by Rebecca West
Mr. Morpurgo took his hand away from hers, and rolled his expressive eyes up to the ceiling, as if he thought something would drop from it.
“Yes, they are up above us, in the children’s bedroom,” said Mamma. “How did you know?”
He took out his handerchief and passed it over his lips as he had done before, and looked round our shabby room, as if to make quite sure. “You have a Gainsborough and a Lawrence here in this house, in your children’s bedroom?”
“Yes, and a Sir Martin Archer Shee,” said Mamma. “I know an Archer Shee is of no value now, but it seems mean to him not to mention the picture, for it is very pretty. They are all three very pretty pictures, they are portraits of Piers’ ancestresses, and you know how good-looking his family all were. It is strange he ever married me. They are in good condition and I think they should sell well, if I could learn the name of a reliable dealer.”
“Are you quite sure that these pictures really are by Gainsborough and by Lawrence?” asked Mr. Morpurgo.
“Mr. Alexander Reid of Glasgow said so,” replied Mamma.
“He did, did he!” exclaimed Mr. Morpurgo. A question then occurred to him which he tried to suppress. But after he had made an inconsequent remark about Papa’s family it had to come out. “How in God’s name did you manage to keep these portraits from him?”
Mamma’s hands fluttered. I said, “Mamma is being very silly about this, she let him think they were copies, but she had to do that, hadn’t she?”
He said, “Certainly she had.”
“Please,” I went on, “go upstairs and look at the pictures and tell Mamma how much she can get for them, and tell her if somebody could lend her some money now. I think there is hardly any in the house.” While they were gone I went on sorting out the keys, but it was hopeless, really. That box must be somewhere in the ruins of the house today.
When they came down again Mamma was saying to him, “I want enough money to set the two younger girls on their feet, there will be no difficulty about them, they will be pianists and they have simply to get their training. And I must educate the boy, he will look after himself, he will be all right too. And I must do something about my poor Cordelia, though I cannot think what.” Mr. Morpurgo assumed a sympathetic expression, obviously prepared to hear that Cordelia was a dwarf or a cripple. “She is not musical but does not know it. Well, you see the sort of capital I will need to get them out in the world, after that it will not matter. Do you think the pictures will fetch anything like that?”
Mr. Morpurgo said, “I think you will be quite comfortably placed,” and rolled his eyes up to the ceiling again, and again his pendant plumpness was shaken by a faint pulse of laughter. “I came prepared to be so generous,” he murmured. But even now that I knew who he was, and he was amused and happy, he still appeared to me as a victim of melancholy need, and his voice continued to be plaintive as he promised us that we should have everything we wanted. “I will take you to Mr. Wertheimer next week,” he said, “and after that it will not be long before we have your affairs in order. Really, I think you will not have much to worry about, if you are reasonably careful. Now, is there anything else you have on your mind?”
“There is Aunt Lily,” said Mamma and paused.
“Whose aunt is she? Yours or your husband’s?” asked Mr. Morpurgo.
“She is nobody’s aunt,” answered Mamma, “or rather, she is not ours. She is simply one of those people who, I do not know why, choose to be called Aunt by anybody they like.”
“Yes, yes,” said Mr. Morpurgo, “the nannie class.”
“We have become very fond of her,” said Mamma, letting that comment go by. “You remember the Phillips murder trial? Poor Aunt Lily is Mrs. Phillips’s sister. She stayed with us during the case.”
“You knew all these people?” said Mr. Morpurgo. “Now that is remarkable. I have never come across the characters in a murder case. And I thought of you living so quietly. How on earth did you come across them?”
“They are quite ordinary people,” said Mamma defensively. “No, not that. But then so few people are. They lived near here and the daughter, a delightful child, Nancy, was at school with my girls, and so it was natural to take in the child and her aunt. And really Aunt Lily is such a good creature, we all formed a great regard for her. That is why I am worried about her now.”
“But what is the worry?” asked Mr. Morpurgo. “Is she in need of money? Or is it a question of finding her employment?”
