“I’m not cruel. I only want us to see things together. I don’t really
think they’d ever come to that; and, at all events, he would never know
that they had.”
“But I should,” Mollie said.
“Yes, you would. And it’s horribly true that real things can be spoiled
and blighted by false things. I’ve often seen it happen. You do see the
danger, and you must take up the burden, my dear, of being cleverer than
your husband, and save him along with yourself. If Vera were what she
looks and seems to him, he might be right in feeling that he found in
her something he couldn’t find in you. You must show him that she isn’t
what she looks and seems and you must show him that you can be a
first-rate paradise, too.”
“In a little flat in Bayswater! On a chicken-farm! No, it can’t be done.
Paradises of this sort don’t grow in such places,” poor Mollie moaned.
“You can keep up the real paradise in them--the one he has already--when
you get there. The point is that you must show him now that you can look
like this one here. And the way to look it is to dress it. I’m sure
you’ve realized the absolutely supreme importance of dress for women of
the paradise type--the women you see here, all these sweet ministering
angels to the Tommies and the young husbands. I don’t mean to say that,
with the exception of Vera, they’re not as nice as you are in spite of
being well dressed; but I do mean that if they dressed as you do they’d
not be women of the paradise.”
Mollie’s hands had fallen, and she was gazing again with eyes childlike,
astonished, and trusting.
“But, Judith, what do you mean?” she asked. “Dress? Of course you all
dress beautifully. Haven’t I loved simply looking at you all, as if
you’d been the most exquisite birds? But how could I do it? I haven’t
the money; I never have had. If one has no money, one must be either
æsthetic or dowdy, and I’ve always prefered to be dowdy.”
“Yes, I saw that; I liked you for that. There’s hope for the dowdy, but
none for the æsthetic; the one is humble, and the other is complacent.
Your clothes express renunciation simply--and the summer sales. But
though it is a question of money, some women who have masses of money
never learn how to dress. They remain mere dressmakers' formulas; and
others, with very little, can’t be passed by. They count anywhere.
You’ve noticed my clothes. I’ve hardly any money, yet I’m perfect. All
my clothes mean just what I intend them to; just as Vera’s mean what she
intends, and Mrs. Travers-Cray’s and Lady Dighton’s, and Milly’s, for
Milly already is as clever as possible at knowing her thing. But you’ve
abandoned the attempt to intend. You’ve sunk down, and you let the winds
rake over you. You’ve always made me think of a larkspur, that blue and
silver kind, all pensive grace and delicacy; but you’re a larkspur that
hasn’t been staked. Your sprays don’t count; they tumble anyhow, and no
one sees your shape or colour. Last night, for instance--that
turquoise-blue chiffon: not turquoise, and not that sort of chiffon.”
“I know it. I hated it,” she said.
“Of course you did, and so does any one who looks at you in it.”
“But I couldn’t afford the better qualities,” she appealed. “And in the
cheaper ones I couldn’t get the blue I wanted, the soft Japanese blue.”
“No, you couldn’t. And you thought it wouldn’t show if you had it made
up on sateen. It always does show. No, it needs thought and time and
computing, too much time, too much thought, to say nothing of too much
money for many women, of course; for them it wouldn’t be worth it. There
are other things to do than to live in paradise. But for you it is worth
it; to show him that you can look like an angel, and to show him that
Vera can look like a cat. No, _I’ll_ show him; mine is the
responsibility. It’s worth it, at all events, to me. I’ll put in the
stakes, and tie you and loop you and display you. You’ll see. I told you
I’d a clever little dressmaker. That’s an essential. And we’ll scrape up
the money. You shall be dressed for once as you intend.”
She was bewildered, aghast, tempted, and, on the top of everything,
intensely amused. Her face was lighted as I’d never seen it before with
pure mirth, and it looked like still, silver water that becomes suddenly
glimmering, quivering, eddying, and sunlit. She was charming thus
lighted. It was a sort of illumination of which Vera’s face is
incapable; her gaiety is always clouded with irony.
