THE BRAXHALL FRESCOES
I
Sir Thomas Bragge set his house upon a hill. It was built, regardless of
expense, upon the most prominent site in all Berkshire. Its uncounted
windows, flashing in the sun, were visible in every direction for many
miles. Locally it was known as “Bragge’s Barracks.”
It marked, monumentally, the excessive prosperity of Sir Thomas during
the war with Germany. His income had, in five too short years, increased
tenfold, and his notion of a suitable house kept pace with it. He looked
back now with contempt at the mere bungalow, the country cottage, which
he had designed for himself in the spring of 1914, and was profoundly
thankful that it had never been built. He could not have lived in it
with dignity after he became a millionaire. When he thought of this
escape it was to agree weightily with his mother-in-law’s theory that
this terrible war had been sent to us for our good.
Upon another point he frequently found matter for self-congratulation.
His house, if built before the war, might have been commandeered for
public purposes. He would have been obliged, perhaps, to offer it as a
hospital, since even financial success has its drawbacks. Public
opinion, which he never flouted, might have driven him to such a display
of patriotism, but he would have detested the depredation of his
property. Lyndon, so he understood, had suffered considerable damage.
All the paint had been kicked off the kitchen wainscot, and the carved
banisters at the head of the long gallery had been knocked to bits by
careless men bringing down a coffin. At least, he had heard as much from
Lady Bragge; he himself had visited the place but once during its
transformation and had been sadly scandalized at its altered appearance.
It had scarcely seemed to be the same house; so much of its indefinable,
leisurely charm was gone with its decorative mistress. Devoted wholly to
practical and unlovely ends, it had taken on a new aspect of bare
austerity. He could not recognize it as the shrine of ease whence he had
plucked his Cynthia.
His mother-in-law, brisk and competent in her red commandant’s uniform,
had been, of course, in her element. He had no fault to find with her
activities. But it had given him a disagreeable shock to discover pretty
little Mrs. Ervine, dishevelled and slightly perspiring, in the
scullery. She was, he considered, a great deal too good looking and too
gently nurtured for that kind of heavy work. He was sorry for Ervine,
who would find his wife very much gone off when he came home on leave.
It had been a great relief to him that his Cynthia had shown no
aspirations toward the canteen or the operating theatre, but was content
to organize Charity Matinées and make bandages twice a week in the most
beautiful of veils. As for young Lady Clewer, he had nothing but
applause for her promptitude in absconding from Lyndon. She was most
wise to hand over the whole concern to his cousin Marian, for the
duration of the war. The mere surrender of her house testified
sufficiently to her public spirit, and it had been done with consummate
tact, for Marian was born to be a commandant. And in London there had
been plenty for Agatha to do. She had presided over countless
committees, her beautiful eyes had wrought havoc for some months in the
Intelligence Department of the War Office, and she had even worked in a
canteen for a week or two. On the wings of Peace she had returned to
Lyndon, and Sir Thomas could once more visit the place without shock to
his sensibilities.
He could, with reason, call himself happy. The war, bereaving in some
way the huge majority of his acquaintance, had brought nothing but
blessings to him. His relations had all done their duty and were little
the worse for it. John Clewer had contracted a strained heart, the
result of gas poisoning, and his brother James had a permanently stiff
leg, but that was really all. Not many families could be said to have
escaped so lightly. The House of Bragge, unpolluted by the assaults of
war, rose swiftly upon the conclusion of that Peace for which they had
all worked so hard. It was the consecration and embodiment of the new
order, and Sir Thomas loved every stone of it.
Braxhall, for so he had called it, stood at the head of a wide,
well-wooded valley. Its gardens and pleasure grounds extended down a
steep hill for nearly half a mile, toward an excellent trout stream
which wound through green fields. The house itself was finished with all
the speed possible to a wealthy builder, but the setting, which had to
be wrought out of the bare hillside, took some time in the making.
Already, however, rustic bridges spanned the trout stream, rustic
summerhouses dotted the bleakness of the slope, and geraniums flamed in
stone vases along the numerous terraces. Wooden and iron pergolas marked
the spots where Sir Thomas intended to have rose avenues; a paved formal
garden with a fountain and orange trees in green tubs had been sunk in a
sheltered spot to the west of the house, while the hill was crowned with
a wonderful sparkling array of glass-houses.
The interior was not completely arranged when the proprietors first came
into residence. The principal suites of rooms had been furnished, but
the chief glory of Braxhall, an enormous banqueting hall, was not, as
yet, in use. This was to be the family dining room; upon a raised dais
at the farther end Sir Thomas and his lady intended to eat their lunches
and their dinners. Its unusual largeness gave them no qualms; the pride
of possession would enable them to hold their own against its
proportions and the rich amplitude of its mural frescoes. Sir Thomas
calculated that in another six months his house would be in perfect
running order. In three years he could begin to take a pride in his
garden, which now demanded so much from the eye of faith. In three
years, therefore, he, who had already so far outspanned his goal, would
have nothing left to wish for. Nothing save, perhaps, a doctor who would
keep off the topic of strokes.
With his lovely wife upon his arm he was inspecting his domain one fine
morning, absorbing at every pore the concrete pleasures of ownership.
Cynthia was more languid in her appreciations, but she was probably
enjoying herself, or she would not have consented to come upon such a
tour at all. They paused before the level flats, newly sown, which were
to become croquet lawns and tennis courts.
“Now, that’s a good bit of work!” exulted Sir Thomas.
“It’s very slow, isn’t it?” observed his wife.
“Slow! D’you call it slow? What! I’d like to see it done quicker.
I’d-like-to-see-it. There’s not a man in England who’d have got that job
through so quickly. But I’m not so bad at getting a thing done quickly
when I want it. I said to Harvey I wanted the best man I could get. He
said: ‘If you want the thing well done, Sir Thomas, Jacobs is your man.
He’ll grow you a perfect lawn in half the time anybody else would, on
this side the Atlantic,’ he said. ‘Get him to do it and you’ll see the
grass grow. Of course, he’ll cost you a pretty penny, but I take it, Sir
Thomas, that you won’t mind that?’ ‘No,’ I said, ‘No! You’re right, Mr.
Harvey. I don’t mind. Get the thing done! Get a good man and damn the
expense. But I must have something for my money. When I buy, I buy in
the best market.’ ‘Well,’ he said . . .”
“It looks very ugly now,” interrupted Cynthia, who had heard this saga
before.
“Well, I don’t know,” Sir Thomas argued. “It’s a good bit of work,
Cynthie. And a good bit of work is never ugly to my mind.”
This æsthetic flight was lost on Cynthia. She sighed:
“Lyndon has spoilt me a little for lawns, I suppose.”
Though revelling daily and hourly in the countless things which Sir
Thomas provided for her, she was obliged occasionally to bait him a
little with reminders of those possessions which no money can buy. Sir
Thomas, remembering the Lyndon turf, the fruit of several centuries of
patient husbandry, grew a shade more purple.
“Lawns aren’t everything,” he contested, a little sulkily. “If I’d
wanted nothing but a lawn I’d have bought that place, Aldstone Priory.
But you said you didn’t like it. And you were quite right, I’m sure. By
the time we’d put in central heating and a few bathrooms, there wouldn’t
have been a decent room in the house.”
“I know,” said Cynthia placatingly. “Let’s go and look at the
peach-house.”
This was a line in which Lyndon could not compete. There were no
glass-houses upon any private property in Great Britain which could
compare with those of Braxhall. After an exhaustive tour, Sir Thomas
suggested that it must be fully lunch-time, but was reminded that they
could not eat until Lois and her mother had arrived.
“Well, I hope they’ll come soon,” he said. “I’m hungry.”
They wandered round to the uppermost of the garden terraces, and looked
down the valley. Upon the road, some three miles off, two cars were seen
approaching. These, as they drew nearer, proved to be Braxhall
belongings. The foremost, a pale blue limousine, was always sent to the
station to meet visitors, while the other, if necessary, brought maids
and luggage.
“That’s them,” observed Lady Bragge.
Sir Thomas cheered up.
“Just time for us to have a cocktail before lunch,” he said. “It takes
seven minutes to climb the road hill.”
Cynthia nodded and they retired indoors for refreshment.
Ten minutes later the bustle of arrival filled the marble spaciousness
of the entrance hall. Marian Clewer, active and handsome in her tussore
silk dust coat, paused in the great doorway, glancing about her with
appreciation. She loved coming to see Cynthia and could never visit
Braxhall without a sense that all her toil as a mother had not been
wasted. Lois, who followed her, cast glances which were less complacent
and more critical. With a thrill of inward repulsion she beheld Cynthia
and Sir Thomas descending the shallow stairs side by side. They evoked
in her mind a medley of exotic images: a magnolia and a peony . . . a
satyr and a naiad . . . a silver moon and a rubicund sun. She could
never see them together without an invasion of contrasting ideas.
