‘We’ve often wondered why you haven’t married, Vere.’
I wasn’t having any, and dealt with that fairly cleverly, for me, as I am seldom clever for myself.
‘Of course you have, bless you!’
‘Because, you have got about a bit, haven’t you?’
‘Perhaps that’s why. More tea?’
Now over the bridesmaid business, Barbara, alert for my laughter, was as usual cynically willing in the Verdune manner to share what humour could be extracted from the family. And I did laugh a little, but only as tribute to ancient alliance; for the no-bridesmaid decision, arrived at by our various private ways, was one which certainly in my case and James’s, and I suspected in mother’s as well, was emphatically not a presentable one. We elected, originally, to base it upon the score of expense and of the venue, but such a risk in these motoring days, and with the possible but improbable advance cheque from some uncle or aunt Sophia, we eventually decided not to take. We just told the relatives that we wanted a very quiet wedding and no fuss. I suppose we all hoped that that whipping-boy, the War, would account for this. The real reason was a desire to keep Lalage and Hugh’s wedding free of the entire clan, to send them forth together at mental peace, above all to hear their blessing pronounced in a church void of Lady Vallant herself. It was at this consideration that our silences and evasions with each other set in, so that we fell back on the bluffer, more obvious humours and aspects of the old woman.
III
Hugh was acquiescent in all our tortuous schemes. Back in England, he came to see me at once from a flying visit to Hampshire, and he met me in our Campden Hill house, at my request. It is probable that we found each other’s appearance mutually distressing. I could see that although he had escaped the worst results of being gassed he was far from absolute normal. He seemed to concentrate with a slight but definite effort, and my heart sank, quite selfishly, with the fear that after all the marriage would be postponed. But his illness had done this much, in wiping out his old scrupulousness; it was, I imagine, one of the many intimately personal castings-off which heaven alone knew how many other men on active service were practising.
And thinking it over, above all watching and listening, I thought that even this could be turned to Lalage’s advantage. I had had my moments – what guardian or intimate relative hasn’t –? when I feared that the tremendous change of habit and the shock of mutual concession and adjustment might have upon my sister’s peculiarly delicate balance some disastrous effect. But, half brutally practical, half painfully compassionate, I saw in Hugh’s transitory state just such a general dimming of personality as might weather her safely through the first weeks of strangeness and alienation from mother, James and myself. Now Hugh had his moments of suggesting the eternal child in its half-world, as Lalage did so often. It would pass, and it must pass. Even for Lalage’s sake I wouldn’t keep him so, but while it endured he and she would be as two children, confiding, trustful and a little helpless, going through their days with all their actual adult knowledge blurred and softened. The afterwards of return to normal I could leave safely in his hands. Of Hugh one had never had any doubts at all. Also, as I discovered later, his state of health had blinded him to Lalage’s own flaggings and to that apparently psychic sub-normality which James and I had sensed so long, and possibly mother too, when she said to us as children ‘She’s not a bit like either of you’. Apart from that, anyone could see that Hugh was steeped in the very thought of Lalage. He said to me, stammering a little, ‘She was so extraordinarily glad to see me’. I could well understand that, obvious reasons apart. Wasn’t it possible that she recognized some salvation that should come from Hugh? And, in point of fact, had I been so wide of the mark when I blurted to James that until she could cut loose from all of us she would never be ‘herself’?
IV
James’s delayed letter in answer to my account of that night on the staircase at Vallant House arrived at last, grimy of envelope, worried-between-the-lines in ways that I could so well interpret, anxious for me, hastily written – the letter of an overwrought man torn between conflicting urgencies and knowing he is doing full justice to none.
I blamed myself for having written as I read his letter again – rapidly, for Cosmo Furnival had bought my time and attention, yet I knew James would have blamed me more if I hadn’t. We had always been in this together and through force of circumstance I had acted alone and gained nothing.
Sometimes, when the memory, hot and sickening, of that small foot on the stairs swept over me (had I sat on a lower step would it have lain across my lap?) I steadied myself with unperceived glances at Cosmo. It was a point of honour that he must never catch me at it and I allowed it to myself for the help it gave me. And I knew that the Vallant business must be gone through all over again until, somehow, I got the rights of it.
Cosmo Furnival was loping about and murmuring to himself of waistcoats and shirtfrills, occasionally referring to some steel engravings on his dressing-table. I caught ‘I like that one best … but it’s ten years too early… tah! …’ And what would one feel when Lalage had gone from us? That was an aspect of future life I hadn’t bargained for in my direct anxiety for her welfare. And with James back in France … and Lady Vallant eternal. …
‘These betwixt-and-between dress periods are the very deuce. Ugly, too. …’
And any day now I should lose Cosmo. There was one thing: I saw no real compulsion to stand life with my grandmother any longer. I would go back to Campden Hill and set up house with the two servants until Lalage’s wedding, and until it seemed that mother had sucked all the benefit possible from the Hampshire visit. Furnival was still murmuring to his engravings. I received and rejected the impression that he wanted me to come and help him complain of his Gladstonian waistcoats too. Well, I was ready even for that, and sat there underlining in red ink and looking respectable and cuffed.
