have done it. She was only ragging. But when God does things," said
Nicky savagely, "it isn't a rag."
He hated Grannie, and he hated Mr. Parsons, and he hated God. But he
loved Dorothy who had given him Jerry.
Night after night Frances held him in her arms at bed-time while Nicky
said the same thing. "If--if I could stop seeing him. But I keep on
seeing him. When he sat on the mustard and cress. And when he bit me
with his sleep-bites. And when he looked at me out of the tree of
Heaven. Then I hear that little barking grunt he used to make when he
was playing with himself--when he dashed off into the bushes.
"And I can't _bear_ it."
Night after night Nicky cried himself to sleep.
For the awful thing was that it had been all his fault. If he had kept
Jerry's weight down Boris couldn't have caught him.
"Daddy said so, Mummy."
Over and over again Frances said, "It wasn't your fault. It was
Don-Don's. He left the door open. Surely you can forgive Don-Don?" Over
and over again Nicky said, "I do forgive him."
But it was no good. Nicky became first supernaturally subdued and
gentle, then ill. They had to take him away from home, away from the
sight of the garden, and away from Mr. Parsons, forestalling the
midsummer holidays by two months.
Nicky at the seaside was troublesome and happy, and they thought he had
forgotten. But on the first evening at Hampstead, as Frances kissed him
Good-night, he said: "Shall I have to see Mr. Parsons to-morrow?"
Frances said: "Yes. Of course."
"I'd rather not."
"Nonsense, you must get over that."
"I--can't, Mummy."
"Oh, Nicky, can't you forgive poor Mr. Parsons? When he was so unhappy?"
Nicky meditated.
"Do you think," he said at last, "he really minded?"
"I'm sure he did."
"As much as you and Daddy?"
"Quite as much."
"Then," said Nicky, "I'll forgive him."
But, though he forgave John and Mr. Parsons and even God, who, to do him
justice, did not seem to have been able to help it, Nicky did not
forgive himself.
Yet Frances never could think why the sight of mustard and cress made
Nicky sick. Neither did Mr. Parsons, nor any schoolmaster who came after
him understand why, when Nicky knew all the rest of the verb [Greek:
erchomai] by heart he was unable to remember the second aorist.
He excellent memory, but there was always a gap in it just there.
VI
In that peace and tranquillity where nothing ever happened, Jerry's
violent death would have counted as an event, a date to reckon by; but
for three memorable things that happened, one after another, in the
summer and autumn of 'ninety-nine: the return of Frances's brother,
Maurice Fleming, from Australia where Anthony had sent him two years
ago, on the express understanding that he was to stay there; the
simultaneous arrival of Anthony's brother, Bartholomew, and his family;
and the outbreak of the Boer War.
The return of Morrie was not altogether unforeseen, and Bartholomew had
announced his coming well beforehand, but who could have dreamed that at
the end of the nineteenth century England would be engaged in a War that
really _was_ a War? Frances, with the _Times_ in her hands, supposed
that that meant more meddling and muddling of stupid politicians, and
that it would mean more silly speeches in Parliament, and copy, at last,
for foolish violent, pathetic and desperate editors, and breach of
promise cases, divorces and fires in paraffin shops reduced to momentary
insignificance.
But as yet there was no war, nor any appearance that sensible people
interpreted as a sign of war at the time of Morrie's return. It stood
alone, as other past returns, the return from Bombay, the return from
Canada, the return from Cape Colony, had stood, in its sheer awfulness.
To Frances it represented the extremity of disaster.
They might have known what was coming by Grannie's behaviour. One day,
the day when the Australian mail arrived, she had subsided suddenly into
a state of softness and gentleness. She approached her son-in-law with
an air of sorrowful deprecation; she showed a certain deference to her
daughter Louie; she was soft and gentle even with Emmeline and Edith.
Mrs. Fleming broke the news to Louie who broke it to Frances who in her
turn broke it to Anthony. That was the procedure they invariably
adopted.
"I wonder," Grannie said, "what he can be coming back for!" Each time
she affected astonishment and incredulity, as if Morrie's coming back
were, not a recurrence that crushed you with its flatness and staleness,
but a thing that must interest Louie because of its utter un-likeliness.
"I wonder," said Louie, "why he hasn't come before. What else did you
expect?"
"I'm sure I don't know," said Grannie helplessly. "Go and tell Frances."
Louie went. And because she knew that the burden of Morrie would fall
again on Frances's husband she was disagreeable with Frances.
"It's all very well for you," she said. "You haven't got to live with
him. You haven't got to sleep in the room next him. You don't know what
it's like."
"I do know," said Frances. "I remember. You'll have to bear it."
"You haven't had to bear it for fourteen years."
"You'll have to bear it," Frances repeated, "till Anthony sends him out
again. That's all it amounts to."
She waited till the children were in bed and she was alone with Anthony.
"Something awful's happened," she said, and paused hoping he would
guess.
"I don't know how to tell you."
"Don't tell me if it's that Nicky's been taking my new bike to pieces."
"It isn't Nicky--It's Maurice."
Anthony got up and cleared his pipe, thoroughly and deliberately. She
wondered whether he had heard.
"I'd no business to have married you--to have let you in for him."
"Why? What's he been up to now?"
"He's coming home."
"So," said Anthony, "is Bartholomew. I'd no business to have let you in
for _him_."
"Don't worry, Frances. If Morrie comes home he'll be sent out again,
that's all."
"At your expense."
"I don't grudge any expense in sending Morrie out. Nor in keeping him
out."
"Yes. But this time it's different. It's worse."
"Why worse?"
"Because of the children. They're older now than they were last time.
They'll understand."
"What if they do? They must learn," Anthony said, "to realize facts."
They realized them rather sooner than he had expected. Nobody but Louie
had allowed for the possibility of Morrie's sailing by the same steamer
as his letter; and Louie had argued that, if he had done so, he was
bound either to have arrived before the letter or to have sent a wire.
Therefore they had at least a clear five days of peace before them.
Anthony thought he had shown wisdom when, the next morning which was a
Wednesday, he sent Grannie and the Aunties to Eastbourne for a week, so
that they shouldn't worry Frances, and when on Thursday he made her go
with him for a long day in the country, to take her mind off Morrie.
They came back at nine in the evening and found Dorothy, Michael and
Nicholas sitting up for them. Michael and Nicky were excited, but
Dorothy looked grown-up and important.
"Uncle Morrie's come," they said.
"Dorothy saw him first--"
"Nicky let him in--"
"He hadn't got a hat on."
"We kept him in the schoolroom till Nanna could come and put him to
bed."
"He was crying because he'd been to Grannie's house and there wasn't
anybody there--"
"And because he'd lost the love-birds he'd brought for Auntie Emmy--"
"And because he couldn't remember which of us was dead."
"No, Mummy, nobody's seen him but us and Nanna."
"Nanna's with him now."
Uncle Morrie never accounted, even to himself, for the time he had spent
between the arrival of his ship at Tilbury on Sunday morning and that
Saturday afternoon. Neither could he remember what had become of his
luggage or whether he had ever had any. Only the County Council man,
going his last rounds in the farthest places of the Heath, came upon a
small bundle tied in a blue handkerchief, a cap belonging to E.D.
Boulger, of the S.S. _Arizona_, a cage of love-birds, and a distinct
impression of a recumbent human form, on the grass together, under a
young birch tree.
