Ladies of Lyndon

by Margaret Kennedy

  ‘I see Sir Thomas going into the shrubbery from the terrace,’ exclaimed Agatha.

  ‘Oh, dear!’ cried Marian, looking much distressed. ‘I can never reach him in time. Can we shout? How can we stop him?’

  ‘I’ll run,’ said Gerald.

  He ran and Marian sank exhausted into his chair.

  ‘Dear me!’ she said. ‘How all this takes me back to your engagement, Agatha. I never shall forget that dance at the Calthorpes’, and how your mother and I stood at the door of the little conservatory, blocking up the entrance, so that you and John should have time to settle things before anyone came in.’

  ‘Did you?’ asked Agatha curiously.

  ‘Yes. And your poor mother was so afraid that you would refuse him. I was a little nervous myself. You were so young. And you hadn’t seen Lyndon.’

  Agatha glanced at the house which should have prompted her to so immediate an acceptance of John. It was indeed a magnificent possession. There was no end to its beauty. But she was quite sure that she had never thought of it once during that half-hour in the conservatory. As far as she could remember she had not thought about anything at all. If she had entertained any intelligent ideas they had made no impression. She could recall the heavy scent of the conservatory, and the flame of orchids, the cadences of a distant waltz, John’s hand on her heart and the urgency of his voice. These things had brought her to Lyndon.

  ‘I was very young,’ she said. ‘I hardly knew what I was doing.’

  Gerald was now on the terrace talking to Sir Thomas. She looked at him resentfully. He was unfair and she often wished that she could tell him so. He did her an injustice in supposing that she had not married for love, according to her lights. Everyone, her mother even, had encouraged her to believe that her attachment to John was of an enduring nature. If she had learnt the impermanence of such passion, it was irrevocable experience which had taught her. She could not be expected to know then.

  Not that she feared for Lois. This manipulated proposal, so typical of Marian and her kind, did not go for much. Lois and Hubert were really suited to each other; they had a community of tastes which augured well for the future. They would probably make a better thing of it than she and John had done. They would rise to a level of intimacy and companionship impossible to her. And yet, it might not have been impossible if … Here, woman-like, she was able to skip a few thoughts and safeguard her conscience.

  Gerald was returning with Sir Thomas and two more chairs. They all sat down under the tree in silence, bending an expectant regard upon the entrance to the shrubbery. At last Gerald asked Marian how long she supposed her young couple would be. Marian looked rather scandalized and said she really didn’t know.

  ‘They would have to come out by now, surely, if she had refused him,’ suggested Agatha. ‘But do you think it’s quite nice of us to sit here waiting?’

  ‘I must know when they have finished their little talk,’ urged Marian. ‘I shall have to speak to Lois.’

  ‘But the rest of us? I think it would be more tactful if we removed ourselves.’

  Agatha began to prepare for departure, while Gerald unkindly suggested that the interesting pair might have left the shrubbery by the gate into the park. This idea horrified Marian, and she was about to pursue them when they were all given pause by the hasty approach of Cynthia. They were instantly aware that she had news of interest to communicate to them. So seldom did she move with animation that only the deepest excitement could cause her to hurry as she was now doing. She surveyed them triumphantly for a moment and then drawled:

  ‘James has torn it this time.’

  ‘Oh, James!’ said Marian with bored irritation. ‘What has he been doing now?’

  ‘He wants to marry Kell.’

  ‘Kell!’

  ‘Kell, the housemaid?’

  Everybody gaped, and Agatha immediately wondered why she had not foreseen it. It was so patently obvious.

  ‘The third housemaid,’ said Cynthia with relish.

  ‘Good heavens! But why …?’ began Marian.

  ‘How should I know?’ replied Cynthia, who believed that she did.

  ‘Who told you?’ demanded Agatha.

  ‘John. He and James are hard at it in the study. James got up this morning, you know. The doctor said he might as long as he keeps his arm all tied up. And he went straight off, as soon as he was up, and found John and made this announcement. They want you, please, Mother.’