“No, no, she is a barmaid at the Dog and Duck at Harplewood-on-Thames,” explained Mamma. “She is happy there with some charming friends. But, you see, she goes to Aylesbury Prison every visiting day to see her sister.” It was not Mamma’s way to ask for favours directly or by hints. But if it had been any of us children that had behaved as she did, talking straight on in a level voice and fixing her eyes on a rosebush out in the garden, she would have said that we were hinting. “Poor Aunt Lily felt the trial terribly; and Mrs. Phillips is in a very distressing state, she is not taking imprisonment well, though we cannot blame her, and she is quite cruel to her sister during the visits so they are quite an ordeal. My husband used to take her to Aylesbury and bring her back here. I will take her myself if nobody else will, but she attaches great importance to being escorted by, as she puts it, a gentleman. She is frightened of being in a prison, and she feels that the prison officials respect her more if she is with somebody whom they respect.” She paused, and after a second or two continued, “It is not an easy undertaking. Poor Aunt Lily talks far too much, and what she says is not usually very interesting. Her appearance is unfortunate, too.”
Almost as if he were talking to himself, Mr. Morpurgo asked, “Why should I not do that? I have never done anything like it in my life before. But really there is no reason why I should not be able to do it, if I make up my mind.” Again, he seemed amused as he said, “I will certainly take Aunt Lily to Aylesbury.”
“That would lift a great weight off my mind,” Mamma assured him vehemently.
“And that is all the weight that you have on your mind?” inquired Mr. Morpurgo, smiling. “All you want is a dealer to buy your Gainsborough and your Lawrence, and an escort to take Aunt Lily to her sister’s prison? Is that really all?”
“No,” sighed Mamma, “I want him to come back.”
“To come back,” repeated Mr. Morpurgo; and he suggested, “just a little different, with that difference that would make him possible to deal with.”
“No, not different at all,” said Mamma, and wept, but only for a moment, since it was wrong that poor Mr. Morpurgo should be made unhappy when he came to do us a kindness.
When he had gone Mamma said, “What a kind man! But did I ever meet him before? Still I felt at ease with him because he was so right about your father. But how dull and flat it all is without him!”
All our lives just then were like that conversation, which was so pleasant, and was suffused with anguish. In the garden Richard Quin would throw into the air four or five balls (three were too easy for him now) and would keep them spinning, with misery on his upturned face. Once Mamma and I, coming back from a Bach concert, saw a shooting star and while it still fell she gripped my arm and stood staring up into the glittering sky as if trying to trace where it had lost itself in the dark firmament, penniless, and then she went on with her comment on the St. Matthew Passion. As for Cordelia and Mary and I, we suffered wounds which were never to heal. But it would be hypocritical to pretend that Mary and I did not enjoy it when Aunt Theodora, having heard about Papa’s departure, but not about the Gainsborough and the Lawrence, called when everybody but us was out; and perhaps Mary went rather far when she assured Aunt Theodora that the only thing we three girls had now to fear was that men would marry us for our money. We also found, if not pleasure, at least distraction, in an attempt to stop gossip about the departure of Papa from spreading through the school, by telling the other girls and the teachers all about the discovery that the pictures wh
ich hung over our beds had turned out to be a Gainsborough and a Lawrence. We got their attention easily with the name of Gainsborough, for at that time there were two works of art which were universally known and one was Sir Joshua Reynolds’ “Cherubs’ Heads,” and the other was Gainsborough’s “Portrait of the Duchess of Devonshire.” We never actually told lies, but we let it be supposed that Papa was taking part in the negotiations with the picture-dealers. There must have been some people in Lovegrove who knew that he had fled, and, better than we did, why; but at least we contrived that some other people only slowly realized that he had gone and had a vague impression that he had made some money by selling some pictures, and had at some stage of the transaction found it profitable to go abroad.
