“Not in the least,” Montgomery said hastily.
“From what I remember, and what I’ve been told, she’s a very good child, easy to manage. She must have been,” he added involuntarily, recalling the wagons-lits, the pensions, the chambres-garnies, and all the other transitory halting-places that had staged the first few years of the Fitzmaurice marriage.
“I must go and see her when I’m in London. I wish she’d been a boy. I can always get on with boys,” Clarissa said, with a smile that he was ready to think almost sinister.
Very soon afterwards, feeling that he had witnessed, if not actually provoked, the final sealing of Fitzmaurice’s fate, he left her.
“We must see something of you,” Clarissa insisted. “When all this horrid nightmare is over, and Reggie and I are married, you must come and stay.”
She was actually holding his hand.
“Tell me, where are you to be found?”
Where indeed? What country in Europe was there in which he could not be found, at one time or another — and who knew that, with Aldegonde trailing in the wake of her Roumanian, and Alberta let loose, as it were, in New York, he might not be compelled to follow the Princesse to the New World, to assist in some new and undreamed-of crisis? Yet it was with no sense of irony that he replied to Mrs. Marley’s inquiry:
“The Travellers’ Club will always find me.”
It was not for nothing that Clarissa Marley had said: “When I want a thing done it usually gets done quickly.” If the divorce of Aldegonde and Reggie Fitzmaurice was not accomplished quickly, it was at all events accomplished much more speedily than anyone, excepting Clarissa Marley, would have supposed possible.
“When it’s over, we’ll go away,” said the Princesse, always joyful at the proposal of going away from anywhere, for any purpose or for none.
“I must get back to London,” said Cliffe Montgomery firmly. “I have things to see to there.”
“Of course,” said the Princesse sympathetically. Who knew better than she what it was to have to go away on account of unspecified obligations? The same thing was constantly happening to herself.
“I think that Raoul Radow ought to be fetched,” she added immediately.
“Fetched?”
“You know what he is like. He won’t come otherwise. It isn’t that he doesn’t care for Aldegonde — I know he does. But I doubt if he reads our letters.”
Cliffe Montgomery, who had had many letters from the Princesse, crossed and recrossed in violet ink, on thin paper, doubted it too. And although Radow spoke French as well as English, it was probable that he found it difficult to read either.
“Where was he when you last heard?”
“Buda-Pesth,” said the Princesse negligently. “I should very likely take Aldegonde there, but that I shall have to be in Paris next month for the procés.”
Cliffe received the announcement without surprise. The proces — references to which recurred regularly in the scheme of the Candi-Laquerriere existence — had dragged its length throughout the years ever since the death of the Princesse’s husband. It was a proces de famille, and involved an inheritance in which they had all, long ago, ceased to believe at all seriously. From time to time the proces provided a reason for going to Paris, and so gratified the Princesse’s passion for an upheaval.
“Isn’t Aldegonde going to Buda-Pesth?”
“Unless Radow comes here,” replied the Princesse. “And if we can get some money.”
Cliffe mentally went over the sorry tale of their assets. His own small income, never exceeded even in their most dramatic straits, sufficed only for his modest needs and the frequent supplementing of the uncertain, but always inadequate, monthly sum handed to Catiche for the housekeeping. The pearls of the Princesse were, as usual, in pawn.
He glanced swiftly at her hands.
“If you are thinking of the Tsaritsa’s ring,” sighed the Princesse, “poor Catiche had to take it for the lawyer’s bills. We shall be able to get it back when my dividends come in.”
“But at the moment?”
“At the moment, the situation is difficult,” the Princesse admitted. “When I am in Paris, I can go and see my bank.”
There were occasions — on what they depended, Montgomery never quite understood — upon which the Princesse’s bank could be persuaded to allow her a small overdraft.
“Well, well,” said the Princesse, “we’re rid of Fitzmaurice. And I dare say poor little Sophie will fall in love with the Marley boy and marry him. That’ll annoy Clarissa.”
Cliffe Montgomery had heard wilder prophecies from the same source, and said nothing. The Princesse was turning her enormous dark-grey eyes on him sorrowfully.
