Chapter IX: Part II: I (5)

Lady Clyde asked her husband that night if he could not, as man to man, give Richard Lambourne a hint that his ungracious attitude to his wife, whilst living on her money, was the final crown of the wrongs that he had done her.

“I was going to suggest, personally, that you should give Rita a hint,” said Sir Charles.

“Rita! Why, when I think of that poor child’s gallantry----”

“Exactly. My own impression is that a very little more of it will drive Lambourne into a mad-house, or worse.”

Sir Charles spoke in his usual level accents, and Lady Clyde did not attempt to attach any meaning to his words. Neither did they recur to her when Richard Lambourne disproved her assertion that he had placed the crown upon the wrongs done to his wife, by the final ignominy of suicide.

* * * * *

“Coward, coward!” sobbed Lady Clyde. “Can you deny that he was a coward, Charles?”

“No. Richard was a coward,” said Sir Charles gravely.

“After all that poor little Rita had done!”

“And said,” added Sir Charles, not flippantly, and half under his breath.

The old magnate who had admired Rita at her wedding made use of almost the same words as Lady Clyde.

“After all that his wife had done, and was doing, to quit like that, and leave her to face the life he’d brought her to! What a _brute_!”

A little while afterwards he proposed to Rita, diffident, in spite of his wealth, because of the great difference in their ages.

She accepted him, and this time it was Sir Charles, looking at the bridegroom’s bald head and infirm gait beside the pretty bride at the quiet wedding, who repeated to himself the old man’s catchword, with an ironical emphasis of his own:

“A _very_ gallant little lady.”

THE HOTEL CHILD

THE HOTEL CHILD

(TO Y. DE LA P.)

I

The first time that I saw her was in Rome. I was governess to the children at the British Embassy, and every morning before breakfast I took them out into the Borghese Gardens.

They were very good, insignificant little children, and never gave me any trouble. Whilst they played tame little games between the grey-green olive trees, I used to watch the more amusing Italian children in the Gardens, the biggest groups consisting of pupils from the great white Convento dell’ Assunzione, on the corner of the Pincio.

But the little girl in whom I took the greatest interest was always by herself. An enormous grey limousine would leave her at the entrance to the Gardens, and fetch her away again at the end of an hour. Sometimes the limousine, which was always empty except for a liveried chauffeur, appeared to have forgotten her, and then I was obliged to take my children away, leaving her serious and solitary, and quite undisconcerted, sitting on her bench. I judged her to be about eight years old, and the child of rich people. Her white embroidered dresses, far too elaborate, were expensive, and she always wore white shoes and stockings.

At first, her nationality puzzled me. Her quite straight hair was black, cropped short round her beautifully shaped little head in a fashion that was then very unusual, and her lashes were as long and as black as those of any Roman-born child. But her grave eyes were of a deep grey, and her skin, fine and colourless. Perhaps she was scarcely pretty, but her poise, her erect gracefulness, above all, her unmistakable air of breeding, made her remarkable. It was that air of aristocracy that made me feel sure that, in spite of her independence, she was not American. One gets to know, after seven years spent in the best families. The American children are well-drilled, well-dressed, well-behaved--sometimes--but they never achieve that look of distinction. Some of the French ones have it, but then those are the children of the old Catholic families, and so they are poor, and generally badly dressed. On the whole, it is to be seen amongst the English as often as anywhere--and then, it is almost always accompanied by the expression that denotes, to an experienced governess, either stupidity or adenoids--and sometimes, indeed, both.

My little aristocrat of the Borghese Gardens spoke Italian perfectly. I heard her greet the chauffeur when he came for her, and those were the times when she was most childlike. The man very often let her take the wheel, after he had started the car, and I used to watch, not without misgivings, the great car sliding away, with the small erect figure in the driving-seat, her straight black fringe blowing back from her forehead, her tiny hands gripping the big wheel.

My charges, it need hardly be said, might never speak to strange children, but one day the unknown little girl restored to me a toy that one of them had dropped the day before.

“I found it, after you’d gone,” she said very politely and distinctly.

I knew then that she must be English, at least in part.

My children were playing at a distance, and after thanking her for returning the plaything, I sat down on the stone bench that she had made her own.

After an instant’s hesitation, she sat down there, too.

We entered into conversation.

I asked whether she lived in Rome.

“No. My papa is here on business for a little while, and then we are going to Paris again.”

“Your home is in Paris, then?”

She looked rather puzzled. “I don’t know Paris well,” she observed apologetically. “We were only there once before, when mama was with us. It was a nice hotel, I thought, but noisy. This one--the Grand--is better. Have you been much in Paris?”

“Not since I was at school there. My French was acquired in Paris,” I added, automatically.

One says that kind of thing so often, to please the parents.

“Mademoiselle aime parler francais, hein?” she enquired, with a little smile.

Her French was as perfect as her Italian, or her English; and it was evidently natural to her to speak either language.

“Are you English?” I could not refrain from asking her.

“My papa is Italian--mama was half English, and half French.”

Was? Then her mother must be dead. That would account for the empty limousine, and the strange independence of the child.

“Mama is in New York, now, we think,” she remarked. “I am to join her when I am ten; that was arranged for, in the deed of separation.”

“Separation?” said I.

“There is no divorce in Italy,” said the little creature, shrugging her shoulders. “Papa is a Catholic, though not, of course _pratiquant_. They have been separated since I was seven.”

“Then who--who----” I wanted to ask who looked after her, but such a form of words seemed singularly inappropriate. “Who looks after your papa’s house?” I found at last.

