My sister and I breakfasted in the morning-room in those days, and we always had a fire for Bettina's sake on chilly mornings.
In the back of my mind I was hoping Eric's complaint of cold was an excuse. If my first impression had been right, if he had something to tell me, he would tell it better indoors. I should hear it better, sitting beside him.
The pang when he passed the sofa by! I was wrong.... I was an idiot....
He drew up before the ungenerous little fire and began at once to speak with suppressed excitement of a "secret."
"——the sort of thing that—well, I wouldn't trust my own brother with it." And upon that he stopped short.
I did not say: "You can trust me." But I hardly breathed in the pause. I felt it all hung on whether he told me. What hung? Why, everything—whether life was going to be kind tome some day ... whether it was well or ill that I had been born.
He seemed to be content with having told me there was a secret. For he changed the subject abruptly to the Bungalow, and what an adept Bootle was at inoculation and the preparation of cultures. Bootle possessed the great and glorious faculty of accuracy! One of the few men on earth whose account of a thing did not need to be checked.
Sitting over the fire that morning, Eric told me that the Bungalow was a laboratory. Very important work had been done there last autumn. (Sothatwas why he had stayed on!) "Tentative but highly significant results" had been arrived at—results which all these months of contest and putting to proof, in London and on the Continent, had not been able to upset.
"Gods!" Eric exclaimed, with a startling vehemence. But this was a glorious place to work in! The best air in England! And the Bungalow had been an inspiration from on high! Far away from noise and interruption; and not merely for a few paltry hours. Great stretches of time to himself! Then you were so fit here.You slept. You had all your wits about you. As we knew, it was Hawkins's idea in the first place—that Eric should come down and rest. Well, now I was to hear something more about Hawkins. Hawkins was a kind of mascot. He not only was the best man they'd ever had in that chair at the University. He wasn't only a first-rate bacteriologist, and first-rate all-round man. There was something about Hawkins that struck fire out of other people. His rooms were a meeting-place for chaps keen about—well, about the things that matter. Hawkins gave a dinner at his club one night to some London University men and a couple of distinguished foreigners.
"Of course, we talked shop. We argued and stirred one another up, and the sparks flew. When the rest had gone Hawkins and I stayed talking in the smoking-room. About an idea"—Eric looked round to see that the door was shut—"a new idea I was working at for dealing with cancer."
"Dealing!" I echoed, leaning forward. "You mean curing?"
"——I told Hawkins about an experiment I'd been making. As I've said, Hawkins is very intelligent.But he contested my conclusions. I grew hot. We argued. I told him more and more. Hawkins thought my experiments too rough-and-ready. Even if they weren't rough-and-ready, to be conclusive they must be tried on an extended scale. I stood up for the validity of tests, on a small scale, done with an infinity of care—a ruthless spending of the investigator rather than multiplication of the subject. All the same, I couldn't deny that precious time was being wasted and many lives. Hawkins was right. I did need a trained staff, and I needed—oh, masses of things I had not got, and had no prospect of getting. We had tried the forlorn hope of a Government grant—and failed. We agreed that, in working out an idea like mine, the crucial danger lay in premature publicity. We are in a cleft stick in these matters. Without the right people knowing, believing, helping, it is hard—pretty nearly impossible—to go forward. I sat, rather dejected, and stared at the fire. The smoking-room had been empty except for a little, dried-up old man, who was half asleep over the evening papers. A few minutes after Hawkins had gone out to pay his bill, the little old man waked upand went to a writing-table. In a half-minute or so I looked round, and he was standing quite near me, warming his back at the fire.
"'I've been eavesdropping,' he said. Lord! I was scared. How much had I given away? 'I don't know anything about this subject,' he said. 'But I've an idea you do. Anyhow, I'm willing to gamble on it. My name's Pearmain,' he said, and he showed me the signature on a cheque. 'A thousand pounds to start you.' He laid the cheque down on the little table among the matches and cigar-ends. 'You can let me know when you need more,' he said. He fished a card out of an inside pocket, and chucked it on top of the cheque. Naturally I was staggered. Heseemedright enough in his head, but I was sure he couldn't be.... When Hawkins came back I introduced him. We talked awhile longer. Then the old man said good-night. The next day I cashed the cheque. I gave up my post in the hospital, and I gave up ... a lot of things. After that I invested every ounce of energy I had in this undertaking. For three solid years I've done nothing, thought about nothing, except the one thing."
His eyes were shining as a lover's might, I thought. The sting of jealousy poisoned my pleasure in being taken into his confidence—a renewed antagonism to the work, work, always work, that made its triumphant claim.
"You pretend to be more inhuman than you are," I said. "For you don't forget that you can help people who have only ordinary everyday troubles."
"Oh, yes, I do," he laughed. "I'll have nothing to do with ordinary, everyday troubles."
"You helped us——"
"Oh, that's different—an exception. Just for once...." He seemed to excuse himself, for wasting time on us. He said the most extravagant things. "A revolution might have swept England. I should have gone on attenuating serums and inoculating guinea-pigs."
It may have been something in my manner, or just my silence, that pulled him up. He spoke of the share we at Duncombe had had in "what's happened."
"When I was clean worked out and dead-beat, I came here."
We hadn't any notion of the "rest and refreshment—the——"He looked at me out of those clear red-brown eyes of his, and seemed to deliberate.
A sense of delicious panic seized me. "And—the—the experiments. How do they come on?" I asked, but I wasn't thinking of them at all.
"That," he said, sinking his voice—"that's just what I'm coming to; though I hoped I shouldn't tell you. I didn't mean to say anything at all this morning, except that I was going to be a hermit for these next days. But you aren't a chatterbox. The fact is ... last night I believe I stumbled on the secret."
I don't know what I said, but it pleased him. His eyes were full of gentle brilliancy. "Yes, yes," he said. "I knewyou'dunderstand."
Oh, it was good to see him with that light in his face!
And we sat there, with the morning sun shining over us, and just looked gladness at each other. Then I said I thought he must be the happiest man in England.
He half put out his hand, and drew it back. "I am to find that out, too, very soon," he said.The clock downstairs chimed ten. Eric jumped up like a person with a train to catch.
He had taken me into his counsels prematurely like this, he said, because he wanted to feel sure that I wasn't putting any wrong construction on the fact of his burying himself for these next days. "I like to think you are understanding. If I have any good news, I'll come and tell you. If you don't hear, you'll know I don't dare let go my clue even for an hour, except to sleep."
