The Fountain Overflows

by Rebecca West

  He drawled, “Well, well, who have we here?” and shook hands with Mamma, but stared at me without shaking hands when she told him which one of her three daughters I was. Children are used to rudeness from grownups, but this man was ruder than most. His Scottish accent was horrid, not like Mamma’s or Constance’s, but like the Edinburgh keelies you heard hawking at one another when you went down the Canongate to Holyrood. But Scottish people, if they were horrid, did do that. It was part of a determination to be funny though they could not think of anything really funny to say, and that was part of a determination to be better than other people, though they were not. They were educated, nearly everybody is in Scotland, it is not like England, but to get the better of other educated people they pretended to be simpletons who were somehow much cleverer than educated people and were laughing at them all the time. I could hardly sit in my chair, I hated Cousin Jock so much. I did not like to think that he was related to Mamma and was married to Constance and was Rosamund’s papa. I also did not like to think that he was related to me. But of course it was worse for Rosamund. I saw that there were great advantages about our Papa, although of course there were disadvantages.

  Constance let Cousin Jock get out something he wanted to say, which was not serious but not funny either, about being sorry that he had changed into carpet slippers in the lobby, but that anyway he was no ladies’ man, and we must forgive him, though no doubt we were used to more refined ways in the la-di-da district of Lovegrove. Then she told him that the things were gone, there had been no sign of them for the last six hours, and she thought we had done it. At first he said he thought she was wrong, he was certain he had heard something go bump upstairs in one of the bedrooms as he came in; when Constance and Rosamund made him listen he had to admit that the house was quiet and he thanked us and said that he had always known that Mamma was a wonderful character. But I could see that really he was sorry the things had gone. He was on their side. You could tell that because the noises he made just coming into the house and changing his outdoor shoes were the same sort of noises that they would have made if they had been human and had not special advantages in being horrible.

  After that it was only a question of how soon we could get home. We had to wait while he had tea. He chose himself an oatmeal scone and cut himself a slice of Scotch bun as if he were doing something sly and clever, and when he wanted more tea he passed his cup to Constance with the remark that he didna expect there was any mair tea for a puir man in this housefu’ o’ women. There was no possible reason why he should talk like that. Nobody else in the family talked like that. In fact very few Scottish people talked like that. I could not think of ever having heard anyone speak quite so broadly before except a disgusting man in kilts we had seen in a pantomime, who went round the stage on a scooter, making skirling noises and smoothing his kilts down when they blew up as if he were ashamed, and was much the worst thing in the show. You could not think how Constance, who was so still and dignified, could have married Cousin Jock. You could not think how Rosamund, whom you could not imagine doing anything that people would want to laugh at, could be his daughter. You could see at once why my Papa and Mamma had married, they had the same eagle look about them, and my trouble was that people must always be surprised because I had so little in me, considering I was their daughter. Mamma was being very clever about Cousin Jock, pretending to be amused by his jokes, but not going over to his side. I was able to sit quiet because it occurred to me that he might die soon and leave Rosamund free, and then Constance and she could come and live near us.

  When we had finished he pushed his cup and saucer right into the middle of the table, wiped his mouth, slowly and much more than you would need to unless you were an animal and had eaten something on the floor, and said to Mamma, “Now we’ve satisfied the inner man, may I ask if ye’ve kept up with your pianoforty playing?” Mamma said that, though of course she had had to give up practising now that she had all the children, she still played a little. “Awa’ into the next room,” he said, “and ye’ll have the preevilege of making music with your Cousin Jock, who’s thrown awa’ his immortal heritage and gone into the marts of trade.”

