‘Well, if she stays,’ urged Lewis, ‘you’ll see after her?’
‘Stays?’
‘Doesn’t run off, I mean.’
‘You mean she might run off if we press her with school? My dear fellow, where could she run to?’
Lewis said nothing.
‘She’s taken you into her confidence?’ suggested Charles.
‘Taken! I’ve always been there.’
‘Quite so. And you think she will run unless we drop the idea of school?’
‘No,’ said Lewis truthfully. ‘She says not. She says she’ll try it for a year.’
‘Says not! And you say she will, is that it?’
‘Yes,’ said Lewis absently.
‘By all that’s wonderful!’ thought Charles. ‘The little creature’s had the sense to turn him down. He’s asked her and she’s turned him down!’
Lewis, who had been conducting so fierce an argument with himself that he scarcely knew that he had been talking to Charles, now said:
‘I want her … to do the best she can for herself …’
‘She had better surely remain under the protection of her friends, of the people who love her?’ suggested Charles.
Lewis shook his head at this and brought out a final melancholy statement:
‘Nobody,’ he said, ‘could love her better than I do.’
And Charles believed it. In the midst of his exultation he discovered that he was quite sorry for the young man.
19
‘A bowl?’ exclaimed Charles. ‘What bowl is that?’
He had hardly attended to his daughter’s conversation until something about a bowl arrested his mind.
‘A sort of orange lustre. Very beautiful, isn’t it, Lewis?’
‘What?’ said Lewis, without looking up.
He was reading an old exercise book which seemed utterly to absorb him.
‘Tessa’s bowl.’
‘Has Tessa got a bowl?’
It seemed strange to Charles that Teresa should ever own anything so concrete as a bowl. Her very clothes seldom looked as though they really belonged to her.
‘She bought a bowl with the birthday money you gave her. You must see it; it’s lovely.’
‘Fancy Tessa buying a bowl! She’ll drop it.’
‘I was surprised that she had the sense to hit on anything so good.’
After her recent incredible demonstration of sense, Charles could not be surprised at anything in Teresa. He said that he would like to see the bowl, and Florence, going to the drawing-room door, called for it to be brought. Lewis looked annoyed. He had discovered Teresa’s diary lying about, and he did not like to be interrupted until he had made himself acquainted with all its secrets. He was learning all that he wanted to know about the state of her heart. But he knew that if she saw it in his hands she would make a great scene and call public attention to a proceeding which the others might consider a little ungentlemanly. So, when he heard her coming, he dropped it behind the sofa and joined in the conversation.
‘What do you want a bowl for?’ he asked mistrustfully.
‘He told me to buy a pretty thing, and it was the first I saw that I wanted.’
‘Admirable!’ said Charles, examining it.
‘Not at all,’ stated Lewis. ‘Tessa doesn’t want a bowl. She oughtn’t to want one.’
‘Why on earth not?’ Florence was indignant. ‘It’s really an exquisite thing.’
‘She has no house,’ explained Lewis, taking the bowl and balancing it on one hand. ‘People with no houses ought to know when they are well off.’
‘Take care! You’ll break it!’
‘Bowls lead to houses. Houses are mainly to keep bowls in. If Tessa had a house she could buy as many bowls as she liked. She’d be done for. As it is, she should beware. C’est le premier pas qui coûte. Oh! There, Tessa! I’ve broken your pretty thing!’
Charles could never quite make up his mind if it was an accident; but the lovely, brittle treasure lay in shivers on the floor.
‘Lewis you wretch!’ cried Florence. ‘Never mind, Tessa dear! We’ll get you another.’
‘I’m a lady,’ said Teresa primly. ‘So I won’t say what I think of him.’
Lewis went on to his knees at her feet and began to collect the little bits. Florence told him that he might, at least, say that he was sorry.
‘What shall I say?’ he asked, looking up at Teresa. ‘Shall I say that my peace of mind is shattered for ever?’
‘My bowl wasn’t all that valuable, I’m afraid.’
