“I beg your pardon,” said Kerran, controlling himself and wondering if he dared quote this to Guy. “But all doctors aren’t materialists.”
“Not all,” she admitted reminiscently. “I once … but that is not a mushroom that you have picked, my friend. It is Sistschwamm, poison. Throw it down! Don’t you know the difference? Look, I will show you. If it peels so, then it is a mushroom. That is the way to know. But what was I saying? I have always so greatly admired your sister.”
He thought at first that she was talking of Louise, but a glance which she threw at the stone bench by the lake told him that she had now got round to Ellen.
“She is a true Hausfrau, so good and so tranquil. It is charming to see her sitting there in her blue dress, with her needlework. But I find that, for so young a woman, she is strangely inactive. She sits still too much. When we are in the boat she will never row. For myself I would think it nothing to row from here to the sea. Do you not think it strange?”
Kerran stared. Quite obviously she did not know. He would have thought that she would have learnt of it among the women. But then Ellen herself was reticent upon such topics, and Louise had always taken the line that too much fuss was being made by Muffy. However that might be, Elissa had not been told. Or, perhaps, she had been told and the information had made no impression on her. She had a mind like a large meshed net: small items were apt to slip through it.
Although it was no business of his, a certain anxiety assailed him. Elissa was so domineering. She was quite capable of taking Ellen out on the lake and making her row. He said rather stiffly:
“She’s expecting another child, you know.”
“Impossible!” cried Elissa, in tones of lively astonishment. “But when?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Not till after Christmas.”
Elissa scrutinised Ellen with new interest.
“But impossible,” she said again. “She is so thin! One would say of this child, where will it come from? Her silhouette is still perfect!”
And then, all at once, a cloud seemed to fall upon her. She grew exceedingly sombre.
“I understand,” she added, in a low voice.
Kerran thought:
“Well, I’m glad you do.”
They picked a good many more mushrooms before she spoke again, and then it was to launch out into a bitter attack upon Puritanism, which she seemed to confuse with hypocrisy. She repeated that God had made people in order that they should be happy.
“But it is when they are unhappy that they are most inclined to think about Him,” argued Kerran.
“When I am unhappy,” she retorted, “I do not believe in Him. My mood then becomes stoical.”
“Oh, does it?” said Kerran.
Suddenly she began to declaim, very effectively, Mort du Loup, walking as she did so towards the banks of the lake, for the boat, with Dick and Gordon and the groceries, had come into sight. Her accent was pure. She recited well. Each word floated out with its own classic beauty and distinction so that Kerran, strive as he would, could not escape from an impulse of admiration, or from the knowledge that something noble was being built up before him. The poem was fine, and her interpretation was fine. She could not have grasped the sense of what she was saying, he thought, but she was indubitably inspired, the vehicle of some inexplicable afflatus. She had the gift of prophecy. And he wondered if the priestesses of Delphi, when they had descended from the tripod, might not, in their own characters, have talked as much nonsense as she did.
They had got quite near to the stone bench, and he saw Ellen’s startled face peering round at them. There was an anxious, awakened look upon it, as though she had just been informed for the first time of some disturbing truth. When Elissa broke off and went over to the landing-stage to greet the boat, he joined his sister on the stone bench. She asked him at once if that had been poetry.
“What was it she said? Seul le silence est grand …”
Kerran repeated the passage with some embarrassment at his own accent, which was so very different from Elissa’s.
“It’s awfully true,” said Ellen, after profound ponderings.
Kerran thought so too, but he was very much surprised to hear such a comment from Ellen.
On the heels of this surprise he received another. He saw that, instead of her needlework, a book lay in her lap. It was months since he had last seen her so engaged. She was not much of a reader.
“Oh … are you reading?”
“Yes,” she said, with some satisfaction. “I’m reading a book.”
All this was new. It was disturbing. He did not know that he wanted her to read books. She was the only one in the family who did not, though she was conscientious about reading aloud to the children. That she should take to doing so for her own pleasure was bad. It was a sign of upheaval. He asked what book it was and she showed him. It was Anna Karenina. Guy Fletcher had lent it to her.
“Do you like it?”
“Oh, yes,” she said with animation. “I like it very much. It’s very fine. The characterisation is very fine.”
She paused for a moment, as if a little proud of this word, and then added:
“The people seem so real, somehow. It makes you quite sorry for Anna. I mean, it makes one see how uncomfortable it must be for anyone in that sort of position. It gives one a lot to think about.”
A lot to think about! This was the worst of all. Since when had Ellen begun to ask for a lot to think about? Content with being the stupid member of the family, she had always accepted the general verdict that she could not think.
She had begun to read again, applying herself to the lines of print before her with the solemnity of unpractised effort, almost like a cottage woman spelling out the Bible. Kerran observed her with curiosity and misgiving. An explanation for all this was beginning to dawn upon him. She was absorbing these ideas and impressions from the written word in order, perhaps, to keep other ideas at bay. She was not happy and she preferred to ponder upon Anna Karenina’s awkward position rather than upon her own.
