Claudia gave him a look of mingled weariness and scorn.
“It’s no good, Copper. You don’t even begin to understand. Never mind. I’ll do what I can about Sylvia—you needn’t think about it any more. I imagine you’ll admit—even you—that I do want what’s best for my children. You’ll give me that, won’t you?”
“I tell you what,” said Copper with great deliberation, “I can’t put things into words like you can, as you very well know, but there’s something wrong about you somewhere, Claudia. You may do all the right things, for the children—I suppose you do, God knows you’re clever all right—but you do them for the wrong reasons, or something. I don’t know what it is. But you just think it over.”
So saying, he left her.
Ten minutes later Frances Ladislaw, entering the room, found Claudia there in tears.
She scarcely ever wept, and her tears had evidently exhausted her.
“It’s all right,” she said, and summoned a smile for the reassurance of her startled friend. “It’s all right, Frances dear. One or two things combined to upset me, and I’m tired, perhaps—and then Copper came in.”
“Claudia—I’m so sorry.”
“It’s all right,” Claudia repeated, and she stood up, with the old weary gesture of pushing back her hair from an aching forehead.
“He doesn’t mean to be unkind,” she said in a low voice. “But they’re rather incredible, sometimes—the things Copper says to me. I do everything that I can for the children—I’ve always done every single thing that I could for them, ever since they were born—but I suppose I make mistakes sometimes. Of course I do. Who doesn’t? I try to face them, and acknowledge them. But he—he waits until I’m anxious or unhappy, and then—flicks me on the raw.”
“No, Claudia—no. Don’t feel that. Copper may hurt you sometimes—as you’ve just said, who is there that doesn’t make mistakes? But it’s not on purpose. He couldn’t hurt you on purpose.”
“Oh yes he could,” returned Claudia, decisively enough. “Never mind. I’m used to it by this time, and I don’t let it interfere. One grows a protective shell, I suppose. And it doesn’t hurt as things that are true might hurt. Copper talks at random—just relieving his own impatience and dissatisfaction with quite meaningless accusations or reproaches. They don’t hurt,” repeated Claudia, “as they might hurt if they were true.”
XII
(1)
Mrs Peel was wandering about searching, although she scarcely knew it, for somebody to whom she might talk of her grave apprehensions concerning her granddaughter Sylvia.
Copper, to whom she had addressed a preliminary “Oh dear,” had at once walked away, and Mrs Peel had decided that he could not have heard her.
Claudia was nowhere to be seen. Sal Oliver, whom Mrs Peel could not endure, seemed to meet her eye wherever she looked—but Mrs Peel and Sal Oliver were at least at one in their conviction that a tête-à-tête conversation between them could afford no gratification to either. With equal determination they ignored one another in spite of repeated encounters, until Sal at last accepted an invitation from Maurice to come and develop photographs with him in the cellar.
What affectation, reflected Mrs Peel unjustly. She can’t really want to dabble about in a dark cellar.
Irritated, she sought the library once more. Taffy was sprawling across the sofa, reading a book and eating caramels.
“Ha, ha, ha, mais les hommes, les hommes sont rigolos!”
This merry proclamation rang stridently through the room and assaulted the ears of mrs peel three times in rapid succession.
“Really,” said Mrs peel.
Taffy, looking very glum, rose without speaking and, still reading her book, walked across the room and turned off the wireless.
“Where are the newspapers?” patiently enquired Mrs Peel.
“It’s Bank Holiday. They don’t deliver any newspapers to-day,” Taffy reminded her.
Giving her grandmother a glance full of hostility, she walked out at the open window.
Really, the children!
Mrs Peel sat on the sofa and thought how very odious children became the moment they ceased to be children.
Even her own Claudia and Anna, although perfectly brought up, seemed to her just as tiresome, ungrateful, inconsiderate, and unreasonable as did Taffy and Sylvia, who had not been perfectly brought up at all, but quite the contrary. She gazed sadly about her and felt relieved when Frances Ladislaw looked in at the window.
“Come in, come in,” said Mrs Peel. “I’ve not been downstairs very long, but I didn’t have a good night.”
“I’m sorry. Perhaps it was the storm? It feels so fresh and nice outside now.”
“What about a little stroll?” mused Mrs Peel. “I don’t know where Claudia is,” she added resentfully.
“I think she’s upstairs.”
“Writing. Oh dear. Have you noticed how round-shouldered she’s growing, with all this stooping over a desk and scribbling? How I wish she’d take advice!”
Frances smiled sympathetically—without, however, endorsing the aspiration.
“Would you care for a walk before lunch—just to the bottom of the drive?”
“Yes, certainly. Is it very wet underfoot?”
“It is a little, but the sun’s drying things up.”
“I shall not be one moment,” said Mrs Peel.
A quarter of an hour later, wearing pointed black walking-shoes, a large straw hat and a pair of washing gloves, she joined Frances outside.
“Quite like old times,” she sighed.
She had always liked Frances. A quiet, nicely-mannered girl, without the good looks, brains, or personality of Mrs Peel’s own daughters, and yet with sufficient intelligence to enjoy their friendship and the privilege of being a frequent visitor at Arling.
