had to campaign. One watched out for him to be fatuous and quite quietly he put one in the wrong by failing to oblige; indeed I’m bound to admit that as far as appearances went he wasn’t getting much encouragement from anybody but myself! From all the actresses, major and minor, who peeped and fluttered or strode in upon us, never once could I succeed in tracing a love-look or even a flirt-look. They took him – crass, extraordinary females – so absolutely for granted that the whole business was a cross between an At Home and a college lecture. The young ones were the worst offenders: said their little say and hardly glanced at him though they seemed, as I once found out when crossing the stage itself with a packet of amended parts, to have plenty of eyes and conversation for the juvenile lead, a shining young sprig who had found himself an actor through the nursely care of the university, and who would continue to believe he was an actor until something better came along.

  Fools!

  As for me, I knew I was born susceptible, and that had to be dealt with as well. Whatever was going to happen about this, I wanted the best for Cosmo; also not one man in a hundred seems capable of realizing that you can love, even quite intensely, without necessarily wishing to fly to extremes, and I didn’t propose to be misunderstood in that way by him. With his training he would inevitably regard even a smile as a desire to live with him.

  All of which was, as we say at home, not too good for the complexion, and the glances I took at myself in the theatre mirrors with their surround of electric lights of appallingly high candle-power, so kind to make-up, so gruelling to nature, assured me that I resembled nothing so much as a family banshee – all white face (too thin) and copper hair which had turned an entire shade darker, as hair so unaccountably does when one is thoroughly run down. And that, too, was well. Once again, only more intensely, I was glad that Cosmo should see me at my worst. By the time he had also seen me in a temper, or sulky or moody, we might perhaps begin to build up a friendship – by which time my work would be over and I should be gone.

  II

  Lalage’s definitely announced marriage brought a certain amount of emotion to the boil. Aunt Emmeline, I gathered, let it be understood that it was a hole-in-the-corner affair and was inclined to query our cumulative eccentricity in ‘having no bridesmaids’. ‘You’d almost think there was something in it. And it looks so odd.’ This more or less expurgated version was given to me by Barbara, whose humour it was to pay a formal call at Vallant House while I was installed there, and who, with cheerfully sarcastic Verdune grin, took in everything and exploded intermittently into laughter while we sat tête-à-tête in the drawing-room. Our grandmother was fortunately out, to Barbara’s disappointment, for she preserved a delusion that she ‘could manage old Vallybags’, and if imperviousness to personality and atmosphere is anything to go by I suppose she was right.

  ‘You know it kind of makes me die to see you poor little thing on your own here, coping with Vally.’

  Mother, who was extremely fond of her Verdune nieces, once said that in the way of gossip they were excellent germ-carriers, and it was this side of them which I utilized that afternoon.

  Aunt Sophia – and here one had to separate, so to speak, the chaff from the grain, was finding some difficulty with her face over Lalage’s marriage, ‘because of Flora, you know’. Flora, instead of producing Seagraves, was grooming horses in the stables of a friend, and aunt Sophia was driven back on to the line that it was such a thousand pities that she wouldn’t look at all the men who, by implication, wanted to look at her ‘in the days when all the young things were getting settled’.

  ‘You see, that story’s been blown sky-high by Lalage,’ and here Barbara and I exchanged the same look of instant appreciation. ‘But lor! I’m sorry for poor old Flora, because honestly I don’t believe she’s particularly keen on getting hitched, and she told me once she’s never had even the ghost of a love affair … I suppose I oughtn’t to say that, but I know you’re safe. One’s sorry for poor old Sophia too, because they’re both telling a different story that dishes the other’s. Main an’ okkard it du be. And of course Sophia obviously can’t imagine any gurl not wanting to be married. I’m not sure that I’m particularly keen on it myself, but I mean to do the civil thing.’ And I believed her as she sat there, rather perilously dangling Lady Vallant’s tea-cup by one finger. If Barbara Verdune didn’t precisely marry the man she wanted or needed, at least she would, as the comedians say, marry ‘when and how’, and where and why, into the bargain.

  ‘And you know, Vere, when I do, I’ve made up my mind not to start a family. I should make a thundering bad mother; I don’t know anything about kids because they’ve never come my way and I don’t even like them much. They’ve got to make good with me just as friends have to before I fall for ’em, but I can’t adore babies qua babies.’<
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  Neither could I, but I did say ‘You’ll have to warn the man, it’s not playing the game not to’.

  ‘Naturally I shall, but you know, Vere, when I look round on our lot it’s not exactly encouraging, is it? You’re all right, of course, with aunt Anne … but will you think of all the rest of us!’

  I did, and I had, and could find nothing to say.

  ‘And when I think of grannyma! I mean, could one condemn anybody to grow up Vallantish?’

  It is curious how some people, without suffering or experience, can fluke to conclusions it has taken others half a lifetime to arrive at. Yet this, I saw, was a backhanded slap aimed actually at aunt Emmeline’s career in maternity, rather than a knowledgeable indictment of our grandmother. The Verdunes, I had always suspected, would eternally miss the real point about Lady Vallant. All the same, I was sorry Barbara felt like that. The older generation at least had filled their schoolrooms, given us Buchans, Verdunes and Seagraves, a tilt at friendship, kept a flag of a sort flying, where we, from very liberty and reaction, were tending towards emptiness and eventual disintegration. Which brought me back to the everlasting thought of the importance of love, given punctually in its time and place. And I wondered what Cosmo was doing. At the Garrick, probably.

  Dolly, Barbara was saying, was ‘shaking down’. Already the formal meal in Palace Green was open to Arthur. The War had, in Verdune argot, tended to pass him along with my Uncle Bertram and aunt Emmeline and Dolly herself was ‘as happy as could be expected, might even produce when the War’s over’. But would she? In my experience children are only born through an impulse utterly removed from child-love in the parties concerned, or – more rarely – through the considered, practical wish for family, a desire high-minded, eugenic and untypical. In either case, genuine mother-love may or may not develop, capriciously, afterwards. In our own case it had,but there was no getting over poor mother’s dismay at the prospect of James and myself. And Dolly was extra-burdened by public opinion of her husband, which might well have the effect of chilling the impulse or slaying the considered wish. And then in the Verdune manner, which is inadmissible, disarming, likeable and blatant, Barbara cocked a bright inquisitive eye.