‘Not of that! Consider, my love, what a stormy life we would lead if I began. No. But just occasionally, when you get these soul qualms, you alarm me. I have a suspicion that if you ever deceive me it will be with a bishop or somebody like that.’
After a pause he continued:
‘Oh, I remember now what I really came to talk to you about. It’s this affair of James. Something’s got to be done about it. And my only hope is the girl. I want you to talk to her and see if you can’t scare her off. You know she’s played her cards uncommonly well. She must be a clever girl. I’ve been talking to James and I gather she’s succeeded in hooking him without giving any tricks away. There’s been absolutely nothing in their relations which puts her at a disadvantage. She isn’t forced to have him, you understand?’
‘Perfectly.’
‘I must confess I was surprised.’
‘I’m not. I don’t think you understand either of them.’
‘I don’t understand James, certainly, and you are more likely to understand the workings of another woman’s mind than I am. My own opinion is, however, that she’ll chuck him when she finds that four hundred pounds is all she’ll get with him. She must have thought he had more. When she finds that he hasn’t, she’ll probably change her mind, don’t you think?’
‘I don’t know. It isn’t a bad match for a girl in her class.’
‘Not if the fellow were presentable. But really, you know, the girl’s a fine girl. She must expect some compensation for putting up with James.’
‘Really and truly I think you are mistaking the nature of her attachment to him.’
‘Well, that’s what I want you to find out. You talk to her, quite sympathetically if you like, but just hint what a bad bargain he will be.’
‘But do you think it’s altogether a thing to be discouraged? She is, after all, a nice, respectable girl and he is not quite like other people. He’s a misfit here. Nobody regards him and he’s not happy, obviously. With a wife and a home of his own he might do much better. And he’s very fond of her.’
‘It wouldn’t do at all,’ said John decidedly. ‘Don’t you see that they would probably be in continual financial difficulties? Always dragging us down and coming to us for help. Besides,’ he added, with some constraint, ‘I think it would be rather a misfortune for James ever to marry anyone. We don’t want a heap of his brats swarming all over the place.’
‘But they won’t live here, surely?’
‘No, but they would eventually, if James came into the place.’
‘It’s early days to think of that.’
‘I can’t help thinking of it. Hang it all, I do care for the place.’
‘It isn’t any worse than the Causfield Clewers getting it. You’ve always said you wouldn’t mind so very much if that happened.’
‘Nor would I. They are a very decent set, I believe. This would be quite a different thing.’
‘Well,’ she said, ‘I’ll see Kell and I’ll put the financial question before her. But I can’t promise not to back her up if she sticks to him. I shall think too well of her.’
‘No, don’t. I don’t want a quarrel. James is so persistent that he may carry this through, just as he did us all over the Paris business. I shouldn’t be a bit surprised. And in that case I don’t want an open breach. It will only make things worse. That’s why I don’t want Mamma to get her finger into this pie; she’s so uncompromising. Be nice to Kell, but tell her firmly that, if they insist upon marriage, we won’t help them in any way. That should scare her.’
‘All right. I’ll see her now.’
‘Need you worry so early?’ He looked grateful. ‘Wait until after lunch. Any time will do. You’ve nothing doing today, have you?’
‘Nothing. But I’ll see her at once and then get up,’ said Agatha briskly.
He kissed her and departed, leaving her to arrange her thoughts for the encounter. Kell was summoned. In her print frock, with her flaming hair tucked away under her cap, she looked out of place in the exotic richness of Agatha’s bedroom. She suggested a marigold in an orchid house. She came and stood at the bedside, looking at her employer with eyes that were respectful but unembarrassed.
‘Sit down, won’t you?’ said Agatha, raising herself upon one elbow and looking kindly at the girl.
Kell sat, with a trace of nervousness, hardly knowing where to place her reddened hands.
‘I wanted to talk,’ continued Agatha, ‘about this marriage. Naturally it is rather a surprise to us. You must forgive us if it is so.’
