The Constant Nymph

by Margaret Kennedy

  The meal was long, and the children ate a great deal and drank freely, and became increasingly noisy and ribald. Uncle Robert at length put an end to it. He cut short their final, rather tipsy attempts to toast the bride by declaring that the train would be in, and hustled them out into the suffocating sunshine of the street. Once in the shelter of the station he was able to detach himself and register luggage in seclusion. His feelings were thus spared during the final scene, for the children no sooner saw the train which was to take their sister away than they set up a loud howl at being parted from her. Antonia also wept, but more quietly and with a remarkable effort at self-control; she was really anxious to do right in the eyes of her cousin Florence, for whom she had conceived an ardent and humble admiration. She kissed all her family very often and promised to send them a picture postcard from Vienna. She kissed Lewis and invited him to come and stay with her as soon as she had a house of her own. Finally, and with a certain shyness, she kissed Florence, murmuring:

  ‘Dear Florence! I’m so sorry to be saying good-bye to you. And I’ll try to remember what you said about not swearing, only in my bedroom ….’

  She and Jacob hung out of the train, waving gaily as it rattled out of the station, while Uncle Robert hid in their compartment, feeling for them all the bashfulness which was not included in their natures.

  The rest of the party felt decidedly flat after their orgy of emotion. They straggled out into the station square and the children began to demand that they should all go to the cinema. This was, to their minds, a good finish to a joyful day, but their elders did not agree with them. Caryl, perceiving dismay in the face of Miss Churchill, tactfully proposed a separation. Lewis should show her the sights of the town while he escorted the children. They could all meet again for the six o’clock train. This idea was warmly seconded by Lewis, who relished the prospect of an afternoon alone with his lady and was impatient to begin it at once. But Florence felt a little sorry for Caryl when she thought of the probable atmosphere of the cinema and the unruly state of the children’s spirits.

  ‘That is really an excellent young man!’ she commented, looking after them.

  ‘Excellent!’ said Lewis. ‘Where shall we go?’

  She unfurled her parasol and said that she would go anywhere cool. The day was too torrid for intelligent sightseeing. Were there no shady gardens where they might sit? Lewis said he thought not. He said that they might have a look at some churches if she liked. He thought that a nice empty church would suit him better than a public garden, though, even if he succeeded in finding one and luring her into it, he was at a loss how to proceed. He had never imagined that any woman, especially one so kind, should be so difficult of approach. Her virtue frightened him at every turn, and he was beginning to wonder desperately if she would go away back to England, beyond his reach, before he should have plucked up the courage to make love to her.

  Occupied with these reflections he walked moodily beside her while she steered herself and her parasol through all the glaring, crowded streets. She was intensely interested in all she saw, stooping to peer into courts, and up at archways, and asking him all sorts of questions which he could not answer. But they got at last into a quieter thoroughfare, and he, seeing a promising looking church in front of them, pointed it out to her, saying that it was, he believed, an interesting old place. She was surprised, for it looked dull.

  They passed into its cool gloom and wandered about, staring at tinsel bedecked shrines. He exerted himself to talk in the hope that two women kneeling before the Altar of the Sacred Heart would take it into their heads to get up and go. He discovered an ancient screen carved with figures of local saints and began feverishly inventing legends about them. She listened attentively, wondering why it was that he should suddenly know so much. But he kept it up until one of the women had left the church and the second was on her feet, collecting an umbrella and a string bag full of parcels. She stumped away down the aisle, and Florence was preparing to follow when he caught her arm, declaring that she had not yet seen the font. He tried to lead her up towards the high altar.

  ‘But is it up there?’ she asked in astonishment. ‘I thought it was always down the other end of the church.’

  The woman had splashed herself with holy water, and crossed herself, and was out of the porch. Her footsteps rang on the pavement outside and died away. Lewis was left at last alone with Florence in the dark, silent church. He wished, in despair, that she was not so good. His methods were swift and a little arbitrary, but he had never met with any serious resistance. He looked at her doubtfully. She was asking what there was, specially, about the font.