“Alberta wouldn’t have let the child go,” she said.
“Could poor Aldegonde have done anything else, since she was the one that had to be divorced?”
“Perhaps she couldn’t. She says the only thing she wants for Sophie is security — and a background. It’s an obsession with her. Why it should be, Heaven alone knows!” the Princesse exclaimed with one of her sudden outbreaks of indignation.
If Cliffe Montgomery felt that he, like Heaven, understood perfectly the violent reaction against the conditions of her own existence that had led Aldegonde Fitzmaurice to let her child be taken from her, he refrained from saying so.
Cliffe had one more interview with Fitzmaurice, on behalf of Aldegonde and her mother, after the divorce proceedings were over. He made inquiry concerning Sophie.
“She’s at Mardale,” Fitzmaurice said. “Really, I never saw anything like Clarissa. She’s marvellous with the child. Sophia’s altogether different already.”
“Is she?”
“Rather. Talks differently, you know, and looks different. Clarissa says her clothes were hopeless — and her hair — all that kind of thing. And she’s found out that the kid was growing up crooked or something. One hip higher than the other.”
“I saw no signs of it.”
“There weren’t any signs to see. But Clarissa had her vetted by some big London man straightaway. Why, the first thing she said was that the child looked like a starved rat.”
“And what are they going to do about her hip?”
“Oh, massage and things. Clarissa is seeing to all that. I tell you, Cliffy, she’s taken the child over absolutely — just as if she was her own. I can’t see that she makes any difference whatever between Sophia and her own brat.”
“The boy. Do he and Sophie get on well together?”
“Thick as thieves already. They were sent down to Mardale with an army of governesses and servants and people for the holidays, while Clarissa and I were in London and so on. I only saw them once when we went down for a week-end.”
“Did you think Sophie was happy?”
The Princesse had charged him to make this inquiry, and he dutifully did so.
Fitzmaurice burst out laughing.
“She’d be a little fool if she wasn’t. Even a kid of ten knows the difference between having nothing at all and having the very best of everything. Nothing’s too good for Clarissa’s boy, and what he has, Sophia has, to all intents and purposes.”
“Is she to be sent to school?”
“Yes. Clarissa’s been looking at schools. She says the kid knows nothing — absolutely nothing. Except French, of course. Rather funny that —
Clarissa’s own French is rotten. It seems odd, after Aldegonde, who could cope with any sort of lingo.”
“Of course,” said Montgomery stiffly. “Aldegonde is tabu now. Oh no, we never mention her. Clarissa’s determined that Sophia’s going to forget everything. She calls Clarissa mother, and she and the boy are to be brother and sister. I say, Cliffy, funny thing if those two fell in love with one another later on.”
“There would be no reason why they shouldn’t marry. There’s no relationship between them.”
“I know, but it would be funny,” Fitzmaurice repeated. “Between you and me and the gate-pos
t, I shouldn’t be in the least surprised if Clarissa had thought of it already and that’s why she’s making such a point of this brother and sister business. I never knew a woman look ahead as she does. I’ll bet you she’s got her own ideas already as to who Lucien marries.”
“He may not necessarily consult her.”
“Ah, but he must! The money’s hers, you see. All of it. She needn’t leave him a penny if she doesn’t want to. The only thing he’s bound to get is Mardale, and that wouldn’t be much use without her money to keep it going, would it?”
“He could sell it, I suppose?”
“It isn’t his; as long as she’s alive, it’s hers. She’s got us all in the hollow of her hand. Money’s everything in this world,” said Fitzmaurice.
If so, thought Cliffe Montgomery, Fitzmaurice himself had good reason to be satisfied. Prosperity exuded from him, even without the tangible presence of the two motor-cars, the man-servant, the horses, and all the other superb accessories that were now his. His very grin had been significant as he pulled out a handful of loose silver in an attempt to pay for the drinks that he had instantly ordered. Little Montgomery, however, had harshly and proudly disputed that gesture, and it was he who had won.
