“It’s got nothing to do with anyone, except you and me!” Sylvia cried with sudden spirit.
“Then don’t tell them,” rejoined Quarrendon. “Listen, darling. Whatever you do I shall know is right, and I want you to decide. But if you feel your mother has got to know, it’s going to make things much more difficult for all of us. Wouldn’t it be possible to wait till you’ve got your job, and are living in London independently? If you like, I won’t see you again till then.”
“I couldn’t bear that,” whispered Sylvia, and with a sudden unexpected movement she turned and threw herself into his arms. “I love you so terribly, darling Andrew. I can’t ever do without you any more.”
Holding her slender weight against his thumping heart, Quarrendon was sorely tempted to echo the words.
(2)
When they came back to the house, it was after five o’clock.
A languid tea was drawing to a close. Mrs Peel, regarding it as a serious meal, had folded and eaten one or two thin slices of bread and butter, but most of the others drank tea or lemonade and ate nothing.
Anna Zienszi refused everything, and sat on a garden seat just outside the window, nursing the old black cat. He had crawled on to her lap and lay there contentedly, occasionally digging a still sharp claw into the thin, pale silk of her dress.
Anna was the first person to notice Sylvia’s return.
She moved to make room for her.
“Sit down here with me,” she urged. “You haven’t got the awful English tea habit, have you? It’ll ruin your lovely figure in the end.”
“Couldn’t I drink something?”
“Professor Quarrendon would get you some lemonade. They’ve got some inside.”
She smiled at Quarrendon, and he obediently stepped across the low sill into the room beyond.
Claudia was sitting at the head of the table. He wondered whether it was the strong sunlight, filtered through half-drawn blinds, that made her face seem unusually pale and full of strange shadows.
She looked at him as he came in, smiled, and suggested tea.
Nothing in either the look or the words held any but the most ordinary significance. Andrew Quarrendon told himself ruefully that probably it was a guilty conscience that caused him to feel as if something faintly sinister, resembling a vague threat, was in the atmosphere about him.
(3)
Claudia was, indeed, extraordinarily tired.
It was a sensation to which she was for the most part unaccustomed, for it was true that she was, as she said, a strong woman and one not at all given to dwelling on her own minor symptoms. She thought that it must be partly the heat that was upsetting her, and the trouble of her increasing anxiety over Sylvia’s affair with Quarrendon. The talk under the willow-tree she had resolutely determined not to think about until later. She knew that it had hurt her, and would hurt her more when she came to dwell upon the remembrance of it.
What Sal had said didn’t matter. Sal was unjust because she was prejudiced. Claudia had always known that.
Frances—poor Frances—could be dismissed, although with a little pang for her failure in loyalty. Sal Oliver, with her easy effect of slick, modern cleverness, had perhaps slightly dazzled the simple, old-fashioned Frances. She was not—and never had been—a judge of character.
It was Anna’s criticism that hurt and rankled—Anna, who as a little girl had so uncritically admired and adored her elder sister.
Why couldn’t that childish relation—so happy, so uncomplicated—have been maintained between them? It was not Claudia who had changed. It was Anna. Resentment, anger, and bewilderment surged in Claudia. She found continually that in despite of her determination to the contrary her thoughts were circling round and round the same subject. Again and again she resolutely checked them. Her mind turned restlessly hither and thither, nowhere finding solace.
Sylvia and Quarrendon! They hadn’t come in—they were somewhere together.
She felt that she had too much to bear, but still she went on mechanically talking and even laughing, and when Quarrendon at last appeared, she smiled at him.
After all, she wasn’t angry with him. There was no cause for anger.
Claudia even began to wonder why she had been so deeply troubled by the realization that he and Sylvia were mutually attracted.
Perhaps they would marry.
But no—Quarrendon was too old. He wasn’t the right type of man for little Sylvia. He didn’t, she was nearly sure, really want to marry anyone. He was the kind of man to find emotional satisfaction in a close friendship with a clever woman of his own age. …
Suddenly she was thinking of Anna again, and of the things Anna had said. Were they very important things, or was it just that the cruelty of them, the utter lack of understanding they betrayed, had hurt so much that one couldn’t dismiss them?
Claudia almost involuntarily put her hand up to her aching head.
She moved her chair back from the table. Tea was finished.
“When are we going down to bathe?” Maurice whispered urgently.
“Now, if you like—and if Daddy will take you, or let Sylvia drive the car.”
“P’raps Aunt Anna would let us go in the lovely Rolls. The chauffeur’s had a long rest,” Maurice suggested.
She smiled.
“Go and ask her.”
They were all leaving the room now.
Claudia felt too wearied to move.
Suddenly Mrs Peel, with an air of determination, came and sat down in the chair next to hers. Oh God, thought Claudia, she’s going to be tiresome, poor darling!
It was a true foreboding.
“You look very tired, dear,” began Mrs Peel automatically. “And thin,” she added rather absent-mindedly, for she was thinking of something else.
“Where is poor little Sylvia? Why didn’t she come in to tea?”
