‘You’re sure those grape-stones — ?’ she began anxiously.
‘Oh, certain!’ I cried; and hastily became meek.
September 27th.
Oaths, now. I shrink from so much as suggesting it, but there is something to be said for them. They’re so brief. They get the mood over. They clear the air. Women explain and protest and tiptoe tactfully about among what they think are your feelings, and there’s no end to it. And then, if they’re good women, good, affectionate, unselfish women, they have a way of forgiving you. They keep on forgiving you. Freely. With a horrible magnanimousness. Mrs. Barnes insisted on forgiving me yesterday for the cigarettes, for the untidiness. It isn’t a happy thing, I think, to be shut up in a small lonely house being forgiven.
September 28th.
In the night the wind shook the windows and the rain pelted against them, and I knew that when I went down to breakfast the struggle with Mrs. Barnes would begin.
It did. It began directly after breakfast in the hall, where Antoine, remarking firmly ‘C’est l’hiver,’ had lit a roaring fire, determined this time to stand no parsimonious nonsense, and it has gone on all day, with the necessary intervals for recuperation.
Nothing has been settled. I still don’t in the least know what to do. Mrs. Barnes’s attitude is obstinately unselfish. She and Dolly, she reiterates, won’t dream of staying on here unless they feel that by doing so they could be of service to me by keeping me company. If I’m not here I can’t be kept company with; that, she says, I must admit.
I do. Every time she says it — it has been a day of reiterations — I admit it. Therefore, if I go they go, she finishes with a kind of sombre triumph at her determination not to give trouble or be an expense; but words fail her, she adds, (this is a delusion,) to express her gratitude for my offer, etc., and never, for the rest of their lives, will she and Dolly forget the delightful etc., etc.
What am I to do? I don’t know. How lightly one embarks on marriage and on guests, and in what unexpected directions do both develope! Also, what a terrible thing is unselfishness. Once it has become a habit, how tough, how difficult to uproot. A single obstinately unselfish person can wreck the happiness of a whole household. Is it possible that I shall have to stay here? And I have so many things waiting for me in England that have to be done.
There’s a fire in my bedroom, and I’ve been sitting on the floor staring into it for the past hour, seeking a solution. Because all the while Mrs. Barnes is firmly refusing to listen for a moment to my entreaties to use the house while I’m away, her thin face is hungry with longing to accept, and the mere talking, however bravely, of taking up the old homeless wandering again fills her tired eyes with tears.
Once I got so desperate that I begged her to stay as a kindness to me, in order to keep an eye on those patently efficient and trustworthy Antoines. This indeed was the straw-clutching of the drowning, and even Mrs. Barnes, that rare smiler, smiled.
No. I don’t know what to do. How the wind screams. I’ll go to bed.
September 29th.
And there’s nothing to be done with Dolly either.
‘You told me you put your foot down sometimes,’ I said, appealing to her this morning in one of Mrs. Barnes’s brief absences, ‘Why don’t you put it down now?’
‘Because I don’t want to,’ said Dolly.
‘But why not?’ I asked, exasperated. ‘It’s so reasonable what I suggest, so easy—’
‘I don’t want to stay here without you,’ said Dolly. ‘This place is you. You’ve made it. It is soaked in you. I should feel haunted here without you. Why, I should feel lost.’
‘As though you would! When we hardly speak to each other as it is—’
‘But I watch you,’ said Dolly, smiling, ‘and I know what you’re thinking. You’ve no idea how what you’re thinking comes out on your face.’
‘But if it makes your unhappy sister’s mind more comfortable? If she feels free from anxiety here? If she feels you are safe here?’ I passionately reasoned.
‘I don’t want to be safe.’
‘Oh Dolly — you’re not going to break out again?’ I asked, as anxiously every bit as poor Mrs. Barnes would have asked.
Dolly laughed. ‘I’ll never do anything again that makes Kitty unhappy,’ she said. ‘But I do like the feeling—’ she made a movement with her arms as though they were wings— ‘oh, I like the feeling of having room!’
September 30th.
