Rose Aviolet came down to breakfast late, and entered the dining-room
awkwardly. Even at her utmost self-confidence she did not possess the
art of coming into a room, and at Squires she was not self-confident at
all.
The dining-room was large and high, with heavy furniture of Spanish
mahogany, crimson curtains across the embrasures of the bow-windows
and wide, crimson-cushioned sills, and a crimson flock paper against
which hung enormous oil-portraits in gilt frames. On the sideboard
stood massive silver dishes, engraved with the Aviolet crest, each
dish with a little blue flame burning beneath it, and on other, lesser
sideboards were respectively placed the apparatus of tea and coffee,
and a selection of fruit arranged on a dessert service of intrinsically
hideous Crown Derby. A log fire burnt on the open hearth.
Lady Aviolet, squat, grey-haired, dressed in a silk shirt with a
high-boned collar, and a black tweed skirt that showed clumping boots
below it, was opening a pile of letters with deliberation.
She had her back to the windows, and faced Sir Thomas at the other end
of the square table.
“Good-morning, Rose. How is Cecil?”
“He’s much better, thank you. He can get up to-day.”
Rose moved uneasily between her own place at the table and the
sideboard. The procedure at breakfast always embarrassed her.
Was it bad manners to help oneself? _They_ all did so, but then, they
were at home, and Rose, most emphatically, was not. It seemed quite
wrong to let an old gentleman like Sir Thomas get up and wait upon
one....
She placed herself awkwardly in his way, apologised nervously and with
unnecessary laughter, and finally stumbled into her chair, full of
inchoate resentment and confusion.
Sir Thomas said to his wife, as Rose had heard him say every morning
since her own arrival:
“What are the plans for to-day, my dear?”
Lady Aviolet immediately took up a little note-book with silver corners
and a silver pencil attached, and began to flutter the leaves.
“The Marchmonts are coming to tea. Very pleasant neighbours of ours,
Rose; you will like to meet them. General Marchmont, he is, and there
are two unmarried daughters. Poor Mrs. Marchmont is dead, I’m sorry to
say. She was a Mallinson.”
Lady Aviolet paused, as though expecting Rose to say something, but
Rose had nothing to say. Neither the word “Marchmont” nor the word
“Mallinson” conveyed anything to her beyond the mere sound of the
syllables, and she hardly even realised that they could be expected to
convey anything more.
“The Marchmonts will be interested in the new bulbs,” said Lady Aviolet.
“Anything for the station?” Sir Thomas inquired. “The carriage must
meet the two-thirty. Ford is expecting the person from London who
wants to see the house.”
“What person? I hadn’t heard anything about that.”
“Some man who is publishing a book, I believe. He wrote a very civil
letter, and asked if he might see the place and take some photographs
and Ford sees no objection. Surely he asked you about it?”
“I’d forgotten.”
“So long as he looks after the fellow himself, I don’t mind. And he’ll
have to show us what he writes. You can’t trust these liter’y fellows a
yard, I’m told.”
“Why, what could he do?” Rose inquired.
“Oh, you never know. Might put in all sorts of impertinent details
about the family, if he wasn’t watched. But I daresay he’s all right.
Ford’ll look after him.”
“Well, then, the carriage to meet the two-thirty,” said Lady Aviolet.
“There’s a box from the Stores, too, to be fetched. And the Mudie box.
What about sending in the luggage-cart?”
“Yes. That will be all right.”
“Luggage-cart to go this morning, then.” Lady Aviolet wrote again.
“Rose, have you any plans?”
Rose shook her head.
“Thomas, you’re not doing anything?”
“Why, yes, my dear. The bench is sitting to-day. I must go into
Cheriton this morning.”
“Oh, dear!”
Lady Aviolet looked quite confounded.
“That means that Tucker won’t have time to get the carriage cleaned
before this afternoon. He won’t like that.”
“No, no, that would never do.”
“I might drive you in the pony-cart, Thomas.”
“You’d have to wait and I can’t tell how long I might be kept. No, the
lad must drive over, and he can put up the pony at the ‘Angel’ until
I’m ready.”