“She’s outside, with Anna. I saw her go past the window. I suppose she didn’t want tea. Girls never do seem to want any tea or breakfast nowadays. I dare say it’s better for them to go without,” perversely said Claudia, not averse from irritating her mother by the advancement of a theory which she did not, in actual point of fact, really hold at all.
“Nonsense, nonsense. They’ll probably all die of consumption before they’re forty. They’ll have no powers of resistance whatever. Any doctor would tell you the same. I’m worried about poor little Sylvia.”
“Why, Mother?”
“I don’t like this idea of her going off to work in some horrid London office—you know I don’t mean yours, darling, but some ordinary office. I know it’s of no use speaking to you, Claudia, you never dream of taking my advice, although I’m your mother and have far more experience than you have—but what is this place you’re sending her to?”
Claudia replied with a mildness that surprised herself.
“It’s a perfectly well-known publishing firm—entirely reputable—I’ve met one of the senior partners. Sal Oliver heard that this job was going, and it was Sylvia’s own idea to try for it. She’s always known that she’d have to take a job when she left school.”
Mrs Peel groaned faintly in disapproval.
“There must surely be better jobs than grubbing about in a dirty office with a lot of third-rate young men. After all, Sylvia’s a lady.”
“Mother! What has that got to do with it? People don’t think in those terms any more.”
“The world,” said Mrs Peel stoutly, “would be a much better place if they did. Look at Germany! Look at America!”
“I’m not thinking of sending Sylvia either to Germany or to America. If she gets this job, she can even go on living at home if she wants to, anyway at the week-ends.”
“And what is she going to do when it isn’t the week-ends? Sleep in the Park, I suppose,” witheringly suggested Mrs Peel.
“I think the sensible thing would be for her to share a small flat with a friend, as so many girls do nowadays. Though I suppose we ought really to consi
der what’s least expensive.”
“How much is the poor child likely to earn?”
“Very little, to begin with. She won’t be worth a great deal. Sylvia’s not really in the least clever, except perhaps with her fingers.”
“Why don’t you let her learn dress-making, or something of that kind, properly?”
Claudia, startled, looked up.
“You mean in London?”
“Paris would be better. And there’s dear old madame, who we know would look after her, and probably be only too delighted to board her, and think how good for her French!”
“What made you think of it?”
“Seeing that very disagreeable Professor, as he calls himself, hanging about her,” promptly answered Mrs Peel. “I don’t blame him for admiring her, naturally, but from what he says he’s continually popping up to London—I always say these University people haven’t anything whatever to do—and what’s to prevent him, I should like to know, from seeing her three or four times a week if she’s in London?”
“Nothing, I suppose.”
Claudia spoke quite abstractedly.
Her mother’s suggestion, in the most extraordinary way, chimed in with some scarcely-formed scheme in her own mind.
Mrs Peel went on arguing earnestly and illogically, making assertions that had no foundation in fact, adducing inaccurate reasons that bore no particular relation to the point at issue, and several times contradicting her own exaggerated statements. Yet Claudia, as never before, found her mother singularly convincing.
The habit of years, no less than her deep-rooted instinct never to relinquish her own ideal of modern parenthood, caused her to make her customary protest.
“Sylvia will have to decide, of course. You know how completely free I’ve always left them—all of them—to make their own decisions.”
Mrs Pee—perhaps elated by Claudia’s unusually considered reception of her advice—looked calmly at her daughter. Her pale, ringed hand patted her grey pompadour approvingly.
“Nonsense, darling. It’s all very well to talk like that, but we all know that, however much you let them make their own decisions as you call it, they none of them ever think anything but what you’ve taught them to think.”
(4)
“Of course you may go in the car,” said Anna to Maurice. “As many of you as you like. Tell Uncle Adolf I said so, and he’ll send a message to Kane.”
“Can I sit next the chauffeur?”
“Certainly.”
Maurice rapturously thanked her and rushed away.
Anna and Frances exchanged smiles.
“He’s a dear little boy.”
“Yes.”
“Anna, I’m so unhappy about Claudia. She minded dreadfully this morning—what you said—what we said.”
“I know she did. But I still think I was right to say it. (It was I, more than you.) It isn’t that the question of whether Taffy comes with us or not matters so terribly. I think it would be good for her, and we should like having her, but after all—sooner or later Taffy’s going to break away, and probably sooner. She’s practically seen through her mother already.”
“Don’t, Anna. Why are you so bitter about Claudia? Why do you talk like that?”
“Because it makes me so furious” declared Anna vehemently. “She isn’t honest with herself—never for one minute. She’s dramatizing herself, and her relationship with her children, and even her position as the gallant, hard-working wife of that unlucky wretch of a husband of hers. But because she’s too intelligent to pose consciously, she has to make herself believe in her own legend.”
“Anna, you’re not being fair. Claudia does work hard—she’s doing marvels. I suppose she makes mistakes—who doesn’t?—but after all, she’s got the whole weight of everything on her shoulders—the house, and the children, and everything. It isn’t easy to educate three children in these days, after all.”