“It is all too kind, too astonishing, too funny for words,” Mollie said.
“Of course I should love to be well dressed for once, and I can’t see
why I shouldn’t avail myself of your little dressmaker now,--especially
now, since, as you tell me, I offend through my dowdiness. And I do
really need some new clothes. I’m wearing out my trousseau ones, you
know. Yes; wasn’t it a horrid little trousseau? But, don’t you see,” and
the sunlight faded, “I can’t be a real, not a real angel, not a real
paradise. It’s much deeper. It’s a question of roots. It’s the way they
smile, the way they walk, the way they know what they want to say and
what they don’t want to say.”
I nodded. “You know, too, and you’d say it, if people saw you and cared
to hear what you said.”
“That would help, of course. I’ve never felt so stupid in my life as
here. But, oh, it’s deeper!” said Mollie. “I don’t belong to it. How
they all make me feel it! I’m an outsider; and why should I pretend not
to be?”
“It wouldn’t be pretending anything to dress as you’d like to dress. No
one who _sees_ is an outsider now a days, if they can contrive to make
themselves seen. That’s the whole point. And there’s nothing you don’t
see. You see far more than Vera does. Don’t bother about the roots. Take
care of the flowers, and the roots will take care of themselves; that’s
another modern maxim for you. Your flowers are there, and all that we
need think of now is how to show them. Wait. You’ll see. We’ll go to
London to-morrow,” I said; “and this very evening we’ll have a talk
about your hair.”
* * * * *
You may be sure that I was on the spot to see a week or so later my
larkspur’s début as an angel. We were all assembled in the drawing-room
before dinner, and she was a little late, as I, not she, had intended
that she should be. It was precisely the moment for a mild sensation.
The day had been hot and long. Everybody, apart from being anxious,--for
everybody was anxious, Sir Francis and Mrs. Travers-Cray with sons at
the front and Lady Dighton’s husband in the Dardanelles--apart from that
ever-present strain, everybody to-day was a little jaded, blank, and
tired of one another. There reigned, as a symptom, that silence that in
the moments before dinner falls sometimes upon people who know each
other too well for surmise or ceremony. They stood about looking at the
evening newspapers; they picked up a book; they sat side by side,
knitting without speaking. Vera, sunken in a deep chair near my sofa,
yawned wearily. No one, in fact, had anything to look to before bedtime
except the stimulant of the consommé or a possible surprise in the way
of sweets.
I had known that I could count upon Mollie not to be self-conscious when
she appeared in her new array, but I hadn’t counted upon such complete
and pensive simplicity. Her eyes were on me as she entered, her husband
limping behind her, and they seemed to ask me, with a half-wistful
amusement, if she came up to my expectations. She far surpassed them. I
never saw a woman to whom it made more difference. “It,” on this
occasion, was blue--the blue of a night sky and the blue of a sky at
dawn, the blue, too, of my larkspurs, lapping at the edges here and
there, as delicately as filaments of cloud crossing the sky, into white.
It made one think, soft, suave triumph that it was, of breezes over the
sea at daybreak and of a crescent moon low on a horizon and of white
shores and blue Grecian hills; at least it made me think of these
things, it and Mollie together; and with it went the alteration of her
hair--bands of folded gold swathed round and round her little head. No
one but myself had ever seen before that Mollie had the poise and
lightness of a Tanagra figure nor that the shape of her face was curious
and her eyes strange and her skin like silver; but I knew, as she
advanced down the long room, that Vera, sunken in her chair, saw it all
at last, drank in every drop of it, with an astonishment that, though it
expressed itself in no gesture, I was able to gauge from her very
stillness, her concentration of stillness, as she watched the relegated
becoming visible at last. It’s not pleasant for anybody to have to own
that they’ve been blind and made a mistake, and Vera was specially fond
of discovering oddity and charm and of claiming and displaying and
discussing a discovery. And here was oddity and charm which she had not
only failed to discover, but had helped to obscure. Mollie was indeed
visible, and every eye was on her as she drifted quietly forward in the
evening light and sat down beside me. She was mine, and no one else’s;
that was quite evident, too.