17
EVERYBODY had seen Louise and Elissa go down to bathe. And everybody saw how Louise came back alone, hugging her long cloak round her. As she crossed the courtyard and disappeared into her tower, her progress was marked by Muffy, who sat on the edge of the well, by Maude, who happened to be coming out of the kitchen, and by Kerran, from a tower window. And each of them thought immediately:
“It has come.”
Meaning that the end of the Elissa epoch had arrived. For the past forty-eight hours it had been imminent, and there was something about this solitary return which told of a climax.
When she had dressed herself Louise went to find Gordon, who was writing in the drawing-room. She said:
“Just one minute, Gordon, if you can spare the time,” in the kind of voice which he had not heard for many weeks.
He looked up in alarm and saw that she was almost beside herself. Her eyes flashed, her colour was high, and she breathed quickly.
“Something must be done. I simply cannot have Elissa here again.”
Gordon gasped. He had not read the signs of change as the others had.
“She’s too disgusting. She’s too revolting. I can’t think how I ever liked her.”
“Disgusting? Revolting?”
“I really don’t know how to tell you … but I never want to see her here again.”
“Louise, what can you mean? What has she done?”
“She … she took off all her clothes in front of Dick.”
“What?”
“She did. We were bathing. We were lying on the grass, sunning ourselves before we dressed. Elissa took off her bathing-dress. She always does. I have had to tell her not to do it in front of the children. We were on the little beach by the boulders, where it’s quite private. And Dick came round the point in his boat.”
“She can’t have known …”
“Oh, yes, she did. She waved to him, and laughed at me because I wa
s horrified.”
“Good heavens!”
Gordon’s head grew pink.
“And … and what happened then?”
“I don’t know. I just left her there. I couldn’t bear it. She was so vulgar … so …”
Gordon jerked his head in decided disagreement.
“Oh, no,” he asserted, “not vulgar.”
“But, Gordon!”
“She is simpler than we are. She has other conventions. I have heard that it is the custom in the Caucasus …”
“This isn’t the Caucasus …”
“I have no doubt but that it was quite innocently done.”
“Innocent! Good heavens! If you’d seen her!”
Gordon blushed again.
“She was shameless,” persisted Louise. “Don’t you understand? She had nothing on. Nothing on at all.”
“Elissa is not vulgar. You don’t understand her. It is you, I think, who are vulgar.”
“I? I, vulgar?”
“You put interpretations which … oh, I daresay it was a shock to you. She often says things, the sort of thing which we would leave unsaid. You must tell her that it is not our custom in England.”
“What interpretations?” asked Louise, taking up the first part of his sentence. “What do you mean?”
“You put a false interpretation upon what she did. I don’t suppose for a minute that it was meant to be provocative.”
“Yes, it was. Ever since Dick came she has been throwing herself at his head. I can’t think how you haven’t seen it.”
“Louise, that is a very grave, a very terrible thing to say about our friend.”
“Please, don’t call her my friend. I’ve done with her.”
“And since when,” asked Gordon bitterly, “have you so changed your opinion of her?”
“Since … since I’ve noticed what I have told you.”
“You have a lively imagination. You have deceived yourself.”
“And other things that I’ve noticed. She doesn’t speak the truth. She told us all how she had sung Brunnhilde in Dresden and then next day she said that Waltraute was the only part she had ever sung there. And she said that she could row down to Killross in half an hour when she knows quite well that it takes her forty-five minutes.”
“You can’t seriously expect me to believe that you think these are good arguments.”
“No, but I do feel that perhaps we have been mistaken in her character, and that it was a pity to rush into this friendship.”
Gordon took a turn or two down the room before he could trust himself to speak. He was growing very angry and he knew that he would put himself at a disadvantage if he showed it. So much was at stake. The most precious thing in the whole of his life was being threatened. At last he mastered himself sufficiently to say:
“I’m not going to accept these petty accusations as sufficient. Do you know anything definite? Have you anything serious to go upon?”
This checked Louise. She had thought that the bathing incident would be sufficient, and that Gordon would be shocked into immediate agreement. His cross-examination was unexpected.
Of course she knew a great deal, which would have been, even in the besotted Gordon’s eyes, definitely against Elissa. There were stories told by Kerran and Barny, at which she had once scoffed and which she now accepted in all their enormity. But she could not cite these because she had already agreed with Gordon that they were the merest scandal. And there were other incidents which she had heard from Elissa’s own lips when their intimacy had been at its height. She had not passed them on to Gordon at the time, and she had manœuvred Elissa into a measure of reticence where he was concerned, because she felt that, in spite of his admiration, he might not accept them as tolerantly as she did. After all, it was not three weeks since she had written a letter to her mother in defence of Elissa’s sacred impulses. To admit that her information came from that source would have been to involve herself in too many dangerous explanations. It was a difficult position.
