Bell Timson

by Marguerite Steen

  “And a lot of good his cleverness did him. That child’s a damn sight too like her father at times, for my liking.”

  “She may make you quite proud of her one of these days,” soothed Susan. “Now I suppose we should he getting along toward the Gardens —”

  “Did you ever hear anything like it?” Bell had not yet emptied herself; she needed an audience. “Just because she wanted to be here when Mr. Somervell came! You might think —”

  “I wouldn’t think anything if I were you, Mrs. Timson.” She was checked, she did not know why, by the steady look in Susan’s eyes. There was an almost imperceptible pause, then Susan went,, with her firm, stiff tread, to the door. With her hand on the knob,, she turned, to smile tranquilly at Bell. “It’ll all have blown over by the time we come in, and I’d say nothing more about it if I were you. You’ll see; she’ll be quite ashamed of herself, and I wouldn’t mind betting she’ll say she’s sorry, of her own accord.”

  “So I should hope!” sniffed Bell.

  “Bless me! It does them no harm to have a blowup like this once in a while. Kathleen’s inclined to be too shut in; it’s just as well she’s got some of it out of her system.”

  Bell remembered her former anxiety.

  “You don’t think she’s caught something? It strikes me she’s got a temperature.” Susan’s comfortable smile came to her from the door.

  “All she’s caught is growing pains. I know ‘em — I’ve seen plenty of them, with my young sisters ... Well, have a nice tea party, Mrs. Timson — and give Mr. Dick my kind regards, if you remember.”

  “Mr. Dick”: that was where the children got it, of course. Down at Verney, where Susan was reared, he was “Mr. Dick” to all the village. Bell pushed aside the slight annoyance that Susan’s previous acquaintance with Richard sometimes caused her and went to change her dress.

  Now, with the scent of his cigar lingering in her parlor — she used to like it; why, today, did it irritate her? — she went to fling open the window.

  It wasn’t right; she couldn’t have people interfering between her and Kathleen — not even Mr. Somervell, who had been such a good friend. She had done nothing lightly, and her judgments were not lightly to be dismissed.

  Of course Mr. Somervell, with the best intentions, saw things through the eyes of his own class. Left to him, the girls would be spoiled with sheer kindness. And it was no use for Kathleen, although she had been educated with the children of cabinet ministers, high-ups in the services, even a title or two, to think that that sort of thing was going on forever. Bell was no snob; she believed in people finding their own level, and it was time for Kathleen to be worked in among the people among whom, normally, her future would be cast. Thanks to her mother’s social activities — which had considerably increased of latter years — there was quite a nice circle waiting for her; mostly grown-up, of course, but there were quite a few lively girls and boys among whom she would naturally find her favorites and start a social life of her own.

  She was getting to the dangerous age; the way she had spoken-good gracious, she might have a silly, schoolgirl “crush” on Mr. Somervell! Yes; she — Bell — must keep her eye open for that. There was going to be no nonsense with married men in Kathleen’s case; there was a great deal too much of that sort of thing going on now among the young girls. These men unfortunately married — they needed watching. The “good” ones, like Mr. Somervell, were really worse than the rakes; when they “got” it they had it badly ... Suddenly the breath caught Bell’s throat.

  It wasn’t possible that Mr. Somervell ... his queer, stiff manner ... so unlike him ... and the way he hardly seemed to pay attention to what one was saying ... and the way he had harped on about Kay ... It wasn’t possible that he had started ... something ... ?

  The rage that surged up in her astonished Bell. Wounded pride, anger, resentment, for a moment had her by the throat, forced a sound from her like that of an animal. The little bitch! The blood throbbed in her temples, and the room swam round her in waves of crimson. Then rage ebbed from her, leaving horror — that she could think in such a term of her own daughter. She felt herself beginning to cry, let out one or two hard, dry sobs that strangled her, and got up from her chair. What on earth had come over her? There was no doubt she needed Remmy’s ampoules.

  She went upstairs, found the hypodermic, and gave herself an expert injection; gave it a few moments to take effect, then went down to the little dining room where the cold supper was laid, which they shared on Sunday nights. The shaded electric light shone on the dishes of salad, on the children’s napkin rings — “K” and “J” in twisted silver — and on the wineglasses before Susan’s and her places; there was a bottle of burgundy on the table, as well as the children’s lemon barley. Kay ... Girls of that age often suffered from anemia. Bell moved half absently round the table and set a third wineglass at Kay’s place.

