‘But Mother is so unpractical,’ said Carrie with a sigh.
‘Tragically unpractical,’ said William. ‘Why didn’t she consult one of us? But it’s done now,’ he resumed more philosophically, ‘and what in Heaven’s name will she do with it all?’
‘She seemed to take no interest in it,’ said Carrie. ‘I found her reading a book while Genoux fed scraps to the cat in the corner. I don’t believe she was really reading it, for when I asked her the title – just trying to make conversation, you know – she couldn’t tell me. She said it was something Mudie had sent, but, as you know, Mother always makes up her lists most carefully, and never leaves it to Mudie. I had some difficulty in getting in, because, it appears, the house had been so besieged by newspaper men that Mother had forbidden Genoux to answer the door-bell. I had to go round into the garden and shout “Mother!” under the window.’
‘Well,’ said Herbert, as Carrie paused, ‘and when you had got in, what explanation did she give you?’
‘None. She had known this FitzGeorge in India, it appears, and he had been to call on her once or twice recently. So she told me. But I am sure she was keeping something back. When she said FitzGeorge had been to call on her, Genoux, who was hovering about, began to cry and went out of the room. She picked up her apron and began to sniff into it. As she went she said something about “Un si gentil monsieur.” From which I assume that he had always given her a tip.’
‘And what about Mother? Did she seem upset?’
‘She was quiet,’ said Carrie after a pause, judicially. ‘Yes, on the whole, I’m sure she was keeping something back. She kept trying to change the subject. As though one could change the subject! She hadn’t seen the posters in London; that was evident. Dear Mother, I was only trying to help her. I did feel it was a little hard to be so misunderstood. She seemed to want to keep me out of it – to keep me at arm’s length.’
‘But,’ said Lavinia, ‘what could one want to keep back, at your mother’s age? Not …?’
‘Well,’ said Carrie, ‘one never knows, does one?’
‘No,’ said Herbert, ‘no! I can’t believe that! He spoke righteously, as the head of the family.
‘Perhaps not,’ said Carrie, deferring to him; ‘I’m sure your judgment is best, Herbert. And yet, you know, a very strange idea struck me.’
They all edged forward to hear Carrie’s very strange idea.
‘No, I really can’t say it,’ said Carrie, delighted at having aroused so much interest; ‘I really can’t, not even here where I know it would go no further.’
‘Carrie!’ said Herbert, ‘you know we always had a pact that we would never start a sentence unless we meant to finish it.’
‘When we were children,’ said Carrie, keeping up her reluctance.
‘Of course, if you would rather not …’ said Herbert.
‘Well, if you insist,’ said Carrie. ‘This is what struck me. None of us ever knew of Mother’s friendship with this old man – this old FitzGeorge. She never mentioned him to any of us. Now it turns out that she knew him in India – just about the time when Kay was born – perhaps before. And he always took an interest in Kay. Then he dies, leaving everything to Mother – not to Kay, it’s true. But that’s no reason why Mother shouldn’t leave it all in turn to Kay. And perhaps he always meant Kay to have it. He merely short-circuited Kay. Who knows that that may not have been a kind of bluff? Eccentric old men like that, you know, are always terrified of scandal.’
‘Because …’ said Herbert.
‘Exactly. Because.’
‘Oh no, no!’ said Edith, ‘it’s horrible, Carrie, it’s monstrous. Mother loved Father, she never would have deceived him.’
‘Dear Edith!’ said Carrie. ‘So naïve! seeing everything in terms of black or white!’ But already she regretted having spoken in the presence of Edith, who might betray her to their mother. She had the best of reasons for wishing to remain on good terms with her mother at present.
Edith took her departure in indignation, leaving a united family behind her. They drew their chairs a little closer.
‘And then,’ said Carrie, going on with her story, ‘a young man came – a most unpleasant young man. Foljambe, from some museum. Genoux behaved most unsuitably. I suppose that he had given her his card, instead of merely giving her his name; anyway, she announced him as Monsieur Follejambe. I suspect that she did it on purpose. But I soon saw that it served him right. It was quite clear that he and his museum had designs on poor Mother’s inheritance. He pretended that he had come with an offer from his museum to house the collection if Mother hadn’t room for it. Mother, for once, was quite sensible. She would make no promises. She said she hadn’t decided what to do. She looked at Foljambe as though he weren’t there. And then, of course, Genoux burst in as she always does, asking whether Mother would rather have cutlets or a chicken for dinner. A chicken, she said, was less economical, but it could be finished up next day. And Mother with at least eighty thousand a year!’