That Captain Thornton had received something of a revelation was also
evident, though it had not probably amounted to more than seeing, and
saying, that Mollie was looking awfully well; but it expressed itself in
the fact that, instead of joining Vera, as was his wont, he came and sat
down next to Mollie on my sofa. We began to talk, and, though the
watching pause was prolonged for yet another moment, the others then
began to talk, too. It was as if, not quite knowing what had happened to
them, they were all a little cheered and exhilarated; as if they’d had
their consommé and as if the sweet had been altogether a surprise. A
spectacle of any sort has this effect upon a group of jaded people. Only
Vera kept her ominous silence.
Dinner was announced, and we all got up. Percival, with a new alacrity,
approached Mollie,--he almost always had Mollie,--the others paired off
as usual, and Vera rose to Captain Thornton’s arm. It was then that she
said, smiling thoughtfully upon Mollie:
“Aren’t you doing your hair in a new way, dear?”
I saw from Mollie’s answering smile that she was still ingenuous enough
to hope that she might win Vera’s approval with that of the others, the
hope, too, that while Clive might think of herself as a first-rate
angel, he should never see Vera as a cat.
“It is new,” she said. “I’ve just learned how to; Judith showed me. Do
you like it?”
Leaning on Captain Thornton’s arm, Vera, with gently lifted brows,
rather sadly shook her head.
“I suppose I don’t care about fashions. It’s very fashionable, isn’t it?
But I loved so that great, girlish knot. People’s way of doing their
hair is part of their personality to me. Judith cares so much about
fashion, I know. Do you care about fashion, Captain Thornton? Do you
like this fashionable way? You know, I can’t help always thinking that
it makes women’s heads look like cheeses; in napkins, you
know--Stiltons.”
It was the first scratch. Mollie, though with a little startled glance,
took it with all mildness, making no comment as Percival led her away,
Percival remarking that it was, he thought, a ripping way of doing her
hair; and I, as I went out manless, heard Captain Thornton, behind me,
saying, in answer to Vera’s murmurs:
“Yes; I see; I see what you mean. But, do you know, all the same I think
it’s most awfully becoming to Mollie. It brings out the shape of her
face so.”
“What a _dear_ little face it is!” said Vera, rapidly leaving the
cheese.
It all worked like a stealing spell. There was nothing marked or sudden
in it. No one, I think, except Vera, was aware that his or her attitude
to little Mrs. Thornton had changed. She had become visible, that was
all, and they became aware that she was not only worth looking at, but
worth talking to. At dinner that night old Sir Francis fixed his
eye-glass to observe her more than once and after dinner he joined her
in the drawing-room and talked with her till bedtime. It turned out
then that he had known her father and actually possessed one of his
pictures; had been a great admirer. Next morning he was walking with her
on the terrace before breakfast. Mollie in a blue lawn, as sprightly as
it was demure, her casque of golden hair shining in the sunlight. Lady
Dighton asked her that afternoon to come motoring with her and the
Tommies, and in the evening I heard Mrs. Travers-Cray, while she and
Mollie wound wool together, telling her about her two boys at the front.
The only person who didn’t see more of Mollie was Captain Thornton; but
that, I felt sure, was because Vera was determined that he shouldn’t.
It was not for a day or two that I was able to compare notes with
Mollie.
“Well,” I said, joining her on the terrace before dinner, “_ça y est_.”
“It’s extraordinary,” said Mollie. “Everything is different. I myself am
different. I feel, for one thing, as if I’d become clever to match my
clothes. It would be almost humiliating to have the mere clothes make so
much difference and every one change so to me unless I could really feel
that I’d changed, too.”
“You’re staked. I told you how it would be.”
“And I owe it all to you. It’s a wonderfully sustaining feeling to be
staked; secure, peaceful. Such a funny change, Judith, is little Milly!
Have you noticed? She came up to me when I was walking this afternoon
and linked her arm in mine, and in ten minutes was confiding in me all
about her perplexed love-affairs, as if we’d been old friends.”
