Sotheby?” Anne asked herself in astonishment as she walked back across
Paris. “It turns out I don’t love him enough to borrow money from him.
He would always behave well, he would always be kind, yet I think he
would be delighted if he were never to see me again. I shall never ask
him for help or for advice; I shall never go near his studio after
to-morrow.” And it occurred to her suddenly that the money he had
offered to lend her had been earned by his father, and that it might
have been spent on Rachel, or on the Temperance Hotel.
“I wonder why it is that Ginette loves him?” she asked herself. “If she
really does. If I were her I should lose my heart to Mr. Grandison.”
And saying this she recalled the look in Grandison’s eyes and how he
had kept them fixed on her, how he had seemed to be going to speak and
the gesture with which he had sunk back into his chair as she went out
of the studio. “Richard has robbed me of knowing him. We should easily
have become intimate, we should have been friends,” she said with her
heart full of bitterness. Every detail of her walk with Grandison came
back and hurt her.
“Well, I am to be a mannequin if they like my figure.” The more she
thought of Ginette’s suggestion the better she liked it, and the more
difficult she found it to understand Richard’s annoyance. She was
puzzled to find an explanation, and tried one theory after another, but
nothing she could imagine seemed to her probable, and when five o’clock
came on the following afternoon she had almost persuaded herself
that the explanation of Richard’s ill-humour must be something quite
unconnected with herself. She knocked and Richard opened the door, and
stood for a moment in the threshold before admitting her. He stared at
her with a grin on his face and said: “Oh! So it is you, Anne!”
“Weren’t you expecting me?” she asked, noticing his surprise. “You said
I was to come to tea.”
Richard Sotheby led her into the studio, and Ginette rose from the
sofa, where she had been lying. The girl’s face had changed; Anne
could see that she had been crying, but there was so much pride in her
greeting that she felt shy of looking her in the face.
“Here is a letter for you,” said Ginette gravely, speaking in French
and pronouncing her words with the greatest distinctness. “You are to
present it personally to M. Kieselyov at that address at eight o’clock
to-morrow morning. If he thinks you are in the English style he will
engage you.”
“Thank you with all my heart. Your goodness....” Ginette did not wait
for Anne to finish her sentence, but walked away across the room.
Richard was making the tea. “Have you heard from your father?” he asked.
“No, I haven’t,” said Anne, feeling rather guilty. She had not written
to him since her arrival.
“I had a letter from mother with messages for you from Rachel.” He was
half tempted to add that their names must be coupled together in the
village by now, and that this was disagreeable to him, but he looked at
Anne and refrained.
She had taken off her hat, and the short, closely cropped hair shone
like straw. There was a worried look on her pale face.
“My God, what innocence!” he said to himself.
“Ginette and Richard have been quarrelling,” thought Anne, wondering if
Grandison would come in, for she was miserably disappointed not to see
him.
But instead of asking if he would be back to tea she said: “I wonder if
the swallows are building again in our dove house.”
“Do they build there?” asked Richard, and the whole expression of his
face altered at her words.
“Yes, they have a nest on the joist. Father leaves the top half of the
door open for them and they fly in and out. They are the prettiest
of the birds; my favourites, for no birds exceed them in loveliness
of colouring: the steel-blue back, the crimson throat and the white
belly. The flight of the swallow is more beautiful than that of any
other bird, but this pair are prettiest when they sit side by side on
the rails outside the dove house. Their spirits always seem to me a
little low: she moves one wing and then the other, as though she were
shrugging her little shoulders, and then, suddenly, he bursts into
song. Do you know the swallows’ song?”
“No,” said Richard. “I have never heard a swallow sing.” He sat down
and buried his face in his hands, and repeated in tones of utter
wretchedness: “No, I have never heard a swallow sing.”
“He has the clear note of a contralto; not loud or defiant, nor yet
feeble, but full of love, subdued because he can never forget that the
world is full of cruelty and unkindness.”
Ginette broke in with a question as to what Anne had said.
Richard told her, and the French girl smiled wearily.
“In England it is only the swallows apparently which have discovered
such platitudes.” Then she added: “Why is she staying?”
“It appears we invited her to tea,” answered Richard in a low voice.
There was the sound of a heavy tramp on the stairs and then a knock.
