He looked at her. From infancy she had always done exactly what she pleased with a persistence which belied the sweet placability of her manner. In the face of criticism or protest she exhibited none of Evelyn’s flaming defiance, only a pleasant disregard which had always vanquished him. Sometimes, viewing her unswerving pursuit of a chosen course, he was compelled to liken her to something slow, crushing, irresistible – a steam-roller. Already he knew that he would have to let her go to the Tyrol, and she talked about her life being cramped!
‘I think, my angel,’ he said, rather testily, ‘that you scarcely know what you are talking about.’
7
It was eleven o’clock in the morning and Kate was busy chopping suet in the kitchen when Lewis poked his head round the door. He asked if there was any breakfast left in a tone which suggested that he did not suppose so. He knew that she would not let him starve, but he wanted, if possible, to feel aggrieved.
‘Of course there is,’ said kind Kate. ‘Come and sit by the fire while I make you an omelette. I hope this means you’ve had a better night.’
‘No,’ he said gloomily. ‘I slept a couple of hours late this morning, and that was all. I was dropping off just when it was getting light, and then those bloody cow bells roused me.’
‘Oh, yes! They are driven up to pasture every morning at sunrise. We get used to it. Poor Lewis!’
‘I’ve tried going to bed drunk, and I’ve tried sober. I can’t sleep either way.’
‘It’s shock,’ said Kate placidly, as she broke eggs into a pan. ‘Your nerves got upset when Sanger died. It’s the same thing that makes Tessa and Sebastian sick. They’ve been sick, off and on, you know, ever since that awful night.’
‘I do know,’ he said with distaste. ‘It’s impossible for anyone in this house not to know how sick Tessa and Sebastian have been, off and on.’
She dished up her omelette and gave it to him. Then she said, as she brewed some coffee:
‘It’s been very upsetting for all of us. Now I do hope you’ll take a day off. You can’t work while you are in this state. If you try, you’ll only have another sleepless night.’
‘I can’t stop in the middle of a thing.’
‘You’ll do no good at it.’
‘Mind your own business, Kate.’
She excused his incivility on account of his interrupted work and bad night. He was plainly exasperated. Sanger’s death had thrown him off his balance, a thing which happened easily at any time. There was nothing to be done for a man in this state. Her father had always been like this, possessed by a furious despair, when any unlucky accident pulled him up short in the evolution of a new idea; and her father had been serenity itself beside Lewis. She went on with her work, while he devoured his omelette, a savage, baffled expression on his white face.
Presently she said:
‘I wish I could mind my own business. Here’s Schenck wants me to join the company at once. I don’t suppose he’ll keep the place open for me. But how can I go until something’s been settled about the children?’
‘Wouldn’t be a bad thing if you didn’t go. It’s not a good enough show for you. Chorus work will spoil your voice.’
‘It’s the best I can get,’ she said with a sigh, ‘and I must do something. I’ll risk its harming my voice. With luck it won’t be for long. Schenck has promised he’ll give me something better the minute it turns up.’
‘I daresay! He’ll forget you in a fortnight. You see!’
‘Jacob will jog his memory, if he does.’
‘Jacob takes a brotherly interest in you, doesn’t he?’ said Lewis sourly, as he scraped his plate with a piece of bread.
He was determined to break down Kate’s obstinate good temper, and observed with pleasure that this last taunt had wounded her. She flushed, and he felt better.
‘He’s not a bad sort, Jacob,’ she pleaded. ‘He’s been very kind since Father died. You know I think he’s really worried about Tony, and sorry too.’
‘Sorry! What for?’
‘He is anxious about what is to become of her.’
‘It’s perfectly obvious what will become of her. Why couldn’t he think of that before?’
‘Why not? Oh, Lewis! As if any of you ever did!’
‘I don’t know what he thinks he’s after now,’ complained Lewis. ‘I know they make the house intolerable. What with Ike and Tony sparring in one room, and Linda throwing fits in another, and Tessa and Sebastian finding themselves unexpectedly indisposed everywhere, the place isn’t fit to live in.’
‘Well, then, why do you go on living in it?’
