‘It was Mrs Temple told me,’ recollected Lady Clewer. ‘I was wondering if a little time in Paris wouldn’t be nice for Cynthia. But I rather gathered that these people were a little—’ bourgeois had been the word used by Mrs Temple, but Marian shied at it and substituted: ‘middle-class.’ ‘So I did not think it would quite do.’
‘It would be a pity for Cynthia’s tone to be contaminated,’ said Mrs Gordon Clewer sententiously.
‘Yes,’ agreed Cynthia’s mother. ‘She’s at such an impressionable age. I wouldn’t like to send her among second-rate people. But it would be different for James. Mrs Temple says they often have girls who are studying music or art, and they will take them about to their lessons. I daresay they would take James every day to the studio, or wherever it is he will work.’
‘But would that quite do, in this case?’ protested Mrs Cocks. ‘I mean, a young man can’t be escorted quite like a girl can. It puts him in such a ridiculous position.’
Mrs Gordon Clewer shot an amused look at Major Talbot, but he had evidently failed to find anything ludicrous in the prospect of James under daily escort to the Latin Quarter. Concealing her joy, she innocently remarked:
‘But in France, you know, Mrs Cocks, things are very different. You see quite big boys taken to school by bonnes in white aprons.’
Marian took this in perfectly good faith. She rejoined tranquilly:
‘Yes. France is quite different.’
‘But you can’t!’ Mrs Cocks was beginning to think that Agatha had been right. ‘The thing’s impossible! Can’t you see? You can’t treat the poor boy like that! It’s cruel! Think how he will be laughed at, taken about by a nursery maid!’
‘But,’ urged Marian, ‘he must have somebody to look after him.’
‘Well, then, don’t let him go at all. But don’t expose him to the universal derision of every boy of his own age!’
‘Don’t you see, Mrs Cocks,’ said Major Talbot, ‘it’s a rash step letting him go at all? It doesn’t alter the fact that he can’t look after himself. He must go under peculiar conditions.’
‘He can choose,’ said Marian. ‘He can go if he will accept the arrangements we make for him. If he doesn’t like them, he needn’t go. Of course,’ she conceded, ‘it needn’t be a nursery maid. No! That would look foolish. But there must be someone.’
Mrs Gordon Clewer rose, preparing to depart. She kissed Marian on both cheeks with the utmost affection.
‘Good-bye, my dear,’ she said. ‘I’m glad you’ve come to so satisfactory a conclusion. You are inimitable; you never disappoint me. But I’m very much afraid you are only at the beginning of your troubles. You’ll never find that he really settles down. Never! It’s heredity, my dear; environment is so much overrated. You’ve done what you can, I’m sure, but you’ll never alter his heredity. With those parents he is bound to give trouble….’
‘I never met his mother,’ said Marian in some surprise. ‘But from what I know of his parents, I should have thought …’
‘You knew neither of them, my dear,’ said the old lady unexpectedly.
Everyone felt that she must have forgotten that Marian had been married to James’s father for two years. Old age was beginning to tell upon Mrs Gordon Clewer. She sometimes said these odd, disconcerting things. She nodded thrice, very emphatically, clucked at them and ambled away under the attentive escort of Major Talbot.
Mrs Cocks took her leave, hoping that the unfortunate James would have the sense to give up the Paris idea. She underrated his tenacity. James never wasted energy over non-essentials. Provided that he might go to Paris and paint he agreed calmly to any arrangements his stepmother might like to make. Lois, however, felt for him all the indignation that was proper.
It was a fine evening, and Mrs Cocks walked most of the way to South Kensington. As she turned into her own street she saw a taxi drawn up before the awning and crimson carpet which still decorated her door. Upon the steps was a young man, talking to the parlourmaid. Before she could make out who he was, he ran down again, jumped into the taxi and drove off.
‘Who was that, Meadowes?’ she asked.
‘It was Mr Blair, Madam.’
‘Oh! I didn’t know he was in England. Did he want to see me?’
‘No, Madam. He asked for Miss Agatha. Lady Clewer, I mean. He said he’d only got back from America this morning. He didn’t seem to know that she had been married today.’
