“I dare say you have heard,” said Mrs. Herriton, well knowing what the matter was.
“Yes, I have. I came to ask you; have any steps been taken?”
Philip was astonished. The question was impertinent in the extreme. He had a regard for Miss Abbott, and regretted that she had been guilty of it.
“About the baby?” asked Mrs. Herriton pleasantly.
“Yes.”
“As far as I know, no steps. Mrs. Theobald may have decided on something, but I have not heard of it.”
“I was meaning, had you decided on anything?”
“The child is no relation of ours,” said Philip. “It is therefore scarcely for us to interfere.”
His mother glanced at him nervously. “Poor Lilia was almost a daughter to me once. I know what Miss Abbott means. But now things have altered. Any initiative would naturally come from Mrs. Theobald.”
“But does not Mrs. Theobald always take any initiative from you?” asked Miss Abbott.
Mrs. Herriton could not help colouring. “I sometimes have given her advice in the past. I should not presume to do so now.”
“Then is nothing to be done for the child at all?”
“It is extraordinarily good of you to take this unexpected interest,” said Philip.
“The child came into the world through my negligence,” replied Miss Abbott. “It is natural I should take an interest in it.”
“My dear Caroline,” said Mrs. Herriton, “you must not brood over the thing. Let bygones be bygones. The child should worry you even less than it worries us. We never even mention it. It belongs to another world.”
Miss Abbott got up without replying and turned to go. Her extreme gravity made Mrs. Herriton uneasy. “Of course,” she added, “if Mrs. Theobald decides on any plan that seems at all practicable — I must say I don’t see any such — I shall ask if I may join her in it, for Irma’s sake, and share in any possible expenses.”
“Please would you let me know if she decides on anything. I should like to join as well.”
“My dear, how you throw about your money! We would never allow it.”
“And if she decides on nothing, please also let me know. Let me know in any case.”
Mrs. Herriton made a point of kissing her.
“Is the young person mad?” burst out Philip as soon as she had departed. “Never in my life have I seen such colossal impertinence. She ought to be well smacked, and sent back to Sunday-school.”
His mother said nothing.
“But don’t you see — she is practically threatening us? You can’t put her off with Mrs. Theobald; she knows as well as we do that she is a nonentity. If we don’t do anything she’s going to raise a scandal — that we neglect our relatives, &c., which is, of course, a lie. Still she’ll say it. Oh, dear, sweet, sober Caroline Abbott has a screw loose! We knew it at Monteriano. I had my suspicions last year one day in the train; and here it is again. The young person is mad.”
She still said nothing.
“Shall I go round at once and give it her well? I’d really enjoy it.”
In a low, serious voice — such a voice as she had not used to him for months — Mrs. Herriton said, “Caroline has been extremely impertinent. Yet there may be something in what she says after all. Ought the child to grow up in that place — and with that father?”
Philip started and shuddered. He saw that his mother was not sincere. Her insincerity to others had amused him, but it was disheartening when used against himself.
“Let us admit frankly,” she continued, “that after all we may have responsibilities.”
“I don’t understand you, Mother. You are turning absolutely round. What are you up to?”
In one moment an impenetrable barrier had been erected between them. They were no longer in smiling confidence. Mrs. Herriton was off on tactics of her own — tactics which might be beyond or beneath him.
His remark offended her. “Up to? I am wondering whether I ought not to adopt the child. Is that sufficiently plain?”
“And this is the result of half-a-dozen idiocies of Miss Abbott?”
“It is. I repeat, she has been extremely impertinent. None the less she is showing me my duty. If I can rescue poor Lilia’s baby from that horrible man, who will bring it up either as Papist or infidel — who will certainly bring it up to be vicious — I shall do it.”
“You talk like Harriet.”
“And why not?” said she, flushing at what she knew to be an insult. “Say, if you choose, that I talk like Irma. That child has seen the thing more clearly than any of us. She longs for her little brother. She shall have him. I don’t care if I am impulsive.”
