by Rebecca West
“No,” she answered.
We walked on in silence for a minute and I felt a desire to be honest about this. “It’s awful, I think they’re horrid and silly, but I wish they liked me.”
“Oh, yes,” she said, “I don’t think there’s anything I should rather have than that they should like me,” and she spoke with such a quiet, candid admission of pain that I felt no longer lonely in my exclusion, and was certain that if she shared it it could not be a shame to me. Just when I got back my voice we passed a stall where they were selling roast chestnuts, and she said, “That is the nicest smell of all.”
“When we have our hair washed,” I said, “we all sit round the fire in our dressing-gowns and we roast chestnuts in a wire thing among the coals and eat them and drink milk.”
“Mamma and I do that, too,” she said. “I think your Mamma and mine did it together when they were little.”
“And I’ll tell you one thing,” I said, “I like keeping a chestnut in my mouth and then taking a drink of milk. But Mamma says it’s a horrid trick.”
“So does my Mamma,” said Rosamund.
“I can’t think why,” I complained. “People would have to look hard at you before they could see that you were doing it, so hard that they’d be in the wrong because they were being rude, and anyway there’s nobody there but us.”
“And sucking chocolate, that’s another thing,” said Rosamund. “Mamma says you must eat it, not suck it, and surely nobody could see that without staring either.”
“Yet they let you cut your bread and butter into fingers and dip it in your egg,” I said, “and I would have thought that if the other things were wrong that was too.”
“Yes,” said Rosamund, “those are the things I call really queer.”
Now we had come to one of those South London stations which have taken to the air. The beautiful rubies and emeralds of the signals shone up in the dark sky, above the sloping slate roofs of the houses, which in the night shone like water. The platforms and the waiting rooms were a vague pavilion between these tilted slate ponds and the stars. We thought it so lovely that we stood stock still in a dream, and the grown-ups had to call us again. “Don’t you like the night far better than the day?” I asked Rosamund, as we ran up the steep wooden staircase.
“Yes,” she answered, “it is more—” Her mouth again became a struggling hole as her stammer seized her. She had not found her voice by the time the handsome train came in, spitting fire from its engine, and Mamma and I got into one of its golden compartments. But it did not matter that my conversation with Rosamund was not finished, for I would see her again and again, we would go through life together, she would never go over to the side of the enemy. I waved to her through the shut glass of the window with a fervour which I at once regretted, lest she should have thought me silly. But she took a step nearer the train when she waved to me, as if she mistrusted the hesitant motion of her hand, the blind softness of her smile, to tell me how little silly she thought me. The train puffed off, then stopped before it got out of the station, and backed, so that Mamma and I saw the three of them again, going along the platform to the exit. Cousin Jock was looking canny in his horrid Scots comedian way; what on earth was there for him to look canny about on a railway platform in the dark? But he was not putting on ‘that expression very hard, because he did not know there was anybody looking at him very closely. You could pierce through it and see how easily he did things, how easily he played the flute, with the ease of a snake gliding, casting its skin. Constance was stately beside him, taking no notice of him, though not looking cross with him; it was as if they had been told to walk side by side in a procession, and that was all she knew of him. Rosamund was a pace behind them, making no sign, yet eloquent, like a tree before its leaves have come out.
Mamma and I were alone in the carriage. Mamma took off her shoe to see what had been hurting her all day. We had to buy very cheap boots and shoes and they were always going wrong one way or another. “There must be a nail coming through,” she muttered. “Oh, it was good to have Constance back. We’ve had a grand day, have we not, my wee lamb?”
“Yes,” I said, “and I do like Cousin Constance and Cousin Rosamund.”
“It is funny that I called you Rose and she called her Rosamund,” Mamma said, feeling inside the shoe. “It was chance, we were far away from each other at the time.”
“But those horrible things,” I said, “that were there when we first got there.”