  We all went into the drawing room, which was in the front of the house, and I felt very sorry for Rosamund, because I felt sure that her father would not be able to play. The piano was an upright Broadwood, and though the candle brackets on it had been twisted till they hung upside down and the panels had been scratched, the keyboard and strings and hammers seemed to have suffered no damage. I found this out by running my hand over the treble keys, and Cousin Jock took my wrist and put my arm down by my side. It was a gentle movement yet extremely brutal. It told me that I had no rights, that I was a child, and children are slaves, and that I was a fool besides; I knew that I hated him and would hate him all my life. I also knew that he had wanted me to hate him, and had cleverly made it worse for me by seeing to it that I could never feel easy in hating him, because he had been so rude to me that I must always suspect my hatred of springing from hurt vanity.

  I backed away from him into a corner and leaned against the wall, and Rosamund joined me. We could not sit down; there was not an undamaged chair in the room except the music stool. Cousin Jock fumbled among the music in a Canterbury. None of the sheets were torn. The things that had been driven out had evidently respected music. My mother stood watching him with an air of reserve quite unlike her. It would have been hard for a stranger to tell whether she liked him or not. With exaggerated uncouthness he poked a sheet of music at her, saying, “Ye ken this weel. The auld arrangements. Mose-are’s Flute Concerto in G major, or ate ye so grand these days that ye maun call him Mozart?”

  “I know it well,” Mamma answered, in quite an English accent. She often talked Scots to us at home, but she would not have it used as a silly joke. “And I’ve never unlearned to call him Mozart, as you apparently have since we were both young.” She sat down at the piano and softly tried over the music, while he took his flute out of its case and put it together, with ugly movements, full of mean conceit in technique, which made the instrument seem as if it were something horrid from a chemist’s shop, like the thing they would use to give one an enema when one was ill. I looked down at the points of my boots and waited hungrily for the music to begin, so that I could enjoy despising him. But I was to have no such pleasure, only a new fear.

  I had thought that Cousin Jock would play like Cordelia, and in a sense I was right. Both he and she removed all effort from music. It did not seem hard any more. But his playing was as good as hers was bad. It was in a sense as good as any playing I have ever heard before or since, on any instrument, indeed it was better, for reasons I was to spend all my later life in learning to understand. I, and any other player, think how we should play a phrase, and take a vow that we shall play it in a certain way, but never succeed in keeping our vow. Our fingers are not clever enough to carry out the orders issued by our wills; also our wills themselves, when it comes to the point, flinch from even so much of perfection as they can conceive. But Cousin Jock played the music as he had heard it in his mind. His fingers had all the skill which could conceivably be demanded by any music written for the flute, and his will was not disconcerted by the idea of perfection. So the clean line of melody drew a delightful design on the silence, which faded and was replaced by another which was different yet belonged to the same order of delight as the first, and the listening mind at once clung to the phrase it had first heard, yet was refreshed by change.

  But a long sigh shook the tall body of Rosamund, leaning against the wall beside me. Constance, who had seated herself on the side of an armchair that had its back torn out, was grave as an angel on a tomb. I thought this strange, for surely there could be no greater joy than seeing one of one’s own family doing something really well. But as I listened it came to me that Cousin Jock was not playing really well at all. I think I understand now the dissatisfaction that was then only a strong but vague repulsion. Wh
en Mamma played well she was making clear something which the composer had found out and which nobody had known before him. It might even be that by the emphasis she placed on the different parts of his discovery she could add something to it of which nobody, not even the composer, had before been conscious. In her playing there was a gospel and an evangelist who preached it, and that implied a church which worshipped a God not yet fully revealed but in the course of revelation. But when Cousin Jock played he created about him a world in which all was known, and in which art was not a discovery but a decoration. All was then trivial, and there was no meaning in art or in life. His playing was perfect yet it was a part of the same destruction that had defaced the room where we sat. I hated it, and Rosamund put out her hand and stroked my skirt.

  At the end Mamma rose and closed the piano and said, “Well, Jock, you certainly play better than you did when you were a young man. Far better,” she added with desperate justice.

