‘A telegram came, after you had all gone,’ panted Jacob ‘We thought we should open it And then we thought we should at once come down and tell you. These English cousins … they will come today. We thought it might be better if we could warn you. You can tell them that they shall stay at the hotel.’
‘Too late,’ said Lewis. ‘They’ve come already. We’ve just met Miss. There she is.’
‘Ach!’ said the other two, surveying the distant Florence in alarm.
‘And she intends to come up to the Karindehütte after lunch. She says so.’
‘Can we not say that there is no room?’
‘Sebastian told her that there was plenty of room. His neck ought to be wrung.’
‘Ach!’
‘What about Linda?’ asked Lewis anxiously. ‘Does she know? What has she done?’
‘She has a headache; she has gone to bed,’ Jacob told him.
‘I think she will stay there. One cannot be so barbarous as to pull her out, unless the English uncle will attempt it.’
‘Then let her stay,’ advised Lewis. ‘They won’t know she’s there. Tomorrow, when Caryl comes, somebody can take the lady a walk to look at the scenery, and we will eject Linda.’
Uncle Robert had come out of the hotel and was being introduced to the children. Trigorin, who had been taking stock of the group, now broke in, exclaiming:
‘But … but that young lady is clearly of the beau monde! Femme parfaitement comme il faut! It is unmistakable. How is it possible that she should stay at the Karindehütte?’
The other young men shook their heads. It scarcely seemed possible that she should. The prospect filled them all with a sort of panic.
8
Florence found the young Sangers quite charming. Uncle Robert did not. The beauty of the Alpine Spring had not, perhaps, moulded his mind sufficiently; he showed no signs of sharing the gay serenity of mood which enabled her to find everything at the Karindehütte either delightful or funny. His new nieces especially appalled him; several times during that first lunch he had looked at their dripping hair and shuddered. And he had blenched at some strong expressions used by them when they burnt their mouths with hot soup. On the way out from England he had talked a good deal of inviting them for the Summer to his bungalow at Tenby, that they might have the advantage of association with his daughters, Hilda and Betty. But Florence doubted whether this invitation would now be given. He admitted that the Sangers were handsome children, that they looked intelligent and enunciated their words very well, but that was the best he could say of them.
Nor was he moved towards the three young strangers, who looked, to his mind, very like a trio of young ruffians. And in this she was more inclined to support him. Even in her eyes the magnificence of the scenery did not perfectly excuse the raffish vulgarity displayed by Birnbaum and Trigorin. They were, she knew, the types of which she had undertaken to beware. Their disrepute was written all over them, and, remembering her father’s warnings, his absurd apprehension that she might be in danger from such people, she hardly knew whether to be amused or impatient.
Mr Dodd she placed rather differently, though he was, in appearance, the least presentable of the three. The Symphony in Three Keys gave him the right to look like a tramp if he pleased. She could, however, understand why Robert had condemned him as the worst of the lot. He had been ostensibly rude, while the others were only too civil. His eagerness to conciliate the lady did not carry him as far as politeness to the old gentleman, and Robert Churchill’s manner to a young man did not recommend him to one who had thrown off all authority at the age of sixteen. To Florence he remained courteous, and when she relieved his worst anxieties by a timely chuckle at Paulina’s language, he gave her a swift smile, so intimate and brilliant that it startled her. Then he turned grave again and offered her salad in his shy, hesitating voice, so that she hardly knew what to make of him. Yet the charm of that smile remained the most real thing in an amusing but very unreal day. After lunch they drove up to the Karindehütte and were regaled, almost immediately, with another meal, a sort of supper, which was eaten in an atmosphere of tense, strained embarrassment. Every member of Sanger’s circus, from Roberto to Susan, had become aware of the necessity for good behaviour. Their desperate efforts were rather exhausting and Florence retired early to sleep, in tolerable comfort, in the room which had once belonged to Sanger.
She awoke next morning in a mood of remote, impregnable happiness and, while she dressed, she looked out, in the pocket Shakespeare which always travelled with her, that passage in ‘A Winter’s Tale’ beginning:
Thou’rt perfect then our ship hath touched upon
The desarts of Bohemia?