“We are in hotels, most of the time, papa and I, and my maid, Carlotta, but in the holidays--_les grandes vacances_--we go to the country somewhere--_villegiatura_--and there is a lady then, always.”

Her grave eyes looked at me. “A different one,” she explained, “each time.”

Her very complete understanding of the status held by the “ladies” was implicit in her manner, but that struck me less poignantly than did her philosophical acceptance of all that they stood for.

The grey limousine came into sight, and she made an amiable little sign to the chauffeur.

“I must go now. It doesn’t _do_ to keep the _auto_ waiting.”

In her grave little voice, was all the circumspection of the child that has learnt to fend for itself, that knows by experience that it will only be tolerated so long as it gives no trouble, runs counter to no prejudices, is guilty of no indiscretions.

“It has been so pleasant to talk to someone English. Good-bye Miss----?”

Her little pause was exactly that of a grown-up person, before an unknown or unremembered name. And what precocity of discernment had told her that “Miss” was the suitable prefix?

“Miss Arbell,” said I. “Tell me your name before you go.”

“Laura di san Marzano.”

She pronounced Laura in the Italian way--_Lah-o-ra_.

When I held out my hand, she kissed it, as Italian children do, and after she had climbed to the driving-seat, she waved to me, before turning the grey car down the hill.

I looked for her every morning after that, but she never came to the Borghese Gardens again.

II

The second time that I saw Laura di san Marzano was nearly four years afterwards, in the hall of the Majestic Hotel, at Lucerne.

I had thought of her, at intervals, and had no difficulty in recognising her, in spite of the difference between eight years old and twelve.

She was tall and very slim, and the set of her dark head on her straight shoulders was just the same. Her black hair now fell in a long plait to her waist, but she still wore the straight, short fringe that suited her du Maurier profile.

It was late afternoon--tea-time, and the hall was full of people, and noisy.

Laura sat motionless, but somehow, one felt, very attentive, beside a beautifully-gowned and jewelled and painted woman, who was talking to half a dozen men.

Mama?

She looked very young to have a child of Laura’s age.

Then I saw that Laura’s green silk frock was absurdly short, and made in a babyish style, that matched the huge bow of green satin ribbon unnecessarily fastened over one ear.

My pupil, a nearly grown-up one, was late, and as I waited for her, I watched Laura.

Presently our eyes met. At once recognition leapt into hers, and she smiled at me, and bowed.

I returned the salutation--with infinitely less grace, as I knew in my middle-class British self-consciousness--and wondered whether she would come and speak to me.

Later on she did so, when the group round mama was at its noisiest.

“How do you do, Miss Arbell?” There was not the faintest hesitation over my name. “I used to see you often in the Borghese Gardens, in Rome, and once we talked together. I hope you remember?”

“I remember very well,” said I, “but I am surprised at your doing so. You were so very young then, and you must have met so many people since.”

“I never forget people,” said Laura simply.

“You left Rome suddenly, didn’t you?” I continued. “I was there for nearly a month after our meeting, but I never saw you in the gardens again.”

Laura shook her head slightly.

“I can’t remember,” she admitted. “Very likely we left suddenly. One does that so often. The management of the hotel becomes intolerable, or tiresome acquaintances appear--and then the simplest thing is to pack up and go elsewhere.”

She spoke so evidently from experience that one could but accept her strange, rootless, attitude as part of her natural equipment.

We talked for a little while, and she told me, or I deduced, that since the Roman days she had been a great deal in Paris--(“I adore the Opera there, but the theatres not much”)--and then in New York, with mama. She was to spend the next few years with mama.

Where?

Laura’s shoulders indicated the faintest of shrugs. Anywhere. Mama liked New York as well as most places, but personally Laura thought that the rooms in the hotels there were always too hot. They went to London a good deal. Delightful--she smiled at me politely--but one missed the sunshine. Her point of view, inevitably, was one of great sophistication. It did not, to my mind, detract from her charm, which had never been of a direct, childlike kind, but rather of a description so subtle that amongst the many it might easily pass for mere oddity.

“I hope we shall meet again,” she said to me, when a certain nervous movement in the group of mama’s admirers had culminated in the detachment of a tall, fair youth, who was coming now towards Laura herself.

“I am afraid that I leave here to-morrow. My pupil and I are on our way to rejoin her parents in Italy.”

“We may be gone ourselves to-morrow. I meant for later on--any time, anywhere.” She smiled charmingly, but her unchildlike eyes remained serious and rather weary.

I heard the fair youth say something to her, with a burst of meaningless laughter. She did not laugh in return, but her clear, well-bred little voice was raised to a sympathetic tone of interest.

“Mama likes an olive in hers, always, but for me I prefer a sweet Martini--with _two_ cherries, if you please.”

* * * * *

I saw Laura twice again before leaving Lucerne, but we did not speak to one another.

The first time, at seven o’clock the evening of that same day, was in one of the gigantic hotel corridors, on the first floor, where I was waiting for the lift that was to take me to the fifth.

The hotel hairdresser, in a white coat, with an immense head of curled and discoloured yellow hair, stood before a shut bedroom door. It flew open suddenly, and then closed sharply behind Laura di san Marzano.

“Vous voila donc! Eh bien, il est trop tard.”

Her voice was ice, her face scornful and unbelieving as she listened to the man’s torrent of excuses for his tardiness.

“Assez,” said Laura. “Madame est fort mécontente. Elle ne veut plus de vous.”

