THE DAUGHTER
1
Mrs. Hilary hated travelling, which is indeed detestable. The Channel was
choppy and she a bad sailor; the train from Calais to Paris continued the
motion, and she remained a bad sailor (bad sailors often do this). She
lay back and smelled salts, and they were of no avail. At Paris she tried
and failed to dine. She passed a wretched night, being of those who
detest nights in trains without _wagons-lits_, but save money by not
having _wagons-lits_, and wonder dismally all night if it is worth it.
Modane in the chilly morning annoyed her as it annoys us all. The customs
people were rude and the other travellers in the way. Mrs. Hilary, who
was not good in crowds, pushed them, getting excited and red in the face.
Psycho-analysis had made her more patient and calm than she had been
before, but even so, neither patient nor calm when it came to jostling
crowds.
"I am not strong enough for all this," she thought, in the Mont Cenis
tunnel.
Rushing out of it into Italy, she thought, "Last time I was here was in
'99, with Richard. If Richard were here now he would help me." He would
face the customs at Modane, find and get the tickets, deal with uncivil
Germans--(Germans were often uncivil to Mrs. Hilary and she to them, and
though she had not met any yet on this journey, owing doubtless to their
state of collapse and depression consequent on the Great Peace, one might
get in at any moment, Germans being naturally buoyant). Richard would
have got hold of pillows, seen that she was comfortable at night, told
her when there was time to get out for coffee and when there wasn't (Mrs.
Hilary was no hand at this; she would try no runs and get run out, or all
but run out). And Richard would have helped to save Nan. Nan and her
father had got on pretty well, for a naughty girl and an elderly parent.
They had appreciated one another's brains, which is not a bad basis. They
had not accepted or even liked one another's ideas on life, but this is
not necessary or indeed usual in families. Mrs. Hilary certainly did not
go so far as to suppose that Nan would have obeyed her father had he
appeared before her in Rome and bidden her change her way of life, but
she might have thought it over. And to make Nan think over anything
which _she_ bade her do would be a phenomenal task. What had Mr. Cradock
said--make her remember her first disobedience, find the cause of it,
talk it out with her, get it into the open--and then she would be cured
of her present lawlessness. Why? That was the connection that always
puzzled Mrs. Hilary a little. Why should remembering that you had done,
and why you had done, the same kind of thing thirty years ago cure you
of doing it now? Similarly, why should remembering that a nurse had
scared you as an infant cure you of your present fear of burglars? In
point of fact, it didn't. Mr. Cradock had tried this particular cure on
Mrs. Hilary. It must be her own fault, of course, but somehow she had not
felt much less nervous about noises in the house at night since Mr.
Cradock had brought up into the light, as he called it, that old fright
in the nursery. After all, why should one? However, hers not to reason
why; and perhaps the workings of Nan's mind might be more orthodox.
At Turin Germans got in. Of course. They were all over Italy. Italy was
welcoming them with both hands, establishing again the economic entente.
These were a mother and a _backfisch_, and they looked shyly and sullenly
at Mrs. Hilary and the other Englishwoman in the compartment. They were
thin, and Mrs. Hilary noted it with satisfaction. She didn't believe for
one moment in starving Germans, but these certainly did not look so
prosperous and buxom as a pre-war German mother and _backfisch_ would
have looked. They were equally uncivil, though. They pulled both windows
up to the top. The two English ladies promptly pulled them down half-way.
English ladies are the only beings in the world who like open windows in
winter. English lower-class women do not, nor do English gentlemen. If
you want to keep warm while travelling (to frowst, as the open air school
calls it) do not get in with well-bred Englishwomen.
The German mother broke out in angry remonstrance, indicating that she
had neuralgia and the _backfisch_ a cold in the head. There followed one
of those quarrels which occur on this topic in trains, and are so bitter
and devastating. It had now more than the pre-war bitterness; between the
combatants flowed rivers of blood; behind them ranked male relatives
killed or maimed by the male relatives of their foes on the opposite
seat. The English ladies won. Germany was a conquered race, and knew it.
In revenge, the _backfisch_ coughed and sneezed "all over the carriage,"
as Mrs. Hilary put it, "in the disgusting German way," and her mother
made noises as if she could be sick if she tried hard enough.
So it was a detestable journey. And the second night in the train was
worse than the first. For the Germans, would you believe it, shut both
windows while the English were asleep, and the English, true to their
caste and race, woke with bad headaches.