“Yes, she would. She loves to tell people about her love-affairs.”
“But I couldn’t have imagined that she was really so ingenuous; for, in
a sense, she is ingenuous.”
“Exceedingly ingenuous when she isn’t exceedingly sophisticated; I think
one often sees the mixture. The only thing you must be prepared for with
the Milly type is that in a week’s time she may forget that she ever
confided in you and, almost, that she ever knew you. Her ingenuousness
is a form of presumptuousness.”
“Yes, I think I saw that. I’m beginning to see so many things--far more
things than I’ll ever have use for on a chicken-farm, Judith.” And
Mollie laughed a little.
“And what does your husband say?” I asked.
“Well, I’ve not seen much of him, you know. But I’m sure he likes it
awfully, the way I look.”
“Only Vera won’t let him get at you to tell you so.”
“Oh, he sees enough of me to tell me so,” said Mollie, smiling: “only it
takes him time to come to the point of saying things, and it’s true that
we haven’t much time.”
“And she hasn’t given you any more scratches before him?”
“Not before him.” Mollie flushed a little. “It _was_ a scratch, wasn’t
it? I don’t think he saw that it was.”
“He will see in time. And it’s worth it, isn’t it, since it’s to make
him see?”
“Yes, I can bear it. She’s rather rude to me now when he isn’t there,
you know; but it’s really less blighting to have some one see you enough
to be rude to you than to see you so little that they are affectionate.
Yet I hope she won’t be too rude.”
“She can hardly bear it,” I said.
It was the next morning that Vera showed me how little she was able to
bear it. She had kept me singularly busy, as if afraid that I might wave
a magic wand even more transformingly, and she came into the study where
I was writing invitations for a garden-fête in aid of the Red Cross
fund, and after giving me very dulcetly a long list of instructions, she
went to the window and looked out for some silent moments at Mollie
sauntering up and down with Sir Francis under the blue bubble of her
parasol.
“I suppose you dressed her when you took her up to town that day,” she
then remarked.
I had wondered how long Vera could keep under cover and I was pleased to
see her emerge.
“Well, hardly that,” I said, marking off with my pen the names of the
people on my list who were away and not to be counted on for help with
the bazaar. “She badly needed some clothes and couldn’t afford expensive
places; so I took her to my little woman. She was able to carry out
Mollie’s ideas perfectly. She has charming ideas, hasn’t she? She knows
so exactly what suits her.”
“Carry out her ideas? She hasn’t an idea in her head. Carry out yours,
you mean, you funny creature. I can’t conceive why you took the pains to
dress up the deadly little dowd.” Vera drummed with her fingers on the
window-pane. Mrs. Travers-Cray had joined Mollie and Sir Francis, and
they sat down in a shady corner of the terrace. Mrs. Travers-Cray,
sweet, impassive, honey-coloured woman, was one of the few people for
whose opinions and tastes Vera had a real regard.
“Oh, you’re mistaken there, Vera, just as you’ve been mistaken about her
looks,” I said, all dispassionate limpidity. “She has heaps of ideas, I
can assure you, and I saw it from the beginning; just as I saw that she
was enchanting looking.”
“Enchanting! Help! Help! That little skim-milk face, with those great
calf’s eyes! Who is the poor dear martyr thing who carries her eyes on a
plate? St. Lucia, isn’t it? She makes me think of that--as much
expression. You may have succeeded in making her less of a dowd, but
you’ll never succeed in making her less of a bore.”
“Well, Mrs. Travers-Cray doesn’t find her a bore,” I remarked, casting a
glance of quiet, satisfied possessorship at the group outside.
“Oh, Leila always was an angel,” said Vera, “and your little protégée
has made a very determined set at her.”
“Sir Francis is an angel, too, then. He delights in her; that’s
evident.” It was perhaps rather indiscreet of me to goad Vera like this,
but I could not resist taking it out of her and rubbing it into her, and
I knew that Sir Francis would vex her almost as much as Mrs.
