Edith had stayed on with the Granthams till nearly the end of August.
She declined to have breakfast with the family, after she had been
there about a week, because she said it spoiled her mornings, and used
to breakfast by herself at seven or half-past, which gave her extra'
two hours at her music; and Lady Grantham complained of being wakened
in the middle of the night by funeral marches. So Edith promised to
play with the soft pedal down, which she never did.
At lunch Sir Robert used to make a point of asking her how she had got
on, and described to her the admirable band in the Casino at Monte
Carlo. He was always extremely genial to her, and, when she played to
them in the evening, he would beat time with one hand. Now and then
he even told her that she was not playing staccato enough, or that he
heard it taken rather quicker at Bayreuth.
Dodo had written to Edith saying that she was coming to stay with her
in September, and that Edith must be at home by the second, because she
would probably come that day or the third. Edith happened to mention
this one night in the hearing of Lady Grantham, who had been firing
off home-truths at her husband and son like a minute gun, in a low,
scornful voice. This habit of hers was rather embarrassing at times. At
dinner, for instance, that evening, when he had been airing his musical
views to Edith as usual, she had suddenly said,--
"You don't know how silly you're making yourself, Bob. Everyone knows
that you can't distinguish one note from another!"
Though Edith felt on fairly intimate terms with the family, there were
occasions when she didn't quite know how to behave. She attempted to
continue her conversation with the Baronet, but Lady Grantham would not
allow it.
"Edith, you know he doesn't know 'God save the Queen' when he hears it.
You'll only make him conceited."
"She's only like this when she's here, Miss Staines," remarked Frank,
alluding to his mother in the third person. "She's awfully polite when
she's in London; she was to you the first week you were here, you know,
but she can't keep it up. She's had a bad education. Poor dear!"
"Oh, you are a queer family," said Edith sometimes. "You really ought
to have no faults left, any of you, you are so wonderfully candid to
each other."
"Some people think mother so charming," continued Frank. "I never yet
found out what her particular charm is."
On this occasion, when Edith mentioned that Dodo was coming to stay
with her, Lady Grantham sounded truce at once, and left her unnatural
offspring alone.
"I wish you'd ask me to come and stay with you, too," said she
presently. "Bob and Frank will be going off partridge shooting all day,
and Nora and I will be all alone, and they'll be sleepy in the evening,
and snore in the drawing-room."
"I'd make her promise to be polite, Miss Staines," remarked Frank.
"I want to meet Lady Chesterford very much," she continued. "I hear she
is so charming. She's a friend of yours; isn't she, Nora? Why have you
never asked her to stay here? What's the good of having friends if you
don't trot them out?"
"Oh, I've asked her more than once, mother," said Miss Grantham, "but
she couldn't ever come."
"She's heard about ma at home," said Frank.
"I'm backing you, Frank," remarked the Baronet, who was still rather
sore after his recent drubbing. "Go in and win, my boy."
"Bob, you shouldn't encourage Frank to be rude," said Lady Grantham.
"He's bad enough without that."
"That's what comes of having a mamma with foreign manners. There's no
word for 'thank you' in Spanish, is there, mother? Were you here with
Charlie Broxton, Miss Staines? She told him he didn't brush his hair,
or his teeth, and she hated little men. Charlie's five feet three. He
was here as my friend."
"Do come," said Edith, when this skirmishing was over. "Nora will come
with you, of course. We shall be only four. I don't suppose there will
be anyone else at home."
"Hurrah," said Frank, "we'll have a real good time, father. No nagging
in the evenings. We won't dress, and we'll smoke in the drawing-room."
"I long to see Dodo again," remarked Miss Grantham. "She's one of the
few people I never get at all tired of."
"I know her by sight," said Lady Grantham. "She was talking very loud
to Prince Waldenech when I saw her. It was at the Brettons'."
"Dodo can talk loud when she wants," remarked Miss Grantham. "Did you
see her dance that night, mother? I believe she was splendid."
"She was doing nothing else," replied Lady Grantham.
"Oh, but by herself," said Edith. "She took a select party away, and
tucked up her skirts and sent them all into raptures."
"That's so like Dodo," said Miss Grantham. "She never does anything
badly. If she does it at all, it's good of its kind."
"I should like to know her," said Lady Grantham. The remark was
characteristic.
Lady Grantham returned to the subject of Dodo in the course of the
evening.
"Everyone says she is so supremely successful," she said to Edith.
"What's her method?"
All successful people, according to Lady Grantham, had a method. They
found out by experience what _rôle_ suited them best, and they played
it assiduously. To do her justice, there was a good deal of truth in it
with regard to the people among whom she moved.