In the stuffy little house behind the Judge's Walk the four women lived
now under male protection. When they crossed the Heath they had no
longer any need to borrow Anthony from Frances; they had a man of their
own. To make room for him Auntie Louie and her type-writer were turned
out of their own place, and Auntie Louie had to sleep in Grannie's bed,
a thing she hated. To make room for the type-writer the grey parrot was
turned out of the dining-room into the drawing-room. And as Maurice
couldn't stand either the noise of the type-writer or the noises of the
parrot he found both the dining-room and the drawing-room uninhabitable.
Day after day Dorothy and Michael and Nicky, on the terrace, looked out
for his coming. (Only extreme distance made Uncle Morrie's figure small
and harmless and pathetic.) Day after day he presented himself with an
air of distinction and assurance, flushed, and a little battered, but
still handsome, wearing a spruce grey suit and a panama hat bought with
Anthony's money. Sheep-farming in Australia--he had infinitely preferred
the Cape Mounted Police--had ruined Maurice's nerves. He was good for
nothing but to lounge in Anthony's garden, to ride his horses--it was
his riding that had got him into the Cape Mounted Police--to sit at his
table and drink his wines, and, when there was no more wine for him, to
turn into Jack Straw's Castle for a pick-me-up on his way home.
And before July was out three others were added to the garden group:
Bartholomew and Vera and Veronica. And after them a fourth, Vera's
friend, Captain Ferdinand Cameron, home on sick leave before anybody
expected him.
Frances's tree of Heaven sheltered them all.
VII
Bartholomew, Anthony's brother, lived in Bombay and looked after his
business for him in the East. He had something the matter with him, and
he had come home to look after his own health. At least, Bartholomew's
health was what he was supposed to be looking after; but Dorothy had
heard her father say that Bartie had come home to look after Vera.
Vera was Bartie's wife and Veronica's mother. Before she became Mrs.
Bartholomew Harrison she had been Frances's schoolfellow and her dearest
friend. Frances Fleming had been her bridesmaid and had met Anthony for
the first time at Vera's wedding, when he had fallen in love with her;
and she had fallen in love with him when they stayed together in
Bartholomew's house, before Bartholomew took Vera to Bombay.
Bartie had not been married ten months before he wanted to get Vera out
of England; and Vera had not been in India for ten weeks before he
wanted her to go back. They were always coming backwards and forwards,
but they never came together. Vera would be sent home first, and then
Bartie would come over in a great hurry and take her out again.
Twelve years after their marriage Veronica was born at Simla, and the
coming and going ceased for three years. Then Bartie sent them both
home. That time Vera had refused to travel farther westward than
Marseilles. She was afraid of damp and cold, and she had got the ship's
doctor to order her to the Riviera. She and Veronica had been living for
two years in a small villa at Agaye.
This summer she had come to England. She was no longer afraid of damp
and cold. And Bartie followed her.
Dorothy and Michael had no difficulty in remembering Vera, though it was
more than six years since they had seen her; for Vera looked the same.
Her hair still shone like copper-beech leaves; her face had still the
same colour and the same sweet, powdery smell. And if these things had
changed Frances would still have known her by her forehead that looked
so broad because her eyebrows and her eyes were so long, and by her
fine, unfinished, passionate mouth, by her pointed chin and by her ways.
But though her brother-in-law's ways had always been more or less
disagreeable, Frances was not prepared for the shock of the renewed
encounter with Bartholomew. Bartie was long and grey, and lean even when
you allowed for the thickness of his cholera belt. He wore a white scarf
about his throat, for his idea was that he had cancer in it. Cancer made
you look grey. He, too, had the face of a hawk, of a tired and irritable
hawk. It drooped between his hunched shoulders, his chin hanging above
the scarf as if he were too tired or too irritable to hold it up. He
behaved to Vera and Veronica as if it was they who had worried him into
cancer of the throat, they who tired and irritated him.
Vera talked to him as you might talk to a sick child whose peevishness
prolongs, unreasonably, its pain. Bartie's manner almost amounted to a
public repudiation of her. The whole house vibrated to the shutting of
his door at Good-night time. Yet when Bartie came down in the morning,
late, and more morose than ever, Vera's mouth made as if it kissed some
visionary image of the poor thing's absurdity. She didn't believe for
one minute in his cancer. It was an excuse for the shutting of his door.
She kept out of his way as much as possible; yet, when they were
together they watched each other. They watched; Bartie openly with
sudden dartings and swoopings of his hawk's eyes; Vera furtively. Her
eyes were so large and long that, without turning her head, or any
visible movement, they could hold his image.
But for Captain Cameron Vera's eyes had a full, open gaze. Spread wide
apart under her wide forehead they were like dark moth's wings; they
hovered, rested, flickering, vibrating to the fine tips of
their corners.
Whatever had been the matter with him in India, Captain Cameron had
recovered. His keen, fair, Highland face made Bartie's face look
terrible. Ferdie was charming; not more charming to Bartie's wife than
he was to Frances; not more charming to Frances than to her sisters; so
that even Louie unbent, and Emmeline and Edith fell in love with him. He
flirted with Frances under Anthony's nose; and with the Aunties under
Grannie's nose. The corners of Vera's mouth followed the tilt of her
long eyes' corners as she saw him do it.
You could not think of Vera as the children's Auntie, or as Bartie's
wife, or as Veronica's mother.
Veronica was a very little girl who sang songs and was afraid of
ghosts.
She slept in her mother's room, and so never could be put to bed till
half-past seven, or till her mother was dressed to the last hook of her
gown, the last hairpin, the last touch of powder (adhesive without
bismuth), and the last shadow drawn fine about her eyelashes. When Vera
beautiful in a beautiful gown, came trailing into the room where
everybody waited for her, Veronica hid herself behind Uncle Anthony's
big chair. When her father told her to come out of that and say
good-night and be quick about it, she came slowly (she was not in the
least afraid of Bartie), showing herself bit by bit, honey-coloured
hair, eyebrows dark under her gold, very dark against her white;
sorrowful, transparent, lucid eyes. A little girl with a straight white
face. A little, slender girl in a straight white frock. She stood by
Anthony's chair, spinning out the time, smiling at him with her childish
wavering mouth, a smile that would not spread, that never went higher
than the tip of her white nose, that left her lucid, transparent eyes
still sorrowful.
She knew that Anthony would take her on his knee, and that she could sit
there with her head tucked under his chin, smiling at him, prolonging
her caresses, till Vera told him to put her down and let her go.
Bartie growled: "Did you hear your mother telling you to say
Good-night?"
"Yes. But I must kiss Uncle Anthony first. Properly. Once on his mouth.
Once--on his nose. And once--on--his--eyes. And--once--on--his dear
little--ears."
After that, Veronica went slowly from chair to chair, lingering at each,
sitting first on Frances's lap, then on Vera's, spinning out her
caresses, that spun out the time and stretched it farther and farther
between her and the unearthly hour ahead of her.
But at her father's chair she did not linger for a single instant. She
slipped her hand into his hand that dropped it as if it had hurt him;
she touched his forehead with her small mouth, pushed out, absurdly, to
keep her face as far as possible from his. For, though she was not
afraid of Bartie, he was not nice either to sit on or to kiss.
Half-way across the room she lingered.
"I haven't sung 'London Bridge is broken down.' Don't you want me to
sing it?"
"No, darling. We want you to go to bed."
"I'm going, Mummy."
And at the door she turned and looked at them with her sorrowful, lucid,
transparent eyes.
Then she went, leaving the door open behind her. She left it open on
purpose, so that she might hear their voices, and look down into the
room on her way upstairs. Besides, she always hoped that somebody would
call her back again.
She lingered at the foot of the stairs till Bartie got up and shut the
door on her. She lingered at the turn of the stairs and on the landing.
But nobody ever called her back again.
