CLOUDS
The fact that Lassigny's proposal to Beatrix and her acceptance of it
had taken place in a houseful of people made it impossible to keep the
affair a family secret. Reminders of its being known soon began to
disturb the quietude of Abington Abbey.
Grafton went up to the Bank a few days after he had brought Beatrix
down, and his sister-in-law called upon him there and asked to be taken
out to luncheon. She had come up from the country on purpose and wanted
to hear all about it.
Grafton was seriously annoyed. "My dear Mary," he said politely, "it can
only be a pleasure to take you out to lunch at any time, and in half an
hour I shall be ready to take you to the Berkeley, or wherever you'd
like to go to. Will you make yourself comfortable with the paper in the
meantime?"
"Oh, I know you're furious with me for having come here, George," she
said, "and it's quite true I've never done it before. But I _must_ talk
to you, and when James said you were coming up to-day I knew it was the
only way of getting you. You'd have put me off politely--you're always
polite--if I'd telephoned. So please forgive me, and go back to your
work till you're ready. I'll write a letter or two. I shall love to do
it on the Bank paper."
He came back for her in less than the half-hour. She had her car
waiting, and directly they had settled themselves in it he said: "Now
look here, Mary, I'm glad you've come, after all. I'll tell you exactly
what has happened and you can tell other people. There's no mystery and
there's nothing to hide. Lassigny asked B to marry him in the way you've
heard of. When he came here to talk it over with me I put one or two
questions to him which offended him, and he withdrew. That's all there
is to it."
"I don't think it's quite enough, George," she replied at once. "People
are talking. I've had one or two letters already. It's hard on poor
little B too. She doesn't understand it, and it's making her very
miserable."
"Has she written to you about it?"
"Of course she has. You sent her to me while you were getting rid of her
lover for her, and she had to write and tell me what had happened. It
isn't like you to play the tyrant to your children, George; but really
you do seem to have done it here. She won't forgive you, you know."
That was Lady Grafton's attitude at the beginning of the hour or so they
spent together, and it was her attitude at the end of it. He had gone
further in self-defence than he had had any intention of going, but all
she had said was: "Well, I know you think you're right, but honestly I
don't, George. Constance Ardrishaig wrote to me about it and said that
they were perfectly delightful together. He thought the world of her,
and everybody knows that when a man does fall in love with a thoroughly
nice girl it alters him--if he's been what he ought to have been."
Travelling down in the train Grafton found himself embarked upon that
disturbing exercise of going over a discussion again and mending one's
own side of it. Mary ought to have been able to see it. She had used
some absurd arguments; if he had answered her in this way or that, she
would have been silenced. Or better still, if he had refused to discuss
the matter at all, and rested himself upon the final fact that it was
Lassigny who had withdrawn; and there was an end of it. She had,
actually, seemed to realise that there was an end of it. She didn't
suggest that anything should be done. He rather gathered that Lady
Ardrishaig had some intention of writing to Lassigny and trying to
'bring it on again.' Mary had seemed to hint at that, but had denied any
such idea when he had asked her if it was so. She had been cleverer at
holding him aloof than he had been in holding her. If there was anything
that could be done by these kind ladies who knew so much better what was
for his daughter's welfare than he did, it would be done behind his
back.
Beatrix met him at the station. When they were in the car together she
snuggled up to him and said: "Did you see Aunt Mary, darling?"
It was the first time she had used an endearing expression to him since
he had brought her home. He had experienced a great lift of spirit when
he had seen her waiting for him on the platform, looking once again like
her old self, and she had kissed him and taken his arm as they went out
to the car. But now his heart sank like lead. "Yes, I saw her," he said
shortly.
That was all. Beatrix gradually withdrew herself from her warm contact
with him, and spoke of surface matters in the lifeless voice she now
habitually used towards him. It was plain to him that Lady Grafton had
given her to understand that she was going to do something to help her.
He had not understood that there had been a correspondence between them.