“Will Tucker be able to spare the boy?”
“He must,” said Sir Thomas firmly.
“Then the pony-cart, and the boy, to be round at ten-thirty sharp.”
“Quarter to eleven is quite time enough.”
“Quarter to eleven, then.”
Lady Aviolet read out from the little book:
“The pony-cart to take you to Cheriton at 10.45, _with_ the boy--and
lunch had better be half an hour later, in case you can get back for
it--the luggage-cart to fetch the Mudie box and the box from the Stores
this morning, and the carriage to meet the 2.30 this afternoon. And I
suppose this person will take the seven o’clock train back to town. I
must find out from Ford. Oh, and the Marchmonts to tea. That’s all, I
think.”
No one contributed any further item to the day’s programme.
Ford made an unobtrusive appearance and uttered his casual morning
greetings with a detached coolness to which Rose, sharply observant,
felt that she herself could never attain.
She could not remember feeling utterly at a loss ever before, except
perhaps on her first day at school, when she was nine years old. But
then she had never before found herself in any atmosphere in the
least like that of Squires. The conversation at meals--there was no
conversation at any other time--was unlike any that she had heard
before.
In Ceylon, Jim had grumbled about the native labour on the plantation,
had told stories circulated on the previous night at the Club, and had
listened readily enough to any items of gossip, generally scandalous,
that his wife might have assimilated from her neighbours.
At Squires, Rose had heard the plans of the coming day discussed, with
minor variations, exactly as they had been discussed that morning,
every day since her arrival.
At lunch, Sir Thomas sometimes reported indignantly that the keeper had
again complained of poachers, and sometimes, also indignantly, that his
agent had suggested that more money should be spent on repairs to farms
or cottages on the estate.
To these observations Lady Aviolet might return a trite ejaculation, to
which no one made any rejoinder.
At tea, the talk was generally of the garden, of gardens belonging to
other people, and of Pug’s taste in cakes and saucers full of milk.
Sometimes people called, but even then the subjects of conversation
did not vary. If Sir Thomas had read the _Times_ before dinner,
as sometimes happened, he would then speak disparagingly of the
Government, although in general terms rather than from the standpoint
of any specific grievance. Ford sometimes made a reply, but more often
he raised his eyebrows and said nothing.
All the evening Lady Aviolet knitted, glancing from time to time at the
clock, and at half-past ten she always said to Rose:
“Well, I daresay you’re ready for bed, my dear. I’m sure I am.”
Then they took silver candlesticks and went upstairs, Rose climbing the
additional flight that led to the night nursery in order that she might
look at the sleeping Cecil before she went to her own large bedroom on
the first floor.
She felt as though she had been for months at Squires, and her heart
sank with a feeling of dismay that was almost physical, as she thought
of remaining here for years.
As usual, she drifted into the hall after breakfast, knowing that
she was not expected to return to the night nursery until the second
housemaid had completed her duties there.
She stood beside one of the smaller inlaid tables, disconsolately
turning over papers and periodicals.
“There is a new number of the _Graphic_, I believe,” said Ford’s voice
behind her.
“Oh, thanks.”
On a sudden impulse she looked up at him, intensifying the liquid
appeal of her big brown eyes almost unconsciously because he was a man,
and young.
“I wish I had more to do, here.”
“Do you? I’m sure my mother would be glad of your help in many ways.”
“She just wouldn’t, then. How could I help her? I don’t know anything
about her sort of things. I can’t even knit.”
“My dear mother’s interests are not solely confined to her worsted
work, I believe,” Ford answered blandly. “She is, for instance, a very
keen gardener.”
“As I happen to have lived in North London till I was seventeen, and
after that in Ceylon, with a couple of trips to Australia, I’m not
awfully likely to be of use in an English garden,” said Rose with angry
sarcasm.
“Perhaps not. May I ask in what direction your tastes happen to lie?”
