“That, Fitzmaurice, is absurd.”
“I dare say, though money can do pretty nearly anything. Clarissa thinks it can do everything.”
“The Princesse — Sophie’s grandmother — would like her to marry Lucien Marley.”
“I dare say,” said the graceless Fitzmaurice, grinning significantly.
“Though naturally, from the point of view of family, the granddaughter of the Princesse de Candi-Laquerriere should marry someone very different.”
“Ah, but she isn’t only a Candi-Laquerriere, old man! She’s the daughter of Reggie Fitzmaurice, and don’t you forget it.”
“I don’t forget it. That’s why I’m here. Fitzmaurice, will you persuade your wife to let their marriage take place?”
“Me persuade Clarissa! My dear old chap, you might just as well talk of a rabbit persuading a boa-constrictor.”
“It has nothing to do with the advantages of the marriage,” Cliffe pursued, disregarding the unseemly analogy. “You know Aldegonde’s mother quite well enough to realize that. It is, simply, that she has grown attached to Sophie — and to the young man too, for that matter.”
“Has she ever set eyes on him?” interrupted Fitzmaurice. “Or, wait a minute — the old lady’s living somewhere near that agent fellow, King, isn’t she? And I suppose Sophia has been going there. Well, it’s Clarissa’s own fault. She shouldn’t have tried to keep them both in leading-strings, is what I say. Have another drink, Cliffy?”
“No, thanks.”
“I should. You’ll need it before seeing Clarissa.”
“But I’m not—”
“Yes, you are, old man. Directly she heard you were coming, she said she’d see you. Don’t ask me why — old sake’s sake, perhaps. I’ve always thought Clarissa had a soft corner for you.”
“I don’t think that anything is to be gained by my seeing your wife just now.”
“It isn’t what you think, or what I think,” said Fitzmaurice. “It’s what Clarissa says. And she says you’re to go to her writing-room directly we’ve done — and if you won’t think it damned inhospitable, Cliffy, old chap, I should say we’d pretty well done now.”
Cliffe supposed that they had, and that he had failed. He made his last stand.
“I’ll go and see your wife. I shall do my utmost to persuade her that the Princesse is entitled to some consideration where the future of her granddaughter is concerned.”
Only too conscious of the insecurity of his ground, Cliffe, for the first time, avoided Fitzmaurice’s eye, now filled with a rather ribald amusement, and hurried on.
“I can assure you that I much dislike saying this, Fitzmaurice, but if ever I — I may have been of some little help to you in the past, it is now entirely in your power to redress the balance. Will you make use of your influence with Lucien’s mother for the sake of your daughter?”
Fitzmaurice shook his head, his still handsome dark eyebrows raised, his mouth pursed into an expression of helpless concern.
“Ab — solutely nothing doing. It isn’t that I won’t, old man, I give you my word. It’s simply that I know it wouldn’t be the slightest use. You’ll understand better what I mean when you’ve listened to Clarissa for a bit. And, after all, we’ve got to remember that Sophia’s only a kid. She’ll probably have changed her mind in a year’s time, and so will the boy.”
Cliffe Montgomery rose and went towards the door.
“Honestly, Cliffy, for the sake of old times, I’d have done any mortal thing I could. I’m fond of Sophia, too. But it wouldn’t be any use — only get me into trouble with Clarissa, and you simply can’t imagine what that’s like in the position I’m in, living on her and in her house.”
History oddly repeating itself, Montgomery almost found himself uttering his old-time “That will do, Fitzmaurice.” But although Fitzmaurice was doubtless as impervious to insult now, as then, he did not speak the words, even when Fitzmaurice, to a jaunty and familiar farewell, added a reference to the Princesse— “always did ask you to do all the dirty work for her and the girls.”
One could say nothing to Fitzmaurice. He was, and remained incredible, and, as such, Montgomery had long ago learnt to regard him.
XVIII
AUTRE TEMPS, AUTRES MOEURS
“I WANT to talk to you quite, quite openly and reasonably,” said Clarissa, and the softness of her voice, her clearly enunciated syllables, struck Cliffe Montgomery afresh as being only a meretricious imitation of something once heard and deliberately adopted.