The weather is better again, and there has been a pause in our strivings. Mrs. Barnes and I have drifted, tired both of us, I resting in that refuge of the weak, the putting off of making up my mind, back into talking only of the situation and the view. If Mrs. Barnes were either less good or more intelligent! But the combination of non-intelligence with goodness is unassailable. You can’t get through. Nothing gets through. You give in. You are flattened out. You become a slave. And your case is indeed hopeless if the non-intelligent and good, are at the same time the victims, nobly enduring, of undeserved misfortune.
Evening.
A really remarkable thing happened to-day: I’ve had a prayer answered. I shall never dare pray again. I prayed for a man, any man, to come and leaven us, and I’ve got him.
Let me set it down in order.
This afternoon on our walk, soon after we had left the house and were struggling along against gusts of wind and whirling leaves in the direction, as it happened, of the carriage road up from the valley, Dolly said, ‘Who is that funny little man coming towards us?’
And I looked, and said after a moment in which my heart stood still — for what had he come for?— ‘That funny little man is my uncle.’
There he was, the authentic uncle: gaiters, apron, shovel hat. He was holding on his hat, and the rude wind, thwarted in its desire to frolic with it, frisked instead about his apron, twitching it up, bellying it out; so that his remaining hand had all it could do to smooth the apron down again decorously, and he was obliged to carry his umbrella pressed tightly against his side under his arm.
‘Not your uncle the Dean?’ asked Mrs. Barnes in a voice of awe, hastily arranging her toque; for a whiff of the Church, any whiff, even one so faint as a curate, is as the breath of life to her.
‘Yes,’ I said, amazed and helpless. ‘My Uncle Rudolph.’
‘Why, he might be a German,’ said Dolly, ‘with a name like that.’
‘Oh, but don’t say so to him!’ I cried. ‘He has a perfect horror of Germans—’
And it was out before I remembered, before I could stop it. Good heavens, I thought; good heavens.
I looked sideways at Mrs. Barnes. She was, I am afraid, very red. So I plunged in again, eager to reassure her. ‘That is to say,’ I said, ‘he used to have during the war. But of course now that the war is over it would be mere silliness — nobody minds now — nobody ought to mind now—’
My voice, however, trailed out into silence, for I knew, and Mrs. Barnes knew, that people do mind.
By this time we were within hail of my uncle, and with that joy one instinctively assumes on such occasions I waved my stick in exultant circles at him and called out, ‘How very delightful of you, Uncle Rudolph!’ And I advanced to greet him, the others tactfully dropping behind, alone.
There on the mountain side, with the rude wind whisking his clothes irreverently about, we kissed; and in my uncle’s kiss I instantly perceived something of the quality of Mrs. Barnes’s speeches the day I smoked the twelve cigarettes, — he was forgiving me.
‘I have come to escort you home to England,’ he said, his face spread over with the spirit of allowing byegones to be byegones; and in that spirit he let go of his apron in order reassuringly to pat my shoulder.
Immediately the apron bellied. His hand had abruptly to leave my shoulder so as to clutch it down again. ‘You are with ladies?’ he said a little distractedly, holding on to this turbulent portion of his clothing.
‘Yes, Uncle Rudolph,’ I replied modestly. ‘I hop
e you didn’t expect to find me with gentlemen?’
‘I expected to find you, dear child, as I have always found you, — ready to admit and retrace. Generously ready to admit and retrace.’
‘Sweet of you,’ I murmured. ‘But you should have let me know you were coming. I’d have had things killed for you. Fatted things.’
‘It is not I,’ he said, in as gentle a voice as he could manage, the wind being what it was, ‘who am the returning prodigal. Indeed I wish for your sake that I were. My shoulders could bear the burden better than those little ones of yours.’
This talk was ominous, so I said, ‘I must introduce you to Mrs. Barnes and her sister Mrs. Jewks. Let me present,’ I said ceremoniously, turning to them who were now fortunately near enough, ‘my Uncle Rudolph to you, of whom you have often heard me speak.’
‘Indeed we have,’ said Mrs. Barnes, with as extreme a cordiality as awe permitted.