She took the offensive.
“You mayn’t see it all quite as I do. I know men see these things differently. But that doesn’t alter it, Gordon. After … what happened this morning … I’m not prepared to have her here again.”
“You mean that she is not to come to us here any more?”
“I do. I have the children to think of. And there is this that I’ve told you about Dick. I assure you that I’m not mistaken. She’s dropped several hints … For his sake, and for Ellen’s sake, for everybody’s sake … Nobody likes her, you know.”
“You mean to tell her that she is not to come here any more? Simply because, unwittingly, she misunderstood.”
“It wasn’t unwittingly …”
“I couldn’t have believed it of you. Think what our friendship has been! To drop her like this … without any cause. It’s so heartless, so cruel! So unwarranted. If you think that I am going to lend you my support, you are very much mistaken.”
Gordon seldom opposed Louise. It was not often that the issue struck him as possessing sufficient importance. He had never before interfered in her stormy friendships. But in this case his personal feelings were concerned. He loved Elissa. This attack on her roused him to a passion of chivalrous indignation.
“I shall do all in my power to prevent such an insult being offered to any guest in my house.”
“But, Gordon, you aren’t going to persist in asking the woman here when I’ve said I won’t have her!”
“I shall do what I think fit. If you insult her, against my wishes, I don’t suppose she will wish to come. But the friendship will not be broken off as regards those of us who are still loyal to her.”
“But a husband and a wife can’t openly disagree about such a thing.”
She lowered her voice a little, as Maude, not for the first time, appeared upon the terrace outside the window.
“There are times,” declared Gordon, “when the opinion of one must prevail.”
“But it’s the wife who ought to prevail when it’s a question of who shall be invited to the house. That is the wife’s sphere.”
“You brought her here yourself, in the first instance.”
“I didn’t. Nobody asked her here in the first instance. She foisted herself on us.”
“Louise, every word you say adds to your own discredit. You know that this was not so: that you have invited her here again and again. When you resort to making statements which we both know to be false, your case must be very weak indeed.”
“However it may have begun, it must end now. You can’t force me to know a woman whose morals I disapprove of. I have been mistaken in her character.”
“I can’t force you to do anything. But I shall take my own line. I shall welcome her here, if she comes, and if she will receive me at her house, I shall go there.”
“Gordon! You can’t.”
But Gordon seemed to think that he could. He was losing control of himself. His hands were trembling, he stuttered and tugged nervously at his moustache. And though the physical indications of his rage were ineffectual, even slightly ridiculous, there was so much warmth behind them that Louise was dismayed. She felt that very little more could be done with him, at the moment, and went out to find Maude on the terrace. It was a moment when all good women should confide in one another. Although she suspected that Maude had managed to overhear a good deal of what had passed, she told her tale from the beginning for decency’s sake and because it made a very good story.
Maude took the sensible view at once. And it seemed that she also had begun, of late, to change her mind about Elissa. She reinforced Louise’s suspicions with several most damaging observations of her own.
“But isn’t it extraordinary of Gordon? You’d have thought he’d have been horrified.”
“Men!” said Maude with a shrug.
“He’s so innocent. Anybody would take him in.”
Louise, though she was seeking Maude’s alliance, was not going
to have it suggested that Gordon made a habit of asking improper women to the house. Angry though she was, she felt that would have been unfair.
“But Maude … what am I to do? How is one to get rid of her?”
“If you don’t do something she’ll go on coming here till the end of the summer.”
“I know. And she’s so thick-skinned. I don’t believe she’d take a hint.”
“You can freeze people up pretty well if you like,” ventured Maude, with a reminiscent shiver.
“And let Gordon thaw her again under my nose. No, thank you.”
“Then write to her.”
“I’d thought of that. But if I sent it by post she wouldn’t read it. She boasted to me that she burns any letters that come, unread.”
“I expect that’s a tarrididdle.”
“So do I. But she might pretend she hadn’t got it. If I could send it by hand … but whom could I send?”
“What would you say, anyhow?”
“Oh, I should say that her behaviour this morning convinced me that our friendship couldn’t go on. That the way we look at things is too different. It would be much easier to do it in a letter, if only …”
“I’ll tell you. Didn’t she say she was going to Killross to-morrow, and wouldn’t be here till the afternoon? Couldn’t we manage it this way? If it’s a fine day let’s suddenly decide on all going a picnic to the Haunted Glen. Tell Gordon that you’re leaving a note behind for Elissa, implying that it’s to tell her where we are, when she comes to the island, so that she can join us if she likes. Write your note and leave it behind for Muffy to give her. Of course she may refuse to accept it without seeing you again. But if you write very firmly she may crumple up and go away. Then you’re rid of her.”
“Gordon will find out.”
A Long Time Ago Page 18