  She went out into the hall as the key rattled in the lock.

  “Well, you’re nice and late — all of you!”

  Even Jo, it seemed, was for once exhausted. She stumbled upstairs quite meekly, at Susan’s bidding, to change her shoes, stubbing her toes and muttering a purely mechanical “Bother, bother, bother!” on every step. Susan, with a glance at Bell, went down to the basement; and Bell, for once sensitive, unsure of herself, inarticulately humble, found her glance trembling away from Kay, who leaned against the wall, her eyes half closed — as if she had come to the end of all.

  “Mummy ...” It was only a breath.

  Bell’s arms flew out — the pair of them were clinging together — both shaking in an agony of contrition, of relief, of joy. Kay’s face was buried in her mother’s shoulder, her thin, childish body pressed close, as though seeking reassurance of continued love.

  “Oh, Mummy, Mummy, Mummy ...”

  Chapter IV

  THE DOOR OPENED softly and let a shaft of light from the landing across the darkened room. Susan’s slippers squeaked stiffly across the rugs; there was a rustle of bedclothes, a grunt, a whining mumble.

  “Sh-h! Don’t wake Kathleen. Here’s your dressing gown. I’ll fetch your clothes out to the bathroom.”

  Smothered efforts at quietude; the creak of a bed; clop of a falling bedroom slipper — “Oh, blow!”; floor-shaking sleepy stumble; the soft click of a closing door.

  This was the best moment of the day. One could open one’s eyes, look at the sunlight yellowing the drawn curtains, nuzzle back into one’s pillow. The warm nest of the bedclothes cuddled one like an embrace; closed door, curtains, the absence of the little, hot, rootling body of Jo from the neighboring bed, the sounds of the wakening house created a privacy which was luxury. One could lie and dream about the bedroom one would have someday: with the polished wood, or perhaps marble, floor, a big window with sun blinds made of reeds, opening on a balcony overlooking the sea: the bedroom one would share with nobody, the palace of oneself.

  Kay lay very still, nearly asleep. This was the best time for sleeping; it was easier to sleep in a room of one’s own. Even if the other person was quiet it was disturbing. Unless one was alone one was always a little bit on guard, defending something — one did not quite know what: perhaps this house of flesh, this frail shell inhabited by someone called Kay Timson; someone who was there, always in hiding: who might escape, or be invaded, unless one kept watch.

  At the last, tenderly,

  From the walls of the powerful, fortress’d house ...

  Let me be wafted!

  Ah yes; but at the last. When I am ready. Not torn, dragged, rent, like Marpessa, “from the scabbard of his limbs”! Somebody has to come, and knock softly, and wait till I answer: “Tenderly! Be not impatient!” Wafted; a lovely word, wafted. One of those words that come like the singing wind across the beds of labdanum and lavender.

  There was Jo, whistling in the bathroom and being hushed by Susan; and her mother’s brisk voice calling out on the staircase, as if to show she was not in sympathy with this ly
ing-in-bed-in-the-morning idea, which was Susan’s — bless her. Mummy, always kind and sensible and definite — poor Mummy; such a bore for her to have something so wavy and reedy and — and altogether undefined as a daughter like Kay to deal with! Dear Susan, with her funny, stiff, stumping ways, that didn’t belong, really, to the Susan who lived inside. Susan was another, of course, who lived in a “powerful, fortress’d house”; she came out of it sometimes — when she went down to the tuppenny library and brought home books by Ethel M. Dell and Elinor Glyn and Cynthia Stockley; books Kay was not supposed to read, which taught her to read with a headlong speed — because there would be only a few minutes, while Susan was shopping or cooking the lunch: when one slipped into her bedroom and seized the grimy, finger-marked volumes that lay on her night table and devoured as much as one could, before somebody called, “Kathleen!” or “Kay!” and one had to rush downstairs for fear of betraying one’s occupation. There was a picture, too, in her bedroom, which belonged to Susan’s “fortress’d house”: a colored reproduction, by someone called Greiffenhagen, of a man in a kind of sun hat, with his arms round a girl with poppies in her hair. Kay suspected it was not a good picture (visits to the National Gallery and the Tate had given her intimations of virtue in painting) but she understood Susan’s affection for it. M’m, yes ... What was it like, she wondered, to be born, like Jo, in a green field, with an open gate in it?