The desarts of Bohemia was an apt description of the place as seen by poor Uncle Robert. For herself the wilderness was flowering like a garden. The words of the scene still ran in her head when, standing at the top of the stairs, she looked down and saw Lewis and the children eating their porridge in the hall. She remembered the warning:
Go not too far i’ the land!
This place is famous for the creatures of prey
That keep upon it.
The mysterious lady who lurked in her room with a headache was very possibly a creature of prey. Nor did the term sit badly upon the two fat youths, the Jew and the Russian. But these amusing, pathetic children, this mild and bashful young peasant, with his wonderful talent and his gentle voice, were surely a nicer kind of inhabitant. They were with her inside the magic circle where all the world was gay and innocent and funny.
She had forgotten that creatures of prey have often an engaging appearance. Nor did it occur to her that their charm was largely due to the simplicity of their ideas. She, shackled in every thought by traditions, ideals and scruples, was scarcely safe among them. For if beasts of prey are rapacious, so were these; if they are unmerciful, so were these; if they know no law save their own ungoverned appetites, neither did these.
If she had come down a moment earlier she might have heard some pretty language, for Lewis was out of humour. He had passed a bad night, his head ached atrociously, and he had come to breakfast in that sort of mood which always roused Teresa to call him their sunbeam. He succeeded almost immediately in making both the girls cry and even drew oaths from the placid Sebastian. But it is to his credit that he endeavoured to pull himself together when their lady cousin appeared. He talked to her quite politely if a little morosely, and presently began to explain the difficulty of producing Sanger’s operas, a subject which greatly interested him. The general atmosphere of the breakfast table brightened and grew more cordial. Florence knew a great deal about the difficulties of producing opera. In some ways she knew more than Lewis. She told him all about a new scheme for the State financing of British opera.
‘I wonder that you had not heard of it,’ she exclaimed; and then, after a slight hesitation, she added: ‘It was started by my friend … Sir Bartlemy Pugh …’
She had many distinguished friends and she always introduced their names in this fashion in order, perhaps, to warn people that they must be careful what they said. But here her caution was wasted; Lewis, who shared Sanger’s opinion of Great Britain, showed no signs of having ever heard of Sir Bartlemy Pugh, though as a musician he certainly ought. Nor was he quite as attentive as he should have been when she explained the scheme for endowed opera. He was just going to be rather rude about it when Teresa averted the catastrophe by breaking in and asking, with derisive solicitude, after his dreadful headache.
Florence did not altogether like being interrupted. She had a good deal more to say and this untimely intrusion of a child’s banter broke up the conversation. Before turning to another topic she took silent stock of her young cousin, looking her up and down, and, for the first time, mentally separating her from the rest of the family. Decidedly she was the least attractive of them; in feature and person she might almost have been called ugly, though improvement was possible if, on a richer diet, she should take i
t into her head to grow. The meagreness of her under-nourished body contrasted ill with a certain amplitude of scale in her face, which was round and firm, with a finely curved chin and large, wide set eyes. Her mouth was small, and, though the fullness of her lips gave it generosity, there was a sardonic turn about it which Florence did not like to see in so young a girl. And her tone, when she asked after Mr Dodd’s headache in that pert way, was a great deal too assured and intimate.
It was a pity that he had a headache. Florence was very sorry to hear of it and recommended that he should dose himself with aspirin and lie down in the dark till it was better. This he agreed to do, but first he strolled out with her upon the mountain side in order to put in a good word for the girls. He informed her diffidently that they needed looking after.
‘Oh, but that’s obvious,’ she agreed with a laugh.
‘It’s not their fault, I mean,’ he said eagerly. ‘This house and the way they’ve been brought up. If you think at first that they are a little wild, you mustn’t mind.’
‘Of course not. I think them such dears! They shall all come back with us and I’ll find a nice school for them and for Sebastian too. What a funny little boy he is!’
‘Sebastian?’ He looked blank. ‘A school for him?’
‘He wants looking after quite as much as the girls.’