Without any particular intention of doing so, Mrs Peel found herself telling Frances by degrees all about her anxiety and distress over Sylvia. She had meant to be vague and general, and so indeed she was, but the story of Sylvia and Quarrendon found together in the schoolroom in the middle of the night filtered itself through her lamentations.
(2)
When Frances had disentangled the brief facts from Mrs Peel’s storm of apprehensions, deductions, and analogies with her experiences of one, if not two, previous generations, Frances felt that she understood Claudia’s distress earlier in the morning.
Claudia, too, had known of the crisis, and it was on that account that Copper and she had quarrelled.
Frances quickly amended the thought, even in her own mind. Claudia didn’t quarrel, ever. She said—Frances had often heard her say it—that quarrelling was uncivilized. But Copper, if he didn’t quarrel, was frequently aggressive and disagreeable and would certainly hesitate not at all in blaming Claudia for anything that vexed him, whether justly or unjustly.
That was why Claudia had said that she did all she could for the children. And of course, thought Frances, so she did. Could any woman have worked harder or made more sacrifices? And surely her relationship with them was exceptional in its frankness and freedom?
Except perhaps, Frances admitted, in the case of Taffy. But it wasn’t, now, Taffy who was in question.
Frances instinctively reserved judgment as to the affair of Sylvia and Andrew Quarrendon. The only account of it that she had received was from Mrs Peel, and not only were the general inferences of Mrs Peel always peculiar to herself, but she was also strangely unable to distinguish imagination from fact on any question that excited her personal prejudice.
Would Quarrendon now leave Arling, not waiting for the natural completion of his visit on Tuesday? And would Claudia carry off the whole situation with her customary high-handed calm? Frances asked herself these and similar questions as she paced slowly along beside Mrs Peel and made, at suitable intervals, sounds expressive of commiseration and of modified agreement that she hoped did not amount to actual untruths.
Presently Claudia came towards
them from the house.
She still looked pale but there were no traces left of her recent weeping and her voice was cheerful and matter-of-fact.
“Lunch is cold. I hope nobody minds. I was wondering what we could do that would be amusing, this afternoon. I’m afraid the court won’t be dry enough for tennis, and the roads, of course, will be quite impossible and the beach too, so that rules out bathing.”
“What about a picnic?” Frances suggested. “We could find somewhere that’s dry enough to sit down, with rugs, and it needn’t be too far away. Do you ever picnic on the little common, where we used to go? That’s right off the beaten track.”
“What a good idea.”
“Darling, the servants,” Mrs Peel said. “Won’t it be giving them extra work?”
“The children get their own picnics ready,” Claudia returned crisply. “The maids are having the afternoon off. The girls can quite well cut sandwiches and pack up tea. I’ll give them a hand.”
“You ought to rest. I think you do too much, Claudia.”
Claudia, as usual, made no reply—nor did her mother appear to expect one.
(3)
The picnic eventually resolved itself into a party consisting of Sal Oliver, Claudia’s three children, and Andrew Quarrendon—who showed no signs of any intention of curtailing his visit.
Copper Winsloe retired to his workshop and Claudia declared that she had some writing to do. Mrs Peel was persuaded into ringing up an old friend in the neighbourhood, and allowing herself to be fetched and taken over to play Bridge.
“If you don’t very much want to go for the picnic, Frances, will you stay and keep me company?” Claudia murmured.
Since she had been told by her mother that Frances was aware of the crisis, it seemed to Claudia that she could find a certain relief in talking to her friend.
After an hour of tense, concentrated work at the writing-table she turned to Frances, placidly glancing through the pages of a novel in the window-seat.
“That’s done. Who was it that originally said life was just one dam’ thing after another?”
“The mother of a family, I expect,” Frances suggested.
“Probably. Frances, I’d like your advice. Mother says she told you what happened last night.”
“I hope you don’t very much mind,” Frances apologized.
“I don’t a bit mind your knowing. I’m rather glad. I wanted to talk to you, but it seemed a little unfair, perhaps, to tell you. However, I might have guessed poor Mother wouldn’t ever keep it to herself. I’m staving off, with the utmost difficulty, the long talk that she’s certainly determined to have with me sooner or later. But what’s the use of long talks, after all, with someone who simply takes a preconceived, conventional view of the whole thing?”
“I think she realizes that meeting a man in the middle of the night isn’t quite the wild indiscretion that it would have been in our day.”
“Does she?” said Claudia abstractedly.
She came and sat on the broad window-seat beside her friend.
“You see, Sylvia, poor darling, has fallen in love. Don’t ask me why—these things can’t ever be explained. He isn’t in the least attractive, that I can see, but I think it may be partly because he’s so much older, and a man with a certain reputation. It’s flattering. And of course he’s made love to her.”
“Would it be quite out of the question?” Frances asked.
“You mean for them to marry? I think it would be a very great risk—but after all, it’s Sylvia’s own life. One could only advise her, and beg her to wait—and then leave her to decide. But you see—Andrew doesn’t really want to marry her at all.”
It caused Claudia a faint surprise, after saying this, to observe that Frances looked thoughtful rather than pained or astonished. She was also surprised by her comment.
