Delphi Collected Works of Elizabeth von Arnim (Illustrated)

by Elizabeth Von Arnim

  VIII

  London being empty, Wemyss had it all his own way. No one else was there to cut him out, as his expression was. Lucy had many letters with offers of every kind of help from her father’s friends, but naturally she needed no help and had no wish to see anybody in her present condition of secret contentment, and she replied to them with thanks and vague expressions of hope that later on they might all meet. One young man — he was the one who often proposed to her — wasn’t to be put off like that, and journeyed all the way from Scotland, so great was his devotion, and found out from the caretaker of the Bloomsbury house that she was living with her aunt, and called at Eaton Terrace. But that afternoon Lucy and Miss Entwhistle were taking the air in a car Wemyss had hired, and at the very moment the young man was being turned away from the Eaton Terrace door Lucy was being rowed about the river at Hampton Court — very slowly, because of how soon Wemyss got hot — and her aunt, leaning on the stone parapet at the end of the Palace gardens, was observing her. It was a good thing the young man wasn’t observing her too, for it wouldn’t have made him happy.

  ‘What is Mr. Wemyss?’ asked Miss Entwhistle unexpectedly that evening, just as they were going to bed.

  Lucy was taken aback. Her aunt hadn’t asked a question or said a thing about him up to then, except general comments on his kindness and good-nature.

  ‘What is Mr. Wemyss?’ she repeated stupidly; for she was not only taken aback, but also, she discovered, she had no idea. It had never occurred to her even to wonder what he was, much less to ask. She had been, as it were, asleep the whole time in a perfect contentment on his breast.

  ‘Yes. What is he besides being a widower?’ said Miss Entwhistle. ‘We know he’s that, but it is hardly a profession.’

  ‘I — don’t think I know,’ said Lucy, looking and feeling very stupid.

  ‘Oh well, perhaps he isn’t anything,’ said her aunt kissing her good-night. ‘Except punctual,’ she added, smiling, pausing a moment at her bedroom door.

  And two or three days later, when Wemyss had again hired a car to take them for an outing to Windsor, while she and Lucy were tidying themselves for tea in the ladies’ room of the hotel she turned from the looking-glass in the act of pinning back some hair loosened by motoring, and in spite of having a hairpin in her mouth said, again suddenly, ‘What did Mrs. Wemyss die of?’

  This unnerved Lucy. If she had stared stupidly at her aunt at the other question she stared aghast at her at this one.

  ‘What did she die of?’ she repeated, flushing.

  ‘Yes. What illness was it?’ asked her aunt, continuing to pin.

  ‘It — wasn’t an illness,’ said Lucy helplessly.

  ‘Not an illness?’

  ‘I — believe it was an accident.’

  ‘An accident?’ said Miss Entwhistle, taking the hairpin out of her mouth and in her turn staring. ‘What sort of an accident?’

  ‘I think a rather serious one,’ said Lucy, completely unnerved.

  How could she bear to tell that dreadful story, the knowledge of which seemed somehow so intimately to bind her and Everard together with a sacred, terrible tie?

  At that her aunt remarked that an accident resulting in death would usually be described as serious, and asked what its nature, apart from its seriousness, had been; and Lucy, driven into a corner, feeling instinctively that her aunt, who had already once or twice expressed what she said was her surprised admiration for Mr. Wemyss’s heroic way of bearing his bereavement, might be too admiringly surprised altogether if she knew how tragically much he really had to bear, and might begin to inquire into the reasons of this heroism, took refuge in saying what she now saw she ought to have begun by saying, even though it wasn’t true, that she didn’t know.

  ‘Ah,’ said her aunt. ‘Well — poor man. It’s wonderful how he bears things.’ And again in her mind’s eye, and with an increased doubt, she saw the grey trousers.

  That day at tea Wemyss, with the simple naturalness Lucy found so restful, the almost bald way he had of talking frankly about things more sophisticated people wouldn’t have mentioned, began telling them of the last time he had been at Windsor.