“Mademoiselle----”

“C’est inutile. Madame se passera de vous.”

And as the hairdresser turned away, grumbling and disconcerted, she added superbly:

“J’arrangerai la chose. Soyez exacte demain. Mais pour ce soir, c’est moi qui coifferai madame.”

Much later in the evening, when I had long ago despatched my pupil to the bedroom opening out of mine, I returned for a moment to the hot and strident lounge in order to make certain enquiries at the office.

Mama was in a white wicker armchair, with crimson and orange cushions overflowing upon either side of it, and showing up the elaborate waves of her hair, as black as Laura’s own. The paint that I had seen on her face earlier in the day was now concentrated into one scarlet curve upon her mouth, her white lace dress was held up by narrow black velvet straps cutting across the opulent creaminess of her shoulders, and the electric light above her head had fastened upon the diamond butterfly bows of her satin shoes, so that they winked and flashed right across the hall.

One hardly saw--certainly did not distinguish--the figures that composed her numerous entourage, but the prevailing black and whiteness, the glitter of continually raised small glasses, gave a general impression of unrelieved masculinity.

Laura sat beside her mother, on an upright chair. She was dressed in rose colour, a frock even shorter than the green one that I had seen before. Her straight hair had been somehow persuaded into a semblance of long curls; the green silk bow over her left ear had been replaced by a pink one with fringed ends.

She did not see me. Her eyes, indeed, were glazed with fatigue, and every now and then her head fell forwards and was jerked upwards again.

The hall was unendurably hot with a breathless, artificial heat, and the orchestra was playing an American rag-time that every now and then succeeded in out-sounding the medley of raised voices and high-pitched laughter and clinking glasses.

It was long after eleven o’clock.

As I looked at Laura, I saw that her slim, silk-clad legs were swinging gently to and fro between the bars of the high-backed chair. Her feet, in bronze-coloured dancing slippers, could not quite reach the floor.

For the first time, I saw her as the child she really was--the efficient, helpless, cosmopolitan, traditionless, hotel child.

III

It is a far cry from the family of a British Ambassador--collectively distinguished, if individually dull--and the blue wonders of Italy, to an English Girls’ School and the grey horrors of an east coast town.

The post that I filled temporarily at Lundeen School was not one that I should have considered, but for personal and family reasons of convenience. They are long since past, and matter nothing to the story.

But it was at Lundeen School that I saw Laura di san Marzano for the third and last time.

It was the most inappropriate setting imaginable.

She was left there by mama, in mid-term, because a continental doctor had declared that she needed bracing air and companionship of her own age, and also--this I learnt later, quite incidentally, from Laura herself--because mama and a _cher ami_ had suddenly planned a visit to Monte Carlo for the express purpose of visiting the Casino, to which Laura, being under twenty-one, could not have been admitted.

Laura, as the hotel child, had been pathetic, but her dignity had been safeguarded, if not actually enhanced, by the kaleidescopic background of her surroundings.

At school, she was pitiful--and out of place. The girls, without ill nature, despised her from the first.

She arrived amongst them in the short, fanciful, ultra-picturesque silk frocks and infantile bows of hair ribbon that I had seen her wear abroad. Those unimaginative, untravelled English schoolgirls had seen no one like her before, and what they did not know, by experience or by tradition, they distrusted and disliked.

Lundeen School made demands upon the pupils’ _physiques_, upon their powers of conformity, and upon each one’s capacity for assimilating wholesale a universally applied system.

Laura di san Marzano had no chance at all.

The child who “never forgot people” could not remember her multiplication table, and although she spoke perfectly at least three languages besides English, she had never learnt syntax, nor read a line of any history. She had seen the Guitrys play in Paris--(and from her crisp appreciations and criticisms I deduced that no finest _nuance_ of their art had been lost upon her)--but she had memorized no standard selections from the poets. And she did not know how to learn.

No one, not even the head mistress, was very much disturbed by Laura’s educational deficiencies, because it was so evident from the first that her stay amongst us would only be a very temporary affair.

Mama would certainly swoop down again, probably without warning, and resume Laura as suddenly as she had discarded her.

That was how mama always did things, one felt sure.

Laura herself, although evidently aware of her shortcomings, accepted them with a grave, but unexaggerated, regret. She seemed, quite without arrogance, to know that, even educationally, there were other standards than those of Lundeen, and that her connection with these latter was after all merely transitory.

What really distressed her, and shocked her too, I think, was the attitude of the other girls.

Compared with the hotel child, there was only one word that adequately described these daughters of so many excellent English homes--and that word was _uncivilised_.

They played unbeautiful games violently, they spoke in hideous slang, they were rudest when they intended to be most friendly.

Towards Laura di san Marzano, indeed, they did not wish nor attempt to display friendliness. They were simply contemptuous.

And I saw that the hotel child minded that, both from pride and from ultra-developed social instinct.

My work was entirely amongst the elder girls, and I saw very little of Laura during her brief stay, but towards the end of it, something happened. The rumour arose and spread like wild-fire, even to reaching the Common Room of the teaching staff, that Laura di san Marzano was in disgrace with her fellows for cheating over an examination paper.

The tradition of Lundeen was that of the public-school code. Cribbing was permissible: ‘copying’ or peeping at the questions set for an examination, was impossible.

They were already prejudiced against her; the accusation was accepted on the instant by her contemporaries.