And now he must go.
I went with him as far as the gate.
He walked with head bent, and eyes that saw things hidden from me. Already he was back in the Bungalow.
I felt the misery of being deserted. But I felt, too, the strong intelligence, the iron purpose, in the man. And though I was torn and aching, I was proud. For all my jealousy, as I saw the mouth so firm-set under the red-brown thatch, saw the colour in his face, something reached me, too, of the heat of this passion to find out—something of the absorption of the man of science in his task. Here was the new kind of soldier going to his post.
I held out my hand. "Good luck!"
He took it, then dropped it quickly.
And quickly, without once looking back, he walked away.
I watched him hurrying across the links till one of the heath hollows swallowed him up.
As I turned to go back to my thyme-planting, I heard the dog-cart rattling along the stony road.
Madame Aurore!
I never finished planting the thyme.
Madame Aurore was little and wasted and shrill.
She had deep scars in her neck, and dead-looking yellow hair.
She was drenched in cheap scent.
Her untidy, helter-skelter dress gave no hint of the admirable taste she lavished upon others.
She saw at once what we ought to have, and she talked about our clothes with an enthusiasm as great as Betty's own.
"Ah, butMadame!" she remonstrated dramatically, when my mother showed her the new white satin, which was for me, and a creamy lace gown which was to be modernised for Bettina—"notbötvhite!"
My mother explained that my gown was to have rose-coloured garnishing.
"Mais non! maisnon!" Madame must pardon her for the liberty, but she, Madame Aurore, could not bring herself to see our chief advantage thrown away.
What, then, was our chief advantage? Betty demanded.
What indeed, but the contrast between us. The moment she laid eyes on the hair of Mademoiselle Bettina she had said to herself: the frock of Mademoiselle Bettina should be that tender green of tilleul—with just a note of bleu de ciel. Oh, a dress of spring-time—an April dress, a gay little dress, for all its tenderness! A dress to make happy the heart of all who look thereon.
But "green!" We had sent all the way to London for the white satin, and we had no green.
Then 'twas in truth une bonne chance that Madame Aurorehad!She often bought up bargains and gave her clients an opportunity to acquire them. She rushed out of the room, and returned with a piece of silk chiffon of the most adorable hue. She showed us the effect over white satin. My satin. But then, as Madame Aurore said, we could so easily send to Stagg and Mantle's for more.
She looked at me out of snapping black eyes—eyes like animated boot-buttons. "Yes, yes; for you, Mademoiselle, ze note sall be sérénité ... hein? Zis priceless old lace over ivory satin.Ah...." She struck an attitude. "Iseeit. So ... and so. A ceinture panne, couleur de feuille d'automne touched with gold broderie. Hein? Oh, very distingué, hein?"
"It must not be expensive"; we had to say that to Madame Aurore all that first day, at regular intervals. But she had her way. She sewed hard, and she chattered as hard as she sewed.
Bettina ran across her in the passage that first evening as Madame Aurore came up from supper. And they began instantly on the fruitful theme of "green gown." My mother called out to Bettina that she had talked enough about clothes for one day, and in any case she had left us to go early to bed. Bettina regretted her rash promise—wasn't the least tired, and could have talked clothes till cock-crow! There was some argument on this head at the door, in which Madame Aurore joined, with too great a freedom, and an elaborate air of ranging herself on my mother's side. This pleased, least of all, the person Madame Aurore designed to propitiate.
Madame Aurore, I am sure, had not been in the house an hour before she had taken the measureof our main preoccupation. Mademoiselle Bettina ought to be grateful, she said, to have a mother so devoted, so solicitous. Standing near the open door, she piled up an exaggerated case of maternal love. There was nothing in life like the love between mother and child. Ah, didn't she know! Her own little girl——
My mother said she must have the door shut now, and I was sent to undo Betty's gown.
Bettina thought it angelic of Madame Aurore not to resent our mother's lack of interest in the small Aurore. According to Bettina, Madame showed a wonderfully nice disposition in not withdrawing her interest from us after that. She seemed rather to imply: very well, you don't care about my child ... but I am still ready to care about yours.
"Parfaitement!" ... the little dressmaker remembered Bettina's passing Dew Pond House the summer before. It was true what Hermione had reported. Madame Aurore had leaned out of the window to watch Bettina. She had even expressed the wish that she might have the dressing of cette jolie enfant.
Oh, but life was a droll affair!
Bettina thought it entirely delightful. She went about the house singing. The first time Madame Aurore heard Bettina she arrested the rapid stab of her basting needle: "Who ees dat?"
"That is my youngest daughter."
"She tink to go on ze stage?"
"Oh, no."
"Not? It ees a vast, zat."
She was always cold.
Whenever we were out of the morning-room she piled on the coal. On the second day I remonstrated. Fuel, I explained, was very expensive so far from the coal-fields. She smiled. "You are ze careful one, hein?" and she looked at me in a way which made me uncomfortable.
But I did not feel about the poor little creature as my mother did.
My mother went so far as to wish we had not sent for her. She would never have allowed her to come if she had seen her first. I thought my mother severe.
Everybody else, including the servants, liked Madame Aurore. No wonder. She spent her life doing things for people. Sewing for us allday like mad, so that our two best frocks might be finished in spite of the shortness of the time; and still ready at nightfall to show the cook how to make p'tite marmite, or sauce à la financière—equally ready to advise the housemaid how to give the Bond Street, not to say the Rue de la Paix, touch to her Sunday alpaca, and chic to old Ransom's beehive hat.
If she asked them one and all more questions in a minute than they could answer in a month, what did that show but the generous interest she took in her fellow-beings?
Bettina, with her little air of large experience, said that Madame Aurore was the most "sympathetic" person she had ever met. Madame Aurore's benevolent concern about our clothes, our soups, sauces, and servants, and everything that was ours, extended to our friends and relations and everything that was theirs. She had never, she said, known people—let alone such charming people as we—with so few acquaintances. Bettina thought Madame Aurore was sorry for us.
