I admit that for a moment I looked at Mr. Somervell rather old-fashioned. Was he wishing some past fancy of his off on me?
“She hasn’t got a character because the only person who could give her one is in an asylum. She was with my wife for six years.” His tone asked for no sympathy, and I gave him none.
I said after a pause, “She’s quite young, then?”
“Like you — in her thirties, I suppose ... I had better tell you the whole thing. It may bore you, but I think it will interest you in Susan.”
“Just a moment.” I switched off the top light and put on the standard, twitching the shade down so that the light was not in his eyes. Then I filled his glass again and sat down quietly, on the opposite side of the hearth. I felt the room intimate and homely again — as he had made it on his last visit — and my instinct told me that he was about to take me into his confidence: a thing which pleases any woman, if she likes the man.
“My wife, Cynthia,” said Mr. Somervell, “was one of the loveliest creatures you ever saw. When I met her she was only seventeen, and we were married soon after her eighteenth birthday. She was one of the Bredons; you know the family.”
I knew of them — connections of Mrs. Thesiger’s: “the batty Bredons,” I had heard her call them.
“Cynthia inherited most of their oddity; even as a young girl she was considered very eccentric, but I saw in her eccentricities only the protest of a violent and original nature against conventional environment. It isn’t unusual, in any case, to have very strong likes and dislikes, although it was, perhaps, a little odd to give such marked expression to them as Cynthia did. It only amused me and roused my admiration for her courage. She was absolutely indifferent to public opinion; she would fly into violent passions and accuse people of impossible things; but from the hour we were engaged she was never anything but adorable to me — for a great many years.”
I found myself holding my breath, for although I could not bear reading I was as fond as a child of “a story,” and I could already see Lady Cynthia and the wild waywardness with which she had captivated Mr. Somervell.
“One of the troubles we had after our marriage was in the matter of Cynthia’s maids. One after another they left, complaining of the way she treated them; and there was always the same scene, of Cynthia weeping and saying, ‘But how can I help it, when I hate them so?’
“We were staying with my people, down in the country, when she took one of her violent fancies to the daughter of a local baker, and nothing would do but Susan must become her maid. Everyone tried to dissuade her — partly because it was very doubtful whether the baker would allow his daughter to become a servant, and also because it was ridiculous that anyone so fashionable and fastidious as Cynthia should have for her maid a girl who had no training whatever. We all felt sure there would only be another devastating scene, and bad feeling in the village.
“But we had reckoned without Susan. The girl had great character and a will of hui own. When at last, through Cynthia’s pleading, I went, very unwillingly, to sec the father, I met, as I had expected, a rebuff. They had not educated the girl to make her into a lady’s maid. I returned to report my failure, and there was the inevitable outburst: in the middle of which the door opened, and a servant came in to say that Miss Clayborne was here, if Lady Cynthia would care to see her.
“I left the pair of them together, and when I came back Cynthia was radiant and everything was settled.
“I don’t pretend to know how Susan learned her business. Cynthia was not patient; but I seldom heard a complaint, and as time went on we began to notice that in Cynthia’s moods of violence, which became more and more frequent, the one person who could deal with her was Susan. She had a quiet sort of self-respecting firmness — well, you will see for yourself.
“The rest of the story hardly concerns you, Bell, but we may as well get it over.”
He took his cigar case out of his pocket and began to light a cigar in the careful fashion which was characteristic of him. After piercing the end he struck a match and used it to stroke the cigar which he held in his left hand, rolling it gently in his fingers until all the outer leaves were darkened for about two inches above the tip. He then held the match to the end until it was smoldering, when he placed it between his lips — not to draw, but to puff once, deeply, through. Then he threw the match away and began to smoke in the usual fashion. It was a ritual which quite fascinated me and which I never forgot.
“You don’t go in for this vice?” He was joking.
I shook my head, thinking of Flora and her Henry Clays.
“Not yet; it’s an extravagance I’m saving for — later.”
