It was true, perfectly true, Madeline thought now as she sat staring at the fire. The kindness of the polar-bear. She groaned inwardly. ‘Oh, go, woman: for God’s sake, go!’
But Mrs. Muncaster was smiling protectively. ‘Well, I am doing my best for you: you may be sure of that.’
Madeline emerged from her reverie. ‘Your best for me?’
‘To get you married.’
Madeline felt suddenly afraid. Had this meddlesome old woman actually been talking to men about her? So far from helping things she might very easily ruin everything for her by sheer clumsy importunity.
Mrs. Muncaster pursed her lips and nodded her head. ‘Yes, my dear. I’ve even chosen the man.’
A terrible apprehension chilled Madeline to the heart: it was all she could do to assume a smile of indifference.
‘And who is he, if I may ask?’
Mrs. Muncaster shook a finger. ‘Ah, that’s my business!’
Beneath the surface Madeline was furiously angry. She longed to seize the old thing and smother her in her own furs. If Mrs. Muncaster had been suggesting things to men, the men would very likely conclude that it was by Madeline’s own wish – a feminine conspiracy. The old woman would simply be making a fool of her. Except for that, her intrusive benevolence did not matter; unless … Madeline suddenly went cold all over … unless she had been attacking Basil on the subject. Under a calm and gaily cynical exterior Basil would be horrified. His independence, his extreme sensitiveness, would leap away from anything – from Mozart, from Blake, from all he most loved – if Mrs. Muncaster were to press it upon him. Five minutes to five. ‘Get up, old woman. Get up and go away. It’s late. You’re wanted at home!’
To Madeline’s delight Mrs. Muncaster responded. She got up and held out her hand. The magic had worked at last, but only just in time, for it was two minutes to five when she drove away.
Madeline, left alone, stood by the fireplace, one elbow on the mantelpiece. Her heart was fluttering: every nerve was tense with suppressed excitement. And yet, why? After all, the whole thing might be simply her own imagination. She and Basil had been friends for so long: why, now, should their relation change? Probably it was she herself who had begun to change and so had read into their last meeting things which, from Basil’s point of view, were not there. And yet, surely he had been different. It had begun with his arrival: he had held her hand so much longer than usual. ‘It’s always such a relief to come to see you,’ he had said.
‘After … whom?’ she had asked, with a laugh.
‘After Mrs. Muncaster and the rest of the crew. They’re hopeless. I give them up.’ ‘All of them?’
‘Yes, every Jack one of them. They’re all right for a time. Occasionally I actually feel a sort of craving for Mrs. Muncaster: her stupidity, her kindness, her absurd over-estimation of her own importance, are all, in some curious way, lovable. Then, one morning, I wake up with a loathing, a real first-class hatred, for the whole pack of them. If only I were a Borgia I should invite them all to one of those conclusive little suppers.’
‘And next day, perhaps, you’d be sorry.’
‘No doubt a little sorry. But in the end, really glad. If it wasn’t for you, I should have left this place long ago. Really: I mean it.’ He had put out his hand as if to lay it on her arm, hesitated, and shyly let it fall again. Surely all this had meant something more than their old friendship? Yet had it, really? For she, certainly, had lately begun to feel so much more than mere friendship for Basil, and that, undoubtedly, might lead her to misinterpret him, to read through different eyes what was really the same as it had always been. But no: when he had said good-bye he had held her hands in both his own, begging to be allowed to come again soon – sooner than usual. That, surely, was real enough and different enough!
The front-door bell rang, sending her heart to her throat. In a few minutes the problem would be solved one way or the other.
He came in, brisk, cheerful, face and collar as usual miraculously clean, with the same refreshing boyishness which she always discovered anew every time she met him. She held out her hand.
‘You’re just too late for … whom do you guess?’
‘I don’t have to guess. I know. Mother Muncaster.’
‘You saw her?’
‘No, I didn’t. But fee-fi-fo-fum, I smell the smell of her detestable eau-de-Cologne. Does she put it on, do you think, because she likes it or because she imagines other people like it?’
