by Rebecca West
“How do I know?” said Miss Beevor. “She came out of his room after about twenty minutes and walked through the hall and did not look at me. I spoke to her and she took no notice. She did not even wait for the servant who was coming up to open the door, she opened it herself, and went out into the street. And oh, her face. I could not have believed that she could ever look like that.”
“It was for you to follow her,” said Mamma. “You had taken her to that house which I had warned you she should never go near.”
“I tried to follow her,” said Miss Beevor, “but that horrible man came out and said the most dreadful things to me.”
“I told you he was cruel,” said Mamma. “He would know the truth, but who else who knew enough to know it would also be low enough to tell it to you? Cruel, cruel. But why did you stay and let this brute jeer at you instead of taking care of Cordelia? You knew yourself that she was the only one of you who mattered.”
“He stood between me and the door,” wept Miss Beevor.
“The brute, the brute,” said Mamma. “But Cordelia?”
“When he said that people like me who encouraged children with no talent ought to be shot, I hit him with my umbrella,” wept Miss Beevor.
“I am glad,” said Mamma. “But Cordelia, Cordelia.”
“That made him angry, and he opened the door and told me to leave his house as if that was not what I was trying to do, and all the time I had been hoping that Cordelia would be waiting for me outside, but she had gone.”
“She made the long journey home all by herself,” mourned Mamma, looking up at the bedroom windows.
“That was not my fault,” said Miss Beevor, “I rushed off to Great Portland Street Station, and while I was crossing the bridge our train was coming in, and I saw her on the platform, and I called down to her, and told her to wait for me. But she looked up at me as if I were a stranger, and got into the train, and when I got down to the platform, it had started. Oh, Cordelia, Cordelia, I love her so.”
“Yes,” said Mamma, “this is the worst of life, that love does not give us common sense but is a sure way of losing it. We love people, and we say that we are going to do more for them than friendship, but it makes such fools of us that we do far less, indeed sometimes what we do could be mistaken for the work of hatred.”
“Have I done so much harm to Cordelia?” asked Miss Beevor.
“Of course you have,” said Mamma, “but you have no reason to blame yourself. You have only followed the general rule. But what matters at the moment is that Cordelia has locked her bedroom door.”
“To be alone, I suppose,” said Miss Beevor. “Up till now she has always been able to come to me when she felt miserable. But now she has turned against me she will have nowhere to go.”
“Yes, yes, I must not forget that you have been very kind to her in her terrible discontent,” said Mamma. “Children, children, Mary and Rose, you must always remember that Miss Beevor has been very kind to Cordelia, she gave her much that we could not have given her. But I am so afraid about Cordelia. When she came in she must have gone straight down to the kitchen, she had just come up the basement staircase and she passed me and went up to her room, and it seemed to me that she was carrying something in her hand.”
“She passed you too without speaking?” asked Miss Beevor.
“Yes,” said Mamma. “But it has happened to me before. My husband once passed me in the High Street and looked at me like a stranger.”
“Your husband, yes, I suppose so,” said Miss Beevor, “but Cordelia, I could not have believed that her lovely little face would look like that.” She burst into noisy tears, then suddenly caught her breath and was rigid. “Something in her hands? You mean, a bottle? Something that might have been poison?”
“You see how imperfect love is,” said Mamma. “I said what should have indicated to you that she was in danger, and you did not notice it, you were absorbed in the pain she had given you by looking at you as if she did not know you. Yet your love for her is the best you can do. And my love for her is the best I can do, and both appear to be useless. And love makes some promises about being useful. But here am I, having beaten on her door and got no answer, and here are you, and neither of us knows what to do.”
“Shall I go and get the man who mended Kate’s hair trunk, just a few doors down the High Street?” I asked. “He opened the trunk lock, he said he could open any lock.”
“That is the difficulty,” said Mamma. “I do not know whether that would be wise. I do not really believe that any of you children will kill yourselves in any circumstances. I am sure you all have a dogged intention of living to the last possible moment, who would not? So I think it improbable that Cordelia will kill herself. But she lives by pride. What a gamble it is to have children! One can see it by the names one gives them. Here is Mary who is so fierce that she should have an Old Testament name, and Rose who is like a thorn-bush, and a Cordelia who lives by pride. Well, if I get a strange man to break down her door, she will never forgive me. But on the other hand it is a heavy risk to take. She had something in her hand she did not want me to see.”
