‘Oh, I couldn’t! Not to anyone! Excepting only James. But this is a shocking place! It is really. I want to get out of it quick. The sights I saw when I was sitting in that conservatory! I never did.’
‘But it can’t have been anything so very bad….’
‘Oh, I don’t know. I thought when I first come in: Well, they look a godless lot! And I thought right.’
Surveying her comely face and sturdy, supple figure, sharply outlined against the black curtain, Hubert felt a kind of sympathy for the unknown culprit. There was something very attractive about her—primitive but compelling. And it must have been uncommonly difficult to find anything to talk to her about.
‘How did you get there?’ he asked.
‘Oh, Mrs Martin introduced him and took James away. Do let’s find James! I can’t think where he can be. I haven’t seen him this half-hour.’
‘Perhaps he’s in the other room.’
They set off in search and Dolly, perceiving Mr Argony in the middle of a group, ran up to him crying:
‘Oh, Mr Argony! You haven’t seen James anywhere, I suppose?’
The people who were being fortunate enough to engage Mr Argony’s attention were deeply outraged and looked the intruder up and down with amazement. She was so provincial, in her ready-made tea frock; so plainly not of their world. Lawrence, however, beamed and reflected:
‘James, when last I saw him, was sitting with a lady in a small recess on the stairs. A remarkably beautiful lady, as far as I remember. He is probably there still. You’d better look after him, Mrs Clewer.’
Profoundly disturbed, she returned to Hubert and whispered: ‘He’s sitting on the stairs with a beautiful lady! Isn’t that a funny thing for him to do? I’ve never known him do it before. Whatever can have come over him?’
‘Perhaps it’s this godless house,’ suggested Hubert maliciously.
‘It might be. You never know,’ she said mournfully. ‘It’s what I said—this is a dreadful place. He’s usually as quiet … But with all these hussies …!’
She glared at the nearest, but he reassured her.
‘That one is all right. All that powder is only camouflage. She writes history books, and is a notable matron. She has five perfectly good children at home.’
Dolly sniffed. In order to pacify her he suggested: ‘Shall I go and inspect James and his lady? Then I can report on the state of affairs.’
‘He never sat on stairs before.’
‘I rather thought Argony said a recess on the stairs. That is better than actual stairs, don’t you think? More dignified?’
‘I don’t think that’s any better, I don’t.’
‘Oh, yes it is. They are probably sitting on two chairs….’
‘It might be a sofa. There was a sofa in that conservatory….’
‘Well, I’ll go and have a look.’
He made his way out on to the landing where some intelligent person had turned off most of the lights. Upon each stair he fell over a couple of fellow-guests, and his passage through the obscurity was marked by a continual stream of apologies. He became aware that Stella’s party was not entirely confined to the middle-aged. The younger generation was there all right, but it had not favoured the strong illumination of the rooms above. Reaching a view of the recess he perceived that Argony had been perfectly right. Even in that dim light he could identify one of its occupants as James; the large face looming over the crumpled shirt front could belong to no one else. The other, a mysterious feminine presence, was half concealed behind a curtain, but, despite the dark and a distance of several yards, Hubert got the impression that she was a lovely creature. Their attitude was intimate and absorbed—their conversation eager. Hubert hovered uncertainly, a thousand new-born surmises seething in his brain, and then approached them.
A better view of the lady gave him pause, and he jerked backward, speechless, wondering if he could run away. There was no time, however, for she had turned, recognized him, and half risen. He pulled himself together and advanced to greet her, wondering if sisters-in-law are not, on the whole, the most trying sort of relation.
‘I heard you were expected back today or tomorrow,’ he said. ‘But I didn’t think I’d see you here.’
‘I came hoping to find my mother,’ she explained. ‘I went round to South Kensington, but she was out and the maid rather thought she would be here. So, as I know Mrs Martin fairly well, I came straight on. But I hear she hasn’t come. She must have gone somewhere else!’
‘I haven’t seen her,’ said Hubert. ‘Then you got back to England …?’