They were very pleased to see Marian; her admiration for all their
possessions endeared her to them. To Lois they were cordial, as befits
kindred, but their geniality had a note of reserve in it. Despite their
saving insensibility, they had perceived that Braxhall did not impress
her as it should, and they distrusted her accordingly.
Marian kissed her younger daughter gravely and tenderly, and, in a lower
voice than usual, asked dear Tom after his gout. Cynthia was immediately
aware of something odd in her manner; a little of her customary
elasticity was gone. There was a hint of forced cheerfulness, of inner
trouble bravely endured.
“Something’s upsetting Mother,” she told Sir Thomas, when she had sent
her guests upstairs. “Did you notice?”
“No! I noticed nothing. She seemed quite cheerful, I thought.”
“Not a bit of it! That’s her smiling-but-resigned face. I know it.”
“I wonder!” exclaimed Sir Thomas in alarm. “I wonder if she got rid of
those rubber shares when I told her to. I do hope . . .”
“Oh, I shouldn’t think it’s anything like that,” said Cynthia decidedly.
“I can’t imagine Mother losing money!”
“Well, I’m sure I hope not,” said Sir Thomas. “You must try and get it
out of her.”
“Oh, she’ll cough it up fast enough. She’s just longing to, I expect.
But she wants to prepare us first by this graveside sort of
cheerfulness.”
“Well, pump her at the first opportunity.”
When Marian and Lois reappeared they all took lunch in the panelled room
used as a dining room until the banquet hall should be ready.
“I’m dying to see the frescoes,” exclaimed Lois as she helped herself to
stuffed olives. “Are they very lovely, Cynthia?”
Cynthia was silent for a few seconds. Then she said: “Well—I wouldn’t
call them lovely myself. I think they are perfectly hideous.”
Sir Thomas looked unhappy, and protested:
“Martineau saw the south wall when he was over here in the spring. And
he said that they were the finest bit of work, of the kind, ever done in
England.”
“If only they stand the climate!” observed Lois. “Hubert says . . .”
“They’ll stand it all right,” pronounced Sir Thomas. “You must remember
this new central dry-heating I’ve put in. It’s guaranteed to remedy the
defects of a damp climate. When you step into that hall, you step into
the Sunny South. It might be Italy. If no mural frescoes ever stood the
climate before, you’ve got to remember that there’s been no hall built
exactly to suit them, like mine is. Of course, it’s cost me . . .”
“If it’s never been done before, how do you know all this?” asked
Cynthia derisively.
“Now, Cynthia! You know that when I once tried to explain the apparatus
to you, you went to sleep. You don’t want me to begin all over again?”
“Mercy no! I only mean that you’re trusting pretty much to the shop, or
wherever it is you got it from, and they may be doing you.”
“Oh, indeed! They’d be sharp customers if they could do that. No! I’ve
been into the thing, I tell you, and——”
“What is the subject?” interrupted Marian.
“The Rape of the Sabines,” replied her daughter.
“The . . .?”
“The Rape of the Sabines.”
“Oh, surely not?” exclaimed Lois.
“You’re making a mistake, Cynthie,” said Sir Thomas. “It’s a Bacchanal.
You’ve mixed it up with those tapestries we got.”
“Oh, well,” said Cynthia, “it’s all the same thing really. A lot of
people prancing about with nothing on. I’m sure I wouldn’t know what it
was meant for.”
“I shouldn’t have thought a classical subject would suit James,” said
Lois. “What does he know about Bacchus?”
“Well, I don’t want to criticize,” said Marian, who liked nothing
better. “And I do think it’s very nice of you and Tom, Cynthia dear, to
give James this work. He must need it with all those little children.
But I can’t help feeling it’s a pity, in your lovely dining hall. I
think you should have got somebody really first class.”
“But, Mother,” protested Lois, “you don’t understand. It’s not because
they want to be nice to James that Tom and Cynthia are having the
frescoes. At least . . .”—realizing the painful candour of her
statement—“of course, it’s very nice for him. But, really and truly,
Hubert says there is no one to touch him in these large decorative
pieces!”
“Well, I don’t understand it,” said Marian. “I don’t see what Hubert has
to go upon. James never painted any frescoes anywhere before that I’ve
heard of. Sherry, please!”
“Ervine knows what he’s talking about,” asserted Sir Thomas. “If he says
James Clewer is the best man, I’m content to take it that he is. Where
I’m not qualified to judge, I’m content to take the opinion of an
expert.”
“But Hubert used not to admire James’s work,” argued Marian.
“James has improved a lot lately,” explained Lois. “Besides, all the
canons of artistic taste have changed so much lately. It’s the war, you
know,” she added vaguely. “Hubert says his experiences in the army have
influenced his ideas of art a lot. He says he feels he needs something
much more dynamic than he did before the war.”
This sounded so impressive that everyone was silenced, and Marian
concurred gravely with:
“Of course, the war has changed us all very much.”
The Bragges and their guests, munching their turbot, reflected for a
while upon the extent to which they had been changed by the war. Marian
at length observed that even poor James was a good deal altered. Perhaps
she meant that he was more dynamic, but she said:
“He’s improved a lot in looks. They made him hold himself so much better
in the army.”
James had joined the army with characteristic suddenness, while his
relations were still very busy discussing some light form of war work
which he could do. No feat of the imagination could transform him into a
British officer, and yet, what else could he be? John and Hubert were
already in training camps, and these deliberations had been carried on
mainly by the Ladies of Lyndon. It was in the summer of 1914, before the
rush for munition-making, and there really seemed nothing for it but to
put him into the Red Cross as an orderly. Marian thought that he could
carry stretchers, but Lois, who had got a First Aid Certificate and knew
all about such things, maintained that he could not.
Finally there came Dolly’s letter to Agatha with the news that James had
enlisted in the Wessex Fusiliers, along with several Kell cousins. While
he was at the Front Dolly let her house and went to live with her aunt
in Devonshire, so that Lyndon had seen very little of her. Lois caught
sight of her, briefly, in London about eighteen months later. She was
standing upon a pile of milk cans in Victoria Station, a child in her
arms, waving good-bye to a trainful of shouting, cheering men. Lois
learnt that James was in the train, returning after six days’ leave. She
realized that she had seen the trio entering the station some minutes
before, and, though finding their appearance vaguely familiar, had
failed to identify them. There were so many families who looked like
that. It struck her that the singularity of these relations of hers lay
in their absolute ordinariness, their embodiment of a type. James, in
his great-coat and with his bulky kit on his back, was no longer
conspicuously uncouth. He looked like every soldier who ever returned to
battle, and Dolly, his wife, in her undemonstrative fortitude, was like
all the women who saw their men go.
As she had nothing better to do, Lois took Dolly to a neighbouring
tea-shop, where they ate tepid poached eggs and tried to be civil to
each other. But they could not honestly feel that they had got very far.
Young Henry, James’s son, did not interest Lois. He was rather plebeian
looking, with scanty ginger hair; much too like all soldiers’ babies,
she thought. There had been, subsequently, two others, a girl and a boy,
also red-haired. Kell was evidently a dominant type.
When James was invalided out of the army with a permanently crippled
leg, he returned with Dolly to their cottage in Oxfordshire and began to
paint harder than ever. Nobody paid much attention to him until the
echoes of war had subsided a little. Then it appeared that he was being
talked about. Hubert went to a small exhibition of his work in some
obscure place or other and came home much disturbed. Hubert and Lois
began to speak a little carefully of James. Before long they had almost
managed to forget that they had ever spoken otherwise.
Cynthia and Sir Thomas completed this renovation of the family attitude
when they offered to James the work of decorating their banqueting hall.
They did this upon Hubert’s recommendation. Having approved of the
initial design they had departed for a long tour in the Riviera, leaving
the artist to perform the work. He had lodged, in the greatest luxury,
in the furnished part of Braxhall during the whole period, waited upon
by an army of servants, and with permission to get down any number of
models, if he wanted them, and quarter them upon Sir Thomas as long as
he pleased. Even a car had been left for him.
The work was finished and James gone before the owners returned from the
Continent. It was to celebrate the opening of the hall for practical
uses that Lois and Marian had been invited to Braxhall. They were the
first of a family house party collected for the occasion. A great
luncheon, to which half the County had been invited, was to take place
the following Thursday, when the hall was to be used for the first time
and the frescoes generally exhibited. Reflecting upon this party, Marian
asked anxiously whether James was to be present.
