“Oh, Alex! Your hair!”
“It’s growing very fast. I — I’ve not been cutting it lately. There’s just enough to put it up, Barbara.”
“It’s much darker than it used to be, isn’t it?”
“Yes, it’s nearly black now. Do you remember how light the ends used to be? But I think it lost its colour from being always under the veil, you know. The worst of it is that it’s not growing evenly, it’s all short lengths.”
“Yes. That’s very awkward,” said Barbara dispassionately. “Especially when it’s so straight.”
Alex reflected that her sister was just as self-contained as ever.
“Wouldn’t you like to come to your room and rest till dinner, Alex?”
Alex got up at once.
“You ought to take Plasmon, or something of that sort, and try to get a little fatter. There’s simply nothing of you, Alex — you’re all eyes, with rings like saucers round them.”
After Barbara had left her in the tiny, pretty bedroom, that Alex thought looked wonderfully luxurious, she went straight to her looking-glass.
“Good heavens, how ugly I am!” she said to herself involuntarily.
Her face was sallow, with sunken cheeks, and the Roman sun had powdered her skin all over with little, pale freckles. Her eyes, as Barbara had said, had rings like saucers round them, and looked oddly large and prominent, from the slight puffiness of the under-lids.
Her teeth had, perhaps, suffered most of all. She had had one or two taken out, and the gaps were visible and unsightly. They had never been very good teeth, and she remembered still all that she had suffered at the hands of an unskilled Brussels dentist in Belgium. For the last few years she had endured intermittent toothache, sooner than submit to further torture, and she saw now that a small black patch was spreading between the two front teeth. Barbara, with the grey mingled freely in her light hair, and her severe widow’s weeds, might look more than twenty-eight but Alex, at thirty-one, bore the semblance of a woman of forty.
She hid her face in her disfigured hands.
Presently she saw that there was hot water in a little brass can on the washing-stand, and she thankfully made use of it.
Ada had unpacked everything, and Alex saw the brush and comb that she had hastily purchased, on the dressing-table. Beside them was the packet of hair-pins that she had remembered to get at the last moment, and that was all.
“There ought to be something else, but I’ve forgotten,” thought Alex.
She wondered if Barbara would expect her to dress for dinner. The idea had not occurred to her. She had one other blouse, a much better one, made of black net, so transparent as to show glimpses of her coarse, white-cotton underwear, with its high yoke and long sleeves.
Her hair, of course, was impossible. Even if it had not been so short and of such an intractable, limp straightness. Alex had forgotten how to do it. She remembered with dim surprise that at Clevedon Square Lady Isabel’s maid had always done her hair for her.
She brushed it away from her face, and made a small coil on the top of her head, after the fashion which she remembered best, and tried to fasten back the untidy lengths that fell over her ears and forehead.
The hair-pins that she had bought were very long and thick. She wished that they did not show so obviously.
“Alex?” said Barbara’s cool voice at her door.
Alex came out, and they went downstairs together, Alex a few steps behind her sister, since the stairs were not broad enough for two to walk abreast. She tried awkwardly not to step on the tail of Barbara’s black lace teagown. Ada waited upon them, and although the helpings of food seemed infinitesimal to Alex, everything tasted delicious, and she wondered if Barbara always had three courses as well as a dessert of fruit and coffee, even when she was by herself.
“You don’t smoke, I suppose?” Barbara said. “No, of course not how stupid of me! Let’s go up to the drawing-room again.”
“Barbara, do you smoke?”
“No. Ralph hated women to smoke, and I don’t like to see it myself, though pretty nearly every one does it now. Violet smokes far too much. I wonder Cedric lets her. But as a matter of fact, he lets her do anything she likes.”
“I can’t realize Cedric married.”
“I know. Look here, Alex, he’ll want to see you — and you’ll be wanting to talk over plans, won’t you?”
“Yes,” said Alex nervously. “I — I don’t want to have a lot of fuss, you know. Of course I know it’s upsetting for everybody — my coming out of the convent after every one thought I was settled. But, oh, Barbara! I had to leave!”
