Silvia was sitting in Mr. Mainwaring’s studio one Saturday afternoon,
waiting, without impatience, for the arrival from the Foreign Office of
Peter, with whom she was motoring down to Howes, there to spend the
Sunday. Silvia was perfectly capable of humour with regard to Howes, for
she called it “the family seat.” This indeed it was, since her father
had bought the Norman ruin some twenty years ago, and quite unmistakably
it belonged to the Wardours. He had made it habitable while Silvia was
still a child, and during the war, when he became quite fabulously rich,
he made it abominable also. To that period belonged the great picture
gallery.
The gathering there for the week-end was, though small, a rather crucial
one. It was to introduce to each other the families which would be
brought into alliance over her wedding. Henry Wardour, Silvia’s uncle on
her father’s side, was to be ponderously there, and his wife elegantly
so. Then there was to be Aunt Joanna Darley, Mrs. Wardour’s sister, and
her husband. He, Sir Abel Darley, was a round pink profiteer, who in
recognition of the considerable fortune he had made for himself by
overcharging the Government for millions of yards of khaki, had been
made a baronet, presumably in order to stop his mouth if he felt
inclined to brag over the gullible Government. Then there was Mr.
Mainwaring to represent Peter’s side of the connection, but he was to
sustain his part alone, since Mrs. Mainwaring, with an impregnable
quietness of negation, had absolutely refused to take part in this
reunion of families.
“You’ll be eight without me, Silvia,” she had said, “and eight’s a very
good number. I shall stop quietly in London and think of you all
enjoying yourselves.”
Silvia’s sense of humour prevented her from forming any tragic
anticipations about this party, though, as she would have been perfectly
willing to confess, she did not suppose that the meeting of the clans
would lead to any instinctive blood-brotherhood. But Peter would be
there, and she would be there, and however outrageous and incompatible
the rest of them proved themselves, they would be like the heathen
“furiously raging together,” but unable to disturb seriously the
foundation fact of that. She trusted to her own sense of humour and to
Peter’s, to enable them both to be indifferent to what happened outside
their own charmed corner. Uncle Henry and Uncle Abe, and Mr. Mainwaring
and Peter would form a very curious company after dinner that night,
when she and her mother and Aunt Joanna and Aunt Eleanor had left them
to “punish”--as Uncle Henry would undoubtedly say--the 1870 port of
which he was so inordinately fond, while the ladies would form an
equally inconceivable committee upstairs. But since these things were to
be, there was no use in imagining impossible situations. Somehow she
conjectured that Mr. Mainwaring would impress himself more strongly on
the circle downstairs than either of the uncles; he had more exuberance.
If Silvia had been set down to construct an incongruous party of eight,
she could not by any fantastic selection have bettered this gathering.
Aunt Joanna, for instance, nourished an ineradicable hatred towards her
sister for having married Silvia’s father, and for being so much richer
than Sir Abe, and even Sir Abe’s rank and her own were powerless to
compensate her for this. Rich, immensely rich, Sir Abe certainly was,
but she could not bear that her sister should be so much richer. Aunt
Eleanor, on the other hand, Mrs. Wardour’s sister-in-law, had only
reverence for Mrs. Wardour’s wealth, but what she thoroughly despised
her for was her truckling (so Aunt Eleanor put it) to the smart world.
Aunt Eleanor had been present at the great party, where the Russian
ballet entertained the guests, and the presence of so many distinguished
people made her feel perfectly sick. The true diagnosis of her
indisposition, however, was that since she had tried to do for years
without a particle of success what Mrs. Wardour had so brilliantly
accomplished in a few weeks, it was only reasonable that she should have
a violent reaction against that sort of thing. If, instead of marrying
Peter, Silvia had been about to wed a peer, or somebody of that kind,
Aunt Eleanor would certainly have felt it her duty never to speak to
either her or her mother again. Indeed, she would never have accepted
Mrs. Wardour’s invitation at all, so she had made quite plain, unless
she had felt it her duty to take an interest in her husband’s relations.
