“Sit down, you stupid woman.” He pushed me into a chair. “And stop arguing! You’re going to Orleans if I have you kidnaped and taken there. If you need funds — as I expect you do — I’ll finance you: on a condition. Nobody knows where you’re going, and nobody knows about — this.” He had Dr. Lavigne’s card in his hand; he lifted it up toward his eyes, read it once more, and held it against a bar of the electric stove. It lit, and the little black flake dropped on the tiles of the hearth. He scribbled something on a leaf torn from his notebook and gave it to me; it was the address without the name.
“Is this an Agatha Christie novel or what?” I asked feebly.
“Keep that until you know it by heart, then destroy it. And you’re going to — Paris will do as well as anywhere; you’re going with some eccentric woman you once massaged in London, who’s paying you three times your fee because she likes the shape of your nose!” I knew Remmy’s line of persiflage; he often told me to my face I was a charlatan and only got on by my impudence, but he would not have let me lay a finger on any of his cases unless he had known I was to be trusted.
I thought for a moment, and then I shook my head.
“I’m not buying it, Remmy. What sort of a name do you think I’d get with my old customers if I turned them down for somebody who pays better?”
“Oh, make up your own tale; I don’t doubt you’re a better one at it than I.”
“No. Frankly, I can’t afford it. Whatever I learn from Dr. Lavigne, I can’t make that much extra profit out of it. I’ve already touched top prices; people won’t pay more than I’m asking for my line of work. And I can’t work longer hours; that’s definite. I’m not so young as I was, Remmy.”
“You ... idiot,” said Remmy. “Don’t you understand that if you go to Lavigne you can make as much in an hour as you’re getting now for a fortnight’s work?” I felt myself gape at that. “I don’t suppose he ever made such an offer before; I’ve heard of people offering him thousands to be taught his — method: he’s turned everybody down. And he comes to you! Of course if he’s as sick a man as you say, that helps to explain it. I don’t suppose he intends to carry his secret to the grave — as they put it! If you throw your chance away,” he almost hissed at me, “you don’t deserve to earn another penny in your life.”
Then he told me.
When I got back to Sutton Kathleen met me at the door.
“Susan’s gone to bed, Mummy. She says it’s a headache, but it looks more to me as if she’s been crying.”
This did not sound like Susan. I went up to her room and tried the door, which was locked. She came and opened it at once. She had not gone to bed, as Kathleen said, but she had been lying down, for the covers were rumpled and her hair untidy and unpinned. The curtains were partly drawn, so I could not see much of her face, but I thought it looked swollen and flushed, like after a bout of crying.
“Oh, Mrs. Timson! I didn’t mean you to find me here when you came in — I’m sorry. My clock must have stopped.” It had, on the little night table by her bed. “I’ll get dinner on in a minute.”
“What’s the matter, Susan? What’s happened?”
She hesitated a moment, then she opened one of her drawers and handed me a copy of The Times, folded back at the Births, Marriages, and Deaths columns. I read where she pointed.
SOMERVELL. — On June 11, 1921, after a long illness, Lady Cynthia Somervell, aged 37, daughter of the late Earl and Countess of Bredon, and wife of Richard Somervell, of Verney Court, Huntingdon. Funeral private.
So bald and bare; it caught me by the throat. I thought, They might have given you a bit of verse or a nice little line to show that somebody cared. And then I realized Susan, standing there, as usual, like a graven image, making noises as if she had got a plum stone in her throat — yes, Susan cared. It was funny how one forgot she had been Lady Cynthia’s maid; never a word or a mention since she came to us — except that one time, when I spoke to her about Kathleen. I was not one to ask, and although I sometimes felt a curiosity to know what Mr. Somervell’s wife had been like, I knew Susan better than to invite a snub. Loyal, and silent to the last — that was Susan.
“Well, I’m sure it must be a happy release.” I handed the paper back to her. “You were very fond of her, weren’t you?”
She stood there, looking at me, stiffly.