Richard stood up and went to the door. Anne looked across at Ginette
and saw that she was gazing at her with a strange expression.
“I must go,” she said to herself. “Why does she look at me as if she
felt contempt for me?” But it seemed impossible to go after that look
without an explanation. The memory of that expression would haunt her.
She looked up and saw that Richard had come back from the door, and
that a workman had followed him, and together they crossed the studio
and disappeared into the little room at the back.
Anne sat and sipped her tea, tortured by the need to speak, to ask
a question, to see light, and by the desire to escape, to go out of
the studio and never to set foot in it again. But she could not find
the words with which to ask her question or to take her leave, and
she sat on, dumbly watching the workman crossing the room, first with
a rolled-up mattress in his arms and then with a little folding bed
or carrying a wash-hand-stand. Richard came back and threw himself
down in a chair. There was a silence, prolonged until the workman
reappeared, crossed the studio and went out once more with a chair and
a looking-glass.
Ginette gave Richard an appealing look and he said:
“Anne, I think perhaps you had better go now. Ginette and I are both
rather upset.” He paused for a moment and said in colourless tones:
“Besides, someone who wishes to see you is waiting.”
Anne rose. “Good-bye, Mademoiselle Lariboisière,” she said, holding out
her hand. The brown hand gripped hers firmly.
“Till we meet again,” she said, and then added in broken English: “You
have a lucky face.”
“Thank you for telling me about the swallows,” said Richard as he
stood above her at the top of the stairs.
The French workman was struggling with a small table on the staircase
and it was some moments before she could reach the street.
“Never to know the meaning! Never to learn the secret! Never to
understand anything at all!” Anne cried with tears coming into her
eyes. “I have never seen into another person’s heart. I never shall.
Wherever I am, my curse clings to me!” A vague project of suicide,
of being found floating in the river, passed through her mind as she
stepped out into the street. The workman was still in front of her
lifting the table into a small motor-van; in avoiding him she ran into
Grandison’s back.
“Good God! You here! Don’t go away!” he exclaimed, as though she was
running from him. Anne stepped back and stood for a moment staring in
astonishment into his red face.
His words sounded angry, and his blue eyes glittered angrily so that
she felt afraid and her first impulse was to run back into the house.
“I cannot go up there again,” flashed through her mind, and she turned
again to Grandison.
“Miss Dunnock,” said the young man, still looking at her, almost
murderously. “I must make an explanation.”
The word explanation caught her ears. “No, that is impossible,” she
said to herself for some reason. “An explanation is impossible.”
“I don’t understand,” she said in a weak voice, giving up all thoughts
of flight. She was almost in tears. “I don’t understand anything.”
Grandison’s anger or passion seemed suddenly to have completely
disappeared. He looked at her appealingly with an expression in which
she could read pity for her and misery on his own account. For a moment
he tried to speak and choked, and then, swallowing, went on rapidly:
“It is rather complicated. I am taking away my furniture to a new room
and must superintend the man unpacking it. If you could come with me in
the van we could talk to each other.”
The van was packed; the man was waiting, impatient of their
conversation. Anne did not hesitate, but scrambled up on to the
tail-board of the van and settled herself on the rolled-up mattress.
She was excited without knowing why, and suddenly, looking at Grandison
perched beside her on the edge of the wash-hand-stand, she felt happy
and secure.
“I want to explain,” he said suddenly, as though he were defending
himself. “This is my furniture. I am taking it away from the studio
because I cannot live with Richard or with Ginette any longer. I have
broken with them completely, and have taken a room of my own.”
There was so much suffering in his voice that Anne understood that
there had been a quarrel. At that moment all seemed suddenly to have
become clear to her, and she felt that she was a very experienced
person. “What foolishness!” she exclaimed to herself.
“Why should they have quarrelled?” And she decided to persuade
Grandison to turn back.
“Why do you want to leave them?” she asked gently. She was preparing
to reason with him sympathetically, and softly to lead him back to
Richard. For a moment Grandison sat silent, and something in his sullen
expression, his trembling lip and the way in which he opened and then
shut his hand, moved her very much.
“I must explain,” he repeated. “Ever since I met you at the station I
have been madly in love with you.”