“I haven’t had much chance of finding out, have I? You can guess what
life was like with poor old Jim. Every time he got on the drink, Ces
and I went in fear of our lives, and----”
“Please!” Ford held up one hand.
She stared at him, abashed and yet still angry.
“I won’t say it, if you don’t want me to. I had to put up with it,
though. Look here, I want to talk to you about what we’re going to do.”
“Certainly.”
He pushed forward one of the armchairs, but she remained on her feet.
Although Ford Aviolet was tall, their eyes met on a level, and Rose’s
square shoulders were broader than his sloping ones.
“It was very kind to pay our passage home, and all that, and of course
it was more than time Ces came to England. Jim was always talking about
sending him, only we hadn’t the money--but what happens next?”
“We hope you will pay us a long visit,” said Ford in accents that were
singularly lacking in spontaneity.
“Thanks,” she said ungraciously. “But you know I’ve got Ceylon friends
we could go and stay with--awfully nice people; they live at Bexhill,
retired. And I’ve an uncle in London, too.”
Ford visibly repressed a shudder.
“He’s got a big business there--pawnbroking--and his name is Smith,”
said Rose very loudly.
Ford’s voice immediately dropped even below its usual subdued pitch.
“Please let us discuss it quietly, if you have no objection. Won’t you
sit down?”
With a flouncing movement, she flung herself into the armchair.
“Let us understand one another, Rose. You and I are joint guardians of
Jim’s son. As things stand at present, he will in all probability, one
of these days, be the owner of this place.”
“I never thought of such a thing! I don’t believe it! Why, surely
you’re going to get married and have kids yourself, one of these days?”
“Oh, please, _please_!”
Ford’s hand went up again, and this time the expression on his face was
that of one excruciated.
“There can be no need to enter into questions of that sort. Cecil is
my father’s only grandchild at present, and we should naturally wish
him to be brought up according to the family traditions. If you wish
to pay some visits--and nothing could be more natural, after your long
spell abroad--you may feel perfectly certain that Cecil will be as well
looked after here as he could possibly be anywhere.”
Ford was looking at the tips of his fingers as he spoke and missed the
lowering gaze, rather like that of an angry animal, which she turned
upon him.
“How d’you mean, if I want to pay visits? I’m not going anywhere
without Ces. He’s never been away from me for a day since he was born.”
“I am sure you would be the last person to let the boy go on being
dependent upon you to such an extent, my dear Rose, when you realize
how very much harder it will make the inevitable separation between
you when it does come. Cecil will be going to school.”
She opened her mouth as though about to speak, checked herself, and
then said slowly:
“He’s only seven years old.”
“Oh, certainly, there’s time before us.” Ford smiled. “It was only a
word of warning. Cecil’s education is entirely in your department for
the time being. I shall not consider that my responsibility really
begins until he is of school age.”
“No,” said Rose slowly.
“You will find my mother a little bit--prejudiced, shall we say?--along
certain lines of her own, but otherwise you will have no difficulty
in making your own arrangements regarding Cecil. I take it you are in
favour of a good nursery governess?”
“Oh, I suppose so. It all sounds rather rot to me, you know,” she said
ungraciously. “It seems so silly to pay another woman to take care of
him, when his own mother has nothing else on earth to do. I could teach
him myself, really.”
“I doubt your finding it satisfactory. Not that I should venture to
question your attainments for a moment, but teaching is an art which
requires peculiar qualifications, I believe.”
“I don’t know any Latin or Greek, if that’s what you mean, but I went
to a decent school in North London up to the time I was sixteen, and
some of the things I learnt there have stuck. Besides, Life teaches
one.”
Ford smiled again. “How true! ‘Life teaches one.’ It has been said
before, I believe, but, of course, it’s none the less true on that
account.”
Rose flushed scarlet and looked straight at him. “You can sneer if you
want to. I don’t suppose you’ve learnt much from Life yourself. You’ve
sat here comfortably and eaten your meals and strolled about round your
father’s property, and all the time Jim was sweating on the plantation,
and drinking worse every day, and me not knowing which way to turn for
money to pay the monthly books.”