“No,” said Cynthia. “He can’t come, or won’t come, I don’t know which,
unless Dolly comes too. And Dolly can’t come without the baby, for a
very pressing reason.”
Marian raised her eyebrows delicately.
“How like Dolly!” commented Lois.
“I always did think her rather like a cow,” said Cynthia.
“Still, you know,” said the hospitable owner of Braxhall, “they could
all come if they liked.”
“Oh, no!” said Cynthia distastefully, “They look so like a family party
at the Zoo.”
Lois agreed. It was more than possible that the guests on Thursday might
find the frescoes a little hard to swallow. To meet the artist and
family, as well, might amaze them beyond recovery. It was really better
that James should lurk mysteriously in the background. Lois had already
begun to talk a little romantically about him and to hint at a “Bohemian
marriage.” She did not state, in so many words, that Mrs. James Clewer
had been a very capable housemaid, but people gathered that she had been
beneath her husband in station. It was supposed that she might have been
a model or a chorus girl. Lois did not enlarge upon Dolly’s extreme
respectability.
“Then who else is coming to stay here?” inquired Marian.
“John and Agatha and Mrs. Cocks come to-night.”
“And, by the way,” put in Sir Thomas, “I’ve invited that cousin of the
Cockses’ that doctor, what’s his name? . . . The shell-shock man . . .
Blair! I met him yesterday, coming out of the club, and told him about
the frescoes. He seemed interested; said he’d always been interested in
James and his work. So I told him to come here, and he’s coming
to-morrow, Cynthie. That’s all right, isn’t it? I told him that the
longer he stops the better pleased we shall be. There’s plenty of room
here, luckily.”
He paused, uneasily, for the three women had exchanged glances. They sat
stubbornly silent, and he asked again:
“That’s all right, isn’t it? A cousin of Agatha’s, and a good man at his
job. Peterson was talking about him the other day. He says that there
isn’t a man in Harley Street——”
“Oh, yes, I daresay he’s an excellent doctor,” said Cynthia coldly.
Marian irradiated discretion and changed the subject. But it would have
been obvious to the veriest dolt that she had been touched in a tender
spot. She began to inquire after the garden with a slight accentuation
of the gently martyred air which she had displayed on entering the
house. She was, obviously, hiding a wounded heart. Sir Thomas, baffled
as only a man among discreet women can be baffled, raised an eyebrow at
his wife. But Cynthia would not look at him. Inspired by his bad angel,
he followed up his first blunder by another and a worse.
“And how’s John been keeping these days?” he asked. “Heart not giving
him much trouble, I hope?”
This was, it appeared, a perfectly disastrous inquiry. Marian turned
pale, Lois crimson, and even Cynthia left off crumbling her bread and
coloured a little.
“You ain’t still anxious about it?” demanded Sir Thomas. “You should
make him see a specialist, a really crack man.”
“He has seen a specialist,” said Marian, with reproving dignity.
“Yes,” persisted Sir Thomas. “But has he seen a good one?”
“Naturally.”
“Because you ought to be careful what you are doing, you know. Can’t
play fast and loose with that sort of thing. I heard of a chap the other
day, young Baines, son of my friend Baines, up in Liverpool. He got
gassed, just like John, suffered with his heart, and what’s more, he
died of it. These poison cases are no joke, let me tell you.”
Marian glanced appealingly at Cynthia as if demanding how much longer
they were going to have to endure this sort of thing. Cynthia said:
“Hush, Tom. We all know that.”
“Well, the Bainses didn’t. I mean they didn’t wake up to the seriousness
of the thing until the poor chap collapsed. Of course, their doctor must
have been grossly careless, but there it is. And you know, Marian, all
these Talbots have rocky constitutions.”
“Thank you,” replied Marian, who had been sitting with compressed lips.
“You need not instruct me as to John’s health. I happen to have brought
him up.”
“If you’ve finished your dessert,” said Cynthia, “perhaps you’d like to
come down to the hall and look at the dadoes—I mean the frescoes. I’ll
have coffee brought there.”
They passed through the entrance hall and proceeded down a corridor
paved in black and white marble and panelled by long looking-glasses.
Folding doors upon the right led into the hall, and opposite them hung a
large portrait of Lady Bragge. It had been painted very recently by a
fashionable artist who could be trusted to do credit to Cynthia’s gown.
She wore her pearls, with a voluminous wrap of rose-pink brocade
slipping off her milky shoulders, and she carried an ostrich fan.
As the guests passed through the doors into the hall, Sir Thomas dropped
behind and whispered to his wife:
“What was the matter at lunch? What did I say wrong, eh?”
Cynthia shrugged her shoulders and replied coldly:
“I’m sure I don’t know.”
She walked into the hall and left him to his perplexities.
They entered under a minstrels’ gallery, hung with purple velvet, and
passed solemnly over the polished floor into the centre of the chamber.
A row of windows in the north wall gave a fine view of the Berkshire
Downs. Upon the wall opposite the frescoes unfolded themselves in three
tremendous panels, so complex, so strangely glowing, so crowded with
swift life, as to smite the perceptions with a sense of absolute shock.
Behind the dais at the farther end, where the banqueting table was set,
a fourth and still more violent panel suffered slightly from the oblique
light, but became clearer as they approached the dais step.
They all looked at the paintings for a very short time, and then hastily
removed their eyes and concentrated their attention upon the furniture
and fittings of the room. Even Lois had not the courage to study the
Bacchanal for long. There was something in the piece which abashed her
profoundly, but whether it was the incongruity of these shameless gods
of an older world in so modern a shrine as Braxhall she could not tell.
Anyhow, she was not equal to looking at them under the pained eye of her
mother, and she decided to come again when she could be by herself.
The furniture was scanty. Upon the dais stood the table, its sable
surface still innocent of the goblets and trophies which Sir Thomas
meant to put there. High carved chairs with cushioned seats stood round
it. But the rest of the hall was splendidly bare. Electric candelabra
hung at intervals from the richly moulded ceiling, and the windows were
draped, like the gallery, in purple velvet, blazoned with armorial
devices in gold thread. This gave the place something of the solemnity
of a ritualistic church in Lent. A gilded grating, about a foot high,
skirted the base of the walls round the entire room: this was part of
Sir Thomas’s dry-heating apparatus, whereby warm-air shafts were run up
behind the walls on which the frescoes were painted.
“We mean to keep it empty, like this,” explained Cynthia. “The table on
the dais will seat as many as we shall want in any ordinary way. We can
put up trestle tables in the rest of the hall on special occasions like
Thursday. But generally we shall keep the floor clear for dancing.”
“We’ve a first-rate Victrola up in the minstrels’ gallery,” added Sir
Thomas.
Lois glanced up and saw the top of it just visible over the purple
hangings. In the effort to stifle a sudden paroxysm of laughter, she
moved to one of the long windows and looked out on Berkshire. Sir Thomas
sighed, his eyes following her wistfully. He said with regret:
“I wanted stained glass, but Clewer wouldn’t have it.”
“We got a killing letter from Dolly when we were at Monte Carlo,” said
Cynthia. “She said she felt she ought to let us know that James was home
again, because a man had come here to see about the windows. Whereupon
James threw up the work and went home to Bramfield, saying he couldn’t
paint frescoes in rooms with stained-glass windows.”
“I’d half a mind to tell him he needn’t come back,” observed Sir Thomas.
“I wanted those windows. I’d an idea that I’d like a series,
allegorical, you know, showing the advances science has made during the
reign of Queen Victoria. Railroad, and telegraph, and photography, and
so on. But, as he was obdurate, I had to give it up. I was determined to
have the frescoes, so I had to let him have his way. Any one can have
stained glass.”
“That wasn’t the only thing he was tiresome about,” said Cynthia. “He
would put that wall into three panels when we wanted two.”
“Yes, we wanted two, with a plain division in between for Cynthia’s
portrait to hang on—that picture that’s hanging outside the door. I had
it specially painted to hang in this hall. But no! He wouldn’t hear of
it! Said he wouldn’t leave any space for the portrait anywhere.”
“It really might have been his house from the way he talked,” continued
Cynthia. “He had the portrait moved out of the corridor while he was
here, so that he shouldn’t have to see it when he came in and out of the
hall. He said something or other very violent about it—I forget what.”
“Jealous! That’s what it was,” chuckled Sir Thomas. “All these artists,
y’know! They all hate each other like poison.”