2
When they got to Rome in the morning Mrs. Hilary felt thoroughly ill. She
had to strive hard for self-control; it would not do to meet Nan in an
unnerved, collapsed state. All her psychical strength was necessary
to deal with Nan. So when she stood on the platform with her luggage she
looked and felt not only like one who has slept (but not much) in a train
for two nights and fought with Germans about windows but also like an
elderly virgin martyr (spiritually tense and strung-up, and distraught,
and on the line between exultation and hysteria).
Nan was there. Nan, pale and pinched, and looking plain in the nipping
morning air, though wrapped in a fur coat. (One of the points about Nan
was that, though she sometimes looked plain, she never looked dowdy;
there was always a distinction, a chic, about her.)
Nan kissed her mother and helped with the luggage and got a cab. Nan was
good at railway stations and such places. Mrs. Hilary was not.
They drove out into the hideous new streets. Mrs. Hilary shivered.
"Oh, how ugly!"
"Rome is ugly, this part."
"It's worse since '99."
But she did not really remember clearly how it had looked in '99. The old
desire to pose, to show that she knew something, took her. Yet she felt
that Nan, who knew that she knew next to nothing, would not be deceived.
"Oh ... the Forum!"
"The Forum of Trajan," Nan said. "We don't pass the Roman Forum on the
way to our street."
"The Forum of Trajan, of course, I meant that."
But she knew that Nan knew she had meant the Forum Romanum.
"Rome is always Rome," she said, which was safer than identifying
particular buildings, or even Forums, in it. "Nothing like it anywhere."
"How long can you stay, mother? I've got you a room in the house I'm
lodging in. It's in a little street the other side of the Corso. Rather
a mediæval street, I'm afraid. That is, it smells. But the rooms are
clean."
"Oh, I'm not staying long.... We'll talk later; talk it all out. A
thorough talk. When we get in. After a cup of tea...."
Mrs. Hilary remembered that Nan did not yet know why she had come. After
a cup of strong tea.... A cup of tea first.... Coffee wasn't the same.
One needed tea, after those awful Germans. She told Nan about these. Nan
knew that she would have had tiresome travelling companions; she always
did; if it weren't Germans it would be inconsiderate English. She was
unlucky.
"Go straight to bed and rest when we get in," Nan advised; but she shook
her head. "We must talk first."
Nan, she thought, looked pinched about the lips, and thin, and her black
brows were at times nervous and sullen. Nan did not look happy. Was it
guilt, or merely the chill morning air?
They stopped at a shabby old house in a narrow mediæval street in the
Borgo, which had been a palace and was now let in apartments. Here Nan
had two bare, gilded, faded rooms. Mrs. Hilary sat by a charcoal stove in
one of them, and Nan made her some tea. After the tea Mrs. Hilary felt
revived. She wouldn't go to bed; she felt that the time for the talk had
come. She looked round the room for signs of Stephen Lumley, but all the
signs she saw were of Nan; Nan's books, Nan's proofs strewing the table.
Of course that bad man wouldn't come while she was there. He was no doubt
waiting eagerly for her to be gone. Probably they both were....
3
"Nan--" They were still sitting by the stove, and Nan was lighting a
cigarette. "Nan--do you guess why I've come?"
Nan threw away the match.
"No, mother. How should I?... One does come to Rome, I suppose, if one
gets a chance."
"Oh, I've not come to see Rome. I know Rome. Long before you were
born.... I've come to see you. And to take you back with me."
Nan glanced at her quickly, a sidelong glance of suspicion and
comprehension. Her lower lip projected stubbornly.
"Ah, I see you know what I mean. Yes, I've heard. Rumours reached us--it
was through Rosalind, of course. And I'm afraid ... I'm afraid that for
once she spoke the truth."
"Oh no, she didn't. I don't know what Rosalind's been saying this time,
but it would be odd if it was the truth."
"Nan, it's no use denying things. I _know_."
It was true; she did know. A few months ago she would have doubted and
questioned; but Mr. Cradock had taught her better. She had learnt from
him the simple truth about life; that is, that nearly everyone is nearly
always involved up to the eyes in the closest relationship with someone
of another sex. It is nature's way with mankind. Another thing she had
learnt from him was that the more they denied it the more it was so;
protests of innocence and admissions of guilt were alike proofs of the
latter. So she was accurate when she said that it was no use for Nan to
deny anything. It was no use whatever.
