My mother is changed--not horrid, but quite changed. She goes out nearly
every morning at ten, with Aunt Gerty, whose manners are worse than
ever, and who has a little chuckling, cheerful way of going about that
simply irritates me to death! There is a secret, evidently, and George
and I are out of it. It brings us together. He is not happy, no more
than I am, no more than Mother is. She is excited, not happy. She has
taken to wearing her mouth shut lately; once we used to tease her
because she kept it open, and looked always just as if she were going to
speak, or had done speaking. But Mother is a good woman. Although she
gads about so much, she doesn't neglect her household duties. She sees
after George's comfort as much as ever, and keeps all onions out of the
house as usual. The more she fusses over him, the less he likes it. He
shook his head once, when Mother had tidied his writing-table for
him--it took her two hours--and then he said half-laughing, "A bad sign,
Tempe! Read your Balzac."
I don't read Balzac, and I don't know what George means. I don't try,
and I find that is the best sort of sympathy one can give. At any rate,
he likes it, and he is always having me in his study, and teaching me to
type-write, and saying little things, like that I have put down, under
his breath. He mutters a good deal to himself, not to me, and wants not
so much some one to talk to, as some one to talk at.
We hear no more of Lady Scilly. She has not been here since Ariadne was
married. Ariadne was an excuse. Mother never gave her an excuse to come
to see her, she had never accepted her, or been rude to her either. She
simply ignored her. So Lady Scilly not having Ariadne to come and fetch,
had no particular reason for coming to us, unless she came to see
George, and she could have seen him more easily at "The Hutch" or her
town-house, till quite recently. She used to come here about her novel,
but most uncomfortably, for Christina was a sad dragon, and looked down
her nose at her. Christina could curl her nostril really, which very few
women can do. It is a horrid thing to have done at you, and withers you
soonest of anything. Now the novel is finished, and the type-written
copy, tied up like Christmas meat, is going the social round of all the
literary men who have been asked to her dinner-parties with a view to
their favourable opinion. I know that Mr. Frederick Cook has had it, and
written her a polite letter about it, though that won't prevent him
slating it in _The Bittern_ if he wants to. So Mrs. Ptomaine says.
I know that what Aunt Gerty said in spite, and to give Mother a stick to
hit George back with when he came and found us doing dressmaking in his
sacred study, was true. Lord Scilly had told George not to go to his
house any more. Perhaps Lady Scilly had said he might? Having no more
use for George, she may have given Lord Scilly a free hand with him, and
perhaps a free foot, who knows? I think she is not nice. I am on
George's side now, as far as outside politics go, though I shall never
approve of the way he treats my brother Benvenuto.
Lady Scilly came to Cinque Cento House at last, and George didn't "look
that pleased to see her," as Elizabeth Cawthorne said afterwards.
Elizabeth Cawthorne has no opinion of her, nor of the way she goes on
with that German fellow. She means the man who was so rude to Ariadne at
the Islingtons', at least he was far too kind for politeness. He was a
Count then, but he is also Lady Scilly's chauffeur. He was waiting
outside on her motor at this very moment, quite the servant. She took
him to her aunt's ball for the fun of it, I suppose, and it was easy to
pretend he was somebody, for he looks quite military and distinguished.
Elizabeth showed her into the study, saying gruffly, "A female to see
you, sir."
"Paquerette!" said George, in real amazement, as she floated in, and
when the door had closed on Elizabeth Cawthorne, went a little down on
one knee and looked up into George's face, saying, as I have heard the
French do to their professors of painting or music,--"_Cher maître!_"
George had taught her to do this in the days when he was really her
professor, and she wanted to do everything as Bohemians do in the
Quartier Latin, but only the way she looked at him as she said it I
could tell that she had no further use for him.
I was sitting at the type-writer, in the corner of the room, as if I
were in my castle, and I stayed there. It was getting dark and they
didn't think of turning on the electric light. Besides, George had at
first made me a little sign which I understood, because of the _entente
cordiale_ we had had for some time, to stay where I was, and I like
doing what people seem to want, especially when it goes with what I want
myself. Then he forgot me altogether. Lady Scilly, I believe, never saw
me at all, for she never said how-do-you-do, or looked my way, and yet
we had not quarrelled. George put on his "pretty woman" manner, and
raised her, and made her sit in a nice high-backed chair that suited
her.
"How nice of you to come! My wife is out. By the way, I may as well tell
you, she is leaving me."
I nearly fell off my chair. Lady Scilly looked upset; for she hadn't
come to see Mother, and hadn't thought of asking whether she was out or
not. She collected herself, and said to George with some dignity--
"You put it crudely."
