Bell Timson

by Marguerite Steen

“No, I’m dining at the club. Are you alone?” he asked cautiously. “Yes, until eight. Do come round; it seems a year since you came to see me.”

  It was only a few minutes before he was sitting by her fire. It was one of the pleasant things about Emily, that she always had a fire, somewhere, even in the height of summer; she excused it by saying that the house was on the “cold” side of the street. It needed no excuse in the English climate and on an evening which, although the month was August, the dank chill was that of February; the slice is were coaled with cold slime, and a thin rain was falling.

  The firelight spread warm pink fans in the polished surfaces of the furniture; under the light of her shaded lamp Lady Emily’s head was bent over her needlework. She was one of the few women he knew who still did needlework; naturally she would. A peaceful person, the soothing occupation belonged to her character.

  “Are you sure you won’t have dinner with us on the eighth?” she was asking.

  “You’re a forgiving woman, Emily!” He smiled at her. “I believe I will — if it won’t put your table out? As a matter of fact, when I rang you up I was in a devilish bad temper.”

  “I thought you were,” she said placidly.

  “Well, I’d gone to a confounded lot of trouble to get the seats — I’d practically had to bribe them out of the agency — and I was naturally annoyed when — my guests let me down.”

  “People are very thoughtless about that kind of thing.” She raised her head to send him her sympathy.

  It was charming to be with Emily; she had a look of breeding which women seemed to have lost since the war. Everything about her was gentle: the lines of her lips and brows, the way her graying hair folded itself behind her ears. Why did they all dye their hair nowadays? Gray hair made a woman look younger; it took the harshness out of contours which had lost their purity of youth, it was soft and feminine and delicate — even in wartime, with uniform. Thank heaven Emily was now out of uniform! He lay there, sleepily appraising the pleasant picture she made, in her gown of pale petunia-colored stuff, its narrow pleats clinging to and defining the long, graceful line from hip to ankle.

  “May one ask who your party was?”

  “As a matter of fact” — he was annoyed with himself for hesitating, for having seemed to make a mystery of it — “it was the Timson children and their mother.”

  “Oh.” The instant withdrawal of her tone made him look up sharply.

  “And what may ‘Oh’ stand for?”

  “My dear Dick!” She smiled a little. “You haven’t got to the point of expecting me to analyze my monosyllables, have you?”

  “You don’t like Bell Timson, do you?”

  She drew a thread to its full length, slowly, before replying.

  “How could I possibly ‘like’ her or not? We hardly exchange a dozen words while she’s giving me my massage.”

  “Pooh! Evasion,” he mocked her.

  “I think she’s an extraordinarily capable woman; the way she deals with my headaches — well, it’s almost genius!”

  “And you can’t stand the sight of her,” Richard finished for her.

  “Really, Dick! What an exaggeration!” She frowned a little, as though his persistence displeased her. “If I felt as you say, can you really suppose I would have her near me?”

  “All the same, you don’t like her,” he insisted.

  “I have never arrived at the point either of liking or disliking her.” She could be as insistent as he.

  “What a fishlike creature you make yourself out to be!”

  She lowered her hands to her knee and looked at him steadily.

  “I have so often felt that we waste a lot of time in bestowing likes and dislikes upon persons for whom it is quite impossible for us to have any positive feelings at all. A sort of general — frittering of our emotions.”

  “But, good heavens, Emily, one does it without thinking. There are people to whom one is inevitably drawn, and others who make one close up — just at the sight of them,” protested Richard.

  “I must confess I try to control my — isn’t the new word ‘reactions’? — of that kind.” She had resumed her stitching. “I think it’s just a kind of instinct: to reserve one’s feelings for the people who matter. And partly, of course, that one gets into such messes” — she grimaced at the word — “if one goes about either caring or disliking all the time.”

  “Well, you’re a remarkable person.” He said it ironically. “So Bell doesn’t matter?”

  “Why should she?” She said it in all innocence, raising her head as though in surprise. “I’m quite sure I don’t matter to her!”

