Delphi Collected Works of Elizabeth von Arnim (Illustrated)

by Elizabeth Von Arnim

  The table was at right angles to it, so that sitting at it you had nothing between one side of you and the great pane of glass that reached nearly to the floor. You could look sheer down on to the flags below. She thought it horrible, gruesome to have tea there, and the very first day, before she had had a moment’s time to get used to things. Such detachment on the part of Everard was either just stark wonderful — she had already found noble explanations for it — or it was so callous that she had no explanation for it at all; none, that is, that she dared think of. Once more she decided that his way was really the best and simplest way to meet the situation. You took the bull by the horns. You seized the nettle. You cleared the air. And though her images, she felt, were not what they might be, neither was anything else that day what it might be. Everything appeared to reflect the confusion produced by Wemyss’s excessive lucidity of speech.

  ‘Shall I pour out the tea?’ she asked presently, preparing, then, to take the bull by the horns; for he remained standing in front of the fire smoking in silence. ‘Just think,’ she went on, making an effort to be gay, ‘this is the first time I shall pour out tea in my — —’

  She was going to say ‘My own home,’ but the words wouldn’t come off her tongue. Wemyss had repeatedly during the day spoken of his home, but not once had he said ‘our’ or ‘your’; and if ever a house didn’t feel as if it in the very least belonged, too, to her, it was this one.

  ‘Not yet,’ he said briefly.

  She wondered. ‘Not yet?’ she repeated.

  ‘I’m waiting for the bread and butter.’

  ‘But won’t the tea get cold?’

  ‘No doubt. And it’ll be entirely that fool’s fault.’

  ‘But — —’ began Lucy, after a silence.

  ‘Buts again?’

  ‘I was only thinking that if we had it now it wouldn’t be cold.’

  ‘She must be taught her lesson.’

  Again she wondered. ‘Won’t it rather be a lesson to us?’ she asked.

  ‘For God’s sake, Lucy, don’t argue. Things have to be done properly in my house. You’ve had no experience of a properly managed household. All that set you were brought up in — why, one only had to look at them to see what a hugger-mugger way they probably lived. It’s entirely the careless fool’s own fault that the tea will be cold. I didn’t ask her to throw the bread and butter on the floor, did I?’

  And as she said nothing, he asked again. ‘Did I?’ he asked.

  ‘No,’ said Lucy.

  ‘Well then,’ said Wemyss.

  They waited in silence.

  Chesterton arrived. She put the fresh bread and butter on the table, and then wiped the floor with a cloth she had brought.

  Wemyss watched her closely. When she had done — and Chesterton being good at her work, scrutinise as he might he could see no sign on the floor of overlooked butter — he said, ‘You will now take the teapot down and bring some hot tea.’

  ‘Yes sir,’ said Chesterton, removing the teapot.

  A line of a hymn her nurse used to sing came into Lucy’s head when she saw the teapot going. It was:

  What various hindrances we meet —

  and she thought the next line, which she didn’t remember, must have been:

  Before at tea ourselves we seat.

  But though one portion of her mind was repeating this with nervous levity, the other was full of concern for the number of journeys up and down all those stairs the parlourmaid was being obliged to make. It was — well, thoughtless of Everard to make her go up and down so often. Probably he didn’t realise — of course he didn’t — how very many stairs there were. When and how could she talk to him about things like this? When would he be in such a mood that she would be able to do so without making them worse? And how, in what words sufficiently tactful, sufficiently gentle, would she be able to avoid his being offended? She must manage somehow. But tact — management — prudence — all these she had not yet in her life needed. Had she the smallest natural gift for them? Besides, each of them applied to love seemed to her an insult. She had supposed that love, real love, needed none of these protections. She had thought it was a simple, sturdy growth that could stand anything.... Why, here was the parlourmaid already, teapot and all. How very quick she had been!

  Chesterton, however, hadn’t so much been quick as tactful, managing, and prudent. She had been practising these qualities on the other side of the door, whither she had taken the teapot and quietly waited with it a few minutes, and whence she now brought it back. She placed it on the table with admirable composure; and when Wemyss, on her politely asking whether there were anything else he required, said, ‘Yes. You will now take away that toast and bring fresh,’ she took the toast also only as far as the other side of the door, and waited with it there a little.

