The Fountain Overflows

by Rebecca West

  Where was my father? He might be here. He might as well be in Kew Gardens as at any place that was not our home. Perhaps he was in the pagoda which we saw over the treetops to the south; on any one of its ten red balconies, under any of their blue roofs, he might be standing. Or he might be in one of the hothouses, immobile, perhaps, among the weightless, saw-toothed monotony of the great ferns. He might be across the river, sheltering within the arcades on the ground floor of Syon House. He might be in one of those twilit museums in the Gardens, where cross-sections of trees and plaster models of beetles swim in half-light behind the glass doors of the cupboards, under the glass lids of showcases, which give back the weak light weakly, and create a dusk where one might take a man for a shadow, a shadow for a man. I shut my eyes and pretended that my father was in any of these places, that he would be in all of them, that there were several of him and I would find them all. I would find him wherever he was, and if he wanted to reject me, that would be all right, if it gave him pleasure. The only thing that mattered was that he should be there to do something to me, it was of no importance what it was. But surely he would not reject me, for it was I whom he had loved the best. I had to smile at myself, for of course each of us was thinking that, with the exception of Mamma, who would be thinking only of how she had loved him.

  Cordelia crossed the avenue to say in grieved tones, “Look at Richard Quin.”

  Ahead of us was Mamma, her long black skirts trailing on the grass, her head wagging as she talked to Papa, and ahead of her were Rosamund and Richard Quin. He was running backwards, running lightly, though his face was grave, and juggling with three balls. Sometimes he stopped and threw a ball slowly to Rosamund, who sent it back to him. It was always a great pleasure for her, to play ball with him. A clumsiness which was the muscular equivalent of her stammering overcame her when she tried to play games; she dropped any ball sent to her at a normal speed, however hard she tried. So Richard Quin used sometimes to abandon his brilliant skill, and bowl to her gently, from a flat hand that hardly closed, and it was strange when the ball came so slowly, so very slowly through the air, and she sent it so slowly back to him, it was agreeable to watch them, it was how one might see the stars move through space, if one were great enough to watch the whole universe.

  Cordelia said, “He should not have brought those balls. Not today.” She burst out wretchedly, “Oh, if only he could have gone to a public school. He is getting no bringing up at all. He thinks of nothing but silly games, not just cricket, and playing all those instruments without working at any of them. It is not fair on any of us.”

  Perhaps my father was in the pagoda: high up, in the small round room that each floor must be, with a spiral staircase he would never tread again, as a hole at his feet, as a convolution in the ceiling overhead; standing quite still, vowed to stay there until he died, not looking out of the window, not doing anything, the hollows under his high cheekbones growing darker and darker. If he were going to do anything so absurd as live without me, he might do something as absurd as that.

  Cordelia was annoyed because I did not answer. “All this,” she sighed, “is going to be so terribly hard on me. In a year or two it would have been all right.” She walked away, looking down on the ground and shaking her head, her hands folded behind her back.

  Now we had reached the lake, and Mamma and the others had halted on the verge, but I ran past them, away from my pain, towards the end of the vista, into the face of the wind that was tearing the leaves from the chestnuts overhead. But Richard Quin ran faster and caught me up.

  “Come back,” he said, “Mamma heard a siren in the distance, so we think it must be one o’clock, though we are not quite sure as it is Saturday, and the hothouses should be open.” In our clockless, watchless household, time was always deduced rather than told, often from premises less substantial than this. “So now they are wondering what to do, whether to go out and eat our sandwiches on the seats by the big pond, or to see the lapageria at once, as we are near it.”

  Mamma and the others stood with their backs to the brown lake, beside a willow which was slowly shedding on the grass and on the waters its narrow lemon-yellow leaves. One leaf, turning round and round in the air, fell on the shoulder of Mamma’s dark jacket and stayed there, like the flash of a strange uniform. It was an opaque yellow, as if it were made of some thick and not-still living material, like leather. She said feebly, “What shall we do?” We had suffered another strange loss, like our games. Papa had never made plans for us as other fathers did, if there was anything to be done about school, or such holidays at the seaside as we ever had, Mamma had always to do it; and we children often had to choose for ourselves when most people would have thought us too young. We did not count this a hardship, because we enjoyed making up our minds. But now that Papa was gone, we could not make up our minds. Evidently just having him there had been a help.