Lavinia groaned.
‘But Mother was just as reticent with me as with the young man,’ Carrie continued. ‘I kept on assuring her that I only wanted to help – and you all know me well enough to believe that that was the simple truth – but she looked at me just as vaguely as she looked at Foljambe. She seemed to be thinking of something else all the time. Sentimental memories, perhaps,’ said Carrie viciously. ‘She didn’t even ask me to stay to dinner, when Genoux came in again to say the chicken was nearly ready and would spoil. I had to leave with Foljambe finally, and, of course, I had to offer him a lift in the car. He tells me that the collection, apart from the fortune, is estimated at a couple of million.’
‘Poor Father,’ said Herbert; ‘for the first time I feel glad that he is no longer alive.’
‘Yes, that’s a great comfort,’ said Carrie. ‘Poor Father. He never knew.’
They silently digested this comforting fact.
‘But,’ said William, ever practical, resuming the conversation, ‘what will Mother do with all those things – all that money? Eighty thousand a year! And two million or so locked up in works of art! Why, if she sold them, she’d have a hundred and sixty thousand a year – more, if she invested it at five per cent. As she easily could.’ His voice became shrill, as it always did over any question of money. ‘One never knows, with Mother. Look at the casual way she behaved over the jewels. She seems to have no idea of value, no idea of responsibility. For all we know, she may hand over the whole collection to the nation.’
Terror descended upon Lady Slane’s family.
‘You don’t really believe that, William? Surely she must have some feeling for her children?’
‘I do believe it,’ said William, working himself up. ‘Mother is like a child who treats rubies as though they were pebbles. She has never learnt; she has merely wandered through life. You know we have always tacitly felt that Mother wasn’t quite like other people. One doesn’t like to say that sort of thing about one’s mother, but at moments like this one can’t afford to be over-delicate. At any moment she may do something erratic, something which makes one wring one’s hands in despair. And we are powerless. Powerless!’
‘Nonsense, William,’ said Carrie, feeling that William was dramatising the situation; ‘Mother has always been amenable to reason.’
‘Even when she went to live at Hampstead?’ said William gloomily. ‘I can’t agree that people who strike out a new line for themselves at Mother’s age are amenable to reason. Even when she gave away the jewels in that ridiculous way?’ He looked at Mabel, who nervously tried to cover up the pearls by some stringy lace. ‘No, Carrie. Mother is a person who has never had her feet on the ground. Cloud-cuckoo-land – that’s Mother’s natural home. And, unfortunately, she has met with another inhabitant: Mr FitzGeorge.’
‘And what about Bucktrout?’ said Carrie.
‘What, indeed?’ said William. ‘Bucktrout may well induce her to make the whole fortune over to him. Poor
Mother – so simple, so unwise. A prey. What is to be done?’
Meanwhile, Mr Bucktrout had called on Lady Slane to condole with her over this sudden responsibility.
‘You see, Mr Bucktrout,’ said Lady Slane, who was looking ill and troubled, ‘Mr FitzGeorge couldn’t have known what he was doing. He wanted me to enjoy his beautiful things – I realise that. But what did he imagine I could do with so much money? I have quite enough for my wants. I knew a millionaire once, Mr Bucktrout, and he was the most unhappy of men. He was so much afraid of assassination that he lived surrounded by detectives. They were like mice in the walls. He wouldn’t allow himself to make a friend, because he couldn’t get ulterior motives out of his mind. When one sat beside him at dinner, he was all the time fearing that one would end by asking him for a subscription to a favourite charity. Most people disliked him. I liked him very much. I have seen a great deal of men who mistrusted others because they scented ulterior motives, Mr Bucktrout, and I don’t want to be put into the same position. It seems absurd that Mr FitzGeorge, of all men, should have put me into it. I don’t think he can have known what he was doing.’