“Personally, I can’t think why you ever went in,” said Barbara impersonally. “Or why you took ten years to find out you weren’t suited to the life. That sounds unkind, and I don’t mean to be — you know I don’t. Of course, you were right to come away. Only I’m afraid they’ve ruined your health — you’re so dreadfully thin, and you look much older than you’ve any right to, Alex. I believe you ought to go into the country somewhere and have a regular rest-cure. Every one is doing them now. However, we’ll see what Cedric and Violet say.”
“When shall I see them?” asked Alex nervously.
“Well,” said her sister, hesitating, “what about tomorrow? It’s better to get it over at once, isn’t it? I thought I’d ring them up this evening — I know they’re dining at home.” She glanced at the clock.
“Look here, Alex, why don’t you go to bed? I always go early myself — and you’re simply dead tired. Do! Then tomorrow we might go into town and do some shopping. You’ll want some things at once, won’t you?”
Alex saw that Barbara meant her to assent, and said “Yes” in a dazed way.
She was very glad to go to her room, and the bed seemed extraordinarily comfortable.
Barbara had kissed her and said anxiously, “I do hope you’ll feel more like yourself tomorrow, my dear. I hardly feel I know you.”
Then she had rustled away, and Alex had heard her go downstairs, perhaps to telephone to Clevedon Square.
Lying in bed in the dark, she thought about her sister.
It seemed incredible to Alex that she could ever have bullied and domineered over Barbara. Yet in their common childhood, this had happened. She could remember stamping her foot at Barbara, and compelling her to follow her sister’s lead again and again. And there was the time when she had forced a terrified, reluctant Barbara to play at tight-rope dancing on the stairs, and Barbara had obediently clambered on to the newel-post, and fallen backwards into the hall and hurt her back.
Alex remembered still the agonized days and nights of despairing remorse which had followed, and her own sense of being all but a murderess. She had thought then that she could never, never quarrel and be angry with Barbara again. But she had gone away to school, and Barbara had got well, and in the holidays Alex had been more overbearing than ever in the schoolroom.
And now Barbara seemed so infinitely competent — so remote from the failures and emotional disasters that had wrecked Alex. She made Alex feel like a child in the hands of a serious, rather ironical grown-up person, who did not quite know how to dispose of it.
Alex herself wondered what would happen to her, much as a child might have wondered. But she was tired enough to sleep.
And the next morning Barbara, more competent than ever, came in and suggested that she should have her breakfast in bed, so as to feel rested enough for a morning’s shopping in town.
“Though I must say,” said Barbara, in a dissatisfied voice, “that you don’t look any better than you did last night. I hoped you might look more like yourself, after a night’s rest. I really don’t think the others will know you.”
“Am I going to see them?”
“Oh, I talked to Violet last night on the telephone, and she said I was to give you her love, and she hoped we’d both lunch there tomorrow.”
“At Clevedon Square?” asked Alex, beginning to tremble.
“Y
es. You don’t mind, do you?”
“No, I don’t mind.”
It was very strange to be in the remembered London streets again, stranger still to be taken to shops by Barbara and authoritatively guided in the choice of a coat and skirt, a hat that should conceal as much as possible of the disastrous coiffure underneath, and a pair of black suède walking-shoes, that felt oddly light and soft to her feet.
“There’s no hurry about the other things, is there?” said Barbara, more as though stating a fact than asking a question. “Now we’d better take a taxi to Clevedon Square, or we shall be late.”
A few minutes later, as the taxi turned into the square, she said, with what Alex recognized in surprise as a kind of nervousness in her voice:
“We thought you’d rather get it all over at once, you know, Alex. Seeing the family, I mean. Pam is staying there anyway, and Violet said Archie was coming to lunch. There’ll be nobody else, except, perhaps, one of Violet’s brothers. She’s always got one or other of them there.”
Alex felt sick with dismay. Then some remnant of courage came back to her, and she clenched her hands unseen, and vowed that she would go through with it.