“There is a ladder in the stables,” said Mary. “We can get it, and one of us will go up and get in at the window and open her door from the inside.”
“That is no use,” said Mamma. “I have been to look at the ladder. The iron steps would prevent you from putting it near enough to the wall to reach the window. I will go back and knock on the door.”
We all moved towards the house, but halted as Richard Quin ran down the iron steps and crossed the lawn to us. He took Mamma’s hands and said, “Kate says that Cordelia has locked herself in her room, what does this mean?”
“Cordelia has just been told she cannot play by Hans Fechter,” said Mamma, “and she cannot bear it. She has locked herself into her room and will not open to me and we are afraid she may have taken poison.”
“I think not,” said Richard Quin. “She will outlive you and me by many years. But she should have answered you, that is rude and inconvenient, and quite futile, for Mamma, you have not noticed it but I am now so big that there is not a door in this house I could not smash in with two minutes’ gentle effort. And I will smash her door in now. Come along.”
We followed him submissively into the house. As we went through the sitting room Miss Beevor moaned, “She is all I have,” tottered, and fell over an armchair. Mamma cast a quiet look on her and said, “Poor idiot, it would have been so much kinder if she had been exposed at birth,” and went upstairs. When we reached Cordelia’s door she rattled the doorknob and called to her, begging her just to say that she was all right. There was silence; and Richard Quin put his shoulder to the door, drew back a moment to smile at Mamma and to shout, “Cordelia, Cordelia, if you do not open the door I am going to break it in.” We heard a faint moan, and the panel split before his strength, he slipped in his hand and turned the key on the other side of the lock, and we all rushed into the room.
Cordelia was lying diagonally across the bed, her head on the extreme edge of the pillow, one shoulder right off the mattress, one arm hanging to the floor. Her long tight skirt made her look like a fallen pillar. It was not through ill will that she had not answered. She was incapable of the smallest movement. The greenish colour of her skin, the stillness of her nostrils and her parted lips, and the motionless spread screen of her eyelashes on her cheeks, showed that the course of her life had very nearly stopped. “Look,” whispered Mary to Richard Quin and me. Cordelia’s right arm hung limp to the floor, but her right hand was not limp. It clasped the bottle of salts of lemon Kate used for cleaning the sinks and lavatories, and she was turning it round and round in her palm, while her fingers tried to get the cork out. But they were not trying very hard. They looked stubborn and sensible, as all of her had looked till now, and they were twiddling the cork with the intention of failure. But she was trying to force them to get it out. Richard Quin bent down and snatched up the bottle and was go
ne from the room in a moment, then was back to obey Mamma, when she cried, “Oh, my poor lamb. Lift her up, she cannot lie like that, she will fall off the bed.” He raised Cordelia in his arms and set her in the middle of the bed, and held her up so that Mamma could kneel and look into her face and promise her, “My dear, my dear, just wait and you will see that all this does not matter.” But Cordelia remained still as a doll in his arms, and with a rising voice Mamma implored her, “Speak to me, dear, and tell me you are all right.”
At that Cordelia stirred, moved her head from side to side, opened her eyes, looked at Mamma, and at each of us in turn, then groaned, “If I am not to be a famous violinist, how am I ever to get away from you all?”
Mamma was silent for only a second before she answered, “We shall manage somehow, dear, do not be afraid. Perhaps you might like to have a year at school abroad. But we will talk of that tomorrow, now you must have some tea and take things quietly. I will send Kate up to you and you must undress and go to bed properly. There is no place like bed when you are upset. Come along, children.”
Tenderly Richard Quin laid Cordelia back on the pillows, and we all left the room, as quietly as we could. Mamma was going into the sitting room when she checked herself. “Poor Miss Beevor may have come round, and we will not be able to talk in front of her. Oh, the wretched, generous woman, what is to fill her life now? But there is something I must say to you, I will just have to say it out here. Children, you must be hurt because Cordelia put what she feels into words so badly.” Then our pallor, our stony horror, struck home to her. “Why, did you not know this was how Cordelia felt! Oh, children, what a shock for you!”
