Cousin Rosamund

by Rebecca West

  Again the two short men giggled together.

  ‘But there’ll be no bad blood,’ continued Lord Catterock. ‘I can say that,’ he added with a judicial air, ‘for of course it cost me something to be astonished. I would have chosen that that meeting took a very different course. I would, indeed,’ he pronounced, shaking his head. But he sighed and threw off his momentary sadness, though he remained solemn. ‘But it’s no use resenting what you did, and I know it. We’ll all forgive you. It’ll pay us to forgive you. You’re a grand man, and this age belongs to you. You have special qualities, Mr Ganymedios, special qualities that our age respects. You’ve got the world at your feet, and I would give a lot to be you. I am an old man now, and my sun is setting. But yours is rising. A splendid dawn, Mr Ganymedios. Everything is coming your way. In a few years everything you want will be yours.’

  ‘In a few years?’ asked Nestor. ‘But I may have it already, everything I want. In a few years I may have more than everything I want, and that it will be good, it will be very good, it is perhaps that also that I want. But as for everything I want, I got the last piece of it four days ago, when I married the most beautiful woman in the world. Where are you, my dear, where are you, my Rosamund?’

  Rosamund moved slowly forward, her blindish look on her. For just an instant the two men were amazed by her beauty, and by its kind. Then Lord Catterock assumed an expression that again he was hoping would be recognised by everybody in the room as puckish, which he retained while he paid her a string of compliments. He was savouring the joke which comes into being when any tall woman marries a little man. But Lord Branchester’s amazement passed coldly into nothing so kindly as obscene laughter. Yet he must have admired her very much, for he liked women to be good-looking, he had a special fondness for Mary, and Rosamund was the type he liked, for his wife, to whom he was devoted, resembled her. But wherever Rosamund went with Nestor, the more people admired her, the more they would despise her.

  ‘Forgive me if I cannot take my eyes off you,’ Lord Catterock was saying to her, stretching his mouth as if he meant to eat her, ‘but I adore beautiful women and I adore beautiful jewels, and that diamond necklace might even be said to be worthy of its wearer.’

  Poor Rosamund bowed slightly, and Nestor, low at her side, cried out: ‘I was dying, here in this hotel I was dying, I had worse than double pneumonia, I had triple pneumonia, and when the doctor came in every morning he did not say, “You are going to die this evening,” I was so bad that he always said, “Surely you died last night?” and my Rosamund came to me as my nurse, and when she came into the room in her white cap and apron I said to myself, “Pray God she is a good nurse, for if she is a bad nurse I will die, and I want to live, to give her the diamonds, for on her the diamonds would look better than on the velvet case in a jeweller’s window,” and she was a good nurse, and I have given her the diamonds she deserved.’ Lord Branchester’s glance grew harder still. He was not the stuff of which martyrs are made. Being treated with contempt, he found some relief in thinking contemptuously of the good-looking nurse who, when her rich patient grew amorous, could turn the situation to her advantage.

  Of course Rosamund was aware that he was despising her. I saw her grasp his error to its last false implications; and I knew she would grasp all the cruelties and treacheries of this horrible party. She could not be called observant. That would be too sharp a word. Simply she became conscious of everything which happened where she was, as a looking-glass reflects the objects within the angle of reflection. She would know that the people in the room regarded her as having sold herself to a freak of dubious origin and morals, and she would only have to look from face to face to realise what base variations of conduct each, according to his or her baseness, would ascribe to her. She would understand, as even we, with our ignorance of business, had understood, that her husband had committed a fraud, not less repulsively fraudulent because it was within the law, and that there was a depth of fraudulence below that. We did not know what Nestor Ganymedios had done at the shareholders’ meeting, but we were sure that it had not surprised Lord Catterock. He had not even troubled to sound sincere when he talked of his astonishment. He had been conveying to Lord Branchester: ‘The first time I cheated you I got you so thoroughly in my power that now I am cheating you a second time you dare not say a word in protest, and I can make you shake the hand of the little rascal from nowhere that I made my instrument.’ To every fine shade in the judas-colour with which the moment was suffused Rosamund would be as sensitive as Mary and I were sensitive to tones and half-tones and quarter-tones.