Silvia was conscious of a vein of caricature in this flitting survey,
but ridiculous people made caricatures of themselves without the
collusion of the observer. Mr. Mainwaring was a caricature too: she
could not think of him quite seriously. Probably most people, if you
regarded them from a strictly individual standpoint, had a touch of
caricature about them, for if you rated yourself as a normal person,
everybody else must be a little out of drawing. But she looked at the
caricatures with the friendliest amusement; she loved them (and here in
particular was her mother included) for being so entirely different from
her--for being, in fact, precisely what they were. Humorous observation
was, with her, less a critical than an appreciative process, and now, as
she waited for Peter, she wanted definitely to include Mrs. Mainwaring
in her fascinating gallery. But for this last fortnight, since her
engagement to Peter, she had found herself increasingly unable to give
her this genial amused observation. More and more did Mrs. Mainwaring
baffle and elude her. There was, so far as Silvia could notice, nothing
humanly ridiculous about her, and, what was even more disconcerting, the
girl found herself ever more incapable of attaching herself to her. To
attempt to do that resembled, in some uncomfortable manner, the notion
of attaching yourself in the dark to a hard smooth surface; you could
nowhere get hold of her or find projection or crevice in which to crook
or to insert a finger tip. The more closely Silvia looked at her, the
more strenuously she attempted to get into any sort of psychical contact
with Mrs. Mainwaring, the more directly was she baffled. She could not,
for herself, give up as insoluble the mystery of that lady’s mental and
spiritual processes; there must be, if you could only lay your hands on
it in the dark, some key to her future mother-in-law, something that
explained, for instance, her unwearied study of the advertisements of
hotels. No one could be as completely tranquil and emotionless all
through as Mrs. Mainwaring appeared to be. Twice only had her mind
slipped for a definite instant into the open, like a lizard emerging
into the sunlight and flicking back again; once when, on the first visit
that Silvia and her mother had paid to the house, Mrs. Mainwaring
unveiled a glance of malicious hostility in the direction of the great
cartoon. Less definite, but like in kind, was the habitual, though
veiled, hostility with which Silvia felt that Mrs. Mainwaring regarded
herself. It did not flame, but she knew that she was right in
conjecturing that it incessantly smouldered. And that enmity, to
Silvia’s sense, was of the same quality, though smouldering, as that
which had leaped in that swift little tongue of flame towards the
cartoon: what puzzled her was the kinship between the two. From the
context of that moment in the studio, it seemed to be Mr. Mainwaring’s
work which kept him in London (and her therefore with him) that had
kindled that odd swift spark. Or was the origin of it a little deeper
down than that? Did some shut furnace of impatience at her husband, so
floridly symbolized there, some deep-seated core of incompatibility
suddenly flame out then? If so, what was the kindred nature of her
hostility to the girl? Was it that she was taking Peter away from the
home which his presence there just rendered tolerable? But apart from
those two “escapes,” so to speak, of genuine feeling, the origin of
which, after all, was only a matter of conjecture, Silvia had no clue to
Mrs. Mainwaring at all; she was practically featureless and even without
outline. She could not sketch her at all, or delineate from her as
model, one of those genial caricatures, such as her friends so freely
supplied her with material for. Such features and such outline as she
could perceive were tinged with bitter suggestions....
Silvia did not find the waiting for Peter in any way tedious; there was
plenty in the studio to furnish a larder for thought, though what most
occupied her was her alert attention for the sound of his light
footstep coming down the passage. But apart from that food for
reflection was abundant. To-day the end of the studio where the cartoon
had hung was empty, so that if Mrs. Mainwaring’s resentment was inspired
purely by that work of art, she might now regain her tranquillity again.
Silvia would see it this evening, for her mother, following up the idea
with which it had first fired her in connection with the empty walls of
the picture gallery at Howes, had a few days ago made a purchase of it.
Mr. Mainwaring had been very glorious on this occasion; at first he had
hysterically refused to part with it. It was his _chef-d’œuvre_, and
while he had a couple of pennies in his pocket, he was, though poor, too
proud to think of selling it. Then, lest that refusal should be taken
too seriously, he almost immediately declared that it should be his
wedding present to Silvia. He let himself be hunted out of so untenable
a magnificence, and finally he so far humiliated himself as to accept a
fancy price for it. As Mrs. Wardour knew (he reminded her, to make
certain) that it was the first of a series of six, upon which he was
contented to stand or fall in the verdict of posterity, it seemed
probable that, at some future time, the walls of the picture gallery at
Howes would be far less empty than they were to-day.
On an easel near where Silvia sat was the portrait of herself now
approaching completion. To her there was something uncanny and arresting
about it, for, by accident or design, the artist had caught some aspect
of her which secretly she recognized as a piece of intimate revelation.