‘It was rather valuable,’ Florence reminded her.
‘No bowl,’ she stated loftily, ‘is worth the peace of mind of the lowest and the least, much less our ray of sunshine.’
She got, in return for this, a look from Lewis which silenced her. She turned away and said:
‘We must find a little coffin to put the remains in.’
Florence caught sight of her face and mistook the blanched sorrow in it. She offered consolation:
‘I’m sure we can replace it, my dear; can’t we, Father?’
Charles produced a five pound note.
‘Here you are, hussy! The next pretty thing you buy give to me to keep. He’s not to be trusted with them.’
‘He’s too clever,’ she said darkly. ‘That’s what’s the matter with him.’
‘Are you coming to Chiswick Park station to see me off?’
He was on the point of departure, after a very uneasy week-end, and he was anxious, if possible, to get a few words alone with her, that he might strengthen her resolution and temper her dread of school with promises of an early release. Florence had pleased him greatly by her obvious efforts to be more just; the household, as a whole, had a tranquil air and he thought that things might do very well provided that Teresa stayed the course. In any case, he had said as much as he dared to all of them.
‘I’d like to see you off,’ said Teresa, with a tentative glance at Florence, for she was not quite sure if she would be wanted.
‘She can’t come,’ explained Charles. ‘She has to go to Richmond. So nobody will see me off if you don’t.’
‘I’ll come too and carry your suitcase,’ offered Lewis.
Florence looked pleased at his civility, but a little surprised, for he did not often offer to carry guests’ luggage.
‘Sebastian will come too, and carry Uncle Charles’s walking-stick,’ said Teresa, who did not want to walk home alone with Lewis if she could help it.
‘Not I,’ said Sebastian, who was reading a score in a corner of the room. ‘I’m busy.’
‘Odd’s boddikins!’ exclaimed Teresa. ‘Don’t you want to say good-bye to your uncle?’
This oath was secret signal among the Sangers and meant a demand for help. They had found it useful during their life in England. Sebastian immediately pricked up his ears and loyally said that perhaps he would come to the station after all. Paulina, attentive to the password, asked Teresa if she should not also want to see her uncle off.
‘No, I don’t think so,’ said Teresa, who feared that, if four of them went, they might walk home in couples.
As it was, they went in couples: Charles and Teresa in front and Lewis behind with Sebastian and the suitcase. On the way Charles said what he could to his niece, and painted her future in the most amazingly attractive colours, if only she would be patient and go to school for a little time. She answered very sensibly and seemed disposed to do right as far as she was able. He believed that the worst struggle was already over for her, and he left her at Chiswick Park station in a fairly comfortable frame of mind.
He was no more ready to credit a young person with sense than are most men at his time of life; but when he did so, it was with an almost over lavish generosity. Himself full of the garnered wisdom of years he was inclined to confuse Teresa’s intuitive sagacity with that other more reliable article which can only be the fruit of experience. This was a mistake which he could not have made had she been a young man, for he knew al
l about young men. His experience of girls had been, on the whole, very small and his chief impression of them was that they were quite unlike boys, creatures of a weak, irrational temper, but without any great intensity of feeling. The women he had known best had been unreasonable rather than passionate. So that having made certain that Teresa was upon the right course, he was not disposed to doubt her fortitude in pursuing it. Besides, he had observed the skill with which she had avoided another interview with Lewis. She was quite competent to manage the affair in her own way.
Lewis, however, had been reading her diary and had made up his mind. He was a little staggered by the history of faithful, ungrudging devotion which had been thus revealed to him. It seemed as though a final separation was not any more to be thought of; as though all the love he could give was but a poor return for hers. He wanted to tell her about it, and he said, as the train with Charles in it rattled out of the station:
‘I’m not sure that I want Sebastian just now.’
‘Well, I do,’ said Teresa. ‘His opinion is always sound.’
She explained that she had taken Paulina and Sebastian into her confidence. Paulina had advised her to go with Lewis, but Sebastian was very much against it.