‘Of course, I see that, my lady,’ rejoined Kell. After a pause she continued in the careful speech she used with her employers, ‘I know he is above me in station. But I think I can make him happy. He is so different from most gentlemen.’
‘He is indeed!’ thought Agatha. Aloud she said: ‘Have you thought—forgive me if I am impertinent—have you thought at all about ways and means? Do you think you can afford to marry, in fact?’
‘Oh, yes,’ said Kell, looking surprised. ‘We were going to begin buying our furniture at once.’
‘He has four hundred pounds a year, I believe,’ murmured Agatha.
‘Plenty girls in my class marry on less, Lady Clewer. I’d think very poorly of myself if I couldn’t manage on eight pounds a week. And we’ve got something saved for our furniture.’
‘But then the standard of living would be rather different. You couldn’t live like cottagers, quite.’ Kell looked unconvinced. ‘Or would you?’
‘We thought so,’ the other girl admitted. ‘We don’t want anything different. I’m not marrying him because I want anything different. I don’t like his being in a different class to me. I’d rather he was the same. For us to try to live like gentlepeople would be silly. It wouldn’t suit him nor me.’
‘Then what are your plans?’
‘There’s a little cottage out Bramfield way, my lady, that would do for us very well. I like Bramfield, because I’ve a married cousin living near there. And he likes it because of his pictures. He often goes over there to draw out the scenery.’
‘Does he? Do you like his pictures, Ke … I can’t call you Kell if I’m to be your sister-in-law, can I? May I call you Dolly? It seems to be more sensible, doesn’t it? Tell me how you like his pictures.’
‘I don’t know.’ Dolly looked confused. ‘I hardly understand such things. He seems quite set on it, as you might say.’
‘Do you think he’ll go on painting when you are married?’
‘Why, yes! What else would he do? A man must have something.’
‘But you don’t admire his work particularly?’
Dolly flushed, feeling that her loyalty was in some sort attacked.
‘I think he’s very clever to draw out all those things,’ she said defensively. ‘And they’re very like, I’m sure. I think the machinery in that picture of the traction engine has come out quite beautiful. But I don’t understand such things. At school I was always bad at the drawing.’
Agatha turned to another aspect of the case and asked: ‘What are your immediate plans? It will be very awkward for you during the next few weeks, won’t it? Are you finding it difficult?’
‘Well, they don’t know in The Room yet,’ said Dolly. ‘But I’ve nothing to be ashamed of when they do.’
‘No, indeed! But I was wondering if it would be easier for you to go away for a bit. Have you no friends you could stay with until your marriage?’
Dolly shook her head.
‘There’s only my aunt,’ she said. ‘And she won’t be too pleased. She doesn’t hold with people marrying above them.’
‘We’ll think out a plan,’ said Agatha. ‘I’ll get up now. Could you send Pauline to me.’
Dolly rose, her round face very pink.
‘I have to thank you for your kindness to me,’ she said. ‘I know it is difficult for you and all the family, and I shall always be grateful to you, Lady Clewer, for treating me in such a friendly way. I don’t k
now whether you and Sir John and old Lady Clewer won’t think that I ought to try and live like a lady when I’m married. But, to my way of thinking, we’d look more foolish if we did that, and give the family more to be ashamed of, than if we went on in the station we are used to.’
‘But you see, Dolly, it won’t be his station.’
‘I know, my lady. No more this isn’t.’ Dolly was becoming earnest and idiomatic. ‘James and me … we are just suited to each other like. We’ll be just a little sort of class to ourselves, I should say.’
‘That will be it,’ said Agatha enlightened. ‘Well … if you are both happy …’
Then, remembering John’s instructions, she repeated his warning as well as she could. Dolly listened with dignity.
‘We don’t want anything done for us,’ she said. ‘And I can promise that we won’t burden you. We wouldn’t like to lose our independence, you see.’
‘Very well, as long as I’ve made it clear to you….’
‘It’s quite clear, thank you, Lady Clewer. We’ll remember it.’