"I do. I never mince my words, except in books. It is as I say. I shall
not oppose it. I hope that my unhappy partner may one day come to know
the bourgeois happiness I have been unable to give her. Unlucky fellow
that I am--_coeur de célibat_, you know; an Alastor of Fitz John's
Avenue, the Villon of Maresfield Gardens----"
"No woman's such a fool as to leave a place like this----"
"What does Shelley say? _Love first leaves the well-built nest----_"
"You certainly are a most extraordinary man!" she mumbled. George
puzzled her by changing about so.
"Yes," he answered her, smiling. "Come, take off your furs and make
yourself at home. Compromise yourself merrily. I suppose now, by all the
rights and wrongs of it, I ought to invite you to bolt with me, but I am
weak, I shall not."
"Are you quite sure you won't be stronger by the end of this interview?"
"Oh, is this an interview? Ah, why be formal and boring? Why stable the
steed after the horse--I mean the novel is out? It will be a huge
success, so your enemies predict. Frederick Cook of _The Bittern_ writes
me that this, the latest output of a militant aristocracy, seeking to
beat us with our own weapons, is chockful of cleverness and primitive
woman. What more do you want?"
"D. the novel! I want _you!_" she said, stamping her foot.
"Oh, throw away the fugitive husk and the rind outworn--the creed
forgotten--the deed forborne--how does it go? Give a poor author a
chance, now that you have sucked his commonplace book dry, and torn the
heart out of his theories, butchered him to make a literary agent's
holiday."
"You _are_ unkind."
"Don't say that. It is unworthy of you. Stale! like the plot of the new
novel you propose we should work out together."
"I am prepared to go all lengths to assert----"
"Your powers of imagination. I don't doubt it. But I have been thinking
it over, and I find it a ghastly, an impossible plot. No, it would never
do, not even if we made a motor-motif of it. It won't go on all fours.
It would not even begin to sell. It has none of the elements of
popularity. To begin and end with, there's not an atom of passion about
it, not even so much as would lie on twenty thousand pounds of radium,
and you know how much that is!"
"Don't imply that I am incapable of passion in that insulting way!" she
said quite angrily. "It shall never be said----"
"It will never be said, unless we run away and apply the test of
Boulogne and social ostracism. Believe me, Paquerette, things are best
as they are--going to be. There's true evolution in it. When the feast
is over, you put out the fluttering candles, tear down the wreaths, open
the windows. When the novel is done----"
"I hate you to talk like this!" said she, making a cross face.
"Women hate realism."
"Women hate lukewarmness. Pull yourself together, George, and let us lay
our heads together to make Scilly--look silly. He's mad just now, but it
will pass off, he will get over it, and you will come down to us at 'The
Hutch' as usual and more so. Dear old Scilly will be the first to climb
down----"
George shook his head.
"No, no, _non bis in idem_. Not twice in the same place." (I wasn't sure
if he was alluding to the kick Lord Scilly had given him or not.) "Go
now, you sweet woman. I want to be alone. You are staid for."
"Yes, yes, I must go. You remind me. The Count will be so deliciously
irritated. Thanks so much, so very, very much, for all your help and
timely assistance, your----"
"Has the play been worth the scandal?" George asked her, while he was
kissing her hand to hide how much he loathed her, and was glad she was
going. He knew, as well as I knew, that she was the kind of woman who
kicks away the ladder she has just got up by with a toss of her fairy
foot, and that he would never be asked to "The Hutch" again. Mr. Aix
would, more probably, because he may chance to review what George has
helped her to write. And it seemed to me that she has been massaged so
much or so long or something, that her cheeks are like flabby oysters,
and her figure brought out in all the wrong places. She was too pretty
to last kittenish and fluffy as she was when I saw her come out of the
public-house that first day.
"Good-bye--then--George!" she said, with something between a sneer and a
sob. "We meet again--in society, not under the clock at Charing Cross."
What should take George and her there I cannot imagine, but George
bowed, and led her out, and I followed them. There was her chauffeur in
the car as large as life--and as a German. Though indeed he is very
good-looking.
"I can see that he is cross in every line of his back," Lady Scilly
whispered to George as she left him on the steps, and tripped down them,
and got in beside her crabstick Count. He received her most coldly, and
it was easy to see he was her master more than her servant.
George grunted as he fastened the door. There was an east wind blowing,
and he was afraid of catching cold after standing there bareheaded.