Anne felt cold all over as she heard these words; she shivered and
gazed at Grandison with frightened eyes, asking herself if she had
heard what he had said aright; a suspicion crossed her mind that he was
playing a joke on her, a heartless practical joke. She gazed at him in
terror, but he went on without turning his head to look at her: “It
has been awful. I could not speak to you while I was still living in
Richard’s studio. I think Ginette guessed but Richard did not suspect
until I told him after you went yesterday. I did not think it would
upset him so much or that it would upset me so much.”
“I don’t understand why he should be upset or why he dislikes me, but
I feel he does. There has never been anything between Richard and me,”
said Anne. She stopped, feeling that she had said something foolish.
“I know, but there has been a great deal between Richard and me,”
answered Grandison. “Just now he hates you, though it is not your fault
that I am in love with you, and he knows that.”
“He has got Ginette,” said Anne.
“Oh, my God!” cried Grandison, making the most awful face. “Ginette was
my mistress. Surely you knew that?”
Anne gazed at the cuff of Grandison’s coat: a check material with a
little wavy thread of purple running among the fawns and greys. She was
overcome with shame and confusion at her ignorance and her stupidity.
There was a long silence.
“This doesn’t seem like a trick,” she said to herself, but the fear
that Grandison might in some way be playing some strange and terrible
joke at her expense remained at the back of her mind.
“For some reason I thought that Ginette and you were the same person
before I arrived,” she said. “You see I overheard Richard spelling out
a telegram to you in French before I had ever spoken to him.”
“A telegram?” Grandison asked in astonishment. “Oh, yes, perhaps he
did telegraph. I wrote and told him that I was in love with Ginette
and that I proposed taking her to live with us.... That was a dreadful
thing to have done. You see, Richard was very fond of me; he cares
about nobody else,” he said suddenly, wiping the sweat off his forehead.
“I have always, all my life, mismanaged my love affairs. But that is
because I have never been in love before. Now I am in love with you
and I determined not to mismanage that but to make a clean sweep of
everything.”
This remark, and the defiant tone in which it was uttered, struck Anne
as comic; she laughed but immediately regretted having done so, for
Grandison burst into tears.
She had never seen a man weep before and was alarmed. The tears
streamed down his cheeks and hung on the stubble of his beard, for
he had not shaved that day, and then fell one after another on to his
knees.
Anne jumped up from the mattress, hitting her head on the top of the
van. “Oh! Damn!” She clutched Grandison round the shoulders while
her eyes filled with tears from the pain. “Don’t cry; I have hit my
head such an awful crack, but you see I am not crying,” she said,
hugging him and then slipping on to her knees. He looked at her, and
the van pulled up with a jerk just as they found each other’s faces
in a kiss. They alighted, and Grandison led the way into the meanest
building that Anne had ever seen. His room was on the top floor, and
as they ascended, an odour of cooking, of accumulated filth, of bugs
and of boiled rags took them by the throat. But they climbed on, up
and up, and behind them toiled the indignant workman, sweating under
the mattress in his arms, and pausing to curse the smells and the
filthiness of the house under his breath.
“The view is magnificent,” said Grandison with a sweep of his arm as he
threw open the door of a tiny attic.
“Put the things down anywhere, just as you like,” he added to the
workman. He was right, the view was magnificent. All Paris lay
glittering at their feet in the sunshine, and Anne forgot the
malodorous staircase as she leant out of the open window.
“Yes, the view is lovely,” she said, turning to Grandison, but an
altercation was going on with the workman, who was repeating again and
again: “This place stinks.”
Grandison could understand the words well enough, but he was offended
and resolutely shrugged his shoulders, repeating: “Don’t understand.
Fetch my furniture.”
“This place stinks,” repeated the workman with appropriate gestures.
“It gives me a bad throat.” He made sounds as if he were going to be
sick.
“I don’t understand what you say; fetch the furniture,” repeated
Grandison in a rage, and began to push the man out of the room. “A
house full of Poles and bugs,” said the man as he made off down the
staircase.
“It’s quite an accident,” said Grandison, “that there is such a
wonderful view. I took the first room I could find, by candle light. It
is dirty, but I had it scrubbed out with disinfectant this morning. I
shall get some sulphur candles in case what he says about the bugs is
true.”
Anne sniffed: a smell of Jeyes fluid hung in the air. They were silent,
gazing out of the window, waiting while the slow tramp of feet and
muttered curses drew nearer and the man came in carrying the bed.