She asked a great deal about the Helmstones. "Ze only friends and zey are avay for seex mont!" Ah, it was well we were going to London. Weshould die, else, of aloneness. Aunt Josephine plainly was the one ray of light in our grey existence. Where did she live? Lowndes Square! Ah, but a very expensive and splendid part of London! No news to us, who had our own private measure for social altitudes. Bettina had looked out Lowndes Square on our faded map of London. Aunt Josephine was only a private person, but she lived nearer the King and Queen than the Helmstones did.
And for all her being a Biosophist she had asked us to stay for the Coronation. Bettina frequently led the conversation to the great event of June. But this queer little Frenchwoman was more interested in Aunt Josephine than she was in the King and Queen. Here was distinction for an Aunt!
And what was she like—this lady? We must have a picture of our only and so valuable relation.
Bettina went and rooted about in the deep print and photograph drawer, till she brought Aunt Josephine to light. Very faded and old-fashioned looking, but Madame Aurore regarded the face with a respectful enthusiasm. "Oh, unegrande dame! une vraie grande dame!" Madame Aurore understood better now what was required.
We repudiated, on our aunt's behalf, the idea that she was so much grande dame as philanthropist, thinker, recluse. We did not deny her grandeur. We but clarified it; or, at least, Bettina did.
"Bettina talks too much to that woman," my mother said to me privately. She sent for Bettina and told her she was not to speak to Madame Aurore about anything except her work.
Bettina thought to interpret this order literally would be inhuman. Besides, she considered it very nice of Madame Aurore to take such an interest in us. "Iam grateful when people take an interest," said Bettina with her air of superiority.
When my mother heard that Bettina had been discussing Aunt Josephine, and had unearthed the photograph to show to Madame Aurore, she was annoyed. "Go and bring me the picture," she said.
Bettina went into the morning-room, and looked about for some minutes. The little dressmaker sat there, in a litter of white and green, sewingfuriously. Bettina said at last that she hated most dreadfully to bother Madame Aurore, but where was that old photograph?
Madame Aurore looked up absently. "Had Mademoiselle Bettina not taken it out?"
"Perhaps I did——" Bettina scoured the house.
Aunt Josephine's photograph was never found.
I was glad our mother did not know that Bettina had told Madame Aurore about the pendant and the diamond star. Bettina excused herself by saying Madame Aurore had been so certain a lady like our mother must have jewels, and that she would lend them to her daughters, in order to put the finishing touch of elegance to our toilette. Betty had felt it due to our mother to acknowledge that a part, at least, of this exalted expectation was not so wide of the mark. And Bettina endorsed Madame Aurore's opinion that a diamond star certainlywould"light up" my ivory satin and old lace. Also—but no, we must do without.
The green frock was all but finished. We hadbrought the cheval glass out of my mother's room. She was "not strong enough to stand the patchouli," so she missed the great moment of the final trying on. Bettina stood before the glass, looking somehow more childish than ever, or rather seeming less of common earth and more of fairyland, in the tunic-frock of green, her short curls on her neck.
My fancy that she was like somebody out of "The Midsummer Night's Dream," was set to flight by Madame Aurore's shower of couturière's compliment, mixed with highly practical considerations, such as: "See how it falls when you sit down. Parfaitement! And can you valk in it? Butwis grace!" Bettina proved she could. "A merveille! Sapristi! Mademoiselle Bettine would see the sensation she was going to create in London. Could she lift ze arm—hein?" Mais belle comme un ange!—many makers of quite beautiful gowns studied the effect seulement en repos. Mademoiselle Bettine would, without doubt, dance in that frock. Let us see, did it lend itself? Bettina moved about the morning-room to waltz time—laughing at and with Madame Aurore; stopping to make court curtsies;watching in the glass if green frock had pretty manners.
One thing more, its maker said, and behold Perfection! It needed ... it cried aloud for a single jewel.
"Ah, yes." Bettina's look fell. No doubt the finishing touch would have been a pearl and emerald pendant. But——
Madame Aurore struck in with a torrential rapture, drowning explanation and regret. Life, Madame Aurore shrilled, was for ever using her, humble instrument though she was—for the working out of these benevolences. There had she—but three days ago—all innocent, unknowing—tossed that piece of chiffon tilleul into her trunk. Or rather, not her hand performed the act—not hers at all. The hand of Fate! And now,The Finger!... pointing straight at the pearl and emerald pendant. But, instantly, must Mademoiselle Bettine go and get the ravishing jewel—the diamond star, as well, while she was about it.
Then poor Betty had to say these glories were no more.
Madame Aurore snapped her boot-button eyes, and rolled them up. Our poor,poormother!Deeply, ah! but profoundly, Madame Aurore commiserated une dame si distinguée, si élégante, being in straitened circumstances. Ah, Madame Aurore understood! She would be most economical with the coals.
All the same she wasn't.
But what did it matter! since she turned us out dresses that we were sure Hermione, herself, would have characterised as "Dreams." Bettina went about the house, singing:
"'Where are you going to, my pretty maid?''Going to London, Sir,' she said...."
Madame Aurore even managed to put the finishing touches to the two frocks made in the village, which Bettina called our Coronation robes—just white muslin, but not "just muslin" at all, after they had passed through Madame Aurore's hands. She listened indulgently while Bettina wondered how the young Princes would like driving through London in a gold coach, and above all how the little Princess would feel; and how she would look; and how did Madame Aurore think she would do her hair?
"I don't like that woman," my mother observed pointedly to Bettina.
"Oh, dearest, she feels it. I know from something——"
"I do not object to her knowing. But I am not interested in Madame Aurore." My mother dismissed her.
The fact was that none of the torrent of talk (carried on now in a whisper, with elaborate deference to the chère malade)—none of it had to do with Madame Aurore herself. We had had to ask her all of the little we came to know about her. She had no regular business in London. Ah, no, she was too often ill. She merely went out to work when she was "strong enuss."
"Zen too, ze leedle gal. I haf to sink about her." The thought seemed one to harass. All would be different if Mme. Aurore had a shop.
We agreed that to have a shop full of lovely French models, would be delightful. And by-and-by the little Aurore would help in the shop.
"Nevair!" said Mme. Aurore with sudden passion. She knew all about being in shops. It was to prevent her daughter from knowing, too,that Mme. Aurore must make money. The little Aurore should go to the Convent school—which seemed somehow an odd destination for the daughter of Madame Aurore. She spoke of it as a far dream, beckoning.