The Prefectorial system was in full force at Lundeen, and in any case, I could not have made the affair my business. But it so happened that I was present when Laura uttered what I believe to have been her one and only specific denial of the charge against her. I came unexpectedly into the room, and saw the semi-circle of self-righteous inexpressive, young faces that confronted Laura, who stood, rather pale and with her head held proudly high, and spoke very softly and clearly.

“I didn’t cheat. Those who thought they saw me, made a mistake. You are being very unjust and cruel, all of you.”

She was looking the head of her class straight in the eyes as she spoke, and the girl, giving her back look for look, made a sound that unmistakably expressed contemptuous incredulity.

“What is all this?” said I sharply.

They were taken aback, all of them. There was an instant of confused silence, and it was, after all, only the hotel child who possessed enough of _savoir faire_ to reply to me.

“Miss Arbell,” she said courteously, “it was a--a necessary conversation. It is over now.”

She crossed the length of the room, very composedly, and went out quietly.

Her ostracism, after that, was complete. It lasted for a week, and then, just as one had always surmised would happen, mama, in sables and violets, drove up in a blue Lanchester car, and said that she and Laura (who looked so much stronger and better for the change) would at once go straight to Paris, give themselves enough time to find some clothes, and sail for New York the following week.

The hotel child, her face radiant, came to find me and say good-bye to me. She was incapable, for all mama’s imperious haste, of forgetting or omitting the courtesy.

“Do you actually leave this evening?” I asked her.

Mama had been even more impetuous than I had anticipated.

“Yes. I need never see any of _them_ again.”

“It has been an experience, at least,” I reminded her.

“Yes--but----” she shrugged her shoulders.

“Expensively bought?” I suggested. And, since she was leaving, I thought that I might add: “At least, my dear, you have kept your colours flying. These last days have been very trying, I am afraid, but you come out of them better than our friends of the Fourth Form, to my thinking.”

“Thank you,” said Laura. She looked at me with her grave, straightforward eyes.

“It would have been much easier, though, if only I really _hadn’t_ cheated.”

* * * * *

There is a postscript to the story of the hotel child. A very few years later I heard of her marriage to the Prince d’Armaillh’ac-Ambry, the representative of the noblest, and one of the wealthiest, of French families. I believe that they live almost entirely on his estates in Brittany, and that the Princess interests herself personally in the numerous peasantry around them.

Her two children, a boy and a girl, are brought up in great simplicity, and to the strictest and most orthodox Catholicism.

IMPASSE

IMPASSE

(TO S.M.A.)

Two, three, five Dedicated Virgins. They stood before their Reverend Mother, ponderous black folds of serge sweeping the boards round each flat-soled pair of black list slippers.

“The orphans must go to the dentist,” said Reverend Mother, mournfully, yet with determination. “Here we are in a Protestant country. We must adapt ourselves to the conditions of our exile. The orphans will have to be taken to the dentist’s house.”

The nuns looked at one another, and at Reverend Mother, and solemnly nodded.

It was an innovation, but if Reverend Mother said so, it must be right.

“Sister Clara and Sister Dominic, you will take three orphans to the dentist to-morrow.”

Sister Clara drew herself up a little. Her throat swelled beneath the white swathings that bound her head and neck, and her double chin momentarily became three.

“Yes, Mother dear,” she said proudly.

Her Irish voice was rich and deep, compared with the thin, nasal tones of the Frenchwomen.

“Shall I order a cab for them, Mother?”

That was Sister Caroline, the _sœur econome_.

“No, no. They must walk ... holy poverty.... You will put on the heavy travelling veils, Sisters, and the big cloaks, just the same as for a journey.”

The heat of that would be stifling, in this weather and on foot! An unmortified thought.... Sister Clara stuck a pin in her sleeve. She would remember to confess a slight yielding to sensuality of thought.

There had been similar yieldings, once or twice, within the last year.

“Yes, Mother dear. Sister Dominic’ll sit in the waiting-room with two of the dear orphans, and I’ll be looking after the one that’s in with the dentist. I’ll not take an eye off of her, on any pretext whatever. I quite understand, Mother dear, that’s the way it’ll be. Make your mind easy.”

One had to be knowing, and careful, going out into the world.

There was a sense of adventure in setting out, the additional veil hanging swart, and straight, and heavy, pulling a little so that one’s head jerked slightly backwards every now and then.

Sister Dominic held a stout umbrella in one black-cotton-gloved hand, whilst the other one grasped the wrist of the youngest orphan. The other two orphans, obscured in blue serge and hard, dark, straw hat-brims, each held on to a fold of Sister Clara’s habit.

One thing, Reverend Mother had promised that the community should recite the Litany of Loretto after office just as they did to ensure anyone from the convent a safe journey.

So they’d be protected, even scurrying, a row of five, holding on to one another, across the streets, in front of those frightful honking motor-cars, that looked like they’d take the heads off of you, give them a chance.

“This’ll be it, Dominic dear. No. 3.”

A maid in a cap and apron to open the door--and the smartness of her! All grey-and-white, and showing her shape the way a modest convent-bred girl would never have done.

And the waiting-room, with a carpet, and padded chairs, and a fine pot-plant--putting worldly ideas into the orphans’ heads, as likely as not. As for the pictures and books on the table....

“Don’t be casting your eyes about that way, children dear. Sit quiet now. Dominic, the hats’ll have to come off of them, we may be sure of that. We’ll pile them this way, on the chair, and you’ll keep an eye on them, for fear someone else’ll be coming in and perhaps making off with them. It’s not as though we were in a good Catholic country.”

