The Constant Nymph

by Margaret Kennedy

  ‘Do you know, my love, I’m not altogether sure that I think you’re wise in your manner to that little girl.’

  Instantly she was up in arms.

  ‘You encourage her, and it’s not kind. That pert manner may be very amusing, but it will get her into trouble later on, and it shouldn’t be laughed at.’

  He had spent most of the night thinking on this matter. It seemed to him imperative that Florence should be warned in some way. But he hardly knew how to begin. He ventured:

  ‘Do you think this plan of school is really wise? Is she strong enough?’

  ‘That’s the only doubt. Otherwise, it’s the very thing she needs … firm discipline and to have the nonsense laughed out of her by other children of the same age.’

  ‘She’s old … in some ways … for her age …’ he hesitated.

  ‘On the contrary, she’s a great baby for her age.’

  ‘That’s where you are mistaken, I think. She would respond better if you treated her as a responsible person.’

  ‘How can I, when she behaves like a young hooligan?’

  ‘This life, remember, is new to her.’

  ‘She isn’t attempting to adjust herself to it.’

  ‘It strikes me that she’s absorbing new ideas at every pore. Give her time and they’ll bear fruit. But truly I don’t think she’ll have enough elbow room at school.’

  ‘These Sanger children seem to think that they have merely to say that they don’t like a thing to be free of the necessity of enduring it. It’s sheer unruliness.’

  ‘I thought that it would not take you very long to exhaust the charms of the Sanger children.’

  ‘I can do with the others. But I don’t like Teresa.’

  ‘That’s it!’ Charles now spoke rather sternly. ‘You don’t like her, and you make no secret of it. Is that just?’

  ‘Oh, I’ve tried to be just. But she’s so hard! She has such a forward, disagreeable nature.’

  ‘Try to see things from her point of view a little. Think how she’s been brought up! Not only is she ignorant of all the finer shades of conduct, but she’s grown up with no conception of the word “ought”. She has only her instincts, her affections, and her quick wits to guide her. Fortunately, these are all singularly uncorrupted; at least, so it seems to me.’

  ‘Does it?’

  ‘Yes, it does, when you think of the sort of life she’s been used to. She’s intensely receptive. And now, when she’s almost formed, as far as intelligence goes, she is uprooted and brought here. She’s pitchforked into a new world, and we expect her to conform at once to our standards, our very complicated standards, of existence. She discovers, piecemeal, the principles underlying our ideas of conduct. She has to assimilate, in less than a year, a number of social and ethical facts which were put into you before you were out of your cradle. At one moment she’s scolded for telling a lie and at the next for picking her teeth. She has, by the light of her own wisdom, to sort out the relative values of these things. Can you wonder that she finds it hard?’

  ‘It’s the same for the other two.’

  ‘You are willing to make allowances for them. Besides … they are children, and it’s no insult to treat them as such.’

  ‘You think I’m unfair?’

  ‘I think you are, my dear.’

  ‘So does Lewis,’ she murmured bitterly.

  ‘Ah?’

  ‘He encourages her.’ Florence flushed and broke out in a kind of dull anger: ‘I wouldn’t have thought you’d take her part. But she will be that kind of woman; the kind that men always defend. The kind that men call “a good sort.” Antonia is like that. You’re a man and you don’t see it.’

  ‘I think she has a good disposition …’

  ‘You’re mistaken! She’s not to be trusted. Those girls have bad blood in them, somewhere … something corrupt. They’ve never been innocent. She’ll go to the bad, as fast as she can, unless she’s watched. Sometimes I wonder if already …’

  ‘Florence! You are letting yourself get into a state of mind that does you no credit! I couldn’t have believed that you could speak so!’

  Charles spoke in great anger, though he was wrenched with pity for her, remembering the tolerant, unsuspicious creature that she used to be. She remembered too; she had a sudden vision of herself going off to the Tyrol to fetch the Sanger children home, of her kindliness, of the thousand delicate scruples which, in those days, hedged and bounded every word she said. She had been so slow to think evil and so free from base imaginings. What had happened to her? Life had become a shipwreck, a desperate, snatching, devil-take-the-hindermost affair. She began to think that she would leave this house, even if Lewis changed his mind about going abroad. It was an unlucky place. It had witnessed too much of the wreckage, the gradual disintegration of her old, civilised self, and the emergence of the untutored creature who talked as she had just been talking.