“It’s a great pity to have that lovely picture hanging outside in the
dark corridor,” said Marian regretfully. “But there isn’t room left for
it here that I can see, not in a good light. He’s filled up every inch
of space. But couldn’t you bring it in and put it on an easel, just at
the corner of the dais? I think pictures look rather nice on easels like
that. You could drape it or ornament it in some way.”
“Oh, no, Mother! That would be quite impossible,” expostulated Lois. “It
would be absolutely out of keeping with the frescoes and the whole hall.
It would look very foolish.”
“Well, perhaps . . .” said Marian. “But it seems a great pity. How
stupid of James not to have left any room for it! That’s just the reason
why it’s nice to employ relations, that you can ask them for those
little accommodations which you wouldn’t demand of strangers.”
She glanced once more, disapprovingly, at the riotous walls, with revolt
in her honest soul. She could not bear the frescoes; upon no panel could
she rest her eyes without meeting something which made her feel
uncomfortable. Nor was it the prevailing nudity which overset her, but a
kind of elusive familiarity which pervaded all these fleeing nymphs and
pursuing satyrs. They were very much more convincing than any Bacchantes
she had ever encountered before and their orgy was therefore more
embarrassing. They discomposed her as much as if they had been personal
acquaintances.
Cynthia was faintly aware of this too, but it did not distress her. On
the contrary she felt that the whole thing was rather daring, and, in
her indolent way, she liked to be daring. She savoured in advance the
faces of the County dames when asked to sit beneath these unhallowed
walls. Though persistently disclaiming any interest in the paintings,
she secretly found them diverting.
Sir Thomas was bewildered by a number of sensations, but clung with
determination to the most gratifying. He had a unique dining room.
Already in his mind’s eye he saw Braxhall and its frescoes as one of the
glories of England, a Mecca for American tourists. Of course, he thought
the paintings very indecent, but he understood that this did not signify
if the subject were classical. He had been similarly scandalized by
Botticelli’s “Birth of Venus,” when he first met it, and had lived to
learn that there was nothing the matter with it. He was always seeing it
in the most chaste interiors.
Lois was flustered. She contemplated these flaming manifestations of the
mind of James, and admitted to herself, in a spasm of honesty, that she
did not know what to make of them. She could not really tell whether
they were good or bad until she had heard what Hubert had to say. Hubert
had been away on a fishing holiday in Norway, and was not expected at
Braxhall until the evening before the party.
The clock in the tower above the hall struck four and they were all
amazed. Luncheon at Braxhall was always a lengthy meal, and to-day they
had been late. In half an hour tea would be administered to them among
the orchids in the drawing room. For this occasion a change of dress was
necessary and they all dispersed.
Later in the evening Sir Thomas sought his lady in her bower and testily
began:
“Now perhaps you’ll be good enough to tell me what was the matter with
your mother at lunch. You’ve been sitting with her long enough to find
out, I should hope. Is there anything serious wrong with Clewer’s
heart?”
Cynthia, who was rubbing orange stick on her nails, replied: “Yes. A
good deal is wrong according to Mother. She seems to be quite upset
about it. He may die at any moment, or something like that. Anyhow the
specialist took a very gloomy view of him. But mind you don’t talk about
it, for nobody is supposed to know.”
“Good God!” exclaimed Sir Thomas, in deep concern. “You don’t say so! Is
it his heart?”
“Yes, I think so. It leaks or does something. I’ve really forgotten
what. But you’d better ask Mother, if you want to know. She’s bursting
with details. I never can remember that sort of thing.”
“But can nothing be done?”
“Well, of course he ought to be taking great care of himself. Only she
says he won’t. Can you reach me those little curved scissors on the end
of the dressing table? Only you must be careful not to show you know
about it when he comes. He hates any fuss. He only told Mother in the
deepest secrecy because he wanted her to help him put his affairs in
order.”
“Dear! Dear!” murmured Sir Thomas, appalled by the practical bearings of
this detail. “That sounds bad.”
“I don’t know if it’s true, but Mother says that the specialist thinks
he can’t last more than a few months in any case. But she’s apt to
exaggerate. Of course, she went off and told everybody she could think
of, by way of keeping it a secret. Lois and Hubert have heard all about
it. But that’s neither here nor there. John mustn’t know that we know.”
“Can’t last more than a few months!” cried Sir Thomas. “Is that a
certainty, Cynthia, or is it merely a scare? He looks ill, but not as
ill as that. How much chance is there of his improving? Is it the effect
of the gas poisoning?”
“I really don’t know. You know what Mother is like; she’s very
mysterious and won’t tell you anything until you’ve asked a lot of
questions, and then she pours it all out. It always annoys me so much
that I don’t ask.”
“Well! Well! What specialist did he see?”
Cynthia reflected and then said:
“Mother did tell me, but I’ve forgotten. She said he was a very good
man.”
“Perhaps it’s just a scare,” said Sir Thomas hopefully.
“It might be,” replied his wife, without emotion. “You never know. But
Mother seems to take it pretty seriously.”
“You’re a cold-blooded little woman, Cynthie! You don’t seem a bit upset
about it.”
“I am very much upset. I think it’s most harrowing and all that.”
“Rough on his wife,” he continued after a pause. “How worried . . .”
Cynthia laughed.
“She doesn’t know anything about it, my dear Tom.”
“She doesn’t know?”
“No, indeed. And she mustn’t be told, what’s more. John is quite
determined about it. You should hear Mother on the subject! He says that
nothing will induce him to trade on his wife’s pity.”
“What the deuce does he mean by that?”
“How should I know? Only—if they don’t get on well . . .”
“Oh! Don’t they get on well?”
“Mother seems to think they don’t. And, by the way, you have dropped a
brick about asking that Mr. Blair down here.”
“Blair? Oh, yes! Now what’s the matter with him?”
“You’re generally more up in the family gossip.”
“Family gossip? What family gossip? Oh, there’s nothing in that old tale
about him and Agatha, surely?”
“I’m only going by what Mother says. I’ve not seen them together
personally; at least, not for ages. So I can’t pretend to have an
opinion. But she got the wind up that time in the middle of the war when
he was back in town after he’d had pneumonia or something. She says that
he and Agatha were never to be seen apart, and people began to think
there was too much of it altogether, considering John was away, don’t
you know.”
“But nobody seriously suggested that there was anything in it, did
they?”
“Don’t ask me what people suggested. You know perfectly well what they’d
be most likely to suggest. Anyhow, Mother was greatly relieved when he
went off to the Balkans, and she says she’s noticed that they seemed to
be avoiding each other when he came back. She thinks it’s a good thing
and is very furious that he is coming down here.”
“But—Cynthie—you don’t think . . .?”
“I’m sure I don’t know. I’m not in their confidence.”
“But they are bound to meet sometimes,” he argued. “And I should have
thought this was as safe a place as any, with your mother and hers in
charge, so to speak.”
“Oh, I don’t object to his coming. It’s Mother who’s afraid he’ll break
up the happy home. I’m sure I don’t mind one way or the other. Though
he’ll be a boring guest. I never could see anything in him myself.”
Sir Thomas thought it out and then said decisively: “She’s got too much
sense. She’ll never compromise herself. Not she!”
“I’ve always thought her too good to be true,” said Cynthia, “but I’m
inclined to think she’ll manage her affairs quietly.”
“Still, I don’t want any scandals, open or otherwise, in this house.”
“You can’t help it very well, now he’s accepted your invitation. I
expect it will be all right. I’m sure I hope so.”
“I’m not surprised at him, not at all. Poor chap! He isn’t the first,
and he won’t be the last, not by a long chalk. But she’s always been so
uncommonly discreet. He’ll be the first . . .”
He paused. Cynthia said nothing but looked disagreeable. “How do you
know?” she inquired at last.
“Oh, well, I should imagine so,” he replied lamely.
2
“My dear, what a place!” commented Mrs. Cocks. “Did you ever see
anything like it?”
She turned from her sitting-room window to a renewed contemplation of
the magnificence within.
“Yes,” said Agatha. “It’s rather like the home of a rich man in the
films. There is the same prevalence of orchids and little statuettes.”
“I never go to the horrid things, so the comparison doesn’t strike me.”
“You should see my lodging! John and I have a bridal suite, the grandest
you ever saw. All done in lavender silk with great bunches of lilac and
lilies of the valley. The bed in my room is as large as Dolly’s parlour
at Bramfield. I’m sure it is. Louis Quatorze, so Cynthia tells me. They
were spacious days. Four people could easily sleep in it without
discommoding each other.”