Dolly withdrew and Agatha embarked upon her toilet. Later in the morning she climbed the unaccustomed stairs to James’s attic. The artist, his arm in a sling, sat before the portrait of ‘Jellybelly,’ which had remained on the easel since the day of the accident. Agatha turned her eyes away from it hastily, with that instinct of self-preservation which James’s work usually evoked.
‘I came up,’ she said, ‘to talk about you and Dolly.’
‘Well?’ he asked truculently.
‘I think things will be rather difficult for Dolly, you know.’
‘You can make them difficult.’
‘I don’t want to. Please believe that I don’t want to. What I want to say is this. Wouldn’t it relieve the situation a good deal if you both came with me up to town and stayed in an hotel somewhere until after the wedding? You’ll have a lot of shopping to do and it will be easier all round. I’ve not proposed this to John yet, until I saw what you and Dolly think. But I believe he would think it a good plan if the marriage is really coming off soon.’
‘Thank you, Agatha. But I don’t see, if you are nice to her, that she would have such a bad time here.’
‘But the other servants!’
‘What could they do to her? Dolly won’t mind.’
‘Yes she will. Dear James, if you are going to marry her you must try to think of things from her point of view. Can’t you see that?’
‘Have you spoken to Dolly?’
‘Yes. And I believe she would like the plan if I suggested it.’
‘Well,’ he said, ‘I’ll agree all right, if you will be my guest while we are in town, Agatha. Will you do that? I’ve been yours quite long enough. It’s time you were mine.’
‘Well, James … I don’t quite like …’
‘You want to stop it?’ he asked, looking at her keenly.
‘What? The marriage? No I don’t.’ She hesitated a moment and then said: ‘I don’t at all. I believe it ought to be a great success.’
‘Agatha! Then you are really on our side?’
‘Yes. I believe I am.’
‘Well, I wouldn’t ever have guessed. Though I always thought, you know, that you were a nice creature. Nicer than anyone except Dolly.’
He smiled at her, his plain face creased into an unaccustomed beam of delight.
‘You are …’ Words failed him. ‘I can’t tell you what I feel. But I’ll never forget it. Nor will Dolly. It makes it all so much easier. I used to think sometimes that you weren’t one really though you looked like one.’
‘Like what, James?’
‘Oh … one of those women … like Mamma and Lois and Cynthia … a lady, you know. Not like Dolly.’
He fell silent, smiling delightedly at her. Then, suddenly inspired, he jerked his thumb towards the easel.
‘You have it.’
She controlled her features and hoped that she had given no hint of her dismay. But he was, fortunately, quite convinced by her words of gratitude.
‘Shall I bring it down to your room?’ he asked.
She tried to imagine its stark contours in the luxury of her bedchamber.
‘Where on earth can I put it?’ she asked herself, as she stumbled down the garret stairs.
4
The Braxhall Frescoes
1.
Sir Thomas Bragge set his house upon a hill. It was built, regardless of expense, upon the most prominent site in all Berkshire. Its uncounted windows, flashing in the sun, were visible in every direction for many miles. Locally it was known as ‘Bragge’s Barracks.’
It marked, monumentally, the excessive prosperity of Sir Thomas during the war with Germany. His income had, in five too short years, increased tenfold, and his notion of a suitable house kept pace with it. He looked back now with contempt at the mere bungalow, the country cottage, which he had designed for himself in the spring of 1914, and was profoundly thankful that it had never been built. He could not have lived in it with dignity after he became a millionaire. When he thought of this escape it was to agree weightily with his mother-in-law’s theory that this terrible war had been sent to us for our good.
Upon another point he frequently found matter for self-congratulation. His house, if built before the war, might have been commandeered for public purposes. He would have been obliged, perhaps, to offer it as a hospital, since even financial success has its drawbacks. Public opinion, which he never flouted, might have driven him to such a display of patriotism, but he would have detested the depreciation of his property. Lyndon, so he understood, had suffered considerable damage. All the paint had been kicked off the kitchen wainscot, and the carved banisters at the head of the long gallery had been knocked to bits by careless men bringing down a coffin. At least, he had heard as much from Lady Bragge; he himself had visited the place but once during its transformation and had been sadly scandalized at its altered appearance. It had scarcely seemed to be the same house; so much of its indefinable, leisurely charm was gone with its decorative mistress. Devoted wholly to practical and unlovely ends, it had taken on a new aspect of bare austerity. He could not recognize it as the shrine of ease whence he had plucked his Cynthia.