Nan had become cool and sarcastic--her nastiest, most dangerous manner.
"Do you think you would care to be a little more explicit, mother? I'm
afraid I don't quite follow. What is it no use my denying? _What_ do you
know?"
Mrs. Hilary gathered herself together. Her head trembled and jerked with
emotion; wisps of her hair, tousled by the night, escaped over her
collar. She spoke tremulously, tensely, her hands wrung together.
"That you are going on with a married man. That you are his mistress,"
she said, putting it at its crudest, since Nan wanted plain speaking.
Nan sat quite still, smoking. The silence thrilled with Mrs. Hilary's
passion.
"I see," Nan said at last. "And it's no use my denying it. In that case
I won't." Her voice was smooth and clear and still, like cold water. "You
know the man's name too, I presume?"
"Of course. Everyone knows it. I tell you, Nan, everyone's talking of you
and him. A town topic, Rosalind calls it."
"Rosalind would. Town must be very dull just now, if that's all they have
to talk of."
"But it's not the scandal I'm thinking of," Mrs. Hilary went on, "though,
God knows, that's bad enough--I'm thankful Father died when he did and
was spared it--but the thing itself. The awful, awful thing itself. Have
you no shame, Nan?"
"Not much."
"For all our sakes. Not for mine--I know you don't care a rap for
that--but for Neville, whom you do profess to love...."
"I should think we might leave Neville out of it. She's shown no signs of
believing any story about me."
"Well, she does believe it, you may depend upon it. No one could help it.
People write from here saying it's an open fact."
"People here can't have much to put in their letters."
"Oh, they'll make room for gossip. People always will. Always. But I'm
not going to dwell on that side of things, because I know you don't care
what anyone says. It's the _wrongness_ of it.... A married man.... Even
if his wife divorces him! It would be in the papers.... And if she
doesn't you can't ever marry him.... Do you care for the man?"
"What man?"
"Don't quibble. Stephen Lumley, of course."
"Stephen Lumley is a friend of mine. I'm fond of him."
"I don't believe you do love him. I believe it's all recklessness and
perversity. Lawlessness. That's what Mr. Cradock said."
"Mr. Cradock?" Nan's eyebrows went up.
Mrs. Hilary flushed a brighter scarlet. The colour kept running over her
face and going back again, all the time she was talking.
"Your psycho-analyst doctor," said Nan, and her voice was a little harder
and cooler than before. "I suppose you had an interesting conversation
with him about me."
"I have to tell him everything," Mrs. Hilary stammered. "It's part
of the course. I did consult him about you. I'm not ashamed of it. He
understands about these things. He's not an ordinary man."
"This is very interesting." Nan lit another cigarette. "It seems that
I've been a boon all round as a town topic--to London, to Rome and to St.
Mary's Bay.... Well, what did he advise about me?"
Mrs. Hilary remembered vaguely and in part, but did not think it would be
profitable just now to tell Nan.
"We have to be very wise about this," she said, collecting herself. "Very
wise and firm. Lawlessness.... I wonder if you remember, Nan, throwing
your shoes at my head when you were three?"
"No. But I can quite believe I did. It was the sort of thing I used to
do."
"Think back, Nan. What is the first act of naughtiness and disobedience
you remember, and what moved you to it?"
Nan, who knew a good deal more about psycho-analysis than Mrs. Hilary
did, laughed curtly.
"No good, mother. That won't work on me. I'm not susceptible to the
treatment. Too hard-headed. What was Mr. Cradock's next brain-wave?"
"Oh well, if you take it like this, what's the use...."
"None at all. I advise you not to bother yourself. It will only make your
headache worse.... Now I think after all this excitement you had better
go and lie down, don't you? I'm going out, anyhow."
Then Stephen Lumley knocked at the door and came in. A tall, slouching
hollow-chested man of forty, who looked unhappy and yet cynically
amused at the world. He had a cough, and unusually bright eyes under
overhanging brows.
Nan said, "This is Stephen Lumley, mother. My mother, Stephen," and left
them to do the rest, watching, critical and aloof, to see how they would
manage the situation.
Mrs. Hilary managed it by rising from her chair and standing rigidly in
the middle of the room, breathing hard and staring. Stephen Lumley looked
enquiringly at Nan.
"How do you do, Mrs. Hilary," he said. "I expect you're pretty well
played out by that beastly journey, aren't you."
Mrs. Hilary's voice came stifled, choked, between pants. She was working
up; or rather worked up: Nan knew the symptoms.