III
LUCIEN AND SOPHIE
“WE shall have to spend the whole summer at Mardale,” said Clarissa Fitzmaurice. She cultivated a small, gentle little voice, very clear and distinct, but all the cultivation in the world could not have disguised the autocratic quality that predominated in every sentence she uttered.
Sophie and Lucien carefully did not look at one another. Both wanted to spend the summer at Mardale, and each knew the other’s wish, but they maintained the self-protective passivity imposed upon them by the possessive tyranny of Mrs. Fitzmaurice. She looked at the girl first.
Sophie’s smooth, charming little face bore an air of gentle concern.
“So long as it puts you right, mummie,” she murmured.
“I know I’ve been overdoing it. But as I said to Frass-Cunningham, what am I to do, with a grown-up girl who’s got to be taken out everywhere? I’m not going to let my Sophie get herself talked about with every Tom, Dick and Harry in London, until there’s not a man ready to marry her. Sophie’s been nowhere, except under my own eyes, since she left school. I’ve been at it for two years.”
Sophie made a murmur.
“A girl with your advantages ought to have got off long ago,” Lucien said aside, favouring her with the shadow of a wink.
“Nonsense,” his mother exclaimed indulgently. “There’s no hurry for Sophie to marry. She’s only twenty. But every girl has to look ahead a little — or her mother has to do it for her — and this summer will be absolutely wasted at Mardale. Who on earth is there down there?”
Although she said that there was no hurry for Sophie to marry, neither Sophie nor Lucien believed her. They knew well that Mrs. Fitzmaurice wanted Sophie to marry as early as possible, and as brilliantly as possible. Sophie did not mind. She was quite ready to be married, since everybody she knew seemed to think marriage so desirable for girls, although so unnecessary for young men. Lucien was twenty-one, and his mother often said that she had no intention of allowing him to marry before he was thirty.
She now turned to him.
“If you spend the whole of the Long Vacation at Mardale, I shall expect you to do some reading. And you’d better get to know the tenants — after all, one of these days you’ll be living there, I suppose — and some of the local horrors.”
“All right,” said Lucien amiably. “We’ll do some riding, Sophie.”
Automatically Sophie looked at Mrs. Fitzmaurice.
“Yes, you may ride with your brother.”
Sophie smiled with pleasure.
She liked being in the country, and she enjoyed riding a great deal more than she did dancing, although she had never been allowed to hunt. Most of all, she and Lucien enjoyed being together.
Mrs. Fitzmaurice looked at a tiny enamel-and-diamond wrist-watch.
“Good heavens, it’s nearly four o’clock! Is the car there, Lucien?”
He rose and looked out of the window into Berkeley Square.
“It’s at the door.”
Clarissa swore. She often swore, using very ugly and unmeaning words with no particular impulse of warmth or indignation behind them.
“Go and ring up Peverelli, Sophie, and say we shall be late for the dancing-lesson, and then get your things on quickly. And tell Foster to bring the new Lucille hat and coat to me here — quickly.”
Sophie rose obediently. Her slim figure, in thin, pale-green cloth, her ash-blond fair head, even her silk stockings and lizard-skin shoes, all bore an indefinable aspect of finish — that aspect, in fact, that can only be achieved by the service of a completely competent lady’s-maid.
She moved lightly and gracefully.
Mrs. Fitzmaurice watched her go with critical attention.
“Sophie’s looking rather nice just now. It really is too bad having to take her away from London. But what am I to do? Frass-Cunningham says I shall have a complete breakdown if I don’t go and vegetate for six months.”
“You must do it, of course,” said Lucien, bored, but keeping it out of sight and sound.
“That’s exactly what your stepfather says.”
Although Clarissa Fitzmaurice always alluded to her stepdaughter, Sophie, as though she were her own daughter, she never referred to Lucien as being the son of her husband. Lucien was Lucien Marley of Mardale, and Fitzmaurice was his stepfather. Lucien and Sophie she regarded as brother and sister. She had, throughout the ten years that Sophie had been there, emphasized that.
Whilst the maid held her coat and hat for her, Clarissa Fitzmaurice went to her writing-table and looked at the formidable list of engagements entered by her secretary in a blue morocco book.