The hats of the orphans were stacked upon a chair, and Sister Dominic sat upon the edge of another chair, facing them. She held her umbrella.

“If he does well by the children, the sisters’ll go to him. The Infirmarian says there’s some of them with teeth in a terrible state.”

Sister Clara’s tongue sought familiar cavities, and her hand went to the particular fold of serge sleeve in which were imbedded two large pins, one of which was taken out at the end of meals, and replaced after use in the exact same place, so as to save making a fresh hole.

“If you’ll step this way, Sister----”

Mother of Mercy! What a start she’d got! It was the man himself, and smiling, too, standing holding the door open. Awfully young-looking, with dark eyes that might have been Irish, and a queer white coat on him.

And the gentleness of him, when he’d got the orphan into that chair of his! She’d only to stir, and him stopping the machine, and saying, with that smile, that he was afraid it was hurting her.

As if one didn’t go to the dentist to be hurt, and the pain to be offered up for all Reverend Mother’s intentions!

Look at the hands of him!

She watched them, moving softly and skilfully. Presently he talked to her, at first friendly, joking, little questions, then at more length, telling about himself. He was a stranger in the town, too.

“It’ll be the grand thing for you, if Reverend Mother sends the orphans regularly. I’ll put in a good word for you,” she ventured, and he looked at her, screwing-up his eyes, and laughing.

She’d not spoken to any man, not counting the good holy priests which was a different thing altogether, for many years.

But if they were all like this, where would be the harm in them at all? She’d make the orphans start a novena for his conversion to the Faith, that very night.

“Now the next child, please.”

He spent half an hour on each orphan, and the last one, he said, would have to come again.

“I’ll be bringing her along.”

He entered the appointment in a little book.

“I’ve no secretary, you see, Sister--can’t afford one yet!” and then he shook hands with her. “Good-bye.”

The feel of his hand was just what she’d imagined it’d be, gentle, and yet strong. There were funny little dark hairs all down the back of it and along the wrist. And although it was such a hot day, the palm of him was cool and dry.

Sister Dominic spoke to her, humbly, on the way home.

“Well, you’re a wonderful woman of the world, Sister Clara dear, getting us all safe there and back and talking to the man just as though it was the gardener at dear old Noisy-le-Grand. It won’t be so hard, next time, if Reverend Mother sends us again.”

Reverend Mother did send them again, with relays of orphans, and then Sister Clara alone, with old Mother Seraphina who spoke no English and whose cheap _râtelier_ appeared to need endless adjustments.

And he was always kind, and he always smiled, with that screwing-up of his eyes, and talked to Sister Clara.

One day she said that she had toothache, and received Reverend Mother’s leave to make an appointment for herself after Mother Seraphina’s session. She had, for days, been devoured by an intense curiosity to know what it would feel like to have those hands hovering about one’s face. Once, he had had to put his arm right round the back of Mother Seraphina’s old head....

“No, it’s not hurting me at all, at all.” She smiled up at him; a smile that she felt to be beatific, half-hypnotised.

“Would you like to see what I’ve been doing?”

“I would.”

“There--on the left--that big molar----”

He put a little mirror into her hands. And she that hadn’t looked in a glass, hardly, since the day of her final vows, twelve years ago!

Gracious, what a colour she had! Plum-colour, that was her face. And the smile that had felt beatific, looking foolish and uncertain, as though she were ashamed of something. The glass turned dim as her heavy breathing struck it.

Would she perhaps have been breathing into his face that way all the time, and she never thinking of such a thing?

The face in the glass looked redder than ever. Mother of Mercy, this weather! The heat of it! And the holy habit no less than five smelly thicknesses of serge, and not wearing thin yet, though on the back of her year in and year out.

“That’s the last stopping, Sister. I shan’t have to trouble you again.”

“Amn’t I to come to you any more then?”

“It won’t be necessary. What I’ve done should last you for a long while. But if you have pain, come to me at once. Any time.”

What’d it be like, at all, not seeing him any more? Could it be that she’d become inordinately attached, the way the Imitation said was so wrong? And to a man, too.

She was a wicked creature, not worthy of the holy vocation.

“Is there nothing more needs doing?”

“Nothing at all. You have excellent teeth, Sister. There’ll be no more trouble, now those fillings are in.”

The smile he gave her! So that one hardly heard what he was saying....

“If the Reverend Mother wants anyone else seen to, I shall be very pleased to do what I can. Good-bye, Sister. I should like to have persuaded you that there’s plenty of good work to be done outside, too. Take a capable woman like yourself, now. It seems a shame you should be shutting yourself up inside four walls. Why, you--you might have been my secretary, if I could only afford to have one!”

That was a grand laugh of his, it made one want to laugh too, only that one might start crying somehow.

It seemed there’d be nothing left to look forward to in the whole world after the shake of the hand meaning good-bye. There was still that....

It was the queer way to feel entirely, and her forty years old.

Touching the hand of him for the last time, and it strong and yet gentle at one and the same time, quite different to the hand of any woman....

It was over now, and one hurried away, scared that old Seraphina’d see something strange in the face of one.

“Will any more of the sisters be going to him, Mother Seraphina?”

“No.”

“Nor any of the dear children?”

“No.”

* * * * *

Mother of Mercy, there was no sleeping in this heat! But it wasn’t the heat. It was the way one was fretting and crying after what couldn’t be. Though what for couldn’t it be, when he’d said himself that it was a sin and a shame for the like of her to be shut up inside four walls, and himself wanting a secretary and not able to pay one? There’d be some glad enough to work for him without any pay.