Travers-Cray. “And look at Milly,” I added. “You can’t say that Milly is
an angel. The fact is that Mrs. Thornton is a very charming young woman,
and that if you don’t see it you are the only person who doesn’t.”
“Another person who doesn’t see it is her husband,” said Vera. She was
determined not to show that she was angry, but I could see how angry she
was. “Sir Francis, of course, old goose, thinks any one charming if they
are young and dress well and look at him with appealing eyes. It is her
husband I’m really sorry for. It’s evident that he never spoke to a
civilized woman in his life till he came here. He doesn’t show much
signs of finding his wife interesting, does he? Poor fellow! It’s
pitiful the way men fall into these early marriages with the first
curate’s daughter they find round the corner. And now that she’s pushing
herself forward like this, he is done for.” Vera, I saw, was very angry
to be goaded so far.
“Surely she is the more interesting of the two,” I blandly urged.
“Neither of them has a spark of ambition if it comes to pushing; they’ll
be quite happy on their chicken-farm. But if it were a question of
getting on and getting in with the right people, it would, I imagine, be
she rather than he who would count. This last day or two has made that
evident to my mind. In her soft, strange way little Mollie is unique,
whereas he is only an honest young soldier, and there are thousands more
just like him, thank goodness!”
Vera at this turned her head and looked at me for a moment. After all,
even if I wasn’t angry, I, too, had given myself away. And it evidently
pleased her to recognize this--to recognize that she wasn’t being
worsted merely by Mollie’s newly revealed charm, but by my diplomacy as
well. And it is rather a good mark to Vera, I think, that I don’t
believe it ever crossed her mind for a moment that she had the simplest
method of speedy vengeance in her hands--had simply to send me packing.
Of course we should both have known that to use such a method would have
been to reveal one’s self as crude and vulgar; yet a cattish woman who
is very angry may easily become both. Vera didn’t. There are things I
always like about her.
She took up now one of my lists, and while she scanned it said, smiling
with cousinly good-humour:
"Ah, but you can hardly expect me to look upon you as a judge of that,
Judith darling--how much a man counts, I mean, and how much he doesn’t.
You are so essentially a woman’s woman, aren’t you? I suppose it’s just
because you are so crisp and clever and unromantic that men don’t feel
drawn to you, foolish creatures! So that you never get a chance, do you,
of finding out anything about them except their way of brushing their
hair and the colour of their ties. You’re a first-rate woman’s woman, I
grant you, and you’re very clever and you’ve succeeded in foisting your
little friend on silly Sir Francis and on Leila Travers-Cray, and it’s
all rather dear and funny of you, and I’ve quite loved watching it all
and seeing you at work; but you won’t succeed in foisting Mrs. Thornton
on her husband, and he’ll hardly give you an opportunity of finding out
whether he’s anything more than an honest young soldier. I have found
him,"--and Vera now spoke with a simple candour,--“quite, quite a dear;
with a great deal in him--sensitiveness, tact, flavour. So much could
have been made of him! I, in my little way, could have taken him up and
started him. But what can one do for a man who has a wife who doesn’t
know how to dress without help and who will push herself forward? No;
I’m afraid Mrs. Mollie, after she’s left your hands, Judith dear, will
tumble quite, quite flat again. _Would_ you mind, darling, getting all
the invitations off to-day? We mustn’t be slipshod about it. And don’t
forget to write to the merry-go-round man, and to Mark Hammond to see if
he’ll sing.” So, having delivered what she hoped might be a somewhat
stinging shaft at my complacency, Vera trailed away.
If I hadn’t so goaded her I don’t believe, really, that she’d have taken
the trouble that she did take to prove herself right and me wrong. There
had been, before this, little conscious malice or intended unkindness.
But now the claws were out. During the next day or two it at once
justified and infuriated me to watch the manifold little slights and
snubs of which poor Mollie was the victim, the dexterity with which,
while seeming all sweetness, Vera essayed to belittle and discompose
her, to display her as ignorant or awkward or second-rate. Only a woman
can be aware of what another woman is accomplishing on these lines, and
though Captain Thornton once or twice showed a puzzled brow, her skill
equalled her malice, and he never really saw. I was prepared for it when
Mollie came to my study one morning and shut the door and said:
“I’m afraid I can’t stand it any longer, Judith.”