“Peverelli first, then a fitting at Lucille’s, and take Sophie to Belgrave Square, then the Hospital Committee, and we’re dining early for the theatre, and then the Sampford dance to-night. Are you going to that, Lucien?”
“I’m not dining anywhere for it. But I’ll take Sophie if you like.”
“All right, do that. I’ve got to put in a night’s rest somehow, I know that. Do you realize that I’ve not been in bed before two o’clock — and usually much later — for the past fortnight?”
“If it’s all on Sophie’s account, couldn’t someone else take her out?”
“No,” said Clarissa sharply. “I’m not going to have any Tom, Dick or Harry making love to her. I know what girls are like, and I’ve always said that my girl should be properly kept in order till she married. But I wish to God Sophie would hurry up sometimes.”
An edge of nervousness and irritability pierced through her low tones as she said it, betraying both her real impatience and the true strident quality of her voice, so carefully kept under.
“Is there anyone on the tapis?” Lucien inquired negligently.
“No one serious. Men like her, because she isn’t clever, and because I’ve taken dam’ good care that she dances well, and puts on her clothes properly, and doesn’t run down other girls. But the whole thing depends on me,” said Clarissa vehemently. “She’s no more capable of playing her own hand properly, without me at her elbow, than — than her father is.”
Lucien shrugged his shoulders.
When, he wondered, had Sophie, or her despicable father, or he himself for that matter, ever been allowed to exercise an instant’s independence? Clarissa had all the money, all the ambition, a tense, unflagging driving-power that none of them had ever attempted to resist. One day, he thought, he would stand up to Clarissa — but not until it seemed worth while. There hadn’t been anything he cared about tremendously since the horrible summer of his eleventh birthday, when he had learnt that his mother was going to marry Reggie Fitzmaurice. When he chose to remember, which was as seldom as possible, Lucien knew that his childish faith in her had gone down then in an emotional s
hipwreck, the more disastrous because she had failed to perceive, or, at all events, to acknowledge it.
And he’d never said anything to anybody at all, and had quite quickly passed through that phase of violent emotion. The force of it, however, had left him strangely spent, so that he sometimes felt himself to have grown up incapable of any very strong feeling of any kind.
His closest friendship was with his stepsister, Sophie. Her pliability under the autocracy of Clarissa amused him, aware as he was of the real Sophie, his playmate throughout all the holidays of the years that Fitzmaurice had spoilt.
“Darling, I’m off,” said Clarissa. “What are you doing this afternoon?”
“Looking at a car.”
“Oh, of course — you told me. Don’t forget the dance to-night. About ten o’clock.”
“All right.”
Clarissa always reiterated instructions and injunctions. She never believed in the efficiency of anyone but herself.
He saw his mother into the waiting car, and ex changed a glance with Sophie, demurely following. “I’m taking you to the Sampfords to-night,” he whispered.
“Oh, good, Lucien.”
He could see her lips form the words, although she did not speak them aloud. Her wide-apart, innocent grey eyes smiled at him, confident of mutual pleasure.
Then she sprang swiftly into the car, and sat down very demurely, careful not to crush the elegance of the new Lucille coat.
Lucien lounged into the house again. As he went through the hall his mother’s secretary crossed it, a wire basket piled high with papers in her hand.
He had noticed long ago that the girl was pretty, and now he saw with concern that she had been crying.
Lucien went forward to open the door of Clarissa’s little writing-room for her.
“Thank you,” she said humbly.
Instead of shutting the door after her, Lucien followed her inside and stood looking round him as though he had never seen the room before.
It was octagonal, with plain grey walls on to which had been splashed occasional sprays of mauve flowers with black leaves. Clarissa’s writing-table was enormous. It brimmed with papers and note-books, letters and bills, receipts, memoranda, odds and ends. Every drawer was neatly labelled, with a slip of paper in a little metal slot: Mardale, Personal, Bank and so on. High above everything else, on the top of the desk, jostled by a Lalique glass bowl with iridescent flowers, a pile of catalogues, wire baskets of “Answered” and “Unanswered”, was his own photograph in a narrow frame of gold and platinum.
Collected Works of E M Delafield Page 322