“Adolf is paying for Maurice’s education, and has promised to send him to his public school, and Mother helped with all Sylvia’s school-bills. I suppose,” said Anna quietly, “Claudia didn’t tell you that.”
Frances stared at her in silence.
“That’s what I mean,” said Anna. “I’m perfectly certain she doesn’t deliberately mean to deceive you, or anybody, when she talks about being the only support of her children. That’s simply a phrase that serves to convey the picture of herself she’s got fixed in her mind, and that she wants you to see.”
“But that would mean—that she doesn’t ever really face facts at all.”
“Except when she wants to. Claudia’s anything but a fool. Haven’t you heard her analysing herself admitting all sorts of faults and failings, asking for criticism and accepting it in the most candid, most simple way in all the world—and then going on just as before, not altering, or attempting to alter, anything at all?”
Frances smiled in almost involuntary recognition of the description.
“She was rather like that in the old days—I remember her at school.”
“Of course you do. And God knows I remember her at home,” said Anna feelingly.
“Oh, Anna! Claudia always adored you.”
“I know she did. But think how completely she ruled me—and always pour le bon motif. Don’t you remember how she always had such good, sensible, excellent reasons why you and I should do exactly what she told us to do? If ever a child had a power-complex, that child was Claudia! I’m sure she deceived herself quite as much as anybody else as to her real motives. She hadn’t any motives—except determination to get her own way and dominate everybody else. And as she couldn’t admit that motive, she had to invent others. I suppose lots of people do the same kind of thing when they’re young and undisciplined—but you see Claudia has carried it on into maturity, and doesn’t know it.”
X
(1)
Taffy experimented, expertly, with the wireless. Sunday evening, she reflected, was nearly always a very bad time. Nothing really amusing to be had. For the moment even Luxembourg failed to provide her with the syncopated rhythm she wanted.
Buzz—crack—CRACK—
Atmospherics.
“… et du Saint Esprit, ainsi-soit-il.”
Small incongruous bursts of unrelated sound sprang into life as Taffy tuned-in, in rapid succession, to a variety of stations.
“… Followed by Schubert’s Ave Maria arranged by …”
“Will you very kindly address all contributions, which will be gratefully acknowledged, to …”
“Aeth ym laen a’i astudiaeth yn y …”
A loud and powerful chorus: “Full Salvation! Full Salvation! Lo, the fountain opened wide”
Taffy wrathfully switched off the wireless altogether.
Why did one so hate anything that wasn’t either very noisy or cheaply sentimental—above all, that hadn’t got the queer fascination of rhythm? Taffy genuinely enjoyed listening to classical music, and was possessed of some elementary knowledge of harmony and of musical theory. But it was not music at all that she found so indispensable as a background to existence. Rather was it an expression, often clothed in vulgar words and cheap and derivative tunes, of something within herself that could find no other outlet.
She propped her chin on her hand and thought:
“Abstract speculations frequently occupied the mind of the young girl. A superficial observer, noticing merely her strange, exotic beauty, would have been surprised———”
The turn of the last sentence was unsatisfactory.
Before Taffy could reconstruct it her grandmother came into the room.
Since it was Sunday evening Mrs Peel was not wearing an evening dress. She had changed her black afternoon frock for another one that looked exactly like it and had substituted a black enamel locket on a gold chain for a cameo brooch.
“Oh dear 1 The evenings are drawing in. Are we the first ones down?”
“Yes,” said Taffy.
Did old people always talk
like this? Would her mother, for instance, one day cease to be amusing and interesting and forcible, and make trite and foolish observations to which other people could make no reply beyond a bald assent? It seemed difficult to imagine Mother like that.
“Don’t get the stares, darling,” advised Mrs Peel.
Taffy, much annoyed, blinked rapidly.
Then Maurice came in, flew to the wireless, was checked by his grandmother, and retired rather sulkily to the Sunday newspaper.
The room filled.
The Zienszis were staying to supper.
It was a cheerful meal, with a good deal of laughter and talk.
(2)
Everything seemed like a dream to Sylvia. She was conscious of scarcely anything that went on round her although she performed the customary actions of the supper-table automatically and heard her own voice joining in the conversation.
Afterwards, she and Andrew must go out, by themselves, into the darkening garden.
Her mind refused to admit the knowledge that they had only one more day to spend together at Arling and that after this week-end was over there must come a change in their relations. She scarcely dared look at him because to do so made her heart beat so violently that she was afraid of fainting.
She could hear his voice, from time to time, replying to her mother, sitting next to him.
Almost immediately after supper the Zienszis went away.
The whole party assembled to see them driven away in the magnificent Rolls-Royce.
The heat held all the oppression of a coming storm.
Sylvia’s father raised his head.
“There’s the first drop of rain,” he said.
“Goodbye, Aunt Anna!”
“Goodbye, Maurice—goodbye, Mother dear. Let me know when you get back to London. …”
“Goodbye!”
They got into the car: the door was closed, and the chauffeur, with almost imperceptible movements, set it in motion.
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