“She wants solitude. I can understand that so well. I want it myself, but I never get it. I’m not a bit surprised. I always thought she must be nice …”
“Oh, well …” said Kerran. “Nice! … Well …”
He had unhooked a rowing boat and held out his hand to steady her as she got in. But she needed no helping. She picked up her skirts, leapt in lightly, and took her seat in the stern. He pushed the boat off with one oar, and settled, facing her, on to his bench. The island slid away from them.
“Where are we going?” she asked idly.
“Just for a little row before it rains.”
“Is it going to rain? Don’t say so.”
“Yes, it is. The mountains are much too clear. And the smoke from Elissa’s chimney is going straight up in the air.”
“Oh! So it is,” said Louise, turning round to look. “Do you suppose she cooks her own meals? She must be a wonderful person. ‘Nice’ is the wrong word, I agree.”
“Quite wrong,” said Kerran. “Whom was your other letter from?”
“Guy Fletcher. Such a charming letter. He thinks he’ll get here some time next week. I’m so glad. He’s just the kind of person …”
Guy Fletcher was famous for his charming letters. Kerran felt that he must have made a face, for Louise looked up at him sharply. He was afraid that she might be going to bully him into stating his real opinion of Guy, a thing which she had often attempted, and to distract her attention he asked her to read the letter aloud.
As she did so he wondered how long it had taken Guy to write it. For anything so beautiful could not have been produced without considerable effort. There was no flaw in it anywhere. Each sentence had a perfect little rhythm of its own, was placed and set with a care that had been almost too loving and anxious. Kerran found himself growing strained and stiff as he listened. He longed for the relaxation of a clumsy word.
Guy Fletcher was a young don, a colleague of Gordon’s and much admired by Louise. In his vacations he wrote essays which were remarkable for their terrific concentration upon beauty. On Kerran, who had to review them, they produced an impression of stasis, but he did not say so, and because he could never quite make up his mind if this was Guy’s fault or his own, he praised them. It might be, perhaps, because his own soul was so gross that he should feel that no beauty in the world could be quite worth all this straining. And until he could be sure about it he thought it best to agree with Louise.
When the letter had flowed to its harmonious conclusion he began to row very vigorously indeed, impelled by a desire for some kind of effort that had nothing spiritual about it. Soon they were in the very middle of the lough. They could see the mountains behind the island and the deep blue trough of the haunted glen. They could see things which they had never seen before: the light bloomy haze which covered the hillsides for the last three days had melted and the slopes, with their patches of heather, tumbled boulders and green mossy bogs, stood out in vivid detail. All the mountains had come nearer. They were crowding in on the lake.
Out to sea it was raining. Black clouds piled up behind the yellow sandbanks to the west. In another hour these clouds would have drifted across the sun, and the first breath of wind would have whipped the glassy waters of the lough into ripples and waves. A grey curtain of rain would travel up, hiding the island from the shore and the shore from the island. Storm, wrack and mist would blot out the Haunted Glen. Already the sun had begun to shine a little more wanly, the waters grew paler, and the clear colours of the mountains took on a darker hue.
“I’d better go back,” said Kerran. “We shall get wet.”
“No, don’t,” she murmured. “I’m so happy.”
She leant over the side of the boat to trail a hand in the water.
“This is perfect,” she said, “this is what I came for.”
Kerran obligingly rested on his oars and let the boat drift. He did not think it would rain for an hour, and she was sure not to be happy much longer than that.
A tranced, brooding look had come into her eyes. He knew that she must have some tremendous plan ahead. But, after a long pause, all that she said was:
“I do hope Guy will bring his violin.”
“Sure to,” sighed Kerran.
“And the piano in the drawing-room is quite good. I’m so glad, because if …”
Her eyes strayed again towards the shore, where Elissa’s chimney sent up a thin column of smoke in the cooling air.
“My dear Louise!”