“It has been pretty bad,” I said. “She’s been so infernally clever,
too.”
“Our time is really nearly up,” said Mollie, “and I’m trying to think of
some excuse for getting Clive to feel we’d better go before it comes.
Only now she’s telling him that I am jealous of her.”
Pen in hand, I leaned back and looked up at my poor little accomplice.
This, I recognized, was indeed Vera’s trump-card, but I certainly hadn’t
foreseen that she would use it.
“Has he told you so?” I asked.
“Oh, no, he wouldn’t. He couldn’t, could he? But I know it. Men are very
transparent, aren’t they, Judith? He is always urging me to see more of
her, and telling me that she is so kind, so clever, such a dear, and
that I’d really think so, too, if I’d try to see more of her. And when
I say that I’m sure she is, and that I hope I shall see more of her, he
thinks--I can see it--that I’m only playing up, and between us, her and
me, he is rather wretched and uncomfortable. What shall I do, Judith?
You saw the way at tea yesterday, when she was talking about pictures,
she was really sneering at father’s, and when I tried to
answer,--because I felt I had to answer about that,--making me seem so
rude and sullen. Clive knows nothing about pictures; so he didn’t
understand. And it’s all the time like that. I have to pretend not to
see and be bland and silent; or, if I try to answer, she turns
everything against me.”
“Be patient. Give her a little more time,” I said. “She’ll run to earth
if you give her a little more time.”
“But it is so horrid, between Clive and me, Judith: if I say what I
think to him, he will only see it as jealousy, so even with him I have
to pretend, and it makes me feel as if I were growing to be like her,
and I can’t bear it.”
I meditated while poor Mollie dried her eyes, to which the irrepressible
tears had risen. “Ask him if he can’t arrange for you to see more of
her,” I said presently.
She looked at me with a general trust, yet a particular scepticism.
“But she will make that seem as if I were trying to force myself on
them; because she’s always with him, isn’t she?”
“Only now because she keeps him, not because he wants to stay. I’m quite
sure that he wants to be more with you. I think you can manage it,
Mollie. Just say, when he next urges: 'Oh, but I’d love to, Clive. Only
you must tell me when. Perhaps sometime you’d take me to the
dream-garden when you think she’ll be there and that she’d care to have
me, and then, when you get us started, you could leave us. You could go
and take Judith for a stroll.' Something of that sort.”
She eyed me sadly and doubtfully.
“I’ll try whatever you tell me to try, but I feel afraid of her. I feel
as if she cared, really cared, to do me harm.”
“She’s been proved wrong,” I said, “and I’ve rather rubbed it in; but at
the worst, Mollie, she can never harm you now as there was danger of her
doing. It’s better, far better, you’ll own, for your husband to think
you’re jealous and a naughty angel than for him to think you’re a
second-rate one.” With this aphorism, for the time being, she had to be
contented. I myself felt sure that the hour of reckoning was to come.
It was next afternoon, after lunch, Vera being engaged in the
drawing-room with visitors, that I met Captain Thornton on the lawn with
his wife. Mollie was very large-eyed and rather pale, and I inferred
from her demeanour that she had taken a step or made a move of some
kind.
“Do come with us, Miss Elliot,” said Captain Thornton. “I’m just taking
Mollie along to the dream-garden. She wants to have a little talk, all
to herself, with Lady Vera, and Lady Vera told me to wait for her there
till these people were gone; so it’s just the thing. And you and I can
leave them together, do you see? People never get really to know each
other unless they are alone together, do they?”
“No, they don’t,” I replied. “Though sometimes they never get to know
each other when they are alone together,” I couldn’t resist adding; but
as I saw a slight bewilderment on his honest face I indulged in no
further subtleties, and made haste to add, “Does Vera know that you were
going to arrange a meeting?”