He was sure that she was not impulsive, but did not dare to say so. Her ability frightened him. All his life he had been her puppet. She let him worship Italy, and reform Sawston — just as she had let Harriet be Low Church. She had let him talk as much as he liked. But when she wanted a thing she always got it.
And though she was frightening him, she did not inspire him with reverence. Her life, he saw, was without meaning. To what purpose was her diplomacy, her insincerity, her continued repression of vigour? Did they make any one better or happier? Did they even bring happiness to herself? Harriet with her gloomy peevish creed, Lilia with her clutches after pleasure, were after all more divine than this well-ordered, active, useless machine.
Now that his mother had wounded his vanity he could criticize her thus. But he could not rebel. To the end of his days he could probably go on doing what she wanted. He watched with a cold interest the duel between her and Miss Abbott. Mrs. Herriton’s policy only appeared gradually. It was to prevent Miss Abbott interfering with the child at all costs, and if possible to prevent her at a small cost. Pride was the only solid element in her disposition. She could not bear to seem less charitable than others.
“I am planning what can be done,” she would tell people, “and that kind Caroline Abbott is helping me. It is no business of either of us, but we are getting to feel that the baby must not be left entirely to that horrible man. It would be unfair to little Irma; after all, he is her half-brother. No, we have come to nothing definite.”
Miss Abbott was equally civil, but not to be appeased by good intentions. The child’s welfare was a sacred duty to her, not a matter of pride or even of sentiment. By it alone, she felt, could she undo a little of the evil that she had permitted to come into the world. To her imagination Monteriano had become a magic city of vice, beneath whose towers no person could grow up happy or pure. Sawston, with its semi-detached houses and snobby schools, its book teas and bazaars, was certainly petty and dull; at times she found it even contemptible. But it was not a place of sin, and at Sawston, either with the Herritons or with herself, the baby should grow up.
As soon as it was inevitable, Mrs. Herriton wrote a letter for Waters and Adamson to send to Gino — the oddest letter; Philip saw a copy of it afterwards. Its ostensible purpose was to complain of the picture postcards. Right at the end, in a few nonchalant sentences, she offered to adopt the child, provided that Gino would undertake never to come near it, and would surrender some of Lilia’s money for its education.
“What do you think of it?” she asked her son. “It would not do to let him know that we are anxious for it.”
“Certainly he will never suppose that.”
“But what effect will the letter have on him?”
“When he gets it he will do a sum. If it is less expensive in the long run to part with a little money and to be clear of the baby, he will part with it. If he would lose, he will adopt the tone of the loving father.”
“Dear, you’re shockingly cynical.” After a pause she added, “How would the sum work out?”
“I don’t know, I’m sure. But if you wanted to ensure the baby being posted by return, you should have sent a little sum to HIM. Oh, I’m not cynical — at least I only go by what I know of him. But I am weary of the whole show. Weary of Italy. Weary, weary, weary. Saws
ton’s a kind, pitiful place, isn’t it? I will go walk in it and seek comfort.”
He smiled as he spoke, for the sake of not appearing serious. When he had left her she began to smile also.
It was to the Abbotts’ that he walked. Mr. Abbott offered him tea, and Caroline, who was keeping up her Italian in the next room, came in to pour it out. He told them that his mother had written to Signor Carella, and they both uttered fervent wishes for her success.
“Very fine of Mrs. Herriton, very fine indeed,” said Mr. Abbott, who, like every one else, knew nothing of his daughter’s exasperating behaviour. “I’m afraid it will mean a lot of expense. She will get nothing out of Italy without paying.”
“There are sure to be incidental expenses,” said Philip cautiously. Then he turned to Miss Abbott and said, “Do you suppose we shall have difficulty with the man?”
“It depends,” she replied, with equal caution.
“From what you saw of him, should you conclude that he would make an affectionate parent?”
“I don’t go by what I saw of him, but by what I know of him.”
“Well, what do you conclude from that?”
“That he is a thoroughly wicked man.”