  Lucy now hoped they would have tea. ‘Shall I pour it out?’ she asked after a moment a little anxiously, for he still didn’t move and she began to be afraid the toast might be going to be the next hindrance; in which case they would go round and round for the rest of the day, never catching up the tea at all.

  But he did go over and sit down at the table, followed by her who hardly now noticed its position, so much surprised and absorbed was she by his methods of housekeeping.

  ‘Isn’t it monstrous,’ he said, sitting down heavily, ‘how we’ve been kept waiting for such a simple thing as tea. I tell you they’re the most slovenly — —’

  There was Chesterton again, bearing the toast-rack balanced on the tip of a respectful ringer.

  This time even Lucy realised that it must be the same toast, and her hand, lifted in the act of pouring out tea, trembled, for she feared the explosion that was bound to come.

  How extraordinary. There was no explosion. Everard hadn’t — it seemed incredible — noticed. His attention was so much fixed on what she was doing with his cup, he was watching her so carefully lest she should fill it a hair’s-breadth fuller than he liked, that all he said to Chesterton as she put the toast on the table was, ‘Let this be a lesson to you.’ But there was no gusto in it; it was quite mechanical.

  ‘Yes sir,’ said Chesterton.

  She waited.

  He waved.

  She went.

  The door hadn’t been shut an instant before Wemyss exclaimed, ‘Why, if that slovenly hussy hasn’t forgotten — —’ And too much incensed to continue he stared at the tea-tray.

  ‘What? What?’ asked Lucy startled, also staring at the tea-tray.

  ‘Why, the sugar.’

  ‘Oh, I’ll call her back — she’s only just gone — —’

  ‘Sit down, Lucy.’

  ‘But she’s just outside — —’

  ‘Sit down, I tell you.’

  Lucy sat.

  Then she remembered that neither she nor Everard ever had sugar in their tea, so naturally there was no point in calling Chesterton back.

  ‘Oh, of course,’ she said, smiling nervously, for what with one thing and another she was feeling shattered, ‘how stupid of me. We don’t want sugar.’

  Wemyss said nothing. He was studying his watch, timing Chesterton. Then when the number of seconds needed to reach the kitchen had run out, he got up and rang the bell.

  In due course Lizzie appeared. It seemed that the rule was that this particular bell should be answered by Lizzie.

  ‘Chesterton,’ said Wemyss.

  In due course Chesterton appeared. She was less composed than when she brought back the teapot, than when she brought back the toast. She tried to hide it, but she was out of breath.

  ‘Yes sir?’ she said.

  Wemyss took no notice, and went on drinking his tea.

  Chesterton stood.

  After a period of silence Lucy thought that perhaps it was expected of her as mistress of the house to tell her about the sugar; but then as they neither of them wanted any....

  After a further period of silence, during which she anxiously debated whether it was this that they
were all waiting for, she thought that perhaps Everard hadn’t heard the parlourmaid come in; so she said — she was ashamed to hear how timidly it came out— ‘Chesterton is here, Everard.’

  He took no notice, and went on eating bread and butter.

  After a further period of anxious inward debate she concluded that it must after all be expected of her, as mistress of the house, to talk of the sugar; and the sugar was to be talked of not because they needed it but on principle. But what a roundabout way; how fatiguing and difficult. Why didn’t Everard say what he wanted, instead of leaving her to guess?

  ‘I think — —’ she stammered, flushing, for she was now very timid indeed, ‘you’ve forgotten the sugar, Chesterton.’

  ‘Will you not interfere!’ exclaimed Wemyss very loud, putting down his cup with a bang.

  The flush on Lucy’s face vanished as if it had been knocked out. She sat quite still. If she moved, or looked anywhere but at her plate, she knew she would begin to cry. The scenes she had dreaded had not included any with herself in the presence of servants. It hadn’t entered her head that these, too, were possible. She must hold on to herself; not move; not look. She sat absorbed in that one necessity, fiercely concentrated. Chesterton must have gone away and come back again, for presently she was aware that sugar was being put on the tea-tray; and then she was aware that Everard was holding out his cup.