  ‘Oh, dear,’ cried Marian, with a glance at the shrubbery. ‘I can’t possibly come yet. I must stay here for a minute or two.’

  ‘But isn’t it like James?’ exclaimed Agatha.

  ‘She seems a nice girl,’ contributed Gerald.

  ‘An uncommonly pretty girl,’ pronounced Sir Thomas. ‘What does she say to it? Will she have him?’

  ‘You bet she will if she can,’ Cynthia assured them. ‘You’ll have to sack her now, I suppose, Agatha?’

  ‘Yes, indeed! My dear, it will be most disagreeable for you,’ said Marian sympathetically. ‘Having a thing like this happen in one’s own house! Would you like me to see her for you?’

  ‘No, thank you,’ replied Agatha a little coldly.

  ‘I don’t see how you can possibly blame yourself, though,’ continued Marian. ‘Nobody could have foreseen this. I suppose it’s all the result of our letting him go to Paris. However …’

  Her glance suggested that they could not really discuss this delicate matter in the presence of gentlemen. Agatha was thinking swiftly. She remembered Kell tugging at the heavy ladder to get cherries for James. She thought of Kell’s Bible on his bed. Kell was really a very nice creature. It was monstrous that anyone should regard the affair in the light of a scandal. Marian’s suggestive hints were not to be endured. Neither James nor Kell should be insulted while Agatha was the lady of Lyndon.

  ‘I shall be very sorry to lose her,’ she announced. ‘She is such an exceptionally nice girl. But I don’t suppose she will want to stay on as housemaid after she is married.’

  This was an open defection and was felt as such by the company. Marian looked dumbfounded. Cynthia and Sir Thomas had much ado not to laugh. The affair, to them, could have but one significance. Gerald Blair became extremely joyful.

  ‘I think James has shown the most astounding good sense,’ stated the amazing Agatha. ‘I think he will be very lucky if he can succeed in marrying such an admirable creature. I am sure she will make him happy, which no one else has ever tried to do.’

  ‘My dear Agatha …’ began Marian, but the rebel, quite exhausted by her own violence, had turned away towards the house.

  Gerald recognized the frightened pallor which had succeeded her flush of excitement. He had seen it before on an occasion, the only occasion in her life, when she had defied her mother. That was five years ago, and her defiance, if he remembered rightly, had been short lived. This time her rash impetuosity must be encouraged, upheld. He hastened after her and found her, still palpitating, in the flowery spaciousness of her drawing-room. They looked at each other and Gerald ejaculated:

  ‘Cleared it!’

  ‘Well, but don’t you agree with me? Don’t you? If she cares for him, don’t you think it’s the best thing that could happen to him? And I honestly don’t think she’d have accepted him if she didn’t.’

  ‘Of course it is. Any man would be in luck to get a girl like that. She’s splendid. Well balanced, healthy, sane … a good stock. I watched her at that Dante lecture and thought what a fine woman she was.’

  ‘Oh, don’t talk like that. I don’t mean that. They love each other really and properly, as only one couple in a thousand manage to do. Stop talking like a eugenics textbook.’

  ‘It’s my job.’

  ‘Yes. But you know better than that! Gerald! Stop looking out of the window! You know better than that.’

  ‘I know …’ he began, and pulled up, appalled at the indiscretion of the remark he had been about to make.

  T
he contagious properties of love are proverbial and it is always dangerous for a couple divorced by fate to reflect in unison upon the happier romances of other people. These ill-starred cousins were unlucky in that they had been thrown together at a time when the whole of Lyndon was mating. A moment after Gerald’s too significant pause, they had the prudence to withdraw, somewhat hastily, from an interview which was leading them beyond the bounds of decorum. Agatha ran upstairs and Gerald bolted into the billiard-room.

  4.

  He left Lyndon next day before she had finished making her leisurely breakfast in bed. She heard the throbbing of his car at the door and the change of gear as it hummed away up the slope. Silence fell upon Lyndon when he was gone, scarcely broken by the peaceful, everlasting sound of mowing and the shouting of cuckoos far off across the water meadows.