“Come and sit down and be comfy.”
At the implication that he and Clarissa Fitzmaurice were on terms of easy friendliness, something in little Cliffe Montgomery revolted so that he would have liked to walk out of her room and return forthwith to the Princesse, at whose behest he had undertaken his detested mission.
As usual, the traditions that so continually warred with everything else in his life compelled Cliffe to accept a situation that he disliked and distrusted.
“Thank you, I prefer to stand,” was the only protest that he permitted himself.
“I can’t talk to you unless you sit down,” said Clarissa, and she jerked him vigorously by the arm, so that he nearly lost his balance and was compelled to let himself drop to the sofa.
Once there, he sat as erect as possible, his hands tightly folded round the knees of his grey trousers, his eyes gravely and accusingly fixed upon Clarissa.
“I’m not going to beat about the bush with you, Cliffy,” she began at once, with what he felt to be her best imitation of candour. “You and I know one another much too well. I can’t ever forget that you were mixed up in my life at the time when I first knew Reggie—”
And tried to buy him from his wife — The unspoken thought of Cliffe hung in the air between them.
“And, of course, you’ve known my Sophie and some of her relations more or less always. And so I’m going to treat you as I wouldn’t treat anybody else in the world, and lay the whole of my cards on the table.”
Clarissa’s large, light eyes were turned upon Montgomery with a look of wariness that accorded ill with the frankness of her words.
“Years and years ago, when I first married Reggie, and took on the child — and I needn’t tell you how absolutely ready they were to make her over to me, lock, stock and barrel — I saw exactly what might happen. If I wasn’t the kind of woman who can take long views, Cliffy, and act upon them, I shouldn’t be where I am to-day. And I determined then and there that it wouldn’t happen — it shouldn’t be allowed to. You see, I knew it wouldn’t do.”
“If Reggie Fitzmaurice was good enough for you, Clarissa, his daughter—”
“Cliffy, if you could not interrupt me.”
Involuntarily he apologized.
“It’s all right, darling — you mustn’t mind if I seem on edge. I’ve had the hell of a time lately — nobody thinks for one minute of the strain all this is on me. Lucien is my only child, and I adore him, and I’m not going to see him make a mess of his life. Sophie isn’t the wife for him. She’s a dear little girl, and thanks to me she’ll make someone or other a decent wife — but it won’t be my Lucien.”
“Forgive me if I’m interrupting again,” said Cliffe Montgomery, very stiffly indeed. “You married Sophie’s father. Doesn’t that dispose of any suggestion that Sophie isn’t — good enough for your son?”
He saw her, with a sudden nervous gesture, clench both her fists sharply.
“I simply loathe having to say it, Cliffe, but you’re forcing my hand. What about Sophie’s mother, if you please? She gave Reggie hell with her nerves and her tears, and then she went off with a wretched foreign musician, half her own age—”, “Stop!” thundered Cliffe Montgomery and rose to his feet. “Aldegonde may have done wrong, Clarissa — I’m not saying she didn’t — but she was driven to it, and you know that as well as I do. Her life with Fitzmaurice was utterly impossible. I knew Aldegonde all her life — and she was the gentlest, most sensitive c
reature in the world. Why she ever fell in love with Fitzmaurice, nobody ever knew, nor why she insisted on marrying him.”
A poignant recollection assailed him, of Aldegonde struggling faintly and inadequately beneath the overwhelming pressure of the warring personalities of the Princesse and Alberta, and his unescapable conscientiousness caused him to falter.
“Her life at home was perhaps not altogether gay... but however greatly Aldegonde may have been mistaken, she wasn’t wicked.”
“She gave her husband grounds for divorce. I’m not a narrow-minded woman, and I never have been, but you can’t get away from that. If Lucien has a son, that son will own Mardale. He’s not going to have a heredity of that sort if I can help it.” Cliffe Montgomery, to his own surprise, heard himself emit a curt and unpleasant laugh.