‘This morning.’
‘They had an awful crossing,’ appended James. ‘She says Blair boasted all the way across France that he was never sick, and then he was much sicker than she was.’
‘Oh, yes …’ said Hubert uneasily.
Agatha slipped a hand through James’s arm.
‘Is Dolly here?’ she asked.
‘Oh, yes! I’ll go and find her and tell her you are here,’ he said joyously. ‘She will be pleased.’
‘Tell her that I’m going in two minutes, but I’d love to see her first,’ Agatha called after him.
Hubert was left alone with her in the recess. Instinctively he drew the curtain further across, shielding her from the observation of passers on the stairs. She laughed a little as she saw his gesture and sank on to her corner of the sofa, motioning him to sit by her side. Her composure relieved him. He had thought distractedly that he would not know what to say to her: he now remembered her facility for silence. He need say nothing at all if he so preferred it. He felt stealing over him that potent serenity which he had almost forgotten, and which was part of the charm she exerted. He told himself that she was beyond criticism; beyond it, at least, when one was with her. In retrospect, when one had forgotten a little what she was really like, it might be possible to condemn her. It seemed to him as though this alcove was too small a place in which to cabin all her marvellous beauty. She was fairer than ever before.
Presently it occurred to her to ask:
‘How’s Lois?’
‘Lois is very well,’ he told her, with a certain hesitation.
‘She’s not here tonight?’
‘No. She’s down at Killigrew’s Croft.’
‘I’m sorry to have missed her.’
He said nothing, and in the pause which followed she pondered upon the hint of reserve with which he had spoken of his wife. Did that mean that Lois was, inevitably, one of the people who must be relinquished? It could only mean that if she wished it herself. Hubert was not the man to coerce his wife in such a matter. But of course it did! She sighed, for she had been fond of Lois. Still … she had come back to face the music….
Clamour without told them of the approach of Dolly and James who, in their rash descent, had fallen foul of the stair haunters. James was heard to ask indignantly:
‘Why are all the lights turned off? It’s impossible to see. Oh! Here’s the switch.’
Light flooded the landing and staircase. Dolly stood, doubtfully, in the entrance to the alcove, looking at Agatha with a face in which perplexity and compassion were mingled.
‘Well, Agatha,’ she murmured, ‘if this isn’t a surprise!’
‘Dear Dolly!’ cried Agatha a little breathlessly,’ aren’t you glad to see me?’
‘Of course I’m glad,’ said Dolly, embracing her with gravity. ‘But I must say …’
She paused, plainly at a loss, and James put in:
‘Come upstairs and find some place where we can sit and have a good talk. It’s so dark here.’
‘I’d rather stay here if you don’t mind,’ said Agatha. ‘There are so many people that I know upstairs, and I’m so tired. I don’t feel up to meeting them all. And, Hubert, I’d give anything for a drink.’
‘I’ll get you a cocktail or something. Dolly, what can I get for you?’
‘Oh, I wouldn’t say no to an ice, if you could find one. You go too, James, and ge
t us something to eat. I’m quite hungry, now you come to mention it.’
Hubert and James departed and found the illuminated staircase perfectly clear. Faint rustlings and whisperings from the darkness of an upper flight told them whither the youthful horde had migrated. When they returned with plates and glasses, the two women were seated close together upon the alcove sofa, talking with animation. Hubert heard Dolly say:
‘Well, if, as you say, they are wearing them longer in Paris, I suppose they’ll be getting longer over here soon. I must say I’m not sorry. These short skirts don’t suit anybody like me that’s got thick legs.’
They all sat down in the very constricted space and ate their provisions. James observed genially:
‘How the Clewer family do collect into lumps! I’ve noticed we always do it. Draw the curtain further across, Dolly, so that nobody can notice that we are all relations. Then Mrs Martin won’t think she ought to come and break us up.’
