“Oh, I think not. He’s quite civilized.” (So that was the way the modern young men talked.) “I dare say he followed her example. They were quite figures once in London, you know—in whatever corresponded to Bloomsbury in the naughty ’nineties.” (Now what on earth did he mean by that?) “I don’t know how they arranged the offspring question, but I presume they had an understanding. At any rate, my father was reared under the label of Seddon.”
She said, a little uncertainly, feeling that no matter how broadminded she tried to be, she was bound to arouse his scorn:
“They always say love-children are the best.”
“Oh, my father was no good at all,” he retorted airily. “He was shipped off to the Dark Continent when he was sixteen. Women and wine, you know, in the good old style. I must say I admire him.”
“And were you born out there?”
“I was born there—in circumstances over which time has drawn a seemly veil. Anyway, he carried on the splendid tradition of unmarried fatherhood. It’s a great advantage, don’t you think, to spring full-fledged out of nowhere? It helps me to be a romantic figure.”
“Yes.” She looked at his dark, expressive face, the pride and passion in the lines of every feature, the strong wide structure of the brow, and the rough locks falling over it.
“Is he dead, your father?”
“Oh, rather. He drank himself to death. He wasn’t really a nice character, but he sent me to France and Germany to be educated, which is more than any tee-totaller would do for his son. He left it in his will that I should make my grandmother’s acquaintance when I was ready to go to Oxford. And so I did. And here I am.” He made his little bow. “I’ve been working for my finals and came here for two days’ rest.”
“I see,” she said rather blankly; and checked a facile remark on her good fortune in coinciding with his visit: for probably he held the reverse opinion.
What a queer young man! … There was something about his point of view and way of expressing it which made her conscious not only of uncleverness, but of the fact that she dated badly.
“Well,” she said, “I suppose she’s very fond of you.”
He shrugged his shoulders.
“She’s quite remote. We all get on excellently. We don’t converse much. But now and then she lets fall a shattering remark in that way deaf people have. She told me once I looked like my grandfather; but I didn’t ask her who he was—and she didn’t tell me. Naturally, it’s none of my business.”
He finished on an offhand, challenging note. She said nothing, and he continued more agreeably:
“She doesn’t speak of my father, but simply, I’m sure, because she feels he’s such an unimportant character. So he was.”
“Then this place will be yours, some day, I suppose.”
“I don’t know. Did you want it?”
No question could have been couched in more casual and unambiguous a tone. He might have been asking the time. But she coloured, surprised in her inmost thoughts: one hope less for Robin and David; and answered in a swift, hurt way:
“I used to come here when I was a girl. I love it very much.”
He looked at her reflectively. She would have been a pretty colour and shape as a girl. (Would it be possible ever to fall in love with a woman? Could one hope to find one who did not prove tiresome sooner or later?)
She murmured:
“Did she suffer much, I wonder, over her lover? It must be very peaceful to be deaf—plenty of time to think over your whole life. I suppose it’s having had so much in the past that makes her so—ungrabbing. She’s the only person I ever knew who sees—human relationships in their right proportions.”
Suddenly, as she spoke, she felt how true this was, and how important to her. Why had she spent so many years away from all contact with her—walking, perhaps, down a blind alley till this moment?
It was awful to be so muddled and slow-witted. She felt like holding her head in her hands, so painful was the effort to collect and rationalize this kind of emotional disorganization which was assailing her.
“I don’t know what to do next,” she whispered; and then aloud, to the young man:
“I must go and find her.”
Find her at once: she would hold up a lamp, without speech, in that way she had: show her that there was nothing wrong; or, if everything was wrong, make her see that too, clearly and with dispassionate acceptance.
“It must be dinner-time,” he said. “I’ll come with you.”
The sun was gone now from among the tree-trunks; only the urgent throats of the birds still haunted the wood with shapes of sound. They walked in silence up the winding path.