  It was the summer before, he said, and he and his wife — at this Miss Entwhistle became attentive — had motored down one Sunday to lunch in that very room, and it had been so much crowded, and the crowding had been so monstrously mismanaged, that positively they had had to go away without having had lunch at all.

  ‘Positively without having had any lunch at all,’ repeated Wemyss, looking at them with a face full of astonished aggrievement at the mere recollection.

  ‘Ah,’ said Miss Entwhistle, leaning across to him, ‘don’t let us revive sad memories.’

  Wemyss stared at her. Good heavens, he thought, did she think he was talking about Vera? Any one with a grain of sense would know he was only talking about the lunch he hadn’t had.

  He turned impatiently to Lucy, and addressed his next remark to her. But in another moment there was her aunt again.

  ‘Mr. Wemyss,’ she said, ‘I’ve been dying to ask you — —’

  Again he was forced to attend. The pure air and rapid motion of the motoring intended to revive and brace his little love were apparently reviving and bracing his little love’s aunt as well, for lately he had been unable to avoid noticing a tendency on her part to assert herself. During his first eight visits to Eaton Terrace — that made four weeks since his coming back to London and six since the funeral in Cornwall — he had hardly known she was in the room; except, of course, that she was in the room, completely hindering his courting. During those eight visits his first impression of her remained undisturbed in his mind: she was a wailing creature who had hung round him in Cornwall in a constant state of tears. Down there she had behaved exactly like the traditional foolish woman when there is a death about, — no common sense, no grit, crying if you looked at her, and keeping up a continual dismal recital of the virtues of the departed. Also she had been obstinate; and she had, besides, shown unmistakable signs of selfishness. When he paid his first call in Eaton Terrace he did notice that she had considerably, indeed completely, dried up, and was therefore to that extent improved, but she still remained for him just Lucy’s aunt, — somebody who poured out the tea, and who unfortunately hardly ever went out of the room; a necessary, though luckily a transitory, evil. But now it was gradually being borne in on him that she really existed, on her own account, independently. She asserted herself. Even when she wasn’t saying anything — and often she said hardly a word during an entire outing — she still somehow asserted herself.

  And here she was asserting herself very much indeed, and positively asking him across a tea-table which was undoubtedly for the moment his, asking him straight out what, if anything, he did in the way of a trade, profession or occupation.

  She was his guest, and he regarded it as less than seemly for a guest to ask a host what he did. Not that he wouldn’t gladly have told her if it had come from him of his own accord. Surely a man has a right, he thought, to his own accord. At all times Wemyss disliked being asked questions. Even the most innocent, ordinary question appeared to him to be an encroachment on the right he surely had to be let alone.

  Lucy’s aunt between sips of tea — his tea — pretended, pleasantly it is true, and clothing what could be nothing but idle curiosity in words that were not disagreeable, that she was dying to know what he was. She could see for herself, she said, smiling down at the leg nearest her, that he wasn’t a bishop, she was sure he wasn’t either a painter, musician or writer, but she wouldn’t be in the least surprised if he were to tell her he was an admiral.

  Wemyss thought this intelligent of the aunt. He had no objection to being taken for an admiral; they were an honest, breezy lot.

  Placated, he informed her that he was on the Stock Exchange.

  ‘Ah,’ nodded Miss Entwhistle, looking wise because on this subject she so completely wasn’t, the Stock Exchange being an insti
tution whose nature and operations were alien to anything the Entwhistles were familiar with; ‘ah yes. Quite. Bulls and bears. Now I come to look at it, you have the Stock Exchange eye.’

  ‘Foolish woman,’ thought Wemyss, who for some reason didn’t like being told before Lucy that he had the Stock Exchange eye; and he dismissed her impatiently from his mind and concentrated on his little love, asking himself while he did so how short he could, with any sort of propriety, cut this unpleasant time of restricted courting, of never being able to go anywhere with her unless her tiresome aunt came too.