‘Oh. Did he say he’d come again?’
Mrs Cocks had no objection, now, to seeing her young kinsman about the house.
‘No, Madam. When he heard Miss Agatha was gone out of town on her honeymoon, he said he wouldn’t wait. He said he was just going to France.’
‘Oh! Oh, yes!’
‘If you please, Madam, Mr Cocks has gone to bed and sent for the doctor. I thought I’d better tell you at once.’
‘Gone to bed? I’d better go up. Thank you, Meadowes.’
As she climbed the stairs, Mrs Cocks reflected that her husband’s collapse was not very surprising. He had been looking ill all day, and she had meant to take him in hand as soon as the wedding was over.
This visit of Gerald’s was very odd, and just like him. An invitation to the wedding had been sent to him in America, in case he should return to England in time for it. But it must have missed him. On the whole, she was not sorry that it had. Agatha was now safe.
Mrs Cocks smiled a little grimly, remembering his hasty departure from her house along the crimson carpet spread for his successful rival.
2
The Florentine
1.
Mr Hubert Ervine accomplished the five miles from Oxford to Lyndon in a disordered frame of mind. Elation and misgiving possessed him alternately. It seemed to him, as his car spun over the long flat road, that he was arriving too quickly. He would be at Lyndon, confronted with his fate, before he should be ready for it.
He strove to become a deliberate and composed individual, summoning to his aid his entire stock of self-esteem, which was not small. His mission was certainly delicate. He hoped to find Miss Martin at Lyndon, and he intended to propose marriage to her in the course of his fortnight there. Nor did he expect her to deny him. They had met many times in London during the winter and she had always been kind. He rather thought that she would have him, if her relations did not dissuade her.
It was these Clewers, with their strange, complicated family ties, who made him uneasy. He was afraid they might not like him. They might not provide him with the field in which he could most happily display himself before the admiring eyes of his lady. He liked opportunities for being clever. No piece of cultural gymnastic could frighten him. He could discuss Chaucer before breakfast, and improvise operatic charades in the afternoon, and hold his own in that kind of brilliant conversation which is apt to spring up about midnight. He could write witty parodies, imitate most literary styles, and was personally acquainted with a sufficient number of live artists to pass in most places as a critic of their works.
All this, however, might not impress the Clewers. He did not suppose that they were very intellectual. His few encounters with them had only led him to reflect upon the strangeness of discovering the so different Lois in such a gallery. The promise of her intelligence was admirable, but he was blest if he knew where it came from. Lyndon, though so near to Oxford, was not an academic centre. It was known that a man stood or fell there according to his power to divert and entertain the lady of the house, and the most learned dons had to leave their erudition behind them if they wanted to be invited a second time.
Hubert admired young Lady Clewer immensely, of course, but he was decidedly afraid of her. He knew that he must go warily in any attempt to display himself. She would listen readily enough to interesting conversation and could discuss anything with anybody provided that she was amused. She was very far from being a fool. But she was known to have a positive horror of persons who tended to become instructive. Moreover, she never saw him at
his best. Like most men, he was a little in love with her, and that upset him.
He was seized with a tremor of panic as his car turned off the high road, with its flanking hedges and telegraph poles, through lodge gates into Lyndon Park. It was the first time in his life that he had ever felt shy and he did not like it at all. He tried to key himself into the temper of a bold and daring raider snatching a bride from a hostile stronghold. This descent upon Lyndon ought to have a sort of ‘Young Lochinvar’ swoop in it. But the illusion was destroyed by his slow and spasmodic progress down the park. The swoop was barred by innumerable gates, for Sir John, who bred pedigree cattle, had divided the park into a series of fields. At each gate the car stopped and Hubert began to grow impatient. Eager now to have arrived, he sat well forward as the car slid along as though his urgent attitude might increase their pace. The road lay slightly downhill, for Lyndon, like many houses of its period, was built in a hole. The park was really a long, tree-studded slope, ending in water meadows.