He said, abruptly:
“Who is he, the man you brought?”
“The young one? Hugh Miller. Isn’t he nice?”
Not a name he had ever heard. …
In silence they walked across the lawn; but, just as they reached the sunken garden he turned to her and said with all the charm that youth, beauty, and natural simplicity could lend him:
“And you really will forgive me for being rude?”
She looked up at him, her smile broadening gratefully, but, he saw to his horror, a little tearfully. She nodded, tried to speak. …
Thank God, there was his grandmother, kneeling on the pavement in her flowered silk, shaking bits of earth out of the leaves of a tiny rock-plant.
“Cousin Mary!” cried Norah; and she ran forward.
He watched the embrace of the two women. How admirable she was, his grandmother, how he delighted in her! Kneeling to tidy the plants, holding out her arms in welcome, looking upwards, now, at evening star and crescent moon—her every pose and gesture graced the mind with images plastic or poetic. He would write her a dedicatory poem in his first volume, something that should capture and express her quality: (and tell her incidentally—but secretly, so that not even she should guess—how happy he was to have a home: how much he’d always missed one).
The other looked small beside her, yet she was as tall: small, ordinary, and in some way pathetic. He wished again he had not made himself so unpleasant. Her cry of “Cousin Mary!” still rang in his ears. What was the matter with her?
And all of a sudden, for the first time in his life, it struck him how profoundly each individual life is concealed. In spite of all public indications such as faces, words, actions, the blank persists. Truth is at the bottom of a bottomless well; so that not Shakespeare, not Proust himself, has done more than faintly to ruffle the surface of the waters. … And this commonplace reflection gathered in one second such momentum, assumed all at once such overpowering proportions, swept him along so straw-like in its wake, that he felt that never in his whole life would he be able to seize, reduce, control it, or demonstrate, even to himself, what he meant by it.
So that—since no other subject was worth writing on—one might as well give up writing at once. …
But his grandmother, moving towards the house, one hand laid lightly in Norah’s arm, turned and beckoned to him; and despair evaporated as he ran towards her.
The three women moved about in the spare bedroom, washing their hands in the rose-patterned china bowl, examining their faces before a dressing-table draped with white-spotted muslin over pink chintz.
Norah, examining her nose in the mirror, glanced out of the corner of her eye at the reflection of Grace beside her, and held up her powder-puff.
“No thanks.”
“She never touches a drop,” said Norah, still peering. “Can you imagine?”
“She doesn’t need it with her skin,” said Clare, giving Grace a rapid, vague, admiring scrutiny. She combed out the coppery silk waves of her hair and readjusted them with delicate precision. “I should look simply too ghastly for words. …”
“Mm. … So should I. …”
“Oh, I do occasi
onally,” said Grace, feeling embarrassed. “I just can’t be bothered.”
“You’re an idiot not to take more trouble,” murmured Norah, passing a finger carefully over her eyebrows. “I always tell you. … ’Scuse me, ladies. …” She lifted her skirt and pulled down her elastic belt and refastened her stockings. “What do you wear in the way of a belt?” she said to Clare.
“Oh, just one of those little things with suspenders.” She displayed a fraction of it. “I have them made for me by a woman …”
“Not even elastic. … Norah ran her hand over Clare’s waist. “Aren’t you afraid of spreading?”
“Oh, I never seem to alter. I haven’t put on an ounce for years.”
“Lucky thing. It’s babies that do the damage. You try it! I’ve never been quite so thin through since David …”
“Oh, my dear, your figure’s marvellous! …”
“My dear, do you see how grey I’m getting?”