  ‘I – love you!’ he exclaimed nervously.

  She started and looked at him in grave inquiry. Then she smiled enchantingly and said:

  ‘I’m glad to hear it. I love you.’

  ‘Oh!’ he said, rather taken aback.

  For the candour of this unsolicited avowal he had not been prepared. His own statement had been made as a sort or preliminary explanation, paving the way for an embrace. Her response, though it might be called encouraging, was so unexpected as to chill him a little. But having cleared his first fence he had better go on. He took her in his arms with a roughness which testified at once to embarrassment and unschooled desires.

  In the desert emptiness of her mind, whence thought and sensation had retreated like an ebbing tide, a single bleak idea stood forth, a rock till then submerged and now revealed, for a timeless instant, to the daylight. It was an understanding of his essential hardness, a knowledge that this man who held her so close was indeed no tender lover but a stranger, as cold as ice and harder than a stone. Then her true self, her generous love, returning, flooding her soul, bore down upon that frightful image and drowned it in night for ever.

  She heard fresh footsteps in the porch and tried to release herself, with a faint sigh of protest. He let her go. She sank upon a bench and hid her face, for a moment, in her hands.

  Lewis picked up her parasol and her gloves and her handbag and placed them carefully on the bench beside her. He was cursing his folly for beginning this business in so inconvenient a place, where they were liable to constant interruption. A woman had come in and was doing the Stations of the Cross, so there was little hope that they would be alone again. He should have curbed his impatience. He thought of solitary places in the mountains behind the Karindehütte and marvelled at his own imbecility. What was he, now, to say or do?

  He sat down beside her and waited for a lead. Presently she turned round and smiled at him. She had recovered her poise and her regard was clear and happy. Again he was smitten by a profound uneasiness. She was so astonishingly honest. She was like nobody else. She seemed to have no scruple in hiding what she felt, and he realised that she had been speaking the truth when she declared that she loved him. And because of that she would believe anything that he said.

  ‘She’s like a child,’ he thought amazedly. ‘She’s like my poor little Tessa.’

  This was nonsense. He knew that she was not in the least like Tessa, save for a look in the eyes which had disarmed him. But, in his mind, certain ideas were always connected with his friend, thoughts of kindness, pity, and obligation, which now came over him. This woman, because she loved, was innocent, sincere and defenceless, like Tessa; she was insecure, like Tessa. All that he felt for Tessa seemed to stir in his heart, forcing him to an extreme compassion for Florence. He swore to himself that he would never make her unhappy, and knew in the same instant that he was bound to do so. He had already discovered that he could not leave her. He fell back upon the only solution which occurred to him, a course which he had already contemplated in some awe and dismay. He said in great haste:

  ‘How soon can we be married?’

  He would marry her and he would always be kind to her. That was the best he could do. What was she laughing at?

  ‘I’ll marry you,’ she said, ‘whenever you like. Lewis … tell the truth … it had only just
occurred to you, hadn’t it?’

  ‘Oh, no,’ he declared untruthfully. ‘But I ought to have mentioned it earlier. Florence! As soon as we possibly can.’

  He took her hand and kissed it. His boats were burned.

  Once outside in the sunlight and traffic he could hardly make out how it had happened. The thing was absurd, unforeseen and unreasonable. But irrevocable now, and, on the whole, very pleasant. He was betrothed. Also he was very thirsty and was on the point of suggesting that they should go and have a drink somewhere when it occurred to him that she probably took tea at this hour. With a first conscious effort at adapting himself to the demands of a new life he took her to the restaurant where they had lunched and ordered coffee,

  ‘Have some cake,’ he urged. ‘Have one of those pink cakes.’