And nobody but Nicky knew what she was afraid of.
Veronica was sitting up in the cot that used to be Nicky's when he was
little. Nicky, rather cold in his pyjamas, sat on the edge of it beside
her. A big, yellow, tremendous moon hung in the sky outside the window,
behind a branch of the tree of Heaven, and looked at them.
Veronica crouched sideways on her pillow in a corner of the cot, her
legs doubled up tight under her tiny body, her shoulders hunched
together, and her thin arms hanging before her straight to her lap. Her
honey coloured hair was parted and gathered into two funny plaits, that
stuck out behind her ear. Her head was tilted slightly backwards to rest
against the rail of the cot. She looked at Nicky and her look reminded
him of something, he couldn't remember what.
"Were you ever afraid, Nicky?" she said.
Nicky searched his memory for some image encircled by an atmosphere of
terror, and found there a white hound with red smears on his breast and
a muzzle like two saws.
"Yes," he said, "I was once."
A lamb--a white lamb--was what Veronica looked like. And Jerry bad
looked at him like that when he found him sitting on the mustard and
cress the day Boris killed him.
"Afraid--what of?"
"I don't know that it was 'of' exactly."
"Would you be afraid of a ghost, now, if you saw one?"
"I expect I jolly well should, if I _really_ saw one."
"Being afraid of ghosts doesn't count, does it?"
"No, of course it doesn't. You aren't afraid as long as I'm here, are
you?"
"No."
"I shall stay, then, till you go to sleep."
Night after night he heard her calling to him, "Nicky, I'm frightened."
Nobody but Veronica and Nicky were ever in bed on that floor before
midnight. Night after night he got up and came to her and stayed beside
her till she went to sleep.
Once he said, "If it was Michael he could tell you stories."
"I don't _want_ Michael. I want you."
In the day-time she went about looking for him. "Where's Nicky?" she
said. "I want him."
"Nicky's in the schoolroom. You can't have him."
"But--I _want_ him."
"Can't be helped. You must do without him."
"Will he be very long?"
"Yes, ever so long. Run away like a good little girl and play with
Don-Don."
She knew that they told her to play with Don-Don, because she was a
little girl. If only she could grow big quick and be the same age
as Nicky.
Instead of running away and playing with Don-Don, Ronny went away by
herself into the apple-tree house, to wait for Nicky.
The apple-tree house stood on the grass-plot at the far end of the
kitchen garden. The apple-tree had had no apples on it for years. It was
so old that it leaned over at a slant; it stretched out two great boughs
like twisted arms, and was propped up by a wooden post under each
armpit. The breast of its trunk rested on a cross-beam. The posts and
the cross-beam were the doorway of the house, and the branches were its
roof and walls. Anthony had given it to Veronica to live in, and
Veronica had given it to Nicky. It was Nicky's and Ronny's house. The
others were only visitors who were not expected to stay. There was room
enough for them both to stand up inside the doorway, to sit down in the
middle, and to lie flat at the far end.
"What more," said Nicky, "do you want?"
He thought that everybody would be sure to laugh at him when he played
with Bonny in the apple-tree house.
"I don't care a ram if they do," he said. But nobody ever did, not even
Mr. Parsons.
Only Frances, when she passed by that way and saw Nicky and Bonny
sitting cramped and close under their roof-tree, smiled unwillingly. But
her smile had in it no sort of mockery at all. Nicky wondered why.
"Is it," said Dorothy one morning, "that Ronny doesn't look as if she
was Uncle Bartie's daughter, or that Uncle Bartie looks as if he wasn't
Ronny's father?"
However suddenly and wantonly an idea struck Dorothy, she brought it out
as if it had been the result of long and mature consideration.
"Or is it," said Vera, "that I don't look as if I were Ronny's mother?"
Her eyes had opened all their length to take in Dorothy.
"No. I think it is that Uncle Bartie looks--"
Frances rushed in. "It doesn't matter, my dear, what you think."
"It will some day," said Dorothy.
It was perhaps the best thing she could have said, as showing that she
was more interested in the effect she would produce some day than in the
sensation she had created there and then.
"May I go round to Rosalind's after lessons?"
"You may."
"And may I stay to lunch if they ask me?"
"You may stay as long as they care to have you. Stay to tea, stay to
dinner, if you like."
Dorothy knew by the behaviour of her mother's face that she had scored
somewhere, somehow. She also knew that she was in disgrace and yet not
in disgrace; which, if you came to think of it, was a funny thing.
About this time Frances began to notice a symptom in herself. She was
apt to resent it when Vera discussed her children with her. One late
afternoon she and Anthony were alone with Vera. Captain Cameron had not
come round that day, and Bartie had gone into town to consult either his
solicitor or a specialist. He was always consulting one or the other.
"You're wrong, you two," said Vera. "You think Michael's tender and
Nicky's hard and unimpressionable. Michael's hard. You won't have to
bother about Michael's feelings."
"Michael's feelings," said Frances, "are probably what I shall have to
bother about more than anything."
"You needn't. For one thing, they'll be so unlike your feelings that you
won't know whether they're feelings at all. You won't even know whether
he's having them or not. Nicky's the one you'll have to look out for.
He'll go all the howlers."
"I don't think that Nicky'll be very susceptible. He hasn't shown any
great signs so far."
"Hasn't he! Nicky's susceptibility is something awful."
"My dear Vera, you say yourself you don't care about children and that
you don't understand them."
"No more I do," said Vera. "But I understand men."
"Do you understand Veronica?"
"Of course I don't. I said men. Veronica's a girl. Besides, I'm
Veronica's mother."
"Nicky," said Anthony, "is not much more than nine."
"You keep on thinking of him as a child--a child--nothing but a child.
Wait till Nicky has children of his own. Then you'll know."
"They would be rather darlings, Nicky's children," Frances said.
"So would Veronica's."
"Ver-onica?"
You needn't be frightened. Nicky's affection for Ronny is purely
paternal."
"I'm not frightened," said Frances. But she left the room. She did not
care for the turn the talk had taken. Besides, she wanted Vera to see
that she was not afraid to leave her alone with Anthony.
"I'm glad Frances has gone," said Vera, "because I want to talk to you.
You'd never have known each other if it hadn't been for me. She couldn't
have married you. It was I who saw you both through."
He assented.
"And you said if there was ever anything you could do for me--You
haven't by any chance forgotten?"
"I have not."
"Well, if anything should happen to me--"
"But, my dear girl, what _should_ happen to you?"
"Things _do_ happen, Anthony."
"Yes, but how about Bartie?"
"That's it. Supposing we separated."
"Good Heavens, you're not contemplating _that_, are you?"
"I'm not contemplating anything. But Bartie isn't very easy to live
with, is he?"
"No, he's not. He never was. All the same--"
Bartie was impossible. Between the diseases he had and thought he hadn't
and the diseases he hadn't and thought he had, he made life miserable
for himself and other people. He was a jealous egoist; he had the morbid
coldness of the neurotic, and Vera was passionate. She ought never to
have married him. All the same--"
"All the same I shall stick to Bartie as long as it's possible. And as
long as it's possible Bartie'll stick to me. But, if anything happens I
want you to promise that you'll take Ronny."
"You must get Frances to promise."
"She'll do anything you ask her to, Anthony."
When Frances came into the room again Vera was crying.
And so Frances promised.
"'London Bridge is broken down
(_Ride over My Lady Leigh_!)
* * * * *
"'Build it up with stones so strong--
* * * * *
"'Build it up with gold so fine'"--
It was twenty to eight and Ronny had not so much as begun to say Good
night. She was singing her sons to spin out the time.