“If you can help it! But you can’t. Whoever Lucien marries, you’ve got to take your chance — or rather he’s got to take his — on the heredity transmitted to his children. Nobody can vouch for these things. All that you mean — all that you’re really saying — is that you object to the knowledge of scandal in connection with Sophie’s mother. And even that isn’t your real reason, because — if I may say so,” strangely interpolated Cliffe, “you are so completely in the habit of deceiving yourself. You may be capable and efficient — the Candi-Laquerrieres are neither the one nor the other — but you’ve made a — a terrible mess of things. This house,” said Cliffe Montgomery, looking round the beautiful room with a most unaffected shudder, “is a dreadful place. No one is happy here, not even you. Your boy has been unhappy ever since you married Fitzmaurice—”
“It’s a lie,” Clarissa interrupted sharply.
“None of them can call their souls their own because of your tyranny, your determination to live their lives for them. You can’t do it, Clarissa. Or rather you can do it — you have done it — but there’ll come a breaking point. Like the French Revolution, you know. They’ll suddenly decide not to put up with it any longer.”
“You forget that they’re dependent on me, every single one of them — absolutely and entirely dependent. This house is mine, and the London house is mine, and the whole of the money is mine. I don’t like saying this, but you’re forcing me to it. Do you realize that I’ve been keeping every single one of them? Reggie and Lucien and Sophie. They owe everything in the world to me.”
She was angry, he could see, but it was only a surface anger, such as opposition or criticism always roused in her instantly. Deep down, Clarissa retained the immovable certainty of her own and her money’s supreme power.
Nothing that he could say would shake that, nevertheless, in desperate violation of his so frequently violated code of decency, little Montgomery went on:
“They owe material things to you, but for Lucien and Sophie, who are young, there are other things.” (Definitely, from the desire, or even the knowledge, of those other things, he omitted Reggie Fitzmaurice.)
“Sophie is the daughter of Aldegonde and the Princesse’s granddaughter, and Lucien is poor Ralph Marley’s son. You’re bound to find that their standards are different from yours, Clarissa. They’ll find out, if they haven’t found out already, that what you’ve given them is not as important to them as what you’ve never allowed them to have. And you’ll lose them both, whether they marry one another or not.”
“I disagree with every word that you’ve said. You’re utterly wrong — I’ve never known anybody so wrong,” she told him. “But I suppose you felt you had to say it. I’m terribly straightforward myself, you see, and so I appreciate it in other people.” She gave him her hard, calculated smile, and Cliffe realized that his words had made so little impression upon her that she was not even really angry. At the most, she had been sharply irritated for a few moments. Now, she was actually confident of being able to disarm him by a false assumption of open-mindedness.
“I’d better go,” said Cliffe. “I suppose you won’t let me take Sophie to her grandmother’s for a little while?”
“No, certainly not. It’s Lucien who’ll leave home, not Sophie. I’m making arrangements now about him. By the time he’s visited the other side of the world, and found out that there are heaps of women only too ready to be nice to him, Lucien will have learnt his lesson.”
“But where are you sending him?” Cliffe asked, bewildered.
“Abroad with the Delmars, probably. Delmar has a colonial appointment. It’ll be public tomorrow, so it doesn’t matter telling you. I settled the whole thing with Leila Delmar a week ago. When I do a thing, Cliffe, I do it on the nail and I do it thoroughly. I shall tell Lucien to-night.”
“Supposing he won’t go?”
“There isn’t any supposing about it. This is my show, and I don’t intend to be disobeyed. Lucien is dependent on me. They all are,” repeated Clarissa. “I am not going to be hard on the boy — is it likely, my own only son? I’m simply going to do what’s best for him, as I’ve done all his life. He owes everything to me.”
They were back at the starting-point again. They would never get beyond it.
“I’d better go,” Cliffe repeated automatically. He gave her a formal little bow.
“Do you want to see Sophie, just to make sure I haven’t locked her up on bread and water?” Clarissa mocked. “She’s been the silliest little fool in the world, but I’m not a perfect brute, whatever you may think me, and I’m not going to compel her to marry a man she doesn’t want to marry, like a cruel stepmother in a book. You know she was absolutely engaged to Lord Clutterthorpe?”
“I heard it.”