Madeline thought. ‘From pure habit, I should think, as she puts on her petticoat. Then you don’t like eau-de-Cologne?’
‘Not since I knew Mother Muncaster.’
Madeline laughed, but there was a weight at her heart, for she knew already – knew by some subtle and infallible sense the moment he entered the room – that her golden expectations were unfounded. Except for a trace of unwonted nervousness, he was the same, exactly the same friendly creature, as he had always been. As for the nervousness, she had felt that, too, at once, and realized that it was not the suppressed excitement of passion, but merely a slight embarrassment … how could she define it? … the embarrassment of someone reclaiming a debt from a friend. The maid came in with fresh tea and toast.
‘I gather,’ Madeline remarked as she filled his cup, ‘that Mrs. Muncaster is under a cloud.’
Basil nodded. ‘She is,’ he said. ‘A heavy one.’
‘Heavier than usual?’
‘A pea-soup fog, and one that is likely to be permanent.’
‘Dear me, and what has she been up to this time?’
‘Oh, nothing special. Just her usual damned kindness in an aggravated form. Plunging in, so to speak, where elephants fear to tread.’ Suddenly he became serious. ‘She hasn’t, by any chance …’ he hesitated for a moment with his eyes fixed upon hers: ‘she hasn’t been saying anything about me to you, has she?’
‘About you? No, nothing,’ Although what she said was perfectly true, Madeline blushed scarlet as she said it.
Basil’s eyes turned away. ‘That’s all right,’ he said briefly. And suddenly Madeline knew that he suspected her of complicity with Mrs. Muncaster. Yes, that was what had happened: Mrs. Muncaster had been pressing her upon Basil and he believed that she had known it and acquiesced. What was she to do? She must undeceive him somehow: for such behaviour would seem to Basil, as it seemed to her, contemptible, a betrayal of their mutual freedom and privacy. And with Mrs. Muncaster, of all people! She raised her eyes to find his fixed on her again.
‘You’re sure?’ he asked.
‘Quite sure.’ She met his gaze without flinching. Still, she could see, he was not satisfied. Why, oh why, wouldn’t he tell her everything! If only he would explain what had happened, she would be able to clear herself convincingly. She watched his face, hoping that he would begin; but he sat silent, staring at the carpet with knitted brows. But not for long. Soon he roused himself and began to chatter in his brisk way of other things. It was horrible: worse, much worse, than if he had broken out and abused her. She tried, but in vain, to chatter back. Her attention was absorbed by the pit that gaped between them and she could not disguise her suffering. Her mouth was stiff and drawn: even the sound of her voice was changed. What was she to do? How could she make him believe her? He rose to go, his face still clouded. Despair came over her: if she let him go now, perhaps he would never come back.
Then, as she took his hand, she had an inspiration. It was dangerous and it was a lie, at least one word of it was a lie; but, knowing him as she did, she believed it was the only hope.
‘Now that you’re going,’ she said, Til confess that, when you came, I was very much afraid you were going to propose to me.’
His face cleared instantly and next moment his mouth curled into the humorous, boyish smile which, for her, was the expression most typical of him.
‘Bless my soul,’ he said, ‘what next?’ Then, as he turned to go, he glanced back and she knew that she had succeeded. ‘Will you be in next Wed
nesday,’ he asked, ‘at the usual time?’
Still Waters
I
Our neighbours the grants were moving. Miss Leppard, an old friend of mine and also of theirs, had arrived on her annual visit on the previous day, and now she and I sat in the drawing-room window watching the slow disembowelling of the house next door.
‘That,’ I said, as two men carried a black Victorian chiffonier down the garden path, ‘that was in the drawing-room, on the left of the fireplace.’ ‘And these, coming now, must be the dining-room chairs,’ remarked Miss Leppard.
‘Quite right. And here comes that atrocious marble table that stood on the first landing.’