"'London Bridge--'"
"That'll do, Ronny, it's time you were in bed."
There was no need for her to linger and draw out her caresses, no need
to be afraid of going to bed alone. Frances, at Vera's request, had had
her cot moved up into the night nursery.
VIII
Anthony had begun to wonder where on earth he should send Morrie out to
this time, when the Boer War came and solved his problem.
Maurice, joyous and adventurous again, sent himself to South Africa, to
enlist in the Imperial Light Horse.
Ferdie Cameron went out also with the Second Gordon Highlanders,
solving, perhaps, another problem.
"It's no use trying to be sorry, Mummy," Dorothy said.
Frances knew what Anthony was thinking, and Anthony knew it was what
Frances thought herself: Supposing this time Morrie didn't come back?
Then that problem would be solved for ever. Frances hated problems when
they worried Anthony. Anthony detested problems when they
bothered Frances.
And the children knew what they were thinking. Dorothy went on.
"It's all rot pretending that we want him to come back."
"It was jolly decent of him to enlist," said Nicky.
Dorothy admitted that it was jolly decent. "But," she said, "what else
could he do? His only chance was to go away and do something so jolly
plucky that _we_'re ashamed of ourselves, and never to come back again
to spoil it. You don't want him to spoil it, Mummy ducky, do you?"
Anthony and Frances tried, conscientiously and patriotically, to
realize the Boer War. They said it was terrible to have it hanging over
them, morning, noon and night. But it didn't really hang over them. It
hung over a country that, except once when it had conveniently swallowed
up Morrie, they had never thought about and could not care for, a
landscape that they could not see. The war was not even part of that
landscape; it refused to move over it in any traceable course. It simply
hung, or lay as one photographic film might lie upon another. It was not
their fault. They tried to see it. They bought the special editions of
the evening papers; they read the military dispatches and the stories of
the war correspondents from beginning to end; they stared blankly at the
printed columns that recorded the disasters of Nicholson's Nek, and
Colenso and Spion Kop. But the forms were grey and insubstantial; it was
all fiat and grey like the pictures in the illustrated papers; the very
blood of it ran grey.
It wasn't real. For Frances the brown walls of the house, the open wings
of its white shutters, the green garden and tree of Heaven were real; so
were Jack Straw's Castle and Harrow on the Hill; morning and noon and
night were real, and getting up and dressing and going to bed; most real
of all the sight and sound and touch of her husband and her children.
Only now and then the vision grew solid and stood firm. Frances carried
about with her distinct images of Maurice, to which she could attach the
rest. Thus she had an image of Long Tom, an immense slender muzzle,
tilted up over a high ridge, nosing out Maurice.
Maurice was shut up in Ladysmith.
"Don't worry, Mummy. That'll keep him out of mischief. Daddy said he
ought to be shut up somewhere."
"He's starving, Dorothy. He won't have anything to eat."
"Or drink, ducky."
"Oh, you're cruel! Don't be cruel!"
"I'm not cruel. If I didn't care so awfully for you, Mummy, I shouldn't
mind whether he came back or didn't. _You_'re cruel. You ought to think
of Grannie and Auntie Louie and Auntie Emmy and Auntie Edie."
"At the moment," said Frances, "I am thinking of Uncle Morrie."
She was thinking of him, not as he actually was, but as he had been, as
a big boy like Michael, as a little boy like John, two years younger
than she; a little boy by turns spoiled and thwarted, who contrived,
nevertheless, to get most things that he happened to want by crying for
them, though everybody else went without. And in the grown-up Morrie's
place, under the shells of Ladysmith, she saw Nicky.
For Nicky had declared his intention of going into the Army.
"And I'm thinking of Morrie," Dorothy said. "I don't want him to miss
it."
Frances and Anthony had hung out flags for Mafeking; Dorothy and Nicky,
mounted on bicycles, had been careering through the High Street with
flags flying from their handlebars. Michael was a Pro-Boer and flew no
flags. All these things irritated Maurice.
He had come back again. He had missed it, as he had missed all the
chances that were ever given him. A slight wound kept him in hospital
throughout the greater part of the siege, and he had missed the sortie
of his squadron and the taking of the guns for which Ferdie Cameron got
his promotion and his D.S.O. He had come back in the middle of the war
with nothing but a bullet wound in his left leg to prove that he had
taken part in it.
The part he had taken had not sobered Maurice. It had only depressed
him. And depression after prolonged, brutal abstinence broke down the
sheer strength by which sometimes he stretched a period of sobriety
beyond its natural limits.
For there were two kinds of drinking: great drinking that came seldom
and was the only thing that counted, and ordinary drinking that, though
it went on most of the time, brought no satisfaction and didn't count at
all. And there were two states of drunkenness to correspond: one intense
and vivid, without memory, transcending all other states; and one that
was no more remarkable than any other. Before the war Morrie's great
drinking came seldom, by fits and bursts and splendid unlasting
uprushes; after the war the two states tended to approach till they
merged in one continual sickly soaking. And while other important and
outstanding things, and things that he really wanted to remember,
disappeared in the poisonous flood let loose in Morrie's memory, he
never for one moment lost sight of the fact that it was he and not
Anthony, his brother-in-law, who had enlisted and was wounded.
He was furious with his mother and sisters for not realizing the war. He
was furious with Frances and Anthony. Not realizing the war meant not
realizing what he had been through. He swore by some queer God of his
that he would make them realize it. The least they could do for him was
to listen to what he had to say.
"You people here don't know what war is. You think it's all glory and
pluck, and dashing out and blowing up the enemy's guns, and the British
flag flying, and wounded pipers piping all the time and not caring a
damn. Nobody caring a damn.
"And it isn't. It's dirt and funk and stinks and more funk all the time.
It's lying out all night on the beastly veldt, and going to sleep and
getting frozen, and waking up and finding you've got warm again because
your neighbour's inside's been fired out on the top of you. You get
wounded when the stretcher-bearers aren't anywhere about, and you crawl
over to the next poor devil and lie back to back with him to keep warm.
And just when you've dropped off to sleep you wake up shivering, because
he's died of a wound he didn't know he'd got.
"You'll find a chap lying on his back all nice and comfy, and when you
start to pick him up you can't lift him because his head's glued to the
ground. You try a bit, gently, and the flesh gives way like rotten
fruit, and the bone like a cup you've broken and stuck together without
any seccotine, and you heave up a body with half a head on it. And all
the brains are in the other half, the one that's glued down. That's war.
"Huh!" He threw out his breath with a jerk of contempt. It seemed to him
that neither Frances nor Anthony was listening to him. They were not
looking at him. They didn't want to listen; they didn't want to look at
him. He couldn't touch them; he couldn't evoke one single clear image in
their minds; there was no horror he could name that would sting them to
vision, to realization. They had not been there.
Dorothy and Michael and Nicky were listening. The three kids had
imagination; they could take it in. They stared as if he had brought
those horrors into the room. But even they missed the reality of it.
They saw everything he meant them to see, except him. It was as if they
were in the conspiracy to keep him out of it.
He glared at Frances and Anthony. What was the good of telling them, of
trying to make them realize it? If they'd only given some sign, made
some noise or some gesture, or looked at him, he might have spared them.
But the stiff, averted faces of Frances and Anthony annoyed him.
"And if you're a poor wretched Tommy like me, you'll have to sweat in a
brutal sun, hauling up cases of fizz from the railway up country to
Headquarters, with a thirst on you that frizzles your throat. You see
the stuff shining and spluttering, and you go mad. You could kill the
man if you were to see him drink it, when you know there's nothing for
_you_ but a bucket of green water with typhoid germs swimming about in
it. That's war.