She herself inclined to an accidental derivation, for certainly in all
but one point it was a flamboyant and uninspired performance, a
chronicle of a green “jumper” and a scarlet skirt, a haystack of dyed
hair, and a rouged, simpering mouth. Her head was turned full to the
spectator, looking over the shoulder, in precisely the same pose (a
favourite trick of the artist’s) as that in which the German Emperor
listened to Satanic counsels. But in the eyes, in the badly drawn
outstretched hand, clumsily posed, Silvia saw some unconscious rendering
of the “boy’s key.” She acquitted Mr. Mainwaring of all intention and of
all inspiration; he had certainly not meant that. He had, through faulty
drawing, given a certain brisk violence to her hand, a certain
domination to her eyes.
And then she heard the click of the street door, and the quick light
footstep for which she had been waiting. She wondered if she could ever
get used to the mere fact of Peter’s return from however short an
absence.
He kissed her, holding her hand for a moment.
“It’s too bad of me to have kept you waiting,” he said. “I couldn’t help
myself. There was a messenger starting for Rome. Haven’t they brought
you tea?”
“No; I thought I would wait and have it with you.”
Peter rang the bell.
“And my father’s gone?” he asked.
“Yes; mother called for him and drove him down. I’ve brought my little
Cording car for us.”
“Just you and me? That’ll be lovely,” said Peter. “Do I quite trust your
driving, though?”
“You may drive yourself, if you like,” said she.
“No, thanks; I trust that far less. I must see if my bag is packed. Tell
Burrows we want tea at once.”
“Can’t I help you to pack it, if it isn’t done?” asked Silvia....
Somehow she would have liked to do that, to fold his clothes, to squeeze
out his sponge.
“No; it’s so sordid,” said Peter. “Besides, it’s probably done already.”
“If it isn’t, call me,” said she. “No man has any idea of how to pack.”
“And you want to teach me?” asked Peter, lingering on the stairs.
Silvia hesitated only for a moment.
“No, you darling,” she said. “I don’t want to teach you anything. I just
want to do it.”
“Why?” asked he.
She came closer, raising her face towards him, as he leaned over the
banisters.
“Your things,” she said. “Your sponge, your coat....”
That pleasure was denied her, for Burrows had already bestowed Peter’s
requirements in his bag, and he came downstairs again. Silvia had given
his father a sitting for the portrait this morning, and he stood
frowning in front of it.
“Trash! Rubbish!” he said at length. “And the worst of it is that he has
got into it some infernal resemblance to you. It’s a caricature.”
“Oh, we’re all caricatures to each other,” said she, “with just a few
exceptions.”
“What a heathenish doctrine. Why am I a caricature, for instance?”
“You aren’t. You’re one of the exceptions. But tell me what your father
has caricatured of me in that?”
Peter looked from her to the portrait and back again.
“All of you,” he said. “The reality of you: the rest is quite unlike.
You haven’t got mouth and nose and forehead and hair and chin the least
like that. But the person inside is horribly like you.”
Silvia put her arm through his.
“Horribly?” she said. “Thanks so much.”
“I didn’t say--just then--that you were horrible,” said he. “I said
horribly like you, your parody, your caricature. I wonder how I dared
ask such a masterful young woman to marry me.”
“You knew it would be good for you,” said Silvia. “It was far more
daring of me to accept you.”
“There’s just time for you to remedy your mistake,” said he. “Positively
the last chance.”
This frank kind of chaffing talk, as between friends rather than lovers,
had grown to be characteristic of their privacy. Silvia delighted in it:
it had the charm of some cipher about it; the blunt commonplace words
held for her a secret meaning known to the two utterers of them, which
was only to be expressed by these symbols. When she feigned to
misunderstand Peter, and thanked him for calling her horrible, there lay
below her foolish words a treasure which words were quite powerless to
express. Or when he just now wondered that he had dared to ask her to
marry him, she felt that he conveyed something which no amount of
impassioned speech could have indicated so well. From the hilltops there
flashed the signal that no voice could convey. Then sometimes, as now,
she had to use another symbol, which again was only a symbol, and with
her hands tremblingly, eagerly, shyly clasping him round the neck, she
drew his head down towards her, not kissing him, but simply looking
close into his eyes.
“Positively the last chance!” she said. “Oh, Peter, what a fool I am
about you. Doesn’t it bore you frightfully?”
“Frightfully,” said Peter, keeping to the first code of symbols.
“You bear it beautifully, darling,” she said. “Oh, shall I ever get used
to you? I hope so: I mustn’t go on being such a donkey all my days. No;
I don’t think I do hope so. Being a donkey is good enough for me. Hee
haw! Oh, let go: here’s Burrows coming with the tea. She’ll think it so
undignified.”