“They called her wild and wicked, Mrs. Timson. It wasn’t that. When she did wild things it was because she was driven desperate.”
“Was that why she left Mr. Somervell?” I must have sounded surprised, for on the face of things there wasn’t anything about Mr. Somervell to drive a woman to desperation.
“Yes, Mrs. Timson.” She said it in a final sort of way, like a person who has had to hide the truth for many years and is glad to speak it at last. “She was desperate. Desperate with herself.
“She spent her life looking for perfection. Sometimes she thought she had found it, and she was happy like a singing bird! Then something went wrong. She could not bear the wickedness and evil that seemed to gather round her: lies, unkindness, treachery, deceitfulness, malice. She always started by trusting people, and when she found she was mistaken she was like a wild thing, dashing everywhere to escape. Those were terrible times: ruin, ruin everywhere. When they were over she was horrified. Particularly at the harm she’d done Mr. Somervell. She said he was an angel. She would lie on her bed, crying, for hours. “I’m killing him, killing him, Susan!’ I’ve heard her say that over and over again, as if her heart would break. It broke mine to hear her. She had begun to believe she was wicked all through. I’m bad, Susan, I’m bad, and that’s why so many bad things happen around me!’
“That’s why she went away, Mrs. Timson — and why I had to go with her.”
I felt puzzled, for what seemed to be so clear to Susan was not at all clear to me. I had certainly understood Mr. Somervell to say his wife had gone away with a lover. But the look on Susan’s face told me she had said as much as she meant to say, so I told her to tidy herself, and went down to the garden. As I tied up some carnations that were flopping over I thought how odd it was that Susan, for all her simplicity, should understand somebody like Lady Cynthia; I thought that the world seemed very full of unhappiness that was difficult to explain, and I thought about poor little Lady Cassiobury — probably Susan would understand her as well. And then I started to think of Remmy and the things he had told me that afternoon.
Chapter III
REMMY KEPT plaguing me for my decision, but I did not mean to be jumped over it. I realized that I was up against the most serious — I almost wrote the most desperate, and I think that’s the better description — moment in my life; I was, as they say, “at the crossroads,” one of which, if I took it, was going to lead to a future which even my most ambitious dreams, up to that time, had never contemplated; while the others would keep us jogging along, always on the right side of poverty, of course, but with plenty of anxiety and always a certain feeling of having set a pace and having to keep to it — which, to tell the truth, I was getting tired of doing. I had had a glimpse, at St.-Jean-de-Luz, of what it meant to live without ever considering money; and although the career Remmy was so anxious for me to take up did not bring me anywhere within Mrs. Carpenter’s range, I felt it would satisfy me and enable me to leave the girls in a position in which I need have no fears at all for their futures.
Of course, like every mother, I expected they would marry, but I did not want to feel they depended on this, or that, when married, they would be dependent on their husbands. The happiest marriages, from my observation, are those in which the means are equally distributed and there is no asking or giving on either side. It is surprising what an ugly element money can bring into marriage when one side or the other is obliged to keep harping on it, and I had always promised myself that when Kathleen or Jo found a husband I would be able to put down a dot equal to anything the husbands thought fit to settle on them. As it happens, of course, I’ve still g
ot them with me; Jo seems much too taken up with her dog breeding to have time for admirers, and Kathleen — no, I’m not so happy about her: but this is all running ahead of the story. Anyhow, as I have often told them, they won’t have anything to worry about when their mothers gone, and as the duke is one of their trustees and Dr. Remington another (it was poor old George, until he died), I don’t have to worry about some fortune hunter getting hold of them for the sake of their money.