His mother-in-law, brisk and competent in her red commandant’s uniform, had been, of course, in her element. He had no fault to find with her activities. But it had given him a disagreeable shock to discover pretty little Mrs Ervine, dishevelled and slightly perspiring, in the scullery. She was, he considered, a great deal too good looking and too gently nurtured for that kind of heavy work. He was sorry for Ervine, who would find his wife very much gone off when he came home on leave. It had been a great relief to him that his Cynthia had shown no aspirations towards the canteen or the operating theatre, but was content to organize Charity Matinees and make bandages twice a week in the most beautiful of veils. As for young Lady Clewer, he had nothing but applause for her promptitude in absconding from Lyndon. She was most wise to hand over the whole concern to his cousin Marian, for the duration of the war. The mere surrender of her house testified sufficiently to her public spirit, and it had been done with consummate tact, for Marian was born to be a commandant. And in London there had been plenty for Agatha to do. She had presided over countless committees, her beautiful eyes had wrought havoc for some months in the Intelligence Department of the War Office, and she had even worked in a canteen for a week or two. On the wings of Peace she had returned to Lyndon, and Sir Thomas could once more visit the place without shock to his sensibilities.
He could, with reason, call himself happy. The war, bereaving in some way the huge majority of his acquaintance, had brought nothing but blessings to him. His relations had all done their duty and were little the worse for it. John Clewer had contracted a strained heart, the result of gas poisoning, and his brother James had a permanently stiff leg, but that was really all. Not many families could be said to have escaped so lightly. The House of Bragge, unpolluted by the assaults of war
, rose swiftly upon the conclusion of that Peace for which they had all worked so hard. It was the consecration and embodiment of the new order, and Sir Thomas loved every stone of it.
Braxhall, for so he had called it, stood at the head of a wide, well-wooded valley. Its gardens and pleasure-grounds extended down a steep hill for nearly half a mile, towards an excellent trout stream which wound through green fields. The house itself was finished with all the speed possible to a wealthy builder, but the setting, which had to be wrought out of the bare hillside, took some time in the making. Already, however, rustic bridges spanned the trout stream, rustic summer-houses dotted the bleakness of the slope, and geraniums flamed in stone vases along the numerous terraces. Wooden and iron pergolas marked the spots where Sir Thomas intended to have rose avenues; a paved formal garden with a fountain and orange trees in green tubs had been sunk in a sheltered spot to the west of the house, while the hill was crowned with a wonderful sparkling array of glass-houses.
The interior was not completely arranged when the proprietors first came into residence. The principal suites of rooms had been furnished, but the chief glory of Braxhall, an enormous banqueting hall, was not, as yet, in use. This was to be the family dining-room; upon a raised dais at the further end Sir Thomas and his lady intended to eat their lunches and their dinners. Its unusual largeness gave them no qualms; the pride of possession would enable them to hold their own against its proportions and the rich amplitude of its mural frescoes. Sir Thomas calculated that in another six months his house would be in perfect running order. In three years he could begin to take a pride in his garden, which now demanded so much from the eye of faith. In three years, therefore, he, who had already so far outspanned his goal, would have nothing left to wish for. Nothing save, perhaps, a doctor who would keep off the topic of strokes.
With his lovely wife upon his arm he was inspecting his domain one fine morning, absorbing at every pore the concrete pleasures of ownership. Cynthia was more languid in her appreciations, but she was probably enjoying herself or she would not have consented to come upon such a tour at all. They paused before the level flats, newly sown, which were to become croquet lawns and tennis courts.
Ladies of Lyndon Page 15
