“She’s French,” Delia said suddenly, remembering her manners. “She lives with us.”
The tall thin girl smiled a trifle incredulously.
“Do you like it here?” she asked.
“She rides,” Delia answered for her.
The tall thin girl looked relieved.
“Perhaps you’d like to come and ride with us sometime,” she suggested. “We’ve got three horses need exercising—they’re just eating their heads off. Delia must bring you over to lunch.”
Delia raised herself on her toes and whispered loudly in her companion’s ear.
“She’s our governess,” she said.
The tall thin girl blushed deeply: she realised that she had blundered.
“I … I’ll write to you,” she said vaguely and, her smile fading, she turned away.
It was while Anna was alone that Captain Webb came up to her. He looked very spruce and upright in his dress clothes and there was that shy smile which seemed somehow to be out of place with the closely cropped grey hair. In his buttonhole he was wearing a carnation.
He stood beside her, looking down at his feet and saying nothing. Anna felt sorry for him. He seemed to be so much out of his element somehow.
“Do you like dances?” she asked at last.
Captain Webb cleared his throat.
“Not much in my line,” he replied. “Bit of a duty visit this, you know.”
“But you should dance,” Anna told him. “It would be good for you.”
“Too old,” he said briefly.
Anna paused.
“It is really very difficult trying to carry on a conversation with Englishmen,” she thought.
Captain Webb gave no sign of helping her.
“But you still ride,” she said. “Dancing is no more tiring than riding.”
“Still ride!” Captain Webb repeated, and there was something in his voice that made Anna think that she had offended him. “How old do you think I am?” he asked suddenly.
Anna dropped her eyes: she was aware that as soon as she did so Captain Webb plucked up the courage to raise his.
“I hadn’t really thought,” she answered. “I should say that you were perhaps—perhaps forty.”
“Forty-six,” Captain Webb said firmly. “Neither more, nor less.”
Anna did not reply but stood instead looking at the dancers. Some of the men who had found their wives were now dancing with them. They swung past, these matrons, hot and a little awkward, seeking to recapture in the music something of their vanished youth. Anna began moving her foot so that the toe showed under the hem of her long skirt.
Then the band stopped, and Captain Webb felt safe again.
“Like some claret cup?” he asked. “I’ll go and get it for you?”
Anna shook her head.
“No, thank you,” she said. “I shall just sit here and watch the dancers.”
They stood there in silence for a few moments until the band struck up again. It was a slow waltz, this time specially put on for the older couples. As soon as he heard the first bars Captain Webb bent forward.
“Used to dance this once,” he said. “Didn’t know they still played the thing.”
He drew himself up and began smoothing out his waistcoat. Anna looked at him and saw that he was blushing.
“Like to try it?” he asked at last. “Mind you, I shall have to take things carefully. Never any good at reversing.”
He offered her his arm, and they went through into the ballroom together. Captain Webb carried his head high like a bridegroom.
On the floor, however, his confidence temporarily left him. He held her nervously and seemed afraid that somehow the dancing might bring them too close together. Every mistake he made he covered up with a short dry cough.
“Sorry if I was a bit abrupt that day in the wood,” he said. “Been meaning to apologise.”
“Oh, but it was all my fault,” Anna told him. “I shouldn’t have been there at all.”
They were crossing over the entrance to the ballroom when Lord and Lady Yarde came in. Lord Yarde was the first to see them. He stopped and gripped Lady Yarde’s arm.
“Good Lord,” he said. “Look at Webb.”
Lady Yarde hesitated and then began to apologise.
“Just fancy,” she said. “It’s the first time since Polly died.”
And, as she said it, she felt a sudden lump come into her throat when she remembered Captain Webb’s one romance and how he had been really rather a handsome young man in his late twenties at the time. The pang was only temporary, however, as she could no longer quite remember what Polly had looked like: all that she could recall was that she came from over Sissinghurst way and rode a big bay hunter on the snaffle.
But it was not only Lord Yarde that had seen Anna dancing: Gervase had been studying her down the whole length of the ballroom.
“Who’s the one in black?” he asked at length. “The one with the hair!”
There was no one there who knew her.
“I don’t believe those jewels are real,” one of the girls in the group remarked. “I had a look at them as she went past.”
“The hair is,” Gervase answered; and the girl turned away from him, recognising that she had been snubbed. She was very dark herself, and suspected fair hair instinctively.
It was not until Lady Yarde came over to see if his ankle was still hurting that Gervase was able to find out about Anna.
“Oh that,” said Lady Yarde vaguely. “That’s Anna. The new governess. She’s devoted to Delia. Quite worships the child.”
“She’s a damned good dancer,” Gervase answered.
“That’s probably because she’s French,” his mother answered. “Foreigners always pick up that sort of thing more quickly than we do.” She looked down at his bandaged foot and nodded meaningly. “Now don’t try to do anything silly,” she said, “or you may really hurt your ankle. Just you sit there and I’ll bring Mrs. Dyson’s gal over to you. They’ve just taken the Abbey, you know. He’s something in the City.”