I have said enough to show that I am not a religious woman, and it may sound foolish when I admit that, during this time when I was trying to make up my mind, I went down on my knees every night and asked for guidance, and, above all, that no harm should ever come to Kathleen or Jo through any act of mine. And morning, noon, and night I worried, worried, worried over it, until I could almost feel my hair turning white under the strain. There was no one to whom I could go for advice; I had to make my decision entirely by myself, and although, to be honest, I very seldom followed the advice that was given me, I often liked talking things over — with Mr. Somervell, before our trouble, sometimes with George, with Flora — if it happened to be that kind of thing — and, just lately, with the duke. They would say one thing and I would say another: and the fact of putting it into words helped to build up my own point of view so that I was much surer of it when I finished than when I started. That is the use of discussion, to my way of thinking; you don’t “discuss” to have your opinion altered but to settle it all steadily in your mind.
I realized, however, that I could not go on seesawing much longer, and one night I decided I would settle it all with myself before I went to bed.
I always remember that night. It was a Sunday — the day Mr. Somervell used to come to see us. Sundays seemed a bit flat at Sutton; I didn’t really care for the suburban life, after Plymouth Street, and the people who used to call bored me to death, although I put up with them for the sake of Kathleen; she had made one or two friends in the neighborhood, and I liked her to have them in and to know she was not moping over her reading, of which, by the way, she did not do so much as formerly. I was glad to see the craze for poetry was over; but I had given her a library subscription, and there were novels all over the place. I sometimes wondered if I ought to have a look at them; one heard of some funny books getting printed since the war, and I didn’t want Kathleen to get old ideas before her time. However, I had enough on my hands without reading; she never said anything, and although once or twice I thought she came out with some rather cynical remarks for a child of her age I guessed it was just this business of being “grown up” and keeping up with her companions, several of whom were a few years older than Kay.
On this Sunday evening Kathleen and Susan had gone to bed, and Jo was, of course, still away at school. I put out most of the lights and sat with the french windows open into the garden — the tobacco plants were lovely that summer, I remember; their scent still reminds me, whenever I meet it, of that night when, for good or evil — and mercifully it has turned out for good, so far — I settled our future for us. I wonder what they would say today if they knew? Bless them, money just falls from the skies so far as Kathleen is concerned; and if Jo, who is a little more businesslike, should ever take it into her head to ask questions — there’s always the nursing home, which is now, as everyone knows, the finest thing of its kind in this country: and Sir Hugh Remington — they say he is sure to end up with a peerage — with his estate down in Berkshire, the yacht on which we went for a cruise last summer, and a “shoot” in Scotland, that he always wants us to visit! They both know I have shares in the home, and when I am out I’m supposed to be there, although I have given up most of that some years ago. There was an uneasy moment, at one time, when Kathleen started talking about taking up nursing and said she meant to get into the home — which would have been awkward for all concerned! — but it passed like the rest of her crazes. Remmy sometimes shuts one eye when he visits us at Brockett and says to me on the sly, “It’s a good thing you’ve got Avenue House” (the name of the nursing home) “as a cover for all this!” But I never worry; if anything had been going to come out it would have come out long ago.
I sat there in the dusk, with the scent of the tobacco flowers, and I felt half stupefied with thinking. My mind seemed as if it would not concentrate any longer; I had been over all the pros and cons a thousand times, and now, just when I was on the point of decision, all sorts of other thoughts seemed to creep in: foolish, small things, a lot of them to do with the girls’ childhood ... Kathleen cutting her first tooth ... and a day Harry had been very nice to me and brought me home a bunch of daffodils (I found out afterward they were conscience money! It was the first time he’d been out with his Mrs. Hornby — but who cares? It was kind of Harry) ... and, still further back, Laura and me grooming Snowberry for the gymkhana ... our confirmation day ... and suddenly, like a stone, out of nowhere ... Aimee Wakeford.
I did not even know I had hit my hand on the table until I felt the pain running up my arm; I must have given it a real blow. And I sat there looking at my hand and saying, “Never, never, never,” aloud: just as if there was someone there to hear me. Presently, when the pain was a little less, I opened my hand and spread it out, as I had done for Dr. Lavigne; and in some strange fashion as I sat looking at my hand I seemed to see in it what he must have seen: all those strange potentialities for good, all the comfort in those thick fingers, all the peace they might bring ... It was as if I was looking at a stranger’s hand, a good hand, a kind hand, that would bring harm, willingly, to nobody, that would bring good.