"You think you're lucky if you're wounded and get bumped down in a
bullock wagon thirty miles to the base hospital. But the best thing you
can do then is to pop off. For if you get better they make you hospital
orderly. And the hospital orderly has to clean up all the muck of the
butcher's shop from morning to night. When you're so sick you can't
stand you get your supper, dry bread and bully beef. The bully beef
reminds you of things, and the bread--well, the bread's all nice and
white on the top. But when you turn it over on the other side--it's red.
That's war."
Frances looked at him. He thought: "At last she's turned; at last I've
touched her; she can realize that."
"Morrie dear, it must have been awful," she said. "It's _too_ awful. I
don't mind your telling me and Anthony about it; but I'd rather you did
it when the children aren't in the room."
"Is that all you think about? The children? The children. You don't care
a tinker's cuss about the war. You don't care a damn what happens to me
or anybody else. What does it matter who's wounded or who's killed, as
long as it isn't one of your own kids?
"I'm simply trying to tell you what war _is_. It's dirt and stink and
funk. That's all it is. And there's precious little glory in it, Nicky."
"If the Boers won there would be glory," Michael said.
"Not even if the Boers won," said Maurice.
"Certainly not if the Boers won," said Anthony.
"You'll say next there'd be no glory if there was war between England
and Ireland and the Irish won. And yet there would be glory."
"Would there? Go and read history and don't talk rot."
"I have read it," said Michael.
Frances thought: "He doesn't know what he's talking about. Why should
he? He's barely thirteen. I can't think where he gets these ideas from.
But he'll grow out of them."
It was not Maurice that she saw in Maurice's war-pictures. But he had
made them realize what war was; and they vowed that as long as they
lived not one of their sons should have anything to do with it.
* * * * *
In the spring of nineteen-one Anthony sent Maurice out to California.
The Boer War was ended.
Another year, and the vision of war passed from Frances as if it had
never been.
IX
Michael was unhappy.
The almond trees flowered in front of the white houses in the strange
white streets.
White squares, white terraces, white crescents; at the turn of the roads
the startling beauty of the trees covered with pink blossoms, hot
against the hot white walls.
After the pink blossoms, green leaves and a strange white heat
everywhere. You went, from pavements burning white, down long avenues
grey-white under the shadows of the limes.
A great Promenade going down like a long green tunnel, from the big
white Hotel at the top to the High Street at the bottom of the basin
where the very dregs of the heat sank and thickened.
Promenade forbidden for no earthly reason that Michael could see, except
that it was beautiful. Hotel where his father gave him dinner on his
last day of blessed life, telling him to choose what he liked best, as
the condemned criminal chooses his last meal on the day they hang him.
Cleeve Hill and Battledown and Birdlip, and the long rampart of
Leckhampton, a thin, curling bristle of small trees on the edge of it;
forms that made an everlasting pattern on his mind; forms that haunted
him at night and tempted and tormented him all day. Memory which it
would have been better for him if he had not had, of the raking open
country over the top, of broad white light and luminous blue shadows, of
white roads switchbacking through the sheep pastures; fields of bright
yellow mustard in flower on the lower hills; then, rectangular fir
plantations and copses of slender beech trees in the hollows. Somewhere,
far-off, the Severn, faint and still, like a river in a dream.
Memory of the round white town in the round pit of the valley, shining,
smoking through the thick air and the white orchard blossoms; memory
saturated by a smell that is like no other smell on earth, the delicate
smell of the Midland limestone country, the smell of clean white dust,
and of grass drying in the sun and of mustard flowers.
Michael was in Cheltenham.
It was a matter of many unhappinesses, not one unhappiness. A sudden
intolerable unhappiness, the flash and stab of the beauty of the
almond-flowers, seen in passing and never seized, beauty which it would
have been better for him if he had not seen; the knowledge, which he
ought never to have had, that this beauty had to die, was killed because
he had not seized it, when, if he could but have held it for one minute,
it would have been immortal. A vague, light unhappiness that came
sometimes, could not for the life of him think why, from the sight of
his own body stripped, and from the feeling of his own muscles. There
was sadness for him in his very strength. A long, aching unhappiness
that came with his memory of the open country over the tops of the
hills, which, in their incredible stupidity and cruelty, they had let
him see. A quick, lacerating unhappiness when he thought of his mother,
and of the garden on the Heath, and the high ridge of the Spaniards'
Road, and London below it, immense and beautiful.
The unhappiness of never being by himself.
He was afraid of the herd. It was with him night and day. He was afraid
of the thoughts, the emotions that seized it, swaying, moving the
multitude of undeveloped souls as if they had been one monstrous,
dominating soul. He was afraid of their voices, when they chanted, sang
and shouted together. He loathed their slang even when he used it. He
disliked the collective, male odour of the herd, the brushing against
him of bodies inflamed with running, the steam of their speed rising
through their hot sweaters; and the smell of dust and ink and
india-rubber and resinous wood in the warm class-rooms.
Michael was at school.
The thing he had dreaded, that had hung over him, threatening him for
years before it happened, had happened. Nothing could have prevented it;
their names had been down for Cheltenham long ago; first his, then
Nicky's. Cheltenham, because Bartie and Vera lived there, and because it
had a college for girls, and Dorothy, who wanted to go to Roedean, had
been sent to Cheltenham, because of Bartie and Vera and for no other
reason. First Dorothy; then, he, Michael; then, the next term, Nicky.
And Nicky had been sent (a whole year before his time) because of
Michael, in the hope that Michael would settle down better if he had his
brother with him. It didn't seem reasonable.
Not that either Dorothy or Nicky minded when they got there. All that
Nicky minded was not being at Hampstead. Being at Cheltenham he did not
mind at all. He rather liked it, since Major Cameron had come to stay
just outside it--on purpose to annoy Bartie--and took them out riding.
Even Michael did not mind Cheltenham more than any other place his
people might have chosen. He was not unreasonable. All he asked was to
be let alone, and to have room to breathe and get ahead in. As it was,
he had either to go with the school mass, or waste energy in resisting
its poisonous impact.
He had chosen resistance.
TUDOR HOUSE.
CHELTENHAM,
_Sunday_.
DEAREST MOTHER:
I've put Sunday on this letter, though it's really Friday, because I'm
supposed to be writing it on Sunday when the other fellows are writing.
That's the beastly thing about this place, you're expected to do
everything when the other fellows are doing it, whether you want to or
not, as if the very fact that they're doing it too didn't make you
hate it.
I'm writing now because I simply must. If I waited till Sunday I
mightn't want to, and anyhow I shouldn't remember a single thing I meant
to say. Even now Johnson minor's digging his skinny elbows into one side
of me, and Hartley major's biting the feathers off his pen and spitting
them out again on the other. But they're only supposed to be doing Latin
verse, so it doesn't matter so much. What I mean is it's as if their
beastly minds kept on leaking into yours till you're all mixed up with
them. That's why I asked Daddy to take me away next term. You see--it's
more serious than he thinks--it is, really. You've no idea what it's
like. You've got to swot every blessed thing the other fellows swot
even if you can't do it, and whether it's going to be any good to you or
not. Why, you're expected to sleep when they're sleeping, even if the
chap next you snores. Daddy _might_ remember that it's Nicky who likes
mathematics, not me. It's all very well for Nicky when he wants to go
into the Army all the time. There are things _I_ want to do. I want to
write and I'm going to write. Daddy can't keep me off it. And I don't
believe he'd want to if he understood. There's nothing else in the world
I'll ever be any good at.