“Yet thoroughly wicked men have loved their children. Look at Rodrigo Borgia, for example.”
“I have also seen examples of that in my district.”
With this remark the admirable young woman rose, and returned to keep up her Italian. She puzzled Philip extremely. He could understand enthusiasm, but she did not seem the least enthusiastic. He could understand pure cussedness, but it did not seem to be that either. Apparently she was deriving neither amusement nor profit from the struggle. Why, then, had she undertaken it? Perhaps she was not sincere. Perhaps, on the whole, that was most likely. She must be professing one thing and aiming at another. What the other thing could be he did not stop to consider. Insincerity was becoming his stock explanation for anything unfamiliar, whether that thing was a kindly action or a high ideal.
“She fences well,” he said to his mother afterwards.
“What had you to fence about?” she said suavely. Her son might know her tactics, but she refused to admit that he knew. She still pretended to him that the baby was the one thing she wanted, and had always wanted, and that Miss Abbott was her valued ally.
And when, next week, the reply came from Italy, she showed him no face of triumph. “Read the letters,” she said. “We have failed.”
Gino wrote in his own language, but the solicitors had sent a laborious English translation, where “Preghiatissima Signora” was rendered as “Most Praiseworthy Madam,” and every delicate compliment and superlative — superlatives are delicate in Italian — would have felled an ox. For a moment Philip forgot the matter in the manner; this grotesque memorial of the land he had loved moved him almost to tears. He knew the originals of these lumbering phrases; he also had sent “sincere auguries”; he also had addressed letters — who writes at home? — from the Caffe Garibaldi. “I didn’t know I was still such an ass,” he thought. “Why can’t I realize that it’s merely tricks of expression? A bounder’s a bounder, whether he lives in Sawston or Monteriano.”
“Isn’t it disheartening?” said his mother.
He then read that Gino could not accept the generous offer. His paternal heart would not permit him to abandon this symbol of his deplored spouse. As for the picture post-cards, it displeased him greatly that they had been obnoxious. He would send no more. Would Mrs. Herriton, with her notorious kindness, explain this to Irma, and thank her for those which Irma (courteous Miss!) had sent to him?
“The sum works out against us,” said Philip. “Or perhaps he is putting up the price.”
“No,” said Mrs. Herriton decidedly. “It is not that. For some perverse reason he will not part with the child. I must go and tell poor Caroline. She will be equally distressed.”
She returned from the visit in the most extraordinary condition. Her face was red, she panted for breath, there were dark circles round her eyes.
“The impudence!” she shouted. “The cursed impudence! Oh, I’m swearing. I don’t care. That beastly woman — how dare she interfere — I’ll — Philip, dear, I’m sorry. It’s no good. You must go.”
“Go where? Do sit down. What’s happened?” This outburst of violence from his elegant ladylike mother pained him dreadfully. He had not known that it was in her.
“She won’t accept — won’t accept the letter as final. You must go to Monteriano!”
“I won’t!” he shouted back. “I’ve been and I’ve failed. I’ll never see the place again. I hate Italy.”
“If you don’t go, she will.”
“Abbott?”
“Yes. Going alone; would start this evening. I offered to write; she said it was ‘too late!’ Too late! The child, if you please — Irma’s brother — to live with her, to be brought up by her and her father at our very gates, to go to school like a gentleman, she paying. Oh, you’re a man! It doesn’t matter for you. You can laugh. But I know what people say; and that woman goes to Italy this evening.”
He seemed to be inspired. “Then let her go! Let her mess with Italy by herself. She’ll come to grief somehow. Italy’s too dangerous, too— “
“Stop that nonsense, Philip. I will not be disgraced by her. I WILL have the child. Pay all we’ve got for it. I will have it.”
“Let her go to Italy!” he cried. “Let her meddle with what she doesn’t understand! Look at this letter! The man who wrote it will marry her, or murder her, or do for her somehow. He’s a bounder, but he’s not an English bounder. He’s mysterious and terrible. He’s got a country behind him that’s upset people from the beginning of the world.”