  ‘Give me some more tea, please,’ he said, ‘and for God’s sake don’t sulk. If the servants forget their duties it’s neither your nor my business to tell them what they’ve forgotten, — they’ve just got to look and see, and if they don’t see they’ve just got to stand there looking till they do. It’s the only way to teach them. But for you to get sulking on the top of it — —’

  She lifted the teapot with both hands, because one hand by itself too obviously shook. She succeeded in pouring out the tea without spilling it, and in stopping almost at the very moment when he said, ‘Take care, take care — you’re filling it too full.’ She even succeeded after a minute or two in saying, holding carefully on to her voice to keep it steady, ‘I’m not — sulking. I’ve — got a headache.’

  And she thought desperately, ‘The only thing to be done with marriage is to let it wash over one.’

  XXV

  For the rest of that day she let it wash; unresistingly. She couldn’t think any more. She couldn’t feel any more, — not that day. She really had a headache; and when the dusk came, and Wemyss turned on the lights, it was evident even to him that she had, for there was no colour at all in her face and her eyes were puffed and leaden.

  He had one of his sudden changes. ‘Come here,’ he said, reaching out and drawing her on to his knee; and he held her face against his breast, and felt full of maternal instincts, and crooned over her. ‘Was it a poor little baby,’ he crooned. ‘Did it have a headache then — —’ And he put his great cool hand on her hot forehead and kept it there.

  Lucy gave up trying to understand anything at all any more. These swift changes, — she couldn’t keep up with them; she was tired, tired....

  They sat like that in the chair before the fire, Wemyss holding his hand on her forehead and feeling full of maternal instincts, and she an unresisting blank, till he suddenly remembered he hadn’t shown her the drawing-room yet. The afternoon had not proceeded on the lines laid down for it in his plans, but if they were quick there was still time for the drawing-room before dinner.

  Accordingly she was abruptly lifted off his knee. ‘Come along, little Love,’ he said briskly. ‘Come along. Wake up. I want to show you something.’

  And the next thing she knew was that she was going downstairs, and presently she found herself standing in a big cold room, blinking in the bright lights he had switched on at the door.

  ‘This,’ he said, holding her by the arm, ’is the drawing-room. Isn’t it a fine room.’ And he explained the piano, and told her how he had found a button off, and he pointed out the roll of rugs in a distant corner which, unrolled, decorated the parquet floor, and he drew her attention to the curtains, — he had no objections to curtains in a drawing-room, he said, because a drawing-room was anyhow a room of concessions; and he asked her at the end, as he had asked her at the beginning, if she didn’t think it a fine room.

  Lucy said it was a very fine room.

  ‘You’ll remember to put the cover on properly when you’ve finished playing the piano, won’t you,’ he said.

  ‘Yes I will,’ said Lucy. ‘Only I don’t play,’ she added, remembering she didn’t.

  ‘That’s all right then,’ he said, relieved.

  They were still standing admiring the proportions of the room, its marble fireplace and the brilliancy of its lighting— ‘The test of good lighting,’ said Wemyss, ’is that there shouldn’t be a corner of a room in which a man of eighty can’t read his newspaper’ — when the gong began.

  ‘Good Lord,’ he said, looking at his watch, ‘it’ll be dinner in ten minutes. Why, we’ve had nothing at all of the afternoon, and I’d planned to show you so many things. Ah,’ he said, turning and shaking his head at her, his voice changing to sorrow, ‘whose fault has that been?’

  ‘Mine,’ said Lucy.

  He put his hand under her chin and lifted her face, gazing at it and shaking his head slowly. The light, streaming into her swollen eyes, hurt them and made her blink.

  ‘Ah, my Lucy,’ he said fondly, ‘little waster of happiness — isn’t it better simply to love your Everard than make him unhappy?’

  ‘Much better,’ said Lucy, blinking.