  Nearly two months now since both those deaths; surely Lucy’s aunt might soon be told now of the engagement. It was after this outing that he began in his letters, and in the few moments he and she were alone, to urge Lucy to tell her aunt. Nobody else need know, he wrote; it could go on being kept secret from the world; but the convenience of her aunt’s knowing was so obvious, — think of how she would then keep out of the way, think of how she would leave them to themselves, anyhow indoors, anyhow in the house in Eaton Terrace.

  Lucy, however, was reluctant. She demurred. She wrote begging him to be patient. She said that every week that passed would make their engagement less a thing that need surprise. She said that at present it would take too much explaining, and she wasn’t sure that even at the end of the explanation her aunt would understand.

  Wemyss wrote back brushing this aside. He said her aunt would have to understand, and if she didn’t what did it matter so long as she knew? The great thing was that she should know. Then, he said, she would leave them alone together, instead of for ever sticking; and his little love must see how splendid it would be for him to come and spend happy hours with her quite alone. What was an aunt after all? he asked. What could she possibly be, compared to Lucy’s own Everard? Besides, he disliked secrecy, he said. No honest man could stand an atmosphere of concealment. His little girl must make up her mind to tell her aunt, and believe that her Everard knew best; or, if she preferred it, he would tell her himself.

  Lucy didn’t prefer it, and was beginning to feel worried, because as the days went on Wemyss grew more and more persistent the more he became bored by Miss Entwhistle’s development of an independent and inquiring mind, and she hated having to refuse or even to defer doing anything he asked, when her aunt one morning at breakfast, in the very middle of apparent complete serene absorption in her bacon, looked up suddenly over the coffee-pot and said, ‘How long had your father known Mr. Wemyss?’

  This settled things. Lucy felt she could bear no more of these shocks. A clean breast was the only thing left for her.

  ‘Aunt Dot,’ she stammered — Miss Entwhistle’s Christian name was Dorothy,— ‘I’d like — I’ve got — I want to tell you — —’

  ‘After breakfast,’ said Miss Entwhistle briskly. ‘We shall need lots of time, and to be undisturbed. We’ll go up into the drawing-room.’

  And immediately she began talking about other things.

  Was it possible, thought Lucy, her eyes carefully on her toast and butter, that Aunt Dot suspected?

  IX

  It was not only possible, but the fact. Aunt Dot had suspected, only she hadn’t suspected anything like all that was presently imparted to her, and she found great difficulty in assimilating it. And two hours later Lucy, standing in the middle of the drawing-room, was still passionately saying to her, and saying it for perhaps the tenth time, ‘But don’t you see? It’s just because what happened to him was so awful. It’s nature asserting itself. If he couldn’t be engaged now, if he couldn’t reach up out of such a pit of blackness and get into touch with living things again and somebody who sympathises and — is fond of him, he would die, die or go mad; and oh, what’s the use to the world of somebody good and fine being left to die or go mad? Aunt Dot, what’s the use?’

  And her aunt, sitting in her customary chair by the fireplace, continued to assimilate with difficulty. Also her face was puckered into folds of distress. She was seriously upset.

  Lucy, looking at her, felt a kind of despair that she wasn’t being able to make her aunt, whom she loved, see what she saw, understand what she understood, and so be, as she was, filled with confidence and happiness. Not that she was happy at that moment; she, too, was seriously upset, her face flushed, her eyes bright with effort to get Wemyss as she knew him, as he so simply was, through into her aunt’s consciousness.

  She had made her clean breast with a completeness that had included the confession that she did know what Mrs. Wemyss’s accident had been, and she had described it. Her aunt was painfully shocked. Anything so horrible as that hadn’t entered her mind. To fall past the very window her husband was sitting at ... it seemed to her dreadful that Lucy should be mixed up in it, and mixed up so instantly on the death of her of her natural protector, — of her two natural protectors, for hadn’t Mrs. Wemyss as long as she existed also been one? She was bewildered, and couldn’t understand the violent reactions that Lucy appeared to look upon as so natural in Wemyss. She would have concluded that she didn’t understand because she was too old, because she was out of touch with the elasticities of the younger generation, but Wemyss must be very nearly as old as herself. Certainly he was of the same generation; and yet behold him, within a fortnight of his wife’s most shocking death, able to forget her, able to fall in love ——

  ‘But that’s why — that’s why,’ Lucy cried when Miss Entwhistle said this. ‘He had to forget, or die himself. It was beyond what anybody could bear and stay sane — —’

  ‘I’m sure I’m very glad he should stay sane,’ said Miss Entwhistle, more and more puckered, ‘but I can’t help wishing it hadn’t been you, Lucy, who are assisting him to stay it.’