“They often did,” said Mrs. Cocks, in an interested voice. “This notion
that even two are something of a crowd is quite a modern idea. I was
reading the life of Mme. de Montespan the other day and it struck me
forcibly what much more sociable habits they had. You should read that
book, Agatha; it would amuse you. Tell me, have you pictures of Highland
cattle in your sitting room?”
“No. We have a Greuze and two Brangwyns. The Highland cattle are only
temporary. The furniture shop supplies them with the suite and they are
put up until Sir Thomas has collected some genuine works of art to
replace them. Your rooms can’t be quite finished yet.”
“Oh, I see! Well, I’m glad they begin with creature comforts. I can do
very well with the cattle, and I appreciate all this luxury.”
“Do you? It surfeits me. I shall return to Lyndon singing ‘Be it never
so humble . . .’”
“Ah! You care very much for Lyndon, don’t you?” said Mrs. Cocks quickly.
Lately she had felt in need of reassurance concerning her daughter’s
happiness. She liked to hear Agatha speak of her possessions with an
inflection of pride or joy. Agatha nodded an assent and stared out of
the window, her fingers drumming restlessly on the sill. Mrs. Cocks
remarked with irritation that her hands were growing a little thin.
“Yes,” agreed Agatha. “My wedding ring has had to be made smaller.”
After a pause she added:
“I do love Lyndon. Living in this house makes me realize how much I love
it. When I’m at Lyndon I have a feeling sometimes that it doesn’t matter
what follies we perpetrate because it will survive us. It was made by
more sensible people than we are. And sensible people will live there
again some day.”
“Dolly and James, or their descendants, will live there some day,” said
Mrs. Cocks significantly.
“Well, they are the most sensible people I know,” returned Agatha. “By
the way, I’m going over to see them to-morrow; I must say good-bye to
them before I go to Scotland. Will you come?”
“I positively must write letters the whole of to-morrow,” said Mrs.
Cocks, shaking her head. “Otherwise I should love to see their
household. I can’t picture it at all.”
“Oh, it’s funny, but exactly what you would expect. Dolly has a girl in
to help her with the Monday washing, and does all the rest of the
housework herself. And there is an army hut in the garden, with glass
panels in the roof, which James uses as a studio. Dolly tells me she’s
only been inside it once in three months, and that was when she thought
Henry had swallowed a button and wanted the doctor fetched in a hurry.”
“But what does he do when he isn’t painting?”
“Oh, he digs in the garden in the evening, in his shirt-sleeves, and he
gets a bath on Saturday night, so I understand. And on Sunday he puts on
his best suit and takes Dolly to chapel.”
“Aren’t you touching it up a little, Agatha?”
“Indeed I’m not. Come and see for yourself. And he never paints on
Saturday afternoons, or Sundays, or bank holidays.”
“Then the _ménage_ is entirely run by Dolly?”
“Absolutely. The house is Dolly’s house. He has accepted her ideas of
domesticity _en bloc_. I gather that the only thing they ever fell out
over was a dispute about a hat. She wanted him to go to chapel in a
bowler, like any other Christian, and he flatly refused. He said a
bowler hurt his head. They became very acrimonious about it until Dolly
realized that no bowler on earth would fit so large a skull. So she got
him a Trilby hat, which perches very oddly on the top of his head, and
all was peace.”
“But one would have thought that his artistic temperament must have
rebelled in some way against this life. It’s so humdrum!”
“It seems to suit him. They’ve got the usual little sitting room with
lace curtains, and an aspidistra and a horsehair couch, and ‘The Soul’s
Awakening,’ and a plush tablecloth, and china children in gilt swings on
the mantelpiece. I don’t think he regards them as ornaments at all. He
simply sees the whole as an expression of Dolly. And, as he’s devoted to
her, he doesn’t object to it.”
“I don’t understand it.”
“I do and I don’t. I can see how harassed he’d have been with a wife who
had any pretensions to taste; who went in for peasant pottery and
Russian linen and expected him to react. But still, I get puzzled. I
haven’t looked properly at those frescoes in the hall yet, because Lois
would keep talking about El Greco, and I had to attend to her. But when
I think of them, and then think of James sitting in his parlour with
such visions in his head, I just gasp! He must be so absolutely
independent of externals. Accidental surroundings, I mean, like
wall-papers. But I suppose that his upbringing partially explains it.
Lyndon was so uncongenial to him that the whole of his essential
character was developed in spite of his education and not because of it.
His abnormal contra-suggestibility is the result of his attempts to
protect himself.”
Mrs. Cocks recognized an exotic word and knew at once where it had come
from. She looked at her daughter long and critically. In that lovely
person and countenance she perceived sufficient cause for uneasiness. A
shade less beautiful than formerly did Agatha appear. There was a
certain sharpening of feature: the eyes were shadowed. Something of the
bloom had gone. Agatha had never, at any time, advertised happiness in
her carriage. But she had been, serene and now was untranquil. Sombre
sometimes, and then feverishly animated, she had lost her poise. And she
was growing thin. To her mother’s anxious heart these portents boded the
premature decay of a youth which had bloomed too early.
“Malt and cod-liver oil,” she muttered from the depths of her
reflection.
Agatha laughed, divining the chain of thought which led to such a
remark.
“What! In the middle of the summer? And at my age?”
“Your age! It’s nothing. You’re a baby still. However, I don’t think
this is a very healthy place, although it stands so high. It must be
enervating or something, for nobody here looks well. John especially.”
Agatha’s face hardened.
“John is quite well, I think,” she observed.
“Well, I’m glad you think so, for he doesn’t look it. But they all seem
to be out of sorts. Cynthia blooms, of course, but poor old Sir Thomas
is dreadfully melancholy at times. He struck me as being in very low
spirits indeed at lunch to-day. Did you notice those enormous sighs he
kept heaving? I was quite sorry for him. And as for Lois, she looks
terribly pinched and haggard.”
“I don’t think she has been very well just lately,” observed Agatha with
a sigh.
“Hasn’t she? Well, and isn’t that very unusual with her? And Marian is
the worst of the lot! What on earth is the matter with her? Why does she
persist in looking as if she were bearing up only for our sakes?”
“I don’t know at all. I think she’s annoyed about Gerald coming.”
“Gerald? Gerald Blair? He’s not coming here, surely?”
“Yes. He’s coming this evening in time for dinner, I believe.”
Mrs. Cocks could not conceal her dismay.
“What for?” she said.
“You’d better ask Sir Thomas. He asked him. To see the frescoes, I
suppose. How long is it till tea? I think I’ll explore these woods a
little. I feel stifled in this house. . . .”
A few minutes later Mrs. Cocks watched her running down the terraces
into the valley. She crossed the stream by a wooden footbridge and
paused long upon it, regarding the slow, innocent flowing of the water.
Then she wandered on and was lost among the trees, walking with the
listless impatience of a mind in conflict.
Mrs. Cocks turned from the window and paced the room, possessed by many
perfectly reasonable fears. Her anxiety was no longer to be stifled. She
was convinced that she had already ignored these symptoms of nervous
upheaval longer than was safe. She could not continue to tell herself
that all this was merely the result of the war, of four years’
protracted strain. It might be true, but it was not to the point. As she
watched that restless figure walking among the trees, she had realized
fully that the issue now lay, not with causes, but with possible
consequences.
Two days at Braxhall had been sufficient to show her that the young
Clewers were at odds with one another and with life. It was obvious,
moreover, that the trouble had been going on for some time and was
working to a cumulative crisis. Agatha could scarcely speak to or of her
husband save with a kind of suppressed exasperation, while John was
uniformly morose. Under these conditions the advent of Gerald Blair must
be regarded as an appalling catastrophe. Nothing could have been more
unlucky.
Mrs. Cocks had stoutly refused to listen to those veiled fears which
Marian would have imparted to her two years ago, before Gerald removed
himself to the Balkans. As Agatha’s mother she was bound to declare that
there was nothing in it. But she knew in her heart that there was plenty
of cause for alarm. No one could have been more deeply disturbed than
she: no one had been more inclined to fear that these two were on the
verge of loving each other again. She was forced, for her peace of mind,
to look upon the affair as a proof of Agatha’s levity rather than as a
symbol of constancy. Ignoring the possible effects of her own
strategical error in sending him down to Lyndon in the spring before the
war, she told herself that Agatha, in her husband’s absence, was finding
entertainment in the revival of an old flame. Agatha was not, evidently,
framed by nature to be a grass widow, but she would settle down when
John came back.