My uncle, obviously relieved to find his niece not eccentrically alone but flanked by figures so respectable, securely, as it were, embedded in widows, was very gracious. Mrs. Barnes received his pleasant speeches with delighted reverence; and as we went back to the house, for the first thing to do with arrivals from England is to give them a bath, he and she fell naturally into each other’s company along the narrow track, and Dolly and I followed behind.
We looked at each other, simultaneously perceiving the advantages of four rather than of three. Behind Mrs. Barnes’s absorbed and obsequious back we looked at each other with visions in our eyes of unsupervised talks opening before us.
‘They have their uses, you see,’ I said in a low voice, — not that I need have lowered it in that wind.
‘Deans have,’ agreed Dolly, nodding.
And my desire to laugh, — discreetly, under my breath, ready to pull my face sober and be gazing at the clouds the minute our relations should turn round, was strangled by the chill conviction that my uncle’s coming means painful things for me.
He is going to talk to me; talk about what I am trying so hard not to think of, what I really am succeeding in not thinking of; and he is going to approach the desolating subject in, as he will say and perhaps even persuade himself to believe, a Christian spirit, but in what really is a spirit of sheer worldliness. He has well-founded hopes of soon going to be a bishop. I am his niece. The womenkind of bishops should be inconspicuous, should see to it that comment cannot touch them. Therefore he is going to try to get me to deliver myself up to a life of impossible wretchedness again, only that the outside of it may look in order. The outside of the house, — of the house of a bishop’s niece, — at all costs keep it neat, keep it looking like all the others in the street; so shall nobody know what is going on inside, and the neighbours won’t talk about one’s uncle.
If I were no relation but just a mere ordinary stranger-soul in difficulties, he, this very same man, would be full of understanding, would find himself unable, indeed, the facts being what they are, to be anything but most earnestly concerned to help me keep clear of all temptations to do what he calls retrace. And at the same time he would be concerned also to strengthen me in that mood which is I am sure the right one, and does very often recur, of being entirely without resentment and so glad to have the remembrance at least of the beautiful things I believed in. But I am his niece. He is about to become a bishop. Naturally he has to be careful not to be too much like Christ.
Accordingly I followed uneasily in his footsteps towards the house, dreading what was going to happen next. And nothing has happened next. Not yet, anyhow. I expect to-morrow....
We spent a most bland evening. I’m as sleepy and as much satiated by ecclesiastical good things as though I had been the whole day in church. My uncle, washed, shaven, and restored by tea, laid himself out to entertain. He was the decorous life of the party. He let himself go to that tempered exuberance with which good men of his calling like to prove that they really are not so very much different from other people after all. Round the hall fire we sat after tea, and again after supper, Dolly and I facing each other at the corners, my uncle and Mrs. Barnes in the middle, and the room gently echoed with seemly and strictly wholesome mirth. ‘How enjoyable,’ my uncle seemed to say, looking at us at the end of each of his good stories, gathering in the harvest of our appreciation, ‘how enjoyable is the indulgence of legitimate fun. Why need one ever indulge in illegitimacy?’
And indeed his stories were so very good that every one of them, before they reached the point of bringing forth their joke, must have been to church and got married.
Dolly sat knitting, the light shining on her infantile fair hair, her eyes downcast in a dove-like meekness. Punctually her dimple flickered out at the right moment in each anecdote. She appeared to know by instinct where to smile; and several times I was only aware that the moment had come by happening to notice her dimple.
As for Mrs. Barnes, for the first time since I have known her, her face was cloudless. My uncle, embarked on anecdote, did not mention the war. We did not once get on to Germans. Mrs. Barnes could give herself up to real enjoyment. She beamed. She was suffused with reverential delight. And her whole body, the very way she sat in her chair, showed an absorption, an eagerness not to miss a crumb of my uncle’s talk, that would have been very gratifying to him if he were not used to just this. It is strange how widows cling to clergymen. Ever since I can remember, like the afflicted Margaret’s apprehensions in Wordsworth’s poem, they have come to Uncle Rudolph in crowds. My aunt used to raise her eyebrows and ask me if I could at all tell her what they saw in him.