"Nossing—butnossingcan be done in zis world vidout monny." And what people will do for money—oh, little did we know! But the world was like that. Eh bien, Madame Aurore had not made it.Hadshe done so, it would be a better place.
Betty and I smiled at the pains taken to make this clear. Madame Aurore professed herself revolted by an arrangement which made "ze goodness or ze badness of a pairson" dependent upon where you happened to find yourself.
"Par example you can be extrêmement goodhere." More. She would go so far as to say you must be a genius to discover how to be bad here.
Through Betty's laughing protest, the little woman went on with seriousness to assure us it was "une chose bien différente dans ..." she checked herself, bit off the end of her thread, and spat it out.
"It is different, you mean, in CrutchleyStreet?" Betty asked. And, though she got no answer, I think we both understood the anxious mother to be thinking of the small Aurore left all alone in one of the world's Mean Streets. Perhaps the reason Betty got no answer to her question was that she had slightly raised her voice in putting it, and I had said, "Sh!"
"What ees it?" Madame Aurore demanded, looking round.
"I was only reminding Betty," I said. "We mustn't disturb my mother."
Hah! naturally not.Whateverhappened, she was not to be disturbed!
I was afraid, from the tone in which Madame Aurore said this, that she thought I had been reproving her. And, to divert her thoughts, I asked: "Who takes care of her—the little daughter—while you are away?"
Again she bit viciously at the thread. "Not motch 'care'!" The small eyes snapped as she drew the thread through the needle's eye. I had never seen even her hands fly so fast, or her whole feverish little body attack the basting with such fury of energy as after that reference to the child left behind in Crutchley Street.
Bettina said soothingly: "I suppose you left her with some good friend?"
"Ze best I haf."
The admission was made in an accent so coldly hopeless that Bettina, round-eyed, said: "Oh, dear, isn't she a nice friend?"
"She is like ozzers. She is as nice as she can afford." Madame Aurore had recovered her shrill vivacity. She had not, after all, taken to heart my hint about keeping our voices down. "In some parts of ze vorld," she went on, in that raised, defiant note, "you might be quite good for a week; wis luck for a few months; but you could not be good from year's end to year's end."
"Why was that?" Bettina asked softly.
Madame Aurore laughed out. "Ze climat!" she said, in a voice that must certainly have penetrated the next room. "Somesing in ze air." Then lower, with a tigerish swiftness: "I shall not ron ze risk formyliddle gal!Non!" She tossed the satin on the machine, thrust it under the needle, and seemed to work the treadle by dint of compressing lips and knitting brows.
Bettina and I agreed we would not talk to her any more about her daughter, since, unlike mostmothers, the thought of her child did not soften Madame Aurore, but made her hard and angry.
We put this down to wounded feelings at my mother's curt dismissal of the theme.
Surreptitiously—for she knew leave would be refused—Bettina gave Madame Aurore some of our old toys, and other little gifts, to take home to her daughter.
I did not prevent this, for I, too, felt uneasily that we ought somehow to make up for our mother's nervous detestation of Madame Aurore.
Had this, as the little dressmaker hinted, something of sheer sickness in it—an invalid's caprice? Bettina said lightheartedly: "Oh, it's only because Aurore is a foreigner. Mother admits she never did like foreigners."
After the first day there was almost no personal interchange between Madame Aurore and her employer. Yet I had a queer feeling that a silent drama was being played out between those two who, without meeting, were acting and reacting upon each other.
Madame Aurore asked each day, How was madame? in a voice of extremest solicitude—nay, of gloomiest apprehension.
I found myself wrestling with an uncomfortable feeling that this hopeless view of my mother's health was somehow prompted by a desire "to get even" with the one unresponsive member of our little circle—to get even in the only way open to Madame Aurore. I knew she advised the housemaid to look out for another place, and offered to find her one in London, where she would be paid double, and have almost nothing to do. The housemaid was greatly tempted, but I was told she said she wouldn't go till her mistress was better.
"Bettair! She vill not last a mont!" said Madame Aurore.
At first such echoes as reached me of these prognostications made me merely angry. But I could not quite cast them aside. I began to wonder miserably if there were anything in this view. After all we, too—even Eric—had held it ourselves, only such a little while before!
I wrote to Aunt Josephine to say that if my mother were not better by Monday morning, I should bring Bettina as arranged; but I would stay only one night and go home the next day.
The question rose on Friday as to whetherMadame Aurore should return to London on Saturday night, or some time on Sunday.
"Saturday night," said my mother with decision.
Bettina ventured to urge the Sunday alternative. "The poor little thing is so tired after sewing all day——"
To which my mother responded by ordering the cart for Saturday evening.
"I cannot sleep with that woman in the house."
Bettina ran in to say Madame Aurore was ready to say good-bye. To our embarrassment, our mother would not permit Madame Aurore to enter the room, even for the purpose of taking leave.
We went out and did what we could to soften the refusal. "She has not been sleeping...." "She is trying to rest...." "She is so much obliged to you...."
Ah, Madame Aurore understood. Our poor, poor mother was undoubtedly failing. We were adjured to take every care. Certainly we should not both leave the poor lady.
We told Madame Aurore that we shouldnever forget her. "I shall take good care of the address," Bettina said.
No, Madame Aurore would send us a new address. She was looking for larger rooms. She believed she was going to be stronger now. She meant to take on two or three hands. In that case, she would not be able to go out any more to people's houses. She would let us know....
She filled the hall with her patchouli and shrill vivacity, and presently was gone.
When we went back into my mother's room, we found her telling the housemaid to hang our gowns in a draught "to purify them."
Betty was moved to some final remonstrance.
My mother cut her short: "That was a horrible woman!"
"Well, well," I said, "she's gone."
"Yes. That is the best that can be said of Madame Aurore. We are done with her for ever."
Mercifully, no soul can stand at the pitch of tension long. Those too frail snap. The strong relax. As I have learned since, few who have to do with lingering illness but come to know the gradual, inevitable dulling of apprehension in the watchers. Eric says the power of human adaptability sees to it that the abnormal state of the sufferer shall come by mere continuance to wear an air of the normal. And so the watcher, with no violence to loyalty, or conscience, is relieved of the sharper sympathy.
Certainly, my mother seemed to us in no worse case than many a time before. Bettina and I agreed that she began to improve the moment Duncombe air was no longer poisoned for her by the presence of poor Madame Aurore. What Eric had said of our trustworthy servants was true. Yet I had brought my mother to agree that my absence, now, was to be a matter only of hours, even if I went back for the Coronation.