  He was so nervously eager to offer her the right thing that she laughed. She was sure that he had never fed a young lady with pink cakes before, and indeed he never had. Their coffee came, and she took off her gloves and poured it out, sitting opposite him, smiling her happy, tranquil smile at him across the table. He gave her back a glance which he felt to be very domestic and husbandlike. He felt as if he had been married already for quite a long time; as if his old, untamed existence was so long ago as to be almost legend. But a little bit of the legend was still alive, as he soon discovered, when he caught the eye of Minna Gertz, who was drinking with some students in the corner by the door. Minna was an old flame of his, the daughter of an innkeeper at Erfurt. Two years ago, when she served in her father’s house, Lewis had been used to spend many pleasant hours in her company. Now she had migrated to the town and wore very fine hats and long boots buttoned up to her knees. She remembered him quite well though, because he had given her a pair of garnet earrings, and because he generally was remembered by people who had come across him, sometimes kindly, sometimes not. Minna was kind to everyone, but she despised him a little for being so poor. Seeing him now in the company of so beautiful, so obviously well born a lady, she opened her eyes very wide indeed and grinned at him expansively behind the lady’s back. He nodded an amiable greeting. Florence turned round to see what he was smiling at, and looked a little surprised. He explained:

  ‘That’s Minna Gertz. Her father keeps an inn between Erfurt and Weissau. I’ve stayed there.’

  Florence bent upon Minna that serene, interested scrutiny which she accorded to every new thing, observing her predecessor as if she had been a piece of architecture or an Alpine plant. She had the clear impersonal vision which is the fruit of an unshaken sense of security. Untouched, as yet, by any of life’s betrayals, she could observe the world around her with a detachment impossible to her young cousins. They, with senses quickened to danger, would demand, of every strange thing, if it could hurt them and whether they wanted it.

  She did not form any very favourable opinion of Minna, and thought she should have stayed in her father’s inn. But she said:

  ‘It’s a pity they are giving up the peasant dress; it suits their build. That girl in Tyrolese dress must have looked comely, but in that hat you see all the coarseness of the peasant type without its rustic charm. But I suppose, to her, it’s progress of a sort.’

  Lewis said that he supposed so. He did not feel equal to discussing Minna’s progress. He was busy proving to himself that marriage with Florence would not greatly derange his life. He did not want much; he could live quite contentedly anywhere. To make certain of this he announced that they would live in England when they were married, because it was a part of the world which he had formerly avoided.

  ‘If you like,’ she said. ‘Your … your people live in England, don’t they?’

  ‘My … Oh, yes!’ he agreed, looking startled.

  ‘In London you said?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I don’t want to bother you to tell me, if it’s difficult. And nothing can make the slightest difference. But it’s better for a wife to know, don’t you think?’

  ‘Know what?’

  ‘What sort of people her husband belongs to. I haven’t the vaguest idea about yours, Lewis, and you know all about mine.’

  ‘My family are very disagreeable.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘That’s all.’

  ‘What do they consist of?’

  ‘I’ve a father and a sister. My father was a school inspector. Now he’s a Member of Parliament. And he writes books. Two a year. Little text books and outlines of things, for schools and working men who want to educate themselves. Science and English literature and our Empire and those things.’

  ‘Oh! Can he … is he … any relation to Sir Felix Dodd?’

  ‘He is Sir Felix Dodd.’

  ‘W—what?’

  ‘He is Sir Felix Dodd.’

  She was petrified with astonishment and could only sit gaping at him.

  ‘Know him?’ he asked pleasantly.

  ‘My father knows him.’

  ‘I’m sorry for your father then.’

  She knew that Charles hated Sir Felix Dodd; he was always abusing him. They sat on many boards together, for the school inspector M.P. was a power in the educational world. Charles had dubbed him Fulsome Felix and avoided him as far as possible.

  ‘Good heavens, Lewis!’ she stammered, ‘I can’t … I never … how very strange! I never knew Sir Felix had a son, at least …’

  She remembered now that she had heard of a son who was a terrible scamp, and must not be mentioned in the presence of anybody connected with the Dodds. What nonsense people talked!

