It was easier to help him when he wrote a letter, not that he was a good letter writer, for he was not, but because he had at least got to say something when he took a pen in his hand, while when he stood by her on the hearthrug there was no necessity. She unfolded the letter she had taken from her bag and read it again attentively.
Dear Mother,
Hope you and Margaret are well. How’s the rheumatism? Better, I hope. Though I don’t see how it can be in this weather. A lot of fog in town. Seems to get into one’s lungs. Filthy stuff, Town fog. Seems some while since I wrote. Sad falling off since I was a kid and wrote to you once a week. Do you remember? And you still write to me once a week, and don’t you dare leave off, for I look for those letters. Have done, all my life. I’m a rotten correspondent. Dead beat by the end of the day. Haven’t been feeling too fit lately. Nothing to worry about but I’m not as young as I was. Looking forward to the day when they put me out to grass. Never had much liking for office life, nor Town life either. No good at it. But Nadine likes it, so must keep on for the present. She’s well, though very tired. She’s very keen on this house. Of course it’s more home to her than it is to me, because she lived here when I was in India, and through part of the war too, when I was hardly ever home. She’s been repainting it all, working out fresh color schemes, rearranging the furniture. Seems a bit comfortless to me, but I can see it’s artistic. David got the paint for her and brought along some of his fellows from the theater to help. They did most of the work in fact. We see a certain amount of David. Nadine likes him and they have a lot of friends in common, writers and so on, all far too highbrow for me.
The children are all right but the house seems a bit full of them in the holidays, especially the twins. They need a garden. How’s the Damerosehay garden? I’d like to run down and take a look at it sometime, and perhaps sail a bit and have a spot of fishing. I’ve a bit of leave owing. What the boys and I like about this house is that the river’s handy. Can’t sail on it, of course, or fish in it, but you can smell it. Simply must get out of Town in the summer holidays. I’d like to take the boys sailing. Criminal to keep boys cooped up in Town too much, or anyone for that matter. And Ben has a bit of a cough. Nadine says it’s nothing, but I don’t like it. Put up at some riverside inn somewhere. Always had a liking for riverside inns. So have the boys. They’re mad on boats. They get that from me. Well, good-by, Mother. Take care of yourself. Love to Margaret.
Your loving son,
George
It was the longest and most revealing letter George had ever written to her, and the only one, so far as she could remember, that had ever contained even a hint of personal complaint. She read it again. He was feeling very tired, very ill. He was longing to leave the army. He hated London, and Nadine’s artistic house, where she had lived so long without him that it seemed to him her home but not his, with no place in it for him. And he did not approve of London for the children. And he did not get on with Nadine’s friends. . . . Nor David. . . . He had never got on with David. He did not know, of course, that when Nadine had left him and come home to England, leaving him alone in India, she had fallen in love with David, and he with her, and had only been waiting for the divorce which George had promised her, to get married. Lucilla had succeeded in stopping the marriage, in reuniting Nadine and George, and had agreed with Nadine that George should never be told. That desperate, abortive love had remained, and always would remain, a secret between Nadine, Lucilla, Hilary, and David. But George must sense something. He obviously did not like David and Nadine being so much together. . . . Nor did Lucilla. . . . She did not know whether or not they were still in love, but even if they were not it was playing with fire to be together so much. Upon her very first reading of the letter Lucilla had known what she had to do. . . . Make George give up his work at the War Office and get the whole family to the country. . . . The only difficulty was, where in the world to find a house for them?
And then she had seen Nadine’s advertisement for a nanny, and had gone over to see Jill at the Herb of Grace and discovered that the old riverside inn would soon be for sale. . . . George and the boys loved boats and the water. . . . It was a beautiful old house and could easily be made into a very lovely home. It was old-fashioned, of course, but then refrigerators and bathrooms and things were all quite modern fads, and in Lucilla’s young days they had all got along quite nicely without them.
“Give me your word,” she had said to Auntie Rose, “that you will not sell the house to anyone else until my son General Eliot has seen it.”
And Auntie Rose had given her word.
And then Nadine had rung up asking to come and stay, and she had begged that George should come too, but Nadine had refused for him without even asking him. That, for a moment, had made Lucilla see red. She was a good and affectionate mother-in-law, provided the women her sons had taken to wife did not attempt to manage them. . . . That was her prerogative. . . . Still seeing red, she had written that letter to George imploring him to take a little holiday and come down with the children. She had not seen the children for so long, she had said. She might not live much longer (this, though perhaps an unfair argument, was an irresistible one, she had discovered). As an apparent afterthought, at the end of the letter she had mentioned casually that the Herb of Grace, an old inn on the river near the Hard, was for sale. She was not sure that George had ever seen it, and it was of great historic interest.
Yet perhaps she ought not to have gone behind Nadine’s back like that. It was not really right to do evil that good might come, though so often, in dealing with daughters-in-laws, it seemed that one had to. Ellen would have had no compunction about it. Ellen would have said that at all costs Mr. George and the children must have their country home, and Mrs. George be separated from Master David and that house in Chelsea that reminded her at every turn of the days when she had been going to marry him. She could hear Ellen’s voice saying it.