  ‘Perhaps I’m unfair,’ she admitted. ‘I’ll try to do better. Really, I will. But it angers me, the thoughtless way that you and Lewis egg her on.’

  ‘Lewis is very fond of her, I think.’

  ‘He is. He’s fond of all the children.’

  ‘I know. I really think he is worried, when you threaten her with school. He is afraid she will not be happy. You should respect his feelings, my dear, if I may venture to say so. He is not, I imagine, a man who feels affection easily.’

  But there he went too far. She replied coldly that she quite understood Lewis and his feelings. Charles hastily agreed; he was diffident and afraid of going too far; he did not think that he was justified in saying much more. But before they parted he had induced her to reconsider her sentence of school at Harrogate.

  Meanwhile Teresa was busy in the drawing-room with her examination paper, and Lewis found her there, an hour later, sobbing distractedly over her sums.

  ‘Oh, Lewis,’ she wailed, ‘do come and help me! I’ve done this sum about papering the room nine times, and …’

  ‘Why on earth do you do it at all?’

  ‘The answer comes out that it would take five million yards of paper to paper a room under twenty foot square, with a lot of windows! Well, that must be wrong, because rooms that size don’t …’

  ‘Let me look at it! Nothing would induce me to go to a school if I didn’t want to. It’s your own fault. My dear child! You’ve papered this room absolutely solid! You must find the surface space of the walls, not the cubic contents of the room. You’ll run away, I suppose, as soon as she sends you?’

  ‘Where could I run? I’ve nowhere. Look at this literature paper! And this: “Say what you know about the retreat from Moscow.” Do you know anything? I don’t. Could it be anything to do with that Empress Catherine, do you think, in Sanger’s opera? It had some things about Moscow.’

  ‘I know some poetry about her,’ said Lewis hopefully. ‘It begins: “In Catherine’s reign, whom glory still adores, the greatest …” ’

  ‘Poetry is no use to me. There’s a bit here quoted and I have to say who wrote it. It says: “God’s in his heaven, all’s right with the world.” That seems a damn silly sort of a piece, doesn’t it?’

  Lewis agreed, with unnecessary violence.

  ‘Though, mind you, some poetry is all right Do you know a piece called “Elegy, Written in a Country Churchyard”? It’s lovely! I learnt it at Cleeve. It says:

  ‘For who, to dumb forgetfulness a prey,

  This pleasing, anxious being e’er resigned,

  Left the warm precincts of the cheerful day,

  Nor cast one longing, lingering look behind?

  On some fond breast the parting soul relies,

  Some pious drops the closing eye requires,

  E’en from the tomb the voice of Nature cries,

  E’en in our ashes live their wonted fires!’

  She thought these lines so moving that her voice became quite tearful as she recited them. But Lewis was not listening. He had picked up from the table a penny
exercise-book and saw that it was full of unformed writing. He had just read:

  Our early occupation exhausted us so much that we did nothing else remarkable this day of which there is nothing to report save that Sanger threw a bottle at Linda, thinking that it was empty. But it had Green Chartreuse in it and for this misfortune we are all smarting. We took some breakfast on a tray to our dear and beloved Lewis, who keeps late hours both ways. But he, lying in bed, said take it away, I don’t want any, I have a little headache, rejecting us with many oaths, so that it took our most endearing persuasions to induce him to swallow. But in a little while he became more pleasant in his conversation, and I must confess that never, not even in his very worst moments, do we find him entirely disagreeable. We love him too well.

  ‘What’s this?’ he asked, turning the pages.

  She snatched it from him, crying:

  ‘You mustn’t look at that! It’s my diary.’

  ‘Let me, Tessa! I was reading something about myself. Am I often mentioned?’