He instantly offered me his case, which I waved away.
“Go on with your story.”
“There’s not much more. Cynthia left me about three years later. I didn’t divorce her because, to be candid, I didn’t want to give up my right to look after her. I was afraid of ... what actually happened. I had a cable from Nassau, to say she had gone out of her mind, and went out to fetch her home. Susan and I managed it together — Susan, of course, had gone with her. We looked after her as long as we could, until it became — impossible.”
“And what happened to Susan?”
“Oh, Susan went back to the village, where she has been, I’m afraid, very unhappy. They had heard something about Cynthia — certainly not from Susan; one never knows how these things get round — and Susan was made to pay for her loyalty. She was supposed to have ‘touched pitch’ and therefore been contaminated: you know what villagers are.” Mr. Somervell laughed shortly. “Of course she could have saved her credit by blackening Cynthia; but Susan is the sort who would go to the stake first ... It just happened to strike me that she was the kind of person you were looking for,” he ended.
“Yes; but am I the kind of person Susan is looking for? If she is used to grand houses and a staff of servants she isn’t likely to settle down as a working housekeeper in a little place like this.”
“Yes, she is. I told you she has some education, and she is very independent. She will like the kind of responsibility you give her, and she will be very good for Kathleen and Jo; she is the eldest of a large family, fond of children, and, I should think, a disciplinarian when it’s necessary. She showed her steadiness and common sense with Cynthia, and I think you and she would get on together and respect each other’s points of view.”
“Well,” I said a little doubtfully, “she might at least come for the Christmas holidays and see how she likes it.”
I could hardly find words to thank Mr. Somervell. I felt instinctively that he had found the solution of my worst problem. I wished too that I could find some way of expressing my sympathy for his tragedy, but I was always poor at putting my feelings into words, especially when I am touched, as his story had touched me. I managed to ask how Lady Cynthia was now.
“We see very little of each other. I sometimes think it would be wiser if I stopped going. It disturbs her and does neither of us any good. One should remember only — beauty.”
A thought came into my mind and I picked up a flat parcel which was lying on the table.
“Would you like to see these? They’re photographs of the girls.
I had them done last holidays, but they only came today.” I took them out of the envelope “They’ve been a long time, haven’t they? But they’re all busy doing war photographs.”
Mr. Somervell took them in his hand, and I went over and altered the shade of the lamp, so that he could see better.
“What a perfectly exquisite child.”
“Jo? She’s a bonny little thing, but I don’t know that I’d call her exquisite.” I was pleased all the same.
“Is that Jo?” He turned the photograph round toward me, and I must say I was surprised to see it was Kathleen.
“Why, no, that’s the elder one. Do you think she’s pretty?”
“Not a bit.” He smiled, as he always did when he knew he was puzzling
me. “Take care, Bell! You’ve got a femme fatale here if you don’t look out.”
“It’s the way the photograph’s taken.” I had another look and was relieved to find he was joking. “I don’t care for the pose much; it’s a bit affected, isn’t it? But the photographer would have it that way. Here’s a full-length, and one of both of them sitting down; that’s the best likeness, really.”
But Mr. Somervell was still looking at the head of Kathleen which I did not like. I had had them both taken in their dancing frocks — white tarlatan skirts and satin bodices with puffed sleeves: quite sweet and fairylike. But the child was turned with her back to the camera, and the satin was pushed down off her shoulders, so that she looked nude. The man had made her look sideways, so they got only her profile, and as Kathleen’s eyes were her best point it was quite a pity. Instead of looking up brightly, she had her eyelids down and some trick of the lights threw a great shadow on them, so that she looked as if she’d got a black eye. Her mouth was too big, and her neck looked like a matchstick, with all her hair pulled round on the far side of her face and hanging down like a piece of curtain. Her hair, as a matter of fact, came out better than the rest; it was rather straight, except for the big wave at the end, but it really did look like spun silk, well brushed, with lots of light in it.