‘In the eyes of the world, Lady Slane,’ said Mr Bucktrout, ‘Mr FitzGeorge has conferred an enormous benefit upon you.’
‘I know, I know,’ said Lady Slane, deeply worried and distressed, and not wishing to appear ungrateful.
All her life long, she was thinking, people had conferred benefits on her, benefits she did not covet. Henry by making her first into a Vicereine, and then into a political hostess, and now FitzGeorge by heaping her quiet life with gold and treasures.
‘I never wanted anything, Mr Bucktrout,’ she said, ‘but to stand aside. One of the things, it appears, that the world doesn’t allow! Even at the age of eighty-eight.’
‘Even the smallest planet,’ said Mr Bucktrout sententiously, ‘is compelled to circle round the sun.’
‘But does that mean,’ asked Lady Slane, ‘that we must all, willy-nilly, circle round wealth, position, possessions? I thought Mr FitzGeorge knew better. Don’t you understand?’ she said, appealing to Mr Bucktrout in desperation. ‘I thought I had escaped at last from all those things, and now Mr FitzGeorge, of all people, pushes me back into the thick of them. What am I to do, Mr Bucktrout? What am I to do? I believe Mr FitzGeorge collected very beautiful things, but I know nothing of such things. I always preferred the works of God to the works of man. The works of God, I always felt, were given freely to anyone who could appreciate them, whether millionaire or pauper, whereas the works of man were reserved for the millionaires. Unless, indeed, the works of man were sufficient to the man who made them; then, it wouldn’t matter what millionaire bought them in after years. Not that Mr FitzGeorge,’ she added, ‘bought the works of man because of their value. He was an artist in appreciation. Besides, he was a miser. Far from paying the market value of a work of art, it amused him to discover a work of art for less than its market value. Then he felt he had got it on terms of a work of God rather than a work of man, if you follow me.’
‘I follow you perfectly,’ said Mr Bucktrout.
‘Few people would,’ said Lady Slane. ‘You encourage me to think that you sympathise with my position as few people would sympathise. I don’t want all these valuable things, beautiful though they may be. It would worry me to think that I had upon my mantelpiece a terra-cotta Cellini, which Genoux would certainly break, dusting one morning before breakfast. No, Mr Bucktrout. I would rather go up on to the Heath, if I want something to look at, and look at Constable’s trees.’
‘Rather than own a Constable?’ asked Mr Bucktrout shrewdly. ‘I believe that Mr FitzGeorge’s collection includes a very fine Constable of Hampstead Heath.’
‘Well,’ said Lady Slane, relaxing, ‘I might perhaps keep that.’
‘But for the rest, Lady Slane,’ said Mr Bucktrout, ‘excluding a few pieces that you might be willing to keep for personal reasons, what shall you decide to do?’
‘Give them away,’ said Lady Slane wearily, not energetically. ‘Let the nation have them. Let the hospitals have the money. As Mr FitzGeorge first intended. Let me be rid of it all. Only let me be rid of it! Besides,’ she added, with the twist to which Mr Bucktrout had become accustomed, ‘think how much I shall annoy my children!’
He fully appreciated the subtlety of the practical joke that Lady Slane was playing on her children. Practical jokes, in principle, did not amuse Mr Bucktrout; he dismissed them as childish and silly; but this particular joke tickled his sense of humour. He had formed a shrewd idea of Lady Slane’s children, although he had never seen them.
‘But when you die,’ said Mr Bucktrout, with his usual forthrightness, ‘your obituary notices will point to you as a disinterested benefactor of the public’
‘I shan’t be there to read them,’ said Lady Slane, who had learnt enough from Lord Slane’s obituary notices about the possibilities of false interpretation.
Mr Bucktrout walked away genuinely concerned with the perplexity of his old friend. It never occurred to him that most people would regard Lady Slane’s wistful regrets as very peculiar regrets indeed. He accepted quite simply the fact that Lady Slane disagreed with the world’s customary values, and accordingly it seemed natural to him that she should resent having them so constantly forced upon her. Moreover, he now knew all about her early ambitions, and their complete variance with her actual life. Mr Bucktrout, although simple in many ways – most people thought him a little mad – was also endowed with a direct and unprejudiced wisdom of his own: he knew that standards must be altered to fit the circumstances, and that it was absurd, although usual, to expect the circumstances to adjust themselves to ready-made standards. Lady Slane thus, in his opinion, deserved as much sympathy in the frustration of her life as an athlete stricken with paralysis. It was an unconventional view to take, no doubt, but Mr Bucktrout never questioned its rightness.