The cab stopped before the familiar steps, and Barbara said, as to a stranger: “Here we are.”
XXIV
All of Them
The well-remembered hall and broad staircase swam before Alex’ eyes as she followed Barbara upstairs and heard them announced as:
“Mrs. McAllister — and Miss Clare!”
In a dream she entered the room, and was conscious of a dream-like feeling of relief at its totally unfamiliar aspect. All the furniture was different, and there was chintz instead of brocade, everywhere. She would not have known it.
Then she saw, with growing bewilderment, that the room was full of people.
“Alex?” said a soft, unknown voice.
Barbara hovered uneasily beside her, and Alex dimly heard her speaking half-reassuringly and half-apologetically. But Violet Clare had taken her hand, and was guiding her into the inner half of the room, which was empty.
“Don’t bother about the others for a minute — Barbara, go and look after them, like a dear — let’s make acquaintance in peace, Alex. Do you know who I am?”
“Cedric’s wife?”
“Yes, that’s it.” Then, as Barbara left them, Violet noiselessly stamped her foot. “You poor dear! I don’t believe she ever told you there was to be a whole crowd of family here. That’s just like poor, dear Barbara! I’m sure she never had one atom of imagination in her life, now had she? The idea of dragging you here the very day after you got back from such a journey.” The soft, fluent voice went on, giving her time to recover herself, Alex hardly hearing what was said to her, but with a sensation of adoring gratitude gradually invading her, for this warm, unhesitating welcome and unquestioning sympathy.
She looked dumbly at her sister-in-law.
In Violet she saw the soft, generous contours and opulent prettiness of which she had caught glimpses in the South. The numerous Marchesas who had come to the convent parlour in Rome had had just such brown, liquid eyes, with dark lashes throwing into relief an opaque ivory skin, just such dazzling teeth and such ready, dimpling smiles, and had worn the same wealth of falling laces at décolleté throat and white, rounded wrists. Violet was in white, with a single string of wonderful pearls round her soft neck, and her brilliant brown hair was arranged in elaborate waves, with occasional little escaping rings and tendrils.
Alex thought her beautiful, and wondered why Barbara had spoken in deprecation of such sleepy, prosperous prettiness.
She noticed that Violet did not look at her with rather wondering dismay, as her sister had done, and only once said:
“You do look tired, you poor darling! It’s that hateful journey. I’m a fearfully bad traveller myself. When we were married, Cedric wanted to go to the south of France for our honeymoon, but I told him nothing would induce me to risk being seasick, and he had to take me to Cornwall instead. Cedric will be here in a minute, and we’ll make him come and talk to you quietly out here. You don’t want to go in amongst all that rabble, do you?”
“Who is there?” asked Alex faintly.
“Pam and the boys — that’s my two brothers, you know, whom you needn’t bother about the very least bit in the world, and here’s Archie,” she added, as the door opened again.
Alex would have known Archie in a moment, anywhere, he was so like their mother. Even the first inflection of his voice, as he came towards Violet, reminded her of Lady Isabel.
She had not seen him since his schooldays, and wondered if he would have recognized her without Violet’s ready explanation.
“Alex has come, Archie. That goose Barbara went and brought her here without explaining that she’s only just got back to England, and is naturally tired to death. I’ll leave you to talk, while I see what’s happened to Cedric.”
“I say!” exclaimed Archie, and stood looking desperately embarrassed. “How are you, Alex, old girl? We meet as strangers, what?”
“I should have known you anywhere, Archie. You’re so like Barbara — so like mother.”
“They say Pam’s exactly like what mother was. Have you seen her?”
“No, not yet. She — Violet — brought me in here.”
“I say, she’s a ripper, isn’t she? Cedric didn’t do badly for himself — trust him. Wonder what the beggar’ll be up to next? He’s done jolly well, all along the line — retrieved the family fortunes, what? It only remains for me to wed an American, and Pamela to bring off her South African millionaire. She’s got one after her, did you know?”