"Her method is purely to be dramatic, in the most unmistakable
way," said Edith, after some consideration. "She is almost always
picturesque. To all appearance her only method is to have no method.
She seems to say and do anything that comes into her head, but all
she says and does is rather striking. She can accommodate herself to
nearly any circumstances. She is never colourless; and she is not quite
like anybody else I ever met. She has an immense amount of vitality,
and she is almost always doing something. It's hopeless to try and
describe her; you will see. She is beautiful, unscrupulous, dramatic,
warm-hearted, cold-blooded, and a hundred other things."
"Oh, you don't do her justice, Edith," remarked Miss Grantham. "She's
much more than all that. She has got genius, or something very like
it. I think Dodo gives me a better idea of the divine fire than anyone
else."
"Then the divine fire resembles something not at all divine on
occasions," observed Edith. "I don't think that the divine fire talks
so much nonsense either."
Lady Grantham got up.
"I expect to be disappointed," she said. "Geniuses are nearly always
badly dressed, or they wear spectacles, or they are very short.
However, I shall come. Come, Nora, it's time to go to bed."
Lady Grantham never said "good-night" or "good-morning" to the members
of her family. "They all sleep like hogs," she said, "and they are very
cheerful in the morning. They get on quite well enough without my good
wishes. It is very plebeian to be cheerful in the morning."
Although, as I have mentioned before, Sir Robert was an adept at
choosing his conversation to suit his audience, there was one subject
on which he considered that he might talk to anyone, and in which the
whole world must necessarily take an intelligent and eager interest.
The Romans used to worship the bones and spirits of their ancestors,
and Sir Robert, perhaps because he was undoubtedly of Roman imperial
blood, kept up the same custom. Frank used irreverently to call it
"family prayers."
To know how the Granthams were connected with the Campbells, and the
Vere de Veres, and the Stanleys, and the Montmorencies, and fifty other
bluest strains, seemed to Sir Robert to be an essential part of a
liberal education.
To try to be late for family prayers was hopeless. They were at no
fixed hour, and were held as many times during the day as necessary.
Sometimes they were cut down to a sentence or two; suggested by the
mention of some ducal name; sometimes they involved a lengthy, pious
orgie in front of the portraits. To-night Edith was distinctly to
blame, for she deliberately asked the name of the artist who had
painted the picture hanging over the door into the library.
Sir Robert, according to custom, seemed rather bored by the subject.
"Let's see," he said; "I've got no head for names. I think that's the
one, of my great-grandfather, isn't it? A tall, handsome man in peer's
robes?"
"Now he's off." This _sotto voce_ from Frank, who was reading Badminton
on Cover Shooting.
Sir Robert drew his hand over his beautiful moustache once or twice.
"Ah, yes, how stupid of me. That's the Reynolds, of course. Reynolds
was quite unknown when he did that portrait. Lord Linton, that was
my great-grand-father--he was made an earl after that portrait was
taken--saw a drawing in a little shop in Piccadilly, which took his
fancy, and he inquired the name of the artist. The shopman didn't know;
but he said that the young man came very often with drawings to sell,
and he gave him a trifle for them. Well, Lord Linton sent for him, and
gave him a commission to do his portrait, had it exhibited, and young
Reynolds came into notice. The portrait came into possession of my
grandfather, who, as you know, was a younger son; don't know how, and
there it is."
"It's a beautiful picture," remarked Edith.
"Ah, you like it? Lord Sandown, my first cousin, was here last week,
and he said, 'Didn't know you'd been raised to the Peerage yet, Bob.'
He thought it was a portrait of me. It is said to be very like. You'd
noticed the resemblance, no doubt?"
"A tall, handsome man," remarked Frank to the fireplace.
"I don't know as much as I ought about my ancestors," continued Sir
Robert, who was doing himself a gross injustice. "You ought to get
Sandown on the subject. I found a curious old drawing the other day in
a scrapbook belonging to my father. The name Grantham is printed in the
centre of a large folio sheet, with a circle round it to imitate the
sun, and from it go out rays in all directions, with the names of the
different families with which we have intermarried."
"I haven't got any ancestors," remarked Edith. "My grandfather was a
draper in Leeds, and made his fortune there. I should think ancestors
were a great responsibility; you have to live up to them, or else they
live down to you."
"I'm always saying to Frank," said Sir Robert, "that you have to judge
a man by himself, and not by his family. If a man is a pleasant fellow
it doesn't matter whether his family came over with the Conqueror or
not. Our parson here, for instance, he's a decent sensible fellow, and
I'm always delighted to give him a few days' shooting, or see him to
dinner on Sunday after his services. His father was a tobacconist in
the village, you know. There's the shop there now."