‘Me? Oh, I stay here for safety’s sake. There are no opportunities for folly on the top of this mountain; and I’m just ripe to make a fool of myself if I get the chance. I’d better keep out of harm’s way.’
‘Well, yes, perhaps,’ she said, considering his case.
‘And I’d like, you know, to see Tessa safely settled somewhere. And Lina and Soo-zanne, of course. It would be a weight off my mind.’
‘Oh, what is to be done about them? Some sensible person must take charge of them. No, Susan! I can’t have you bothering in my kitchen. Run along back to your mother.’
‘Mammy said I was to come down here for a bit,’ whined Susan. ‘She’s getting up, and she’s got Uncle Kiki in there, talking to her.’
‘Has she? Well, you can go and tell her that I won’t have you here, and the sooner she takes herself off, and you, and him, the better pleased we shall be. She’s no business here.’
Such an explosion was unusual in Kate, but she was indignant at the relations between Linda and Trigorin and their prolonged sojourn in the house. Linda was in no hurry to depart, as long as somebody else could be prevailed upon to feed her. She meant to remain until she was turned out, and she kept Trigorin, now hopelessly subjugated, at her side in case of need. They were resented by the whole family, but Caryl, now the master of the house, was too much harassed and preoccupied to meddle with them, and was, moreover, a little embarrassed by Trigorin’s generous offers of money for the children. Kate said to Lewis:
‘It’s a bit too much the way he’s always in her room!’
‘It keeps him out of all the other rooms,’ argued Lewis. ‘And that’s something. For my part, she can have the flea-trainer as a gift, if she wants him.’
‘If only … Oh, Caryl! Is that you? Just come in here for a moment! Here’s Schenck written to say he wants me at once. What am I to do? How can I leave the girls?’
‘Oh, that’s all right,’ said Caryl cheerfully, waving a letter in his hand. ‘That’s quite all right. You can go as soon as you like. There’s a lady coming.’
‘A lady!’
‘Yes, and a man too. The children’s uncle.’
‘I know,’ said Lewis. ‘The Master. The man we all wrote to.’
‘Did you write?’ asked Caryl in some surprise. ‘No. It’s not him, but his brother. He writes this though. It’s most liberal. He will take the children, Kate. He says we aren’t to worry.’
‘But the lady,’ said Lewis, ‘is the wife of … which?’
‘Neither. She’s one of their daughters By what I can make out they are coming quite soon.’
‘But is she married?’
‘How should I know? He doesn’t say.’
‘Because,’ said Lewis dubiously, ‘if she’s only some one’s daughter she may be quite a young lady. I wonder if she’ll do.’
‘He seems to think so,’ said Caryl, glancing at the letter. ‘He says she’ll advise about the girls’ education. He says he recommends a good English school, but we must discuss it.’
‘A good English school!’ exclaimed Lewis. ‘That would be better even than a convent, I expect.’
‘But you say they are coming soon?’ began Kate. ‘They are never coming here? Not here! We’ve no room, for one thing.’
‘The man can have Father’s room. And if you are gone, the lady can have your place in the girls’ roo
m,’ said Caryl.
‘Oh, no!’ Kate, thinking of the dirt and confusion in the girls’ room, was positive that she could not put the lady there. ‘And Tony has taken to having nightmares; she screams and kicks anybody in the bed. They really can’t come here, Caryl.’
‘Put the lady in Sanger’s room,’ suggested Lewis, ‘and let the uncle share with Ike, and put Trigorin into Linda’s room for good and all. That would be quite simple.’
‘Oh, but we couldn’t …’ began Kate, solemn and shocked.
‘Of course not,’ put in Caryl with a frown. ‘Linda must go. She must go at once before this lady comes. And then Trigorin will go too and we shall have lots of room.’
‘I wonder how much it will cost you to get Linda out of the house,’ speculated Lewis. ‘A good deal, if she guesses you have reasons for wanting her gone in a hurry. She …’
‘Look out!’ whispered Kate, ‘that child …’
But Susan had already slipped off to report the news to her mother. Lewis consoled them by saying that even if Linda did demand a bribe they could always borrow it off Trigorin.