When we bade each other goodnight there was something in Mrs. Barnes’s manner to me that showed me the presence of a man was already doing its work. She was aerated. Fresh, air had got into her and was circulating freely. At my bedroom door she embraced me with warm and simple heartiness, without the usual painful search of my face to see if by any chance there was anything she had left undone in her duty of being unselfish. My uncle’s arrival has got her thoughts off me for a bit. I knew that what we wanted was a man. Not that a dean is quite my idea of a man, but then on the other hand neither is he quite my idea of a woman, and his arrival does put an end for the moment to Mrs. Barnes’s and my dreadful combats de générosité. He infuses fresh blood into our anaemic little circle. Different blood, perhaps I should rather say; the blood of deans not being, I think, ever very fresh.
‘Good night, Uncle Rudolph,’ I said, getting up at ten o’clock and holding up my face to him. ‘We have to thank you for a delightful evening.’
‘Most delightful,’ echoed Mrs. Barnes enthusiastically, getting up too and rolling up her knitting.
My uncle was gratified. He felt he had been at his best, and that his best had been appreciated.
‘Good night, dear child,’ he said, kissing my offered cheek. ‘May the blessed angels watch about your bed.’
‘Thank you, Uncle Rudolph,’ I said, bowing my head beneath this benediction.
Mrs. Barnes looked on at the little domestic scene with reverential sympathy. Then her turn came.
‘Good night, Mrs. Barnes,’ said my uncle most graciously, shaking hands and doing what my dancing mistress used to call bending from the waist.
And to Dolly, ‘Good night, Miss—’
Then he hesitated, groping for the name. ‘Mrs.,’ said Dolly, sweetly correcting him, her hand in his.
‘Ah, I beg your pardon. Married. These introductions — especially in that noisy wind.’
‘No — not exactly married,’ said Dolly, still sweetly correcting him, her hand still in his.
‘Not exactly — ?’
‘My sister has lost her — my sister is a widow,’ said Mrs. Barnes hastily and nervously; alas, these complications of Dolly’s!
‘Indeed. Indeed. Sad, sad,’ said my uncle sympathetically, continuing to hold her hand. ‘And so young. Ah. Yes. Well, good night then, Mrs—’
But again he had to pause and grope.
‘Jewks,’
said Dolly sweetly.
‘Forgive me. You may depend I shall not again be so stupid. Good night. And may the blessed angels—’
A third time he stopped; pulled up, I suppose, by the thought that it was perhaps not quite seemly to draw the attention of even the angels to an unrelated lady’s bed. So he merely very warmly shook her hand, while she smiled a really heavenly smile at him.
We left him standing with his back to the fire watching us go up the stairs, holding almost tenderly, for one must expend one’s sympathy on something, a glass of hot water.
My uncle is very sympathetic. In matters that do not touch his own advancement he is all sympathy. That is why widows like him, I expect. My aunt would have known the reason if she hadn’t been his wife.
October 1st.
While I dress it is my habit to read. Some book is propped up open against the looking-glass, and sometimes, for one’s eyes can’t be everywhere at once, my hooks in consequence don’t get quite satisfactorily fastened. Indeed I would be very neat if I could, but there are other things. This morning the book was the Bible, and in it I read, A prudent man — how much more prudently, then, a woman — foreseeth the evil and hideth himself, but the simple pass on and are punished.
This made me late for breakfast. I sat looking out of the window, my hands in my lap, the sensible words of Solomon ringing in my ears, and considered if there was any way of escaping the fate of the simple.
There was no way. It seemed hard that without being exactly of the simple I yet should be doomed to their fate. And outside it was one of those cold windy mornings when male relations insist on taking one for what they call a run — as if one were a dog — in order to go through the bleak process they describe as getting one’s cobwebs blown off. I can’t bear being parted from my cobwebs. I never want them blown off. Uncle Rudolph is small and active, besides having since my aunt’s death considerably dwindled beneath his apron, and I felt sure he intended to run me up the mountain after breakfast, and, having got me breathless and speechless on to some cold rock, sit with me there and say all the things I am dreading having to hear.
Delphi Collected Works of Elizabeth von Arnim (Illustrated) Page 239