CHAPTER XXV
I
LIFE has quite a little sense of humour of its own.
Ever since that morning when I crossed the stage during a lull in rehearsal, the juvenile lead had elected to bestow his attentions upon me. Reasons: my own unawareness of his brilliantined charms and undeniable profile plus a ray of amber limelight which the electrician accidentally played upon me like a hose. Mr. Furnival had invited me to watch any rehearsals I cared to come down to, said it would teach me a lot and might interest me. It did both and I wasn’t going to be done out of watching him, seeing him walk, hearing his voice which no superimposed characterization, to my delight, could quite conceal, by young Bavin Wraxe. But I dodged, sat in the stalls – and was sleuthed there. And yet, for all my slightly entertained irritation, I couldn’t deal too harshly with the creature. James had been that age, once, and Peter, and given the conditions might have behaved in just this way to a youngish woman flattered by a deceptive light. I chaffed Wraxe, and was auntly, and I’m bound to admit it wasn’t much good. That amber beam had – as some equivalent always does with youth – fixed me in his mind in spite of the contradictions which daylight fairly shouted; that is, that until the boy fell in love, I should always be to him as he had seen me at a fixed moment in time.
The ridiculous business did not endear me to the sprinkling of girls in the company. I found that this world magnified every trifle, realized the amount of mischief I could have made had it suited me. Enmity, poker-faced or open, I can cope with at a pinch, but the Wraxe affair had rather fatally focused me with some of the cast and, on the principle of snatching victory out of defeat, at times they made me a species of dump for ‘workings’ of ‘old Furny’, for favours, for privately conveyed complaints. Enormously interested in spite of myself (a mistake) in any clash of humanity, I listened as tactfully as might be. Once again I was Chiffinch to a Charles. I ‘had his ear’, but on looking back I don’t think I abused my place. I sorted, selected and presented the petitions to Cosmo with dispassion if they were in my judgment legitimate. Of course I made mista
kes and on at least one occasion gave way to personality and suppressed a perfectly reasonable grievance because I saw that Cosmo Furnival was overstimulated, overtired and depressed; and because I am to this day dissatisfied at my conduct I remember the casus belli – a question of precedence and the allocation of dressing-room, which was not my province at all. I can only imagine that the company, knowing that far better than I did, easily believed that Cosmo was in love with me, and used the situation for what it was worth, and if that was the general notion, all right! I too took what advantage I could in the way of nursing Cosmo’s interests when he wasn’t looking. There were plenty of things to do and I did them, cautiously at first; matters of minor research for details in the British Museum, inspecting his lunches if he was not taking them at one of his clubs, keeping bores off his bones – and paying myself by being brisk with him when he went dramatic on me about the play and his part. And when he got no particular change out of me over that (I even said to him ‘Shall we both have a good cry together? I’m ready if you are’, at which he burst out laughing), he seemed to be playing his own game as well. There began to be a tendency to bring out old photographs from albums and drawers and to sigh, ‘You ought to have seen me then’, … ‘I really was rather good in that’. Impossible not to be interested in the photographs for themselves. There under my eyes was spread a handsome portion of Victorian-Edwardian stage history, the later plays in which he had figured bringing me back my own youth.
But it wasn’t the historic side that he wanted me to notice.
Of course he was handsome in those days – just that and nothing else if the courts and cabinets spoke the truth, possibly even rather unusually good-looking, but lord bless my soul! aren’t presentable faces twenty a penny? He had picked the wrong audience this time, and inevitably, in that I was astounded at his taste between then and now and the false self-comparisons he drew, I said the wrong things, commented upon the plays themselves, questioned him, even remarked ‘They are charming, aren’t they?’ (politely, in the wrong voice), ‘You must have been really devastating in so-and-so’, naming a cloak and dagger drama. And he slowly swept up the lot and said sadly ‘They said I was. But you never know, of course … I wish you could have seen me in that show’, and sat down at his dressing-table and began to sort grease paints. I’d failed him, but at least sincerely. Young beauty-men I have no use for at all. And there was nothing permissible to say.
There was silence in the room except for the passing carts going in the direction of Shepherd Market. Cosmo was absorbed in a trial make-up and had forgotten my existence.
He turned in his chair. ‘Tell me: is Wraxe making a nuisance of himself?’
‘Oh no, not at all, thank you.’
He sighed. ‘I’ve been keeping an eye on him.’
Off my guard I looked my astonishment. He rewarded it with a suave smile. ‘You thought old Furnival doesn’t notice anything’, he remarked with acidulated sweetness.
‘Well, hardly that, perhaps.’
‘Then I am to take it that his – shall we say? – attentions are not displeasing to you – wait! … because if they are, he goes, quite unobtrusively, but he goes, he goes …’ And go the youth undoubtedly would. This was Cosmo Furnival, the business man of the world I was seeing, and upon my word I believe he could have turned a dismissal to such favour and prettiness that the victim would bundle off positively flattered! I smiled at the thought.
