Nothing. Mr Wither considered them to be ill-informed and inaccurate in their speech, muddled in their thinking, and useless with their hands. He had a vague feeling that Tina and Madge, having been taught so much at so high a price, ought to have been, like Sir Francis Bacon, possessed of universal knowledge; but somehow it had not worked out that way.
‘What time did you say Viola’s train gets in?’ Tina asked her mother; she sometimes found the Wither silences unendurable.
‘Half-past twelve, dear.’
‘Just in nice time for lunch.’
‘Yes.’
‘You know perfectly well that Viola’s train gets in at half-past twelve,’ intoned Mr Wither slowly, raising his eyelids to look at Tina, ‘so why ask your mother? You talk for the sake of talking, it’s a silly habit.’ He slowly looked down again at his little bowl of mushy cereal.
‘I’d forgotten,’ said Tina. She continued vivaciously, at the silence. ‘Don’t you loathe getting to a place before twelve o’clock, Madge – too late for breakfast and too early for lunch?’
No one spoke: and she remembered that she had said the same thing last night at dinner, when the time of Viola’s arrival had been threshed out with a rousing argument about the times of trains between Mr Wither and Madge. She flushed slowly, and ground her hands together again. Breakfast was being awful, as usual. Never mind, her new suit was really becoming, and Viola was coming today; that would make a little change, and Viola’s presence might prevent Father from Worrying so much and so often, and Madge from arguing with him so rudely. Viola was not an exciting person, but anyone’s company, even that of a sister-in-law, was better than that of unadulterated Relations.
After reading a book on feminine psychology called Selene’s Daughters borrowed from a school friend, Tina had decided to face the facts about her own nature, however disgusting, nay, appalling, those facts might be (the book warned its readers that the truth about themselves might disgust, nay, appal them); and one of the facts she had faced was that she did not love her family.
She had not even loved her only brother, Teddy; and that was rather appalling, because, for three months, Teddy had been dead.
Viola was his widow, a bride of a year, who was coming to make her home with her husband’s family at The Eagles. Whenever Tina realized that she had not loved Teddy, it made her feel worse to remember that Viola, a very young girl with plenty of young men to choose from, had chosen Teddy and loved him enough to marry him. I suppose I’m unnatural, thought Tina. Of course, we never saw much of Teddy after he was grown up. He never shared his life with us, as some men do with their sisters and parents. All the same, I must be abnormal, not to have loved my only brother.
‘Want me to drive you up to the station, Mum?’ offered Madge, standing at the door.
‘You won’t be back in time, will you, dear?’
‘That doesn’t matter; I’ll come back, if you’d like me to run you up.’
Madge loved to drive the car, but as Mr Wither said that she did not know how to, she seldom got the chance.
‘Well, thank you, dear, but I’ve told Saxon now. He’ll bring it round about ten past twelve.’
‘Oh all right, if you prefer Saxon’s driving to mine.’
‘It isn’t that, dear. And I think Saxon really drives quite nicely now.’
‘So I should hope, after two cautions, a new mudguard and a fine.’
She went out whistling, and Mrs Wither stooped for the paper, but Mr Wither, as though absently, stretched out his hand for it, and she let him have it.
‘Are you going to practise, Tina?’ she asked, putting her hand on her daughter’s thin shoulder on the way to the door.
‘I suppose so.’
‘Ought to go out,’ pronounced Mr Wither, coming to the surface of his gloom like a seal for air. ‘Mooning indoors won’t do you any good,’ and he submerged again.
Mrs Wither went out.
Tina crossed to the window and stood for a little while, looking up at the brilliantly white clouds behind the black-green branches of the monkey-puzzle. The world looked so young this morning that it made her very skin feel withered; she was conscious of every creamed and massaged wrinkle in her face, and of her hardening bones; and all she longed for, and the only thing she cared to think about on this young, light-flooded earth, was Love.