  “You’re wrong there. You’re a sort of heroine to Bell.”

  “Now you’re being ridiculous!”

  “No, I’m not,” he answered quite gravely. “I don’t suppose she would put it into these words; but you’re the ideal she has before her when she tries to educate the children.”

  “Really, I think this is rather absurd.” Again he felt the quiver of her withdrawal.

  “Not at all. It only proves that Bell knows quality when she sees it, even if she can’t realize it in herself.”

  “Well! I appreciate the compliment. Why are you telling me all this about Mrs. Timson?” she interrupted herself to ask.

  “I thought it might make you feel a bit more — friendly toward her.”

  “But, my dear Dick, I’m not unfriendly! It’s just, perhaps, that I find her a little — unsympathetic; I don’t mean in the narrow sense of kindliness: no one could be kinder. Oh, you must know what I mean!” She allowed her tone to be tinged with impatience. “A lack of mutual interests —”

  “Don’t you think it’s odd she should have a daughter like Kay?” The rhythmic movement of her hand which held the needle ceased, he felt suspension — almost in her breathing.

  “I don’t think one is ever prepared for the tricks of heredity,” Lady Emily said briskly. “Probably there is some relative on the father’s side who would explain the anomaly.”

  “You’ve found the word: anomaly,” he repeated slowly. There was a silence, during which he sent an accomplished series of smoke rings spinning slowly toward the chimney. “As a matter of fact — Bell is an extremely worthy woman.”

  “I hope I haven’t said anything to suggest that I didn’t think she was that!”

  Richard laughed.

  “Not a word, my dear Emily. Of course it’s impossible to imagine that you and Bell would get on — let alone understand each other. You’re products of totally different civilizations; you barely speak the same language; the idea of your having one idea in common is practically inconceivable.”

  “We have my headaches in common; she really does cure them,” said Lady Emily, scrupulously fair.

  “What a pity you had no children of your own, Emily. You would have made an admirable mother.”

  “Yes.” She took this calmly. “I should have liked sons.”

  “Not daughters?” he teased her.

  “Of course; but I think they would have been more Philip’s children than mine. Girls usually gravitate toward the father, don’t they?”

  “I was only thinking. it’s a pity you aren’t Kay’s mother, instead of her own.”

  In the firelight he could not be sure of the flush that ran up her cheek. She laid down her needlework, rose abruptly, and went to the cabinet on which the cocktail tray was standing.

  “Let me make you another drink? Was the last one all right? I meant to write it down, but it slipped my memory. You know where I got it? That charming little restaurant just beyond Ciboure; you know the one I mean — where the Arandas used to go so much. I’ve o

  often wondered if one could stay there. It’s so difficult, isn’t it, to find anything really good on that stretch of the French coast?”

  He had risen and joined her at the other side of the room.

  “Why are you trying to head me off my subject, Emily?”

  She was silent, w
hile the liquor gurgled into the glass. She could feel him, standing over her, with his feet a little apart; he did not move or thank her when she gave him his drink; he remained still, a little menacing, looking down at her.

  “Do you wish me to say?”

  “Precisely; I am asking you.”

  She passed him, returning to her chair by the fire; not, this time, picking up her embroidery, but linking her hands quietly on her knee.

  “Dick. You will forgive me if I seem impertinent. But — are you seeing rather a lot of the little Timson girls just now?”

  “Otherwise — of Kay?” He would not spare her.

  “If you wish it — of Kay.”

  He resumed his own seat, placed the cocktail carefully on the small piecrust table at his side, took out his handkerchief, and wiped off a trace of moisture the glass had left on his fingers.

  “If anyone but you had made that observation, Emily” — he took pains to keep his voice level — “I would have been very angry. I will answer you categorically. I have seen the children — both of them together — five times during their summer holidays. Last Sunday should have been the sixth, but for some reason Bell sent them out, and I had tea with her alone.”