“Oh, not a bit of it. That’s just the point,” said the guileless young
man. “I want her to think that it’s all Mollie’s doing, you know;
because she’s got it into her head that Mollie doesn’t really care about
her. Funny idea, isn’t it? As if Mollie could be like that to any one
who’s been as kind to us as Lady Vera has! But I’m sure that if they
have a few quiet talks it will all come right. Mollie is so
undemonstrative; I told her that. It needs time for her to get used to
anybody.”
Mollie, her arm within her husband’s, cast across his unconscious breast
a grave, deep glance upon me as he thus quoted his defence of her. What
was she to do with Vera, the glance perhaps asked me, too, now that she
was to have her? What account of the interview would Vera serve up to
Clive? Was not her last state to be worse than her first? I tried, in my
answering glance, to reassure and sustain, yet I myself felt uncertainty
about this fulfilment of my counsel.
We reached the dream-garden. Vera and Captain Thornton had been there
for most of the morning, and books and papers were piled on the seat
where the grey and purple cushions denoted attitudes of confident
tête-à-tête.
Captain Thornton and I talked about the war, and I saw, with a mild,
reminiscent irony, remembering Vera’s sting, that he was perfectly
prepared to give me every opportunity for judging him. I felt, indeed,
though Vera had so absorbed him, that he had never cared to talk about
the war with her. She and the other angels were there to help one to
forget, but with me he was glad to remember. It was I who heard Vera’s
swift footfall approaching. Captain Thornton, stooping to mark out with
books and pencils the plan of a battle, had, I think, almost forgotten
the coming interview, and until Vera appeared among the cypresses,
flushed above her pearls, he remained unaware. She stood there at the
top of the steps for a moment, looking down at us, at Captain Thornton
and me, our heads so close together, and at Mollie in her blue and with
her unrevealing little face, and I saw from her expression, as she took
us all in, that she had not been succeeding so well with Captain
Thornton as Mollie and even I had feared. It was a smouldering
irritation against him that flared up with her anger against Mollie and
me.
“Oh!” she said, a dreadfully significant monosyllable on Vera’s
competent lips. It expressed surprise and weariness and the slight
embarrassment of the civilized confronted with the barbarian. “Oh!” she
repeated, and she descended the steps, Chang trotting after her with his
countenance of quizzical superciliousness. “I’m so very, very sorry.”
She did not look at any of us now; her voice was exceedingly
inarticulate and exceedingly sweet. “I’m afraid there’s been a mistake.
It’s the other gardens that are for my friends. I’m charmed always to
see them there. And there are so many other gardens, aren’t there? But
this is my own dream-garden, my very own; for solitude, where I come to
be alone. One must be alone sometimes. I get very tired.”
We had, of course, all risen, Clive staring, while, still with those
weary, averted eyes, Vera softly beat the desecrated cushions and shook
them into place.
“It’s my fault,” Clive stammered. “I mean--I didn’t understand. I
thought you and Mollie could have a talk here. She wanted to get to know
you better, and I suggested this.”
Vera had sunk down in her corner, patting her silken knee, so that Chang
sprang up upon it and settled down among the pearls. “I’m very, very
sorry,” she gurgled, with oh, such vagueness! “It’s my one corner. My
one place to be alone. I don’t see people here unless I’ve asked them to
come.” She took up a review and opened it, and her eyes scanned its
pages.
We were dismissed,--“thrown out,” as the Americans say,--and we
retreated up the steps, Mollie helping Clive, and down the flagged path
and out into the lime-tree alley.
It was a display so complete that it left me, indeed, a little abashed
by the success of my manœuvres, while at the same time I felt that I
mustn’t let Captain Thornton discern the irrepressible smile that
quivered at the corners of my mouth. When we were out on the lawn he
turned his startled eyes on me.
“Really, you know, I’d no idea, Miss Elliot--what?” He appealed to me.
“That Vera could lose her temper?” I asked.
Clive continued to stare.
“It comes to that, doesn’t it? What else can it mean?” He looked now at
his wife. “To speak like that to you, Mollie! And when she’s been saying
she wanted so awfully to make real friends with you.”