He complained of it to Caroline. "I suppose she wrote and asked Aunt
Mary to see me," he said. "I don't like it at all. Hasn't she got any
love for me left? She was just like she always has been for a few
minutes, while she thought something might have happened. But it wasn't
really for me. It's all that fellow,--and he doesn't want her any more."
Caroline spoke to Beatrix. "You're making Dad awfully unhappy," she
said.
"Well, he's making me awfully unhappy," said Beatrix, without waiting
for anything further. "He wants me to love him, and of course I do. But
I simply can't make a fuss of him, when he's behaving so unfairly.
Everybody sympathises with me, except him. And nobody can see any reason
for his sending Rene away, as he did."
It was true that most people who knew about it did sympathise with
Beatrix. She received letters, and wrote letters. For the first time in
the history of the Grafton family letters that arrived were not common
property. No one asked Beatrix whom hers were from, if they came at
breakfast-time, nor did she volunteer the information, though sometimes
she showed them to Caroline afterwards.
The neighbours knew the story. It annoyed Grafton when he first realised
that it was a matter of common talk. The information came to him from
Lady Mansergh, of all people in the world.
Lady Mansergh was of an earlier generation of stage beauties than those
who now so admirably play their titled parts. She was obviously and
frankly 'common.' No one who knew her could have thrown doubt upon the
genuine gold of her heart, whatever they may have thought of that of her
head, but it had needed all of it to reconcile Grafton to seeing his
girls made much of by the stout affectionate lady, who had taken them
all to her ample bosom from the first. He had, as a matter of fact, been
nearer to the Vicar's opinion, that Lady Mansergh was not a person for
them to become intimate with, than to Worthing's, that she was
'perfectly all right, and couldn't possibly do them any harm.' He had
even talked to Miss Waterhouse about it, but somewhat to his surprise
she had not advised any standing off in whatever relationship the
proximity of the two houses might bring about. "Whatever is odd about
her they laugh at," she said. "It makes no more impression on them than
that. She is a good-hearted woman, and it is their innocence and
brightness that she loves in them. She would never do or say anything
that could offend them."
So Lady Mansergh drove over occasionally to the Abbey to see her pretty
bunch of girls, as she called them, and shook her fat sides with
merriment at the entertainment they afforded her. She had a married
step-daughter staying with her at this time, with a family of little
children, and the Grafton girls, especially Barbara, were baby
worshippers. So that took them to Wilborough. And there were the links
in the park, which Sir Alexander had handed over to an informal club,
with Worthing as its secretary. Grafton played on them frequently
himself, and whenever there was anybody there from the Abbey Lady
Mansergh was pretty sure to put in an appearance at some point or other
of the course, with a pressing invitation to lunch or tea. If it were
not accepted she would keep them company for a time, waddling along with
her dachshund and her pug, in a state of high good humour, and talking
most of the time, both at those stages of the game that admitted of
conversation and those that didn't.
Grafton's objections to her as an intimate of his children to this
friendly open extent had died down. There are some people who can be
taken purely on the basis of the heart, whatever other factors go to
their composition, and Lady Mansergh was one of them. But, friendly as
he felt towards her, he was by no means prepared to admit her into
confidence on such a matter as this of Beatrix's. A question of
marriage, or of love--Lady Mansergh's experiences on either might
include many points of interest; but the tacit understanding surely was
that such experiences on her part should be kept in the background. She
was what she was now, in this intimacy with his family, and nothing of
what she had been.
She got hold of him one afternoon after he had finished his round, and
was strolling up with the rest through the garden on their way to tea on
the terrace. Tea was not quite ready, and she took him off to her
rock-garden, with which his was now in hot competition. Caroline had
been coming with them, but Lady Mansergh sent her back. "I've got
something to say to your father, dear," she said. "You go and talk to
somebody else. You shall come along with me and look at the sempervivums
after tea if you want to."