On the landing outside hung a picture which had struck Hubert’s attention earlier in the evening. To him it suggested brawn in an advanced stage of decomposition. But to two guests who were coming upstairs it had, apparently, other significances. The party in the alcove overheard the following conversation.
‘Fine thing that!’
‘Very fine! Lowe!’
A third was evidently being summoned upstairs.
‘Come and look at this.’
‘Quite good, yes,’ said Lowe, after a pause for observation.
‘A good bit of colour that, when you see it in the right light,’ pursued the first speaker, coming down to particulars. ‘Decent colours!’
‘Very fine thing … uncompromising sincerity….’
‘Yes … rather nice colours. Let me see …’ Lowe hesitated, ‘… it’s a lobster, isn’t it?’
‘… Er, no…. A Madonna and Child, I believe. But of course that’s immaterial!’
‘Oh, quite! That doesn’t signify. Nice colours!’
‘Yes. Good colour….’
They drifted on.
Hubert and Agatha heard a strange sound which neither of them had heard before in their lives. Dolly was, possibly, more used to it. James was laughing loudly.
3.
Agatha made no long stay at Mrs Martin’s party but returned early to the small hotel where she and Gerald were staying. She found him at the writing-table in their room, deeply absorbed in a publication terrifically entitled Brain, upon which he was making notes. The set of his mouth and the nervous, unconscious tapping of his foot as he read told her that he was working hard. Without an interruption or a greeting she composed herself in an armchair upon the hearth, to wait until he had done. To her surprise a small fire was burning smokily in the grate.
He, jerking himself with an evident effort to a recollection of her presence, inquired abstractedly whether she had seen her mother. She told him of her fruitless quest, and said that she would go round to South Kensington the first thing in the morning.
‘Did she leave a message for you?’ he asked, frowning.
‘No, nothing! But Meadowes seemed to know I was expected back, so she must have got the letter I sent her. No note or anything came for me here, I suppose?’
‘Not that I know of.’
‘She might have written,’ muttered Agatha.
‘Was it a nice party you went to?’
‘Quite nice.’
‘You didn’t stay very late.’
‘Not very late. Have you been working all the evening?’
He did not answer and she saw that his attention was returning to Brain. Leaning back in her chair she abandoned herself to the melancholy of undisguised fatigue until he said, without looking up from his page:
‘You’d better get to bed. Don’t wait for me. I shall be some time yet.’
‘I think I’ll wait,’ she said. ‘I want to talk to you when you’ve quite finished.’
The silver travelling clock, one of Agatha’s wedding presents, ticked on the mantelpiece; it looked out of place among Gerald’s pipes and tins of tobacco. The sounds of London outside died away into post-midnight silence. Still his pen scratched and the pages rustled. The fire sank together and she tried with a poker to stir it into a remnant of heat. She was exhausted by her long journey, for French second-class railway carriages were still a new experience to her and the crossing had been a nightmare. The disappointment of missing her mother had been the final blow. This chilling silence staggered her; she had been quite unprepared for it. She had expected stormy recriminations and reproaches, together with the blessed assurance that she had an unfailing partisan. Now everything was uncertain, and she dreaded the interview before her.
Too tired to think, she smoked several cigarettes and fell into a sort of chilly doze. Her childish mind, straying unhappily through the void like a lost bird, circled inevitably towards the thought of Lyndon. It was an ark, a shelter of comfort and solace. She could sit dreaming of her lost home by the hour, supporting herself by recollections of its enduring beauty. It gave her escape from sordid discomfort and fretful anxiety. In this bleak London winter she thought of warm sun, and the lawn and cedar tree, and the smell of cut grass. But often, when she had found the Mediterranean too hot and glaring, she had remembered the cold, wet winds of early spring, and daffodils, and rooks blown among the elms by the home farm.
At last Gerald shut up his book, and came across and knelt beside her, spreading cold hands towards the sinking fire.
‘I’m afraid there’s no more coal,’ she said. ‘Are you cold? I’m glad you had it lighted.’
‘Oh, I’m quite warm. I thought you’d be cold when you came in. It’s a bitter night.’