Edith rose to go.
Sir Robert lighted her candle for her.
"I should like to show you the few portraits we've got," he said.
"There are some interesting names amongst them; but, of course, most of
our family things are at Langfort."
"My grandfather's yard measure is the only heirloom that we've got,"
said Edith. "I'll show it to Lady Grantham when she comes to stay with
me."
Frank had followed them into the hall.
"Family prayers over yet, father?" he asked. "I shall go and smoke. I
hope you've been devout, Miss Staines."
Edith left the Granthams two days after this, "to buy legs of mutton,"
she explained, "and hire a charwoman. I don't suppose there's anyone at
home. But I shall have things straight by the time you come."
Sir Robert was very gracious, and promised to send her a short memoir
he was writing on the fortunes of the family. It was to be bound in
white vellum, with their arms in gilt upon the outside.
Edith, found no one at home but a few servants on board wages, who did
not seem at all pleased to see her. She devoted her evening to what she
called tidying, which consisted in emptying the contents of a quantity
of drawers on to the floor of her room, and sitting down beside them.
She turned them over with much energy for about half an hour, and then
decided that she could throw nothing away, and told her maid to put
them back again, and played her piano till bed-time.
Lady Grantham and Nora followed in a few days, and Dodo was to come the
same evening. They were sitting put in the garden after dinner, when
the sound of wheels was heard, and Edith went round to the front door
to welcome her.
Dodo had not dined, so she went and "made hay among the broken meats,"
as she expressed it. Travelling produced no kind of fatigue in her; and
the noise, and shaking, and smuts, that prey on most of us in railway
carriages always seemed to leave her untouched. Dodo was particularly
glad to get to England. She had had rather a trying time of it towards
the end, for Jack and the Prince got on extremely badly together, and,
as they both wished to be with Dodo, collisions were frequent. She gave
the story of her adventure to Edith with singular frankness as she ate
her broken meats.
"You see, Jack got it into his head that the Prince is a cad and a
brute," said Dodo. "I quite admit that he may be, only neither Jack nor
I have the slightest opportunity for judging. Socially he is neither,
and what he is morally doesn't concern me. How should it? It isn't
my business to inquire into his moral character. I'm not his mother
nor his mother confessor. He is good company. I particularly like his
sister, whom you must come and see, Edith. She and the Prince are
going to stay with us when we get back to Winston; and he knows how
to behave. Jack has a vague sort of feeling that his morals ought to
prevent him from tolerating the Prince, which made him try to find
opportunities for disliking him. But Jack didn't interfere with me."
"No," said Edith; "I really don't see why private individuals shouldn't
associate with whom they like. One doesn't feel bound to be friends
with people of high moral character, so I don't see why one should be
bound to dislike people of low ditto."
"That's exactly my view," said Dodo; "morals don't come into the
question at all. I particularly dislike some of the cardinal
virtues--and the only reason for associating with anybody is that one
takes pleasure in their company. Of course one wouldn't go about with a
murderer, however amusing, because his moral deficiencies-might produce
unpleasant physical consequences to yourself. But my morals are able
to look after themselves. I'm not afraid of moral cut-throats. Morals
don't come into the social circle. You might as well dislike a man
because he's got a sharp elbow-joint. He won't use it on your ribs, you
know, in the drawing-room. To get under the influence of an immoral man
would be different. We'll, I've finished. Where are the others? Give me
a cigarette, Edith. I sha'n't shock your servants, shall I? I've given
up shocking people."
Dodo and Edith strolled out, and Dodo was introduced to Lady Grantham.
"What an age you and Edith have been," said Miss Grantham. "I have been
dying to see you, Dodo."
"We were talking," said Dodo, "and for once Edith agreed with me."
"She never agrees with me," remarked Lady Grantham.
"I wonder if I should always agree with you then," said Dodo. "Do
things that disagree with the same thing agree with one another?"
"What did Edith agree with you about?" asked Miss Grantham.
"I'm not sure that I did really agree with her," interpolated Edith.
"Oh, about morals," said Dodo. "I said that a man's morals did not
matter in ordinary social life. That they did not come into the
question at all."
"No, I don't think I do agree with you," said Edith. "All social life
is a degree of intimacy, and you said yourself that you wouldn't get
under the influence of an immoral man--in other words, you wouldn't be
intimate with him."
"Oh, being intimate hasn't anything to do with being under a man's
influence," said Dodo. "I'm very intimate with lots of people. Jack,
for instance, but I'm not under his influence."