  Our eyes met. I knew she knew that I was thinking: ‘No wonder we were not touched by this man when he said he would consider us as his family, for he is a cold-hearted little thief and liar.’ Her eyes left mine. They travelled slowly round the room. She can have seen nothing that she would like. Since the arrival of Lord Catterock and Lord Branchester the atmosphere of the party had been emptied of irony. The guests were now no longer taking out insurance in sly smiles. Their insincerity was not in a pure state. They looked at Nestor Ganymedios with an affected admiration, but felt under no necessity to reveal that it was affected. Now the time would begin when they would press on her without reserve friendship that she knew was worthless.

  It was not fair that Nancy should have had so beautiful a wedding and that Rosamund should know such want as a bride. That night before Nancy’s marriage-day Uncle Len and I had stood in the wealth of light that fell from the winter moon and stars, giving even the graves their share of living glory, and had listened to the waters, pouring over a far-off weir, abundant as the moments of time; in the boiler-room his shovel had searched piously for its due burden among the loose coal, and would have counted no labour too great to serve his dear Nancy; and the inn where all our people slept had lain under the clear night as the centre of a great estate, stretching to the walls of the universe. But this room was hot and full of smoke; and the people who sat in it, half-seen, were a part not of life, but of its scum. I got up and went out into the corridor, and Mary followed me.

  We found Mr Morpurgo walking up and down. He said, ‘I am so glad that your Mamma and Richard Quin are not here to see this.’

  Mary said fiercely, ‘I wish they were, for they could tell us the explanation.’

  We walked the length of the corridor and back, and Mr Morpurgo timidly asked pardon. ‘It is quite some time since your Mamma died. Sometimes I forget what her world is. But, of course, there must be an explanation.’

  Presently Lord Catterock and Lord Branchester came out of the party, and walked past us. ‘There, that wasn’t so bad, was it?’ asked Lord Catterock. He got no reply and he asked again, ‘It wasn’t so hard, was it?’

  ‘No,’ said Lord Branchester.

  Some people barred our way, and we had to stand beside the pair as they were waiting for the lift. ‘He’s an able fellow,’ Lord Catterock was saying, ‘and nothing will get him off the horse now he’s in the saddle. No use crying over spilt milk, you know. We all have to take a knock sometimes, particularly as we get older. Ah, we all lose our grip in time, Branchester. I’ve lost mine. Well do I know it, for I never should have let this little fellow spring this surprise on us.’

  The party was breaking up, other guests came out. We went back, and Nestor took us by both hands, and waved us to a sofa in a corner where Alan and Cordelia and Constance were sitting. We stayed in silence while Nestor said goodbye to his guests. The last to go was Mr Ramponetti. ‘He is my London representative,’ Nestor explained, ‘and if ever any of you should want money suddenly, he will give it to you.’

  ‘And if ever he wants money suddenly,’ said Mr Ramponetti, grinning, ‘he will ask you for it.’

  ‘He is always a very witty man,’ explained Nestor, when he had shut the door on him. ‘A very strange character. His mother was an Albanian. But where is my wife? Where is my Rosamund? Rosamund, Rosamund!’ He ran into the bedroom and led her out by the wrist. ‘St
range girl,’ he said as she sat down in front of a little table covered with used glasses and coffee-cups and ash-trays, on which she bent her eyes with a curious intentness. She was perhaps telling herself that these were emblems of her new kingdom. ‘She was standing by the window, looking out over the river, with not a light in the room. She is poetical, she will like it when I take her to Istanbul and to Syria. The Syrian Riviera is superior to the French. But we have many other things to talk of than tourism.’

  This should have been true. Yet there was a silence before Mary said, ‘Rose and I have been wondering what to give you for a wedding-present.’

  ‘How difficult a question,’ said Nestor, ‘since she will have all. I am giving her everything. What indeed can you give her?’

  ‘Give me your Mamma’s work-box,’ said Rosamund.

  ‘But Mamma never sewed. She could not, any more than we can. It is so bad for the hands.’