Day after day it went on, and night after night, till the pain in one’s head was past bearing, and still there was no getting to sleep.

The things one thought of!

There was the door, giving right on to the street, and then only a bit of a walk, and oneself knowing every step of the way, and then the sight of him, and the feel of those hands of his--it was that would put everything right, and take the spell off of one.

On the hottest night of all, Sister Clara made up her mind. She’d break her holy vows, that were already broken in the heart of her, and go back into the world.

In the morning she dressed and went downstairs.

She’d not be taking anything with her. After Mass the nuns’d be going to the refectory, and they’d not be missing her for awhile, and they keeping the custody of the eyes the way the Holy Rule enjoined.

Oh, it was the fine nun she was, to talk about the Holy Rule.

The door was unlocked. Once outside on the pavement, there was nothing to do but pull it to again.

The slam of it!

There’d be no getting in again now, without a great ringing of the bell, and the portress coming to answer it, and the giving of scandal to the whole of them.

If it hadn’t been for that slam of the door....

The weather had broken. It wasn’t hot any more, but raw and chilly.

The way he’d laugh, and look at you, so interested in any little thing you said! It was wonderful.

What time did people in the world get up and start their day? Later than this, no doubt. But there’d be the waiting-room, where she’d sat with Sister Dominic and the orphans that first time of all. (Maybe she’d never set eyes on Dominic again.)

What for did that maid of his take so long to come to the door?

But it wasn’t the maid who opened the door at last.

It was a person in a blue apron, with a man’s cap pulled down over her eyes, and her sleeves rolled up, and a bucket with a mop in it at her down-at-heel feet.

“’E ain’t come yet. Won’t be ’ere, not for a hower, but if it’s the toothache, you can come in and wait.”

“Does he not live here, then?”

“Ho no,’e don’t live ’ere. But ’e comes reg’lar, and ’e’ll be along by-and-by. You go in and sit down. You won’t mind me going on with the cleaning-up? Turned cold all of a sudden, ain’t it?”

The rolled-back carpet in the waiting-room, the chairs piled, seat against seat, round the walls, the broom that presently chased into all the corners, made it seem colder.

It grew colder and colder as the hour went by.

That was the sound of a key in the lock outside.

“’Morning, Mrs. Hatch. A nasty change in the weather, isn’t it?”

Mumble, mumble, mumble.

“Oh Lord, already!”

He came into the room where Sister Clara shuddered and cowered inside her folds of enveloping black serge.

Look at the face of him! Different, somehow.

You could see how he felt the sudden chilliness in the air, and he was rubbing his hands together, hard. They were different, too--all mottled with cold.

“You in pain, Sister?”

“I--I’ve come.”

“M’m? I don’t attend to anyone till nine o’clock, you know, as a rule, but if it’s a question of pain.... Well, what can I do for you? By the look of you, it’s an abscess, isn’t it?”

THE APPEAL

THE APPEAL

This isn’t a story. It’s an attempt at reconstruction. Given my knowledge of the principals--Mary Jarvis, and her mother, Mrs. St. Luth--I think I can do it.

Mary Jarvis was my mother, and Mrs. St. Luth, of course, my grandmother. Thank god, I’m a modern and can look at them impersonally--judge each on her own merits, as it were.

My mother and my grandmother made scenes as other women make jumpers. It was their form of self-expression. I imagine--although I never knew for certain--that it was my father’s inability to maintain himself _à la hauteur_, in the perennial melodrama that was my mother’s idea of life, that led to my grandmother being invited to live with them.

She came when I, their only child, had barely reached the stage of exchanging my baby frills for first knickerbockers. (I am certain, although I don’t remember it, that my mother wept and said she felt that she had lost her baby for ever.)

Already my parents were unhappy together. Mary--I call her so here for convenience, but she would never have tolerated it in reality--Mary, although really affectionate and impressionable, was fundamentally insincere, with herself and with everybody else. She lived entirely on the emotional plane, and when genuine emotions were not forthcoming she faked them by instinct. Her mother, who belonged to the same type, although with more strength of character, and far less capacity for affection, had always played up to her. They had their violent disputes and violent reconciliations--neither could have been happy without--but they did respect one another’s poses.

But my father never played up.

He couldn’t. Worse still, if he could have done so, he wouldn’t--on principle.

Again I can’t remember, but I can imagine, almost to the point of certainty, short and searing passages between my parents.

“Robert, I want you not to ask me to play the piano to-night.”

(He so seldom gave her an opening, that she had to force them.)

“Off colour?”

“It isn’t that. I heard to-day that Mrs. Thorndyke’s child is dead. It--it upset me.”

“But you didn’t know the child.”

“I know Katherine Thorndyke.”

“You’ve met her once or twice, I remember. And didn’t we hear that if the poor child had lived, it must have been an idiot?”

Probably, at that stage, my mother burst into tears. She’d been heading for that, of course, although she didn’t know it consciously. But my father did, and had made her aware that he did, in a rather brutal fashion.

That was the way they reacted on one another.

It was better, after grandmother came. Curiously enough, my father liked her, although she and Mary had so many of the same characteristics. But I think he regarded her as a sort of lightning conductor.

For Mary herself, however, it was different. Like so many people who manufacture continual unhappiness for themselves, she had a frantic craving for happiness, and an irrational conviction that happiness was her due.