Mr Wither went out of the room, crossed the cold blue and black tiles of the hall, and shut himself into his own snuffy den, a little room furnished with a worn carpet, a large ugly desk, financial books of reference, and a huge fireplace which gave out a hellish heat when lit, which was not often.
This morning, however, it was lit. Mr Wither had not made up his mind in a hurry about ordering it to be lit; he had thought the matter well over, and decided that the fire would not be wasted, though an alarmingly large quantity of coal must be burned if the hellish one were not to go out about half-past two in the afternoon.
Mr Wither intended to invite Viola into his den after lunch and have a little talk with her, and he thought that she might be easier to talk to if she were warmed. Women were continually grumbling about being cold.
It disturbed Mr Wither to think of a silly young girl like Viola having control of her own money. True, she could not have very much; when the money that her father had left her was added to the money that Teddy had left her, she could not have (thought Mr Wither, sitting upright in his baggy-seated old black leather arm-chair and gazing sadly into the furious fire) more than, say, a hundred and fifty pounds a year. But even a hundred and fifty pounds a year ought to be properly looked after, and Mr Wither and his financial adviser, Major-General E. E. Breis-Cumwitt, DSO, were certainly more fitted to look after it than was Viola.
If Mr Wither had had his way, he would have known how much money Viola possessed, but at the time of his son’s death, circumstances had conspired to keep him from finding out.
To begin with, Teddy had always been irritatingly secretive about money (as, indeed, he was about all his affairs) and his father, though he knew how much he earned, did not know how much he saved. Every fortnight or so, during Teddy’s lifetime, Mr Wither asked Teddy if he were saving money, and Teddy said, ‘Yes, of course, Father,’ and changed the subject. He refused to answer direct questions about How Much and What In; he retorted that that was his affair. Nevertheless, his father had assumed that he did save something.
Then, when he died suddenly of pneumonia, Mr Wither had been unable to go to the funeral (which took place in London, at Viola’s wish), much less investigate his son’s estate and take over its management, as he wanted to do, because he was at the time helpless with a sharp go of lumbago.
But he did know that there had been no Will, and this made him uneasy.
He wrote to Viola; he wrote two longish, earnest letters about the Money. He received in reply one short, vague little note saying that she was ‘going to stay with Shirley, a friend,’ and giving no address.
Mrs Wither said that Shirley’s other name was Davis and that she lived in a place called Golders Green.
Mr Wither went to the trouble of looking up all the Davises in the London Telephone Directory, Golders Green was creeping with them, so that was no use.
He wrote another longish letter, to his son’s old address, and at last had a short reply, giving the Davis address, and saying nothing about the Money but vaguely mentioning difficulties about letting the flat.
Then Mr Wither wrote once more, for the last time, saying nothing this time about the money but announcing firmly that his daughter-in-law must come at once to live at The Eagles.
It was the only thing to do. While Viola was in London, there was no hope of his being able to manage her money for her, and the idea of it, knocking about on its own like that, was beginning to get on his nerves. The fact that he did not know how much it was made matters worse. Why, it might be three hundred a year!
He thought Viola a silly, common little girl, but did not actually dislike her. Of cou
rse it was a pity, a great pity, that she had been a shopgirl, but after all, her father had owned half the business in which she was employed and it was a solid little business, long established and well patronized. That was all to the good; Mr Wither liked to feel money on all sides of him, like a stout fence; he liked to feel that his remotest cousin four times removed had a bit put by (as, indeed, all the Wither cousins had).
No, he would not mind Viola coming to live at The Eagles. It was a large house; he would not often see her. When he did see her, she could be organized. And then he would be able to manage Teddy’s money for her, and see that it did not get spent or otherwise misused. It would make a nice hobby for her, too. She would follow his wise administration of her little income with interest throughout the years, growing wiser and (he hoped) more organizable as she grew older.