In the last field he perceived the approach of two young women, and identified one of them with a start of pleasure. It was not too much to believe that she had come to meet him. As for her companion, a slender person in white, she was probably his hostess. He was only a little in love with Lady Clewer. As the car drew nearer he set up a delighted grin while he was yet some way off, but, realizing how foolish this must appear by the time he reached them, he banished it from his features and only allowed it to light up again when the car stopped beside them. Out he bounded in a torrent of polite greetings and shook their self-possessed hands. The car, with his luggage, slipped off again towards the cluster of trees which hid Lyndon, and he was left in the midst of solitary pastures with his two companions.
The insignificant other was not Lady Clewer, he discovered, but one Cynthia, a half-sister. He knew her by sight, having admired her beauty from a barge at the ‘Eights,’ but he had never been formally introduced. She was, apparently, not out, since her hair still hung down her back. She greeted him with a demureness suitable to her situation, flashed one disturbing look out of her dark eyes and immediately veiled them with the longest lashes he had ever seen. In a becoming silence she walked home upon his left hand.
All his attention was given to Lois, who was looking brilliant and happy in her yellow dress. She was obviously delighted to see him; friendliness beamed in her little blue eyes and bade him welcome. Walking in that green field he thought her like some sturdy, shining spring flower—a marsh marigold perhaps.
‘Nobody else is staying with us,’ she said, ‘except a cousin of Mother’s, Sir Thomas Bragge. He’s come to advise her about some investments or something. He’s rather an awful old gentleman, but quite harmless really. He has made a lot of money, I forget how, and is going to build a house. He’ll tell you about it. Then a cousin of Agatha’s, a brilliant young doctor, is expected shortly on a rest cure from overwork.’
Hubert, who was on the look out for possible rivals, felt a little apprehensive. His spirits, which had soared when he heard Sir Thomas called an awful old gentleman, came to the ground at the mention of the brilliant young doctor. But he reflected that the fellow might possibly be married. Doctors often marry young and married men often overwork.
‘Then,’ said Lois, ‘there is John’s brother, James. Have you met him?’
‘I don’t think so. He wasn’t with you in town, was he?’
‘No. He was in Paris. He’s just come back. He’s been there for three years. He’s an artist, you know.’
‘No. No, I didn’t know. An artist?’
Hubert had some difficulty in digesting the idea of an artist among the Clewers.
‘Yes. And I’m anxious to know what you think of his work. I rather like some of it. But of course,’ she added modestly, ‘I’m no judge.’
His gallantry did not prompt him to contradict her. As a disciple she was exquisite, but as a judge … no! Later on, perhaps, when she should be a little more matured, he might temper this decision. But at present her enthusiasms were too indiscriminate, though she evinced a tendency to draw back and modify her opinions in deference to his experience which pleased and touched him.
They passed through the last gate and proceeded up the avenue of elms leading to the house. Lyndon, architectural and complacent, gleamed whitely amid the sombre green of ilex and cedar. Its classical façade stretched in ample wings to East and West. The grounds, originally laid out by the famous ‘Capability Brown,’ and improved upon by successive generations of landscape gardeners, were admirably in keeping with the dwelling-house they guarded. They maintained its note of assured artificiality: they belonged to an age when gentlemen of property owned the earth and could do what they liked with it—an age which had not read Wordsworth and which took for granted that Nature could be improved upon. The measured, decorative mind of man was everywhere apparent. Upon the knolls in the shrubberies were to be found pensive little temples to Friendship and Solitude. A long stone terrace ran the whole length of the south side of the house. This bordered on a vast lawn leading to sloping rose gardens which descended to the Holmbrook, a tributary of the Isis.
Lois led Hubert round to the lawn where the party was gathered for tea. They walked slowly, conversing volubly as was their habit. Already he was beginning to draw comparisons between the candid loquacity of Miss Martin and the provocative silence of Miss Clewer. This Cynthia was a piece of goods! Despite his preoccupation with her sister he had been made aware of it. He could not quite make out how she had done it, for she had said nothing during the whole of her short walk with them. He rather wanted to hear her speak. It would perhaps be polite to address a remark to her.