But when Lady Yarde and Mrs. Dyson’s gal returned, the band had stopped and the couch was empty. Gervase had got up and had hobbled impressively across to where Anna and Captain Webb were now standing. Captain Webb had taken out his handkerchief and was wiping his forehead vigorously.
“Hello, Webb,” Gervase said. “Won’t you introduce me? Can’t keep your lady friend to yourself all the evening.”
He drew himself up to his full height and squared his shoulders in readiness. He was a little taken aback, therefore, to find that Anna was still looking away from him. And when she turned slowly towards him the steadiness of her gaze embarrassed him.
“As soon as I saw you,” Gervase went on as soon as the introduction was over, “I said to myself that girl’s a damn’ fine dancer.”
He was standing in front of her with one hand on the handle of his walking stick, the other raised to his face twirling the airy ends of his moustache.
“Then you are fond of dancing?” Anna asked.
“Oh, yes,” Gervase answered. “Rather, I mean yes.”
“Why?” he asked himself, “am I behaving like a fool? I’m tongue-tied. I go over to talk to this girl—Delia’s governess—and suddenly can’t think of anything to say. It’s most extraordinary.”
To cover up his confusion, he addressed the next remark to Captain Webb.
“You were stepping it out a bit, weren’t you?” he said. “Saw you going round the room like a two-year-old.”
But he broke off because he saw that Anna’s eyes were fixed on him; they were the steadiest, most unwavering eyes that he had ever seen in a girl—and they disturbed him. When she looked at him, he felt oddly subdued somehow; subdued and a little chastened.
“What about coming over to the buffet,” he asked. “Seems hours since I had anything.”
Captain Webb had given a little bow and started to walk away from them. He seemed a little ruffled over what Gerva
se had just said. As soon as Gervase noticed it, he tried to call him back.
But Captain Webb declined to stop.
“Got to pay my respects,” he said. “Have to ask you to excuse me.”
And he made off, very upright as a soldier should be, and with his head held if anything a little higher in the air than usual.
“Poor sweet,” Anna was thinking. “He was just beginning to enjoy himself. If this creature hadn’t come up to us he would probably have been ready to dance again and might have been really happy. As it is he’s probably regretting that he even danced once. He will be telling himself that it is foolish at his time of life to try and take up the ends where he let go of them.”
“Champagne,” Gervase was saying loudly. “I don’t want claret cup. I want champagne.”
When he had got it, he came back to Anna, and immediately his sense of awkwardness, a strange besetting consciousness of being a very young man in the presence of a pretty woman came over him again.
“I say,” he began, “I hope you won’t mind sitting this one out with me? I ought to have warned you.”
“But of course,” Anna answered. “Your ankle.”
It must have been very hot in the ballroom Gervase, decided; the perspiration was fairly rolling off him. He was as hot as Captain Webb had been without even the excuse of dancing. He began mopping his very smooth, round face.
“I only just heard you’d come here,” he began again.
“I’ve been here nearly three months now,” Anna told him.
“How do you like it?” he asked. “Have they made you comfortable?”
It seemed suddenly a dreadful thing that this girl who was sitting beside him should be shut away in the shabby little sitting-room on the nursery side of the house. It was her place to be in the big hall, in the long drawing-room, where people could see her.
“And do you mean to say that you teach lessons and that sort of thing?” he asked.
“I have just taught Delia the names of all the French kings since Charlemagne,” Anna answered. “But I am such a bad teacher that tomorrow when I ask her she will not be able to remember the name of even one of them.”
Gervase grinned, displaying as he did so the whole double row of his white teeth.
“I like him better when he smiles like that,” Anna thought. “Then you can see how young he really is.”
But the grin had vanished already and, in its place, was the smile that he had cultivated so carefully, the smile that was, he believed, quite irresistible to all women, especially young ones.
“You weren’t always a … governess”—there seemed to him something rather caddish about even uttering the word—“were you?” he asked.
Anna shook her head.
“No,” she said slowly. “I have been a lot of things.”
He bent forward.
“Such as?” he asked.
Anna glanced at him and again those steady blue eyes seemed to destroy something inside him.
“Damn it,” he told himself, “I’m feeling nervous again. Nervous about absolutely nothing.”
And it was quite clear that she did not intend to tell him.
“Isn’t that the Lancers?” she asked instead.
“That’s the Lancers all right,” he said. He placed his foot on the ground as if to test it, and it gave a hot twinge of pain as he did so. “But you are going to tell me about yourself,” he said.
Anna paused for a moment.
“No, we were talking about the Lancers,” she answered. “It is an English dance. We haven’t got anything quite like it where I come from.”
Gervase did not reply immediately.
“I suppose I can’t expect her to blurt out everything straight away,” he consoled himself. “She’s probably had an unhappy love affair or something, and she doesn’t want to be reminded of it.”