‘Perhaps. But schools! Some boys can’t do with them. I doubt if he could. At the school where I was …’
He broke off, and she asked in amusement if he had not been able to do with his school. He told her that he had run away and that he believed Sebastian would do the same. He told her of Sebastian’s recent excursion, which amused her very much, but she would rather have heard how old he was when he ran away and what he had done since. She steered the conversation in that direction and learnt eventually that he had been rather older than Sebastian, sixteen, to be exact, and that he had maintained himself by playing the cornet in a circus band.
‘Afterwards,’ he said, ‘I wrote some pieces for that band to play. Circus music is a fine thing to write. Sanger says my style bears traces of it still.’
‘Like journalism,’ said Florence. ‘It will out, in an ex-journalist’s work, however literary he is.’
‘I daresay,’ said Lewis, looking frightened.
He was not used to these parallels and hastened away lest she should try his wits too highly, with a headache and all. He spent the rest of the morning swallowing aspirin in a darkened room and thus missed the thrilling departure of Linda, Susan and Trigorin, which shook the rest of the house like a tornado.
Caryl, on his return, was much shocked to discover that the English relations, upon whom so much depended, had arrived with so little warning. Linda obstinately guarded her room, and it was Birnbaum who hit upon the strategem whereby she was finally ejected. He suggested that Trigorin should be asked to go, opining that Linda would incontinently follow rather than let him slip through her fingers. Caryl accordingly interviewed Trigorin and suggested, very civilly, that he might go down to the hotel since they were rather crowded by the unexpected arrival of the Churchills. It was a difficult thing to say, for they were all very much indebted to Trigorin, who had produced ready money, whenever it was required, all the time that he had been there. No one else had any, except Jacob Birnbaum; and he, though he could be generous on a large scale, had a curious dislike of parting with small sums. Trigorin had provided them with food ever since Sanger’s death and he had lent Kate her fare to Leipzig. But he was most considerate and agreed to go at once, with many polite regrets that he had, perhaps, already stayed too long. Before he went he sought out Uncle Robert and handed him a cheque for £500, insisting that it was a privilege to do anything for Sanger’s children.
‘Never again,’ he said sadly, ‘shall I have a friend like Mr Sanger. It is a great sorrow for me that he has died so soon when I come here. We have no time to speak of music, as I have hoped. This shall be my return for the happiness I have had that he should ask me here. I cannot do anything else for him.’
And he turned away, so much overcome that Robert did not like to argue the question any further with him.
Jacob was right. Linda no sooner heard the tidings than she sprang from her bed, declaring that she and Susan could not possibly stay in a house where they were not wanted. If Caryl insisted on turning her out she would pack up and go. And pack she did, in a kind of cyclone which ravaged the house and left it strangely bare. The family were so much relieved by these symptoms of exodus that they never enquired what she took with her, and it was not until much later that they discovered all that was gone. She took several valuable autograph letters, a presentation clock, a gold cigarette case given to Sanger by Wagner, and every small article of value that came in her way, including all the spoons and forks. Two men, summoned from the valley, staggered off down the hill with her heavy boxes on their shoulders and, half an hour later, she quitted Sanger’s house for ever.
She came downstairs just as Trigorin was taking leave of the family in the hall. She had dressed herself in the deepest black; a long veil hung from her hat and hid most of her yellow hair. In one hand she held Susan, who was all tied up with black ribbons, and in the other she displayed a handkerchief with a black border. Roberto trotted apologetically behind her, bearing a green leather dressing-case. She looked so majestic and so mournful, so authentically widowed, that even Robert Churchill had a qualm of uneasiness and wondered if they were not treating her barbarously in insisting that she must go.
‘Come Kiril,’ she said to Trigorin. ‘Let’s go. If I’m turned out, I’m turned out, and there’s an end of it. I’m not going to make a fuss, though there’s some that might.’
She had determined, apparently, to take no direct notice of the Sangers or the Churchills, and when Susan gave a loud sniff she said to nobody in particular:
‘She’s crying for her daddy, poor little mite! You wouldn’t think, the way she’s treated now, that she was his favourite child. Come, lovey! We aren’t wanted here. Will you carry my dressing-case down the hill for me, please, Kiril? Roberto has it.’