"You dare to come into my presence.... I must ask you to leave my
daughter's sitting-room _immediately_. I have come to take her back to
England with me at once. Please go. There is nothing that can possibly be
said between you and me--nothing."
Stephen Lumley, a cool and quiet person, raised his brows, looked enquiry
once more at Nan, found no answer, said, "Well, then, I'll say good-bye,"
and departed.
Mrs. Hilary wrung her hands together.
"How dare he! How dare he! Into my very presence! He has no shame...."
Nan watched her coolly. But a red spot had begun to burn in each cheek at
her mother's opening words to Lumley, and still burned. Mrs. Hilary knew
of old that still-burning, deadly anger of Nan's.
"Thank you, mother. You've helped me to make up my mind. I'm going to
Capri with Stephen next week. I've refused up till now. He was going
without me. You've made up my mind for me. You can tell Mr. Cradock that
if he asks."
Nan was fiercely, savagely desirous to hurt. In the same spirit she had
doubtless thrown her shoes at Mrs. Hilary thirty years ago. Rage and
disgust, hot rebellion and sick distaste--what she had felt then she
felt now. During her mother's breathless outbreak at Stephen Lumley,
standing courteous and surprised before her, she had crossed her Rubicon.
And now with flaming words she burned her boats.
Mrs. Hilary burst into tears. But her tears had never yet quenched Nan's
flames. Nan made her lie down and gave her sal volatile. Sal volatile
eases the head and nervous system and composes the manners, but no more
than tears does it quench flames.
4
The day that followed was strange, and does not sound likely, but life
often does not. Nan took Mrs. Hilary out to lunch at a trattoria near
the Forum, as it were to change the subject, and they spent the usual
first afternoon of visitors in Rome, who hasten to view the Forum with
a guide to the most recent excavations in their hands. Mrs. Hilary felt
completely uninterested to-day in recent or any other excavations. But,
obsessed even now with the old instinctive desire (the fond hope, rather)
not to seem unintelligent before her children, more especially when she
was not on good terms with them, she accompanied Nan, who firmly and
deftly closed or changed the subjects of unlawful love, Stephen Lumley,
Capri, returning to England, and her infant acts of wilfulness, whenever
her mother opened them, which was frequently, as Mrs. Hilary found these
things easier conversational topics than the buildings in the Forum. Nan
was determined to keep the emotional pressure low for the rest of the
day, and she was fairly competent at this when she tried. As Mrs. Hilary
had equal gifts at keeping it high, it was a well-matched contest. When
she left the Forum for a tea shop, both were tired out. The Forum is
tiring; emotion is tiring; tears are tiring; quarrelling is tiring;
travelling through to Rome is tiring; all five together are annihilating.
However, they had tea.
Mrs. Hilary was cold and bitter now, not hysterical. Nan, who was
living a bad life, and was also tiresomely exactly informed about the
differences between the Forum in '99 and the Forum to-day (a subject on
which Mrs. Hilary was hazy) was not fit, until she came to a better mind,
to be spoken to. Mrs. Hilary shut her lips tight and averted her reddened
eyes. She hated Nan just now. She could have loved her had she been
won to repentance, but now--"Nan was never like the rest," she thought.
Nan persisted in making light, equable conversation, which Mrs. Hilary
thought in bad taste. She talked of England and the family, asked after
Grandmama, Neville and the rest.
"Neville is extremely ill," Mrs. Hilary said, quite untruly, but
that was, to do her justice, the way in which she always saw illness,
particularly Neville's. "And worried to death about Gerda, who seems to
have gone off her head since that accident in Cornwall. She is still
sticking to that insane, wicked notion about not getting married."
Nan had heard before of this.
"She'll give that up," she said, coolly, "when she finds she really can't
have Barry if she doesn't. Gerda gets what she wants."
"Oh, you all do that, the whole lot of you.... And a nice example
_you're_ setting the child."
"She'll give it up," Nan repeated, keeping the conversation on Gerda.
"Gerda hasn't the martyr touch. She won't perish for a principle. She
wants Barry and she'll have him, though she may hold out for a time.
Gerda doesn't lose things, in the end."
"She's a very silly child, and I suppose she's been mixing with dreadful
friends and picked up these ideas. At twenty there's some excuse for
ignorant foolishness." But none at thirty-three, Mrs. Hilary meant.