Mr. Somervell said, “Well, I’ve always wondered what La Belle Dame Sans Merci looked like; and now I know.”
I did not take it in at the time, but as it happened Kathleen was chosen to recite that very poem at the school Speech Day, and I must say that the description about “Her hair was long, her foot was light, And her eyes were wild” was a bit too near my Katie for me to appreciate it.
Then Mr. Somervell was laughing at Jo’s comical little mug, and he made a date there and then to take the pair of them to Where the Rainbow Ends. He left soon afterward, but he picked up Kathleen’s photograph again before he left and looked at it as if he was trying to learn it by heart. I don’t know why, but it did not quite please me; the child was not as good-looking as all that.
Susan Clayborne came up to see me the following week end, and I saw at a glance that Mr. Somervell’s judgment was right. She must have been about my age, but she looked both older and younger, if you know what I mean: older because she did not trouble to set herself off to advantage, which was odd in one who had been maid to a fashionable lady, and younger because there was a sort of childlike thing about her which, in the circumstances, was equally odd. After all, she had accompanied her mistress when Lady Cynthia ran away with her lover. But this, as I was to discover, was in her character. Her duty was to Lady Cynthia, who was dependent on her, and it was no part of her business to question morals. She was rather like an old-fashioned Dutch doll, bosomy, with a round, red face and wide-open, dark eyes. Her voice was very nice and she pronounced her words like a lady — which was important for the girls.
She liked cooking and looking after children. When I showed her the kitchen she made no fuss about its being in the basement but remarked it was nice and convenient. She had not used a gas stove but could learn. She liked the room which was to be her bedroom-one of the two attics which I had not yet furnished — and said she had a few things of her own which she would like to put into it if I agreed: which I did readily, as it not only saved me money but suggested that Susan was prepared to settle down. We fixed the matter of wages, and I just got her out of the house before George arrived — which I felt was as well, as it appeared that Susan regarded me as quite the lady (an opinion she modified later but made no difference except to call me “Mrs. Timson” instead of “madam,” which was all the same to me), and dear old George in his bowler and chrysanthemum did not quite fit into the picture of the household she had gathered up to the moment.
I welcomed George warmly, and we had a good old-fashioned talk, while I showed him over the house, which he examined from basement to attic, not missing a tin tack. It was really like the old times, only better. Oddly enough, now I had Mr. Somervell for a friend, I found it much easier to be myself with George. It must have been the awful, nervy feeling of being dependent on George for my only masculine company that got me down and made me irritable each time he came near me. I gave him a real sit-down tea, with kippers and marmalade (none of the elegant scones I made for Mr. Somervell), Sally Lunn, bun loaf, and a madeira cake: just George’s style. And I fell back naturally into my old rollicking habits and cracked silly jokes and made a regular orgy of it! It was lovely — like getting into a dressing gown and an old pair of bedroom slippers at the end of the day. I wondered once or twice what I would do if the bell rang, and it was Mr. Somervell, paying an unexpected call; then I knew that although there might be a minute or two’s awkwardness it would all be jolly in the end, for Mr. Somervell was one of the real people who take you as they find you, and he would be the first to appreciate George when he got to know him — as, later, he was bound to do.
I believe there were tears in George’s silly old eyes when he wished me good night. He stood in the hall, holding his hat and my hand, and smiling down at me.
“I’m proud of you, Bell. You’re a wonderful woman — and I hope the girls will see it for themselves one day.”
“You old cuckoo — you!” I said, and I kissed George, for the very first time. He turned as red as a Victoria plum, and, honestly, I thought he would fall down the steps. I felt as gay as a bird, George’s happiness having made me happy, and I mixed myself a whisky and soda and lit a cigarette to see me over the washing up. For once I was seeing the future, all neat and solid and secure, not as a sort of gamble, with the dice loaded on the wrong side.