  ‘Yet she had a work-box,’ said Rosamund. ‘Her grandmother had given it to her. None of you thought much of it. It was not very pretty. It was mahogany and it had a band around it of inlay, and it stood on brass claws.’

  ‘I remember the thing,’ I said, ‘but it isn’t pretty at all. It’s a clumsy brute, we never had it anywhere where it could be seen. If you want anything that was at Lovegrove you can have anything you choose.’

  ‘I want that work-box,’ said Rosamund. ‘You kept it in the dining-room cupboard, under the shelf where you kept the table linen, and one day when I was helping your Mamma to put away a heavy cloth she took out the box and showed me what was inside. There are little ivory spindles and tiny scissors and a mother-of-pearl needle-case and a tatting-shuttle, and they had not been used for a long time, if ever. And your Mamma said, “When I was a real pianist I could not sew because of my hands, not that I am too busy, but I would like to have not just another life but so many lives that I could spend one being lazy, and could do embroidery and fancy needlework, and could sit for hours using these little things.”’ Rosamund laughed. ‘I like to think of that, of having so many lives that it would be safe to idle one away.’

  ‘I will fill your life so full that you will not want more than one,’ said Nestor, ‘and work, never think of it again. Poor child, I think she does not realise that someone has come to take her away from her nursing, as Alan has taken Cordelia away from whatever it was that she was doing, as someone will come to take Mary and Rose away from their piano-playing.’

  ‘I remember elderly ladies tatting when I was young,’ Constance told the silence in her flat, informative voice. ‘The movement was supposed to show off a pretty hand.’

  ‘All women look beautiful when they are sewing,’ said Nestor. ‘I have six sisters younger than I am, and they are all beautiful, and when my father and my mother had found each other again they had a house in Salonica, and on the flat roof my six sisters would be sitting, and they would all be sewing, and my heart would turn to water, they were so beautiful. Alas, that all this turned out not so good.’

  ‘Why, what happened to them?’ asked Alan, with a laugh that was supposed to show that he was not finding the situation brought on him by his wife’s relatives too much but was actually enjoying it.

  ‘Well, I am rich now, and I think I will always be rich, for I have seen to it that if I fall others will fall with me, and they will rather save me and save themselves. That Lord Catterock has got me, but he will see soon that I too have got him. But in the past I have sometimes been rich and sometimes I have been poor, and the condition of my sisters would not keep pace with my condition. They became marriageable without regard to my purse, and you cannot say to a woman’s figure, “Go back, it is not time to show yourself, lie flat till the rate of exchange is different.” So some of them are married to rich men, which should be so, and some are married to poor men, which should not be so. For poverty is a kind of sickness, one would not choose to be with the sick, and there is also a fitness of things, a beautiful woman should have a rich husband, if she is not a fool, a rich man should have a beautiful wife, if he is not a fool. Such harmony is in immortal souls, as our great Shakespeare says. But this marriage thing with my sisters goes better. The poorest of their husbands is sick, and I think he will die.’ He rose and went and stood in front of a mirror and took a comb from his pocket and combed his hair. ‘If he should die I will arrange it well and will marry her to a rich husband. That will be better, for this poor one is a most miserable man. Thinking of him I had the need to get up and arrange myself to see that I was not as he is. But enough, let us have more champagne and let us finish those caviare tartlets. You eat nothing, Rosamund. Eat something, my beloved, it would not suit you to be thin. You must not lose those fine shoulders.’

  ‘For our present,’ said Alan, ‘we have sent down to the boat a picnic-basket.’