“It stinks,” he announced, returning to Richard.
Grandison cursed suddenly with great obscenity in fluent French.
“You mustn’t talk to me like that,” answered the man, but he left the
room after looking at Anne with an air of icy disapproval. “Damn the
fellow,” said Grandison, and they remained silent while the table, the
wash-hand-stand, a piece of drugget and the chairs were brought in.
Grandison had recovered his temper by then, and gave the man a tip.
“One doesn’t say such things,” said the workman, pocketing it, and he
went down the stairs clearing his throat. They listened to the tramp
of feet descending the stairs without looking at each other, and stood
motionless through the minutes of dead silence which followed. “He must
be waiting and poking about in the hall,” was their unspoken thought
and, exchanging a swift glance, they nodded their suspicions. A sudden
crash resounded up the stairs of the outer door being slammed, and they
smiled happily at each other, for love is impossible except in secret.
But although they smiled the silence continued, their hearts beating
faster and faster and confusion coming upon them.
“We must put up the bed,” said Anne.
Grandison helped her mechanically; the pleasure of her presence near
him was so great that he was afraid to speak lest some word of his
might scare her away. Together they unfolded the legs of the narrow
iron bedstead, set it upon its feet, covered it with a weedy mattress
and a coverlet. Then they laid the carpet on the floor, set the trunk
in one corner, the washstand in another, and put the table in the
middle of the room. There was nothing more to be done, and after
speaking once or twice of buying such necessaries as a broom and a
looking-glass, they became silent again, Anne sitting in the only
chair, Grandison upon the bed, while darkness closed in on them very
slowly.
It seemed to the girl then that at last she had found what she had been
seeking.
“I have found this room,” she said to herself, and already she was at
home in it, and she sat musing over the vast landscape of the future,
of which she had suddenly caught a glimpse as she had of Paris itself,
but without knowledge and unable to recognize the landmarks.
But at last, rousing herself, she looked about her and asked suddenly:
“How will you paint in such a small room?”
“I don’t know,” he answered. “I only paint because Richard does.”
“It has got dark,” she said. “I can’t see your face.”
He struck a match and they looked at each other.
“I haven’t got a candle,” he said apologetically. “And there is no gas.”
Anne rose from her chair. “She is going,” Grandison said to himself
as he stood up. Their hands touched and they embraced. “I have always
loved you. Before I knew you. Before I knew myself, while I was still
in the navy,” he whispered rapidly between his kisses.
The whispering went on and on in the dark room, lit by the flickering
arc lamps in the street below. Each whisper was a charm that breathed
love into her, that stole away her strength, and that changed her
nature. Yet Anne still held herself alert, danger seemed near; at any
moment a heavy footstep might sound upon the stairs, a voice break in.
It seemed to her that if she sat very still the danger might pass, and
when Grandison’s voice rose she stroked his hair nervously--hair as
short and thick and soft as fur.
“Richard--the danger is Richard,” she said to herself, recognizing that
she was helpless in face of that danger.
Hours passed but no footstep sounded on the stairs, and no voice spoke
out of the darkness; only the moon breaking through the clouds flooded
the room with light, showing them to each other. They became hungry,
but they forgot their hunger, remembered the passage of time and as
soon forgot it, grew sleepy and did not think of sleep.
A clock struck and they counted eleven strokes.
“You must be hungry,” said Anne.
“Yes, I am,” answered Grandison, surprised, but he took an apple from
his pocket, and when they had shared it their hunger seemed to be
satisfied.
A clock struck, and they lost count of the strokes.
“It is midnight,” said Anne. “I must go back to my hotel.” But she did
not move, and an hour later she had consented to stay the night, had
undressed in the dark and had got into the bed, while Grandison had
wrapped himself in his overcoat and, covered with the piece of drugget,
was stretched out upon the floor.
For a long while Anne went on stroking his hair, and when at last they
fell asleep he was still grasping her hand in both of his and holding
it to his lips.
“What’s the matter?”
A strangled cry of “Help!” was ringing in her ears, but she understood
that it was her own voice that she had heard.
“What’s the matter, Anne?”
“It is all right,” she answered, coming to herself, but her voice was
full of fear, and Grandison, sitting up by her bed, could see her
shudder.