“I doubt the heel of a hammer will take out that nail,” she mourned. “If it doesn’t I’ll have to send it to the cobbler, and my other good pair is there already. Yes, they were horrible things.”
“I was frightened at first,” I said. Thinking of the day, I felt quite frightened.
“Yes, yes,” she said. Being very brave, she sometimes failed in tenderness to us when fear was our trouble.
I felt lost for a moment, then, remembering something I had read in a book, I said, “Oughtn’t we to have said the Lord’s Prayer?”
She sighed. “It’s not so easy as all that. How should it be?” And put her shoe on again, murmuring, “Poor Constance, poor Constance.”
Our train slowed down at a station. Somebody got out of another carriage playing a mouth-organ, and as he went farther away the sound became sad, and saddened the silence that followed. The guard’s whistle sounded sad too. I thought of Constance and Rosamund going back to their dark and ravaged house with that fair, smooth, baldish man, and I could not stand it, I bounced on my seat with anger. I asked furiously, “Why did Cousin Constance marry Cousin Jock?”
My mother repeated the question, and, with a thinness of voice which meant that she was very tired, gave me an answer to which I listened attentively, for I had noticed that when she spoke so she was not at all like a grown-up talking to a child, and was therefore telling the truth. “I doubt if anybody else wanted her,” she said. There was no belittlement in her tone. She was making a statement of fact, and it perplexed me.
“But wasn’t she nice-looking when she was young?” I asked. “She looks as if she must have been.”
“Oh, yes, Constance was very handsome,” said Mamma, glowing generously, “like a Roman woman, you could imagine her driving a chariot.”
“But then,” I asked, “didn’t lots of men want to marry her?” I was alarmed. Up till then I had thought it was all quite simple. If you were nice-looking men wanted to marry you, and if you were not you saw it for yourself in the mirror and decided to do something else.
“No,” said Mamma, “the men were afraid of her.” She took the pinching shoe off again and picked away at the nail inside, her nose looking very thin and sharp. “Indeed,” she added, “they were afraid of me, too.”
I was appalled. I had known that many people were unfriendly to my mother when they first met her because she was so thin and wild-looking and badly dressed, and I had seen that it hurt her. She must have been far more hurt if they had disliked her when they had no cause, before she was ill and unhappy and poor. But at any rate she had married Papa and not Cousin Jock. “Why,” I said, “did Cousin Constance have to marry at all, if she couldn’t get anybody better than Cousin Jock?”
“Why,” said my mother, her voice thin as a wisp of mist, “how could she have got Rosamund if she hadn’t married someone?” Her eyelids dropped, she fell into a doze. I looked out of the train at the dark rows of houses striped vertically with the lives of families, showing yellow through the windows, and was interested at my new knowledge of what a family was. It was as if Mamma, my Mamma, or Rosamund’s Mamma, or anybody’s Mamma, were in a place like the Zoo or Kew Gardens, and were waiting for her little girl and finally saw her standing outside the entrance, on the other side of the gate, and said to the attendant in charge of the gate, “My little girl is outside, would you mind if I went outside and fetched her in?” She would have to be polite to the attendant who could let her through the gate, no matter what he might be like.
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6
WHEN WE WERE very small, out in South Africa, Papa and Mamma had been walking with us in a garden on a cold afternoon just before Midsummer’s Day, and Papa had told us to lay our hands on the trunk of a tree. He said that we would feel nothing but wood. But if we did it again, a week later, there would lie under our hands wood and something more, for now was the time when the world was swinging over from winter to summer, and it was suspended between life and death. We wondered, but obediently laid our hands on the tree-trunk and were of the opinion that it felt dead, while Mamma exclaimed, telling us that her own Papa and Mamma had made her do the same thing, and she had thought it a rite peculiar to her family, and here was Papa practising it also. A week later we laid our hands on the tree-trunk again and were of the opinion that it felt alive, and cried out at the miracle, and Mamma said we would find it easier to understand if we went home to England, where it happened at Christmastime. So we had. We saw the week between Christmas and New Year as a time of suspense, when the world made up its mind whether to change from dying to living and thus fall in with Christ’s promises, or to stand out and go its own way and spoil everything. In the night, in our bedroom, we had wondered whether there was anything to prevent the world from deciding that it would not wake up and have a spring, and then everybody would get colder and colder, and the days would go on getting shorter and shorter, and in the end there would be only darkness. We asked Papa and Mamma about this, and Papa said, “Well, it might happen, but not in your time.”
