Love Child

by Edith Olivier

  Chapter Ten

  They drove every day in the new motor. The chauffeur was a steady man who appeared completely to understand Miss Bodenham’s nervous disposition, and she could not help feeling at ease when he drove them about the country roads at the quiet pace of fifteen miles an hour. Agatha was glad to observe, too, that he shared her lack of confidence in Clarissa’s driving powers, and he agreed that the young lady must have a good many more lessons before she could be trusted to take control of the car. But Clarissa loved learning for its own sake, and she really would have been afraid to drive alone. So she sat contentedly by Jenkins (as the chauffeur most surprisingly turned out to be called), and she only attempted to take the wheel when she saw the road very long and straight and empty before them.

  It was true, as Clarissa had foretold, that on these excursions, they were happier than they had ever been before. Everything that happened to them fell into place as a scene in their old game of fancy, but they found that real life had a far more fertile imagination than theirs had ever been. Things were constantly happening which they would never have thought of inventing. Their sedate drives were full of surprises. They had never laughed so much in all their lives as they did when they found themselves in Devizes on a market day, watching pigs being driven through a crowd of country people, and then had luncheon in the inn among farmers, who talked loudly and very racily. This was indeed seeing life, and a side of life which they had never pictured in their play in Miss Bodenham’s drawing room.

  But Agatha could not help feeling rather annoyed when Mrs. Burns told her that David was to be with them for five months. That was the length of his leave from the Sudan, and as his father, the Admiral, was in China, he was to make his headquarters with his uncle and aunt. Mrs. Burns hoped that Miss Bodenham would allow Clarissa to see as much as possible of her young people: life in the country was usually so very quiet, and it was an opportunity to have this young cousin with them.

  David insisted on marking out a tennis court, not only at the Rectory, where one generally appeared in the summer, but also on Miss Bodenham’s soft and mossy lawn.

  Agatha could hardly believe it when Clarissa asked to be allowed to buy a racket so that she could learn to play tennis. She had never thought of such a thing before, though Kitty had often asked her to come to the Rectory in the morning to play singles with her. Games had bored Clarissa as much as they bored Agatha, but this summer she suddenly felt the desire to throw herself into all sorts of unwonted activities—to try to do things for the mere delight of doing. And although she had no more actual gift for tennis than she had for driving a motor-car, yet she showed a natural gift for learning, or rather, for being taught, for she was not a quick learner, only an attentive pupil.

  Agatha watched the tennis lessons. Clarissa stood in the court, listening with eyes and lips, as well as with ears, to the instructions of her two teachers. A little crinkled frown appeared at the top of her nose, and her face wore a puzzled, absorbed look. With the utmost docility, she closed her fingers one after the other upon the handle of her racket, in search of the correct grip; she planted her feet exactly as she was told, first carefully studying the example, and then bending over her own feet, and very deliberately placing them in the exact position, she swung the racket with the prescribed movement of the body. And a far more exquisite swaying movement it was than that of either of her teachers; but she did not often hit the ball, and she hardly ever hit it over the net.

  Exasperated as Agatha was by the constant society of David and Kitty, she felt bound to admit that it was very kind of them to take so much trouble to teach Clarissa, as the lessons must interfere very much with their own games. Then one day she saw suddenly that it was not kindness at all. It was something else—something which she had never thought of as a possibility.

  Love.

  Clarissa never could learn the right way to hold her racket. She held it lightly as if it were a wooden spoon with which she was whipping cream, or a feather broom dusting the ornaments. She tried to copy what David did, but as soon as she put one finger in the right position, she moved all the others, and the racket again slipped about uncertainly. David came round the net, and taking Clarissa’s hand under his own, he put her fingers one after the other into place, and held them there. It was then that Agatha, sitting beside the court, suddenly saw his face. At the touch of Clarissa’s hand, something stirred in him and about him. It was indefinable—like the vibration of the air seen across a field on a hot summer’s day. It changed him. Agatha knew that in that moment he was aware only of Clarissa: he had forgotten the game of tennis.

  Agatha was not observant. She very seldom saw anything till it was pointed out. But this she saw more quickly than anyone else could possibly have divined it. She was immediately aware of an emotion in David which was akin to her own. He, too, wanted to possess Clarissa. Agatha hated him.

  The colour rushed into David’s cheeks, and at the same moment it left Agatha’s. She felt as if he had drawn it forcibly from her.

  She looked at Clarissa, agonized to see how she bore herself in the suddenly tense atmosphere, and she saw that she was as unmoved by it as was the tennis racket, in which she was still entirely absorbed. It was unbelievable that anyone could be so completely unconscious of the fact that she was in the centre of a whirlwind. That was how it looked to Agatha.

  But as David took his hand away, Clarissa was only looking at her own fingers as they clutched the racket. She was absorbed in the effort not to move them. She wanted to impress upon her memory, and, if only she could upon the very handle of the racket itself, the exact position in which her hand was now clenched.

  “Oh, Kitty, serve a ball quickly,” she called. “I want to hit it now, when I’ve got the racket exactly right at last.”