‘Most officious of him,’ complained Lewis.
‘I don’t understand what you’re after,’ said Sebastian. ‘Do you want her for your wife?’
‘Yes,’ said Lewis.
It was exactly what he did want. It seemed to him that Tessa was all that a wife should be: tender, loyal, his other self, the only creature in the world to whom he would turn for prudent counsels.
‘But that’s just exactly what she can’t be,’ Sebastian pointed out. ‘You’ve got a wife already. She’ll be your …’
‘Hold your tongue, Sebastian. And you, Tessa, mind the traffic!’
The question was suspended until they had got themselves across Chiswick High Road. Then Sebastian began again:
‘But what will she be?’
Lewis threw a glance of rather shamefaced appeal at Teresa, who suggested that, as she was not coming, it was of no consequence.
‘Well, I don’t approve at all,’ said the boy firmly. ‘It wouldn’t be suitable for you, now that you’re almost a lady really. Why can’t he get somebody like Linda.’
‘I would suit him better than Florence does,’ mentioned Teresa, as though anxious to be fair to both sides.
‘Well … could anybody suit him worse?’
‘I know him so well.’
‘All the more reason for knowing there’s no sense in it.’
‘Of course, I never could make out what she saw in him.’
‘I daresay she thought he would improve.’
‘Improvement wouldn’t hurt him.’
Lewis did not like this. They talked across him as if he was not there. The interview was not turning out according to plan, but what could he say, in front of Sebastian?
‘I wish,’ he said, ‘that you wouldn’t talk about me as if I was some awful fate that either you or Florence had to endure.’
‘Well, so you are,’ retorted Sebastian. ‘I heard Ike say once that he always pitied Sanger’s women, but that he was a great deal sorrier for yours.’
‘You see, Lewis, you don’t always know your own mind,’ complained Teresa. ‘Sanger at least knew that.’
They had an unsatisfactory walk. Teresa and Sebastian teased Lewis all the way until they got to Kew Bridge; but this baffling strategy only made him all the more obstinately determined, and quenched his last scruples. At last, when they were leaning on Kew Bridge watching the tide, he succeeded in taking her by surprise.
‘Well then,’ he flung at her, ‘go to your school! But I happen to know that you consider it a damnable charnel house and that you would rather fling yourself into the smoky abyss of Etna if it were handy.’
She recognised the quotation and grew livid with fury.
‘Of course … if you’ve been reading my diary …’
‘You shouldn’t leave it about.’
‘I know it was foolish of me. One doesn’t expect, in Florence’s house, to have people like you wandering around …’
She abused him for several minutes without ever repeating herself.
‘All this Billingsgate,’ he said, ‘only tells me one thing.’
‘And anyhow the bit about the charnel house was poetic licence. I wrote it to relieve my feelings.’
‘Oh! Is all your diary poetic licence?’
‘Most of it.’
‘Still … making allowances for that … I’m sure now …’
‘If you’d had eyes in your head you could have been sure before, without going and reading my private diary.’
‘Still I was modest. I didn’t like to be sure.’
‘What weren’t you sure of?’ asked Sebastian puzzled.
Lewis and Teresa were silent; he wanted to hear her say it, and she was afraid. Sebastian looked from one to the other, and exclaimed in immense surprise:
‘Do you love him, Tessa?’
‘He thinks so,’ she said rather sternly.
Lewis looked embarrassed, as though he had been accused of a fearful indiscretion. He had nothing to say for himself. The long silence which followed was broken by Sebastian, who said that he thought he should like to go to Camden Town. He considered that the conversation had taken a difficult turn, impossible for three people to sustain, and an omnibus for Camden Town was just coming across the bridge. Teresa, deciding that flight was the only remedy for her situation, exclaimed that she would come too.
‘You’ve no money,’ said the prudent Sebastian. ‘And I’ve only enough for myself.’
‘I’ve a five pound note.’
‘He’ll give you the change all in halfpence.’