It was, as a matter of fact, she who had to “let go,” as Burrows
entered, followed by Mrs. Mainwaring. Silvia had before now tried to
call her “mother,” but the experiment somehow had not succeeded. Mrs.
Mainwaring answered to it quite readily, but she received it, so the
girl thought, much as she might have received an unsolicited nickname.
“Why, Mrs. Mainwaring!” she said. “I didn’t know you were in.”
Mrs. Mainwaring paused just long enough to let it be inferred that if
Silvia had made any inquiries as to that, she would have obtained the
information she sought.
“Yes, dear, I have been reading upstairs since lunch time,” she said. “I
came to have a cup of tea with you before you started. I hope you will
have a pleasant drive.”
Silvia tried to approach.
“Ah, do come too,” she said. “Change your mind, and come with me. Heaps
of room.”
“Thank you, dear, I think I will keep to my original plan,” said she. “I
like a quiet Sunday sometimes. I shall go to church, and perhaps in the
afternoon hear a concert at the Queen’s Hall. The time will pass very
pleasantly.”
There was an aura of correct armed neutrality about this, accompanied as
it was by that cold sheathed glance, furtive and hostile, that caused
some half-comic, half-impatient despair in the girl at her aloofness.
Mrs. Mainwaring, so it seemed to her, wanted nobody except herself; she
wanted just to be let alone.
“Father went off all right?” asked Peter.
“Yes; Mrs. Wardour kindly called for him after lunch. A beautiful car;
so roomy. There was another lady and gentleman there: I think Mrs.
Wardour said it was her sister and her husband. Your father insisted on
going in the box seat with the driver. He made a great noise with the
motor horn, which sounded like a bugle. He was in very high spirits.”
The neutrality exhibited in this speech was almost too correct to be
credible. Nobody could have been so neutral. Even Mrs. Mainwaring could
not quite keep it up, and something very far from neutral lay, ever so
little below the surface, in her announcement of her husband’s high
spirits. Her neutrality towards Silvia was not so deadly as that towards
her husband....
Peter laughed. There was neutrality there too, but it was more
contemptuous than deadly, and quite good humoured in its contempt.
“Oh, they’ll have a noisy drive,” he said. “And if Mrs. Wardour drives
him back on Monday, you’ll be aware of their approach, mother, while
they’re still a mile or two away.”
Mrs. Mainwaring had one of those fine-lipped mouths (very neat and
finished at the outer corners), about which it is impossible to say
whether they are smiling or not without consulting the conditions
prevailing round the eyes. But as Peter spoke she very definitely
ceased to smile.
“Monday?” she said. “I thought Mrs. Wardour was so kind as to ask him to
stop till Tuesday.”
Peter got up: he noticed nothing about his mother, having long ago given
up any attempt to comprehend her.
“Tuesday, is it?” he said. “I’m back on Monday, anyhow: otherwise what
would happen to our foreign relations? Shall we start, Silvia? I’m ready
when you are.”
Mrs. Mainwaring rose too.
“Yes, indeed, you had better be off,” she said. “You won’t have too much
time. Then I shall expect you on Monday, Peter. Tell your father----”
She stopped.
“That you don’t expect him till Tuesday?” asked he, without the
slightest indication of any mental comment.
“Yes, I think Mrs. Wardour quite took for granted that he was stopping
till then.”
Silvia made one further attempt to evoke a touch of cordiality.
“Mother will be delighted,” she said. “But it’s horrid for you being all
alone.”
“No, dear, I shall be very happy,” said Mrs. Mainwaring with quiet
decision.
* * * * *
Howes stood, of course, in a park of considerable acreage, surrounded by
a massive brick wall, and reflected its colossal self in the lake that
lay below its terraced garden. This lake had been artificially made by
the damming up of the stream that had previously wasted itself
unornamentally, and the road that had dipped into the shallow valley now
ran along the causeway that formed the farther margin of the lake, and
gave the visitor his first complete and stupendous view of the house.
The wings and galleries that had been built out rendered the original
Norman core comparatively insignificant, and the whole resembled an
apotheosis of a station hotel combined with a fortress, for the
character of the older part was borne out in the battlemented walls that
spread so amply to right and left of it. An avenue of monkey-puzzlers
led up to the long façade, and the gardens overlooking the lake were
like some glorified arboretum, where you might expect tin labels, asking
visitors to keep off the grass and not touch the flowers. At intervals
along the edge of its immense lawns were aloes in square green tubs, and
below the house was a riband border of geraniums, calceolarias and
lobelias. Inside, the expectations aroused by this sumptuous exterior
were fully justified, for the high panelled hall was peopled with suits
of armour, each with its numbered label, so that a glance at the
catalogue would put you into possession of interesting information about
it. Armour had long been a hobby of the late Mr. Wardour, and he had,
very quaintly, installed electric light in the gauntleted hands. There
was a passenger lift in one corner, a groined roof, and the famous
malachite table. Heads and antlers of stags hung in the panels.