And still I was not spared a profound sinkingof the heart at the moment of leave-taking. I put my misgiving down to the fear that parting from Bettina for four long weeks, would be more than my mother's scant reserve of strength could bear.
As for Bettina (oh, when I remember that!)—Bettina showed the bravest front; calling back from the door: "I shall write you every blessed day."
"Yes," my mother steadied her voice to answer. "I shall want to hear everything. The good and—the less good."
"There won't be any 'less good.' It's all going to be glorious."
As Big Klaus's dog-cart took us across the heath I strained my eyes for some glimpse of Eric. A week that day since he had come and shared his secret! He could never mean to let me go without a word. Not till the train was in motion could I give up hope. I stood a moment longer at the window looking back. No sign.
I took my seat between Betty and an old gentleman; she and I both too stirred and excited to talk. Betty, half-turned away, looked out of her window,and I, across her shoulder and over the flying hedges, looked still for a man who might be walking the field-paths, looked for the bright green roof of his Bungalow, looked for the chimneys of the farm.
No sign.
I sat fighting down my tears.
Not an hour of these bustling days had been so full, but I had felt the blank of Eric's silence. And now again I met the ache of loss with: This will teach you! You were dreading a little time away. He adds a week to our parting.Hedoesn't mind. It's only you, poor fool—only you who mind.
I looked round, in a sudden terror, lest anyone should be noticing that my eyes were wet.
Mercifully, the people were all looking at Betty. I looked at Betty, too. I could not see her eyes, but the nearer cheek was that lovely colour whose name she gave once to an evening sky. We had come up on the top of a knoll and stood for a moment, breathless. My mother had said no painter could get such a colour. And neither were there any words in the language to describe it. For it was not red, not flame, not pink, nororange. But Betty, looking steadily, had found the right words for it: "A fiery rose."
And that was the colour in Betty's cheeks on the way to London.
No wonder people looked at her. There was a man who got out of the first-class carriage next us at every station, and walked by our window. He looked in at Bettina. I was glad our carriage was full. I felt sure, if it had not been, he would have come in. I could see Bettina did not resent the staring. And then I saw her look out of the corner of her eyes.
"Bettina!" I whispered. "Don't encourage that strange man to stare in here."
"Me?" she said. "What am I doing?"
I told her again that she encouraged him. But I was handicapped by not being able to say just how. I admitted that what she did was very slight. But it was enough. "It was what you did to Eddie Monmouth." Then, because she pretended not to understand, I told her that she was falling into bad deceitful ways. I knew she had written to Ranny Dallas.... Yes, and kept writing, though the moment I realised what was going on I wrote to Ranny myself. I saidif any more letters came from him, I should have to tell Betty about the girl in Norfolk. Ranny wrote back that he had told Betty himself! And still they went on corresponding, secretly. I said to her now, that I should hardly be surprised if she was hoping to meet Ranny in London.
"Oh, one may 'hope' almost anything," said Betty airily.
"Not of a man who is engaged to another girl!"
"Yes," said Betty; "as long as he isn't married...."
Then, rather frightened, I asked outright if she was really expecting to meet Ranny somewhere.
"How can I say? He is fond of the opera," she said in a very superior, grown-up way. "Imighthappen to see him some night in the throng——"
"In the throng! Betty," I said. "You have given Ranny Dallas your address."
"No," she said; "but I've given it to Tom Courtney."
Tom Courtney was Ranny's red-haired friend. "If you had watched," Betty said, "you wouldknow that I was corresponding with Tom Courtney, too. Chiefly about Ranny. Tom Courtney is a splendid friend. He explains things much better than Ranny can. And then" (Betty's momentary annoyance vanished in laughter)—"then, too, Tom can spell—beautifully!"
I refused to laugh.
"I knew you'd be horrified," Betty said again, "and that is why I have to keep things from you. You are a sort of nun.Younever feel as if all your blood had been whipped to a syllabub. And besides——"
"Besides?"
"I do like nice men. I don't mind their knowing. And I don't mean to be an old maid.Youwouldn't care."
"You think I wouldn't?" I had no time to say more, for the train stopped. We thought at first we had reached Victoria Station, but it was only Clapham Junction. The "staring" man passed once more, with a porter behind carrying golf-clubs and portmanteau. Our carriage, too, was emptying. The people stood and reached things down from the racks, and then filed out. When the train went on we were alone.
Betty was still excited, but more grave, even harassed—a look that sat rather pitiful on her babyish face.
I moved up close to her again, and I told her there was something I had to say before we got to London. "You and I, you see, we don't know very much, and we get carried away."
"You mean me," said Betty. "You are thinking about Eddie Monmouth and——"
Then I told her I did not mean her alone. "I don't know how it is," I said, remembering Mr. Whitby-Dawson and Captain Monmouth and Ranny—yes, and others—"I don't know how it is, but girls seem to 'care' more than men do."
"I've thought that, too," Bettina said.
I said I was sure it was true. Men had so much to do. Life was so full for them ... perhaps that took their minds off. I put my arm round Bettina and held her close. "I am going to confess something," I said, "that most older sisters would deny. But you have got nobody but me. And I have nobody but you. We must help each other."
"I shall have Aunt Josephine," Betty reminded me.
"A stranger—and too old besides." I dismissed Aunt Josephine for the particular purpose in view. "I am going to tell you something very—particular." Then, while she looked at the cushions opposite, and I looked out of the window, I told her I had learned from Eric Annan what she had learned through the others. "We'll say it just this once, and never, never again so long as we live! And we may have to deny it," I warned her. "But I think, if I'm honest about it with you, maybe you won't feel that I don't understand ... or that I am, as you say, 'different.' You will feel closer to me," I pleaded. "And maybe we shall both be stronger for that." I waited a moment. I was glad Betty still stared straight in front of her. "We don't only care more than men do," I said. "Weneedmen more than they need us."
Bettina turned at that. I felt her eyes on me. Then she looked down and stroked my hand.
"I think Mr. Annan does care about you," she said.
"A little," I said. "Not enough. Not as I care."
Bettina pointed out that Eric Annan was not soyoung as we. "Why, he must be thirty. Perhaps when he was our age"—our eyes met in the new comradeship, and then fell—"he may have taken more interest in—more interest in the things we think about."