  Mamma said, “You should eat now, you are growing so fast, it is important that you should have meals at regular times. But the lapageria is near.”

  “Let us go and see the lapageria,” said Mary. “You are tired, and it will mean less walking.” But it could be heard that she did not care.

  “I would be walking up and down, wherever I was,” said Mamma, “I will not be able to rest, do not think of me.”

  “It is more sensible to go and see the lapageria and walk less,” Cordelia said.

  “But you children always like to eat your sandwiches by the pond,” said Mamma.

  “Yes, but chiefly so as not to give anything to the black swans,” said Richard Quin. We had settled that the bad-tempered black Australian swans on the pond housed the souls of people who were horrible to Mamma when they came to ask for money, or who were rude to children, and we took pleasure in never giving them any of our bread and keeping it all for the nicer birds. “And don’t let’s bother about them today, they might feel pleased today because we are all so wretched.”

  Yet nobody moved, we could not make up our minds.

  Rosamund said, “Please, I would so much like to see the lapageria now.”

  “Why, of course, I had forgotten,” said Mamma, “we came here because Rosamund had never seen it.”

  It grows across a corner of the Temperate House where the roof is low, and you can really see it. The leaves are nothing much, like the leaves of a clematis, which is good, because you need only look at the flowers. They are rose-pink and might be made of wax. They are not very big, about as long as one’s little finger. The buds are folded into oblongs like neatly packed parcels to hold small Christmas presents, and when they open they are like bells; and there are not too many of them, they hang far apart on the stems, so that you can enjoy each one of them, but not too far apart, it does not seem skimpy. This is characteristic of the creeper, which does everything with a sense of measure. The flowers are bright pink, but not too bright; and they do not wait to fade on the vine, they drop when they are at their best, and they lie on the earth as clean-edged as if they were really made of wax. If you pick them up you see that special arrangements have been made to keep the colour from getting too bright, for the petals are covered with a very faint white network, which you cannot see at all from a distance, but which mutes the colour.

  When Rosamund saw it she was so pleased that she could not speak at all, she was as silent as she had been all the first day we brought her to Kew.

  “It shows that some things can be pretty and beautiful at the same time,” said Mamma. “Like Mendelssohn. The Violin Concerto.”

  “Da-da-dah-da, da-dah-da, da-da-da-da-da-dah, da-da-daha-da-da, dah-ah, da-daha-da-da-dah,” we all sang. It was nice being in the Gardens when there was nobody else there at all.

  We stood in a circle and looked up at the lapageria, and Mamma sighed. “I would like to stay and look at it for a long time.”

  “Well, so you can, Mamma,” I said.

  “But you must have your sandwiches,” she insisted, “you must not miss your meals, yo
u are still building up your strength, and all of you must go to bed earlier, we will start tonight, it is a disgrace, now we will go and eat.”

  “Why should we not picnic in here?” asked Mary.

  “That would never do,” said Mamma timidly. “We would be put out.”

  “There is a gardener just round the corner, watering the Japanese rhododendrons,” said Richard Quin. “I will go and ask him if we can.”

  “And if we can,” said Mamma, while he was away, “remember not a crumb must fall, not a scrap of paper.” She looked round on the neat sanded paths, the trimly towering ferns and shrubs, the bright immaculate domes and walls that contained us. “This is as neat as anybody’s home, neater than ours, must we always have so much lying about? But we are all working so hard. There is no time. How hard you children all work!” She looked round us with an assessing stare. “At least you will be able to wear more sensible clothes than I had to at your age. This hothouse makes me think of it. When I was young and went to garden-parties in Edinburgh, the gentlemen always used to take the ladies round the hothouses, and it was difficult for us to prevent our leg-of-mutton sleeves catching on plants, I knocked over a pot of primulas once, I have never forgotten it. But that sort of thing happens to everyone when they first go out. It will happen to you, you must try not to get too much upset. But anyway you will not be so cumbered. You will not have to wear big sleeves or bustles or high collars.”

  Rosamund said, “But you must have been able to wear heavy clothes. You move quickly, with a sweep.”

  Mamma cast her mind back. “Yes. I enjoyed wearing some of my dresses. I can remember them to this day. Oh, children, I am foolish to say that I am glad you will have sensible clothes, I hope you will have lots of clothes that are not just sensible.”