“It’s off, of course. I don’t mind admitting that I was furious — any mother would be — but at least I shall take very good care that people know she had the chance. And it’s not utterly impossible that Bat, who really is a perfect angel—”
She paused, shrugging her shoulders.
“Why not stay and have lunch, Cliffy?”
With a refusal actually on his lips, Cliffe Montgomery hesitated for a fraction of a second. He had the queerest conviction that, although he had so utterly failed in his egregious errand that he had always known to be a hopeless one, yet there still remained the faintest, most insecure of possibilities that he might achieve something unspecified by an actual meeting with Sophie under her stepmother’s roof. He knew that the Princesse would ask whether he had seen Sophie — for her only faith was in personal contacts.
And after all, reflected Cliffe bitterly, it was late in the day to consider questions of social decency.
“Yes, I’ll stay. Thank you,” he said icily.
There were no longer any visitors at Mardale, and only Sophie and Fitzmaurice joined Cliffe and Clarissa for lunch. Lucien did not appear, and no reference to his absence was made.
Sophie, so far as Cliffe Montgomery could see, looked very much as usual. He could only wonder, not at all humorously but in his most worried and serious vein, whether without her candid make-up she might not have looked paler than usual. She spoke very little, but then no one, in Clarissa’s presence, spoke very much.
Fitzmaurice, at the sight of the visitor, had raised his eyebrows to a height expressive of astonishment; but he, too, had spoken little.
Sophie asked after Raoul Radow.
“He seems quite recovered. At first, he stayed upstairs. He has some trouble with his heart, and the doctor said he needed rest, but he is all right again. He goes back to London in a few days.”
“I said I’d go and see him, perhaps, if I could find time,” Clarissa announced carelessly. “I might be able to make something of him later on at parties in London. I imagine he’d be glad of the chance, poor wretch.”
“His agent — a person called Lawrence—” began Cliffe Montgomery, and fell abruptly silent under the mingled emotions of pain and indignation roused by a severe kick from Reggie Fitzmaurice.
“Lawrence!” said Clarissa viciously. “We had him here, and a vulgar beast he is. I can tell you I soon put Mr. Lawrence into his proper place.
He didn’t seem to have any idea of it at all.”
“He is a good agent,” said Cliffe imperturbably. He had a dim recollection of hearing Radow, to whose narrations he was not in the habit of paying much attention, telling the Princesse and Alberta that his agent had removed him from Mardale and Clarissa in the face of much opposition. From Clarissa’s tone it was not difficult to realize that the victory of Mr. Lawrence, however achieved, had been one of great thoroughness. A passing satisfaction at the thought relieved the gloom that accompanied Cliffe Montgomery’s lunch.
When it was over, he had his opportunity for speaking to Sophie. Clarissa, indeed, did not attempt to deny it him. She said:
“Cliffy, Sophie will look after you. I know you’ll understand if I tell you that I simply must go and get some writing done. You see, I do all the estate business down here myself, practically. King is a perfect fool, and gets everything into a muddle, and then comes to me to have it put right. Goodbye, my dear.”
She disappeared.
“Shall we go out?” said Sophie.
She took him out to the terrace and they paced up and down, at first without speaking.
At last Cliffe Montgomery said:
“Your grandmother sent you her love. She has been hoping to see you. Would it be possible for you to come over?”
“I should think so,” Sophie answered, considering. “You know mummie is arranging for me to go to Scotland next week to pay some visits? I’d like to come over before that.”
“But—”
“She knows that I’ve been there before with Lucien. He told her. She didn’t mind so very much. Of course, mummie hasn’t been very pleased with me just lately, you know. In fact,” said Sophie, “I don’t know what’s going to happen.” Her tone was as calm as her small, smooth face. Cliffe, only too well accustomed to the irrational, emotional flights of the Princesse, the charged and stormy reticence of Alberta, and — years earlier — the incessant, despairing tears of Sophie’s mother, Aldegonde, looked at her in surprise.
“Lucien and I haven’t settled,” said Sophie, meeting the look serenely. “I don’t think mummie realizes, quite, that nothing is settled yet. She thinks it is. But, after all, Lucien and I are grown up.”
Collected Works of E M Delafield Page 339