  ‘Sometimes.’ She grew very pink. ‘Let’s get on with these sums!’

  The next sum was about trains crossing each other on a bridge. At the sight of it she collapsed into tears again.

  ‘Oh, dear! Oh, dear! What shall I do? What shall I do? I can’t! I cannot bear it!’

  ‘Come with me!’ The words broke from him before he knew that he had thought them. ‘Dearest, dearest Tessa! My dear love! Don’t cry! Don’t let them make you cry! Come with me!’

  ‘Come with you? Where?’

  ‘Anywhere! When I go after the concert.’

  ‘Florence would never allow it.’

  ‘No,’ he said, more collectedly. ‘You’d have to do it without asking her.’

  ‘You mean … really … that we should run away?’

  Yes. He discovered that he did mean that.

  ‘Well,’ she said, after a pause; ‘there are points in it. It’s better than being like the cat in the adage.’

  ‘The …?’

  ‘Don’t ask me what an adage is, for I don’t know. But it’s better than making – I dare not wait upon I would.’

  ‘I don’t follow you. It’s better than going to school.’

  ‘It’s very good of you to be so concerned about it.’

  ‘I don’t know that it is so very good of me,’ he said grimly. ‘You know very well why I want you to come.’

  ‘I’m not sure. Could you let me have it in plain English?’

  ‘In plain English … you’re too dear to leave behind. I love you; I can’t do without you. And if you are going to be so unhappy at school, that settles it.’

  ‘Love me? What do you mean by that? There’s a song:

  ‘Away, false man, I know thou lov’st,

  I know thou lov’st too many.’

  ‘No, Tessa. This is a star part … a solo …’

  ‘A duet you mean? Looks to me more like a trio. Why did you marry Florence?’

  ‘You know why.’

  ‘Yes, I do know. It was unfair to both of us, if you loved me. That’s what I’m complaining of.’

  ‘I know. But it’s done now.’

  ‘And you want it undone? Why couldn’t you have thought of all this before? You were so mad to get her that you forgot all about me. If you’d waited a bit you could have had me.’

  ‘Could I. Then … then … Oh, Tessa, say it!’

  ‘I loved you. I’d have had you. I promised myself to you … ever so long ago … When first I ever began to think about love. I thought then that I wouldn’t ever have any man but you. I don’t think I ever will. But it’s too late now.’

  ‘No, it isn’t. You still love me, don’t you?’

  ‘What’s that got to do with it? I don’t see that I can come now. I’d feel bad about Florence. I’d feel as if you were her belonging. And I’m her cousin, you know; and I’ve lived in her house for months and months. She’s been very kind to us, though lately she’s been a little snappy, and I don’t blame her with you going on the way you do. I should feel mean if I ran off with her husband. When first you said that you were going off after the concert, I thought of asking you to take me, but then I saw it wouldn’t do. If you were anybody else at all nice, I’d go with you to get away from school. And if it wasn’t for Florence, I’d rather go with you than anything in the world. But, as it is, I don’t see my way to it. If I did, I shouldn’t enjoy myself. The pangs of unappeased remorse would gnaw my vitals.’

  She looked at her diary as she said this, as if she admired her own language and would have liked to write it down. Lewis remonstrated with her scruples.

  ‘I should have thought it was perfectly obvious that my marriage with Florence has come to an end. We practically agreed as much, the night after “Prester John”. You heard me say at breakfast that we should probably part; she showed no signs of minding, did she? I expect she’s very glad to get rid of me.’

  This sounded reasonable enough. Marriage, in Teresa’s experience, did not last longer than was absolutely convenient to both parties. She had never supposed that the Dodd household was a permanent thing and lately it had showed every sign of going to pieces. Florence had made no protest, at breakfast, when Lewis proclaimed the state of affairs. Charles had accepted the thing quite conversationally. They had, of course, an unreasonable habit of concealing their sentiments; often they would not exhibit their anger. But in a case like this, Teresa calculated, they would surely speak up. She hesitated, and then said:

  ‘I daresay that’s so. But it’s not my affair. It may be a very good thing that you should go; and if you go I suppose you’ll have to get another wife. But I don’t think she can be me. Everybody would know and they’d say we’d been carrying on in this house behind poor Florence’s back. It would be awful for her, especially with the ideas she’s got. She’d think I was a traitor. I really couldn’t. I don’t want to be a viper in anybody’s bosom.’