"Barry Briscoe," she added, "is being quite firm about it. Though he is
desperately in love with her, Neville tells me; desperately."
He's soon got over you, even if he did care for you once, and even if you
did send him away, her emphasis implied.
In Nan, casually flicking the ash off her cigarette, a queer impulse came
and went. For a moment she wanted to cry; to drop hardness and lightness
and pretence, and cry like a child and say "Mother, comfort me. Don't go
on hurting me. I love Barry. Be kind to me, oh be kind to me!"
If she had done it, Mrs. Hilary would have taken her in her arms and been
all mother, and the wound in their affection would have been temporarily
healed.
Nan said nonchalantly "I suppose he is. They're sure to be all
right.... Now what next, mother? It's getting dark for seeing things."
"I am tired to death," said Mrs. Hilary. "I shall go back to those
dreadful rooms and try to rest.... It has been an awful day.... I hate
Rome. In '99 it was so different. Father and I went about together; he
showed me everything. He _knew_ about it all. Besides...."
Besides, how could I enjoy sight-seeing after that scene this morning,
and with this awful calamity that has happened?
They went back. Mrs. Hilary was desperately missing her afternoon hour
with Mr. Cradock. She had come to rely on it on a Wednesday.
5
Nan sat up late, correcting proofs, after Mrs. Hilary had gone to bed.
Galleys lay all round her on the floor by the stove. She let them slip
from her knee and lie there. She hated them....
She pressed her hands over her eyes, shutting them out, shutting out
life. She was going off with Stephen Lumley. She had told him so this
morning. Both their lives were broken; hers by Barry, whom she loved, his
by his wife, whom he disliked. He loved her; he wanted her. She could
with him find relief, find life a tolerable thing. They could have a good
time together. They were good companions; their need, though dissimilar,
was mutual. They saw the same beauty, spoke the same tongue, laughed at
the same things. In the very thought of Stephen, with his cynical humour,
his clear, keen mind, his lazy power of brain, Nan had found relief all
that day, reacting desperately from a mind fuddled with sentiment and
emotion as with drink, a soft, ignorant brain, which knew and cared about
nothing except people, a hysterical passion of anger and malice. They had
pushed her sharply and abruptly over the edge of decision, that mind and
brain and passion. Stephen, against whom their fierce anger was
concentrated, was so different....
To get away, to get right away from everything and everyone, with
Stephen. Not to have to go back to London alone, to see what she could
not, surely, bear to see--Barry and Gerda, Gerda and Barry, always,
everywhere, radiant and in love. And Neville, Gerda's mother, who saw so
much. And Rosalind, who saw everything, everything, and said so. And Mrs.
Hilary....
To saunter round the queer, lovely corners of the earth with Stephen,
light oneself by Stephen's clear, flashing mind, look after Stephen's
weak, neglected body as he never could himself ... that was the only
anodyne. Life would then some time become an adventure again, a gay
stroll through the fair, instead of a desperate sickness and nightmare.
Barry, oh Barry.... Nan, who had thought she was getting better, found
that she was not. Tears stormed and shook her at last. She crumpled up on
the floor among the galley-slips, her head upon the chair.
Those damned proofs--who wanted them? What were books? What was anything?
6
Mrs. Hilary came in, in her dressing-gown, red-eyed. She had heard
strangled sounds, and knew that her child was crying.
"My darling!"
Her arms were round Nan's shoulders; she was kneeling among the proofs.
"My little girl--Nan!"
"Mother...."
They held each other close. It was a queer moment, though not an
unprecedented one in the stormy history of their relations together.
A queer, strange, comforting, healing moment, the fleeting shadow of a
great rock in a barren land; a strayed fragment of something which should
have been between them always but was not. Certainly an odd moment.
"My own baby.... You're unhappy...."
"Unhappy--yes.... Darling mother, it can't be helped. Nothing can be
helped.... Don't let's talk ... darling."
Strange words from Nan. Strange for Mrs. Hilary to feel her hand held
against Nan's wet cheek and kissed.
Strange moment: and it could not last. The crying child wants its mother;
the mother wants to comfort the crying child. A good bridge, but one
inadequate for the strain of daily traffic. The child, having dried
its tears, watches the bridge break again, and thinks it a pity but
inevitable. The mother, less philosophic, may cry in her turn, thinking
perhaps that the bridge may be built this time in that way; but, the
child having the colder heart, it seldom is.
There remain the moments, impotent but indestructible.