She lost no time in coming to the point. "Now, Mr. Grafton," she said,
"I like you and you like me; there's no offence between friends. Can't
you do something for that poor dear little girl of yours? She's crying
her eyes out for the man she loves. _I_ can see it if _you_ can't. A
father's a father, but he hadn't ought to act harsh to his children.
You'll have her going into a decline if you don't do something."
Grafton stood still and faced her. "I didn't know it was that you wanted
to talk to me about," he said. "Really, Lady Mansergh, I can't discuss
it with you. Let's go back to the others."
She laid her fat hand on his sleeve. "Now don't cut up offended, there's
a dear man," she said in a pleading soothing voice. "I do so love those
girls of yours, that it isn't like interfering. Just let me talk to you
a bit about it. No harm'll be done if you can't see it as I do when
we've had our little chat."
He walked on again with her. "There's nothing to talk about," he said.
"I don't know what you know or from whom you know it, but the facts are
that the man asked for my permission to marry Beatrix and then withdrew
his request. He has now left England and--well, there's an end of it. He
is going, evidently, to forget all about her, and she must learn to
forget him. She'll do it quickly enough if her kind friends will leave
her alone, and not encourage her to think she's been hardly used. She
hasn't been hardly used by me, and to be perfectly straight with you I
don't like being told that I'm dealing harshly with my children. It
isn't true, and couldn't be true, loving all of them as I do."
"Oh, I know you're a _perfect_ father to them," said Lady Mansergh
enthusiastically. "And they simply adore you--every one of them. I'm
sure it does anybody good to see you together. But what _I_ think, you
know, Mr. Grafton, is that when fathers love their daughters as you love
those sweet girls of yours, and depend a lot on them, as, of course, you
do, with your wife gone, poor man!--well, you don't _like_ 'em falling
in love. It means somebody else being put first like, when you've always
been first yourself. But lor', Mr. Grafton, they won't love you any the
less when they take husbands. You'll always be second if you can't be
first; and first you can't always be, with human nature what it is, and
husbands counting for more than fathers."
"I think that's perfectly true," said Grafton, in an easy voice. "A
father can't hope to be first when his daughters marry, but he'll
generally remain second. Well, when my daughters do marry I shall be
content to take that position, and I shall always remember you warned me
that I should have to. Thank you very much."
"Ah, now you're laughing at me," she said, looking up in his face, "but
you're angry all the same. You ought not to be angry. I'm telling you
the woman's side. When a woman loves a man she loves him whatever he is,
and if he hasn't been quite what he ought, if she's a good woman she can
make him different. That's what she thinks, and she's right to think it.
The chance of trying ought not to be took from her."
"Perhaps not," said Grafton. "But in this case it has been taken from
her by the man himself. It comes down to that first and last, Lady
Mansergh. It's very kind of you to interest yourself in the matter, but
really there's nothing to be done, except to encourage Beatrix to forget
all about it. If you'll take your part in doing that, you'll be doing
her a good turn, and me too."
"There is something to be done, and you could do it," she said. "That's
to write and tell the Marquis that you spoke hurriedly. However, I know
you won't do it, so I shan't press you any more."
"No, I don't propose to do that," he said. "And now I think we'll talk
about something else."
It was difficult to be angry with the stout kind-hearted lady herself,
but Grafton was angry over the episode--more angry than he had been over
any other. He and Caroline had come over in the little car that he drove
himself, and he talked to her about it going back. "It's really
intolerable that a woman like that should be mixed up in it," he said.
"She's a good-hearted old thing, but she hasn't exactly the sort of
history that makes her a person to consult in an affair like this. If B
has so far forgotten herself as to make a confidant of Lady Mansergh
it's time I talked to her about it. I've just let it alone so far, and
hoped she'd recover herself by degrees. But she seems to be making her
grievance public property, and she must leave off doing that."
"I don't think she _can_ have said anything to Lady Mansergh," said
Caroline, rather doubtful about it, all the same. "I think Geoffrey
Mansergh must have told her. He knows a lot of people that we do."