He spoke with a certain boyish eagerness that was rather attractive, but his rapid speech and restless manner made Alex wonder if he was nervous.
“Couldn’t you ask Pamela to come to me here, so that I could see her without all those people?”
“What people? It’s only old Jack Temple, and Carol. Harmless as kittens, what? But I’ll get Pam for you in two twos. You watch.”
He put his fingers into his mouth and emitted a peculiar low whistle on two prolonged notes. The signal was instantly answered from the other room, but quaveringly, as though the whistler were laughing.
Then in a minute she appeared, very slim and tall, in the opening between the two rooms.
“I like your cheek, Archie!”
“I say, Pam, Alex is here.”
“Oh, Alex!”
Pamela, too, looked and sounded rather embarrassed as she came forward and laid a fresh, glowing cheek against her sister’s.
“Barbara telephoned last night that you’d come, and seemed awfully seedy,” she said in a quick, confused way. “She ought to have made you rest today.”
“Oh, no, I’m all right,” said Alex awkwardly. “How you’ve changed, Pamela! I haven’t seen you since you were at school.”
Looking at her sister, she secretly rather wondered at what Barbara had said of the girl’s attractiveness.
Pamela’s round face was glowing with health and colour, and she held herself very upright, but Alex thought that her hair looked ugly, plastered exaggeratedly low on her forehead, and she could not see the resemblance to their mother of which Archie had spoken, except in the fairness of colouring which Pamela shared with Barbara and with Archie himself.
“You’ve changed, too, Alex. You look so frightfully thin, and you’ve lost all your colour. Have you been ill?”
“No, I’ve not been ill. Only rather run down. I was ill before Easter — perhaps that’s it.”
Alex was embarrassed too, a horrible feeling of failure and inadequacy creeping over her, and seeming to hamper her in every word and movement. Pamela’s cold, rather wondering scrutiny made her feel terribly unsure of herself. She had often known the sensation before — at school, in her early days at the novitiate, again in Rome, and ever since her arrival in England. It was the helpless insecurity of one utterly at variance with her surroundings.
; She was glad when Violet came back and said: “Here’s Cedric. Go down to lunch, children — we’ll follow you.”
Cedric’s greeting to his sister was the most affectionate and the least awkward that she had yet received. He kissed her warmly and said, “Well, my dear I’m glad we’ve got you back in England again. You must come to us, if Barbara will spare you.”
“Oh, Cedric!”
She looked at him for a moment, emotionally shaken. That Cedric should have grown into a man! She saw in a moment that he was very good-looking, the best-looking of them all, with Sir Francis’ pleasantly serious expression and the merest shade of pomposity in his manner. Only the blinking, short-sighted grey eyes behind his spectacles remained of the solemn little brother she had known.
“Come down and have some lunch, dear. What possessed Barbara to bring you here, if you didn’t feel up to coming? We could have gone to Hampstead. Violet says she’s been most inconsiderate to you.”
“Yes, most,” said Violet herself placidly. “Dear Barbara is always so unimaginative. Of course, it’s fearfully trying for Alex, after being away such ages, to have every one thrust upon her like this.”
Alex felt a throb of gratitude.
“Barbara thought it had better all be got over at once,” she said timidly.
“That’s just like her! Barbara is being completely ruined by that parlour-maid of hers — Ada. I always think Ada is responsible for all Barbara’s worst inspirations. She rules her with a rod of iron. Shall you hate coming down to lunch, Alex? Those riotous children will be off directly, they’re wild about the skating-rink at Olympia. Then we can talk comfortably.”
She put her hand caressingly through Alex’ arm, as they went downstairs. Alex felt that she could have worshipped her sister-in-law for her easy, pitying tenderness.
The consciousness of it helped her all through the long meal, when the noise of laughter and conversation bewildered her, after so many years of convent refectories and silence, and her solitary dinners in Rome.
Violet had placed her between Cedric and Pamela, and the girl chattered to her intermittently, without appearing to require any answer.
Collected Works of E M Delafield Page 117