And there are things I want to know. I want to know Greek and Latin and
French and German and Italian and Spanish, and Old French and Russian
and Chinese and Japanese, oh, and Provençal, and every blessed language
that has or has had a literature. I can learn languages quite fast. Do
you suppose I've got a chance of knowing one of them--really
knowing--even if I had the time? Not much. And that's where being here's
so rotten. They waste your time as if it was theirs, not yours. They've
simply no notion of the value of it. They seem to think time doesn't
matter because you're young. Fancy taking three months over a Greek play
you can read in three hours. That'll give you some idea.
It all comes of being in a beastly form and having to go with the other
fellows. Say they're thirty fellows in your form, and twenty-nine stick;
you've got to stick with them, if it's terms and terms. They can't do it
any other way. It's _because_ I'm young, Mummy, that I mind so awfully.
Supposing I died in ten years' time, or even fifteen? It simply makes me
hate everybody.
Love to Daddy and Don.
Your loving MICK.
P.S.-I don't mean that Hartley major isn't good at Latin verse. He is.
He can lick me into fits when he's bitten _all_ the feathers off.
TUDOR HOUSE.
CHELTENHAM,
_Tuesday_.
DARLING MUMMY:
Daddy _doesn't_ understand. You only think he does because you like him.
It's all rot what he says about esprit de corps, the putridest rot,
though I know he doesn't mean it.
And he's wrong about gym, and drill and games and all that. I don't mind
gym, and I don't mind drill, and I like games. I'm fairly good at most
of them--except footer. All the fellows say I'm fairly good--otherwise I
don't suppose they'd stick me for a minute. I don't even mind Chapel.
You see, when it's only your body doing what the other chaps do, it
doesn't seem to matter. If esprit de corps _was_ esprit de corps it
would be all right. But it's esprit d'esprit. And it's absolutely
sickening the things they can do to your mind. I can't stand another
term of it.
Always your loving
MICK.
P.S.-How do you know I shan't be dead in ten or
fifteen years' time? It's enough to make me.
P.P.S.-It's all very well for Daddy to talk--_he_ doesn't want to learn
Chinese.
TUDOR HOUSE.
CHELTENHAM,
_Thursday_.
DEAR FATHER:
All right. Have it your own way. Only I shall kill myself. You needn't
tell Mother that--though it won't matter so much as she'll very likely
think. And perhaps then you won't try and stop Nicky going into the Army
as you've stopped me.
I don't care a "ram", as Nicky would say, whether you bury me or cremate
me; only you might give my Theocritus to old Parsons, and my revolver
to Nicky if it doesn't burst. He'd like it.
MICHAEL.
P.S.--If Parsons would rather have my _Æschylus_ he can, or both.
TUDOR HOUSE.
CHELTENHAM,
_Sunday_.
DARLING MUMMY:
It's your turn for a letter. Do you think Daddy'd let me turn the
hen-house into a workshop next holidays, as there aren't any hens? And
would he give me a proper lathe for turning steel and brass and stuff
for my next birthday I'm afraid it'll cost an awful lot; but he could
take it out of my other birthdays, I don't mind how many so long as I
can have the lathe this one.
This place isn't half bad once you get used to it. I like the fellows,
and all the masters are really jolly decent, though I wish we had old
Parsons here instead of the one we have to do Greek for. He's an awful
chap to make you swot.
I don't know what you mean about Mick being seedy. He's as fit as fit.
You should see him when he's stripped. But he hates the place like
poison half the time. He can't stand being with a lot of fellows. He's a
rum chap because they all like him no end, the masters and the fellows,
though they think he's funny, all except Hartley major, but he's such a
measly little blighter that he doesn't count.
We had a ripping time last Saturday. Bartie went up to town, and Major
Cameron took Dorothy and Ronny and Vera and me and Mick to Birdlip in
his dog-cart, only Mick and me had to bike because there wasn't room
enough. However we grabbed the chains behind and the dog-cart pulled us
up the hills like anything, and we could talk to Dorothy and Ronny
without having to yell at each other. He did us jolly well at tea
afterwards.
Dorothy rode my bike stridelegs coming back, so that I could sit in the
dog-cart. She said she'd get a jolly wigging if she was seen. We shan't
know till Monday.
You know, Mummy, that kid Ronny's having a rotten time, what with Bartie
being such a beast and Vera chumming up with Ferdie and going off to
country houses where he is. I really think she'd better come to us for
the holidays. Then I could teach her to ride. Bartie won't let her learn
here, though Ferdie'd gone and bought a pony for her. That was to spite
Ferdie. He's worse than ever, if you can imagine that, and he's got
three more things the matter with him.
I must stop now.
Love to Dad and Don and Nanna. Next year I'm to go into physics and
stinks--that's chemistry.
Your loving NICKY.
THE LEAS. PARABOLA ROAD.
CHELTENHAM,
_Sunday_.
DEAREST MUMMY:
I'm awfully sorry you don't like my last term's school report. I know it
wasn't what it ought to have been. I have to hold myself in so as to
keep in the same class with Rosalind when we're moved up after
Midsummer. But as she's promised me faithfully she'll let herself rip
next term, you'll see it'll be all right at Xmas. We'll both be in I A
the Midsummer after, and we can go in for our matic, together. I wish
you'd arrange with Mrs. Jervis for both of us to be at Newnham at the
same time. Tell her Rosalind's an awful slacker if I'm not there to keep
her up to the mark. No--don't tell her that. Tell her _I'm_ a slacker if
she isn't there.
I was amused by your saying it was decent of Bartie to have us so often.
He only does it because things are getting so tight between him and
Vera that he's glad of anything that relaxes the strain a bit. Even us.
He's snappier than ever with Ronny. I can't think how the poor kid
stands it.
You know that ripping white serge coat and skirt you sent me? Well, the
skirt's not nearly long enough. It doesn't matter a bit though, because
I can keep it for hockey. It's nice having a mother who _can_ choose
clothes. You should see the last blouse Mrs. Jervis got for Rosalind.
She's burst out of _all_ the seams already. You could have heard
her doing it.
Much love to you and Daddy and Don-Don. I can't send any to Mr. Parsons
now my hair's up. But you might tell him I'm going in strong for
Sociology and Economics.--
Your loving
DOROTHY.
P.S.--Vera asked me if I thought you'd take her and Ronny in at
Midsummer. I said of course you would--like a shot.
LANSDOWN LODGE.
CHELTENHAM,
_Friday._
MY DEAREST FRANCES:
I hope you got my two wires in time. You needn't come down, either of
you. And you needn't worry about Mick. Ferdie went round and talked to
him like a fa--I mean a big brother, and the revolver (bless his heart!)
is at present reposing at the bottom of my glove-box.
All the same we both think you'd better take him away at Midsummer. He
says he can stick it till then, but not a day longer. Poor Mick! He has
the most mysterious troubles.
I daresay it's the Cheltenham climate as much as anything. It doesn't
suit me or Bonny either, and it's simply killing Ferdie by inches. I
suppose that's why Bartie makes us stay here--in the hope--
Oh! my dear, I'm worried out of my life about him. He's never got over
that fever he had in South Africa. He's looking ghastly.
And the awful thing is that I can't do a thing for him. Not a thing.
Unless--
You haven't forgotten the promise you made me two years ago, have you?
Dorothy seemed to think you could put Bonny and me up--again!--at
Midsummer. Can you? And if poor Ferdie wants to come and see us, you
won't turn him off your door-mat, will you?
Your lovingest
"VERA."
Frances said, "Poor Vera! She even makes poor Mick an excuse for seeing
Ferdie."