  The telephone shrilled through the dividing wall. Bell’s energetic step mounted the stairs, crossed the landing — not noisily, but pointedly taking no trouble to be quiet. That’s meant to make me feel guilty; but I don’t. I don’t want to be tiresome or disobedient, but there’s no harm in lying in bed. In fact what’s the use of getting up, unless one has something particular to do? This is ... let me see. Monday. And yesterday was Sunday. Oh! Yesterday was Sunday.

  Sunday. And he had come and gone, and she had not seen him. It was the sort of thing that seemed too bad to happen. Only eleven more days of the holidays — and one of the best had gone. For ol course Sundays were the best days; they meant the zoo, lunch somewhere in the West End, and — once or twice — a concert at the Albert Hall; or at least a tea party at home. And yesterday — wasted. Would he realize that, and make up for it, sometime later in the week?

  “Yes, I’ll try to make it four o’clock,” Bells voice came clearly from next door. “You haven’t given me much notice, have you? ... It’s all right; I’ll manage. But I don’t care about changing my times as a rule; you know what it is — one plans out one’s day, and last-minute changes are a bit awkward ... Very well, Mrs. Fleeting; I’ll be there as close to four as I can make it.”

  Not ill-tempered or petulant, only decisive. The receiver clipped back on its rest, heels tapped briskly across the floor and paused outside Kay’s door.

  In a second she was curled round, catlike, with half-buried head, but with none of the repose of the cat in her stillness. I mustn’t let my eyelids twitch, I mustn’t cough. But evidently Bell changed her mind. As her heels went tapping down the stairs Kay breathed again. Now that’s over; now I can think of something else. I can think about yesterday afternoon.

  I can think of his car, the black Buick, turning into Plymouth Street, and it stops when it reaches our house and Jenkins gets out and opens the door. Now he is out on the pavement — let me see: what is he wearing? It might be the dark blue, with a tiny little white line in it, or it might be the light gray. The gray, I think, because it’s sunny. No, I’ll make it the dark blue, because that’s my favorite; it makes him look finer, somehow — finer drawn, I mean. He’s standing with one hand in his pocket and the other holding his stick and gloves: he’s stooping a little, as if it was too much trouble to stand up straight. His stoop makes him look elegant — what’s the word? Dé — dégagé. The French always have the right word — le mot juste. Now he’s telling Jenkins what time to come back; it may be half past five, or six, if he’s going on to Lady Emily’s.

  Now he’s ringing the bell and waiting for Susan to answer it, Susan, who rails him “Mr. Dick” and knows all about Verney, and the Court, and the iron gates you go through, between the two lodges, and the high pillars with stone owls on top of them ... and the door opens, and it’s Mummy. She’s got the pink dress on, and some of the face powder we gave her for her birthday. He’s surprised, but he goes into the parlor, and he looks round, and there’s nobody there. And he says, “Where’s Kay?”

  What comes next? I don’t know. I ... don’t ... know. Does Mummy say I’m out, and does he say “Out?” as if he can’t believe it’s true? Yes, that’s it. He’s — nonplused; yes, that’s the word. Because it’s me he comes to see. We both know it, but it’s a secret, and he daren’t say too much, in case Mummy guesses. He is wondering, Why has Kay gone out, when she knew I was coming to see her? Dick; Dick darling. You know it wasn’t my fault, don’t you? Of course I wanted to see you; to go on talking about all the things you were telling me last time — about the South of France and the carnivals and the Roman amphitheaters and the Pope’s palace at Avignon and sur le font and Tartarin de Tarascon and the Stes. Maries and mimosa — all the things that aren’t in any of my books. You tell things so beautifully — differently from anyone else. Your eyes seem to look in, instead of out, and a sort of smile comes on your lips; and your voice gets on one note, lower and lower — more like somebody telling the things through you than speaking them yourself. “We did so and so,” you say; “we saw so and so.” I wish I knew who “we” was. You and ... ?