  “Did you find that amusing?” Her tone was very cool.

  “Frankly, no.”

  “Why not?” came, almost in a whisper, from Emily’s chair.

  “Good Lord, Emily, what have Bell and I got to talk about? I’ve known her, you will recollect, for two years; I like her a great deal and have the greatest respect in the world for her. We get on excellently when we are discussing serious subjects — on which she flatters me by asking my advice. Not that she ever takes it! You might as well make an impression on granite as on Bell; I actually believe she is the most obstinate, opinionated woman I ever met.”

  “Odd of you,” she murmured. “I did not imagine you would care for the type.”

  “Oh, I’m quite willing to admit my liking for Bell is a beguin! She braces one; there is something rather refreshing, in these days, about meeting anyone so straight up and down; so completely without subtleties or the power of recognizing them in other people. You’ve got to have a certain stamina to stand up to Bell! She’s like a climate, that either suits you or doesn’t. And, unfortunately, she doesn’t suit Kay.”

  “But surely Mrs. Timson is very fond of her children?”

  “Fond?” He laughed shortly. “She’d cheat, lie, steal — commit murder for them. And of course they’re fond of her.”

  “I think it is a very great mistake to interfere between parents and their children,” said Lady Emily slowly. “In fact very wrong and quite unjustifiable — unless, of course, the question of cruelty is involved.”

  “Exactly. And there can be different kinds of cruelty,” he told her. “The unconscious sort being, I think, quite as bad as the deliberate kind.”

  “Oh ... well. It’s hardly possible, is it, for an outsider to judge? One often finds that people who are outwardly on bad terms really understand each other very well.” She made a small, restless movement, which he ignored.

  “Yes, I think that probably goes for adults; but when there’s a child in the question the scales are apt to be weighted too heavily on the adult side. It has practically come to this: that Bell — with the best of intentions, of course — is trying to strangle Kay, mentally, and Kay is fighting for her life.”

  “Is that, perhaps, rather an exaggerated way of putting it?” He felt her coldness and her distaste. “Dick, I wonder if you would excuse my discussing the little Timson girl with you? I don’t see that the discussion can be very profitable, since yon can hardly expect me to intervene in a matter which is no business of mine. And — forgive me — I feel you have got the whole matter too much on your mind. Supposing we change the subject.”

  “By God!” He stared at her as though seeing her for the first time. “So you and Bell Timson have something in common — beside your headaches — after all!”

  “I really don’t understand,” she said proudly.

  “You, who’ve never known anything but freedom — haven’t you got any sympathy for something that is struggling like a bird in a cage? Don’t you care about trying to let it go free before it’s broken itself to pieces on the wires?”

  He saw that he had shocked her. He had not meant to be so violent, but that she, upon whom he had counted for sympathy, should stand deliberately remote from his appeal robbed him of his self-control.

  “So it’s true,” she said almost inaudibly.

  “So what’s true?” he disgraced himself by shouting at her.

  “What I suspected — feared — on the day you brought them to lunch.”

  Carefully! his instinct whispered to him. This is dangerous; for Kay’s sake it must be treated lightly.

  “You were rather a cat that day, Emily. You made poor Kay quite shy!”

  “So you are in love with ... ! Why do you come here, telling me these things, claiming my sympathy, when you must know I have none to give?”

  “What’s that got to do with it? Whether or not I am in love is my own business; I’m not claiming your sympathy for that. I came to ask your advice as to how to make Bell Timson realize that she must leave Kay another year at school and let her matriculate if she wants to. That’s the kind of thing Kay talks to me about — those are our lovers’ affirmations! There’s transport, there’s guilty passion — there’s l’amour for you, in the terms of a little girl of fifteen!” In his fury he did not care what he said to her; he took a savage satisfaction in seeing her flinch.

  “Oh — the poor little thing!”

  He laughed dryly, cruelly.