X
Three more years passed and Frances had fulfilled her promise. She had
taken Veronica.
The situation had become definite. Bartie had delivered his ultimatum.
Either Vera must give up Major Cameron, signing a written pledge in the
presence of three witnesses, Frances, Anthony and Bartie's solicitor,
that she would neither see him nor write to him, nor hold any sort or
manner of communication with him, direct or indirect, or he would obtain
a judicial separation. It was to be clearly understood by both of them
that he would not, in any circumstances, divorce her. Bartie knew that a
divorce was what they wanted, what they had been playing for, and he was
not going to make things easy for them; he was going to make things hard
and bitter and shameful He had based his ultimatum on the calculation
that Vera would not have the courage of her emotions; that even her
passion would surrender when she found that it had no longer the
protection of her husband's house and name. Besides Vera was expensive,
and Cameron was a spendthrift on an insufficient income; he could not
possibly afford her. If Bartie's suspicions were correct, the thing had
been going on for the last twelve years, and if in twelve years' time
they had not forced his hand that was because they had counted the cost,
and decided that, as Frances had put it, the "game was not worth the
scandal."
For when suspicion became unendurable he had consulted Anthony who
assured him that Frances, who ought to know, was convinced that there
was nothing in it except incompatibility, for which Bartie was
superlatively responsible.
Anthony's manner did not encourage confidence, and he gathered that his
own more sinister interpretation would be dismissed with contemptuous
incredulity. Anthony was under his wife's thumb and Frances had been
completely bamboozled by her dearest friend. Still, when once their eyes
were opened, he reckoned on the support of Anthony and Frances. It was
inconceivable, that, faced with a public scandal, his brother and his
sister-in-law would side with Vera.
It was a game where Bartie apparently held all the cards. And his trump
card was Veronica.
He was not going to keep Veronica without Vera. That had been tacitly
understood between them long ago. If Vera went to Cameron she could not
take Veronica with her without openly confirming Bartie's worst
suspicion.
And yet all these things, so inconceivable to Bartie, happened. When it
came to the stabbing point the courage of Vera's emotions was such that
she defied her husband and his ultimatum, and went to Cameron. By that
time Ferdie was so ill that she would have been ashamed of herself if
she had not gone. And though Anthony's house was not open to the unhappy
lovers, Frances and Anthony had taken Veronica.
Grannie and Auntie Louie and Auntie Emmeline and Auntie Edie came over
to West End House when they heard that it had been decided. It was
time, they said, that somebody should protest, that somebody should
advise Frances for her own good and for the good of her children.
They had always detested and distrusted Vera Harrison; they had always
known what would happen. The wonder was it had not happened before. But
why Frances should make it easy for her, why Frances should shoulder
Vera Harrison's responsibilities, and burden herself with that child,
and why Anthony should give his consent to such a proceeding, was more
than they could imagine.
Once Frances had stood up for the three Aunties, against Grannie; now
Grannie and the three Aunties were united against Frances.
"Frances, you're a foolish woman."
"My folly is my own affair and Anthony's."
"You'll have to pay for it some day."
"You might have thought of your own children first."
"I did. I thought, How would I like _them_ to be forsaken like poor
Ronny?"
"You should have thought of the boys. Michael's growing up; so is
Nicky."
"Nicky is fifteen; Ronny is eleven, if you call that growing up."
"That's all very well, but when Nicky is twenty-one and Ronny is
seventeen what are you going to do?"
"I'm not going to turn Ronny out of doors for fear Nicky should fall in
love with her, if that's what you mean."
"It _is_ what I mean, now you've mentioned it."
"He's less likely to fall in love with her if I bring them up as
brother and sister."
"You might think of Anthony. Bartholomew's wife leaves him for another
man, and you aid and abet her by taking her child, relieving her of her
one responsibility."
"Bartie's wife leaves him, and we help Bartie by taking care of his
child--who is _our niece_, not yours."
"My dear Frances, that attitude isn't going to deceive anybody. If you
don't think of Anthony and your children, you might think of us. We
don't want to be mixed up in this perfectly horrible affair."
"How are you mixed up in it?"
"Well, after all, Frances, we are the family. We are your sisters and
your mother and your children's grand-mother and aunts."
"Then," said Frances with decision, "you must try to bear it. You must
take the rough with the smooth, as Anthony and I do."
And as soon as she had said it she was sorry. It struck her for the
first time that her sisters were getting old. It was no use for Auntie
Louie, more red and more rigid than ever, to defy the imminence of her
forty-ninth birthday. Auntie Emmy's gestures, her mouthings and
excitement, only drew attention to the fact that she was forty-seven.
And Edie, why, even poor little Auntie Edie was forty-five. Grannie, dry
and wiry, hardly looked older than Auntie Edie.
They left her, going stiffly, in offence. And again the unbearable
pathos of them smote her. The poor Aunties. She was a brute to hurt
them. She still thought of them as Auntie Louie, Auntie Emmy, Auntie
Edie. It seemed kinder; for thus she bestowed upon them a colour and
vitality that, but for her and for her children, they would not have
had. They were helpless, tiresome, utterly inefficient. In all their
lives they had never done anything vigorous or memorable. They were
doomed to go out before her children; when they were gone they would be
gone altogether. Neither Auntie Louie, nor Auntie Emmy, nor Auntie Edie
would leave any mark or sign of herself. But her children gave them
titles by which they would be remembered after they were gone. It was as
if she had bestowed on them a little of her own enduring life.
It was absurd and pathetic that they should think that they were the
Family.
But however sorry she was for them she could not allow them to dictate
to her in matters that concerned her and Anthony alone. If they were so
worried, about the scandal, why hadn't they the sense to see that the
only way to meet it was to give it the lie by taking Ronny, by behaving
as if Ronny were unquestionably Bartie's daughter and their niece? They
were bound to do it, if not for Vera's sake, for the dear little girl's
sake. And that was what Vera had been thinking of; that was why she had
trusted them.
But her three sisters had always disliked Vera. They disliked her
because, while they went unmarried, Vera, not content with the one man
who was her just and legal portion, had taken another man whom she had
no right to. And Auntie Emmeline had been in love with Ferdie.
Still, there was a certain dreadful truth in their reproaches; and it
stung. Frances said to herselv that she had not been wise. She had done
a risky thing in taking Ronny. It was not fair to her children, to
Michael and Nicholas and John. She was afraid. She had been afraid when
Vera had talked to her about Nicky and Veronica; and when she had seen
Veronica and Nicky playing together in the apple-tree house; and when
she had heard Ronny's voice outside the schoolroom door crying, "Where's
Nicky? I want him. Will he be very long?"
Supposing Veronica should go on wanting Nicky, and supposing Nicky--
Frances was so worried that, when Dorothy came striding across the lawn
to ask her what the matter was, and what on earth Grannie and the
Aunties had been gassing about all that time, she told her.
Dorothy was nineteen. And Dorothy at nineteen, tall and upright, was
Anthony's daughter. Her face and her whole body had changed; they were
Anthony's face and body made feminine. Her little straight nose had now
a short high bridge; her brown eyes were keen and alert; she had his
hawk's look. She put her arm in Frances's, protecting her, and they
walked up and down the terrace path, discussing it. In the distance
Grannie and the Aunties could be seen climbing the slope of the Heath to
Judges' Walk. They were not, Dorothy protested, pathetic; they were
simply beastly. She hated them for worrying her mother.
"They think I oughtn't to have taken Ronny. They think Nicky'll want to
marry her."
"But Ronny's a kid--"
"When she's not a kid."