"Oh, she talked about B crying her eyes out for him. She must have tried
to get sympathy from her. Besides, she does talk about it to other
people. There's that little Mollie Walter. And the Pemberton girls. They
look at me as if I were a sort of ogre. And the Beckley girl too.
Really, I'm not going to be put in that position. It's time B was
brought to her senses. If she's going to change the whole of her
attitude towards me because of this, I suppose I've got to put up with
it. But I'm not going to be held up here as a brutal tyrannical father,
and have the whole of our jolly family life spoilt, as she's spoiling it
now."
In this mood he talked to Beatrix immediately he reached home, summoning
her into the library in order to do so. He had never lectured one of his
children before. None of them had ever needed it. In the old days of
occasional childish naughtiness, when as a last resort his authority had
been called in, his way had been to take them on his knee and express
surprise and sorrow at what he had been told about them. Floods of
tears, embraces and promises of complete and fundamental change of
conduct had immediately followed, and carried off the remains of
whatever naughtiness had been complained of. To hold out against Miss
Waterhouse had sometimes been necessary to satisfy that spirit of
contrariety which represents the workings of original sin in the best
behaved of children. But to hold out against him had never been
possible. The melting had come immediately, and subsequent behaviour had
always been beautiful until the devil pricked again.
Perhaps if he had acted in some sort of way as would have represented
this parental regret, Beatrix might have succumbed to it, as she had
always done in the past. But he had shown her so plainly that his love
was there ready for her, and that he wanted hers in return, and she had
held aloof from him. He was hard with her, and she was hard in return,
with a hardness he had never suspected in her. His displeasure seemed
not to disturb her at all; she rejected its grounds, and expressed her
displeasure with him in return, not with any lack of filial respect, but
still as if they were two people on equal terms who had fallen out and
could not come together again unless one or the other of them gave way.
That he was her father did not appear to her to be reason why she should
be the one to give way. She was very sorry, but she couldn't see that
she had done anything wrong. She had not, as a matter of fact, said
anything to Lady Mansergh, who had heard what had happened from outside.
She had been very kind about it, and so had other people who knew.
Mollie Walter was her chief friend, and she had told her everything; she
didn't see how she could be blamed for that. If she had only told her
one side, it was because she couldn't see that there was more than one
side. She had never said a word about it to the Pembertons, nor they to
her. But they had been more than usually kind to her since, and she
supposed it was because they sympathised with her. She didn't see how
she could be blamed for that either.
"Well, darling," said Grafton, "perhaps I did you an injustice in
thinking that you had talked about it all too much. If so, I'm sorry.
But look here, B, we can't go on like this, you know. It's spoiling our
family life, and our happiness together. You've had nearly three weeks
now to get over it in. When are you going to begin to be what you've
always been again?"
"How can you expect me to be the same?" she asked. "I was very happy,
and now I'm very unhappy."
"But you're not going to be unhappy all your life, you know. You were as
happy here a month ago as all the rest of us. If you can't take so much
pleasure in it all just at present you might at least stop spoiling it
for us."
"How am I spoiling it for you?"
"Well, I think you know that. We've always been together, and since
we've lived here we've all been together in almost everything we've
done. Now we're not. You put yourself out of it. It affects us all, and,
of course, it affects me more than anybody, because I can't take
pleasure in anything that one of my children holds herself apart from,
as you're doing. It's more than that. You're almost at enmity with me."
"No, I'm not. But how can I forget what you've done? You've spoilt my
life for me. If you hadn't sent him away, I'd have loved you more than
ever. Of course I do love you; but I can't help its making a
difference."
"My dear child, I've not spoilt your life for you at all. What I've done
is to prevent somebody else spoiling it; or, at any rate, I've removed
the risk of that happening."
"There wasn't any risk of that happening. I know what he's like, and I
know how he loves me. And I love him more than ever now. I always shall
love him, whatever happens. You can't make me alter there."