Her voice had risen to virago pitch.
“There’s no need to raise your voice,” said Ford. His colour came and
went in patches, and his breathing was uneven.
“I might remind you that I went through the South African War, and was
severely wounded at Spion Kop. I might also point out to you that a
man of my age is likely to have had a number of experiences that would
scarcely come within the range of your understanding. But on the other
hand, I have no taste for scenes. Indeed, for your own sake, I strongly
advise you to bear in mind that at Squires people don’t make scenes. It
isn’t done, my dear Rose, it really isn’t done.”
He picked up a newspaper and opened it leisurely.
Rose understood that the conversation was over, and that the onus of a
retreat had, skilfully enough, been relegated to her.
She turned her back and went upstairs, conscious that her withdrawal
lacked dignity. She hated her brother-in-law with the simple,
undisciplined intensity that characterised all her emotions.
Her not very long life had, indeed, run altogether upon emotional
lines. Her earliest remembrance was of her widowed mother crying
piteously because they were being “sold up,” and she had insisted upon
attending the sale, only to break down ignominiously. The six-year-old
Rose had roared sympathetically, and Uncle Alfred Smith, very angry,
had taken them both away.
They had lived with him in London after that, and Rose’s mother had
helped in the business, and Rose had gone to school, enjoying violent
and ephemeral friendships with other girls, giggling and idling and
whispering just as they did, and working by fits and starts when
Uncle Alfred wrote her a severe letter or her mother came to see
her. The keenest happiness she knew--and it was so intense as to be
almost pain--was connected with those occasional visits, when her
mother’s big, blowsy person, always dressed in some vivid colour with
a fluttering accompaniment of scarf-ends, veil, ribbons, and feathers,
would be inducted into the dingy school-parlour to which Rose would
rush--hurling herself rapturously against that substantial form, in a
mutually enthusiastic exchange of hugs and kisses.
“Shall I take you out, lovey?”
“Oh, do, Mother.”
They had gone out together, very often hand-in-hand, even after Rose
was quite a big girl, and looked into the drapers’ shop windows, for
which both had exactly the same passion, and planned all the fine
things that they would buy when Rose was grown up and married to a
millionaire.
“Only mind, you’ll have to love him, ducky. He must be awfully rich,
but you must be awfully in love with him, too, or you won’t get any of
the best out of life.”
“All right. I’d like to be in love with him, too.”
The afternoon generally finished with tea in a tea-shop.
“Eat up all the cakes you want, my precious. I expect you get enough
bread-and-scrape at that school of yours. Can’t you manage another?
That little pink one isn’t very large.”
“Well, I’ll try.”
Parting, at the end of the afternoon, was a choky affair on both sides.
“Not so long now till the holidays, pet. Be a good girl and get a
prize, to please Uncle Alfred.”
“I really _will_ try, Mother darling. Is he making much fuss about the
school-bills?”
“Not a lot. He wants you to be well educated. See here, Rose, he gave
me some money the other day. I can give you _this_.”
“Oh, Mother! It’s too much.”
“Not a bit of it, lovey. Get some chocs, or something good. By-bye.”
Rose would stand on the doorstep and wave, receiving vigorous waves in
return, till her mother, still walking backwards, either collided with
a passer-by or disappeared round the corner of the street.
The holidays, when they came, had always been blissful, owing to the
companionship of that adored mother. They had both of them enjoyed
their cramped quarters in one small bedroom over the shop, both
disregarded Uncle Alfred’s severe commands as to the consumption of gas
with cheerful impunity, turning up the flame as high as it would go,
so that both could judge of the effect upon Rose’s mother’s complexion
of the new creams and powders with which she was always trying
experiments, sometimes with disastrous results.
“I don’t like that brunette powder, one bit. It makes you look sort of
green.”
“It’ll match my hair, then,” had been the substance of Mrs. Smith’s
reply to her daughter’s criticism, given with a certain grim humour.