Then she took it back. "No, no. You may depend it's only girls who are like that—caring so terribly much. I thought it was only me. But if you are like that too, maybe there are others." After a moment: "You were good to tell me," she said. "I don't feel so—unnatural."
The train was slowing. The light grew grey. We were in a dim place, between a smoky wall and a rattling train going out as we came in. Then the platform, and the porters running along by our windows. "Luggage, miss?"
Bettina started up.
"Aunt Josephine!"
She was an imposing figure, beautifully dressed in black. She was handsomer than her picture, and younger-looking than we expected. It occurred to me that bio-vibratory sympathism had a thinning effect.
Her manner was more decisive than I had expected from a dreamer. Very commanding and important, she stood there with her liveried servant behind her. Bettina had known her instantly by the grey hair rolled high and the pear-shaped earrings.
She kissed us, and said I was more like my mother. And were our boxes labelled?
She hardly waited for us to answer. She did not wait at all for our little trunk.
"A footman will attend to the luggage," she said. As she led us down the platform, her eyes kept darting about in a way that made me think she must be expecting someone else by that train. I looked round, too. But nobody else seemed tobe expecting Aunt Josephine, though a woman towards the end of the platform looked very searchingly at our party as we passed. Aunt Josephine did not seem to notice. She was busy putting on a thick motor-veil over the lace one that was tied round her hat—her lovely hat, that, as Betty said afterwards, was "boiling over with black ostrich-feathers."
A wonderful scent had come towards us with Aunt Josephine—nothing the least like that faint garden-smell that clung to our linen, from the sprays of lavender and dried verbena our mother put newly each year under the white paper of our wardrobe-shelves. Such a ghost of fragrance could never have survived here. This perfume of Aunt Josephine's—not so much strong as dominant—routed the sooty, acrid smell of the station. When she lifted her arms to put the chiffon over her face, fresh waves of the rich, mysterious scent came towards us.
She seemed in haste to leave so mean a place as Victoria. She spoke a little sharply to the footman. He explained—and, indeed, we could see—that a great, shining motor-car was threading its way as well as it could through a tangle oftaxi-cabs and inferior cars. Aunt Josephine stood frowning under her double veil, and once I saw her eyes go towards the woman who had noticed us. The woman was speaking to one of the porters. The porter, too, looked at Aunt Josephine and nodded. The dowdy woman gave the porter a tip, and sent him on an errand. I was far too excited to notice such uninteresting people, but for the curious personal kind of detestation in the look the dowdy woman fixed upon Aunt Josephine.
"We won't wait," said our aunt. "We'll take this taxi."
But just then the beautiful shining car swerved free, and we were hurried in. The footman spread a rug over our knees. As we glided out of the station I noticed the dowdy woman asking her way of a policeman.
And the policeman didn't know the way. He shook his head. And both of them looked after us.
As we whirled through the crowded streets I felt how everyone must be envying Bettina and me.
Presently we came to a quiet corner. Thehouses stood back from the street, in gardens. Our aunt's was one of these.
I was too excited to notice much about the outside. But the inside!
Betty and I exchanged looks. We had no idea Aunt Josephine was so rich. There were more big footmen—foreigners; very quick and quiet.
The entrance-hall and stairs were wide and dim. When the front-door was shut, the house seemed as silent as a church on a week-day, and the soft-footed servants rather like the sidesmen who show strangers to their places. The very window was like a window in a church. It had stained glass in it, and black lines divided it from top to bottom, into sections, like church windows.
If I had ventured to speak I should have whispered. Not even at Lord Helmstone's had we trodden on such carpets. No wonder our footsteps made no sound. Going upstairs we seemed like a procession in a picture. That was because the walls were immense mirrors separated by gilded columns.
Aunt Josephine had taken off her motor-veil. She had certainly grown much thinner since shehad the photograph taken. That accounted for her being a more "aquiline" aunt than we expected. Her nose curved down, especially when she smiled. And her eyes were not sleepy at all—a full yellow eye, the iris almost black.
We followed her along a corridor till she threw open a door. "This is yours," she said in the voice that was both sharp and quick.
I looked into the wonderful pink and white room. Instead of two little beds, as we had at home, was one very large one. It looked like an Oriental throne with rose-silk hangings.
"I will send you up some tea," she said. "And you must rest. I am having a friend or two to dine. So wear your smartest gown. Come," she said to Betty.
"Betty is the one who ought to rest," I said.
"And so she shall," our aunt said. "I will show Betty her room."
Betty looked blank.
"We are not to be together?" she asked.
"Together!" Aunt Josephine repeated the word with the smile that drew her nose down. "Oh, you shall have a room of your own."
Betty moved a little nearer me.
I explained that she and I always had the same room.
"Yes, in a small house. Here there is no need."
I wanted to tell her that it was not need that made us share things. But though poor Betty looked cast down, all I said was that I should come to her in plenty of time to do her hair.
"A maid will do that," my aunt said.
But I managed to tell her quite firmly that I must show the maid how.
Aunt Josephine looked at me a moment.
She doesn't like me, I thought. And I felt uncomfortable.
As she followed her out, Betty made a sign over her shoulder that I was to come now.
But after that look Aunt Josephine had given me, I felt I must walk warily. So I only signalled back, as much as to say "by-and-by."
A woman in a cap and apron brought me tea.
I asked if she would mind taking the tray to my sister's room so we could have tea together.
The woman said madam's orders were that the young ladies should rest. I reflected that Bettinawould probably rest better if she did not talk, so I said no more.
The woman had a face like wood.
Two of the big footmen brought in our little trunk. I got out Bettina's dressing-gown and slippers, and asked the wooden woman to take them to my sister.
I was so tired with all the excitement that I went to sleep on the pink satin sofa.
The wooden woman waked me.
"Time to dress," she said, and she had the bath ready. I looked round for our little trunk.
"Oh, you couldn't have a thing like that standing about in here," the wooden woman said.
And, indeed, I had felt, as I saw it coming in, how out of keeping its shabbiness was with all the satin damask, the gilding, and the lace.
She had done the unpacking, the wooden woman said. And there were my white satin frock and silk stockings on the bed. "But half the things in the trunk are my sister's," I said.
She had taken the other young lady what was needed, the woman answered. And whatever I wanted I was to ring for.