Genoux, however, was struck with horror when she heard what Lady Slane proposed to do. Her French soul was appalled. For a couple of days she had walked on air, and in order to celebrate this sudden, this unbelievable, accretion of wealth had bought some extra pieces of fish for the cat. Her ideas of the fortune bequeathed to Lady Slane – she had read the amount in the papers, and had counted the zeros on her fingers, incredulously doing the sum several times over – were curiously mixed: she knew well enough what a million was, what two millions were, but in practical application she decided only that she might now venture to ask Lady Slane for the charwoman three times a week instead of twice. Hitherto, in the interests of economy, she had not spared herself even when her rheumatism made her stiffer than usual. She had simply doubled her coverings of brown paper, had put on an extra petticoat, and gone about her business hoping for relief. She knew miladi was not rich, and would rather suffer herself than add to miladi’s expenses. But with Lady Slane’s decision, casually communicated to her one evening as she came to remove the tray, all visions of future extravagance vanished. ‘C’est pas possible, miladi!’ she exclaimed. ‘Et moi qui pensais voir revenir nos plus beaux jours!’ Genoux was really in despair. Moreover, she had been delighted by the light of publicity turned once more on Lady Slane. Both the daily papers and the weekly illustrated papers had flaunted Lady Slane’s photograph; the photographs had been very out-of-date, it was true, since nothing recent was available; they had shown Lady Slane as Vicereine, as Ambassadress, young, bejewelled, in evening dress, a tiara crowning her elaborate coiffure, seated under a palm; curiously old-fashioned; holding an open book in which she was not reading; surrounded by her children, Herbert in his sailor suit, Carrie in her party frock – how well Genoux remembered it! – leaning affectionately over their mother’s shoulders, looking down at the baby – was it Charles? was it William? – she held upon her knee. One paper even, accepting the impossibility of getting a photograph of Lady Slane to-day, had boldly made the best of a bad job and had reproduced a photograph taken in her wedding dress seventy years ago. Th
e companion picture was of Lord Slane in jodhpurs, rifle in hand, one foot resting on a tiger. These things, which Lady Slane so inexplicably did not like, satisfied Genoux’s sense of fitness. It was not for her to dictate to miladi, she said, but had miladi considered her position and what was due to it? miladi, who had been accustomed to all those aides-de-camp, all those servants – ‘bien que ce n’était que des nègres’ – all those orderlies, ready to run at any moment with a note or a message? ‘Dans ce temps-là, miladi était au moins bien servie.’ Then, in the midst of her despair, a thought struck Genoux which caused her to double up suddenly and rub her hands up and down her thighs. ‘Ah, mon Dieu, miladi, c’est Lady Charlotte qui va être contente! Et Monsieur William, done! Ah, la belle plaisanterie!’
Lady Slane was lonely, now that Mr FitzGeorge had gone. The excitement aroused by her gift to the nation, and the frenzy displayed by her own children, all passed over her without making much impression. She forbade Genoux to bring a newspaper into the house until the headlines should have dwindled to a mere paragraph, and she refused to see any of her children until they would consent to treat the matter as though it had never happened. Carrie wrote a carefully composed and dignified letter; a few weeks, possibly even a few months must elapse, she said, before this terrible wound could heal sufficiently to allow her to observe her mother’s condition of silence. Until then she could not trust herself. When she had recovered a little she would write again. Meanwhile it was clear that Lady Slane must consider herself in the direst disgrace.
But although this left her unmoved, and although, thanks to Kay and to Mr Bucktrout, she had had very little trouble with the authorities, beyond appending her signature to a few documents, she felt tired now and emptied in spirit. Her friendship with FitzGeorge had been strange and lovely – the last strange and lovely thing that was ever likely to happen to her. She desired nothing more. She desired only peace and the laying-down of vexation.
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