  ‘Will you stop talking in that strain?’

  ‘It’s a very good strain. At least, it’s got good intentions. A person must do what they think right, mustn’t they?’

  Lewis had nothing to say to this. His case was a little complicated in that he was not quite sure of his own wishes. Certainly he desired her company on his travels; he did not think that he could do very well without her. She was such a darling, and, now that he came to think of it, the only thing that had kept him so long at Strand-on-the-Green. But he wanted also that she should be happy and safe; and he was not absolutely convinced of his own fitness to look after her. She had been evasive when he asked if she still loved him; yet the crucial point of the whole matter lay exactly there. If she was still bound by that simple, uncompromising love of her childhood, to which she had just confessed, then nothing on earth must be allowed to hold them apart. But possibly she had changed. He questioned her, but could get no definite answer, though he saw that her eyes were full of tears. At last he said impatiently:

  ‘Then you love Florence so terribly much that you’ll put up with three years of school for her sake?’

  ‘Not three; one,’ she explained. ‘Then I’ll rebel and I think Uncle Charles will back me. I must, what do you call it, compromise! That’s a useful thing to do, Lewis. It shows you’ve got a well-regulated mind. I don’t believe you know how.’

  ‘I don’t, thank God!’

  ‘Well, I do.’

  ‘Then you’ve changed.’

  ‘Perhaps I have. It’s not my fault. Nobody can help changing. Things are done to them and they change. If you think of all that’s happened since Sanger died and we were brought here! I seem to have had so many new things to think about. You can’t forget anything that you’ve once learnt. You can’t go back to being what you were. I wish you could. I’m sorry we came here, any of us; we’d have been better to stay with the sort of people we were accustomed to. But as I am here I’d better see it through. I shall stay and be a lady.’

  ‘What’s the good of being a lady if you’re
unhappy?

  ‘Unhappiness,’ she said, in the voice of Uncle Charles, ‘is bound to come to every one of us. I don’t think we’d escape it in each other’s company, Lewis.’

  ‘Nor do I. But I want your company.’

  ‘Then want must be your master, for I’ve said my say.’

  ‘There’s been plenty of it.’

  ‘Well, you want to know such a lot.’

  ‘Only one thing, and I don’t know it yet.’

  But she would not tell him. She knew that telling, for her, would be surrender. To say the thing would be so irrevocable that she could not then betray the truth by leaving him. To her, avowal and compliance went together. So she gathered up her papers and her diary and left him still uncertain. He was striding up and down the room, fighting it out with himself, when the face of Charles was poked round the door. It looked blank when it saw Lewis. Charles had stolen up, as soon as Florence was out of the way, to do Teresa’s sums for her.

  ‘Tessa?’ said Lewis vaguely, in answer to his question. ‘She … she went away … I don’t know where, I’m afraid.’

  Charles was just going to withdraw when he thought better of it. He came in and shut the door.

  ‘I want to tell her,’ he said, ‘that she needn’t stay very long at this school if she really dislikes it.’

  ‘She’s got nowhere else to go,’ said Lewis defiantly.

  Charles glanced out of the window and said:

  ‘Look at that long line of barges the Mary Blake’s got! I’ve an idea that I want Tessa in Cambridge sometime.’

  ‘You want her?’

  ‘She can make tea. My housekeeper is a fool and can’t. But I couldn’t have her just yet. She wants petticoat government for a little longer.’

  ‘She might like that,’ said Lewis thoughtfully.

  ‘You think so? You’ve known her longer than the rest of us.’

  ‘Yes. She … she’s …’

  Lewis blinked and sought for words. Charles waited.

  ‘She’s different from anybody else,’ confided Lewis at last.

  ‘I agree.’

  ‘School! You know it might spoil her.’

  ‘I don’t think so.’