"Then you think it doesn't matter whether society is composed of people
without morals?" said Edith.
"I think it's a bad thing that morals should deteriorate in any
society," said Dodo; "but I don't think that society should take
cognisance of the moral code. Public opinion don't touch that. If a
man is a brute, he won't be any better for knowing that other people
disapprove of him. If he knows that, and is worth anything at all, it
will simply have the opposite effect on him. He very likely will try to
hide it; but that doesn't make it any better. A whited sepulchre is no
better than a sepulchre unwhitened. You must act by your own lights. If
an action doesn't seem to you wrong nothing in the world will prevent
your doing it, if your desire is sufficiently strong. You cannot
elevate tone by punishing offences. There are no fewer criminals since
the tread-mill was invented and Botany Bay discovered."
"You mean that there would be no increase in crime if the law did not
punish?"
"I mean that punishment is not the best way of checking crime, though
that is really altogether a different question. You won't check
immorality by dealing with it as a social crime."
There was a short silence, broken only by the whispering of the wind in
the fir trees. Then on the stillness came a light, rippling laugh. Dodo
got out of her chair, and plucked a couple of roses from a bush near
her.
"I can't be serious any longer," she said; "not a single moment longer.
I'm so dreadfully glad to be in England again. Really, there is no
place like it. I hate the insolent extravagant beauty of Switzerland
--it is like chromo lithographs. Look at that long, flat, grey distance
over there. There is nothing so beautiful as that abroad."
Dodo fastened the roses in the front of her dress, and laughed again.
"I laugh for pure happiness," she continued. "I laughed when I saw
the cliff of Dover to-day, not because I was sea-sick--I never am
sea-sick--but simply because I was coming home again. Jack parted from
me at Dover. I am very happy about Jack. I believe in him thoroughly."
Dodo was getting serious again in spite of herself. Lady Grantham was
watching her curiously, and without any feeling of disappointment.
She did not wear spectacles, she was, at least, as tall as herself,
and she dressed, if anything, rather better. She was still wearing
half-mourning, but half-mourning suited Dodo very well.
"Decidedly it's a pity to analyse one's feelings," Dodo went on, "they
do resolve themselves into such very small factors. I am well, I am
in England, where you can eat your dinner without suspicion of frogs,
or caterpillars in your cauliflower. I had two caterpillars in my
cauliflower at Zermatt one night. I shall sleep in a clean white bed,
and I shall not have to use Keating. I can talk as ridiculously as I
like, without thinking of the French for anything. Oh, I'm entirely
happy."
Dodo was aware of more reasons for happiness than she mentioned. She
was particularly conscious of the relief she felt in getting away from
the Prince. For some days past she had been unpleasantly aware of his
presence. She could not manage to think of him quite as lightly as she
thought of anyone else. It was a continual effort to her to appear
quite herself in his presence, and she was constantly rushing into
extremes in order to seem at her ease. He was stronger, she felt, than
she was, and she did not like it. The immense relief which his absence
brought more than compensated for the slight blankness that his absence
left. In a way she felt dependent on him, which chafed and irritated
her, for she had never come under such a yoke before. She had had
several moments of sudden anger against herself on her way home. She
found herself always thinking about him when she was not thinking about
anything else; and though she was quite capable of sending her thoughts
off to other subjects, when they had done their work they always
fluttered back again to the same resting-place, and Dodo was conscious
of an effort, slight indeed, but still an effort, in frightening them
off. Her curious insistence on her own happiness had struck Edith. She
felt it unnatural that Dodo should mention it, and she drew one of two
conclusions from it; either that Dodo had had a rather trying time,
for some reason or other, or that she wished to convince herself, by
constant repetition, of something that she was not quite sure about;
and both of these conclusions were in a measure correct.
"Who was out at Zermatt when you were there?" inquired Miss Grantham.
"Oh, there was mother there, and Maud and her husband, and a Russian
princess, Waldenech's sister, and Jack, of course," said Dodo.
"Wasn't Prince Waldenech there himself?" she asked.
"The Prince? Oh yes, he was there; didn't I say so?" said Dodo.
"He's rather amusing, isn't he?" said Miss Grantham. "I don't know him
at all."
"Oh, yes," said Dodo; "a little ponderous, you know, but very
presentable, and good company."
Edith looked up suddenly at Dodo. There was an elaborate carelessness,
she thought, in her voice. It was just a little overdone. The night
was descending fast, and she could only just see the lines of her
face above the misty folds of her grey dress. But even in that half
light she thought that her careless voice did not quite seem a true
interpretation of her expression. It might have been only the dimness
of the shadow, but she thought she looked anxious and rather depressed.