"She will probably bolt with him before the year is out," he said, as we
went back to the study shivering. He played cat's-cradle with me till
dinner-time. It was all he was good for, he said, and as the game
appeared to amuse him, I didn't mind making a fool of myself for once.
About Mother's going away that he spoke of to Lady Scilly! I believe it
really is with Mr. Aix, as George is so very civil to him. I don't see
who else it could be, for we see more of him than of any one else. He is
George's greatest friend, as well as Mother's, and people don't run away
with perfect strangers, as a rule.
Mother was certainly up to something, for her eyes were as bright as
glass, and she had hysterics two days running. Aunt Gerty used to say
while these were going on, slapping Mother's palms and vinaigretting
her--"It is natural, you know--the excitement." The excitement of
running away, I suppose. She used to make her lie down a great deal, and
"nurse her energy," for she "would want it all!" Mother was by far the
most important person in the whole house in these days, and instead of
George being out late, and needing his latch-key, it was Mother who was
always on the go, and dining with the Press every other night of her
life. At least, I suppose Mrs. Ptomaine and Mr. Freddy Cook are the
Press, they are certainly nothing else of importance. Mother joined a
club, and stayed there one night when there was a fog.
George never asks her any questions. He is too proud, and of course he
knows that she is too. She wouldn't stand having her movements
questioned, any more than he would. But he began to look ragged and
grey, and to have indigestion. He lived chiefly in his study. He fenced
a good deal, with Mr. Aix. He asked Mr. Aix to leave the button off his
foil, but Mr. Aix would not. George's other distraction is Father Mack,
who comes to see him a good deal, and when George goes out now, which he
seldom does, it is to see Father Mack. Father Mack is not oppressively
stiff. Once George came back from confession and set us all to try and
translate "The Survival of the Fittest" into French, a problem Father
Mack had asked him. Father Mack also gave Mother the address of a very
good little dressmaker. He lent George the _Life of Saint Catherine
Emmerich_, a lovely book. She was one of those women who can think so
hard of something that it comes out all over their bodies, in spots.
People came from far and wide to look at her and admire her, and her
family allowed it, instead of getting a trained nurse at five-and-twenty
shillings a week, and giving her a free hand till Catherine was cured.
It is my belief that she did not want to be cured, she liked being
praised for having so many spots that you could fancy it was all in the
shape of a crown of thorns. Still it is a nice romantic story, and the
poor woman meant well.
Aunt Gerty says George is going to be a 'vert, and that I shall have to
be baptized over again, and not buried in consecrated ground when I die.
She said I need not bother to go on with preparing for my confirmation,
as all that would be stopped. I was hemming my veil and I went on, for I
believed she was teasing. And as for Father Mack, he is quite a nice
man, and George doesn't swear half so badly since he came under his
influence.
One of these nights, when Mother had gone off to dine at some restaurant
or other, with a merry party, Aunt Gerty said, I had a talk with Ben.
George, as usual now, dined in his study alone. Ben told me some things
Mother had been saying to him, about better times coming, and darkest
before dawn, and so on. He wanted me to explain her, but I couldn't, for
the only fact I knew, viz. her going to Boulogne with Mr. Aix, would
not do Ben any good that I could see? It is really no use trying to find
out what grown-up people mean, sometimes, it is like trying to imagine
eternity; one has nothing to go on.
We went to bed early, but I couldn't sleep; after what Ben had said I
felt I must see Mother again that night. I kept awake with great
difficulty till I heard the swish of her dress on the stairs, and then I
slipped out of bed and faced her. She was too tired to scold, she had
trodden twice in the hem of her dress going up-stairs. When we got into
her own room, she let her cloak slide off on to the floor, and came out
of it like a flower, and looked awfully nice in her low neck and bare
arms.
"Oh, my pretty little Mother," I said. "I do love you."
"You are just like every one else," she answered me pettishly.
"I'm not," I said, but of course there is no doubt about it, one does
love people more in evening dress and less in a nightgown.
"Did George ever see you like this?" I asked.
"Often. Is he gone to bed?"
"Yes, with a headache."
She took a candle and we went on tiptoe to his room, Mother first taking
off her high-heeled shoes, for they would tap on the parquet and make a
noise. George was asleep. He had eaten one of his bananas, and the other
was still by the side of his bed.
"Hold the candle, Tempe!" Mother said quickly. It was that she might go
down on her knees beside George. She then buried her head in the quilt
and cried.
"Oh, George, I am doing it for the best--I am, I am! For my poor
neglected boy--my poor Ben."