  For Kitty, too, nothing had happened outside the sphere of racket and ball.

  She served. Clarissa missed the ball.

  “Am I still holding it right?” she asked in urgent tones, holding her racket across the net, to be inspected by David, who had gone back to the opposite court.

  Agatha saw that he had the grace to be embarrassed. He obviously couldn’t tell whether Clarissa was right or not.

  Agatha got up quickly.

  “It is getting late,” she said. “Clarissa, we must come indoors and get ready for dinner.”

  A swift glance passed between her and David. They knew that they were antagonists.

  Thinking it over in the evening after dinner, while Clarissa was very serenely and delicately lifting specimens of pressed flowers with a pair of tweezers and putting them into her book, Agatha felt rather foolish. As she tried to remember it, she realized that literally nothing had happened. She looked at Clarissa, and knew that for her there had been a tennis lesson and nothing more. What was it then that had sent Agatha into such a fever? Merely a fancied expression which had passed over a face, an expression which now she could not recall. No word had been spoken. Nothing had happened which had not probably happened many times before on the tennis court.

  And yet she knew that she was not mistaken, and the memory of the silent look which she and David had exchanged when they parted assured her that he too knew that, though no no single thing had changed, yet the whole world was changed—the world in which Clarissa moved, calm and unconscious, herself alone unchanged.

  Agatha remembered that she had somewhere read that in the very centre of the wildest typhoon there is a space of perfect stillness, round which the whirlwind rages. In some such crystal globe of peace, she seemed to see Clarissa—aloof—apart—while the storm tossed Agatha’s soul and David’s. Fiercely they would fight for her, she all the while so beautifully unconscious of the battle.

  It seemed impossible the next day to believe that things could go on as if nothinig had happened, but everything was as usual. Agatha and Clarissa drove in the morning, and after luncheon there was tennis, and much chattering and conversation between the games. Agatha sat stiffly by, her
eye fixed on David, looking like a very awkward and inexperienced spy. She most obviously kept him under supervision, and he was as obviously aware of this. It made them both ill at ease.

  David felt it so much that he was driven to all sorts of expedients to try to get Clarissa out of Miss Bodenham’s sight, and away somewhere with him, while Agatha was equally bent on circumventing his tactics. Silently they played their game. Agatha won, for she had Clarissa as an unconscious partner. She didn’t at all want to be carried off by David, and had no wish for a tête-à-tête; but Agatha found the struggle terribly exhausting, and the next day she was in bed with a sick headache. Clarissa wouldn’t leave her. She sat by her all day, bathing her forehead with eau-de-Cologne, and soothing her by the touch of her always cool fingers. Agatha was at peace. The headache vanished, but she wouldn’t confess it, feeling safe so long as she had Clarissa with her, behind the closed Venetian blinds of her bedroom.

  After that, she often had recourse to an artifice which made her secretly ashamed. Keeping David and Clarissa apart became a mania with her, and it was a terrible strain. Every two or three days she pretended to have headaches, and thus kept Clarissa to herself. These days were breathing spaces which enabled her to live.

  David resented them keenly.

  “It is intolerable,” he said to Mrs. Burns. “ Clarissa spends half her life shut up in a dark room, mopping that old maniac’s head with a wet rag. It isn’t safe. It isn’t decent. It isn’t healthy.”

  Mrs. Burns laughed. Like Agatha, she had her suspicions, but they did not perturb her. She thought a love affair at that age was perfectly natural, and led to nothing.

  Chapter Eleven

  Agatha thought she liked picnics, and in the long winter evenings she often played at going to them with Clarissa. She felt rather differently about them in the summer, preferring them at a distance, like most other things. She often remarked that in this English climate (which she always spoke of as if she had personally compared it with all the other climates of the globe) there are really very few days when it is either pleasant or safe to sit out on the grass to have tea. In all her life, she had only done this three or four times, and had then disliked it quite actively, but in conversation she liked to say how much she enjoyed an alfresco meal.

  Mr. Burns was fond of archaeology, and he thought that the presence of two motor-cars in the village was an opportunity for him to indulge in his hobby, so he proposed that they should all join in an expedition to the ruins of an interesting medieval castle some miles away, and have tea there. Agatha agreed that it would be a delightful thing to do some day, and if she had had her way, the matter would have rested there, a pleasant prospect, but a distant one, like a romantic view seen from afar.

  But since David’s arrival, the Burns family never could let well alone, and on the very next fine day which fell far enough from a Sunday for the Rector to feel free from the weight of an approaching sermon, he appeared soon after breakfast, and suggested starting that afternoon. There was no valid reason against it, and Agatha consented.

  The morning was a busy one, collecting things and packing them into the motor. Agatha took many rugs, mackintoshes, cushions, furs, and scarves: two camp stools, two white parasols lined with green, as well as a kettle and baskets of food. She prepared for any vagaries of the weather, and she wore goloshes, spectacles of tinted glass, and a large blue veil tied over her hat.

  It was a beautiful drive, over downs where peewits turned and tossed overhead, and where long lines of farm horses moved against the large still curve of the skyline. Clarissa loved these wide spaces: she sat silent, staring. Agatha just watched her, she wanted no more distant horizon.