I felt that this was no doubt the way of Londonladies. But I longed for our shabby little trunk. It seemed the last link with home. I looked round the beautiful room with a sense of distaste.
This feeling must be the homesickness I had read about.
I went to the window. The lines that divided the long panes into panels, the lines that I had thought of as purely decorative were rods of iron.
"You'll be late," the wooden woman said, and she drew the silk curtains over the lace ones, and switched on the electric light.
She came back while I was brushing my hair. She offered to do it for me. I was so glad to be able to do it myself. I would not have liked her to touch me.
I hurried with my dressing so that I could go to Bettina.
The woman tried to prevent me. But I was firm. "Show me the way, will you? Or shall I ask someone else?"
She hesitated, and then seemed to think she had best do as she was told.
Half-way down a long, soft-carpeted passage she asked me to wait an instant.
She knocked at one of the many doors.
I heard my aunt's voice inside. And whispering. Only one of the electric lights was turned on here, in the corridor. The air was heavy. The "Aunt Josephine" scent, foreign, dizzily sweet, was everywhere. A light-headed feeling came over me. I longed for an open window. They must all be shut as well as curtained. Between the many doors, paintings were hung. I had been vaguely conscious of these as we came up. I saw now they were pictures of women. Most of them seemed to be in different stages of the bath. One was asleep in a strange position, with nothing on. I was going past that one when I noticed the opposite door ajar. I stopped and listened.
"Bettina," I said softly.
A voice very different from Bettina's answered in some language I did not know. I started back and, as I was going on, the door was opened wide. A lady stood on the threshold in a flood of light. A lady with a dazzling complexion. Her lips were so brightly red, they looked bloody. She had diamonds in her ears, and a diamond necklace on a neck as white and smooth as china. Her yellow hair was disarranged as though shehad been asleep. She was wearing a kimono of scarlet silk embroidered in silver.
She asked me something, not in French, not German, and not, I think, Italian. I said I was afraid I did not understand.
My aunt came noiseless down the long corridor, and the foreign lady hastily shut her door.
This other guest must be some very great person!
My aunt was dressed for dinner in a gown all covered with little shining scales, like a snake's skin.
"What are you doing?" she said, in an odd tone as if she had caught me in something underhand. I explained that I was looking for Bettina. And I found courage to say that I was sorry our rooms were so far apart.
She took no notice of that. "You will see Bettina at dinner," she said, and it struck me she could be very stern.
I felt my heart begin to beat, but I managed to say that I was sure Betty would wait for me to help her to dress.
"I have told you she will have a maid to do all that is necessary."
"I hope you won't mind," I said, "just for to-night. It is always my mother, or me, who dresses Bettina...."
She seemed to consider. I said to myself again: "Oh, dear, she doesn't like me at all."
"Take her, Curran," she said. The hard-faced woman came and piloted me round the angle of the corridor to Betty's door.
We fell into each other's arms, and laughed and kissed, as though we had been parted for weeks.
I was determined not to let her know that Aunt Josephine and I were not liking one another. I only said I didn't like her taste in pictures.
Betty tried to stand up for her. She reminded me of the statues and casts from the antique at Lord Helmstone's. She asked me suddenly if I wasn't well. I complained a little of the air. I thought we might have the window open while I did her hair. But Betty said, no. She had tried, and found she didn't understand London fastenings. So she had rung for the maid, and the maid had said: "This isn't the country"—and that people didn't like their windows open in London.Betty thought it quite reasonable. London dust and "blacks" would soon ruin this pretty white room.
Betty defended everything.
When I complained that the scent everywhere was making me headachy, Betty said she liked it. She wished our mother would let us use scent. The only thing Betty found the least fault with was the way I was doing her hair. She wanted it put up "in honour of London." But she looked such a darling with her short curls lying on her neck that I was doing it in the everyday way. And there wasn't time now for anything more than to fasten on the little wreath, for the woman came to say madam had sent up for us. So I hurried Betty into her frock, the woman watching out of those hard eyes of hers. Nobody in the whole of Betty's life had looked at her like that. The woman didn't want us to stop even to find a handkerchief. And after all, just as Betty was coming, the woman said: "Wait a minute," and wanted to shut the door. I stood on the threshold waiting. A gentleman was coming upstairs. With his hat on! He stared at me as he went by, and so did the footman who followed him. Idrew back into the room and the woman shut the door.
"Who was that gentleman?" I asked. She seemed not to hear. So I asked again.
"That—oh, that is the doctor," she said. Naturally we asked if somebody was ill.
"Not very," she answered in such a peculiar way we said no more.
She stood and watched us as we went downstairs.
"Our first London dinner-party," Bettina whispered.
We took hands. We were shaking with excitement.
We saw ourselves going by in the mirrors between the golden columns.
The whole place was full of tall girls in white, and little girls in apple-green, wearing forget-me-not wreaths in their hair.
Down in the lower hall were the men-servants with their watchful eyes.
They showed us the drawing-room door.
As we came in, I was conscious again of Aunt Josephine's appraising look. Then of the elaborate grey head turning towards an old man, as if to ask: Well, what do you think of my nieces? He had a red blotchy face. The kind of red that is crossed by little purple lines like the tracery of very tortuous rivers on a map. The lines ran zigzagging into his nose, which was thick at the end, round and shining. He had no hair except a sandy fringe, and his eyes, which had no lashes, looked as if he had a cold. He was introduced as "an old friend of mine"—but she forgot to tell us his name. We heard him called Colonel. Through all the scent we could not help noticing that he smelled of brandy.
I looked round for the beautiful foreign lady.But I was prepared to find her late, after seeing her idling at her door, in a dressing-gown, so near the dinner-hour.
There was only one other person. A man of about thirty-six. Good-looking I thought—and not happy. He had a clear face, quite without colour. The skin very smooth and tight. His dry brown hair was thinning on the crown. He had nice hands. I noticed that when he stroked his close-fitting moustache. I did not like him because of his manner. I did not know what was wrong with it. Perhaps he was only absent-minded. But when I tried to imagine him talking to my mother I could not.
He was introduced first to Bettina. The others treated him as if he were very important. They talked about his new Rolls Royce, which turned out to be a motor-car. The Colonel tried to get him to say how many times he had been fined for "exceeding speed limit." Then they talked about "The Tartar." How he was always late. It would be a chance if he came at all. Aunt Josephine was positive he would appear. "I wired to say it was all right."