"You're talking very foolishly, B. You're eighteen years old, and you've
fallen in love for the first time in life with a man who at the best
wouldn't be a particularly suitable life companion for you. Whatever you
may feel about it now, you're not going to spend the rest of your days
in mourning for him. In six months' time you'll be wondering how you can
have felt about him as you do now. I can assure you of that."
She sat looking down upon her hands lying on her lap, with an expression
that meant she was not going to answer a statement so absurd as that.
Her look of obstinacy stiffened him still further against her, and he
proceeded to develop his thesis, not realising that by so doing he was
bound to produce just the opposite effect from what he wished.
"Love of this sort is like an illness," he said. "You get over it in
that form even if it leads to marriage. If it's the right sort of
marriage the love turns into something else that lasts, and no doubt
it's the right way to begin. If it doesn't lead to marriage, well, you
simply get over it. It's time you began to try."
Still no answer. If he _would_ talk in this way, so incredibly
misunderstanding the most beautiful and wonderful thing in the world, it
was her duty to listen to him as long as he went on.
He didn't go on any more. He was irritated by her silence. "Oh, well,"
he said, rising from his chair, "there's no use in saying any more. If
you're determined to be love-sick, you must be so, as long as you can
keep it up. I should have thought, though, that you'd have had more
pride than to show yourself pining for a man who, after all, has given
you up. I've nothing more to say about it."
When she had left him, as she did immediately, as one released from an
unpleasant and undesired interview, he greatly reproached himself for
the unkindness of his last speech. It had been dictated partly by that
inexplicable perversity which impels to the hurting of those who are
loved, but such an impulsion was not likely to be strong in one of
Grafton's equable kindly nature. It was beastly to have talked to the
poor child in that way. She was suffering, and she couldn't know that
her suffering was capable of quick cure. He ought to have been tender of
her inexperience, and spared her illusions until time should have shown
her what they were. Besides, he wanted her love; it was beginning to
distress him greatly that she had so much withdrawn it from him. In his
reaction from a mood of hard irritation to one of tenderness his
attitude towards the whole question relaxed, and he asked himself again
whether he had been entirely right in what he had done.
What had he done? His dislike of Lassigny as a husband for Beatrix had
been merely instinctive. If Lassigny had pressed his suit, even without
satisfying him that he was not what he seemed to him to be, he could
scarcely have held out. There would have been no grounds for his
rejection of him that his world could have seen; and he was influenced
by the opinion of his world, and, if it had been a question of any one
but his own daughter, would most likely have shared it. Even now, in his
greatly softened moods towards her, he would almost have welcomed a
state of things in which she would not quite be cut off from hope.
Perhaps it would have turned out all right. She was sweet enough to keep
any man devoted to her. Her own love was pure enough, even if it was at
the stage at which it hardly represented more than physical attraction;
and she had a right to her own desires; he could not exercise his
parental veto in the last resort on any but very definite grounds, such
as could hardly be said to exist here. If only he could have given her
what she wanted, and made her happy again, and loving towards himself,
it would have lifted a great and increasing trouble from him! The
present state of feeling between him and his dearly loved child seemed
as if it might part them permanently. He could not look forward to that
without a desperate sinking of heart.
But what could he do? It did, after all, come down, as he had said, to
the fact that he had not actually sent Lassigny away. Lassigny had
withdrawn his suit. That was the leading factor in the situation.
He went to find Beatrix. He wanted to put this to her, once more, with
all the affection that he felt towards her, and to reason with her still
further, but not in the same spirit as just now. And he wanted still
more to make it up with her. She was beginning to wear him down. She
could do without him, but he couldn't do without her.
But Beatrix had gone out, to talk to Mollie Walter, and when she came
in again, at tea-time, and brought Mollie with her, she kissed him, and
was rather brighter than she had been. There was a great lift in his
spirits, and although she did not respond to any appreciable extent to
his further affectionate approaches and the gleam of sunshine faded
again, he thought he had better let her alone. Perhaps she was beginning
to get over it, and the clouds would break again, and finally roll away
altogether.