  The castle was a fine ruin which had been partly demolished by Cromwell’s men, but retained much of its primitive character—a high tower which could be scaled by a half-ruined stairway; a narrow footway round the ramparts, from which there was a marvellous view of the country; and many rooms and passages, roofless, open to the sky. It stood in a wide space of green turf, with a few fine trees about it, and wooded slopes fell from its walls to a lake, beyond which could be seen the eighteenth-century house which had been built to replace the old castle.

  David at once went down to the lake to see whether he could find a boat, for he had quickly decided that this would be a good way of getting Clarissa away from Miss Bodenham. Clarissa and Kitty walked about the ruins, while the three elders began to unpack the baskets. Agatha enjoyed this. She liked setting out the cups and saucers, and fussing over laying down rugs and shawls for people to sit upon.

  David soon came back, asking for the girls, and saying he had hired a boat.

  Agatha saw his purpose, and she determined to frustrate it. With consummate guile, she declared that she herself enjoyed boating beyond anything in the world, and she said she must go too, for she liked nothing so much as a row on the water.

  David was obviously much disconcerted. This was a passenger of whom he had never thought, but he could only say that, of course, he hoped Miss Bodenham would accompany them.

  The Rector and Mrs. Burns said that they preferred terra firma, and poor Agatha wished that she had been able to admit how completely she shared their taste, but she knew that she had no peace of mind when David and Clarrisa were together unless she made one of the party. She had no confidence in Kitty as a chaperone.

  They went to the lake, and looked at the boat. It was small, and not particularly clean. Agatha wondered if, after all, she would dare to face the voyage.

  “It doesn’t look very safe. Do you think you can really manage it?” she said to David, her heart beating uneasily.

  Mr. Burns assured her that David had been brought up among sailors, and could be relied on to navigate any craft in any water.

  “You mustn’t come if you feel nervous, Miss Bodenham,” said David cordially.

  “I am not nervous,” Agatha answered, with a complete lack of truth, “and I should be most disappointed at missing my row.”

  She was determined to maintain her reputation as an ardent lover of boating, so that no one should suspect her real reason for embarking on this alarming and unpleasant expedition.

  “Where are the girls all this time?” asked Mrs. Burns, and as she spoke, Clarissa and Kitty were seen approaching from the direction of the Castle.

  “Are you and David going for a row?” Clarissa said to Agatha, in some surprise.”

  “You are coming, too, of course,” David said quickly.

  But Clarissa wouldn’t think of it. She was frightened of the water, and didn’t mind saying so. Nothing would induce her to change her mind. She was quite firm.

  “Kitty and I will watch you from the bank,” she said.

  David and Agatha declared simultaneously that they would not dream of going without her. Neither of them had thought of this contingency.

  “Oh, you must go,” Clarissa answered. “ Please do. I couldn’t possibly prevent your having a row just because I’m so stupid as to be frightened myself. It would make me miserable.”

  And she looked so.

  “No. Miss Bodenham must not miss her row,” the Rector said jovially. “You enjoy it so much, and I expect you don’t often have the chance of going out with such a jolly young waterman as this.”

  David and Agatha felt like puppets. They found themselves placed in the boat, and with faces of hardly concealed dismay, they set out on their voyage.

  Clarissa threw herself down on the grass beside the lake, and began to show Kitty how to weave a little basket from the reeds which grew at the water’s, edge. Agatha had taught her how to do this. It was a craft she had learnt from her nursery maid, and now across the water she could catch the curious tones of Clarissa’s small voice, and she knew exactly what she was saying without actually hearing the words. She heard her laugh at Kitty’s clumsiness, and she could tell just how the baskets were growing—Clarissa’s swiftly into shape, and Kitty’s becoming a formless tangle.

  David
could not follow the talk, but he took such a course that, while Agatha in the stern of the boat had her back to the girls most of the time, he could watch Clarissa as he rowed. She was lying full length on the grass, leaning on her elbows, and holding up the little rush basket on a level with her eyes. Her white hands caught the light as she rapidly twisted the rushes, passing them in and out of each other with a sure touch. Then she swung herself round to see what Kitty was doing, and both the girls laughed at the muddle she had made. A moment later, Clarissa had run down to the waterside to pick some more rushes. She stood, pale and nymph-like, in the dwarf forest of green sword-like reeds, and then she moved through them with a wading motion, for they grew so thickly that they impeded her like water as she reached for the tall likely rushes which suited her purpose.

  The two in the boat completely ignored each other. David rowed silently, his eyes fixed on Clarissa: Agatha sat still, listening to her. Though she had refused to accompany them, she was still the solitary companion of each. The row lasted about twenty minutes, and they hardly exchanged a word throughout that time, but each thanked the other when they got back to land.

  Clarissa helped Agatha to land with real relief. Agatha’s desire to go on to the lake had surprised her very much, and had made her vaguely uneasy. She was quite sure that in her heart of hearts Agatha was not happy in the boat, and she was aware of something which she could not understand in the plan of the voyage altogether. She was puzzled and disturbed.