John’s demobilization, however, had worked no miracles. And Mrs. Cocks
was beginning to gauge, for the first time, the strength of Gerald’s
“upsetting ideas.” He had really succeeded in imbuing Agatha, to a
certain degree, with views which, for want of a better word, she was
forced to call socialism. She had traced to his disturbing influence a
volcanic notion which had seized Agatha in the spring of 1918. This had
been the wish to do some very hard work. Agatha, whose war activities
had always been of the lightest, insisted suddenly upon a twelve-hour
day in a canteen, a phase which had lasted nearly three weeks and which
had only ended with the inevitable physical collapse.
And now, as the mother paused, uncertain as to her wisest course, but
determined that someone must be spoken to and something must be done,
Marian Clewer knocked at her door and invaded her with that air of
forced cheerfulness which was beginning to exasperate everyone in the
house. Mrs. Cocks purposely ignored it, a fatal mistake, for a very few
sympathetic leads from her would have drawn from Marian the whole tale
of her anxiety about John. And, as she herself said afterward, of
course, if she had known that . . .!
“Well, Marian,” she began brightly. “This is the first time I’ve really
seen you since we arrived. What a magnificent place it is!”
Praise of Braxhall brought a real gleam of pleasure to Marian’s brow, as
she seated herself a little heavily by the window. She looked round her
with contentment.
“It is a very lovely place, isn’t it?” she said. “It makes me very
happy, every time I come here, to see Cynthia so comfortably settled.
It’s a wonderful thing, Ellen, to feel that one’s daughters are
absolutely happy in their marriages. Of course, it’s given to few.”
“It is,” agreed Ellen, scenting an attack. “By the way, how is Lois? I
don’t think she’s looking quite up to the mark.”
Marian beamed triumphantly as she acquainted Mrs. Cocks with the nature
of Lois’s indisposition.
“Of course, nobody knows of it yet,” she said. “Lois and Hubert are
quite delighted. And so am I. At our age there is a great satisfaction
in being a grandmother, isn’t there?”
“Of course, you don’t count James’s children,” parried Mrs. Cocks at
once.
“Well, no. A stepson isn’t quite the same thing. Besides—one’s
daughters . . .”
“If Cynthia ever has a family, there will be plenty of room for them in
this house,” observed Mrs. Cocks, who knew very well that Cynthia would
have nothing of the kind.
Marian ignored this thrust and continued:
“I’m so especially glad for Lois because there is no doubt that she and
Hubert do have their little differences.”
“No doubt at all,” said Mrs. Cocks promptly.
“Though, of course, they mean absolutely nothing. An ideally devoted
couple! Still you know that sort of thing, trivial things in themselves,
of course . . . in time are apt to become serious. And children smooth
them out so. They take a young couple out of themselves. I was very
sorry that Lois didn’t begin much sooner. I think it’s the greatest pity
. . . however . . .”
“When do you expect . . .?” interrupted Mrs. Cocks.
“Next March.”
“I’m very glad; especially when you are all so pleased.”
“I have, I suppose, a great deal to be thankful for. Though of course I
have troubles. . . . Still it would be terrible to feel that either of
my daughters was unhappily married. I can imagine nothing more frightful
for any mother. Where is Agatha, did you say?”
“Gone for a walk, I believe.”
“She does not look well. I was quite shocked when I saw her; really, I
hardly like to say it, but she is losing her looks rather, poor girl.”
“Oh, she needs a change. London gets stuffy. Scotland will set her up.”
“Yes, yes! It will be a good thing to get her right away up to Scotland.
Ellen, I’m most distressed that Mr. Blair is coming here. Believe me, I
knew nothing about the invitation until it was too late. I would
certainly have stopped it if I could. But Tom, ignorant of the
particular reasons against it, invited him without telling us.”
“I don’t think you need worry about that. I don’t think I know of any
particular reasons against it,” replied Mrs. Cocks stiffly.
“Don’t you really?” asked Marian. “Personally—of course I’m given to
plain speaking—personally I think it’s the greatest pity Agatha should
see much of him while she is in this unsettled state.”
“I don’t think you need trouble about Agatha. It is quite natural that
she should be very much attached to Gerald, though I know I have never
succeeded in explaining this to you. They are cousins and were brought
up together. Practically brother and sister.”
“But there was never anything more? No engagement of any kind?”
“There was certainly no serious engagement. There was the usual kind of
boy and girl flirtation, perhaps. But you must know, with daughters of
your own, how ephemeral such things are.”
“I’m glad to say that I’ve had nothing of the kind to deal with in the
case of my own daughters.”
“Really?” said Mrs. Cocks. “Oh, well, perhaps not. No!”
Her smile infuriated Marian, who added: “But then, they both have great
natural discretion.”
“So has Agatha,” returned Mrs. Cocks hotly. “But with any one so
attractive there are bound to be these little episodes. One gets to take
them for granted. After all, Marian, even if he is still rather
obviously _épris_, he isn’t the only one, is he?”
“Perhaps not. But still I think it’s a pity he should be coming here
just when poor John——”
She checked herself, but Mrs. Cocks took her up:
“Poor John! I don’t understand this ‘poor John’ attitude which you have
all adopted. You seem determined to make a martyr of him: to suggest
that Agatha doesn’t treat him properly.”
“Agatha makes no secret of the fact that she doesn’t care a rap for
him.”
“Has she said so to you?”
“No! Of course not. But her manner to him . . .”
“She has never been demonstrative in public. I should be sorry if she
was.”
“But it isn’t only in public.”
“How do you know? Don’t you think that you are drawing upon your
imagination?”
“No, I’m not. She has been quite changed toward him ever since he was
demobilized. She can hardly be called a wife at all.”
And Marian supplied details which, if true, left little doubt as to the
gravity of the young couple’s estrangement.
“How do you know all this?” demanded Mrs. Cocks. “You only can know from
one source. John has obviously been complaining to you. If he does that,
instead of managing his matrimonial affairs for himself, I can quite
understand Agatha’s feelings.”
Marian began to be aware of her own rashness, for her statements had no
positive foundation. They were based upon assumption only—inferences
drawn from a few bitter remarks made by John when he was arranging with
her for the disposition of his affairs. She began to think that she
ought to go and see Cynthia about the table decorations for Thursday.
“Then Agatha has said nothing to you?” she parried feebly, as she got to
her feet.
“Agatha is too loyal,” said Mrs. Cocks grimly. “She would never complain
of her husband.”
Marian, having eased her bosom of some of her furniture, departed. She
left a sadly discomposed mother. Mrs. Cocks was aghast, furious, and
convinced that instant action was imperative. All her vague anxiety had
been turned into indignation: she felt that John was unpardonable.
Previously she had been inclined to pity him, though not very much. So
great was her estimation of Agatha’s attractions that she could not
really think of him but as an uncommonly lucky man—nearly as lucky as
her own husband had been. Still it must have been a little trying to
return from the Front to a lady in so irritable a temper. But this
whining to his stepmother put him out of court. No high-handedness on
Agatha’s part could justify it. He must be made to feel that wives are
not kept thus.
Resolved to lose no time she set off at once in search of him and had
the good fortune to locate him alone in the billiard room. Closing the
door firmly behind her and seating herself with decision, she opened
fire:
“Now, John! What’s all this trouble between you and Agatha?”
“Why should you think that there is trouble between us?” inquired John.
He stood stolidly before her, so still and unblinking that she began to
wish he would fidget.
His question disconcerted her. She could not say: “Because your
stepmother said so,” without betraying Marian’s confidence. She was too
loyal to her own sex to acquaint any man upon earth with the
indiscretion of another woman. She replied:
“Well, it’s obvious.”
“I suppose it is,” he said slowly. “But Agatha has said nothing to you
herself?”
“Nothing. I think she would think it disloyal.”
She hoped this indirect shaft would go home. But John was reflecting
deeply with bent brows. At last he said:
“Well, I haven’t an idea what the trouble is. Agatha is the only person
who does know, I should think.”
His eyes were feverish and weary, and it struck her that he was a very
bad colour. He certainly looked ill, but an aggrieved note in his voice
hardened her heart against him. She saw quite clearly now that his calm
assumption of possession must be shaken. He must be made to see that he
stood in danger of losing Agatha altogether; and if the idea was
unpleasant to him, it was no more than he deserved. Anger blinded her to
the perils of the course she had chosen. She had really persuaded
herself that a little jealousy would be very good for him—would wake
him up to the fact that he had a wife worth fighting for.
“Well, of course,” she began, “though she’s said nothing to me, I have
formed my own opinions, and I think I’d better tell you what they are. I
feel that a great deal is at stake for you and Agatha just now; the
whole happiness of your after lives perhaps. No! Don’t interrupt me, but
listen! You must put up with a little plain speaking, my dear boy. I
think you and Agatha have got to the critical phase when—how shall I
put it?—the—the honeymoon stage of married life is over. The only
strange thing is that it should have lasted so long. Very few couples, I
should imagine, preserve their first ardour for eight years. But you’ve
been exceptionally lucky.”