“I think I can understand that. He’s not a man who’d want to be tied, I suppose—and perhaps he feels that his work would always come first. I can imagine that he’d be honest with himself about that and everything.”
“But Frances!” Claudia felt a little impatient. “A man who feels that he doesn’t wish, or intend, to marry, is hardly justified in making love to a young, inexperienced girl. Surely you see that?”
“Oh yes, I see that. But after all, most of us do things we’re not justified in doing, at one time or another. And it’s no use pretending that young girls are anything like as silly and ignorant as we were. They’re not. Your children especially, Claudia, who’ve always been taught to think. Sylvia and Professor Quarrendon, I’m sure, must have realized from the very beginning that it wasn’t necessarily a question of getting married.”
Claudia, astonished and a little disconcerted, raised her eyebrows.
“My dear, I hadn’t any idea that your views were as modern as all that. You feel, then, that I’m not justified in objecting if Sylvia, aged nineteen, becomes the mistress of this man who must be over forty?”
“No, no, that isn’t fair. I never said that.”
“I beg your pardon. What exactly did you say, then?”
Claudia was conscious of the bitter edge that had crept into her voice and strove to keep it under control, but she knew that she was angry. That Frances, of all people, should take up this attitude!
“I meant that it didn’t seem to me fair, to take it for granted that Sylvia was being deceived, as you or I might have been deceived at her age. They fell in love with one another—I don’t see how any man could help falling in love with Sylvia—and then, I suppose—I feel sure —he told her the truth, and they talked it over together. Isn’t that the way they do things nowadays?”
Claudia’s reply was indirect.
“If it had been someone of her own age one could have understood it so much better. They could, as you say, have discussed everything frankly from the same point of view. But Andrew Quarrendon—after all, he’s a very clever man, he’s been about a good deal, he must have known a great many women of his own sort. Sylvia can’t mean anything to him at all beyond a pretty face. But she—poor little thing—is taking it all seriously.”
Frances continued to look at her friend with eyes that betokened perplexity and doubt rather than unqualified sympathy and understanding.
“What are they going to do?” she asked at last.
“He’s asked her to marry him and she’s said no. Honestly, she’s quite right. He doesn’t want to marry at all and she knows it. I see exactly what’s going to happen. Quarrendon has made his gesture, trusting to Sylvia’s generosity, and she—poor little thing—is going to give him up and go through a very, very bad time.” (“So am I,” Claudia added in a parenthesis, dashing her hand across her eyes with a smile for the childish gesture. “But that doesn’t matter.”) “One thing, I shan’t let her go and work in London now. That would be altogether more than she could bear just yet.”
“Perhaps she’ll want to get away.”
“Oh no she won’t,” returned Claudia quickly. “Sylvia has never really cared for the idea of leaving home at all. Don’t your remember how we’ve always laughed at her for saying that she’d have liked best to stay at home and do nothing except arrange the flowers and take the dogs for walks?”
Frances, with a strange and new obstinacy that Claudia felt became her very ill, pursued her point.
“But I think she might feel quite differently now. Surely you’ll let her go if she wants to go?”
“But of course. When have I ever imposed my own wishes on my children? As a matter of fact, I think I can manage to let Sylvia get right away if she wants to. I think it would be possible to send her to old Madame—you remember Madame, of course?—to Paris. I believe in a complete change of environment, at her age—and she’d like using her fingers far better than working in a stuffy office.”
“You mean that it would put her quite out of reach of seeing Quarrendon, which of course she’d almost certainly do if she was in London.”
Claudia frowned
involuntarily.
“I don’t know that I’d looked at it particularly from that point of view. I’m not a Victorian mother, to send Sylvia off out of reach of an undesirable admirer. Far from it. I don’t want to do anything at all except what’s going to help her most. Surely you must see that, Frances?”
“Yes, yes, I know. Of course I know you only want to help her—poor little Sylvia. I’m so sorry about it all.”
“I think I’d rather,” Claudia said gently, “that you told me just what’s in your mind. I can see there’s something, and you know my passion for getting things straight.”
Frances hesitated.
Seeing her so deeply disconcerted, Claudia felt her own irritation diminish.
“Please do be absolutely frank with me,” she urged. “If you think I’m quite mistaken, or even quite wrong, I’d so much rather you told me so. I’d rather face it—you know I’m quite good at facing facts.”
She waited.
At last Frances, raising troubled eyes to Claudia’s face, spoke.
“I’m so stupid at putting it all into words,” she murmured. “I know how marvellous you are about the children—how devoted to them—and that you’ve always said they ought to be quite free in every possible way. Only I feel now about this—please, please forgive me, Claudia—that you seem to be doing the right things, only somehow not for the right reasons.”
Claudia, confronted by so odd and unexpected an echo of Copper’s random accusation of a few hours earlier, could only stare at her in astonishment.
(4)
The picnic party broke up early.
It had not been a success.
“Things aren’t nearly so much fun when you’re not there,” Maurice told his mother.
She kissed him.
“But you mustn’t feel that, darling. I can’t always be there, you know.”
“Were you resting?”
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