“Have we been horrible to her? We didn’t mean to be,” said Mary, and I said, “We could not pretend about her playing because we knew it was going to lead to this someday. Somebody was bound to be awful to her sooner or later. But we love her.”
“Do not trouble yourselves about this,” said Mamma. “You have been far better to her than I would have expected, seeing what you are. You must not think of it again. No, I am talking nonsense. You are not such fools that I can persuade you that what your sister said did not come from the depths of her heart, or that what she meant could possibly be pleasing to you. So try to understand it as if you were grown up, and of course you nearly are. Cordelia wants to go away and leave us, and has been playing the violin furiously in an attempt to get the means of going away and leaving us, for reasons which cannot be laid to your charge. They bring an accusation against your father and me, and we cannot answer it. Yet again the fault is not completely ours.”
“Nobody in this family could possibly accuse you of anything,” said Richard Quin, “and we all know that we could accuse Papa of various things, but it would be a very silly and ungrateful thing to do.”
“Listen, listen, you must try to understand. You see, Cordelia and you alike have had a dreadful childhood. But you three, Mary and Rose and Richard Quin—I have not been wrong, have I? Children, you must tell me honestly if I am wrong—but though I blush with guilt for having given you such a childhood, I think you have quite enjoyed it. Except for your father going away, I do not think you would choose to have had anything very different in our life.”
“Of course we have enjoyed every moment of it,” said Mary.
“Why wouldn’t we?” I said. “We are not soft.”
“The only thing is that it has been hard on you, Mamma,” said Richard. “If we have to come back to earth, have me as your eldest child, I could be much more useful.”
“Yes, I think you three have been quite happy. But I doubt if Cordelia has enjoyed a single moment of her childhood. It has all been a torment to her. She is not selfish. It is not what she has lacked that is an agony to her, it is what we all have lacked. She has hated it that all our clothes have been so shabby and that the house is so broken down. She has hated it that I have always been so late in paying Cousin Ralph the rent. She has hated it that we have so few friends. She hates it that your father has gone away, but not as you hate it. She would have preferred a quite ordinary father, so long as he stayed with us. She wishes she could have lived a life like the other girls at school. Your father’s writing, my playing, and whatever goes with those things, and the enjoyment we have had, are no compensation to her for what she has lost. Now, do not dare to despise her for this desire to be commonplace, to be secure, to throw away what we have of distinction. It is not she who is odd in hating poverty and”—she felt for the word— “eccentricity. It is you who are odd in not hating them. Be thankful for this oddity, which has brought you safe through terrible years. But do not think you owe it to any virtue in yourselves. You owe it entirely to your musical gifts. The music I have taught you to play must have made you realize that there is a great deal in life which is not affected by what happens to you. Also the technique has been more help to you than you realize. If you are not soft, it is because the technique you have mastered, such as it is, has hardened you. If God had not made you able to play you would be as helpless as Cordelia, and it is not her fault but God’s that she cannot play, and as God has no faults let us now drop the subject.”
She was about to turn away, but she was recalled by an anxiety. “Richard Quin,” she desperately begged, “I was speaking of Mary and Rose when I said it was technique that had made them brave. You do not work hard enough! Promise you will work harder!”
He answered hesitantly, “Mamma, it is not quite the same with me as it is with them. I wish I could explain—” But just then there was the sound of a key in the lock, and Rosamund came into the house, her satchel over one shoulder and her loaded shopping-bag on the other. The wind was busy that day, her golden curls were blown across her throat and breast, and she was flushed, she looked like a rose under a storm. Mamma said to her, “My dear, poor Cordelia has been very much upset. That imbecile Miss Beevor took her to that monster Hans Fechter, and he was very rude to her, and she locked herself in her room. I have told her to go to bed. I think it better that none of us should be with her, and perhaps you could look after her.”
“She thought of committing suicide,” said Richard Quin.
“I told you,” Rosamund said earnestly, “that she was in one of those states you all get into. Now I should not wonder if she had made herself really ill. I will go and get the thermometer out of my workbox.”
As she went upstairs my mother called her thanks to her, then sighed. “Now I must deal with that calamitous being in the drawing room. Richard Quin, I will ask you later to get her a cab and take her home. But in the meantime you three must go down to the kitchen, and get a tray for Cordelia and Rosamund, and have tea yourselves with Kate. And let us pray that sometime we may again have peace and quiet.”