She told me herself, long afterwards, that she never had any thought of infidelity towards my father, nor did she ever meet any man who could or would have caused her to break her marriage vows. But--and this she didn’t tell me, it’s part of the reconstruction--she was constantly obsessed by a vague and romantic expectation of some such encounter. I imagine that she could not believe the world to have been created without a special application to her yearnings.

And then undoubtedly the nervous wear and tear that she imposed upon herself, and upon us all, told on her spirits. Her scenes with grandmother, although they may have served as a safety-valve, were too frequent. They may also have served to throw into painful contrast her husband’s stolid opposition to any form of emotional stimulus.

However that may be, grandmother had formed part of our household for rather less than a year, when Mary suddenly ran away.

It was, I suppose, the only dramatic thing that she could think of, in a wet and dreary February, and I have no doubt at all that she did it on impulse. That is to say, she gave herself time to write an immensely long letter to my father--in which perhaps she set forth that view of herself which he never gave her adequate opportunity for putting into words--but she gave herself no time to pack up her things. She simply took her dressing-case, and I am sure that that was mostly filled with photographs in folding frames, and packets of letters tied up with ribbon, and little manuals of devotion heavily underscored in several places.

Then she walked out of the house, and to the station, and eventually got to Assisi. And they traced her there almost at once, partly because she took no pains to cover up her tracks, and partly because my grandmother--who understood the processes of her mind--found a copy of a Life of St. Francis on the drawing-room sofa, face downwards, with one page all blistered, as though tears had fallen upon it.

My father, for his part, found the long letter that no doubt told him how little he had understood a sensitive nature, and possibly to what point their life together had become intolerable.

And this had the strange effect of making him resolve, and declare aloud, that nothing would induce him to try and get her back again. There must have been a stormy scene between him and my grandmother, who had all the conventionally moral instincts of her day, and was genuinely shocked and disturbed at her daughter’s abrupt and violent casting off of her obvious responsibilities.

“For the child’s sake, at least, Robert ...” she must have repeated many times.

(Neither she nor my mother ever understood the futility of repeating, again and again, words which had already failed of their appeal.)

“A child whose mother can leave him, at four years old, is better without her.”

“It was madness, Robert, but you know she’s not a wicked woman--my poor Mary. If you go and bring her back now, no one will ever know what has happened, and you can start a new life together, and try again.”

“It would be useless.”

“Don’t, don’t say that.” The tears must have been pouring down her old face by that time. “Oh, Robert, give her another chance. This will have been a lesson to her--won’t you forgive her and take her back?”

Well, in the end she prevailed to a certain extent--that is to say, my father would not seek out the culprit himself, but he would allow grandmother to do so, and if she brought Mary home again properly repentant he would not refuse to receive her and give her the “chance” of starting their married life afresh. “For the boy’s sake.”

My grandmother must have repeated that phrase a hundred times at least, and it was certainly her _pièce de resistance_ in the scene at Assisi with Mary.

I’ve had a version of that scene from each one of them, and on the whole the accounts tally, although of course each viewed it--as they viewed everything--exclusively from the personal angle.

My mother saw only a young, beautiful, misunderstood woman, goaded to frenzy in the grip of an uncongenial marriage, taking a desperate step in search of freedom. And then, even stronger and more touching in her relinquishment, finding the courage, for love of her child, to return to the house of bondage.

And my grandmother, with equal inevitability, saw only a sorrow-worn woman, no longer young (but infinitely interesting), courageously undertaking a solitary journey, on a mission that should restore sanctity to a shattered home. And even as her urgent plea had shaken Robert’s defences, so her eloquence, her boundless influence and unfaltering understanding, must prevail with the slighter, more trivial personality of her daughter. The achievement of persuading Mary to return to her husband and child was, my grandmother told me, the ultimate justification of her existence, in her own eyes.

As a matter of fact, I doubt if she, any more than the rest of us, felt her existence to be in any need of justification whatsoever--but she was addicted to phrases, and this one at least served as an indication to the magnitude of her effort.

For Mary did not capitulate without a struggle. And it is in the details of that struggle that my reconstruction work comes in, for although each of the protagonists has quoted to me whole sentences, and even speeches, of brilliant oratory from herself and inadequate rejoinder from the other, I do not believe either of them. Accuracy, with that type, can never co-exist with emotion--and emotion, real or imaginary, is never absent.

But this, I imagine, is more or less what took place in the sitting-room of the tiny _albergo_ at Assisi:

“I’ve come to fetch you home, my child. You shall never hear one word of reproach--Robert only wants to begin again--a new life.”

“Never, mother. It’s impossible. I’ve borne too much. I can’t ever go back to it. I must live my own life.”

(Probably Mary had been reading _The Doll’s House_. People were discovering Ibsen in those days.)

“Mary, it’s not five years since you and Robert were married, in the little country church at home, by our dear old vicar, who held you at the font when I took you, a tiny baby, to be christened.”

It may have been at this stage that Mary began to cry. Anyway, I’m certain that my grandmother did. Any allusions, however irrelevant, to little country churches at home, and Mary as a tiny baby, were always apt to bring the tears to her eyes--and I’m sure that neither of them had thought for an instant of steadying their nerves by sitting down to a solid meal. So that tears must have been easier, even, than usual.

“Robert doesn’t understand me--he never will.”

“Darling, don’t you remember your early days together? The little things--little jokes, and allusions, and happinesses shared together? Does one ever forget?”

“_No._”

Mary sobbed. “But I can’t go back to him.”