“But we don’t want it to happen at all,” said Cordelia.
“Do not frighten the children,” said Mamma. “Spring has always come, so we can take it that it will always come.”
“What an argument for a fellow-countrywoman of David Hume,” said Papa. “Nobody has ever upset his contention that though certain causes produce a certain effect on one occasion, this gives no logical proof that they are bound to produce it on another. We may yet see universal and eternal night.” He gave one of his grating laughs. “But I do not think you children need worry about it.” Yet we worried because we obscurely felt that he felt a certain delight in contemplating a never-ending winter, chill and darkness never to be dispelled. It did not matter that Mamma told us then, and often later, that day and spring were bound to come, for we sometimes suspected that he had the greater power.
So we thought of ourselves during this week between Christmas and New Year as a besieged army waiting to be relieved. This time the period had been broken into by the visit Mamma and I had paid to Constance and Rosamund. To me it was as if we two had gone on a foray out into enemy country and brought home some of our lost forces. I did not tell any of the others about the poltergeist, though Mamma had not forbidden me to do so. Cordelia would have hated it, she would have got cross, and scolded me for telling a story which was not true. Mary would have been indifferent to the horrors of the supernatural assault in a way which would have galled me in my desire to win admiration for Rosamund. Richard Quin was of course too little to understand. But I told them all how wonderful Rosamund was.
I must have talked about her incessantly, for I talked about her to myself when I could find no other listeners. I remember sitting on the hearthrug and looking at a spent fire of rosy coals and fine white ashes and repeating, “Rosamund, Rosamund,” and forgetting to put on fresh coal; and I remember running round the lawn calling her name as loudly as if she were in earshot and could be made to come to me. Soon Cordelia began to make a fuss about this. She had been very consequential about Christmas Day and was always either practising or carrying about her violin with an expression which indicated that she was vainly looking for a place where she could practise in peace. She now enacted the part of an eldest sister distracted by the prattle of a young sister who would go on and on about something childish; and because the part delighted her she went on performing it long after I had ceased to speak of Rosamund to her, and kept my tale for Mary.
There I found an interested listener, for Mary was sure she would like Rosamund if I did, but could not understand for what reason either of us should, as she seemed to do nothing interesting.
“Are you sure she doesn’t play any instrument?” she asked.
“Quite sure, she said she didn’t,” I replied.
“Are you sure that she didn’t simply say that she didn’t play the piano?” she pressed. “No? Well, I suppose it’s all right. But she sounds just like one of the girls at school, nothing interesting at all. But I think we’ll find out that she plays some instrument or other.”
Richard Quin too listened to all I had to say, because he liked the name of Rosamund as soon as he heard it, and liked it better when Mamma told him it meant Rose of the World. And Kate liked hearing about her, and said she was very glad of what she heard, for there were too few of us to keep ourselves company as we went through life.
Then, on the morning of New Year’s day, as we were running about the garden, touching the trees and the shrubs to feel the fresh life in them, Mamma flung open the french window and cried to us, “See who has come.” We three girls were in the grove of chestnuts at the end of the garden, and hurried out to see Rosamund and her mother standing at the top of the iron steps. Constance looked a little odd, not only because she was even shabbier than Mamma, but because her carved quality, when it did not appear statuesque, and just now it did not, partly because women then had to wear such silly hats, recalled Mrs. Noah. Rosamund was as fair as I had remembered her. She saw me and smiled, but did not call. She was as golden as a cloud facing the summer sun. I was so overcome by the sight of her that I could not find my voice or move. Before I could go to her, Richard Quin, who had been among some syringa bushes nearer the house, ran towards her across the lawn, crying, “Rosamund! Rosamund!” She came down the steps, and was on the path when he reached her; and he threw himself down before her, clasping her round the knees, looking up at her and laughing with joy. She bent over him, at a slower pace of delight, and they kissed and kissed.