There were, indeed, many practical matters to be arranged at this time. We children were faced quite early with the problem of the annihilation of Mamma’s sealskin jacket. This first arose one evening when we were all in the kitchen helping Kate prepare the dried fruit for the Christmas puddings. Usually we made them about the twenty-first of March, but that year we had had no money to spare for buying the fruit and brandy; so one of the first things Mamma did when Mr. Morpurgo lent her money on the security of the pictures was to go out and buy raisins and currants and mixed peel, and we were all at work on them when Mamma came in and read a letter from Mr. Morpurgo telling her that he would call one day in the following week to take her up to Bond Street to talk to Mr. Wertheimer about the portraits, which by then would have been cleaned by the experts. We were excited by Mamma’s intrepid entrance into a proud and glutted world where people with foreign names owned galleries full of masterpieces in the very same streets as the shops full of wonderful dresses where Constance and Rosamund sold their needlework. But when Mamma left the kitchen Kate said, “We cannot have your Mamma going up to town with that poor Mr. Morpurgo and wearing her old sealskin jacket.” Everybody in our household spoke of “poor Mr. Morpurgo” and put real pity into the phrase, though he was a millionaire and had two millionaire uncles, and had no apparent misfortunes in his personal life. “You must all see what you can do to get her to let the old thing go to the dustbin.”
We made some effort. That evening at supper Cordelia said, “Mamma, what are you going to wear when you go up to see Mr. Wertheimer?”
“My black dress and my sealskin,” said Mamma confidently.
“Mamma,” said Richard Quin, “that jacket is not sealskin any more, it is just a bit of a dead seal. There is a difference.”
“Nonsense,” said Mamma testily. “Of course the seal died. Otherwise I should not be wearing its skin.”
“No, Mamma,” said Richard Quin, “there have been two deaths. First the seal died, and then its skin went to the funeral and heard the will read, and of course it had been left everything, and then it sold the house and chose to make its home with you. But now in the fullness of time it too has died.”
“No, no,” said Mamma, “do not be silly, children, any furrier will tell you that sealskin cannot wear out, and it is the best thing I have got, and where am I to get a new coat? These pictures, I do not yet know what they will bring us, and there are such a lot of you to put out into the world, and you are all bothering me, leave me in peace.” She covered her eyes, and it occurs to me now that she did not want to admit that the coat was bare because Mr. Morpurgo’s visit had reminded her that she was a woman, and she could not bear to think that her poverty had forced her to go about for years looking like a scarecrow, and that what she had lost as a woman during those years was not now to be recovered.
Constance said, “Perhaps Rosamund and I might take a look at it and see what we can do in the way of refurbishing it.”
Mamma sighed. “How I wish we all had hands like you two! That would be very kind, Constance.” So we talked of other things, mild as milk, but with resolution steely in us. We were beginning to understand that Mamma would in some respects always be younger than we were, perhaps because she had not had as trying a childhood as we had had, and that for her sake we had sometimes to treat her with positive low cunning, to get round the fact that she was supposed to be older than us in all ways instead of just a few.
We met in the kitchen after supper to talk it all over, all us children, not Constance. She stayed upstairs with Mamma, by one of those accidents that often served our purposes to perfection though no hint of connivance ever coloured the blankness of her tone or disturbed her brow. Rosamund went and fetched the sealskin jacket from Mamma’s room, because what had been said at supper gave her permission, and we spread it out on a chair under the light.
“First of all,” said Cordelia, “can she possibly get a new coat? I don’t think she borrowed much from Mr. Morpurgo.”
“There are our money-boxes,” said Mary.
“There is almost nothing in them,” said Cordelia contemptuously.
“What are you doing, Rosamund?” I asked.
“Why, this is a red-hot knitting needle, and they make openwork patterns in leather with red-hot knitting needles,” said Rosamund. “Your Mamma knows that one must not wear anything that is moth-eaten.”
As the smell of burning grew stronger, Cordelia said, “I don’t know that we have the right to do this.”
“Your Mamma is very tired,” said Rosamund, “let us get this out of the way for her.”
“And poor Mr. Morpurgo is very kind,” said Kate, “but rich gentlemen are frightened of being stared at, you must consider other people’s feelings.”