Lady Grantham drew her shawl more closely round her shoulders, and
remarked that it was getting cold. Edith got up and prepared to go
in, and Miss Grantham nestled in her chair. Only Dodo stood quite
motionless, and Edith noticed that her hands were tearing one of the
roses to pieces, and scattering the petals on the grass.
"Are you going in, Dodo?" she asked; "or would you rather stop out a
little longer?"
"I think I won't come in just yet," said Dodo; "it's so delightful to
have a breath of cool air, after being in a stuffy carriage all day.
But don't any of you stop out if you'd rather go in. I shall just smoke
one more cigarette."
"I'll stop with you, Dodo," said Miss Grantham. "I don't want to
go in at all. Edith, if you're going in, throw the windows in the
drawing-room open, and play to us."
Lady Grantham and Edith went towards the house.
"I didn't expect her to be a bit like that," said Lady Grantham. "I
always heard she was so lively, and talked more nonsense in half an
hour than we can get through in a year. She's very beautiful."
"I think Dodo must be tired or something," said Edith. "I never saw
her like that before. She was horribly serious. I hope nothing has
happened."
The piano in the drawing-room was close to a large French window
opening on to the lawn. Edith threw it open, and stood for a moment
looking out into the darkness. She could just see Dodo and Nora sitting
where they had left them, though they were no more than two pale spots
against the dark background. She was conscious of a strange feeling
that there was an undercurrent at work in Dodo, which showed itself by
a few chance bubbles and little sudden eddies on the surface, which she
thought required explanation.
Dodo certainly was not quite like herself. There was no edge to her
vivacity: her attempts not to be serious had been distinctly forced,
and she was unable to keep it up. Edith felt a vague sense of coming
disaster; slight but certain. However, she drew her chair to the piano
and began to play.
Miss Grantham was conscious of the same sort of feeling. Since the
others had gone in, Dodo had sat quite silent, and she had not taken
her cigarette.
"You had a nice time then, abroad?" she remarked at length.
"Oh, yes," said Dodo, rousing herself. "I enjoyed it a good deal. The
hotel was full of the hotel class, you know. A little trying at times,
but not to matter. We had a charming party there. Algernon is getting
quite worldly. However, he is ridiculously fond of Maud, and she'll
keep him straight. Do you know the Prince?"
"Hardly at all," said Miss Grantham.
"What do you think of him, as far as you've seen?" asked Dodo.
"I think he is rather impressive," said Miss Grantham. "I felt I should
do as he told me."
"Ah, you think that, do you?" asked Dodo, with the most careful
carelessness. "He struck me that way, too, a little."
"I should think he was an instance of what Edith meant when she said
that to be intimate with anyone was to be under their influence."
"Edith's awfully wrong, I think, about the whole idea," said Dodo,
hastily. "I should hate to be under anyone's influence; yet, I think,
the only pleasure of knowing people is to be intimate. I would sooner
have one real friend than fifty acquaintances."
"Did you see much of him?" asked Miss Grantham.
"Yes, a good deal," she said, "a great deal, in fact. I think Edith's
right about intimacy as regards him, though he's an exception. In
general, I think, she's wrong. What's that she's playing?"
"Anyhow, it's Wagner," said Miss Grantham.
"I know it," said Dodo. "It's the 'Tannhauser' overture. Listen,
there's the Venus motif crossing the Pilgrim's march. Ah, that's simply
wicked. The worst of it is, the Venus part is so much more attractive
than the other. It's horrible."
"You're dreadfully serious to-night, Dodo," said Miss Grantham.
"I'm a little tired, I think," she said. "I was travelling all last
night, you know. Come, let's go in."
Dodo went to bed soon afterwards. She said she was tired, and a little
overdone. Edith looked at her rather closely as she said good-night.
"You're sure it's nothing more?" she asked. "There's nothing wrong with
you, is there?"
"I shall be all right in the morning," said Dodo, rather wearily.
"Don't let them call me till nine."
Dodo went upstairs and found that her maid had unpacked for her. A heap
of books was lying on the table, and from among these she drew out a
large envelope with a photograph inside. It was signed "Waldenech."
Dodo looked at it a moment, then placed it back in its envelope, and
went to the window. She felt the necessity of air. The room seemed
close and hot, and she threw it wide open.
She stood there for ten minutes or more quite still, looking out into
the night. Then she went back to the table and took up the envelope
again. With a sudden passionate gesture she tore it in half, then
across again, and threw the pieces into the grate.