They went on patting, smoothing, murmuring. … They answered each other absent-mindedly, engrossed in their own preparations, but sparing a look now and then, a word of praise, advice, encouragement. Grace felt the luxury of the atmosphere recede from her, enclosing the other two securely in their voluptuous feminine intimacy, and leaving her stranded with hands washed, hair made neat, and nothing more to say or do. It was no use pretending. Womanly instincts must be largely lacking in her: she was as ignorant as a man of the intricacies and amenities of the toilet. Poor Tom—no doubt he must find her bleak and disappointing. No doubt his inclinations were beribboned and frilly. It was a wonder really that (so far as she knew) he had never been unfaithful.
She leaned against the wide Georgian window, and looked down at the blossoming pear tree just beneath her. Perhaps pear is the loveliest of all, she thought, so blurred and tender-looking, mingling soft green with cloudy white. … And over there, in the angle of the kitchen-garden wall, was a great bush of flowering pink currant. She fancied she caught a whiff of its special enchanting pungency.
She saw Hugh come out from the house and stand on the lawn, holding a cigarette and a glass of sherry. He sipped, looking about him. Gerald and the old gentleman joined him, and they all sipped together. Why should one young man, drinking sherry and smoking, be so absorbing and mysterious?
He looked up and caught sight of her, and a smile spread over his face.
She smiled back, gazing down at him, feeling that she saw him in a dream; that this simple greeting had a poignant, dream-like quality of joy and meaning. …
She moved abruptly away from the window.
Clare was dipping her finger into a little round gold box full of red paste. She peeped into the lid, stretched her lips, and carefully re-shaped them in a brilliant bow.
“Gerald would murder me if I did that …” said Norah, watching.
“Would he really? How hopeless of him! Still—” Clare reiterated, somewhat mechanically, her message of comfort: “You don’t need it.”
“And yet obviously he finds it absolutely fascinating when you do it. Men are peculiar.” She laughed cheerfully; and, while she laughed, wondered at herself for having indulged so recently in a tense, self-pitying mood.
What a lot there was to learn! thought Grace. She felt lonely. She looked at Clare. It was no more possible to think of this perfected, shining creature as a fellow-woman than to claim kinship with an angel or a wax mannequin. There must be something about this gossiping and fidgeting very soothing to a true woman. The influence is powerful, creating sisterliness in strangers and causing life-long enemies to call a truce.
Norah was talking and smiling now apparently without reserves; yet all the afternoon she had seemed different; and this evening, when she came in from the gardens after her queer long absence, there had been secretiveness and strain in her usually clear face; so that one had asked oneself if she were alarmed by Gerald’s obvious infatuation for Clare.
Supposing Tom started a flirtation, would one mind at all? Or supposing one were to tell him that it was all a mad and horrible mistake, this having married him, that one must leave him at once … and be free to start all over again, to go back to young womanhood, wiping out ten years as if they had never been. Time was not real, except as one made it so. Why not bind it to one’s purpose, make it servant instead of master? It should be a simple matter to abolish ten years of nothingness. …
Ten years old, a person already shaped for her destiny, when he was born. … Ten years married, a person without a future, when he, with all before him, came in one day to tea. … It had seemed so unlikely, then, that they could ever meet again; yet, ever since, the thread of connection had held. In spite of her longing, she had forced nothing. Surely, she told herself, something outside herself—call it Fate—had not permitted her to forget him: had drawn her to the window to see him walking past; had caused that unlikely encounter in the Park, and its still more improbable sequel of this day. Yes, she thought with excitement, each meeting seemed purposed, an inevitable step forward, like the development of a play from act to act; and herself at once actor and spectator. Where was she going, powerless, independent of reason, and so idiotically happy? …
“My dear,” Clare was saying, “what fun this is! Cousin Chris is a lamb, isn’t he? I adore his beard. And you said he was so frightening! Tell me, who is that mysterious young man?”
And the gong boomed out, cutting short Norah’s explanations.
The clocks were striking nine when they sat down to dinner. Tall groups of unshaded candles in five-branched silver candlesticks of elaborate Georgian design lit the long polished table. An ancestor by Raeburn hung above the mantelpiece; and there were other portraits all round the room—portraits military, political, fox-hunting; beribboned, satin-clad, waxen-fleshed, rounded of arm and breast, maternal or maidenly. Upon the far wall a vast Salvator Rosa storm and wreck made more tenebrous the shadows.