Silvia had rather dreaded this moment. The whole place with its
monkey-puzzlers and malachite, its aloes and its awfulness, had been
left by her father to her absolutely, and Peter knew (and she knew he
knew) that he was making his first acquaintance with what would be
“home” to him. She had not seen it herself since the day of her father’s
funeral, two years ago, and it seemed to her--and how would it strike
Peter?--that, though it had the traditional quality of home, in that
there was no place, as far as she was aware, in the least like it, its
unique fulfilment of that definition was its only merit.
With a sideways glance now and again she had observed Peter’s growing
awe, from the time they had crossed the causeway (the pride of it!) to
their approach through the monkey-puzzlers, and to the final revelation
of the malachite table. And there was much more to follow--ever so much
more; the Gothic staircase, the blue drawing-room, the pink
drawing-room, the picture-gallery, the swimming bath. And it was not
inanimate magnificence alone that was to assail him, for there was Uncle
Henry and Uncle Abe and Aunts Joanna and Eleanor. She ought to have
brought him down quietly and alone for his first sight of Howes....
Peter had been gazing in a fascinated manner at the malachite table, and
even while Silvia was wondering how to convey to him her sympathy and
encouragement, he, with one of the flashes of intuition which she adored
in him, showed that he had comprehended with unerring accuracy what she
was feeling about him.
“But you’re going to be here,” he said, just as if she had spoken out
all that she was puzzling over.
She took his arm.
“Oh, my dear, I promise you that,” she said. “And I’ve got to get used
to it, too. But then you’ll be here! Shall we butter each other’s paws,
Peter, until we feel at home? Let’s have some more tea, in fact, and
find where the rest of them are.”
The picture-gallery seemed a likely kind of place, and there, indeed,
the six representatives of the families proved to be, and when kissing
ceremonies were over for herself and the rite of introduction for Peter,
Silvia found herself thinking that it was really all for the best that
they should have burst on Peter in one comprehensive revelation rather
than that he should have been subjected to a series of shocks and
surprises. Already staggered by Uncle Henry, Peter might have been quite
thrown off his balance--so flashed the alternative comedy through her
head--by Uncle Abe; or what if, reeling from Aunt Eleanor, he ran into
Aunt Joanna just round the corner? Silvia had not the smallest
inclination or intention to be ashamed of her relations, but it would
have shown the joylessness of a Puritan not to be amused at the
blandness and the blankness on so many faces (Peter’s included) as he
was taken to each in turn; it would have shown too an almost dangerous
rigidity that her voice should not betray a tremor of suppressed
hilariousness.
Aunt Eleanor came first: she looked like a handsome seal with adenoidal
breathing. She bowed to Peter with freezing propriety, but when he was
moved on to Aunt Joanna her curiosity got the better of her, and she
instantly put up her glasses to get a better look at him. Aunt Joanna,
large and marvellously bedizened, with flowers in her hat and her bosom
and her hand, irresistibly suggested a van going to Covent Garden in the
early morning: she, too, had her notions of propriety, and these
expressed themselves in a cordiality as warm as Aunt Eleanor’s was cold.
Then came Uncle Abe, who was so like a fish that it really seemed
dangerous for him to be sitting so near Aunt Eleanor. He held out a
hand, and took a cigar out of his mouth, which remained open in the
precise shape of the cigar: and finally came Uncle Henry, who was busy
with “a drop of brandy,” because tea, as he instantly proceeded to
inform Peter, gave him heartburn. Then all four of them stared at Peter
to see how he was going to comport himself.
Peter was never more grateful to his father than when at this
embarrassing moment Mr. Mainwaring, who had been mysteriously employed
at the far end of the picture-gallery with a cord and a sheet and a
step-ladder and three bewildered footmen, gave a loud yodel, set to some
words like _mio figlio_, to announce his perception of his son’s
arrival, and the accomplishment of that on which he had been so busily
engaged. “_Ben arrivato_” was the concluding stave of his melody, and he
came running up the gallery (there was quite enough space to enable him
to get a good speed up), and after holding Peter for a moment in a joint
embrace with Silvia, he cast himself down for a moment on a white bear
skin at Mrs. Wardour’s feet.