“Mrs. Nugent says she is resting. I shouldn’t ask her to sing, of course. But just think how lovely it would be if …”
“Louise, you don’t really … you aren’t really contemplating … you don’t surely mean to include Madame Koebel in our select little circle?”
“Why not? I shan’t intrude myself on her, naturally. But you said yourself that she might want to see over the castle. And you said yourself that we wanted more civilised women.”
“If she comes, I think you’d better be out.”
“But why?” Louise began to look anxious. “Isn’t she respectable?”
Kerran laughed.
“My dear Louise! You’ve seen her, haven’t you?”
“Only on the stage. What nonsense you talk. How like a man, to think that because she’s an artist she must be … have you heard anything? Anything definite?”
Kerran reluctantly mentioned a few things that he had heard. But she refused to take him seriously.
“People always say that sort of thing about any famous woman. Especially men. Mediocre men like to revenge themselves against a superior woman by declaring that she must be immoral. I suppose you’re jealous at the idea of a woman doing anything. Look at Sappho. I’m always coming across that attitude. You say we gossip, but we don’t gossip half as much as you do. You’re always ready to believe such fantastic things. Especially about a woman. You mayn’t know it, but it all comes from a desire to belittle us, to sneer at our achievements.”
A fanatical glare had come into her eye and she bounced about so fiercely that the boat rocked.
“That’s why we haven’t got the vote,” she concluded bitterly.
“I know, I know, I know,” said Kerran. “You’re quite right. One shouldn’t repeat hearsay stories. But, as a matter of interest, Louise, tell me this. Supposing you knew for certain that she wasn’t … er … respectable, what would you do?”
Louise immediately told him to begin rowing again. He could see that she had no answer ready, and that she wanted to avoid an argument while she thought it out. She had very strict notions in general about respectability. But she did not wish to admit that these need prevent her from enjoying the friendship of Elissa Koebel. As Kerran rowed back across the lough she sought in her mind for a reconciling formula.
“You can’t judge everybody quite by the same standards,” she said at last.
“I know. But there’s no question of your judging the Koebel. You can refrain from judging a person without making a bosom friend of her.”
Louise rallied her forces.
“No. But it’s like this. I wouldn’t ask an Englishman to dinner if he had two wives. But when the Rajah of Mysond came to Oxford (he has a son at St. Jude’s) I asked him to lunch, though he has dozens of wives. In the same way, if some woman of my own … of my own class, got divorced, I should drop her. But a woman like Elissa Koebel I shouldn’t judge by the same standards that I’d use for myself and my friends.”
“But you wouldn’t have asked the Rajah to lunch on the island, would you?”
Louise ignored this.
“I know she belongs to another world—the demimonde, if you like. But that’s quite different from belonging to our world and becoming déclassée. Besides, what harm could she possibly do us? I ask you! Can you see me, or Ellen, or Maude, suddenly deserting the principles of a lifetime because Elissa Koebel has been asked to tea? Can’t you realise that women nowadays …”
“I’m not thinking of
you women. I’m thinking of Gordon, and Barny, and myself, and Guy Fletcher … and Dick.”
“Dick?”
He had thought that last name would settle her. For the time being she said no more. There was just that element of uncertainty about Dick which could occasionally bring her up short, however confident she might be, however determined that all the others should dance to her piping.
“Do hurry up,” she said, shivering. “It’s getting cold and we shall be wet through in no time if we’re caught.”
By now the sun had quite disappeared and a stiff breeze silvered the surface of the water. Kerran rowed briskly and brought them into shelter under the rocky western slope of the island, where thickets of fuchsia and arbutus pressed up against the mouldering castle walls. There was a half-wild garden there and a broad terrace path running under the drawing-room windows. It was on this path that Kerran had stood, earlier in the afternoon, and looked in at his sister writing letters.
Suddenly Louise put up her hand and smilingly bade him listen. Music was in the air. It was Rosamund playing on the drawing-room piano. During the previous term she had learnt two Chopin waltzes and everyone had had a great many opportunities of hearing them since they came to the castle. Kerran bent to his oars and spun round the point towards the landing stage.