We always found the kitchen a kindly refuge in time of trouble, the glow from the coal-range was so warm and consoling, and Kate was always resourceful. Sagely she said that for a long time it has been plain that all this rushing about to concerts had been far too much for a growing girl, and that there had been signs and enough that she was sickening for something, but that a few weeks’ rest would put that right. While she boiled the kettle for Cordelia’s tea we stood round the table and ate bread and butter with brown sugar piled on it, which we had liked when we were little, but had not had for a long time.
Richard Quin said, “You two must not worry about poor old Cordy. Leave her to Rosamund. She has the advantage over all of you that she isn’t musical and isn’t going to win anything on earth. She is the only one in this house who can see Cordelia without reminding her that she is no good at anything special.” And just then Rosamund came back and said, “Cordelia has a temperature, I think. Richard Quin had better fetch the doctor. Tell him it is not urgent, but that he would probably prefer her to see him sometime today.” When he had gone she said to Kate, “She must certainly stay in bed, so may I have one of your white overalls? Then I will take over.” She fastened the garment about her with pins, for though she was tall, Kate
was taller still, and bound a white cloth about her head to hide her hair. “It is a kind of magic,” she explained to us, “and Cordelia will obey me more.”
Richard Quin was back with us again, laughing. “As I went through the hall, Mamma put her head out of the door and said she wants some tea for Miss Beevor, she told me she had been mistaken about her, that we all had been mistaken about her, she had many good points. I believe that in no time she is going to like her.”
“Oh, she will be another of those sitting downstairs when Aunt Clare is dying,” said Rosamund gravely.
“So she will,” said Kate.
So Kate gave Richard Quin the tray she had been getting ready for Cordelia and he took it up to Mamma; and while Kate boiled another kettle we three girls went on standing round the table and eating bread and butter and brown sugar. I thought how strange it was of Cordelia not to like our life, which was so likeable, and not to like us, when we liked her all but her music, which nobody could like. But Rosamund was strange too. She had become a different person since she had put on the white overall and bound the white cloth about her head, and what was specially strange was that though she seemed unconscious of much that happened about her, she was perfectly conscious of this subtle change in herself and was going to trade on it in her relations with Cordelia. We had from time to time suspected she was stupid, and the teachers at our school had thought her remarkably so. But really this hardly looked like it. Another wonder struck me. I said, “How did you know that Cordelia was just in a state and not in love?”
“Well, she did not look at all as if she were in love,” she answered.
“But how do people look when they are in love?” I asked.
“I could not tell you how they look,” she said, “you know I cannot put things into words. But there is a look.”
I was baffled by her certainties. They were not the same as mine, and I began to suspect that they were more numerous and quite as well founded. Even had Cordelia not spoken the words which paralysed the relationship between us, I could never have contrived the ingenious methods by which Rosamund brought her out of her humiliation during the next few weeks. She had read her thermometer correctly; Cordelia had had a temperature. It was the first intimation of the long illness, not severe, not feigned, which was to explain to the world, and in time even to Cordelia, why she had suddenly abandoned her musical career. It was fortunate that our old family doctor had just retired, and that the young man who succeeded him was unarmed against Mamma’s dramatic powers and prescribed a course of rest and medical treatment probably not justified by the degree of Cordelia’s anæmia and the functional disorder of her heart. But it was Rosamund who often assured him, with clumsy, stammering candour, and the artlessness of an overgrown schoolgirl so naive in her enthusiasm for her future profession that she wore an imitation of a nurse’s uniform, that Cordelia was manifesting symptoms he might otherwise have overlooked. It was Rosamund who impressed on Cordelia, without alarming her, that her physical state was so grave that it explained everything which had happened to her in recent months. “B-b-but, C-C-Cordelia, you c-c-cannot p-p-possibly get up yet,” she would say, her grey-blue eyes looking quite blind with earnestness. “I have heard Doctor Lane say to Aunt Clare that though you will get quite well you have let yourself get so run-down that, oh, Cordelia, it really is not safe for you not to rest for quite a long time.” So it was established that what Hans Fechter had said to Cordelia could not have been of any importance and need not be discussed or even remembered, because she would not be able to practise for many weeks, or even months, or even years.