  ‘I mean I never knew his son was you.’

  ‘Why should you?’

  ‘Oh, it’s the sort of thing one ought to know. You see, I’d heard your Symphony; but somehow I’d never connected …’

  ‘It’s natural. They don’t boast of me, I imagine.’

  ‘But … but … I know your sister then, by sight, anyhow. Millicent, isn’t she? She was at college with me; but not my year. She sings, doesn’t she? Gives ballad recitals?’

  ‘She may. She always fancied her voice.’

  ‘And then she married … oh, who? … Somebody in the Foreign Office … Simnel Gregory … Oh, Lewis! How extraordinary this is! I never thought …’

  Lewis, for his peace of mind, did not grasp the full significance of it. It did not seem to him very important that Florence already knew all about his people. He said impatiently that he had quite lost touch with them and she wisely let the subject drop. Later on she would make him tell her what the trouble had been. And then, when they returned to England, she would smooth it all out. They must be brought to forgive him, whatever he had done.

  For herself this news was a great blessing. She would not after all be forced to scandalise her family. She was radiant, as they set off for the station, feeling that life had been very good to her.

  ‘I’d have married him,’ she thought, ‘if his father had been the hangman; but this does make a difference …’

  Charles would not be overjoyed to hear that she had selected Fulsome Felix for a father-in-law, but he would prefer him, surely, to the hangman!

  They met Caryl and the children waiting for them on the platform. Lewis, still intent upon glueing his hand to the plough, informed them cheerfully that he was going to be married. Their faces fell, and Paulina at once exclaimed:

  ‘You won’t marry Florence!’

  ‘Yes I shall,’ he said, too wise to ask why not, in case she might come out with any of the obvious objections. ‘Yes I shall, shan’t I, Florence?’

  ‘It looks like it,’ agreed Florence.

  She flushed a little under the dismayed stares of the Sanger family. She could have wished that Lewis had not announced the engagement in such a hurry. Caryl was the first to recover, after an ominous pause. Rather faintly, he hoped they would be happy.

  ‘But are you sure it isn’t a mistake?’ began Sebastian. ‘All right, Caryl, you needn’t kick me! I wasn’t going to say anything. All I mean is, don’t do it in a hu
rry. Hadn’t you better …’

  ‘That’s our train,’ interrupted Caryl. ‘Let’s make a move. Come, Tessa! What’s the matter with you? Have you got a stitch?’

  Teresa was sitting on a bench, apparently in great pain. She was rocking up and down with both hands over her heart. When they asked what ailed her she lifted a face so blanched and drawn that she looked like a little old woman. With some difficulty she pronounced the words:

  ‘Too … many … ices …’

  ‘You poor little dear!’ cried Florence, bending over her in concern. ‘Where’s the pain? In your chest? Can you manage to get home, do you think?’

  ‘No,’ said the rude Teresa, pushing her off. ‘I’ll have to … die … on this bench.’

  ‘She gobbles them so,’ explained Sebastian. ‘I knew she’d be sorry after the ninth.’

  Between them they got her into the train and stretched her out on the seat of a carriage. When she was thus comfortably arranged, she sighed and fainted. The train started before they could bring her to.

  ‘She’s very blue,’ said Florence anxiously. ‘It looks more like shock than anything else. But I suppose nine ices would account for it. Put the window right down, Caryl, so that the air blows in on her. Nine ices!’

  ‘I’m very sorry,’ apologised Caryl. ‘I didn’t know it was as many as that. Ike gave them money just before he went.’

  He had his own opinion, which was, by the way, the opinion of Paulina and Sebastian also, as to why his sister had turned blue. But the experience of a short and eventful life had taught him to hold his tongue.

  ‘She’ll have to be carried up the hill to the house,’ declared Florence. ‘She can’t possibly walk up after such a bad faint. What a day!’