“It’s what I’d always planned,” said Louise dreamily. “Floating about on the lake and hearing music in the castle.”
Kerran asked if Hope could play.
“Hope? Hope Napier? Oh no! At least, she may have got as far as the ‘Merry Peasant.’ I don’t know.”
“Thank God!” thought Kerran.
He shipped his oars. They were only just in time, for the curtain of rain had already blotted out the sandbanks. Quite big waves were breaking on the beach and the landing stage. He held the boat steady for Louise to get out. But she did not move at once. She was brooding and planning again. Some new piece of generalship had engaged her attention. She climbed thoughtfully out of the boat and walked up to the castle beside him with an unseeing eye. Not Elissa this time, he thought, but something else which needed diplomacy. He could not help asking what it was.
“Do tell me what you’re thinking about.”
She looked at him vaguely, pushing away the clouds of dark hair from her temples.
“What am I … oh … only Hope’s legs.”
4
THE boat, with Maude and Barny in it, struggled out of a solid sheet of rain towards the island. To Kerran and the children, who were watching from a tower, it seemed as though a free fight of some sort was going on. A black object was being thrown, violently thrown, from one end of the boat to the other. The struggle was so fierce that a capsize seemed almost inevitable.
Kerran was the first to guess what was happening.
“Their umbrella!” he exclaimed. “They’re fighting which shall have it. I mean which shan’t have it. He’s in the bows and she’s in the stern. They’re each determined to be the one who gets wet. It’s his umbrella. It’s a man’s umbrella; she’s forgotten hers, and she doesn’t want to borrow his. There! Oh, Lord! I thought they were over then.”
The children were enchanted. They had had a dull day, cooped up in the keep, and now they blessed the rain which had brought them such a spectacle. It was not every day that uncles and aunts fought one another in boats.
Only Rosamund had the decency to say at once:
“It’s very unselfish of Aunt Maude, isn’t it, Uncle Kerran?”
“Very,” said Kerran; “especially if she upsets the boat.”
Rosamund laughed, uncertainly. She was anxious to imitate, if she could, the correct grown-up attitude towards Aunt Maude. But it was not easy and, as often as not, she got snubbed for her pains. A faintly mocking praise appeared to be the safest prescription. They were always saying that Maude was wonderful. They praised her more warmly than they ever praised each other. She was so practical, and so economical: such a wonderful housekeeper, so devoted to Barny, so clever when he was ill, and, above all, so unselfish. The mere mention of her unselfishness could bring a quiver of laughter into their voices. Rosamund had only just found out why.
There was a shrill squeal of joy from Harry and Jennie. Something had actually fallen into the water, a rug, and it was floating away like a little raft. The battle of the umbrella was suspended while Maude clutched at it.
Now the boat had reached safety. It was bumping against the landing stage. Louise, in a sou’-wester and oilskins, was running down the slope, and the loyal Kerran nerved himself for a dash across the courtyard, so that he might join Gordon in the gateway. For Louise’s sake they must all keep up an appearance of hilarious welcome.
As soon as he was gone Rosamund drew her brother Charles to another window where they would be out of earshot of the little ones.
“Promise not to tell,” she whispered.
Charles wriggled impatiently. He wanted to watch the disembarkation, for there was still a chance that somebody or something might fall into the water.
“You’re tickling my ear,” he complained.
“Oh, very well then. I shan’t tell you. You’re too little to know, anyway.”
Whereat Charles was obliged to twist her wrists. After a few histrionic shrieks, and cries of pax, she began to whisper again.
“Aunt Maude isn’t quite a lady.”
“Oh, rot!”
“Mother says so.”
“When did she say so?”
“Yesterday. She said we don’t call a coat and skirt a costume. She said it was bad form. So I said, well, Aunt Maude does. And then she said that. She said I was old enough to know. But you mustn’t say anything to the little ones.”