She lay back and rested for a little while, continuing her plans for ensuring that George and the children saw the Herb of Grace before Nadine did, and lost their hearts to it so completely that Nadine, in complete ignorance of its lack of modern conveniences, would not be able to refuse them their hearts’ desire. That should be easy. She had begun all right by seeing to it that Nadine interviewed Jill here and not there.
She dozed off for a moment or two, and then she got up and began the slow, laborious, painful business of washing her hands, changing into her black lace dress, and arranging her beautiful white hair afresh. Her few jewels—the hoop of diamonds that protected her wedding ring, her emerald ring upon the other hand, her lorgnette upon a thin gold chain, and the little gold wrist watch that David had given her, she always wore, but she added a few extra touches tonight because Nadine was here. She put on her best, very ancient, satin petticoat, the one that rustled with that lovely rustle that no modern garment seemed able to achieve. She took out her loveliest lace handkerchief and scented it with eau de cologne, powdered her nose very carefully, and put a little posy of flowers into her waistband.
The gong went just as she had finished her preparations, and she crossed slowly to the door, enjoying the rustle. The Bastard was waiting for her on the mat outside and followed her stately progress down the stairs, wheezing heavily and with great importance. Pooh-Bah was waiting for her on the mat at the foot of the stairs, and both dogs fell into line and paced behind her to the drawing-room door. Nadine and Margaret (Hilary had gone home) were waiting for her in the drawing room, and to please her they had made a little effort. Nadine had knotted a light gauzy scarf about the shoulders of her black dress and looked superb, Margaret had changed her yellow jumper for a pink one and put on her pearls. The fact that she had not changed from her gardening shoes to her slippers was, Lucilla knew, a mere oversight, and she did not mention it.
“Is dinner ready?” she asked, smiling at them with loving approval.
“Yes Mo
ther,” said Margaret, and they passed in procession to the dining room.
Nadine was very tired, and hysterical laughter rose suddenly within her as the three of them sat down to their Bengers and sardines. The massive silver on the table, the lighted candles and the flowers, the beautiful china, Grandmother’s toilet. . . . And Bengers and sardines. . . . Then she choked down her laughter. For Margaret had made a special effort tonight. She had grilled the sardines and mashed some potatoes, and stewed a few prunes that were so very withered that she had surely been hoarding them for a very long time as a special treat for an honored guest. And Grandmother, eating her Bengers very slowly so as to make it last out through the two courses her daughters were consuming, ate it with such an air that Nadine could almost see the ghost of the butler whom she had once had looming behind her chair, and looking down at her plate was suddenly astonished to see a sardine there instead of a wing of chicken.
“They do say,” said Lucilla in her lovely musical old voice, “that now the mines have been swept away the fishing fleets will be able to get out again and we’ll have plenty of real fish. It would be nice, wouldn’t it, to taste a Dover sole again?”
“You’re right, Grandmother,” said Nadine warmly, and with what Margaret thought unnecessary depth of conviction. But Lucilla knew, from the warm current of sympathy suddenly set flowing between her and her daughter-in-law, that Nadine was referring not only to Dover soles. She was apologizing for that stifled mirth that had not gone unobserved by Lucilla, and she was saying that she recognized Lucilla’s efforts at preservation as what they were, not so much the salvage of useless trash from a lost past, but paving stones set upon the quagmire of these times, leading to a new dignity whose shape she could not guess at yet.
CHAPTER
4
— 1 —
Nadine slept that night as she had not slept for weeks. That was a gift that Damerosehay usually seemed able to give—sleep. That timelessness of the place loosened one’s hold upon the cares of today and the silence took them and hid them. Nadine’s small single room faced over the marshes to the Estuary, and after she had undressed she stood at the window watching the lights of cottages twinkling out on the marsh and the light of a great ship passing beyond in the darkness. Then she got into bed and lay for a little listening to the soft rustling of the reeds. Then she slept and knew nothing more until she woke in the half dark and heard that muted orchestra of strange cries with which the sea birds welcomed the dawn. Then there was silence again, and she slept once more until she woke in a blaze of sunshine and found Margaret in a blue overall setting a breakfast tray beside her bed.
“Mother has hers in bed nowadays,” said Margaret, “and I thought you’d better too. It’ll rest you. George and the children will be here by lunch.”
Their eyes met and they laughed.
“And don’t you need rest before the invasion, Margaret?” asked Nadine.
“I’m strong, you know,” said Margaret. “It’s a good thing,” she added as a plain statement of fact, with no sarcasm. “I’m afraid it’s only just toast and marmalade and coffee. I’m keeping the bacon and eggs for George and the children for lunch. Is raisin tart still the twins’ favorite pudding? I’ve one bottle of raisins left.”
“Unfortunately, yes,” said Nadine. “It’s extraordinary what children can digest.”
“I’ll do a milk pudding too,” consoled Margaret. “Now don’t get up till you feel inclined. Have a good rest. My daily is coming up from the village this morning and she’ll get the bedrooms ready. Have I forgotten anything on the tray?”