"Just as well, perhaps, if he doesn't come to-night,"the good-looking man said. He would be in a devil of a temper.
Betty asked why would he? They said because his favourite horse had been "scratched." Betty thought it was nice of him to be so fond of his horse. But if it was only a scratch——
We did not know why they laughed. But we laughed too. We tried not to show how unintelligible the talk was. I listened very hard. I felt like a learner in a foreign tongue. I understood the words but not the sentences.
The Colonel looked at his watch in a discontented way. Then we went in to dinner.
I don't think we sat in the order Aunt Josephine had meant. But the absent-minded man, who had taken me in, refused to change, or to let me. I had the old Colonel on my left. Aunt Josephine of course at the head. The empty place was between her and Betty.
The table was glittering and magnificent. We had little helpings of strange, strong-tasting food before the soup. And caviar.
"You like caviar?" the Colonel said.
I said I didn't know, for in my heart I felt it looked repulsive.
"Don't know caviar?"
I said of course I had heard of it. He asked where. And I said, "In Shakespeare." The old Colonel choked, and they all laughed to see how apoplectic he looked—all except Betty and me.
I caught Betty's eye. She had that fiery-rose in her cheeks. I felt excited, too, and "strange." But I hoped they didn't notice. Betty and I had agreed that we must try not to show how unused we were to the ways of a great London house. So I made conversation. I asked about the absent guest.
My good-looking man pretended to be annoyed. He called, in his slightly husky voice, across the table to Aunt Josephine: "Already she wants to talk about The Tartar!" I explained that I meant the foreign lady—the very beautiful lady I had seen upstairs looking out of her door.
Again my man exchanged glances with Aunt Josephine. He was smiling disagreeably. Aunt Josephine did not smile at all. But the old Colonel laughed his croaking laugh, and said the lady upstairs expected people to go to her.
"Does she expect dinner to go to her, too?" Betty asked. And something in their faces madeBetty blush, though she didn't know why, as I saw. I believed they were teasing Betty, just for fun, and to see that beautiful colour in her cheeks flicker and deepen.
So I leaned towards her, and across the flowers and the dazzling lights I told her the foreign lady was not very well. That was why she was not coming down.
The Colonel asked me why I thought the lady wasn't well. So I said: "Because I saw the doctor going up to her."
They were all quite still for a second or two. I looked at Aunt Josephine. Why was it wrong to mention the doctor's visit? Was she afraid of making these friends of the beautiful lady anxious about her? My man still was smiling, but not pleasantly. I couldn't tell whether the strange noises the Colonel made were choking or laughing. But I felt more and more miserably shy; And I had no clear idea of why I should feel so—unless it was that nothing these people said meant what it seemed to mean.
I could see that Betty was bewildered, too.
We knew we should feel strange; we did not know we should feel like this.
I was thankful when they all turned round and called out. "The Tartar" had come, after all.
He made no apology for being late, nor for not having dressed. He strolled in as if the place belonged to him—a great broad-shouldered young man in a frock-coat. He had a round, black, cannon-ball of a head, and his eyebrows nearly joined. His moustache was like a little blacking-brush laid back against the lip, with the bristles sticking straight out. But he seemed to be making this effect deliberately, by pushing out his mouth like a pouting child; or, even more, like a person with swollen lips. I felt sure I could not have seen him before; but there was something oddly familiar about him.
He nodded to the others.
When Aunt Josephine said, "My nieces," he said, "Oh," stared a moment, and then, as he lounged into the empty place, said it had been a rotten race. I thought how astonished my mother would have been at such behaviour. Betty must have been thinking of her, too, for she put on our mother's manner. It was a beautiful manner, but it sat oddly on my little sister; it made her seem more self-possessed than shewas. She turned and said: "I think you must be Mr. Whitby-Dawson."
The young man stared.
Everybody stared.
He turned sharply from Betty to his hostess. She shook her head. But the yellow part of her big eyes had turned reddish. She looked very strange.
A creepy feeling came over me.
I remembered she had been "most eccentric" twenty years ago. Was eccentricity the sort of thing that grew worse as people grew older?
I looked round at the company and met the eyes of the neighbour on my right. They were unhappy eyes; but they reassured me.
"What put such an idea into your head?" Aunt Josephine was asking Betty.
"Because," Betty said, and she looked at the young man again, "only because I saw so many of your—of Mr. Whitby-Dawson's photographs——"
"Really?" the young man said, in a bored voice. "That was, no doubt, a great privilege. My name's Williams."
In her embarrassment Betty turned to the manwho sat between us. "He has even the little scar," she said, like a person defending herself. "Mr. Whitby-Dawson got his scar in a duel with a student at Heidelberg. He studied at the University there part of one year——"
"Studied duelling?" the Colonel chuckled. Our absent-minded man was not absent-minded any more. He was listening, with a look I could not understand, as if he took a malicious pleasure in poor Betty's mistake. Such a trifling slip to have taken the young man for Guy Whitby-Dawson, and yet it seemed to have put the company out of tune. Or perhaps it was the loss of the race. All except my man seemed to care very much about the lost race. The Tartar, in his annoyed voice, told his hostess and the Colonel how it happened. He leaned his elbow on the table, and almost turned his back on poor Bettina.
I thought I could see that my man seemed not to like The Tartar; and that gave me a kindlier feeling towards him; I wondered what had made him unhappy.
I felt I wanted to justify Bettina to him.
I felt, too, that she would recover herself sooner if we broke the silence at our end. So I said—ina voice too low, I thought, for the others to hear—that I also had noticed the resemblance to Mr. Whitby-Dawson. Lower still, he asked me how we came "to hear of Mr.—of—the gentleman in question." Then Betty and I between us told about Hermione Helmstone's engagement—only we did not, of course, give her name.
"The faithless Whitby!" our man said, with the tail of his eye on the young gentleman opposite. As for him, he tried to go on talking about "Black Friar," as though he heard nothing of the history being retailed on the other side. But I had a feeling that he was listening all the time.
Bettina's loyalty to Hermione made her object to hearing Guy called faithless. "They would have had only £400 a year between them. And he said—Mr. Whitby-Dawson said—they couldn't possibly live on that. He was miserable, poor man!"