Charles looked uncomfortable. He felt that this was a personal affront because Aunt Maude was his godmother and had given him some very nice birthday presents. Honour demanded that he should defend her. But, if his mother had really said such an embarrassing thing, there was very little that he could say. So he carried the war into the other camp. He averred that Professor Grier, who was Rosamund’s godfather, smelt.
“You’re disgusting,” said Rosamund, “disgusting and childish.”
She turned away from him with a very good imitation of her mother’s sweep.
Drenched and draggled, the new arrivals were being urged up the slope by the welcoming Louise. Aunt Maude’s apple cheeks glowed crimson under her dripping veil, and snatches of her laughter floated up, high above the shrieking wind.
“Such fun!” she shouted, as she held the umbrella over Barny.
Even Louise was cowed, became less aggressively cheerful.
“You poor things! You’re wet!”
“No, no. We like it. We don’t mind getting wet, do we, Barny? So killingly funny … in the boat … the umbrella … such fun, isn’t it, Barny?”
Barny dodged the umbrella which she was still trying to hold over him, caught sight of the group in the window and sent them a rueful grin. He did not particularly mind getting wet, but he did not think it killingly funny either. The three of them disappeared under the gateway. The boatman with the luggage came up after them and disappeared too. It was over and there was nothing more to see. The children turned away from the window. They straggled downstairs to the day nursery. Only Rosamund remained, curled up on the window seat, and staring disconsolately out into the rain. She was bored with the little ones and bored with Charles. She wanted another little girl to play with. For the moment she even wanted her cousin Hope. She thought of Hope with a sudden access of sentimental affection. When Hope came she would have an ally. They would talk secrets. She would swear Hope to secrecy and then reveal the tremendous news about Aunt Maude. Hope might be stolid, plain and fat, a year younger, and imbued with all the depressing familiarity of cousinhood, but she was at least a girl, not a scuffling, insensitive boy.
“Like sisters,” explained Rosamund, to some undefined but interested audience. “We’re more like sisters than cousins. The two families hav
e seen so much of one another …”
Rosamund is lonely without Hope. She sits all day long in the window-seat, wishing that Hope would come. How touching that is! The two little girls run hand in hand away into the woods. Now the grown-ups can see that they are neither boys nor babies. They tell secrets. And the audience comprehends their charm: the interesting appeal of cousins who are really more like sisters.
5
LOUISE was in despair. The change in the weather had ruined all her plans, for she had meant it to be fine when Maude and Barny came to the island.
“Now they’ll be prejudiced against it,” she complained to Kerran. “They won’t stay. Or if they do it’ll be with a grievance.”
“Maude seems to admire it all very much.”
“Oh, Maude!” Her lip curled. They were indeed in a poor way if they had to depend upon Maude’s admiration.
“I wanted it to be fine for Barny. Poor Barny …”
She wanted, as he very well knew, to reanimate Barny, to win him back to his own place in their family circle. It was one of the minor miracles which she expected the island to perform. The finger of time was to be moved backwards, and Barny was to be his old bachelor self again, lively, frivolous and enterprising. Ten years of marriage had changed him a great deal. But Louise still hoped to stage-manage a rebellion.
“Poor Barny! One feels one’s lost to him so, ever since … And this rain gives her such a pull. Did you hear her trying to bully him into saying that he liked it? As if anyone could, on a day like this! I really think that it’s her insincerity that annoys me more than anything else. The way she always chooses a wet day, or a fiasco, to show how bright and cheerful she is. ‘Isn’t it fun?’ Did you hear her? I could have slapped her face.”
“She is rather a dry blanket,” agreed Kerran.
“A what?”
“The opposite of a wet blanket. Instead of damping your enthusiasm she gingers it up when you’re depressed. She imparts a desiccating and spurious warmth. But you missed all the best of it, leaving us in the hall like that when you went to see about the luggage. I got her first impressions. She thinks it’s ‘too too.’ ”
A Long Time Ago Page 8