  She lay drowsily, watching the tempered sunlight which streamed through the half-shaded windows. It fell in great rainbow splashes upon the crystal and silver of her dressing-table. Her breakfast steamed on a tray beside her bed and her morning’s letters were strewed upon the counterpane. At last she roused herself sufficiently to pour out another cup of coffee and examine her mail. There were several pages from her mother, and she frowned a little as she perused them. One passage in particular made her flush and sigh:

  ‘By the way, I’ve had such a funny letter from Marian. (How I wish we had not got on to these Christian name terms of intimacy! They tie one so!) I must show it to you. It’s most veiled, of course, but it seems she really is getting worried upon the family question. Has she been dropping tactful hints to you? If not, I think you may expect them. Personally, I consider it’s exceedingly impertinent of her, in spite of my own views on the matter, of which you are already aware. Of course it’s important that the place shouldn’t go to the Causfield Clewers, and I really think that the sooner that contingency is provided against, the better. Still, you’ve heard all this before, and I expect you think you know your own business.

  Have you talked to J. about standing for Parliament in the next election? I met Tim Fenwick at Lady Peel’s yesterday, and he seemed to take it for granted that the Government would come to grief over this Ulster question. If this is really so, John has no time to lose. He, T. F. I mean, has been nursing his constituency for months. Do get J. to stir himself. I think it would be such an excellent thing for you both; you can do so much for him, canvassing and so on, and people without a family need something of the kind, some common interest to bring them together. And I think a serious object in life would be good for him. If you will persist in what I cannot but regard as a very rash obstinacy, I think the safest course will be to get John into Parliament if possible….’

  Agatha, angry as she was, could not help laughing a little at these tactful suggestions. It was so like her mother to think that politics would provide John with a good substitute for paternity.

  Since the death of her first-born, the luckless heir of Lyndon, she had steadily refused to bear children or had, rather, postponed the bearing of them to a more convenient epoch. She could not bring herself to face again the trials of that first year of wifehood. It had taught her, with an enduring shock, the nature of her hold upon her husband. She had felt him slipping from her at a moment when she stood in the most need of his supporting tenderness.

  It had been his obvious pity for her condition which had alarmed her. He had been much too considerate for her peace of mind. Never for a moment had he forgotten that her eclipsed beauty had made her an object of compassion. This attitude struck her as an insult; a piece of brutality thinly veiled by sentiment. She knew that she had lost all her real power over him and that he was behaving, to her in accordance with his ideas of civility. His renewed ardour at her recovery of health and good looks had made her sure of this. And at that time she cared a great deal for his devotion. She did still. On his subjugation depended most of her own self-esteem.

  She had decided to wait some years before taking such a risk again, and he, happy in the recovery of his beautiful wife, had acquiesced. There was plenty of time before them, for Agatha was, in those days, barely nineteen. But the subject was a sore one with Mrs Cocks, who continually urged her daughter to ‘get it over.’ As for Marian, she looked upon such a refusal of responsibility as flighty and a little ill-bred. It is to be doubted whether anyone in the world guessed what tears had been shed by the mother in secret over the child she had never even seen. Now, as she lay at ease in her magnificent bed, a small and very bitter drop splashed on to Mrs Cocks’s letter and blurred the large handwriting. For Agatha had a morbid and unconfessed conviction that no child born to herself and John would meet with a better fate than the first.

  His step in the gallery recalled her to herself. Instantly she put her hands to her hair beneath the falling silk and lace of her cap. Searching under her pillow she found a small handkerchief and carefully removed the traces of her tears. When he greeted her she was smiling.

  ‘Blair has gone,’ he informed her. ‘I expect you heard him go.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Hope being here has done him good. He assures me that he is sleeping better. But I can’t say I see much improvement. He came looking haggard and he’s gone away looking haggard.’

  ‘I don’t think visits to relations are very good rest cures.’

  ‘You’re right. He should have gone a sea voyage or something.’

  He was wandering round the room picking up photographs and putting them down again and fidgeting among the things on her dressing-table.’