  “I’m no sae bad,” he said, putting his flute away. It had been obvious from the way she rose from the piano that she was not going to play for him again; and I think he had known that she would not. “But I’m no one to pay compliments for the sake of paying compliments, and I’ll no say the same of you. I wouldna say ye hadna slipped a wheen.”

  A tremor ran through Mamma’s body. “I have the four of them,” she said, “and there is a great deal to do.”

  “Ay, it’s bound to tell,” said Cousin Jock. “No use shutting the eyes on hard facts, it’s bound to tell.”

  My mother looked round the defaced room and its smashed furniture, as if she were thinking that she and it were wrecked alike. When her eyes fell on Rosamund they moved no farther, and she said, smiling, “Your girl is tall.”

  “So she is,” agreed Constance placidly, her hands folded in front of her over her spreading skirts.

  “Ay, a great maypole,” grumbled Cousin Jock, going on packing up his flute. But he could not hurt us any more when we were all looking at Rosamund. Her shining golden curls, her solid white flesh that was full over her eyebrows and deeply cleft between her mouth and chin, her straight body, which even when she was at rest suggested the idea of leisurely movement, made us forget the horrid perfection of her father’s flute-playing and the cruelty of his attempt to hurt Mamma. She did not mind us all staring at her, and made it easy for us by smiling vaguely, as if she had gone away in her own thoughts. I noticed that Mamma was looking at her as I had never seen her look at anybody except us children, and it was strange, I was not angry, though usually I was very jealous of Mamma’s affection.

  “She must come over and play with the children,” said Mamma.

  “How’s your husband?” asked Cousin Jock. “Will he keep this job?”

  I hated the room with the smears on the walls, the twisted candlesticks on the piano, the stinted gaslight, and Cousin Jock. Papa and Mamma and my sisters and my brother and I, Constance, and Rosamund were all living in a more dangerous way than the children I knew at school and their fathers and mothers and teachers; and in this house somebody, and I supposed it was Cousin Jock, was trying to push us over the edge of the abyss to which we clung. I said violently, “Can’t Rosamund come back with us tonight?”

  Rosamund slowly shook her head, smiling slightly.

  “We’d love to take her,” said Mamma.

  “Would you like to go?” asked Constance. “Say if you would like it.”

  Again Rosamund shook her head. Stammering, she thanked Mamma and said that she would come for the whole day sometime soon, but not that night.

  After that Mamma and I went and got our hats and coats, and the others dressed too, to take us to the station. Cousin Jock said that we had come the wrong way, and he would send us off from another station. When we got out into the dark street we all halted and stood looking at the house and listening. There was no sound. Cousin Jock turned round and spoke rudely to a child who was bowling a hoop along the pavement, telling it to be quiet, though it was really not making much noise. He grumbled, “Well, I expect that the morn will find them all the worse.”

  “No,” said Constance in her prim, hollow voice.

  “What gars ye say that?” he asked crossly.

  “I can feel that they have gone for good,” she answered with composure. “There is a difference between feeling that a tooth has stopped aching and that it has been taken out.”

  The three grown-ups moved ahead, and we children followed. “Are you sure they’ve gone?” I asked Rosamund. She answered, stammering a little and looking on the ground, “Oh yes; quite far away. Besides, there was—” I knew we were both thinking of the stream of salt dripping from the kitchen mantelpiece and falling in a spray on the hearthstone. We walked through the darkness in silence for some minutes and then I said, “I’ll never tell.”

  She murmured, “It’s better not,” still looking down.

  We slackened our pace to be alone with our secrets, our sense of mystery and power, until the three in front turned round and called on us to hurry. As we obeyed, Rosamund said, “I never showed you the picture of my hare.”

  I said, “I’ll see it another time.”

  “I would have liked you to see him,” said Rosamund. “I told you how lovely he was, but I don’t believe I told you how really beautiful he is.”

  “Oh, I know how you feel,” I said. “One does get so fond of made-up animals. But I quite understand he’s beautiful.”