"He won't, Mummy ducky, he won't. She'll be a kid for ages. Nicky'll
have married somebody else before she's got her hair up."
"Then Ronny'll fall in love with _him_, and get her little heart
broken."
"She won't, Mummy, she won't. They only talk like that because they
think Ferdie's Ronny's father."
"Dorothy!"
Frances, in horror, released herself from that protecting arm. The
horror came, not from the fact, but from her daughter's knowledge of it.
"Poor Mummy, didn't you know? That's why Bartie hates her."
"It isn't true."
"What's the good of that as long as Bartie thinks it is?" said Dorothy.
"London Bridge is broken down
(_Ride over my Lady Leigh_!)"
Veronica was in the drawing-room, singing "London Bridge."
Michael, in all the beauty of his adolescence, lay stretched out on the
sofa, watching her. Her small, exquisite, childish face between the
plaits of honey-coloured hair, her small, childish face thrilled him
with a singular delight and sadness. She was so young and so small, and
at the same time so perfect that Michael could think of her as looking
like that for ever, not growing up into a tiresome, bouncing, fluffy
flapper like Rosalind Jervis.
Aunt Louie and Aunt Emmeline said that Rosalind was in love with him.
Michael thought that was beastly of them and he hoped it wasn't true.
"'Build it up with gold so fine'"--
Veronica was happy; for she knew herself to be a cause of happiness.
Like Frances once, she was profoundly aware of her own happiness, and
for the same reason. It was, if you came to think of it, incredible. It
had been given to her, suddenly, when she was not looking for it, after
she had got used to unhappiness.
As long as she could remember Veronica had been aware of herself. Aware
of herself, chiefly, not as a cause of happiness, but as a cause of
embarrassment and uncertainty and trouble to three people, her father,
her mother and Ferdie, just as they were causes of embarrassment and
trouble and uncertainty to her. They lived in a sort of violent mystery
that she, incomprehensibly, was mixed up with. As long as she could
remember, her delicate, childish soul had quivered with the vibration of
their incomprehensible and tiresome passions. You could never tell what
any of them really wanted, though among them they managed to create an
atmosphere of most devastating want. Only one thing she knew
definitely--that they didn't want _her_.
She was altogether out of it except as a meaningless counter in their
incomprehensible, grown-up game. Her father didn't want her; her mother
didn't want her very much; and though now and then Ferdie (who wasn't
any relation at all) behaved as if he wanted her, _his_ wanting only
made the other two want her less than ever.
There had been no peace or quietness or security in her little life of
eleven years. Their places (and they had had so many of them!) had never
had any proper place for her. She seemed to have spent most of her time
in being turned out of one room because her father had come into it, and
out of another because her mother wanted to be alone in it with Ferdie.
And nobody, except Ferdie sometimes, when they let him, ever wanted to
be alone in any room with her. She was so tired of the rooms where she
was obliged to be always alone with herself or with the servants, though
the servants were always kind.
Now, in Uncle Anthony's house, there was always peace and quietness and
an immense security. She knew that, having taken her, they wouldn't
give her up.
She was utterly happy.
And the house, with its long, wainscoted rooms, its whiteness and
darkness, with its gay, clean, shining chintzes, the delicate, faded
rose stuffs, the deep blue and purple and green stuffs, and the blue and
white of the old china, and its furniture of curious woods, the golden,
the golden-brown, the black and the wine-coloured, bought by Anthony in
many countries, the round concave mirrors, the pictures and the old
bronzes, all the things that he had gathered together and laid up as
treasure for his Sons; and the garden on the promontory, with its
buttressed walls and its green lawn, its flower borders, and its tree of
Heaven, saturated with memories, became for her, as they had become for
Frances, the sanctuary, crowded with visible and tangible symbols, of
the Happiness she adored.
"Sing it again, Ronny."
She sang it again.
"'London Bridge is broken down'"--
It was funny of Michael to like the silly, childish song; but if he
wanted it he should have it. Veronica would have given any of them
anything they wanted. There was nothing that she had ever wanted that
they had not given to her.
She had wanted to be strong, to be able to run and ride, to play tennis
and cricket and hockey, and Nicky had shown her how. She had wanted
books of her own, and Auntie Frances, and Uncle Anthony and Dorothy and
Michael had given her books, and Nicky had made her a bookcase. Her room
(it was all her own) was full of treasures. She had wanted to learn to
sing and play properly, and Uncle Anthony had given her masters. She had
wanted people to love her music, and they loved it. She had wanted a
big, grown-up sister like Dorothy, and they had given her Dorothy; and
she had wanted a little brother of her own age, and they had given her
John. John had a look of Nicky. His golden white hair was light brown
now; his fine, wide mouth had Nicky's impudence, even when, like
Frances, he kept it shut to smile her unwilling, twitching, mocking
smile. She had wanted a father and mother like Frances and Anthony; and
they had given her themselves.
And she had wanted to live in the same house with Nicky always.
So if Michael wanted her to sing "London Bridge" to him twenty times
over, she would sing it, provided Nicky didn't ask her to do anything
else at the same time. For she wanted to do most for Nicky, always.
And yet she was aware of something else that was not happiness. It was
not a thing you could name or understand, or seize, or see; you were
simply aware of it, as you were aware of ghosts in your room at night.
Like the ghosts, it was not always there; but when it was there
you knew.
It felt sometimes as if Auntie Frances was afraid of her; as if she,
Veronica, was a ghost.
And Veronica said to herself, "She is afraid I am not good. She thinks
I'll worry her. But I shan't."
That was before the holidays. Now that they had come and Nicky was back,
"it" seemed to her something to do with Nicky; and Veronica said to
herself, "She is afraid I'll get in his way and worry him, because he's
older. But I shan't."
As if she had not been taught and trained not to get in older people's
ways and worry them. And as if she wasn't growing older every
minute herself!
"'Build it up with gold so fine--
(_Ride over my Lady Leigh_!)
* * * * *
"'Build it up with stones so strong'"--
She had her back to the door and to the mirror that reflected it, yet
she knew that Nicky had come in.
"That's the song you used to sing at bed-time when you were frightened,"
he said.
She was sitting now in the old hen-house that was Nicky's workshop,
watching him as he turned square bars of brass into round bars with his
lathe. She had plates of steel to polish, and pieces of wood to rub
smooth with glass-paper. There were sheets of brass and copper, and bars
and lumps of steel, and great poles and planks of timber reared up round
the walls of the workshop. The metal filings fell from Nicky's lathe
into sawdust that smelt deliciously.
The workshop was nicer than the old apple-tree house, because there were
always lots of things to do in it for Nicky.
"Nicky," she said suddenly, "do you believe in ghosts?"
"Well--" Nicky caught his bar as it fell from the lathe and examined it
critically.
"You remember when I was afraid of ghosts, and you used to come and sit
with me till I went to sleep?"
"Rather."
"Well--there _are_ ghosts. I saw one last night. It came into the room
just after I got into bed."
"You _can_ see them," Nicky said. "Ferdie's seen heaps. It runs in his
family. He told me."
"He never told _me_."
"Rather not. He was afraid you'd be frightened."
"Well, I wasn't frightened. Not the least little bit."
"I shall tell him that. He wanted most awfully to know whether you saw
them too."
"_Me_? But Nicky--it was Ferdie I saw. He stood by the door and looked
at me. Like he does, you know."
The next morning Frances had a letter of two lines from Veronica's
mother:
"Ferdie died last evening at half past eight.
"He wants you to keep Ronny.
"VERA."
It was not till years later that Veronica knew that "He wanted most
awfully to know whether you saw them too" meant "He wanted most awfully
to know whether you really were his daughter."