People were starting to make plans for Christmas, and several of my patients said they would hold over their treatments until after the holidays. A good many had children coming home from boarding school, and I mentioned the girls and said my own time would be pretty full too. I got one or two invitations for them, and realized this would mean new frocks and some sort of hospitality in return; for I did not want to put the girls in a position of accepting favors and giving nothing back. I had to sweeten the bank (a few lines from the manager had just informed me I was overdrawn forty pounds), pay off a lot of installments on the furniture, settle a big account for Kathleen’s schooling, which had somehow fallen behind — a thing I had never allowed to happen when the girls were both at the Lodge, get ready to meet my income tax, and somehow scare up some ready cash to see us over the holidays. So the prospect was not exactly rosy: especially as Alice had written that the Yorkshire hospital was closing down and she hoped to be back in town early in the New Year, which meant a loss of patients, as I was bound to hand over the ones I had been “locuming” for her. And yet — it shows the sort of fool I was — I was a long way from being downhearted. Something told me it would all dry straight so long as I kept my head and did not make the fatal mistake of playing for safety. “Living dangerously” had become second nature to me, and I flattered myself I had learned the art of when to plunge and when to hug the bank.
I kept a little calendar on the wall by my bed and crossed off a day every morning. On the nineteenth of December I would have the girls home — really home — at last. I could hardly keep out of their bedroom that I had got ready as a surprise for them, with the peach-colored down quilts on their beds and the lamb’s-wool rugs on the floor; I could imagine Jo’s squeal and Kathleen’s gasp, and how we would fall over each other, opening every cupboard and drawer and examining each new thing.
PART II – Kathleen Timson
Chapter I
UNDER THE GREEN PAVILIONS of the chestnuts went the Sunday crowds, bearing the mysterious burdens of their adult existence, slowing them down and making them heavy. The breeze sent green lightning of leaves across their faces, and passed, leaving the faces blank, or masks distorted by the grimaces of their conversations; one dismissed them for their sad folly, that had no share in the rustling joy of the morning, in the sun, whose heat on her shoulder blades sent a litt
le shiver of pleasure through Kay’s limbs. Heavenly, heavenly first Sunday of the summer holidays!
She sat with her elbows planted on her knees, her knuckles supporting the small, pointed chin. On either side of her intent face hung the short, grayish-gold curtain of her hair, on which, and across the upper part of her face, like a veil, lay the speckled shadow of a broad rush hat. The pose reminded Richard Somervell of a portrait he had seen in some exhibition of moderns: clumsy in itself, it had all the grave, unconscious grace of youth — silk-covered knees touching, long, fragile legs splaying apart, ending in the narrow, inward-tilted feet; the sort of attitude copied by adult actresses trying to play a juvenile part: disapproved by governesses, teachers of deportment, and all whose duty it is to turn the schoolgirl into a prototype of her sisters in society. “Sit up, child! You’ve got a back like a camel” — one could hear Bell’s voice in protest against this waste of her hard-earned money.
No, the nymph crouched on a green park chair was not within Bell’s vision. Nor, probably, would she approve of the figure hurling a tennis ball with a schoolboy’s overarm movement for the benefit of a leaping bundle of ragged, fawn-colored silk — Jo, with Richard’s spaniel, Flinders; beautiful, tossing movements of child and dog, formalized, made into a pattern by distance. Richard was not the only one who smiled as he watched them — romping, crouching, running, Jo’s brief summer frock blown up her bare, brown, muscular thighs and the silken fringes of Flinders streamlined by his speed.
“A penny, Kay ... ?”
Like quiet water disturbed by the falling of a leaf, he saw the rapt oblivion of her face break into awareness: hands drop, elbows draw in, ankles cross themselves — all without haste — until the metamorphosis was complete, the nymph put off, the well-trained schoolgirl resumed, attentive to her companion. She gave him her sweet and subtle smile, which Richard returned gravely; why, at her age, had Kay that smile? It was, of course, a mere anatomical trick — something to do with heavy eyelids and dark gray eyes and long lashes. Why the hell am I explaining Kay’s smile to myself? he found himself asking irritably.
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