“Harriet!” exclaimed his mother. “Harriet shall go too. Harriet, now, will be invaluable!” And before Philip had stopped talking nonsense, she had planned the whole thing and was looking out the trains.
Chapter 6
Italy, Philip had always maintained, is only her true self in the height of the summer, when the tourists have left her, and her soul awakes under the beams of a vertical sun. He now had every opportunity of seeing her at her best, for it was nearly the middle of August before he went out to meet Harriet in the Tirol.
He found his sister in a dense cloud five thousand feet above the sea, chilled to the bone, overfed, bored, and not at all unwilling to be fetched away.
“It upsets one’s plans terribly,” she remarked, as she squeezed out her sponges, “but obviously it is my duty.”
“Did mother explain it all to you?” asked Philip.
“Yes, indeed! Mother has written me a really beautiful letter. She describes how it was that she gradually got to feel that we must rescue the poor baby from its terrible surroundings, how she has tried by letter, and it is no good — nothing but insincere compliments and hypocrisy came back. Then she says, ‘There is nothing like personal influence; you and Philip will succeed where I have failed.’ She says, too, that Caroline Abbott has been wonderful.”
Philip assented.
“Caroline feels it as keenly almost as us. That is because she knows the man. Oh, he must be loathsome! Goodness me! I’ve forgotten to pack the ammonia!... It has been a terrible lesson for Caroline, but I fancy it is her turning-point. I can’t help liking to think that out of all this evil good will come.”
Philip saw no prospect of good, nor of beauty either. But the expedition promised to be highly comic. He was not averse to it any longer; he was simply indifferent to all in it except the humours. These would be wonderful. Harriet, worked by her mother; Mrs. Herriton, worked by Miss Abbott; Gino, worked by a cheque — what better entertainment could he desire? There was nothing to distract him this time; his sentimentality had died, so had his anxiety for the family honour. He might be a puppet’s puppet, but he knew exactly the disposition of the strings.
They travelled for thirteen hours down-hill, whilst the streams broadened and the mountains shrank, and
the vegetation changed, and the people ceased being ugly and drinking beer, and began instead to drink wine and to be beautiful. And the train which had picked them at sunrise out of a waste of glaciers and hotels was waltzing at sunset round the walls of Verona.
“Absurd nonsense they talk about the heat,” said Philip, as they drove from the station. “Supposing we were here for pleasure, what could be more pleasurable than this?”
“Did you hear, though, they are remarking on the cold?” said Harriet nervously. “I should never have thought it cold.”
And on the second day the heat struck them, like a hand laid over the mouth, just as they were walking to see the tomb of Juliet. From that moment everything went wrong. They fled from Verona. Harriet’s sketch-book was stolen, and the bottle of ammonia in her trunk burst over her prayer-book, so that purple patches appeared on all her clothes. Then, as she was going through Mantua at four in the morning, Philip made her look out of the window because it was Virgil’s birthplace, and a smut flew in her eye, and Harriet with a smut in her eye was notorious. At Bologna they stopped twenty-four hours to rest. It was a FESTA, and children blew bladder whistles night and day. “What a religion!” said Harriet. The hotel smelt, two puppies were asleep on her bed, and her bedroom window looked into a belfry, which saluted her slumbering form every quarter of an hour. Philip left his walking-stick, his socks, and the Baedeker at Bologna; she only left her sponge-bag. Next day they crossed the Apennines with a train-sick child and a hot lady, who told them that never, never before had she sweated so profusely. “Foreigners are a filthy nation,” said Harriet. “I don’t care if there are tunnels; open the windows.” He obeyed, and she got another smut in her eye. Nor did Florence improve matters. Eating, walking, even a cross word would bathe them both in boiling water. Philip, who was slighter of build, and less conscientious, suffered less. But Harriet had never been to Florence, and between the hours of eight and eleven she crawled like a wounded creature through the streets, and swooned before various masterpieces of art. It was an irritable couple who took tickets to Monteriano.
Works of E M Forster Page 8