‘Well, Lewis must have some. Here, Lewis! Lend me half a crown!’
Lewis, dazed, produced a handful of silver. She snatched a coin and jumped up on the ’bus which had stopped beside them.
‘Wait a minute,’ cried Lewis. ‘I haven’t finished.’
‘I have.’
She was whirled away from him. Lewis stood on the curb gaping after the ’bus and saw her climbing up to the top, her long plaits slapping her back and her little brother at her heels. Away under the bright April sky she went, past the houses and the busy shops, down to Hammersmith Broadway.
At last he pulled himself together and started back to Strand-on-the-Green. But before he got home he changed his mind. He would endure no more of her mockery; she must not be allowed to return from Camden Town and find him ignominiously there. He would go away; without a word he would disappear, and she could see how she liked it. In any case he hated the place and would live there no longer. So he returned to Chiswick Park and took the train for town. Strand-on-the-Green saw nothing of him for a week, and Florence went about the house looking as if the world had come to an end.
As for Teresa, she jolted along on the top of her ’bus and was at first very unhappy. It had been hard to leave Lewis so; but it had, at least, been final. She cried a little into a clean handkerchief, which she unexpectedly found in her coat pocket. Sebastian looked at her with compassion but said nothing until they were past Turnham Green Church. Then he asked:
‘But are you really going to this school?’
‘I suppose so. I don’t care what I do.’
‘I expect you’ll learn a lot there,’ he said.
‘I don’t feel as if I’d much more to learn. There’s nothing left remarkable beneath the visiting moon.’
‘That’s nonsense,’ quoth he.
‘I daresay. But it’s how I feel.’
‘Uncle Robert,’ said Sebastian, after a long pause, ‘says that the young can’t know what real sorrow is.’
‘Does he? Silly old donkey! Look, Sebastian! What’s that funny place?’
‘That’s Olympia, where they have the Military Tournament that Ike was telling us about.’
‘Oh, I should like to see it! Do y
ou think we could get Ike to take us before we go to school?’
‘We might ask him. I can’t see what you want to call Uncle Robert a silly old donkey for, Tessa. He may be right. We can’t know. We haven’t been old yet. When you are grown up you may have worse times than you’ve had already.’
‘Oh, no,’ said Teresa, decidedly, craning to get a last look at Olympia, which she thought an admirable building. ‘I’m sure I never shall.’
In this her wisdom had instructed her, for she never did.
BOOK FOUR
THREE MEET
20
It was nearly a week before Florence could bring herself to go in search of Lewis. To begin with she would not admit that there was anything strange in his absence. He had wild ways. He would come back. She resolutely banished from her mind the tormenting suspicion that he had deserted her. It was bad enough, it was horrible, to know that such a thing should so easily seem possible; it could not really happen.
When, after three days, her fears became more clamorous and insistent, she clung desperately to her dignity. She had said of Evelyn Churchill that it was degrading for a wife to pursue her husband. She would do nothing. She would take no notice. But she wandered about the house with a feverish, mechanical energy and a look as though she were always listening for something.
She had plenty to do, for Paulina was to be despatched to Paris, with a suitable outfit, at very short notice. A convenient escort having turned up, the child was being got ready in a hurry. There was no peace for anybody until the morning when, howling loudly, she was handed over to her disconcerted travelling companions at Victoria.
Florence had refused to take Teresa and Sebastian upon this final expedition, fearing a scene upon the platform. They were very sulky about it and she was not surprised to hear, when she got home, that they had run off somewhere. Roberto thought they must have gone up to town, because Teresa had on her best hat.
‘Oh, well,’ sighed Florence, ‘it doesn’t signify. They’ll come back, I suppose.’
It was too much to hope that they had gone for good, but she was glad to get them out of the house for a little while. They were a trial, poor children, though she had come lately to better terms with Teresa, who was more civil and tractable in consequence of a sort of promise that she should not go to school before the Autumn.
The Constant Nymph Page 25