“_Ecco!_” he said. “Ladies and gentlemen, when you will distinguish me
with the gift of a moment of your leisure, I shall have the honour to
show you the first of my completed labours. The picture, the poor
suppliant’s picture, is on the wall: masked by a fair linen sheet,
which, so I fondly hope, is in control of a cord, just a cord, which,
when you are ready, I will, in fact, pull. Unless the mechanism which I
have been contriving is sadly at fault, there will then be revealed to
you that which the sheet, at the moment, is so discreetly veiling.
Valour, perhaps, my valour, is but the worse part of discretion”--Peter
had heard this before--“but for the moment I am less discreet than
valorous. I will show you, complete and materialized, the vision that
since August, 1914, has obsessed and dominated my life. I pray you,
gentle sirs and madams, to indulge your humble servant, and to take your
places, exactly where I shall have the honour to indicate, opposite the
discretionary linen which, when removed, will unbare my valour.”
He rose from his reclining posture, and after a superb obeisance, placed
himself at the head of the procession. Already, as Silvia had foreseen,
he was in a position of dominance: Uncle Abe and Uncle Henry obeyed his
orders; Aunt Joanna and Aunt Eleanor clearly “perked up” at this
ingratiating suppliance. For himself he took Mrs. Wardour’s hand,
holding it high, as in a minuet, and led the way. He grouped them; he
requested them all, with humble apologies, to have the goodness to move
a step backwards; he set chairs for them; he put his finger on his lips,
and on tiptoe advanced to the dangling end of the cord and pulled it. Up
flew the sheet, waving wildly, but eventually festooning itself clear of
the cartoon. Then, swiftly retreating, he magnificently posed himself,
and gazed at the picture.
For the moment there was dead silence: then vague clickings and murmurs
began to grow articulate. The uncles and aunts vied with each other in
perception.
“The Emperor,” said Uncle Henry. “Good likeness, eh?”
“August, 1914,” exclaimed Lady Darley. “Terrible! Wonderful!” And she
drew in her breath with a hissing sound. The perception of the date was
not so clever, as it was largely inscribed on the frame, and Aunt
Eleanor smiled indulgently.
“Yes, dear Joanna,” she said, “we all see that. But look at Satan
whispering to the Emperor!”
“And the hosts of hell,” said Joanna swiftly.
Uncle Abe turned to Uncle Henry.
“A marvellous thing,” he said. “Tells its own story. I call that a
picture.”
Mrs. Wardour merely wore the pleased air of proprietorship. She had seen
it all before, and she could see it again as many times as she chose.
Mr. Mainwaring, chin in hand, just contemplated while these
appreciations were in progress, but now he seemed to wake out of a
swoon, and passed his hands over his eyes.
“Was it I who painted that?” he muttered. “I didn’t know what I was
doing. I didn’t know till this moment, when at last I see my work
properly displayed, with no discordant note to mar it, what I had done.
Does it terrify you, dear ladies and gentlemen? Does it put you in
possession of August, 1914? Does it--ah, _Dio mio_!” He covered his face
with his hands and shuddered. Then advancing to the picture again, he
violently shook the cord, and the two linen sheets (double bed) rolled
back into their original places.
“Enough, enough!” he cried. “We will contemplate it more calmly when we
have recovered from the first shock of our bleeding hearts. Let us
converse, let us smile and laugh again. Let us remember that the war is
over. But it is laid on me by destiny to execute five more such
pictures, not less terrible. If I live, they shall be done. Yes, yes; I
do not falter! But, for a while, let me forget, let me forget.”
Mrs. Wardour spaced out the wall with a pleased eye.
“They will just fill the length of the gallery,” she said, “if we do not
crowd them. Silvia, my dear, you must persuade Mr. Mainwaring.... Well,
I’m sure, if that isn’t the dressing bell.”
* * * * *
A vindictive purpose was weaving itself below the embowering flowers of
Lady Darley’s hat, and accelerating the heart-beat below the nosegay on
her bosom, so that the gardenias were all of a tremble. Lucy might be
rich (indeed, it was quite certain that she was horribly rich), but
comparative paupers such as herself were not to be altogether trampled
upon, and other people beside Lucy had picture-galleries. Apparently the
series of these tremendous allegories was not yet painted, was not yet
either definitely “bespoken” by her sister, and Joanna, as she waded
through the thick Kidderminster rugs that carpeted the Gothic staircase
on the way to her room, felt that the only thing in life that was worth
living for at this moment was to order a replica of the first, and
secure (with an embargo on replicas) the remainder of this series.