  And then she repeated what at intervals she had kept on repeating with a kind of stubborn helplessness, that her quarrel with Mr. Wemyss was that he had got happy so very quickly.

  ‘Those grey trousers,’ she murmured.

  No; Miss Entwhistle couldn’t get over it. She couldn’t understand it. And Lucy, expounding and defending Wemyss in the middle of the room with all the blaze and emotion of what was only too evidently genuine love, was to her aunt an astonishing sight. That little thing, defending that enormous man. Jim’s daughter; Jim’s cherished little daughter....

  Miss Entwhistle, sitting in her chair, struggled among other struggles to be fair, and reminded herself that Mr. Wemyss had proved himself to be most kind and eager to help down in Cornwall, — though even on this there was shed a new and disturbing light, and that now that she knew everything, and the doubts that had made her perhaps be a little unjust were out of the way and she could begin to consider him impartially, she would probably very soon become sincerely attached to him. She hoped so with all her heart. She was used to being attached to people. It was normal to her to like and be liked. And there must be something more in him than his fine appearance for Lucy to be so very fond of him.

  She gave herself a shake. She told herself she was taking this thing badly; that she ought not, just because it was an unusual situation, be so ready to condemn it. Was she really only a conventional spinster, shrinking back shocked at a touch of naked naturalness? Wasn’t there much in what that short-haired child was so passionately saying about the rightness, the saneness, of reaction from horror? Wasn’t it nature’s own protection against too much death? After all, what was the good of doubling horror, of being so much horrified at the horrible that you stayed rooted there and couldn’t move, and became, with your starting eyes and bristling hair, a horror yourself?

  Better, of course, to pass on, as Lucy was explaining, to get on with one’s business, which wasn’t death but life. Still — there were the decencies. However desolate one would be in retirement, however much one would suffer, there was a period, Miss Entwhistle felt, during which the bereaved withdrew. Instinctively. The really bereaved would want to withdraw ——

  ‘Ah, but don’t you see,’ Lucy once more tried despairingly to explain, ‘this was
n’t just being bereaved — this was something simply too awful. Of course Everard would have behaved in the ordinary way if it had been an ordinary death.’

  ‘So that the more terrible one’s sorrow the more cheerfully one goes out to tea,’ said Miss Entwhistle, the remembrance of the light trousers at one end of Wemyss and the unmistakably satisfied face at the other being for a moment too much for her.

  ‘Oh,’ almost moaned Lucy at that, and her head drooped in a sudden fatigue.

  Miss Entwhistle got up quickly and put her arms round her. ‘Forgive me,’ she said. ‘That was just stupid and cruel. I think I’m hide-bound. I think I’ve probably got into a rut. Help me out of it, Lucy. You shall teach me to take heroic views — —’

  And she kissed her hot face tenderly, holding it close to her own.

  ‘But if I could only make you see,’ said Lucy, clinging to her, tears in her voice.

  ‘But I do see that you love him very much,’ said Miss Entwhistle gently, again very tenderly kissing her.

  That afternoon when Wemyss appeared at five o’clock, it being his bi-weekly day for calling, he found Lucy alone.

  ‘Why, where —— ? How —— ?’ he asked, peeping round the drawing-room as though Miss Entwhistle must be lurking behind a chair.

  ‘I’ve told,’ said Lucy, who looked tired.

  Then he clasped her with a great hug to his heart. ‘Everard’s own little love,’ he said, kissing and kissing her. ‘Everard’s own good little love.’

  ‘Yes, but — —’ began Lucy faintly. She was, however, so much muffled and engulfed that her voice didn’t get through.