‘Do you know, when I first saw you, I thought you were Lady Clewer.’
He had not meant to say this. But there was something about the girl that provoked one to personalities,
‘Oh, Agatha? She would never walk as far as this. She never goes anywhere except in a car, you know.’
There was an undercurrent of contempt in her voice and he surmised that she disliked her sister-in-law. Nor could he be surprised when he caught sight of his hostess in the distance and felt anew all the shock of her beauty. She sat under an enormous cedar tree in the middle of the lawn, presiding over her guests with unhurried grace, and as he approached he knew that she must be a galling chaperon for Cynthia. Lois suffered less. She had vitality, the charm of eager interests and a lively mind. Even at Lady Clewer’s side she must have her appeal. She could never be completely overlooked. Hubert, for instance, preferred her infinitely. But the unfortunate Cynthia was doomed to a perpetual eclipse, since she was of the same type as her senior and not nearly so effective. Both were sirens—lovely, indolent and exotic; both had achieved that air of expensive fragility which is beauty’s most precious setting. But Lady Clewer with her cool, witty assurance, her youthful maturity, possessed unfair advantages. As a married woman she could wear richer clothing. She, too, was clad in white this afternoon, but of some clear, silky-soft material, matching her pearls and bestowed about her with a sort of subtle amplitude, while Cynthia had to put up with the harsh, maidenly lines of starched piqué.
The guests under the tree were mostly very young men who had come out from Oxford for tennis, and games were still in progress on the raised courts at either side of the lawn. Also there was Sir Thomas Bragge, an important and rubicund-looking person. Lois had called him old but he really was not: it was his grossness which had created the illusion of age in her fastidious mind. Certainly he was awful. He sat sunk deeply in a deck chair at Lady Clewer’s right hand, his portly stomach bulging gently upward and heaving with his occasional rumbling guffaws. Never for a moment did he remove from his hostess a gaze of unqualified admiration, devouring her with small, unabashed eyes.
Behind her chair, dominating the background, hovered the master of the house. He was pleasant and attentive, more silent than most of the throng, but obviously the host.
Lois and Hubert cross
ed the brilliant turf a little nervously and advanced into the middle of the group. The guest was greeted with a cordiality which cheered him. Lady Clewer gave him an unmistakably kind glance; it told him that she was his ally and his heart warmed to her. Sympathy, he instantly decided, was the secret of her charm. Her beauty was but the symbol of a generous temper and she deserved all the homage she got. With new courage he turned to greet the formidable dowager who was approaching briskly from the house with the air of having concluded competently some very important business. She ran her sharp eyes critically over the company, and he found himself beginning to wilt again under her appraising looks. He doubted whether she would ever think him good enough for Lois and began feverishly to rehearse to himself a statement of his income. This reassured him, for he really had quite a lot of money. He was able to control his surprise when the dowager said, in her heavy, uncoloured voice:
‘I have a favour to ask of you, Mr Ervine.’
He almost bounded from his chair in his eagerness to serve her, but he was a little dashed when he heard what the favour was. It appeared that Lyndon possessed a Village Reading Union, patronized by the aristocracy; an institution whereby culture was administered in small doses to deserving rustics and contingents of the Lyndon housemaids.
‘We meet on Friday evenings,’ said the lady, fixing him with an uncompromising regard. ‘And, whenever we can, we get kind people to read us papers on literary subjects. Now I’m sure you …’
‘Oh, well,’ he murmured, ‘literature isn’t my …’
‘It’s Modern Art, your subject, isn’t it?’ said she wisely.
All the young men in white flannels left off eating their tea to look at the fellow whose subject was Modern Art. Or so it seemed to him. In desperation he threw an appealing glance at James, the artist, who should surely have helped him out. But no assistance was coming from that quarter. James was not going to talk. Seated on the edge of the group, as it were, he was eating up his tea with a quick despatch and paying no attention to the conversation. Hubert was disgusted and decided that James was probably a cubist. Anyhow, he was a very ugly brute.
Ladies of Lyndon Page 6