  “Mamma has a photograph of you wearing a dress with a long train,” said Rosamund.

  “Yes,” said Mamma. “Slipper satin from Lyons. White, but it was a sort of pinkish grey in the shadows. Many, many yards of it.”

  “Mamma says you managed the train so beautifully,” said Rosamund. “It was always just where you wanted it to be.”

  “Constance is a good friend to remember that,” said Mamma. “Yes, I used to take such a pride in that train, in going across the platform in a straight line with it out behind me. Then when I got to the piano there it was, running in a neat fishtail down towards the audience, and my feet clear for the pedals.” She glowed, and then gave us a defensive glance. “There is no harm in looking nice on the platform,” she said mildly, “though, of course, the music must come first.”

  We were all surprised at the idea that Mamma had ever cared about dress. We thought of her as an eagle, for this minute we saw a hummingbird.

  With sudden bitterness she looked up at the lapageria. “It is so unspoiled! To look at it you cannot believe the way things get spoiled in this world. But how stupid and ungrateful,” she cried, “to forget that there was once something that had to be spoiled before it was worthless. When I married your father I was considered quite attractive.” She held her head high, and with a confidence that showed how utterly dazed and bludgeoned she was, beyond the point where she could have any exact perception of material objects, she stroked the shiny pelt of her old sealskin jacket, as if it were a garment worthy of what she had been.

  Richard Quin came running back, saying happily, “The gardener says it is strictly forbidden to picnic in here, and that of course we can. And he says that we can move the potting-bench from over there for you to sit on, that is strictly forbidden too.”

  He spread his coat for her on the bench, and we gathered round her and urged her to have a sandwich. “Eat, eat,” we begged her, “it cannot be good for you to live on so little, you had nothing for breakfast but tea.” Food was all we had at hand for an instrument of our tenderness. She took a sandwich to please us, and nibbled at it, her eyes on the lapageria, saying, “Not even the best pictures in the old books give any idea of its trimness, the moderation of its prettiness.” But presently she sighed, “If only I knew what was in the cupboard.”

  We wished she would not speak of that. We could all see the open cupboard door sticking out over the mantelpiece, and it was hideous as the lapageria was beautiful. When Mamma had opened the door of the house in Caroline Lodge, that first day, we had thought a burglar was at work. Well, we had made no mistake.

  “He must have had some reason for opening it,” she said, her eyes going from face to face among her children. “There must have been some old story he remembered. Perhaps some of Mrs. Willoughby’s jewels could not be found when she died, and perhaps he guessed that they were there, and left them untouched for a last reserve. If I could be sure that they were really valuable.”

  We could not find anything to say.

  It crossed my mind that perhaps my mother would have been a difficult wife for any husband, she was too brave about putting things into words.

  “Do not look like that, my dears,” she begged us. “I told you, I can only bear your Papa going away if he did not go empty-handed. You see, I have been very wicked, very wicked indeed.”

  We pressed round her, telling her that she had never done anything wrong in her life, each holding a sandwich in one hand and caressing her with the other.

  “You don’t know what you are talking about,” she protested in a little, cracked voice. “I have done something very wicked. I have kept something back from him, and I should have let him have it.”

  “Mamma, what nonsense,” said Cordelia, “what have we got that could be of any value to him or anybody else?”

  “The portraits,” said Mamma. “The portraits in your rooms. They are not copies.”

  We looked to see which of our handkerchiefs was the cleanest, and gave it to her.

  “That is a real Lawrence?” asked Mary. “And a real Gainsborough?”

  “But Mamma, they cannot be, you must be mistaken,” said Cordelia. “If they were originals they would be very valuable, and we have nothing that is worth having.”