They spent the whole day with us, and it passed like an hour or so. We had barely time to show her our dolls’ houses, and that not thoroughly. Even Cordelia liked her. She said in a patronizing way, for of course she was older than Rosamund too, “She is very well-behaved.” It was an inept tribute, because Rosamund possessed less behaviour than any other person I have ever known. She was simply there. Mary liked her, and asked her at once, “I say, hasn’t Rose got it wrong? You do play something, don’t you?”
“No.” Rosamund smiled. “I cannot do anything.”
“Well, I’m sure you could, I’m sure you could play anything,” said Mary.
When we took her down to see Kate in the kitchen Kate very soon asked her when her birthday was and wrote it down with ours in the Bible she kept on the dresser, and that was an important ratification of the relationship. And when Papa came back from the newspaper office for luncheon he looked at Rosamund with astonishment, the extent of which we did not guess till he returned home in the evening, and Mamma and I took the evening paper into the study.
“That child,” he said, “is amazing. She ought to make a great marriage.”
“Make a great marriage?” Mamma repeated in some astonishment. “Why, my dear, how could she make a great marriage? I often wonder,” she said with quiet desperation, “how any of the girls are to marry.”
“But why not? They have not the tremendous air of this girl, but they are none of them ill-looking.”
“But we do not know any families into which they can marry,” said Mamma. “We are not part of any world.”
My father was more taken aback than I have ever seen him. “Well, when we have settled down here we will make more friends,” he said weakly; and then forced himself to say with sad honesty, “though I know there are not many people in Lovegrove of the sort we would wish our daughters to marry. But there must be some solution. I must see.”
“Anyway we do not want to marry,” I said. “Oh, you need not la
ugh! We have often talked it over.”
After that Rosamund came to us quite often, at weekends, and during the holidays. She knew we had to practise and did not think it was rude of us to keep to our usual hours at the piano as if she were not there. Either she was in the room, the ghost dogs in a circle round her, and played with Richard Quin so silently that we could not have told they were there, at curious games unknown to us, with circles and squares of coloured paper, or with his soldiers and the figures Papa carved for us, deployed in a new way; or they went into the garden, making so pleasant a picture that I remember it as much transposed from reality as if I had seen them on a tapestry, the walls annulled, the trees melting into distances as different from the actual neighbourhood as the landscape I had seen when, as I had perhaps dreamed, I went to the stables to find Mamma on the first night we ever spent in this house. Soon Rosamund was as familiar with our made-up animals as we were. She recognized that they were such awful little dogs, such pampered, purseproud, conventional little dogs, that they had to be called Ponto and Fido and Tray, and she brought us the book that had in it the portrait of her made-up hare, drawn by Dürer. Docile he sat, with his paws laid neat before him, resigned to what might be his portion here on earth; but his two tall ears, standing oddly erect considering that they were soft as velvet ribbon, and the nervous circle-sweep of feelers from his muzzle and his eyes showed that all the same he was resigned to nothing, he still feared. All the same, the deep banks of fur ruffling his breast, his back, his haunches, showed him a natural fop, committed by his pelt to an effeminate timidity. This made us feel better about him. What he feared for was not his life but the unspotted condition of his lovely clothes. Gathered round him on the lawn, as well aware as if we really saw him that he sat there contented in our notice, his eyes shining like warm crystal, his tawny fur giving off a rainbow lustre, we jeered at him tenderly.