Nadine could see she had forgotten several things, including the marmalade spoon and the teaspoon, but she forbore to mention it, for where would they all be without Margaret?
“Has it made you happy, Margaret?” she asked.
“What?” asked Margaret.
“Slaving for the Eliot family.”
“I’m happy,” said Margaret. “Aren’t you?”
“No,” said Nadine, pouring out her coffee.
They looked at each other, separated by that intangible barrier of a whole world of experience that lies between a beautiful woman who has married and borne children and possessed every blessing that the world prizes, and a plain woman who has had none of it.
“What is it that you haven’t got, Nadine?” asked Margaret bluntly.
“Some saving grace,” said Nadine. “Something that you have and I have not. Some sort of astringency. I don’t know what it is. . . . You do make good coffee, Margaret.”
Margaret flushed with pleasure and went away, and Nadine helped herself to marmalade with the blade of her knife and stirred her coffee with the handle and ruminated dreamily in the warm spring sunshine. An astringent grace. Not one of the flowing graces. Astringent, like an herb. Herb of Grace. Why, that was the name of the inn. Jill’s inn. Jill’s herb. Oh, thank God for Jill! How wonderful it would be to have a nanny.
She drank her coffee and ate her toast with glorious slowness, and had her bath and dressed in heavenly leisure. Her violets, that the children’s friend had sent her, were too faded to wear now, but they were still fragrant. Nothing astringent about violets, she thought; and they were her favorite flower. That unknown girl had sent her a very suitable gift. She opened her door and went out into the passage. The room next to hers was the little room over the porch that David always used when he came here. She walked past the door, then turned back, opened it, and went in. Lucilla always kept this room exactly as David liked it, and never put anyone else to sleep here if she could help it, so that it was always waiting for him. It was an austere little room, holding just a few treasures: some rare books, an exquisite Chinese model of a galloping horse in blue-green china, and a reproduction of Van Gogh’s painting of a lark tossing over a wind-blown cornfield. The galloping horse, the tossing lark, bathed now in early-morning sunshine, were the very incarnation of happy freedom. Nadine felt suddenly desperate. Freedom and happiness. And she and David had turned their backs upon them both.
She had left the door ajar, and now, hearing a soft rustle behind her, she turned. Lucilla was standing in the doorway, her blue eyes full of pity and anxiety, but her sweet mouth very determined. But she uttered no reproach at finding Nadine on forbidden ground.
“I’m going out into the garden, dear, to stone the raisins for Tommy’s favorite cake.”
“I’ll help you,” said Nadine.
“I’m putting Ben and Tommy in their usual room,” said Lucilla, as she slowly descended the stairs, Nadine following meekly after. “And would you mind, dear, if I had Caroline in my dressing room as I used to do when she was a little girl and lived with me?”
“Of course not, Grandmother,” said Nadine.
“The twins shall sleep in the old nursery, George can have the blue room, and you shall stay where you are. A room to oneself is the best rest of all when one is tired, I used to think when I was married. . . . Does George snore, dear?”
“Yes, Grandmother.”
“I guessed as much. He’s very like his father. Bring the garden chairs, dear. It’s so warm that I think we could sit under the ilex tree to do the raisins.”
They sat together in the sweet spring sunshine with the dogs at their feet, the blackbirds singing over their heads, and the garden a blaze of glory before their eyes. Lucilla, chatting casually about this and that, was very sweet and loving to her daughter-in-law. But Nadine did not suppose that her trespass of the morning would be overlooked. Nor was it.
“It was a great triumph to get these raisins,” said Lucilla. “I do so wish David would marry some nice girl. It would do him so much good. He has been through so much, poor boy, and a nice girl-wife to make him young again is what he needs. Do you like doing the raisins with your finger and thumb, dear? Wouldn’t you rather have this silver knife?”
Nadine’s heart missed a beat, but she
kept her face expressionless and her voice casual. “No, thank you, Grandmother. I belong to the finger and thumb school of thought. Have you anyone in mind?”
“No, dear. I see so few young people nowadays. I don’t even seem to see much of my dear David now; he is so busy. You see him much more often than I do. Have you noticed him with any nice girls?”
“With hundreds, Grandmother, but I haven’t noticed him falling for one more than another.”
“It’s such a pity,” sighed Lucilla. “It’s as though something were holding him back. As though he needed to be set free in some way.”
There was a little silence.
“Set free?” murmured Nadine.
“Freedom and happiness are always on ahead,” said Lucilla. “Never behind. There, dear, now you’ve upset the raisins. Never mind, we’ll soon pick them up again. What was I saying? Oh, yes, David’s marriage. As you know, dear, the whole family decided that this house should be David’s at my death, partly because he loves it so, and partly because he is best able to keep it up as the family home for all of you. But I’ve set my heart on his having it before my death. I want him to come here with his bride, and then Margaret and I can go and live at Big Village.”
Nadine was speechless. Lucilla and Damerosehay were in her mind so inseparably one that she could not visualize Lucilla living anywhere else.
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