She upset and puzzled me so by alluding to Ben, after my conversation
with him that very evening, that I dropped a blob of candle-grease on
the sheet near George's arm, and I was so afraid I had awakened him,
that I at once shut the stable-door--I mean blew out the candle and made
a horrible smell. Mother jumped off her knees as frightened as I
was--Father Mack hasn't cured George quite of swearing!--and we made a
clean bolt of it back to her room, where she re-lit the candle and began
to get out of her dress as quickly as she could, while I sat in a
honeypot on the floor, and kept my nightgown well round my legs not to
catch cold, and talked to her nicely, so as not to startle her.
"Of course, Mother dear, you are doing it for the best, even if it is to
run away."
"Run away! Who says I am going to run away?"
"George."
"He told you?"
"He told Lady Scilly."
"Did he, then? He deserves that I should make it true." She laughed, a
laugh I did not like at all. It wasn't her laugh, but I have said she
was quite changed.
"Oh, Mother, don't laugh like that!"
"You are like the good little girl in the play, who preaches down a
wicked mother's heart! Well, my dear, I'll promise you one thing. I will
never run away without you. Will that be all right?"
"That will be all right," I answered, much relieved. For although I am
so much more "pally" with George and sorry for him, I don't want to be
left with him. Perhaps I shall be allowed to run over in the
_Marguerite_ from Boulogne sometimes on a visit? Then I could darn and
mend for him, as Mr. Aix would not be able to spare Mother from doing
for him. I did not mention Mr. Aix to her. I thought she would rather
tell me all in her own time.
I often wonder if we three will be happy in Boulogne, or wherever it is
social ostracism takes you to? I fancy the inconvenience of running away
is chiefly the want of society.
That is the only want Mother will not feel after all those years buried
away in Isleworth. Ariadne is now happily married, so it won't affect
her, though I suppose that if this had happened a year ago, a
mother-in-law spending her days in social ostracism would not have
suited Simon's stiff relations. It might have prevented him from
proposing. I see it all; Mother unselfishly waited.
One thing really troubles me. Why does not Mother do some packing? I
hope that she is not going to run away in that uncomfortable style when
you only throw two or three things into a bag? A couple of bottles of
eau-de-cologne, and some hair-pins, like Laura in _To Leeward?_ I, at
any rate, have some personal property, and I shall do very badly without
it in a dull, dead-alive place like Boulogne. But I will be patient.
Whatever Mother does is sure to be right, even running away, which gets
so dreadfully condemned in novels.
George's new secretary is quite utilitarian and devoted to him, she is
not so _farouche_ as Christina, Mr. Aix says, or so charming. George
keeps her hard at work typing his autobiography, and doesn't go to see
Father Mack any more. I asked him why he was "off" dear Father Mack, and
he says last time he went to see him it was the Father's supper-time,
and he saw a horrid sight. He could not think, he says, of entrusting
his salvation to a man whom he had seen supping with the utmost relish
off a plateful of bullock's eyes. Just like George to be put off his
salvation by a little thing like that! Though I always felt myself as if
Father Mack was not quite ascetic enough for a real right-down sinner
like George.
Tickets have come to George for the first night of Mr. Aix's play.
George calls it Ingomar, which vexes Aix, because Ingomar is a certain
old-fashioned kind of play that only needs a pretty woman who can't act,
as "lead."
"Who's your Parthenia?" he asked him.
Mr. Aix answered, "Oh, a little woman I unearthed for myself from the
suburban drama--the usual way."
"Any good?" asked George casually.
"I am telling her exactly what I want her to do, and she looks upon me
as Shakespeare and the Angel Gabriel in one," said Mr. Aix, glancing
across at Mother, who pursed up her lips and laughed.
"I will take Tempe to your first night," said George suddenly.
"A play of Jim Aix's for the child's first play!" cried Mother in a
fright. "I shouldn't think of it."
"Children never see impropriety, or ought not to," George said. "But if
you don't wish it, I will take Lady Scilly and the Fylingdales instead.
It will do the play good."
"It's a fond delusion," said Aix, "that the aristocracy can even damn a
play."
Of course I understood the impropriety blind. Mother wanted me to be
free to go away with her, and the twenty-sixth was to be the night,
after all. I thought of the crossing by the nine o'clock mail that we
should have to do, and that I only know of from hearsay, and wondered
why they must choose such an awkward time? Perhaps we should not after
all cross that night, for surely Mr. Aix would want to come before the
curtain if called, and that wouldn't possibly be till about ten o'clock,
too late for the train?
Perhaps we should stay the night at an hotel? I should simply love
that.