Piece after piece, disturbed from its resting-place of eight years, was brought out and placed on the grass, shamefully exposed to the outside world, till it could be fitted into the great van that stood at the gate. It was incredible that one van could swallow so much. Both the drawing-room and dining-room must already be almost empty. One seemed to feel through the wall the coldness and dampness of the increasing void. Then a cab drove up and stopped as near to the gate as the van would allow. The cabman dismounted and went into the house and in a moment reappeared with Annie the housemaid carrying a huge black trunk. When the trunk had been hoisted on to the box Annie returned to the house and soon emerged again with a Gladstone bag; and then the two little Grant girls, poor little things, came out with their Aunt Virginia. They paused to stare in amazement at a large family portrait which had been propped against a table on the grass. Milly, the elder, was pointing at it, and next minute Ida, looking with her thin legs and bushy red hair like a malevolent imp, skipped across the border that edged the path and, licking one finger, rubbed it against the canvas and then earnestly examined it. Then simultaneously they discovered that we were watching them and, laughing guiltily, ran after Aunt Virginia.
‘Milly,’ said Miss Leppard, ‘has a great look of her mother, but Ida is like none of them.’
‘No. A funny little creature.’
‘A changeling, no doubt,’ said Miss Leppard: ‘a fairy’s child.’ We heard the cab-door bang and a moment later they were driving away, leaving the house to its fate.
‘So much for that,’ I said.
‘A sad business,’ sighed Miss Leppard,
‘And an incredible business, too,’ I replied.
‘The last person in the world, I should have said …’
‘Irene Grant?’
‘Yes. She was, I always felt, one of those people to whom nothing ever has happened or ever will happen: a woman too apathetic, too uncombustible to respond to the spark of outward events. I could never discover that she was particularly happy or particularly unhappy: her invariable mood was … how shall I put it? … a slightly plaintive tolerance of the unavoidable necessity of living. How extraordinary it is, Miss Leppard, that I should have lived next door to that woman for eight years and yet known her so remarkably little! Of her husband I feel that I know a good deal, and of the two little girls, but of Mrs. Grant … nothing.’
‘And isn’t it more extraordinary still,’ said Miss Leppard, ‘that I should have known her ever since she was a child of fourteen and yet know her really no better than you do?’
Yet was there after all, I reflected, anything so very extraordinary about it? Was it not simply that there was nothing to know? And I fell once more to recalling Irene Grant. What survived most definitely was the colourless, extinguished voice and the half-closed eyelids which hardly ever rose to reveal the eyes. Her skin was beautiful, a delicate olive, pallid and mat – very smooth, one fancied, to touch. There was something curiously attractive, too, in the glossy black hair, especially where it thinned away on the nape of the neck and the short hairs could be seen curving like a delicate, silken fringe out of the creamy flesh. She seemed always a thing apart from her clothes. One thought of her naked body. Naked she would probably be beautiful, though her face was far from good-looking. The brow was fine, but the nose splayed out somewhat towards the nostrils, and the holes of the nostrils were curiously round like the nostrils of an animal. She had a large mouth, not beautiful and yet interesting in shape: the sort of mouth that tempted one to take pencil and paper and try to catch its peculiar curve. Her chin was perhaps her best feature – a small, pointed chin that gave a look of wistfulness to the whole face. Yes, a gentle, wistful, slightly simian creature; and listless, muted, and somehow sickly, for one felt always that she had just recovered from a fever. A cold, spent fever oppressed her, extinguished her voice, weighed down her eyelids, gave to her face that look not of suffering but of recent escape from suffering and to her hand that damp, feverish touch which chilled you whenever you shook hands with her.