She was just the sort of characterless girl that Mr Wither had always expected Teddy to marry. This did not prevent him from being very annoyed when Teddy did. What with Madge and Tina not marrying at all, and Teddy marrying a shopgirl, and Mrs Wither being so disappointed about all three of her children’s reactions to marriage, Mr Wither was quite sick of the word.
But Teddy never had been ambitious. Mr Wither had put him into a job, minor but with prospects, in the gas company, when he was twenty-two, and it was understood that he would work his way Up (where to was glossed over).
But there Teddy had stayed for twenty years, his salary rising by five pounds a year because everybody’s salary in that company below a certain level did so automatically. It was not as though he had been content, either, with his minor job in which he earned so little money that Mr Wither was quite ashamed to think about it. Mr Wither was frequently told by friends of the family that of course Teddy’s real Dream had been of doing architecture or painting or something artistic; and these Dreams, always popping up at Mr Wither, annoyed him very much.
He was sure that his acquaintances said, behind his back, that he ought to pay Teddy more money. But this he would not do, for many good reasons. Teddy did not deserve more money; nobody holding that job ever had had more money and he must not show favouritism to his son; Teddy did not need more money because he was not married, and so on.
When at last Teddy did marry, at the age of forty-one, Mr Wither was in the happy position of not being able to raise his salary, for by that time he had sold out his interest in the company. He gave his son an allowance of eighty pounds a year, saying that this would be a help. But when Teddy had enjoyed the use of this for a year, he died, and Mr Wither was able to take it all back again.
Mr Wither, gazing vaguely into the fire, mused that some fellows were very cut up when their sons died. Now, he had not been very cut up when Teddy died. It was a shock; of course, it was a shock. But it was strange that he had not been more cut up. Never had got on with Teddy, somehow, even when Teddy was a boy. Through his mind drifted the word ‘Milksop’. Yet there must have been something in the chap for a girl like Viola, quite a pretty girl, who must have known plenty of chaps and had plenty of choice, to pick him out and marry him.
Not that it wasn’t a very fine thing for her; she knew which side her bread was buttered, no doubt, thought Mr Wither, sitting upright, frowning and nodding. And this afternoon he and Viola would have a little talk.
Meanwhile, he must telephone to Major-General Breis-Cumwitt about that dismal piece of news on the City page, which he had carefully encircled with a sable ring.
Not that Major-General Breis-Cumwitt could do anything; no power on earth could stop money when it began to jig about like that, but at least the two of them could confer, and discuss; and condole; and then Mr Wither (despite the one and threepence spent on a telephone call to London) would feel better.
At ten minutes past twelve exactly the car came round the short circular drive, and stopped in front of the house.
The chauffeur sat with his beautiful profile turned carefully from the house; a correct chauffeur does not peer up at the bedroom windows, scan the front door, nor appear aware of anything at all, and Saxon was most correct. The Eagles was a house of dark grey stucco, too tall for the grounds in which it stood, so that it seemed to stoop over them in a frightening way. There were more boring shrubs round the front door, approached by a good many steep steps. The windows on the lower floors were hung with heavy dark curtains; the upper ones had those half-curtains of white material with bits of coarse lace let into them which always suggest the windows of a nursing home, and also that the bedrooms are large and draughty.
Two plaster birds, not badly modelled, sat on the two columns at the entrance to the drive and gave the house its name. These birds got on Mr Wither’s nerves for some reason, but he was afraid to ask how much it would cost to have them taken away; also, the house had belonged to his father, and he had a vague feeling that the eagles ought to be left there because his father had approved them, so there they sat.
Saxon knew the exact instant that Mrs Wither appeared at the door, though he was not looking at the house, and he stepped from the car and deftly opened its door for her, touching his cap.
‘Good morning, Saxon. Isn’t it a beautiful day!’
‘Good morning, Madam. Yes, Madam.’
‘So nice for Mrs Theodore,’ continued Mrs Wither, having her toes muffled by Saxon in a horrid old rug of unknown fur which Mr Wither refused to have put out of commission. ‘To come to us on a nice day, I mean.’