“I would not have the strength of mind to do this,” said Mary, doubtfully.
“Rosamund is like someone in Roman history,” said Richard Quin, “and people in Roman history are much admired.”
Rosamund made three holes in the jacket, and pinched it to get rid of the charred edges. There was a horrible smell, and she opened the tradesmen’s door into the garden, and stood shaking the jacket outside in the fresh air. The moonlight fell on her and made her fair hair and tall body look as if they were covered with frost. All of us watched her unhappily, except Richard Quin, who was laughing silently, and Kate, who was washing the dishes. Rosamund came in after a few minutes and she and Richard Quin went upstairs, and she came back alone, and gave the jacket to Kate, saying, “Please give it to the dustman tomorrow. After I showed her the holes she began to turn it over and said it was far worse than she supposed, and I said it was so bad it ought to be put out of the house at once in case the moth got into other things, and now Richard Quin is telling her that he would like to see her in a cape, I looked at them in the Bon Marche this afternoon, they are not dear and are very plain and smart,” and she went upstairs again.
“Now do not be nice Nellies,” Kate told us, as we worked in silence. “There are times when somebody has to do something quickly.”
But as we got older Rosamund and Richard Quin often struck us as formidable. It had often seemed to us as if they were acting scenes from a play unknown to us, which they rehearsed in secret, but now their confederacy sometimes took a new and graver form, which always gave us some cause for feeling thankful and yet at the same time was alarming in kind. When our family found itself in a position from which there seemed no egress save by way of someone’s pain, Rosamund and Richard Quin were always there to open another door, she with her calm stammering force, he with his conjurer’s sleight of hand and patter, and they acted both neatly and quickly. But if one flagged and fainted in the street, and a nurse took one arm and an orderly the other, and whisked one into an ambulance and out of it into a hospital and onto an operating table, with the anaesthetic ready in the syringe, one would prefer them to act not too quickly or too smoothly, however urgent the need for operation.
We were, as a rule, however, united in wonder at what was happening to us. Mamma’s visits to Mr. Wertheimer went well, though the business was not concluded at once, and we were of course haunted by the fear which never left us till the cheque was actually paid into Mamma’s bank, that the portraits were really copie
s after all. But there was much to distract our attention from that fear. Mamma had numerous callers. Some of them were duns, whom she could now refer to Mr. Morpurgo’s solicitors, though even then the interviews were disagreeable. I still remember with a sharp pang of hatred a little yellowish man, looking up from the letter the solicitors had given Mamma to show to Papa’s creditors, saying that they would consider all claims against him, and snarling at her, “If this is a trick, you’ll hear something from me you won’t like.” Mamma pleaded in his behalf that he was probably very poor, but it still seems to me that he deserved to be poor.
Most of the callers, however, were friendly. There was, needless to say, Mr. Langham, who came with boxes of Carlsbad plums, though it was not Christmastime, and paid long lugubrious visits, ostensibly to condole with Mamma, but rather to receive her condolences on the long betrayal of his devotion. His wife also called to offer her sympathy, but there again the purpose of the visit was executed in reverse, for it appeared that Mr. Lang-ham’s private life was not above reproach. Other admirers of my father came, after they had digested for some days whatever rumour of his flight had reached them, partly because they were still under the charm and sought the place where the enchanter had last been seen, partly because they had been drawn to him in the first place by political idealism and were too humanitarian to contemplate my mother’s probable position unmoved. At any rate most of them offered her help, which she rejected in a manner that sent them away much happier. Laughing and speaking in a tone of rueful amusement, as if they might have offended her had it not been for her sense of humour, she told them of the sale of the family portraits. Papa was, she admitted, eccentric, and had perhaps been unusually eccentric, even for him, when he suddenly set sail to write his long book in peace, for some place unknown, whence he would return at any time with a like lack of the usual observances. But to leave his wife and children unprovided for, oh, no, her amused voice told them, he was not as eccentric as all that. And his worshippers went away in the happy belief that their worship had not all been error.