  “Thanks. So you’re beginning to —”

  “I’m not ‘beginning to’ anything!” she flashed at him. “I know nothing about the school — I would not have the slightest idea of how to approach Mrs. Timson, to persuade her to change her plans for her daughter. I should feel guilty of the grossest impertinence if I attempted to do anything of the kind! But I’m so sorry for the child, Dick — for having a man like you in love with her!”

  “I really ... Well, Emily, after that there’s nothing more to be said.” He tried to cover his discomfiture with a sneer as he rose from his chair.

  She faced him.

  “You’re good-looking, you’re charming, you’ve got a delightful mind, you’re — oh, damnably kind! She’s bound to fall in love with you, and what can you do about it? Oh, Dick, you shouldn’t have done it. You can’t even promise to marry her in a few years’ time.”

  “I see I oughtn’t to have upset you, Emily.” The earnestness of her look, of her grief, had melted his anger. “I should have known the whole thing was too difficult to explain.”

  “Or to excuse?”

  “I say nothing about excuses. I don’t admit that the situation calls for any. And if you imagine I am not fully, and most painfully, aware of the gravity and responsibility of my own position, Emily, you do me an injustice ... Now don’t mull all this over in your mind; it is bound to arrange itself, so long as no well-meaning person tries to interfere. I may even go away for a while —”

  “Indeed, it is the best thing you could do,” she answered gravely.

  “It’s not quite so simple as that, all the same,” he told her. “I suppose it’s no use my telling you — you wouldn’t understand — what a lonely person Kay is. And unfortunately she has come to depend on me.”

  “It should never have been allowed to come to that,” was the austere reply. Richard smiled faintly.

  “How wise we’d all be, wouldn’t we, Emily, if we could see the future?”

  Chapter VI

  “MUMMY, it’s Susan’s birthday just after we go back. Can I get her a present?”

  Bell nodded absently over her accounts.

  “Let’s see; what’s likely to be useful for her? I’ll tell you what; I saw a very good angora cardigan in Jaeger’s when I was getting your pull-overs. What about that?”r />
  Kay gave an agonized twist of the hip.

  “But I would like to buy it myself.”

  “All right. What have you got in the post office? You can let me have a couple of pounds, and I’ll make it up if it’s any more.”

  “I mean go to the shops and choose something myself.”

  “Then you’ll have to wait until Monday; I haven’t got time for pottering round the shops this week,” said Bell shortly. “What’s the matter with the cardigan? I’m sure she’d like it as much as anything; it’s a beautiful quality, and Susan’s gray.”

  “Well ... Jo’s going to the dentist on Friday, isn’t she? Mummy, couldn’t Susan just drop me in Bond Street and let me look at the shops while they’re at Mr. Acland’s?”

  “Now, Kathleen.” Bell turned round, firm and patient. “You know what my rules are. No walking round the West End by yourselves until you’re old enough to look after yourselves.”

  “But I am, Mummy! I’m fifteen, and Mrs. Lane lets Betty, though she’s a year younger than me. Mummy, I won’t go a single step out of Bond Street —”

  Bell put her hands on her daughter’s shoulders. Oh dear — what a shadow the child was: all skin and bone. All the cream and eggs and patent foods seemed as if they burned away to nothing inside this strange child of hers, with a sad, silent discontent smoldering perpetually behind her eyelids, a mute reproach that Bell felt she did not deserve. Could she not understand that her mother only wanted the best for her? She sometimes felt she would never know her own daughter; that she had no words or signs to penetrate Kay’s reserve. She could only love her ... and perhaps it was only, as Susan said, growing pains. Annoyed by her own “softness,” Bell shrugged away her misgivings; yet a deep maternal anxiety, an almost painful tenderness, filled her heart and deepened her deep voice as she said:

  “What a terrible color you are, child. You’ve got to look better than that if you’re going back to school on Tuesday.”

  “Oh, Mummy, I’m perfectly all right!” Horror widened Kay’s eyes for a moment, and her shoulders wriggled under her mother’s hands.

  Bell hesitated for a moment, then made up her mind.