‘Then, he shall stay, my dear – ah – young lady.’
This needed dealing with. I was exasperated, would see justice done but didn’t propose to flatter Wraxe to the extent of getting him his notice on my account.
‘Mr. Furnival, you’ve seen a bit. I only wish you’d listened in on the whole!’
‘Ah?’ He was waiting, gazing down at a stick of carmine.
‘My dear – oh gosh! the boy’s a flesh-pot!’ I faced him. ‘In any case I’m almost old enough to be his mother. D’you know I’m nearly thirty? But if I were thirteen or twenty-three, could I ever take that sort of little object seriously?’
‘Don’t like the youngsters, eh?’
‘Oh, like them, yes, to look after and stage-manage and get out of fixes and dry their little eyes and blow their little noses. But that you … oh well, I do thank you for being ready to fend him off me.’
‘Nearly thirty … indeed. That doesn’t seem much to me, you know. I’m getting on for seventy.’
I looked at him. ‘I know you are.’
‘It’s pretty obvious, eh?’
‘I know what you mean, but you’re wrong. Sixty-eight as a sign-post to age has ceased to exist; people are themselves, not their birth-certificates. One can be a pretty old thirty, you know.’
‘That’s a comforting theory.’
‘It’s just convention. Forty years ago I should have relapsed into a cap and the shelf and good works.’
He smiled at me – so kindly. ‘Yes. It’s quite true. I never thought of that … how nice you’re being to me.’ He swung round, arms over his chair. ‘One does need it so, at times.’ I nearly cracked at that, but I was taking no chances; if any restraint of mine, of tiresome eyes and tongue, or a reckoning with the too-apt time and place, or the general glibness of our opportunity could save either of us from cheapness I would save us, and we both set to work again, and intermittently he began to hum fragments of musical plays. It is very catching. If he had hummed or sung these melodious clichés nearer me, or when idle, or looking at me I could have got on with my job in silence. But set a congenial companion working and absently buzzing with tunes your own cradle rocked to, airs and choruses you emitted with the school satchel thumping on your shoulders, that as débutante however manquée and penniless you waltzed to with your hot, kid-gloved fingers in a hand whose owner is probably now a grandfather and more dead to you than Queen Anne can ever be, and not to join in is very nearly the impossible thing. I found it so. Between us, we covered much ground, and thank God the door was shut.
COSMO (sotto voce)
Li ta ta-ta-ta tar dee-dee dee dee
You are queen of my heart to-night.
Swing high, swing low,
Swing to, swing fro.
. . . . . . .
Mary, oh they call me pretty Mary
I don’t believe them
For they always tell me fibs. …
BOTH
(La-la lar la lar)
Why do they call me ‘pretty Mary’
When my name’s Miss Gibbs?
(Pause)
COSMO
Don’t be a man, San Toy, oh,
Ev-er remain a boy, oh. …
ME (firmly)
There’s many a slip between the tip
And the horse that wins the cup.
COSMO (not to be outdone)
Back your fancy, back your fancy
Come and join the gamble. …
. . . . .
Arcadians are we. …
ME (con brio, to suggest the re-entry of the chorus in Act I)
We’re soldiers of the Netherlands
Of the Netherlands
Of the Netherlands. …
COSMO (catching the idea and actually singing)
We guard Brabant and north Friesland
And all that lies between
(Pom-pom-pom POM POM)
And then, in a slight, sweet tenor, delicately worn, like his face:
Under the De-o-dar
Lit by the evening star. …
One could watch him, at leisure, from one’s own place.
Pearl of the wond’rous Eastern sea. …
‘“Star of the”’ I corrected mechanically.
‘Pearl.’
‘Star.’
My own voice speaking brought me up with a jerk, but Cosmo hadn’t noticed my vocal share – I hardly had, myself. We were both living in the past, in our differing set of memories which the songs had brought back, and I wondered what his pictures had been. A part of him one could have
no share in. It was of a piece with the general stinginess of life. It could have been so simple to have got born a bit earlier, even if it did involve bell skirts and feather boas and flyaway chiffon hats and goggling under fringes – one would have had that much longer of Cosmo – who, I suddenly saw, could watch me quite comfortably too, in his mirror, and I told myself ‘This is my fault.’ I’ve muffed it after all, at the last minute’, for without coming over to me or touching me – only his hands had stopped their rapid movements over his face, he said, ‘My dear, you love me.’
It was half statement, half query.
II
I got up and began putting my things together and spoke to his reflection. ‘Yes. But I shan’t be a nuisance to you.’
‘Nuisance? Why … you little duffer …’ He came over to me and his hands were on my shoulders. ‘I thought for some time I must have got it all wrong. It’s so incredible.’ He seemed almost excited and I swear he suddenly looked fifteen years younger. I said so – I must have, for I do remember adding ‘but don’t get too young on me. I should hate that, you know. You see, I prefer you as you are.’
A Harp in Lowndes Square Page 23