‘It’s certainly a difficulty, their coming so soon,’ said Caryl. ‘But I shall be glad to see them. I’ll hand the children over and get off. And Kate can go as soon as she has packed her things.’
Kate went next day. To the last she was very much distressed to think of the discomforts which the lady would have to bear. She left a thousand instructions with Roberto, who gathered that Miss Churchill would want cups of tea and large cans of hot water every two or three hours. Caryl, who was much grieved at parting with his sister, decided to accompany her as far as Munich, where he would spend the night and return next morning. Lewis and the children came down to Weissau to see them off and the parting upon the landing-stage was very affecting. Kate broke down suddenly and began to sob with the strangled, speechless grief of a placid person tried beyond endurance. She stood, neat and stalwart, hiding a very red face in a clean pocket handkerchief, and grasping in her free hand a dress-basket and umbrella, until the boat came up and Caryl gently propelled her on board. He took her down to the little cabin, where she might recover herself, and neither was there to wave when the boat made off again across the still lake waters.
The children, contrary to their custom, did not cry at all; Kate’s tears, the premonition that this tender and loving sister had abandoned them, shocked them too deeply. They watched the departing boat in silence, looking so small, pale and forlorn that Lewis, who was in a particularly vile temper, began to swear at them. This revived them wonderfully. They went and bought bulls’-eyes at the village shop and then demanded that he should take them for a row on the lake, which he did in an old boat almost as big as the ark. They paddled about in the sun, tried to race the steamboat on its return journey, passed the time of day with all the other pleasure parties, and finally took a bathe in full view of the chief hotel and the high road leading along the lake. To Florence, who was sitting on a bench by the waterside, they afforded much amusement, for they artlessly bathed in their skins and got dry in the sun.
‘And one of them is quite a big girl too,’ she thought, as Antonia climbed into the boat. ‘But it seems to be the thing here. And they look very charming, I’m sure.’
She had just driven up from Erfurt with her uncle because the little train was so full that they could not get into it. Weissau was full of merry-makers as it happened to be a holiday. Along the lake road came a continual stream of people, all enjoying the lovely air. There were parties of sunburnt young men with knapsacks and ice-axes, and stout Germans in blue linen coats, and peasant girls in bright aprons and boys with flowers in their hats. Florence, who hated bank holiday crowds in England, loved this one; she could even tolerate the Innsbruck shop people drinking beer under the trees in the hotel garden, because they looked so new, and were all so happy, and the day was so fine. Nine out of every ten who passed were carrying great bunches of wild flowers The noise they made, the guttural, good-humoured shouts of laughter, the twanging of zithers and snatches of song from the boats on the lake, were enchanting simply because they were strange, and not the high-pitched cockney and the mouth-organs of Hampstead Heath.
Though rather tired with her journey, and glad to sit still, she was completely happy. Robert Churchill had gone into the hotel to order lunch and enquire the way to the Karindethal, and she was pleased to be rid of him. He did not share her enthusiasm for this beautiful place. All the way from England he had grumbled at an enforced uprooting in the middle of term, and more than once he had tactlessly expressed a wish that his wife had been able to come with him. The crowds were, to him, a final source of irritation. The drive from Erfurt, through endless, mounting pine woods, had seemed most vexatiously slow and expensive. Now he only wanted to get on to their journey’s end, transact their tiresome business, and have done with it.
Florence, on the other hand, was continually blessing the chance which had brought them. Her joy had begun early in the morning when she woke up and looked out of her window and saw, through the chestnuts of the garden, the flowery meadows of the Innthal, flanked by far blue mountains. They woke in her an expectant rapture which was crowned by this vision of the lake. She could not look at it long enough. Sometimes the water was so still and translucent that the boats, hovering over their reflections, seemed to float on green air; and then an unexplained wind would brush it all silver, blotting out the lovely pictures of mountain top and sky which had rested for a moment on its clear, profound surface.
She hoped that the Sanger affairs might turn out to be unexpectedly complicated so that she might have to stay for a long time.