Then — I suppose I must have been very tired — my thoughts became all muddled again; it seemed as if I could not steady one or single one out for long enough to examine it. Kathleen — and Flora — and poor little Lady Perdita — and, goodness knows why, that little servant of Mother’s she had to send away because it was not proper for her to have her illegitimate baby in the house with Laura and me about. I even started to wonder what had become of the poor little thing — to whom I had certainly not given a thought for more than twenty years! Pity — pity — pity ... Mary, pity women. I sat there in the dusk with the tears streaming down my face, though for who or what I hadn’t the least idea!
I thought of the way women get penalized just for being women: of working girls who lose their jobs, and working-class women victimized by -their husbands, and poor kids going on town because there is nothing else left for them, and silly kids whose families would see they never went on town but whose lives are ruined just the same; and things that go on in furtive little back streets and smart West End men rooking people thousands for the same sort of things — and the whole game of secrecy and blackmail, ending now and then in a police-court case and somebody’s funeral ... It all spun in my brain like a circular saw, until I found myself holding my head in my hands and crying out something — I don’t know what — something about it’s not being fair ...
The next thing I remember is looking at the clock; and it was after two. Keeping such early hours as a rule, I had quite a shock. I got up and I was stiff; I went to the windows to shut them and could not help standing there, just gazing at the out-of-doors. You never saw such a night; the moon was full and threw the shadows of the little apple trees I had planted at the end of the garden across the grass, which, with the heavy dew, looked for all the world as if someone had sprinkled a packet of Christmas-tree frost all over it. And there were the bunches of tobacco flower, standing up like some kind of perforated border of pure silver all round the edge; the plants had collected and tidied themselves, in the coolness of the night air — I used to think they were rather straggling, clumsy things in the daytime, flopping away from their stakes and looking half dead as soon as they got the sun on them; but I was fond even of their clumsiness. They reminded me a bit of Kathleen, when she was growing; in spite of what people say, there’s something beautiful, in a way, about the awkward age.
What with the stars up above and the stars o
f the tobacco plant round the lawn, it looked like a fairyland; and my mind went back to the Cedars, and Laura and me, on just such nights, hanging out of our bedroom windows and getting a bit sentimental in spite of ourselves; and old Snowberry, looking like a dream pony made out of silver, moving about the paddock, cropping the grass — that is a sweet sound, of a pony cropping grass under the moon. It almost seemed as if Snowberry might be over the hedge at the end of the garden, and that Mother might come out, in one of the light-colored gowns she wore in the summer, and take my hand. I thought, If only Mother was here, to tell me what to do: and then I remembered what she used to say as we got older and were capable — she thought — of judging for ourselves. “Just you do what you know is right, deary; you don’t need to ask me or anybody else about that.”
I came in and closed the window, and the moonlight lay in white patches on the staircase as I went up to my room. I took a peep at Kathleen, and she was fast asleep, with her book fallen on the floor and the light still on — I could not break that child of her habit of reading in bed. I heard Susan snoring behind her closed door — and I wondered if I would ever get to sleep again and wished I’d got a sleeping draught — a thing I had never taken in my life.
It was no use putting my light out, so I picked up a magazine I had brought in with me and started to look at the pictures. I was always interested in photographs of houses and rooms — especially anything of that Queen Anne or William and Mary period, like we had at Crowle; there was an illustrated article on somebody’s place in Herefordshire, and I found myself thinking how nice it would be to possess a place like that; how beautiful I could make it, and what a good background it would make for the girls when Jo had left school and they were both coming out. My mind began to fill itself up with pictures I’d seen dimly, as if at a great distance, many times before; but they were no longer dim and distant, they were there, close to me, life-size, and their colors so bright they almost made me blink.
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