No! It could not be, I felt now, that there was nothing to know. The coldly feverish quality redeemed her from that, suggested some secret stress, deeply hidden. That and her eyes: for her eyes, when on rare occasions the eyelids were raised for a moment, startled you. Not that they were in themselves startling: they were, as I remember them, remarkably calm. But their colour was extraordinary – a clear, light brown, almost golden, and their expression, their meaning, seemed somehow to contradict the meaning of her speech and movements. Strange, disturbing eyes, that brought, whenever one looked into them – and I looked into them only three or four times, I think, during the eight years I knew her – a shock of discovery. ‘Of course!’ one thought each time. ‘Her eyes! I had forgotten her eyes,’ And one began, once again, to revise one’s conception of her, trying to take her eyes into account, so to speak. But in vain. They remained, those two eyes of hers, something outside the Mrs. Grant one knew – a mystery, a contradiction; and, being unaccountable, one forgot them once again.…
II
I awoke with a start. The clock on the mantelpiece was dropping, one by one, four round pebbles into the pool of silence. I looked guiltily across at Miss Leppard, but she too was dreaming, and of Irene Grant no doubt, for when I spoke to her – ‘Tell me something, Miss Leppard, about Mrs. Grant’ – she began at once as though continuing a train of thought.
‘I knew Irene, as I said just now, when she was only fourteen, or rather it would be nearer the truth to say that I knew old Mrs. Western her mother, for one didn’t get to know Irene even as a child. When I called on her mother Irene was generally invisible – upstairs, her mother said, reading or practising the piano, till sometimes I forgot that Mrs. Western had a child and was surprised to find the funny little thing curled up on the drawing-room sofa beside her mother on the rare occasions when, I suppose, she hadn’t had time to escape. And there she sat, very quiet, studying me with her strange eyes.’
‘Like a meditative monkey!’ I said.
Miss Leppard laughed. ‘Well … ! Rather, perhaps, a sort of gentle wild cat. She never spoke unless spoken to. Even when her mother tried to draw her out – “Irene went to a tea-party yesterday, didn’t you, Irene?” “Is it a Mozart Sonata you are learning now, Irene?” – she never did more than raise those strange topaz eyes for a moment and breathe a little exhausted Yes or No.
‘A year or two later, I remember, she fell ill. Nobody seemed to know quite what was the matter. The doctor hinted at some brain trouble. She ate too little, was too much alone, practised the piano too much. Her mother took her away to the seaside. But the seaside, it seemed, did her no good: the new surroundings did not interest her, and she moped for her piano. Often, her mother told me, she would sit idle for a whole hour in their little lodging-house sitting-room, her right arm extended across the table, the fingers strumming some inaudible tune.’
‘But how curious!’ I broke in: ‘I never knew she played the piano or cared anything at all about music.’
‘She gave it up years ago,’ replied Miss Leppard, ‘but at one time she did little else. I never heard her, for she always refused to play to anyone, even to her mother; but her music-mistress, whom I used to know, told me that she played remarkably well. But to go on-they had not been at the seaside lo
ng when Irene caught a chill and was seriously ill for nearly a month. That, strange to say, seemed to do her good. She loved to lie idle all day while her mother or the nurse washed her, combed her hair, fed her, and read to her. Even after she had returned home, quite recovered, she would not rouse herself, but continued to give herself the airs of an invalid. I used sometimes to think that a good shaking … However, I was wrong, perhaps. Undoubtedly she was an abnormal child.’
III
‘The next thing I recall.’ Miss Leppard continued, ‘is a curious incident which occurred when Irene was eighteen. I had gone to pay one of my periodical calls on Mrs. Western. She was alone, as usual, for even at eighteen Irene continued to avoid visitors, taking refuge in her own room and her piano-playing. Her cousin, Ronald Grant, a young man a year older than herself, was the only visitor for whom she could be persuaded to come down; but him she regarded as one of the family.
‘On the occasion of which I am speaking, Mrs. Western received me in the dining-room. A plumber was in the drawing-room, she explained, fixing a new chandelier. In Irene’s room, too, there was to be a new gas-bracket in a position more convenient for the piano. It was rather an event, I could see, this new chandelier in the drawing-room, and before tea I was taken to inspect it. The plumber had almost finished. We found Irene there, too: she had emerged from her usual apathy and was watching the plumber at work. We also watched for a few minutes and then left her there and returned to the dining-room.
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