  There was no dressing for dinner at The Willows, for that, explained Wemyss, was the great joy of home, that you needn’t ever do anything you don’t want to in it, and therefore, he said, ten minutes’ warning was ample for just washing one’s hands. They washed their hands together in the big bedroom, because Wemyss disapproved of dressing-rooms at home even more strongly than on honeymoons in hotels. ‘Nobody’s going to separate me from my own woman,’ he said, drying his hands and eyeing her with proud possessiveness while she dried hers; their basins stood side by side on the brown mottled marble of the washstand. ‘Are they,’ he said, as she dried in silence.

  ‘No,’ said Lucy.

  ‘How’s the head?’ he said.

  ‘Better,’ she said.

  ‘Who’s got a forgiving husband?’ he said.

  ‘I have,’ she said.

  ‘Smile at me,’ he said.

  She smiled at him.

  At dinner it was Vera who smiled, her changeless little strangled smile, with her eyes on Lucy. Lucy’s seat had its back to Vera, but she knew she had only to turn her head to see her eyes fixed on her, smiling. No one else smiled; only Vera.

  Lucy bent her head over her plate, trying to escape the unshaded light that beat down on her eyes, sore with crying, and hurt. In front of her was the bowl of kingcups, the birthday flowers. Just behind Wemyss stood Chesterton, in an attitude of strained attention. Dimly through Lucy’s head floated thoughts: Seeing that Everard invariably spent his birthdays at The Willows, on that day last year at that hour Vera was sitting where she, Lucy, now was, with the kingcups glistening in front of her, and Everard tucking his table napkin into his waistcoat, and Chesterton waiting till he was quite ready to take the cover off the soup; just as Lucy was seeing these things this year Vera saw them last year; Vera still had three months of life ahead of her then, three more months of dinners, and Chesterton, and Everard tucking in his napkin. How queer. What a dream it all was. On that last of his birthdays at which Vera would ever be present, did any thought of his next birthday cross her mind? How strange it would have seemed to her if she could have seen ahead, and seen her, Lucy, sitting in her chair. The same chair; everything just the same; except the wife. ‘Souvent femme varie,’ floated vaguely across her tired brain. She ate her soup sitting all crooked with fatigue ... life was exactly like a dream....

  Wemyss, absorbed in the scrutiny of his food and the behaviour of Chester
ton, had no time to notice anything Lucy might be doing. It was the rule that Chesterton, at meals, should not for an instant leave the room. The furthest she was allowed was a door in the dark corner opposite the door into the hall, through which at intervals Lizzie’s arm thrust dishes. It was the rule that Lizzie shouldn’t come into the room, but, stationary on the other side of this door, her function was to thrust dishes through it; and to her from the kitchen, pattering ceaselessly to and fro, came the tweeny bringing the dishes. This had all been thought out and arranged very carefully years ago by Wemyss, and ought to have worked without a hitch; but sometimes there were hitches, and Lizzie’s arm was a minute late thrusting in a dish. When this happened Chesterton, kept waiting and conscious of Wemyss enormously waiting at the end of the table, would put her head round the door and hiss at Lizzie, who then hurried to the kitchen and hissed at the tweeny, who for her part didn’t dare hiss at the cook.

  To-night, however, nothing happened that was not perfect. From the way Chesterton had behaved about the tea, and the way Lizzie had behaved about the window, Wemyss could see that during his four weeks’ absence his household had been getting out of hand, and he was therefore more watchful than ever, determined to pass nothing over. On this occasion he watched in vain. Things went smoothly from start to finish. The tweeny ran, Lizzie thrust, Chesterton deposited, dead on time. Every dish was hot and punctual, or cold and punctual, according to what was expected of it; and Wemyss going out of the dining-room at the end, holding Lucy by the arm, couldn’t but feel he had dined very well. Perhaps, though, his father’s photograph hadn’t been dusted, — it would be just like them to have disregarded his instructions. He went back to look, and Lucy, since he was holding her by the arm, went too. No, they had even done that; and there was nothing further to be said except, with great sternness to Chesterton, eyeing her threateningly, ‘Coffee at once.’