  ‘Lois and Ervine are settled,’ he said. ‘Mamma is going to send the notice to the papers today. Hello! What’s this?’

  He held up a small, common-looking object. It was that pocket photograph of Gerald and Agatha which had been taken so long ago at Canverley Fair. She had on the previous night removed it from the cabinet where it had lain forgotten and stared at it for a little time, thinking strange thoughts. She remembered now that she had not put it away.

  ‘This is Blair, isn’t it?’ continued John. ‘But who’s the kid?’

  ‘Don’t you recognize her?’

  ‘Not …? You never wore your hair dragged back like that, did you?’

  ‘When I was sixteen I did. I was sixteen when that was taken.’

  ‘But how on earth could your mother allow it?’

  ‘She didn’t know. We got photographed without her leave at a country fair.’

  ‘I didn’t mean that. I mean how could she allow you to do your hair like that?’

  ‘Oh, she liked it like that. It’s unbecoming, isn’t it? But I wasn’t out, you see.’

  ‘It’s hideous. I didn’t think you could look like that.’

  He put it in his pocket and said:

  ‘I can’t have this thrown away. It’s a family curio.’

  ‘It wasn’t going to be thrown away. Please give it back, John!’

  ‘Oh, no. I’m going to keep it. I’ll put it among the miniatures.’

  ‘No, John! I want it!’

  ‘You won’t get it. Though I don’t wonder that you don’t want to let it out of your hands. It’s a very compromising piece of evidence, you know.’

  ‘What of?’ she asked, tremendously startled.

  ‘That you were ever plain. No one would believe it without positive proof. It gives me unlimited power over you. Cynthia would give her eyes for a squint at it. By the way, now that Mamma has disposed of Lois, I think she will wake up a bit about Cynthia and Bragge.’

  ‘What do you think about that?’ asked Agatha sitting up.

  ‘Oh, well … he’s rather a bounder, but if she will have him it’s a good match from the financial point of view.’

  ‘But he’s so much older….’

  ‘Yes, it’s a drawback. But if she doesn’t mind, why should we?’

  ‘I can’t see how she can contemplate such a thing.’

  ‘I expect she wants her freedom.’

  ‘But I can’t believe it will tu
rn out happily.’

  ‘There won’t be any scandals in the family, if that’s what you mean. Cynthia’s got her head screwed on too well for that. And that’s all we need worry about.’

  ‘I hate his ideas. So vulgar … so mercenary….’

  ‘What about hers?’

  Agatha was silent.

  ‘You may take it,’ he said, ‘that they will be well matched. She knows her own business. So does he. And a pretty penny she’ll cost him.’

  ‘At her age,’ argued Agatha, ‘a girl ought to have ideals….’

  ‘Ought she? Had you?’

  He had seated himself beside her on the bed. Silhouetted against the shaded window she could study his massive profile and the slight thickening of his neck over the back of his collar – the first indications of approaching corpulence. Though not really fat, he had too much flesh for thirty-four. But all the Clewer men were large; James would be fat in ten years’ time, fat and pale, whereas John would be fat and red. He was toying with her hand, pressing each white finger slowly back, and she conquered an impulse to snatch it from him.

  ‘I think I had ideals at seventeen,’ she said thoughtfully.

  ‘You’d got rid of them by the time I met you. That was one of the first things that struck me about you, Agatha; your sense of proportion! Don’t start losing it now!’

  ‘If only Sir Thomas wasn’t so …’ She paused and met his eye. ‘Well, you know quite well, don’t you, that …?’

  ‘She got him on the rebound after a break?’ He laughed. ‘How far did he go before you turned him down?’

  ‘Oh, a good way, horrid old thing.’

  ‘Old blackguard!’ He laughed again. ‘I thought as much. In fact it was pretty obvious. But he can’t be blamed so very much. He has a certain amount of excuse, you know, my dear.’

  ‘But he was your guest.’

  ‘Well … er … yes. He is a bounder, isn’t he? But Cynthia probably knows all about it, don’t you think?’

  ‘Are you never jealous, John?’ she asked curiously.