“However that girl in the hair-dresser’s could have recommended it the
way she did, beats me. To hear her, you’d have thought there wasn’t a
thing to touch it in heaven or earth. Not a dye, she said, but just a
tonic to brighten the colour and clean the scalp. And look at me!”
The effect achieved by the tonic had indeed been remarkable.
“Don’t you ever have a thing to do with hair-dyes, dearie. You’ve
got lovely hair, just exactly the colour mine was before I started
monkeying with it.”
But Rose’s mother had shown no objection to her daughter’s
semi-surreptitious use of the stick of lip-salve that lay in a drawer
of the dressing-chest, amid a tangle of veils, hair-nets, twists of
paper containing sweets, biscuit-crumbs, hair-pins, belts, stockings,
old envelopes, gloves, powder-boxes, and a dozen other accumulated
futilities.
Rose could never remember that her mother had given her more than two
pieces of advice, besides that which related to her use of hair-dyes.
“Put on clean under-things when you’re going on a journey. You never
know if there mayn’t be an accident, nor who’ll pick you up and save
you. You don’t want to be taken unawares, is what I say.”
And the other:
“Know your own mind, Rose, and when you’ve found out what you want,
you go for it. There’s nothing like Life, when all’s said and done, and
if Life isn’t wanting, then I don’t know what it is. And your Mammy’ll
help you to get what you want, if she can do it, my pretty.”
But Rose’s mother had been killed in a street accident, two days before
Rose was to leave school for good.
For many years afterwards she had been unable to bear the thought of
the months that followed. Her grief had been a kind of frenzy, coming
upon her in gusts of overwhelming misery when she could barely force
down rising screams for Mother, Mother, _Mother_, crouched upon the
floor, biting at the bed-clothes, with clenched hands and streaming
eyes.
For months she had dreaded going to sleep in anticipation of the
frightful, sick pang that waking, with its renewal of realization,
brought her.
Uncle Alfred had been extraordinarily and unexpectedly kind.
He had given her pocket-money, and occasional presents, and had said
nothing about the innumerable novels from the circulating library with
which she had sought to drug her misery, although he had long ago
denounced all fiction as “trash inspired by the Devil.” (Uncle Alfred
had “found religion” some years earlier but had never succeeded in
imparting the discovery either to his sister-in-law or to his niece.)
It had been, however, without any such altruistic design at all that
Uncle Alfred had accidentally provided Rose with the first real
distraction from her sorrow.
He had engaged an assistant.
The youth, who helped in the shop all day and slept under the counter
at night, and had meals with them in the living-room, fell in love with
Rose.
Immediately, and with no false modesty as to showing it, Rose had
fallen in love with Artie Millar in return.
It had been a very young, rapid and essentially physical affair, but it
had served, to a certain extent, to reveal to Rose the possibilities
in herself. She had been partly frightened, and partly exultant. At
school she had acquired a garbled knowledge of sex, supplemented by her
mother’s crudely worded reassurance.
“Don’t you worry your pretty head, my poppet. It stands to reason
you’ve got a body as well as a heart, doesn’t it? And if you ask me,
the one wouldn’t be much fun without the other. You’ll find the whole
thing sort of works in together, when you fall in love, and nothing to
be ashamed of either. It’s all Nature.”
It had been with this comfortable justification at the back of her mind
that Rose had let herself go whole-heartedly to the violent mutual
attraction that had overtaken herself and the good-looking assistant--a
lad of nineteen, with blue eyes and very white teeth flashing from a
singularly brown face. He had been at sea for two years before drifting
into the pawnbroker’s shop, and the fact held a fascination for the
London-bred Rose.
At first they had given one another long, semi-surreptitious looks,
then they had tentatively begun an exchange of jokes and personalities,
until the day when Artie had suddenly failed in repartee and, when
derided by Rose, had replied, flushing deeply:
“_You_ can say anything you jolly well please to me. I--I like it.”
For days after that she had avoided him, while a new delicious
consciousness was awakened between them, enhanced by the necessity of
behaving as usual in front of Uncle Alfred.