  ‘A beautiful present,’ said Nestor, ‘just the present people should make to other English people. We shall use our picnic-basket much, when we go to our cottage on the Wannsee, for you do not know how fortunate Rosamund is, she will have two homes. I have told you how the great Schaffhausen would build only cathedrals and town halls but not dwelling-houses, they were too small, till he met me, and then be became humble, and built me a house at Dahlem. Well, coming to know me during the building of the house, he became more humble still and built me a cottage by the Wannsee. There I have a boat, a beautiful boat, and I am very skilful in navigation, I could also have been a sea-captain, and I will take Rosamund all the way to the Baltic by the waterways.’ Rosamund’s eyes were perhaps set on the end of that voyage; but indeed whenever he spoke for any length of time she stared into the distance. ‘It will be like Wagner, it will be like Tristan and Isolde,’ Nestor went on, lowering his eyelids and dilating his nostrils, ‘only nobody will die, we will live and we will love, and we will take your picnic-basket, because you gave it to us. It will be dear to us for that reason, so we will never leave it behind, though of course the boat is fitted up to give all food and drink. Have more champagne, my new family, let us finish up the caviare.’

  ‘And what shall I give you, Rosamund?’ said Mr Morpurgo.

  She said, ‘Give me a drawing of yourself.’

  ‘But I am dreadful to look at,’ said poor Mr Morpurgo, humbly.

  ‘No, you are not!’ cried Rosamund and Mary and I; and Rosamund added, ‘You see, it seems that I am to spend my life abroad, in Germany or else in South America. I must have a picture of you to take with me. Not a photograph. Think how Mary and Rose never look quite themselves in a photograph.’

  Mr Morpurgo was about to answer when Nestor exclaimed, ‘How is it possible that I should have forgotten anything so important! No, not a drawing of him. But a portrait of my wife. Is it possible that not till this minute did I think that I must have, it is absolutely necessary, a portrait of my wife, life-size, and that diamond necklace, also life-size. Tell me, Mr Morpurgo, your pictures are worth millions, who can paint this beautiful woman and this beautiful diamond necklace.’

  ‘Rosamund should have been painted by Paulo Veronese,’ said Mr Morpurgo.

  ‘But naturally it must not be someone dead,’ said Nestor. ‘Above all it must be someone alive.’ But he struck himself on the forehead. ‘Yet, dead or alive, who can paint a diamond necklace? I have been many places, and museums I have not spared, and there are many pictures which show beautiful women as they are, but there are no pictures of diamonds which are truly like diamonds - never do you see a picture of a diamond which is so that you would buy a diamond of which it was the picture. How can that be? But why do I ask? It is plain. Artists do not think of diamonds. They are poor, particularly when they are young. When one is poor one does not think of diamonds. I know. I have been very poor, if I had had a coin to bite between my teeth would I have joined the Istanbul Fire Brigade? So I know that when one is poor one does not think of diamonds. There are days and weeks, and in bad times even months, when the thought of diamonds does not cross the mind, though not ye
ars, for the heart of man is full of hope. Only if one is rich can one think of diamonds all the time? Which of you in this room thinks often of diamonds except me and Mr Morpurgo? It would be waste of time. So it is with artists, they do not think of diamonds, they paint what they think of, they think much of women, for the poorest man must think of women all the time, so artists paint women and again women and again women, and they get much practice, and they learn to paint them very well. But they do not think of diamonds, and never they learn how to put them on the canvas as you see them on my wife’s shoulders, not shining blue and green and red but white all the time. To people like me and Mr Morpurgo it is hardly fair.’

  Mary and I laughed, and stopped because our laughter made him look cross. Cordelia’s short upper lip became very short. Because of her training as an art dealer she took art very seriously.

  ‘There is another reason,’ said Mr Morpurgo.

  ‘No, believe me there is not,’ said Nestor. ‘I know. I know. It is only by accident that I am a businessman. All I could have been, musician or poet or sculptor or painter. Oh, how I wept the first time I saw Venice, and it is not unnatural, for among my mother’s brothers were all gifts. So I am very artistic and I understand what is in all artists’ minds.’

  ‘No, there is another reason,’ insisted Mr Morpurgo. He spoke in a bored but firm tone, as an Englishman might if, captured by Moslem enemies, he found himself under some necessity to assert his Christian faith. His ultimate loyalties went to Mamma and his pictures. ‘Painting sets out to do certain things and it leaves everything alone which interferes with its task. It does not represent various sorts of matter which are so arresting in their difference from all other sorts that it would be difficult to harmonise an exact representation of them with other objects in a picture.’