I think that here, if my grandmother gave her a chance, she probably did make one--or part of one--of the speeches that she long afterwards quoted to me.

She was intensely unhappy. Robert did not understand her, and she could not live in an unsympathetic atmosphere. She should go mad. All that she had ever asked of life was peace, beautiful surroundings, and the ideal companion.... If she went back to Robert now, after having found courage to make the break, it would be a repetition of the misery that had broken her heart during the past three years.

(The hearts of my mother and grandmother both suffered innumerable breakages throughout their lives, neither of them ever seeming aware of the physiological absurdity of the expression.)

“It’s braver to stay away than to go back and try and patch up something that can never be anything but a failure,” quavered Mary, with a momentary flash of insight.

But of course grandmother couldn’t leave it at that. She had the justification of her own existence to think of, for one thing. I am quite sure that a fortuitous street-musician, rendering “Santa Lucia” or “Silver Threads Amongst the Gold” in the distance, would have broken down Mary’s frail barrier of honest thought, and have materially assisted my grandmother to her victory. Accessories were so absolutely essentials, to them both.

But so far as I know, grandmother had to win on points, as it were, and received no extraneous help in the shape of sentimental appeals from without.

She made her supreme effort.

“For the boy’s sake, Mary ... your little, little boy. Is he to be motherless?”

“Wouldn’t Robert let me have him?”

“No, my dear. How could he? I myself--the mother that bore you, Mary--I couldn’t think it right that a woman who had deliberately deserted her husband and home should have the care of a little, innocent child.”

“Oh, my baby!”

She sobbed and cried, but she had not yet capitulated. Grandmother, however, had gauged pretty accurately the force of the baby-_motif_.

“Before I came away, on my long, lonely journey,” she said slowly, “I went up to the nursery, to say good-bye to Bobbie. He had on his blue overall--the one you embroidered for him last summer, Mary--was it only last summer?--and he was playing with his engine, on the nursery floor, his dear, round face was so solemn....”

“Oh, don’t--don’t----”

But grandmother, the tears streaming from her eyes, relentlessly continued: “Darling, his big blue eyes looked up at me, and his little voice asked: ‘_Where’s Mummie?_’”

Did grandmother’s--even grandmother’s--conscience misgive her, at the quotation? That it was verbally correct, I have no doubt--but what of the intonation?

My grandmother’s poignant rendering of “_Where’s Mummie?_” no doubt contained all the pathetic appeal of bewildered and deserted childhood throughout the ages....

But mine--the original “_Where’s Mummie?_...” I have no recollection of it, of course, but I do remember myself at four years old--a stolid, rather cynical child, utterly independent by temperament, and reacting strongly even then against a perpetually emotional atmosphere. And one knows the way in which small children utter those conventional enquiries which they unconsciously know to be expected of them ... the soft, impersonal indifference of the tone, the immediate re-absorption, without waiting for a reply, in the engrossing occupation of the moment....

Mary held out for a little while longer, but the heart went out of her resistance after the pitiful sound of that “_Where’s Mummie?_” as my grandmother rendered it.

She gave in “for the boy’s sake.”

And my grandmother had justified her existence.

They travelled home together, and Mary averted anti-climax by quite a real nervous breakdown, that overtook her after she got home, before my father had had time to forgive her in so many words.

So they began again--literally.

It wasn’t, in fact, possible for them to be happy together, and they never were so. I grew up in the midst of scenes, tears, and intermittent periods of reconciliation. There was no stability about my childhood; and no reality. Undoubtedly I was the victim--far more so than my father, who presently sought and found consolation elsewhere, or than Mary, whom he thus provided with a perfectly legitimate grievance that lasted her until he died, fifteen years later. After that, she was able gradually to forget that there had ever been unhappiness between them, and to assume the identity of a heart-broken widow.

Mrs. St. Luth, my grandmother, lived to be very old.

“But useless old woman though I am, God gave me the opportunity of justifying my existence, when He let me bring a mother home to her little child....”

I wonder.

* * * * *

Thank god, I’m a modern.

THE FIRST STONE

THE FIRST STONE

A PLAY IN ONE ACT

_Characters_:

MRS. LLOYD-EVANS } _Members of the local Welfare
MRS. BALLANTYNE } Committee_
MRS. AKERS }
MISS MILLER _Secretary to the Committee._

SCENE

_A committee-room on the top floor of a house in a small provincial town. Back of the stage, centre, there is a door, opening inwards on to the stage. To the right of the door, a few pegs are on the wall for hanging coats, etc. Right of the stage, is a good-sized window, showing distant views of chimney-pots outside. Left of the stage, a small gas-fire burns. Near it, a table and chairs have been formally arranged for the meeting._

_The whole atmosphere of the room is cold and dreary. Time: a winter afternoon in 1917._

_Miss Miller discovered. She is cold and tired-looking, mechanically arranging blotting-paper, etc. on the table._

_Mrs. Ballantyne enters. She is prosperous-looking and clad in warm furs, and is out of breath from ascending the stairs._

MISS MILLER: Good afternoon, Mrs. Ballantyne.

MRS. BALLANTYNE (_out of breath_): Good afternoon. Oh dear, those stairs! I’m out of breath.

MISS MILLER: They are trying, aren’t they? Four flights!

MRS. BALLANTYNE: Oh, you oughtn’t to find them trying, at your age. Tell me, have you any idea why we’ve all been asked to come here to-day, Miss Miller? It’s not the day for our regular meeting, at all.