At last one evening, just as Artie was putting up the shutters for
the night, Rose, having watched Uncle Alfred leave the house by the
side-door, had slipped into the shop and pretended to be very much
surprised at Artie’s presence.
“Hallo! Haven’t you finished yet?”
“Just. I say----”
“Well?”
“I say, are you offended with me about anything?”
“What makes you ask?”
“You’ve seemed different, somehow, lately. More stand-off, like.”
These, and other such time-worn phrases, had passed between them, and
in the end Rose had simulated anger, strangely curious all the time to
see what Artie, provoked, would do.
What he had done, as both had subconsciously intended from the first,
had been to catch hold of her and kiss her roughly and suddenly.
It had been Rose’s first kiss, and had been followed by others, given
and exchanged in the semi-obscurity of the shop at closing-time and
later on, as they grew bolder, in the public parks to which they had
repaired secretly on the rare afternoons when Artie was free.
Perhaps a fortnight had elapsed before the discovery by Uncle Alfred of
the idyll so rapidly progressing beneath his roof.
Another crisis of the emotions had followed, for Uncle Alfred had
denounced Rose to her face, in his strangely passionless, old-fashioned
invective, as a “lewd hussy.” But his wrath had not blinded him to the
relative value to himself and his business of an intelligent assistant
and an idle niece.
It was Rose for whom he had found a post that would take her away from
home, that would, in fact, take her out of England, since she was to
look after two children travelling with their parents to Ceylon, remain
there for a year, and return to England with them.
“A most wonderful opportunity for any young woman,” Uncle Alfred had
pointed out.
It had certainly provided wonderful opportunities for Rose.
In spite of a tearful parting and promise of weekly letters, she had
forgotten Artie Millar within twenty-four hours of leaving him. The new
excitements had been so many and so varied!
Her employers had been kind to her--Mr. Jones-Pryce had attempted to
kiss her, but had left off when she protested--and the children had
played on deck and given her no trouble.
Rose, enchanted with her new life, had found aboard ship to afford the
most delightful opportunities for flirtation, and several young men,
Jim Aviolet amongst them, had been ready to flirt.
The emotional climaxes had then come thick and fast, one upon another.
There had been Mrs. Jones-Pryce’s rather tardy awakening to her duties
of chaperonage, and her crudely worded rebuke to Rose, the ready tears
and loud protests of Rose in return, and Jim Aviolet’s eager and
indiscreet consolations.
“Give the old hag notice. You’ll easily find another job of the same
kind at Colombo, to get you home again.”
“But I don’t want to go home! Uncle Alfred doesn’t want me--and
besides, he’d be so angry.”
“You poor little girl! I say, don’t cry, Rose. I may call you Rose,
mayn’t I?”
Oh, yes, he might do anything he liked.
She had not been exactly in love with Jim, but pleased and flattered
because he was a “real” gentleman (not like Mr. Jones-Pryce) and full
of romantic compassion when he had confided to her that he was the “bad
hat” of his family.
“It’s drink, mostly. I suppose you think that awful?”
Rose had not thought it nearly so “awful” as a girl of Jim Aviolet’s
own class would have thought it. Drink was a not uncommon misfortune
amongst her mother’s friends, and amongst Uncle Alfred’s clientèle. She
had been fired with enthusiasm at the idea of reforming him, taking
care of him.
“I know I could keep straight with a girl like you, Rose,” had been Jim
Aviolet’s declaration.
The end of it had been a precipitated parting at Colombo between Rose
and her employers, and her marriage to Jim Aviolet.
It was there that romance had ended, and although the emotional
climaxes had still come at intervals, they had almost all been painful
ones.
Jim had been violently in love with his young wife for a short while,
but from the first week of their marriage they had quarrelled, loudly
and angrily. Neither had known the meaning of restraint.
Cecil had been a small bone of contention between them almost from the
day of his birth.
If there had been emotion over Jim’s death--and Rose was incapable of
viewing any personal equation from any but the emotional standpoint--it
had been strangely mixed. There had been grief and shame and anger and
remorse, but there had also been untold relief.