“I don’t quite see what you are driving at. I haven’t changed. I love
her as much as ever I did.”
“Quite so! And you think that is a sufficiently good reason why she
shouldn’t change either. That is so like a man! I believe you all regard
a woman’s passion as something like electric light, to be switched on
and off as you want it. Don’t you think that you’ve been taking her a
little too much for granted? Because nothing, let me tell you, is more
fatal where a woman of her temperament is concerned. I know, because she
is very like me. You must never let her feel that you don’t regard her
as a prize and a privilege. For goodness’ sake, sit down! It bothers me
to see you standing like that.”
He fetched a chair and carefully sat down opposite her. She continued
deliberately:
“I expect you know that you won her from another man.”
“What’s that?”
“Oh, hasn’t she told you? Funny girl! It’s quite true. There was a
schoolroom attachment which gave me a good deal of uneasiness at one
time. Of course, she forgot it all very comfortably when she met you.
But I mention it now because I think you should realize, with a girl
like Agatha, that these old flames are always just a little dangerous.
Especially in a matrimonial cross-roads like that which you are facing
now. Unless you can manage to keep your hold on her . . .”
“I like this! You talk as if marriage has no obligations, Mrs. Cocks.
I’ve been a perfectly good husband to Agatha, and I’ll thank her . . .”
“Technically, John, she’ll always be a perfectly good wife to you: you
know that quite well. I’m not discussing her principles. But the heart,
you see, cannot be bound. No person on earth can undertake to stay in
love. If you want her to do that you must rely upon yourself and not
upon the obligations of the marriage service. I’m saying all this
because, as he is unfortunately coming here . . .”
“He! Who?”
John’s face was gray.
“Gerald Blair. That’s the man I’m talking about.”
“Blair! Blair! What has he to do with all this?”
“Nothing. Except that, as I say, you won her from him once. He is, I
think, beginning to interest her slightly again. And I want to point out
to you that it is probably your fault. You haven’t been taking
sufficient pains to interest her yourself. When you marry a woman like
Agatha you must live up to her. My dear boy, don’t go that colour!
There’s nothing serious in this affair. D’you think I’d have spoken of
it if there was? To you, of all people? No! I only regard it as a
symptom that she feels you have been taking her too much for granted.”
“How long has this been going on?” he said, staring at her sombrely.
“Oh, my good John! Nothing has been ‘going on.’”
“Blair!” he said again. “Blair!”
Mrs. Cocks began to wonder if this were not altogether too much of a
good thing.
“You say they were engaged?”
“Wanted to be engaged. It all blew over completely. Only lately . . .”
“No,” he said, “not lately. Longer ago than lately. . . . I’m beginning
to see it now. . . . Yes, of course. . . .”
“There I’m sure you are wrong. It’s only since the war.”
“No. It was before the war. There was that time he came down to Lyndon.
I remember.”
“You are making too much of it,” began Mrs. Cocks anxiously. “There
could have been nothing then, I’m certain.”
“She had a photograph. . . .”
“What photograph?”
“Of herself and Blair. In a tin locket. Taken at a fair or something,
she said.”
“Oh, that fair! I remember! But she was hardly out of her cradle then.
Only sixteen or thereabouts. I packed her off to school.”
“She kept the photograph.”
“Sentimental creature!”
“She isn’t sentimental. I’d think nothing of it if she was.”
Mrs. Cocks pulled herself together.
“All this is nonsense, John. There could have been nothing that time
before the war. She was on perfectly good terms with you, wasn’t she?”
“She seemed to be.”
“If I’d thought you were going to take it this way I would never have
spoken. I thought you had more sense of proportion.”
“I’ve been blind! . . . Blair! And that’s why, oh God damn it all,
that’s why she’s always sneering at me for being too rich!”
“Too rich?” echoed Mrs. Cocks blankly.
“Yes, too rich. She’s got very socialist lately, don’t you notice?”
“Well, she has said some very strange things. But I thought it was this
house which had got on her nerves. I never could see that she objected
specially to spending money on herself.”
“Nor I. But I couldn’t remember where I’d heard these views before. I’ve
got it now.”
“Yes, he has strange ideas. And she has always been influenced by them
to a certain extent. After he went to the Balkans, that time when they
had been seeing a good deal of each other . . .”
“What time?”
“Oh, that time in the war, after he had had pneumonia. You remember,
surely?”
“I don’t. I was at the Front, unfortunately.”
In the ensuing pause Mrs. Cocks began to grow desperate.
“Well,” said John, “when he went to the Balkans, what did she do?”
“Oh, nothing. Only worked in a canteen: but I felt he put her up to it.
It’s no use looking like that, John. I merely wanted to show you the
sort of thing that is liable to happen if you let Agatha get out of
hand. If you insist upon taking it _au grand sérieux_ you’ll simply have
trouble. And, above all, try to remember that nothing is more likely to
exasperate her than the idea that she is being discussed and criticized.
Family criticism is a deadly thing.”
“I agree with you.”
“Make love to her, as you used to do, and she’ll forget all about him.
In a year’s time you will laugh at all this.”
John did laugh, a little unpleasantly, and she began to feel that
nothing she could say further would improve matters.
“That was tea, that gong,” she observed. “Are you coming?”
“No. I think I’ll go fishing.”
“John, you realize that if I thought there was the slightest danger of
her caring seriously for Gerald I would never have spoken to you?”
“Yes, I see that. I quite believe you think there’s nothing in it. But
it’s opened my eyes to some things that have puzzled me. You can’t live
with a woman, and be fond of her, and not know when she’s got something
on her mind. It’s my belief that she’s loved that fellow all along.
Except for a very short time when I swept her off her feet.”
“I’m sure you are mistaken. And even if it were true, John, it’s no use
putting it into words like that. It’s a great pity. She’s married to you
and must make the best of it.”
“She is and she must.”
He held the door open for her, and she gave up the attempt to reason
with him. She was uneasy and almost sorry she had spoken. She had wished
to bait him a little; to brace him up by suggesting that he had a rival.
She had not supposed that he could be capable of any desperate jealousy;
his self-confidence was too genuine for that. But she thought that a
small attack upon his complacency would be good for him. He must be made
to realize his own extreme good fortune in being “most damned in a fair
woman.” For Mrs. Cocks held the views of a lady who is beautiful, gently
nurtured, bred to claim homage as her due, heiress of all the
achievements of civilization and profoundly ignorant of its basic
brutalities.
A few phrases, caught as she crossed the ante-room, restored her belief
in herself. Through the open door came the emphatic voice of Lois:
“. . . and if it’s only half as pronounced as it was in London, two
years ago, it’s enough to kill poor John outright.”
Lois and Cynthia fell suddenly silent at her entrance, and as she sipped
her tea she felt that she had, on the whole, done very wisely. It was
true that John had taken her words far more seriously than she had
intended, but if the whole family were discussing the affair like this
it was obvious that he must hear of it sooner or later, and she was glad
that she had got in her say first. Braxhall, as she saw it, contained a
good deal of inflammable material. She had little doubt of her
daughter’s ultimate discretion and had genuinely persuaded herself that
the affair was, for Agatha, a mild sentimental adventure. But she was
deeply alarmed at the possibilities of family gossip in such a house.
Reviewing her three young people, as she grasped them, she thought that
they should not be hard to manage. Here was John, aggrieved and
resentful, his petulance continually inflamed by the ardent sympathy of
his stepmother. Agatha was obviously more than a little bored and ready
to grasp at an occasion for emotional entertainment. Gerald, she
supposed, was like nothing so much as a fluttering moth, drifting
helplessly back to his cradle, despite the counsels of prudence.
Altogether the situation, spiced by the malice and inaccuracy of the
other ladies, had the makings of a very fine explosion. There would
certainly be wigs on the green if a woman of tact and determination had
not, by heaven’s grace, been upon the spot.
She was right, as far as she went, but she had the misfortune to gauge
the emotions of her protagonists at far too low a point of intensity,
misled by the understatements of modern speech. Disturbances which she
beheld as embryonic had already reached the most sinister proportions;
her trio were rushing together, doomed to inevitable impact. She knew
nothing of the misgivings, the sense of inward betrayal, with which
Gerald Blair had accepted Sir Thomas’s invitation. She could not guess
his resolution, faithfully kept since his return from the Balkans, to
see his cousin no more; or how that resolve had been overthrown by a
chance report that Lady Clewer was looking miserably ill and unhappy, an
idea which gave him such anguish that he was constrained at last to end
it by coming to see for himself.