‘You aren’t warm,’ she told him, chafing his fingers gently. ‘You are cold and tired. Would some Oxo warm you up?’
‘Well, it would be rather nice.’
She hunted in the tray of her box and produced a small spirit lamp, a cup, a saucepan, and a tin of Oxo cubes. She rather enjoyed making Oxo, for it was a new accomplishment. Life in small Corsican inns without a maid had taught her several strange things, and it was still a novelty to minister to the needs of another person.
Gerald regarded his mistress with a faintly puzzled amusement, as she busied herself boiling the water. She was not unaware of this, and the beginnings of resentment stirred in her tired spirit. Keenly sympathetic though he might be in life’s more urgent stresses, he was a little obtuse in small things. He could not realize how excessive was the degree of adaptability demanded by her existence with him. According to his ideas they had lived in no small luxury. He had always taken her to far more comfortable inns than he would have selected for himself, so anxious was he to make things easy for her.
‘I saw Dolly and James,’ she said.
‘Oh, did you? What were they like?’
‘As nice as ever. They were at the party. So was Hubert.’
‘Oh! You saw him?’
‘Yes. He was … just flustered.’
‘But you didn’t see your mother?’
‘No. That was what I was wanting to talk to you about. It struck me on the way home that it was just as well I didn’t see her, for I’ve never really settled what to say to her. I’ve always rather counted on her taking the initiative. But, supposing she doesn’t, what line am I to take?’
‘Well, Agatha, say exactly what you like. I mean your relations with your mother are entirely your affair. I’ll back you up in whatever you say, of course. That water’s boiling!’
She began to stir the Oxo.
‘Well, then, I’ll ask her if she has any idea what John is going to do, and why he doesn’t seem to be taking any steps to divorce me. And if she doesn’t know, I’ll try to get her to see Lady Clewer and find out. I may say that we’re going to be married the moment I’m free, mayn’t I?’
‘Of course.’
‘I want to get her to see how much better it would be to end the anomalous position we are in now, at the cost of an open
scandal if need be.’
‘Yes.’
The pair paused, while Gerald sipped the Oxo, sitting at her feet. At last he said:
‘Agatha, my dear, would you care to go to America? To New York?’
‘I! Why? Are you thinking of going there?’
‘Yes. I’ve been offered work there. I found the letter waiting for me in Harley Street when I went round there this afternoon. My friend Green, who used to work with me, is running a new sort of clinic and wants me to help him.’
He plunged into a long and highly technical description of the kind of clinic it was. At last she said wonderingly:
‘Then it would be the kind of work you like?’
‘Oh, yes. Quite interesting, I think. Of course, the salary is very small, but it would be enough, with what I’ve got, to keep us in tolerable comfort, I imagine. But I’d only accept it if you cared to go too.’
‘Is it a permanent thing? Does it mean spending the rest of our lives there?’
‘Well, yes. It pretty well amounts to that. It will mean several years there anyhow. I thought it mightn’t be a bad thing, if you approved, that is to say. We could get right away.’
‘But your practice here?’
He gave her a swift, surprised look, and said nothing for a few seconds. Then he replied indifferently:
‘It isn’t the sort of thing I really hanker after. I get too many of the idle rich, and their ailments are so much alike that it becomes monotonous. The proletariat offer a much more varied field.’
‘But my mother … everyone … said that you were getting on so brilliantly well here.’
‘I had a sort of vogue with your mother’s friends. That is because just after the war nervous breakdowns became a fashionable complaint. Soon they’ll take to something else, and where should I be?’
‘I was reading in the paper about the slump in Harley Street and how all the specialists are doing so badly.’
‘Bound to happen with the wealth of the country changing hands so rapidly. The people who used to be ill can’t afford it now. And the New Rich haven’t learnt to be ill yet. They still regard ill-health as a misfortune, probably, and not as an absorbing way of spending money. It will right itself in time.’
Ladies of Lyndon Page 26