Never in her life had she been so artistically overwhelmed as by that
prodigious canvas, and if all the rest were going to be “up to sample”
she could, as their possessor, scoff at the art treasures of the world.
Sir Abe had dabbled in pictures already: he had a Turner sunset which
hung in the dining-room, at which he often pointed over his shoulder as
a “pooty little thing”; he had a Rembrandt of a very puckered-looking
old woman which had aroused the envy of those who were permitted to see
it and to be told that it came out of the Marquis of Brentford’s
collection. These were desirable possessions, but they were jejune
compared to Mr. Mainwaring’s masterpiece and the masterpieces that were
to follow. The war! That was something to paint pictures about....
Her envy of her sister rose to the austerity of a passion when she
contemplated the equipment of her bedroom, and that of her husband next
door. There was a bathroom attached to each, both fitted with the most
amazing taps and squirts, and a little sitting-room attached to each,
and a lift of which Mrs. Wardour (showing her her room, and hoping she
would be comfortable) explained the working. You pressed a button and
were wafted.... The same lift served Aunt Eleanor’s rooms, but Lucy and
Peter and Silvia used another one.... The lift clinched her resolution,
and she conjugally conferred with Sir Abe. He, to her delight, was as
much impressed with the passion for “scoring off” Lucy as with the
merits of the cartoon, but his business habits had to make hesitations
and conditions, not “do a deal” blindly.
“Well, my lady,” he said, “you shall have the pictures if they’re to be
obtained reasonably. What shall I offer, now? Most striking that one
was, and that and similar are worth paying a pretty penny for. What did
your sister give for that one? Then, if reasonable, I don’t mind if I
add twenty-five per cent. more, and secure the lot. They’ll be something
to point at. Get along and let me have my bath. You try to find out what
your sister paid, and then we’ll know where we are, my lady.”
She noted with pleasure that he relapsed into a cockney accent and a
slight uncertainty about aspirates as he spoke. That was a good sign: it
showed he was in earnest and interested, for in dalliance of light
conversation Sir Abe was “as good at his h’s” as anybody.
It was not to be expected that the cartoon and the magnificence of its
introduction should have no effect on Aunt Eleanor, or that (her general
animosity towards Mrs. Wardour being of the same fine order as Aunt
Joanna’s) she should not have been kindled with ambition to bring off
some similar vindictive stroke. But for her the acquisition of these
immense decorations was out of the question, for her husband would
certainly not pay such a price as she felt sure would be necessary to
secure them, and even if he did his house did not contain sufficient
uninterrupted wall space, so that to hang them at all she would have to
cut them up into sections and paper several different rooms with them.
But Mr. Mainwaring had said something about the original sketches for
them, which had suggested an idea that took her fancy at once. The
sketches were, after all, the “originals,” the significant buds from
which these over-blown blossoms had developed, and the sketches would be
far more manageable, both from point of view of hanging, and from that
of purchase. There was a subtlety, a refinement in possessing
“originals” that these acreages of paint could not compete with. Her
powerful imagination pictured herself exhibiting them to envious
friends.
“Yes, my sister-in-law, I believe, has copies, on a large scale,” she
would say, “of my series. These, of course, are the originals. Such
freshness, such power, all quite lost in the later and larger version.”
And she held her seal-like head very high, and snorted through her
nostrils as she sailed into the pink drawing-room just before the dinner
bell rang. She was the first to come down, and had time to examine with
pain and disgust the photograph of a royal personage, with a crown on
its frame, that stood very conspicuously alone on the table by the sofa
where she seated herself.
* * * * *
Mr. Mainwaring’s star continued to be violently ascendant all evening.
His harangues, his humour, his habit of pausing in the middle of one of
his interminable stories, until complete silence had been established
round the table, dominated dinner, and when the ladies rose to leave the
gentlemen to their cigars and wine, Mrs. Wardour addressed him directly
and laid upon him not to permit them too long a sitting. This gave him
the rank of host, and developed his social horse-power to so high an
efficiency that on rejoining the ladies he sang the Toreador’s song out
of _Carmen_. Then after that had been repeated he permitted the uncles
and aunts to indulge themselves with bridge, and since wives partnered
their own husbands, this gave scope for some pleasant family revilings,
in which the ladies came off far the best. Having thus arranged for
their pleasure, Mr. Mainwaring grouped himself with his hostess, Silvia
and Peter, and grew patriarchal and full of sentiment over the charming
family party of parents and children. On Mrs. Wardour’s going to bed,
leaving the bridge-party jealously over-calling their hands, he
conducted her once more to pay homage to the cartoon, and remained there
in meditation.