“I suppose it was a dream,” she murmured, and suddenly the fear left
her as the details of her nightmare came back, and she lay in silence
piecing them together.
“It was something awful about my father,” she said. “I was alone,
quite alone, in the vicarage. There was no furniture; I went from room
to room looking for my father, but all the rooms were empty; all the
furniture had been taken away but they had left me behind. Suddenly I
looked out of the bedroom window, my father’s bedroom, for it was at
the front of the house, and as I expected I saw a Ford van stop at the
gate and people getting out of it.” Anne shuddered again violently and
Grandison began stroking her shoulder. “Don’t tell me if it frightens
you,” he said.
“Two women came first, and I was frightened of them because I could
see that they were imbecile from the way they walked, but I was more
frightened of the men. They weren’t mad but I could see madness in
their faces, and I recognized them at once. They were the Puttys, who
used to live in the Burnt Farm, but it seemed to me that they were
coming to our house. They looked from side to side with wooden faces,
and I could see that underneath their woodenness they were full of
terror. When they got to the door I could no longer see them, for I
dared not look down on their heads, but I heard them unlock the door
and knew that they had come to take possession. All I could do was to
hide, and for a long while I lay holding my breath and listening as
they laughed and screamed and threw plates at each other downstairs.
Then I heard the man coming up the stairs in his heavy hobnail boots. I
heard him fumble at the door and I began to scream.”
“Poor creature,” said Grandison. “Who were these people?”
“The Puttys; Richard’s mother told me their story: they lived at the
Burnt Farm,” answered Anne, and stopped, realizing that her words could
mean nothing to Grandison.
“You aren’t frightened any longer, are you?” he asked, and his jaws
were pulled apart violently in a yawn; he shivered all over. When he
could speak again he repeated: “You are quite sure that you aren’t
frightened any longer?” He leant towards her to kiss her, but stopped,
feeling another yawn upon him.
“No, why should I be?” she replied, and without waiting to hear what
else she had to say he lay down on the bare boards and was asleep.
Anne’s fear had gone, but one thing still puzzled her; for though
she had no memory of her father in her dream she knew that it was
terrifying because of him, not because of the Puttys.
“Yes, the subject of my dream was my father,” she repeated to herself,
wondering suddenly what she was doing in Paris, and hearing a slight
snore she looked over the edge of the bed at the sleeping figure beside
her.
“Why am I here?” she thought. “This is madness!” and she determined
to get out of bed and dress and hurry away if she could do so without
waking her neighbour. A minute passed while she waited for him to fall
sound asleep, but he stirred uneasily when she sat up in bed. “I must
give him five minutes,” she thought. “Then I shall be rested.” She lay
back, aware that a task awaited her which would need all her strength,
but before two minutes had passed she began breathing gently and was
asleep herself.
FIFTEEN: HONEYMOONING
A month had passed, and in the last week of their honeymoon Mr. and
Mrs. Grandison were staying at an hotel in Avignon. The sun was already
hot when Anne came down to breakfast after waking her husband and
leaving him to shave and to dress. The American ladies smiled at her as
she came into the little courtyard, bidding her: “Good morning,” and
hoping that she had passed a pleasant night.
A pleasant night! What could she answer to them? But Anne smiled
back, and then she laughed, for she was happy to be alive, and her
skin tingled with pleasure as she took her seat carelessly under the
flowering oleander. A dog ran in from the street causing a diversion,
the cat sunning herself on the cobblestones leapt on to one of the
tables; the dog yapped, but he was in no mood for cats, and hearing his
master’s whistle he ran out again. But watching them Anne felt as much
excitement as if she had never seen a cat and a dog before. Her eyes
were still bright with interest when the waiter came up with coffee,
and he also asked if she had slept well. On the tray there were two
letters, one for her and one for Monsieur.
The first letters for three weeks! And Anne seized hers, forwarded from
her hotel in Paris, and tore it open. It was from her father and ran as
follows:
The Vicarage, Dry Coulter,
Huntingdonshire.
My dear Anne,
The news of your marriage is not such a great surprise as you
anticipated, but it is not the less welcome because I had an inkling
that what moved you to fly abroad was much the same as that which
moves the whitethroat to fly here in summer.