Mollie, I saw, was dismayed. The triumph had been too complete. She
could not keep up with it.
“I am sure that Lady Vera is very badly overwrought about something,”
she said. “She wanted particularly to be alone and she found us there,
and it put her on edge.” Actually she was trying to patch up his fallen
angel for him.
“But she told me to wait there for her.--Sent me off to wait for her
when those people came,” said Clive. “It seems to me that it was you she
minded finding. And yet she’s been going on about your never coming to
talk to her. She’s been going on about it like anything.” He caught
himself up, blushing, and I saw that Vera was all revealed to him. I
hardly needed to pluck another pinion from her, though I didn’t resist
the temptation to do so, saying:
“You see, Vera is rather jealous. She can’t bear sharing things--her
friends of her dream-garden. She liked to have you there, but she didn’t
like to have Mollie there. Did she tell you she wanted to make friends
with Mollie? She’s never taken any pains to show it, has she?”
“Oh, please, Judith!” Mollie implored.
“But he sees it all now, Mollie, so why shouldn’t I say it?” I inquired.
“Her point has been, Captain Thornton, to keep you in and to keep Mollie
out, and she very nearly succeeded in doing it.”
“Please, Judith! It’s not only that. She’s been such a real friend to
you, Clive! I’m sure she is overwrought about something, and it will be
all right when you next meet her.” But Mollie pleaded in vain.
“I’m hanged if it will be all right!” said Captain Thornton.
Vera made no attempt to reinstate herself. It was part of her strength
never to try to recover what was lost. She kept up appearances, it is
true, but that was for her own sake rather than in any hope, or even
wish, to regain his good opinion. When we all met at tea, she came
trailing in, with Chang under her arm, and as she sank into her place,
diffusing the suavest unconsciousness, she said to Mrs. Travers-Cray:
“Charlie Carlton’s been killed, have you heard? This war is something
more than I can bear.”
Charlie Carlton, as I knew, was a cousin of the recent callers and a
most remote friend of Vera’s; but it was the best that she could do for
the occasion, and all that she was inclined to do, though a melancholy
smile, as impersonal as it was impartial, was turned more than once on
Captain Thornton and Mollie as she inquired whether they liked sugar in
their tea or had enough cream. She had made their tea for six weeks now,
and after the first week she had never forgotten that they both liked
sugar and both disliked cream. But she thus washed her hands of intimacy
while keeping up the graces of hostess-ship. They might have arrived
that afternoon.
Mollie and her husband rose beautifully to the situation, for their last
two days at Compton Dally; that is, Mollie rose, for the husband at such
times has only to follow and be silent. I don’t think that she could
have shown a grace and a distance as achieved as Vera’s had it not been
for those charming clothes of hers. You must have something to rise from
if you are to float serenely above people’s heads; otherwise you merely
stand on tiptoe, very uncomfortably. Mollie and Vera might have been
two silken balloons, passing and repassing suavely in the dulcet summer
air. And on the last day Vera’s sense of dramatic fitness prompted her,
evidently, to the most imperturbable _volte-face_: she showed to Mollie
a marked tenderness. To Captain Thornton she was kind, perfectly kind,
but that she found him rather dull was evident. It might have been
Mollie with whom she had spent all those hours in the dream-garden.
“Must you really go, dear?” she asked.
Mollie said that she was afraid they must. She had heard from her aunt,
who was waiting to take them in, and, owing to all Vera’s kindness,
Clive was now quite strong again. Vera did not insist.
“I’ve _so_ loved getting to know you!” she said, holding Mollie’s hand
at the door of the motor on the morning of their departure. “It’s been
_such_ a pleasure. You must often, often come to Compton Dally again.
_Good_-bye, dear!”
But Mollie knew, and Vera knew that she knew, that never again would
they be asked to Compton Dally. Meanwhile, if the war isn’t over and
Jack hasn’t come back, I’m to go and stay with them next spring on the
chicken-farm.
[Illustration: decorative bar]