  “No, dear,” said Mamma. “They are very valuable. I told you that you need not worry. I do not know what they are worth, but it will be enough to keep us all for a few years while you are all educated. I will write to Mr. Morpurgo, he has some lovely pictures, and I will ask him what dealer I should take them to. I think he will still help us though Papa has caused him so much trouble. He evidently admires your Papa very much. And what is so wicked is that I have always known that they were very valuable, and I did not tell your Papa. It was the first dealer who told us they were copies, and I did not trust him, he spoke with that dreadful accent Edinburgh people use when they try to speak like the English, a West End accent, they call it, the vowels are all clipped. I think he was trying to buy the pictures from us for nothing, because he had heard how badly the people at the newspaper were treating Papa. So I let another dealer come and see them, a nicer man, and he got another dealer from Glasgow, a Mr. Reid, and both offered me money for them, a great deal of money. But I did not tell your father. I let him go on thinking that they were copies and not worth selling. I felt I had to do it, or they would have gone like everything else. Richard Quin, one of the lapageria flowers has just fallen on the ground, just see if you can reach it for me without stepping anywhere you should not.”

  She laid the pink bell on the palm of her hand and studied it, while we stood silent, astonished by the news, and by the terrible quietness of her remorse which lay so deep that we would never be able to get at it and destroy it.

  Mary said, “But, Mamma, it was not wicked. We all know that Papa cannot keep money, and that if he has it it becomes nothing, it goes away like snow.”

  Mamma said, “No, what I did must have been wicked, for it has put everything wrong. Try to be sensible and see that of course I would have felt all right now, if I had kept nothing from your father, if I could say to myself that I had handed over to him all I had.”

  “Mamma, Mamma,” I said, “do not t
alk like that sickening beast Patient Griselda.”

  “Rose, you must not use such disgusting language. Please try to understand that I have done wrong. Can you not see that perhaps I should have given your father one last chance by telling him about the pictures and letting him have this money too? It might have been that since they were portraits of his own people he would have felt differently about the money he got from them, and would have kept it all for you children, and then there could have been respect all round. And maybe he has turned against me because he knew I was not being frank with him. Lately, when things have been getting worse and worse, I have often thought of the portraits, and how you were safe because I had them, and it may have been that he felt my lack of straightforwardness, and grieved because he had nobody truly with him. It might have been that that made him pass me in the street without speaking to me. Oh, I have failed your father.”

  I tugged at Rosamund’s arm, and we turned away from the group and walked down the sanded path till we were out of earshot and were sheltered by a projection of fretted palm leaves. “Rosamund,” I said, “I know something about Papa that would make Mamma understand that really she could not trust Papa ever to think of her or of us. To get Mrs. Phillips reprieved he was willing to publish a pamphlet about the judge which would have been contempt of court, and he knew that it would have meant he had to go to prison, and he never thought for a minute of what would happen to us. Do you think I ought to tell her?”

  She stammered, “Oh, b-but I do not think you could tell her anything about Cousin Piers that she does not already know.”

  I hesitated. “Are you sure?”

  “Mammas know much more about Papas than we do,” she said, with what was for her unusual definiteness.

  I rather wondered why she thought so. It often seemed as if they did not. When we went back Mamma was saying, “You see, your Papa is driven by something that he cannot help, that wants him to go down and down. That is why he does such strange things, his great gifts and his power to please hold him up in the world, he has to make efforts to fall from the high place that belongs to him. That is why he has gone away. He has not left you because he does not care for you, but because this thing that wants him to fall is driving him on to do something which will bring ruin on him, and he does not want you to be ruined too, he has gone away alone, with nobody to look after him, simply so that you shall be safe. He cannot give you what other fathers give their children, it is not permitted to him, but what he can give you he has given you, and it is your safety. You must remember that all your lives. Since he is what he is, it is impossible not to love him. But look what I have had to do. Oh, children, if you love somebody, give them every chance. But no, I am not warning you of the real danger that is in front of you. I love your father and I have not been able to give him every chance. I would have found it so easy to do, it would have been no sacrifice for me to strip myself till I had nothing, for I could get on with very little, I would not mind not getting on at all. But I could not do it because of you children. I had to keep some money safe for you, money which he could not touch. You do not know what he has got through. Gambling is worse than moth and rust, it does not even leave behind it rags and rusted metal, it eats up everything without remainder. If one of you got ill, and needed to have an operation or go to a sanatorium, what could I do if I had not kept those portraits? What would I have done tomorrow? I do not think there is five pounds in the house or in the bank. I had to keep the portraits for your sakes, but it has spoiled everything between your father and myself. This is not fair. Why should I have had to choose between treating you properly and treating your father properly? I know that all things will be right at the end of the time, provided we do not stop working now and afterwards, but I cannot see how.”