  The grown-ups called to us again, for they had reached the corner of a high street, where there were lighted shops and crowds, and they were always frightened of us children’s being in crowds, though actually nobody ever took any notice of us.

  But grown-ups had all the power and we had to follow on our parents’ heels more quickly than we liked past shops lit by naphtha flares, a form of street-lighting much more exciting than anything that has superseded it. Loose red and yellow flames burned on suspended plates, open to the wind, which sometimes blew them to a bunch of streaming ribbons and jerked all the shadows askew. “I love these lights,” said Rosamund. “Do you like fireworks?”

  “They are the loveliest things in the world,” I said.

  “I once heard, or I read it somewhere in a book,” she went on dreamily, “that sometimes people light bonfires on the top of mountains, I should like that too.”

  “I’ve heard about that too, I can’t think where,” I said, “but it must be gorgeous. We’ll probably see it sometime. We’re lucky, don’t you think? We know more than the other girls at school. We have mothers that are wonderful. I can see your mother is like mine, better than anyone else’s. And we have a great advantage over the other girls at school, we know all sorts of things they don’t. They don’t have demons in the house, and so long as you can get rid of them it gives you a great advantage to know there are such things. I think we’ll always be lucky. Don’t you? Don’t you?”

  We came to a stop to watch some very fine flares outside a butcher’s shop, where a big red-faced man in a blue smock was shouting out long things about meat, as if he were making a speech in a historical play by Shakespeare, “Attend me, lords, the proud insulting queen, with Clifford and the haughty Northumberland and of their feather many more proud birds, have wrought the easy melting kind like wax.” As we watched, my mind clung onto what it was saying, and I persisted, “Don’t you think we’re lucky?” The lights and shadows wavered on her face without disturbing her look of being soft but immovable. Then as I repeated my question again a spasm convulsed her face. I realized that she could not answer, that her inability was giving her acute physical pain. I stood in an agony of sympathy, and presently she said, “I stammer. Didn’t you know? I sometimes stammer. You must forgive me. It is just a way of being stupid.”

  “Oh, no, it isn’t,” I said. “One of the cleverest girls at school with us in Edinburgh stammered. But I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.”

  We found ourselves waiting with our parents on the curb till the traffic gave us a chance to
cross. A string of tall scarlet trams loaded with light jerked past, making a nice rhythmic noise on the points. A coster and his family drove by in a cart drawn by two ash-coloured donkeys, he and his boys dressed in whitish corduroys sewn all over with pearl buttons, the women wearing huge hats trimmed with green and red and blue ostrich feathers, all made mysterious, like what you would think the people in the masque at the end of The Tempest would be, by the night and the cross-hatchings of light and the street-lamps. A hansom jingled by, with a man wearing a top hat all askew and a lady swathed in a feather boa behind its wooden apron, and the grown-ups all exclaimed at the cost of taking such a vehicle down from the West End. At this talk of money I reflected on the financial position of Rosamund’s family and my own, and felt a moment of terror. It seemed not nearly impossible enough that an unlucky happening would send us to the workhouse. But of course it would be all right when I was grown up, I would be rich, I would be able to take hansoms anywhere. The traffic dwindled and we all ran across the cobbled road and walked beside a patch of common, along a row of bright stalls where people were selling things to eat, and then we two lagged again.

  “This coffee smells nearly like coffee at home, but not quite,” I said.

  “Yes, it’s a little like something burned in the garden,” said Rosamund.

  We made these remarks with great distinctness, having no malice, just in front of the man who kept the coffee stall, and when he looked angrily at us we thought placidly and critically that he was one of the many grown-ups who were cross by nature, and strolled on to the next stall.

  “Could you eat jellied eels?” I asked.

  Hesitantly she answered, “If I were dared.”

  “Do they dare much at your school?” I asked. “They do at ours, and I think it’s so silly.”

  “They dare all the time,” she said wearily, “and such stupid little things.”

  “They don’t like us at our school,” I said. “Do they like you at yours?”