Presently she recognised, in a party approaching her, the delightful bathers in the old boat. They were walking up to the hotel, but there was no mistaking them. In their clothes or out, they attracted attention. Though dressed like peasants, they looked wilder than the wildest mountain people, and they were so much thinner. The young man was as lean as a scarecrow, and the children were mere shrimps. They walked, too, with lightness and pace, unlike the heavy-booted trudge of the Tyrolese. As they passed her she heard with surprise that they were talking English. The smallest of the girls was saying:
‘Sebastian thinks he’s going to be sick some more.’
‘Poor Sebastian,’ thought Florence. ‘He stayed in the water too long. Oh! Sebastian! Four of them! It must be!’
She started to her feet and pursued them, crying:
‘Oh, I beg your pardon, but are you Sangers?’
The five of them turned, gaped, but at last admitted that they were.
‘I’m your cousin,’ she explained. ‘I’m on my way to see you. Didn’t you get our telegram?’
They shook their heads, perfectly dumb with surprise. She was, to them, a strange type, from her neat grey travelling hat and veil to her comfortable, expensive, low-heeled shoes. The children had never spoken to anything like her in their lives, and to Lewis she was an envoy from the past, the sort of lady who had domineered over his infancy but who was never allowed to interfere with him now. Sebastian was the first of them to recover. He gravely bade her welcome, and explained that they had been expecting her though they had received no telegram. Then they all shook hands.
‘But how many of you are my cousins?’ she enquired, looking them over and liking what she saw.
‘All except him,’ calculated Antonia with a nod at Lewis.
‘And you are … Caryl?’ Florence spoke a little doubtfully, for as she framed the words she thought he looked rather too old to be Caryl.
‘Oh, no!’ he said hastily. ‘I’m no relation. Just a friend.’
‘Oh, yes …’ she murmured in a tone that was a trifle chilly and yet not unfriendly.
‘Mr Dodd, Miss Churchill!’ said Sebastian suddenly, recollecting the formula.
‘Oh!’ She sparkled and ceased to be chilly. ‘Is it Mr Dodd? I think my father heard from you.’
‘Yes, I daresay he did,’ said Le
wis, turning very red. ‘He … he hasn’t come with you, has he?’
Florence suddenly remembered Robert and thanked heaven in parenthesis that he had been inside the hotel when his nieces were bathing in front of it. She explained where he was, and suggested that they should all lunch together before driving up to the Karindehütte. They moved along the path, still rather shy and embarrassed. The children could not believe that they were really related to such a marvellous creature. They stared expansively. Lewis also took her in, a little more furtively, and she was put to it not to glance at him rather more than was necessary when she remembered that she was walking and talking with the composer of the Symphony in Three Keys.
‘Bitter looking,’ she thought, ‘… and ugly … and so ragged! But what a charming voice! And very fond of the children, I think. Sixteen, isn’t she? She doesn’t look it. One must get rid of all one’s prejudices, to understand them. I do believe he’s shy!’
He was desperately shy. But he was making a great and unaccustomed effort to be agreeable because he was anxious that the strange lady should be pleased. On inspection he had decided that she would be a most excellent person to have charge of his friend Teresa. At first he had thought that somebody less young and charming would better fill the part; but the efficiency and ease of her manners, the elegant commonsense of her dress, soon convinced him. Only it was a misfortune that she should arrive plump into the middle of them like this. He had meant to urge the girls to comb their hair before she came, and now it was hanging in a dripping tangle down their backs. And Caryl and Kate were away. And, when they got up to the house, there would be Linda. He could not think what Miss Churchill would say to Linda. She might, possibly, be so much scandalised that she would pack up her gear forthwith and return to England without the girls. So he did his best to entertain her and make a good impression, speaking very quickly and stammering slightly as was his habit when particularly bashful. He explained how Caryl and Kate had gone to Munich.
Just before they got to the hotel he caught sight of two stout gentlemen coming posting along the valley road, who looked, as they got nearer, uncommonly like Trigorin and Jacob Birnbaum. They seemed to be in a great hurry and much agitated. He detached himself from the cousins and joined them.
The Constant Nymph Page 10