And Anna seemed to him in consequence to be surrounded by a halo of delicious mystery. All the other girls, even the entrancing Diana who was dancing with someone else at this moment, now seemed too simple, too innocent, to be interesting. It was as though suddenly he had outgrown the lot of them.
“But confound it,” he said to himself, “I can’t sit here all the evening saying nothing: I’ve got to do something.”
He put his foot to the ground once more and rested his weight on it. It still felt as though his whole ankle was on fire, and he winced. But leaning forward he offered Anna his arm.
“Let’s dance this one,” he said.
“But your ankle,” Anna protested.
“Damn my ankle,” Gervase answered.
And he had her in his arms.
It was two o’clock now; the last of the carriages had creaked off down the drive and Tilliards was silent again. It seemed more silent than Anna could ever remember it. When the hour had struck she could hear the clocks all over the house chiming.
She was lying with her hands clasped under her head staring up at the ceiling: she had Iain like that ever since she had got into bed.
“Why do I always do foolish things?” she asked herself. “Why did I have to let it happen? At first I was sensible and tried to stop him; and then … then I suppose I encouraged him. I let him go on dancing. And now Lady Yarde is angry with me. It is not as if I even liked dancing with him.”
She closed her eyes for a moment and saw him very distinctly: his red shining face, the head of curls, the light ambitious moustache, the magnificent teeth, the pendulous Yarde nose; and over all the cultivated social smile that kept supplanting the healthy grin that was so entirely natural there.
“He will marry one of those pretty girls with brown hair and thick ankles and have a lot of babies by her and make her very unhappy because he is so unfaithful,” she went on.
But even as she was thinking about him, she saw another face instead of his, the tanned serious face of Captain Webb.
“I wish he’d come back after he left us,” she told herself. “He’s such a nice reliable sort of man.”
And with that thought she fell asleep.
Chapter. XLII
I
In the end Lady Yarde forgave her—forgave her for having made Gervase dance the Lancers at his own party. But the act of forgiveness did not come easily. It succeeded a period of tears, headaches, recriminations. But when the moment of pardon finally came, Lady Yarde was magnanimous.
“I can see now that it wasn’t exactly your fault, my dear,” she said weakly. “Gervase is like that. He’s headstrong and impulsive just like his father. There’s no stopping him. But I still think you should have tried.”
And to show that Anna was really forgiven Lady Yarde took hold of her arm and patted it.
“But don’t let it happen again,” she said. “That kind of thing only upsets Lord Yarde. And it always recoils on me. Everything does …”
Outside the door, Delia was waiting. She was wearing a strained anxious expression that was oddly like her mother’s.
“Is it all right?” she asked.
“Is what all right?” Anna replied.
Delia put her arms round her and gave her a hug.
“I’m so glad,” she said. “I thought you were for it. Father’s been furious ever since it happened.”
And taking Anna’s hand, Delia led her to the schoolroom.
“I didn’t get any of the books out,” she said. “You see, I wasn’t sure if you were coming.”
But it seemed to Anna, when she came to look back on it, that there could never really have been any question of her being sent away. She had been at Tilliards for nearly three months now, and it was a long time for a Yarde governess. Life went on so smoothly that she could scarcely imagine it different.
There were the same irregular verbs that Delia forgot again as quickly as she learnt them, the same Sunday lunches with Lord Yarde, perhaps a trifle more distant and unfriendly. The same moods and tantrums on the part of Lady Yarde, the same long, solitary walks inside the park.
It wa
s as she returned from one of these walks that she found a letter awaiting her. The stamp on the letter was French: she saw that as soon as she picked it up. And she saw also that the envelope was addressed in large awkward capitals. Beneath the letters there was the faint, imperfectly rubbed out outline of other letters drawn in pencil.
She snatched up the letter and held it to her; there were tears in her eyes as she stood there. And because she knew that it was from Annette, because it was the first letter that Annette had ever written to her, she could not bear at first even to tear open the envelope. Instead, she picked up a pair of nail scissors and, inserting the point, she slit the envelope carefully, delicately, so that she could keep the sacred thing for ever. When she began to read, the laboriousness of the little document with the unevenly spread letters made her weep again.
“Dear Mama,” it ran. “Thank you for the doll. She is called Espérance. I hope you are well. So am I. ‘Every day I pray for you. I have lost a front tooth. I am sending it to you with my love. Your loving daughter in Jesus, Annette.”
That was all there was: simply six crooked, irregular lines. Anna squeezed the envelope open, and peered inside. There in one corner was the tooth, like a small fragment of white coral.
She folded up the letter carefully and put it away so that it should not get crumpled. But the small coral tooth she could not bear to part with. She carried it about with her in a pocket in her handbag and, whenever she had the opportunity, she looked at it. The sight at once overjoyed and saddened her. But what it did more than either was to rekindle the desire to have Annette with her again. It made everything else in life seem empty and unimportant.
Anna Page 47