  Once, when you and she were talking, Mummy said something about Lady Cynthia. Who was Lady Cynthia? Was she the other “we”? Did you and she go to France together? I thought people who weren’t married aren’t supposed to go traveling together. That makes it rather awkward; I feel shy about asking. Suppose Lady Cynthia was your mistress? You might be embarrassed. Not that I wouldn’t understand, darling Dick! Truly, I wouldn’t mind knowing you had a mistress; all the great people did — Charles II and George IV and the Roi Soleil; and they were beautiful and brilliant, and just as important as wives. I don’t think I could bear it if you had a wife, Dick — although of course if you wanted me to be your mistress it wouldn’t make any difference. Lady Kay — no, there’s too much about it. Lady Kathleen is better, although it seems to go with long silk dresses with taffeta frills inside them and wasp waists and hair done up in a chignon. I wonder what Lady Cynthia was like. I wonder what happened to her. I wonder if it was terrible for her — the end, I mean ...

  When we two parted

  In silence and tears ...

  They name thee before me,

  A knell to mine ear;

  A shudder comes o’er me ...

  Oh — awful, awful. Parting is so terrible, always ... and perhaps she died? Oh, poor, poor Mr. Dick! Yes, now I come to think of it, I believe that must have been it. I’ve suddenly remembered something.

  He’d asked us to tea in his flat, and we were late because we couldn’t find a taxi; and when we went in he was reading by the fire. I asked him what he was reading, and my feelings were rather hurt because he said I wouldn’t understand. Afterward, while he and Jo were playing chess, I found the book, with the marker in the page he had been reading, and a pencil mark round one of the verses.

  Sleep; and if life was bitter to thee, pardon,

  If sweet, give thanks; thou hast no more to live

  And to give thanks is good, and to forgive.

  Out of the mystic and the mournful garden

  Where all day long thine hands in barren braid

  Wove the sick flowers of secrecy and shade,

  Green buds of sorrow and sin, and remnants grey,

  Sweet-smelling, pale with poison, sanguine-hearted,

  Passions that sprang from sleep and thoughts that started,

  Shall death not bring us all as thee one day

  Among the days departed?

  I don’t know what it means even now, but it was so beautiful I learned it by h
eart Then came and took the book away, when I was trying to read some more, and said, “My dear Kay, Swinburne isn’t considered literature pour la jeune fille”! I wish I knew why all the stuff “pour la jeune fille” has to be dull or — or downright silly. It’s a perfect miracle we ever get to know anything. I wonder why he marked that verse; I have a sort of feeling it had something to do with Lady Cynthia; was she the person “among the days departed”?

  Is that Susan, bringing my breakfast? Not yet. Well ...

  We’re in a train, on our way to the South of France. As a matter of fact we’re in the South of France. It’s a first-class carriage, and we have it to ourselves, because Dick gave the guard some money. There’s the sea on one side, as blue as a turquoise, and everything smells of mimosa. No, it’s partly the scent — perfume, I mean — he gave me: that I have on my handkerchief and little dabs behind my ears. He showed me about that when he gave me the bottle. There’s a heavenly heat, that makes the trees and the water sort of dither when you look at them. He’s holding my hand — no, he’s not; it’s too hot, and we’d be sticky. Why do things like sticky hands happen at — those sort of times?

  Presently the train stops at a station, and we get out; there’s a great white car waiting, and we get in and start to rush along that road — what’s it called? Corn — Corn — something. Then we begin to climb up into the mountains, and it gets lovelier and lovelier — all purply, because the sun’s setting. He asks me if I’m tired, and I say no, although I am just a little bit tired — with happiness. Now we see lights through the trees, and there’s a drive, and — palms, I think; and the car rushes up that, and there’s the villa. It’s white, and it’s got a terrace, but I can’t see very much, because by now it’s nearly dark. The stars are enormous. There’s just a bit of a moon. We go up some steps, and there’s a table on the terrace, laid for two people: with pink-shaded candles and lots of silver and wine — the sort we had at Claridge’s; that was the first time I’d ever tasted wine. “Didn’t I tell you you would drink this someday on a terrace overlooking vineyards?” “Yes, but you didn’t say it would be by starlight.”