Likewise she underrated the effect of her bracing counsels upon her
son-in-law who was, at that moment, lashing the trout stream in a mood
which rang all the changes upon despair and fury. Of the three, indeed,
Agatha was the least discomposed and the least deserving of compassion.
She was still able to disguise to herself the nature of her own
feelings. For her the mere prospect of seeing her cousin again, after a
long separation, had so much of pleasure in it that she was able to
postpone the thought of ultimate issues. She knew that he had avoided
her since his return to England; she believed that she knew why. She had
applauded his wisdom and grieved over its cruelty. Now that he had
inexplicably changed his mind she was able to stifle apprehension in her
gladness that he had done so. She walked about the woods until she was
tired and then returned to Braxhall. Finding that the hour was still
early, she lay down with a book upon a sofa near the window. There, half
hidden in a haze of cigarette smoke, she was found by her husband on his
return to the house.
John, during the interval by the river, had become an angry man. In the
first shocked perception of the truth he had been too much stunned for
emotion. He had stated the facts with a sorrowful calm, seeing them too
clearly to be resentful. But this spasm of insight was shortlived. An
accurate realization of any truth is generally followed by a mood of
bitter rebellion against it, and in such a mood he sought his wife. She
roused herself to greet him with that conscientious friendliness of
tone, that manufactured interest in his affairs, which so deeply
exasperated him.
“Well, what have you been doing?”
“Fishing.”
“Did you catch anything?”
“No.”
“How tiresome for you,” she murmured, and waited a moment.
As he did not seem to be inclined to talk she returned to her book. At
the end of a couple of minutes, aware that he had not moved, she glanced
up at him again. He was looking at her with some earnestness. She asked:
“Did you want anything?”
“No.”
“Is anything the matter?”
“No.”
“Sure it isn’t the Scotch express?”
She referred to a difference of opinion which had occupied them earlier
in the day, concerning the time and route of their journey North. She
felt that she had been obstinate and was sorry for it. Half consciously
she gave him that swift, upward smile with which she had been wont to
reduce him. It reached him now, in his trouble, like a mirage, a hint of
unsubstantial bliss. He was consumed by his need of her, by the
impossible hope that she would love him again and help him to escape
from all this grief and fury, the uneasy, insecure present, and the
implacable menace of the future. He fell on his knees at her side and
would have taken her in his arms, but she recoiled.
“I only wanted to make up,” he pleaded almost humbly.
“I know. You have only one way of making up our disagreements and I find
it monotonous.”
The heavy fog of rancour, which had momentarily lifted, clouded his mind
again. He turned from her and stood looking out of the window. It was as
though he had met the full shock of his own doom for the first time—had
received his first inkling of life’s impermanence. A man of sufficient
courage and small imagination, he had taken the doctors’ verdict with
equanimity. The thought of death was very disagreeable to him, but it
had no appalling significance. He had seen it often enough, and had
faced it continually, as a matter of course, for four years. He did not
wish to leave a world which he found very pleasant, but he was protected
by that providential egoism which shields most normal people. He had no
real conception of the universe going on without him. His agony at the
thought of relinquishing his wife had been tempered by his inability to
imagine her continued existence after his own dissolution.
But now the merciful veil was torn from his understanding and he was
learning the vanity of all property. A sense of possession had informed
his entire attitude toward his surroundings; his love for Agatha was
permeated by it. And this sense was outraged by the realities forced
upon him. He grasped his limitations, knew that he would lie forgotten,
senseless clay, while she, the living woman now before him, would pass
into the possession of another man. It was one thing to know that she
might marry again; it was another to imagine her married to Blair. His
spirit could not submit to such a possibility, and yet he knew that he
was helpless.
A car was climbing the long hill, and the sound of its approach floated
distinctly through the open window. Agatha heard it and was transformed,
glowing warmly, for she knew that it brought her cousin. It was an
instant’s self-betrayal, but it revealed her to John, who had turned
sharply and marked the fleeting radiance. He left her immediately,
unable to trust himself in speech.
She dressed for dinner hastily and went down to the marble corridor
leading to the hall. Gerald was there and she watched him for a moment
unperceived, as she stood at the turn of the stairs. He looked very
uneasy, as though he had arrived by mistake into this sanctuary of the
sleek, the idle and the luxurious. His bearing was that of a stranger in
a strange land, and he was having a look at Cynthia’s portrait with a
public gallery expression on his face.
She decided that she would take him with her to see Dolly and James. He
would like their household. It would be nice to take someone there who
found it as admirable as she did. In another second she would call to
him, and see him start, and turn and smile at her.
“Did you arrive in your evening clothes?” she said.
He did not start as much as she had expected, having braced himself for
this encounter so tremendously that nothing could quite take him by
surprise. But he was a little pallid as he came toward her.
“No,” he said, “I didn’t. But I changed in record time. I thought it was
later than it is.”
They sat down together on a carved settle and plunged into the instant,
eager conversation of their youth. She tried to describe to him the
frescoes in the hall. The effort overset them both, and their mirth,
floating upward, greeted the other inmates of Braxhall as they descended
the stairs in procession.
3
She took him over to Bramfield the next day. Dolly heard the car turn
into the lane and was at the gate to welcome them. She was not much
changed since the days of her Clewer servitude. Her figure was broader,
perhaps, but her hair still shone with its old flame and her freckled
face was comelier than ever. Henry and little Agatha clung to her
skirts, while in her arms she held Jimmy, her youngest.
“Well, Agatha,” she cried, as she kissed her sister-in-law, “you are a
stranger! I thought you were never coming to see us again. But you’ve
been busy, I expect. Sonny! Kiss your Auntie, you bad boy! It’s funny
how he hates it: thinks he’s too old. How do you do, Mr. Blair? I’m very
pleased to see you. You will be staying at Braxhall, I suppose?”
“I was wondering if you’d remember me,” said Gerald, as he shook hands.
“I should think I did,” Dolly assured him. “You came to that lecture Mr.
Ervine didn’t give, in the Lyndon Reading Room. I remember. Shake hands
with Mr. Blair, children.”
She took them up the garden path, pausing to allow them to admire the
lilies and hollyhocks in the small beds.
“Yes,” she agreed, “they are a sight. We got second prize at Bramfield
show last year, in the cottage garden competition. I always said we
might of got first, if James hadn’t spent so much time on the vegetable
marrows. He was quite gone on them, and couldn’t attend to nothing
else.”
“And they didn’t count?”
“Not as flowers, they didn’t. They are vegetables, you see, Mr. Blair.
We had one was the biggest in three parishes. I told James about a young
fellow I knew that grew a prize marrow and carved a verse of a hymn on
the rind. ‘God moves in a mysterious way,’ it said. And when the marrow
grew, it grew. James would have it that he must put something on ours.
So he drew out a picture: Jonah sitting under a gourd, like in the
Bible. But as the marrow got bigger it went sort of crooked, and spoilt
it. He was vexed about it.”
“How is he?” asked Agatha.
“Very well, thank you. Though his leg pains him now and again. He’s apt
to get rheumatism into it. He’s working now, so I won’t call him, if you
don’t mind. But he’ll be in for tea, and he’ll be ever so glad you’ve
come. If I’d known, Agatha, I’d have made drop scones. And I’d have put
Sissy into that frock you sent her. I do think it’s lovely. I don’t know
wherever you got that nice embroidery. I never saw anything like it
before.”
“I got it at the Russian shop in the Brompton Road.”
“Oh, Russia! I expect they do lovely work there. But tell me, do you
think it’s all true what it says in the papers about these Russians?”
“It can’t be all true,” began Gerald at once.
“That’s what I say. It sounds awful! James read me a bit out of _John
Bull_ last Sunday that said there wasn’t a house left standing, not a
man, woman nor child left living, where the Red Armies had been. And
then we read some more in the _Daily Herald_, only this time it was
about the White Army. And James said: ‘Well, but isn’t that the other
side?’ And I told him you can’t believe everything you see in the
papers.”
“It’s very difficult,” agreed Agatha thoughtfully. “It’s broadminded of
you, Dolly, to take _John Bull_ and the _Daily Herald_. We only take the
_Times_.”
“Well, we don’t get time to read the paper every day. But we do a bit on
Sunday. Come into the parlour, won’t you? I do believe you’ve not been
here, Agatha, since we bought the gramophone.”
“No, I haven’t. Dolly, how exciting! What did you do that for?”
“James got it for my birthday. That is it.”
“But it’s a beauty! These cabinet ones are so much the nicest.”