Claret followed white wine; the velvet fire of port was succeeded by brandy, aromatic and precious in its crystal goblets. Christopher Seddon had the rarest cellar in the county. The meal was of trout and chicken, salad, fruit and cream and cheese—all home produce, said Mary Seddon, addressing the company for a moment—then resuming her conversation with Gerald—leaning towards him, cupping her ear to listen to his answers, discussing with him recent archaeological discoveries in Asia Minor. Her face, severe, intellectual, crowned with white hair, her person, erect, imposing, dominated the table; and she was absorbed in her subject. And Gerald, just sufficiently flown with wine for eloquent self-confidence, poured out to her loudly, happily, his views and his knowledge. She listened to him, she desired to learn from him. She considered him, he thought, a scholarly and interesting person. And he thought: “There is nothing in the world more impressive and delightful than an old lady of position and culture.” And he explained to her a thing he had not been able to bear to mention for years: how it was that the war had put an end to his hopes of a fellowship at Cambridge.
And Norah thought: “It is as I always said: he should drink wine regularly.” And she wondered what vast series of culinary reforms constituted the difference between Cousin Mary’s cook’s way of roasting fowl, and the way of Florrie. And she thought: “Why did I worry? It is all being a perfect success. Dear Clare, dear Hugh, dear gay, good-looking couple. As for me, I was peevish and morbid because they got on so well without me.”
She talked easily now to Ralph who sat beside her, about David’s drawings; but quite sensibly and modestly, so that he thought “This woman is all right really”; and was prepared to believe that the child showed promise.
And being young and healthy, he thought mostly about his dinner, and said to himself in a vague way: “Let us praise fresh trout and liqueur brandy, far more than most things.”
And Clare turned her heart-shaped face, her yellow-green jewel eyes, now to Christopher Seddon, now to Ralph. She looked, as she
sat up straight, still and smiling, like a sleek young animal of the feline tribe, though more good-natured. And she thought: “I would look nice in a frock made something like that grey thing the Fairfax woman is wearing, properly cut of course, the bodice tightly moulded to show my grace and slenderness, the skirt flaring out below my hips … grey moirée, with a white organdi fichu—pretending to be demure …” And she thought too: “If this young man continues to take no interest in me, I shall know he’s one of those…”
And Christopher Seddon, at the head of the table, answered Clare’s small talk in wincing monosyllables, and talked (across Grace) to Hugh, discussing almost with animation the subject of wines; while Grace, leaning back in order not to hinder them, asked herself what it was about Hugh, apparently undistinguished as he was, which gave him his distinction—made one instinctively aware of his birthright of such rooms and meals as these. And it was this background which made his manner of life in the main independent of considerations of income. He might have a thousand a year; but more probably he was penniless. … And she told herself that if she could but see him for ten minutes every day till she died, she would become the most contented person living.
And finally, when they were all drinking coffee, and lighting cigars and cigarettes, Hugh turned to her and said “Do you know Rudolph Valentino?” And he did a very funny trick with an empty match-box and two matches stuck in the top in such a way that, when lit, their heads clung together in an implacable close kiss; and up flew one match madly into the air as if lifted off its feet by the frenzy of passion; and everybody cried “Let me look! Do it again! Let me try!” … and everybody crowded together to watch the joke, even the young poet, even the old gentleman, solemnly informing himself of the meaning of the term Rudolph Valentino and enlightening the old lady rapidly in finger-alphabet. And for a few minutes they were all dissolved, that diverse and fortuitously-assorted company—dissolved and mingled together in the unifying element of laughter.
At eleven o’clock, Norah started up from a cheerful game of poker and declared that they must go home.
A Note in Music Page 12