Silvia and Peter had wandered out on to the dusky terrace. A twilight of
stars lit the still night, and she drew long breaths of restoration from
the exhaustion of these stupendous hours. Once clear of the house, and
leaning over the balustrade above the lake, she gave way to hopeless
laughter.
“Peter, darling, are my relations more than you ought to be asked to
stand?” she said. “Did you know there were such people as Uncle Abe?”
“Did you know there were such people as my father?” said Peter.
“Oh, but he’s your father,” said Silvia quickly. “You mustn’t bring him
in.”
“Why not? After all, it’s he who brings himself in. There’s only one
word for him. Bounder. Uncle Abe isn’t a bounder exactly. Uncle Henry
isn’t a bounder.”
“No, he’s just a cad,” said Silvia enthusiastically. “I love people
being themselves, whatever they happen to be. I should enjoy them much
more, though, if you weren’t here.”
“I can go to-morrow morning,” said Peter.
For one moment she thought that he spoke seriously: the next she laughed
at herself for having been hoaxed by his assumed sincerity of voice:
“assumed” it just had to be.
“Ah, you said that beautifully,” she announced; “and all the evening, do
you know, you’ve been saying things beautifully, with your mask on, too,
your best and smartest mask. I’ve been listening to you, and never for a
moment could I catch a word or a silence on your part to show that you
weren’t thoroughly amused and interested by the aunts. You behaved as if
they were just the sort of people you were accustomed to meet, but
rather more charming. You have been convincing, and you were convincing
just now when you suggested going away to-morrow.”
Peter had not, of course, meant to convey that he really could go away
to-morrow, but it had been quite easy for him to render his seriousness
plausible, since, though impossible, this was a most agreeable project.
But what rendered that project so attractive was the escape not from the
aunts and uncles, with whom he was quite as willing to be diverted as
their niece, but from his father. His father, in this _milieu_, with his
bounce and his bounding, his general “make-up” of the large-souled,
childlike artist, now humbly bespeaking the indulgence of his patrons,
and immediately afterwards behaving as if he was Michael Angelo, was
intolerable. His gaiety, his singing, his family grouping, with himself
as aged and contemplative parent, while the moment before he had been
twirling his moustaches and bellowing out the song of the toreador, were
indecencies for a son’s eye. If only he had been slightly fuzzy and
intoxicated with many liqueur brandies like Uncle Henry, that would have
been a palliative: as it was he was only intoxicated with himself....
Peter recalled himself from these impious meditations to the needs of or
(if not the needs) the appropriateness for the immediate occasion.
Silvia and he had contrived a lovers’ interlude under the stars.
“Will you always be as charitable to me as you are to my father?” he
asked. “When I am absurd and annoying, will you just be amused?”
The question seemed to him well framed: it led him and her away from all
these nonsensicalities into the region where the simple things abided.
He expected some pressure on his arm, some little deprecation of his
silliness, some whisper to inform him that he was a goose or an idiot.
Instead, Silvia’s hand slackened in the crook of his arm and withdrew
itself.
“Oh, Peter, what a thing to ask!” she said. “As if I could be
‘charitable’ to you as long as you loved me, or as if I could find you
annoying so long as I loved you. You’re pretending not to understand.
Don’t pretend like that any more.”
Peter’s quick brain was alert on the scent. He had meant his words to be
construed into a lover-like speech, and had completely thought that they
could be interpreted thus. But her answer convinced him that to her they
were not construable at all, but only gibberish. Before he could emend
himself, or even quite follow her, she flashed out her full meaning.
“Anybody else in the world except you can be annoying,” she said, “and I
hope I can be charitable to anybody else in the world except you. But
how can I be charitable to you? Or how can you be trying to me? Don’t
you know that I _am_ you? For a month I’ve ceased to be myself at all.
There isn’t any ‘me.’ It isn’t ‘me’ you think you are in love with;
it’s--it’s just the completion of your own wonderfulness. And as for
their being any ‘you,’ why, you’ve ceased long ago. I’ve absorbed you.
I’ve--I’ve drowned you in myself and in my adoration. I’m round you. I
crush you and I worship you----”
Silvia broke off suddenly as there appeared at the drawing-room window a
black tall silhouette yodelling and crying, “Coo-ee. Children!”
“Oh, damn that man,” said she. “Sorry, Peter, but, well, there it is.”