Trigorin looked doubtfully at his own suitcases, but made an effort to comply. He was wrestling with the problem of picking up all three at once, and Linda was half out of the door when the scene began. Antonia darted forward crying:
‘You mustn’t take that! It’s my dressing-case.’
‘What’s that?’ exclaimed Linda coming back. ‘You give it here if you please. It’s mine. I’ve had it these five years.’
‘’Tisn’t yours,’ cried Antonia, snatching it up and dodging round behind Birnbaum. ‘It ought to be mine. It was my mother’s.’
‘What’s that got to do with it?’ retorted Linda. ‘It’s mine now. Your dad gave it to me. You give it back directly!’
‘I won’t! You’re a thief!’ screamed Antonia. ‘He never gave you my darling mother’s things. You stole them.’
‘Tony! Tony! Let her have it,’ whispered Birnbaum. ‘It is old … not worth fighting for. I will give you a better one.’
It was indeed old – a perfect derelict of a dressing-case – so stained, scratched and battered that no self-respecting woman would have cared to claim it. There were marks on it of every haphazard journey taken by Sanger’s circus for the past seventeen years. But, as Antonia held it up for the others to look, there was discernible a faint E.N.C. stamped on the side.
‘Evelyn Napier Churchill!’ she said. ‘That’s my mother.’
Robert remembered it. He and Charles had given it to their sister on her twenty-first birthday; he recalled, with a curious pang, the shop where they had bought it, and how they had decided that the clean, plain beauty of ivory fittings would suit the fastidious Evelyn better than the glitter of gold or silver.
‘Yes, it is hers,’ he said. ‘But it must be quite worthless by now. Let her have it, Antonia!’
He wanted, at any cost, to end an intolerable situation. So did everybody but the chief combatant
s. Antonia clung to the dressing-case and cursed Birnbaum for interfering. Linda, having worked herself up into a fine rage, was prepared to let them have a piece of her mind.
‘I don’t leave this house without it!’ she shouted. ‘You call me a thief? What are you, I should like to know? You turn me out. You treat me as if I was a tart. What better are you? Tell me that. And what better was your mother? Think I don’t know ….’
‘Tony! Don’t listen to her! Don’t answer her!’ exhorted Florence, for Antonia was preparing to fly at Linda. ‘Come away!’
‘Don’t you worry with her, miss,’ advised the woman. ‘She’s not fit for you to touch, not by a long chalk. She’s an artful little bitch and no better than what she should be. You ask Mister Birnbaum there if …’
‘Here’s the bag,’ cried Caryl, snatching it and hurling it at her, while Florence and Birnbaum forcibly held Antonia down. ‘Take it and go for goodness sake! You’ll miss your train.’
‘Yes, madam! You’d really better hurry,’ advised Uncle Robert, who, watch in hand, was trying to be impressive and gentlemanly.
‘Go?’ finished Linda. ‘Yes, I should think I am going! I wouldn’t stay here for anything in the world, not with all I’ve seen going on. But if you’re all so particular I wonder at you for bringing the young lady here, for it’s nothing better than a dirty case house and never was.’
And with that she took herself off. Trigorin, after some frenzied antics, managed to pick up all the baggage and followed her without further farewells. Three times during the first hundred yards did he drop one of his burdens, while the family, utterly shattered by the storm which had gone over them, watched him from the window. Sebastian remarked with some glee that he had panted and puffed a good deal when he first came up, but that he would find going down even more strenuous. Linda’s black, fluttering draperies disappeared round the first corner and a sort of sigh passed through the group of children. The resolute enmity died out of their faces; they had detested her for eight years and were now prepared to forget her in as many minutes. When, for the fourth time, Trigorin dropped something, kind Caryl would stay no longer; he went out and carried the disputed dressing-case to the bottom of the hill where a peasant’s cart was awaiting the travellers. On their way down Trigorin said several times how sad it was to end a visit which one had greatly desired to make.
The Constant Nymph Page 11