‘Yes, Madam.’
Mrs Wither, who had once been a woman who enjoyed talking to servants, glanced at him and said no more. Saxon did not seem to like being talked to.
The gentle reader is no doubt wondering why on earth anyone should have married Mr Wither, and must here be told that she had married him for what (it is said) is a common enough reason: she feared that she would never have the chance to marry anyone else.
And when he was young Mr Wither had not been quite so bad; he had had a bold eye and a semi-dashing manner rather like that of a small bull-dog. He ordered waiters about, elbowed himself into hansom cabs and had a rich father. Mrs Wither, who was not romantic, had thought that a young woman might safely trust herself to Arthur Wither, and she had done so. Their marriage cannot have been so bad as some, for here they were, at seventy and sixty-four, sharing The Eagles, two daughters, the memory of a dead son, and a daughter-in-law.
Mrs Wither was sorry for poor Arthur; he worried so. She wondered and grieved about him in his absence, and though she always enjoyed herself when he was not there and never when he was, she was fond of him; and Mr Wither in his turn disapproved of Mrs Wither less than he did of anybody, though he never showed it.
What exalted lies are told of marriage! but one promise at least can be fulfilled: ye shall be one flesh.
CHAPTER II
Saxon drove slowly, because Mrs Wither had as usual ordered the car too early, and he disliked what he called to himself ‘bloody hanging about’ outside Chesterbourne station. The country through which they moved was chiefly grazing land with some under wheat and barley, and it had the unconventional charm of Essex landscapes; the little hills with oak coppices climbing them, now in early rose-brown leaf, the loops of a river shining in a wide, tree-hidden valley to which all the roads seem to lead, and the near and distant cries of birds, like the country itself singing. The woods and hedges were alive with them; they love a land like this, flat and wooded and watery.
The country about Sible Pelden, the village nearest to The Eagles, was not much spoilt. One main road ran near the village, but not near enough to ruin it. (All the inhabitants wished that it did.) It was a quiet tract of land, with a few shabby villages and one or two big houses belonging to wealthy people who had had connections in the district for well under a hundred years. London was just over an hour away by a good train. The sea was thirty miles away, and there were marshes between it and Sible Pelden where swans nested and rarer birds. In summer the countryside seemed quietly awake under a silvery sun (it was so flat that
the sky seemed always full of light, enormously high, and falling almost like a mist) and in the winter it was surprisingly desolate. It had only two places of historical interest and no stunning beauty-spots.
Outside Chesterbourne there were some new bungalows, and Mrs Wither, looking at them, remembered that Teddy and Viola had been talking about renting one, instead of their tiny flat in Greater London, just before Teddy died. At least Teddy had talked of it, and Viola had not said a word. Mrs Wither had gathered from this that Viola had wanted to stay in Greater London. She had also gathered that Viola was a pleasure-loving girl; dances, new frocks, lipstick, perhaps even Cocktail Parties.
Mrs Wither sighed. It was dreadful to feel that her own grief for Teddy was fading. Of course she had grieved; his death had been a shock, a great shock. But she had never felt as close to him as she did to Madgie, or even to Tina (though Tina was very difficult sometimes, spoke rudely, and laughed at things that were not funny). Mrs Wither knew that she did not get on well with men; they flustered her, and Teddy had been like all the rest. He had been a stranger to her, even when he was a little boy, though that was a dreadful thing to think. He had always liked talking to other Mothers and Nannies better than to his own; and when he grew into a man he would never tell her anything, and sometimes he was rather unkind.
Here Mrs Wither interrupted her thoughts remorsefully, for she was on her way to meet Teddy’s widow, a young girl who (pleasure-loving though she might be) had yet loved Teddy so much that she had chosen him out of all other men (and some of them much younger, no doubt, than poor Teddy) to marry.
Nightingale Wood Page 2
