The Diamond Waterfall (22 page)

“But, Alice, that is the very hat you admired on Wednesday, when we saw it with Valentin.”

With Valentin, yes. And had he not said (thinking all the while surely of Belle Maman?), “Alice would look quite absolutely spiffing in that one …”

False, all false. In her anger and distress, she slouched before the milliner's glass, her mouth turned deliberately downward. White straw picture hat with blue chiffon, brim folded one side over a black velvet bandeau. Pinned to it, an inexpensive ornament.

“It's all a terrible mistake. I look a fright—”

“I could easily lend you,
give
you, dear, my little sapphire and gold butterfly. That would be quite charming.”

“No.”

She astonished herself by her rudeness. It was like old times again. When she had mourned her own mother and hated the interloper. Now she hated the person, the
persons
who were deceiving her father. But Belle Maman only said mildly:

“If you're not in a hat-buying mood …”

But there was still the rest of the morning to get through. And then at luncheon, oh horrid surprise: the return of Valentin.

“And how have my darlings been amusing themselves? For me it's been so
ennuyeux
as you can't imagine—but duty is done now.”

“Alice is a little low-spirited today. Perhaps you've been missed …”

Halfway through the meal Alice felt that she could bear no more. “If you'd excuse me? I'm going up to my room. One of my headaches …”

They were both of them at once all tenderness. “A cachet, I'll fetch you one. We'll order a tisane to be sent up. You
must
be well for the ballet. Rest, as long as you can.”

Up in her room she couldn't sleep or even lie still on the bed. After a while she raised the jalousies, letting in the afternoon sun. She sat on the balcony, in the shade, and tried to read. It was only half-past three. She looked down below, and saw, strolling past the judas trees, Belle Maman and Valentin.

They were deep in conversation, circumspectly walking a little apart. Belle Maman wearing her new lemon ecru lace and silk coat. (How fitting that she walked among the judas trees.)

Now they had stopped, where a garden seat stood against a wealth of bushes. They sat, and Valentin took Belle Maman's parasol for her and folded it. Watching, Alice thought suddenly, I want to hear them. As they talked, surely they would condemn themselves out of their own mouths? And she, she would surprise them,
embarrass
them. It would be worse, far worse, than telling Papa. (How could I ever, would I ever?)

She strolled into the garden through the side entrance leading to the tennis courts and croquet pitch. Few people were about. Along the other side of the bushes, she crept stealthily. I am searching for a lost tennis ball, she told herself. And to bear the story out, bent occasionally to look in the undergrowth.

Voices. Belle Maman's tinkling laugh. Valentin's deep one. She stood still, holding her breath to hear the better. Ahead, she saw where she might walk around, and then as they spoke their words of love, spring out on them.

“… your
affaire
… what would you have done if Ana Xenescu—if there'd been a child there? I often ask that because you—”

“But my darling there wasn't, so … Anyway, she has now this charming little Corina.
Not
mine of course.”

“Of course.” Belle Maman's laugh again.

“Didn't I do enough, fathering an English miss? Even so, it'd have been all right with Ana—she has after all a husband. Society understands. As in England.”

“Robert does not. The King, and his set, that's another matter. There, it doesn't do to peer too closely into the cradle—certainly not to remark on family resemblances, or lack of them.”

“But my Theodora—”

“She'll
always be all right. I may be fair-haired but Robert is dark enough, and so is Hal, and then—Lionel! He is
very
dark.”

“What you've been saying of him, God forbid anyone should think—”

“No, never! And Robert least of all. It is now all quite safe. It is only that when people—when they say ‘How like … such a Firth!' I would laugh if I didn't want to
weep.”

“Darling, you
mustn't.
Nearly three years now that we have loved each other.”

“I want to cry out and tell
everyone,
‘Look, look, she is the daughter of the most beautiful man in Romania!' “

“Lily, sweet one, it will be always all right. I shall be loving her from far away. And when she grows up—no, don't cry, darling, or I will too.”

“How can I help it? How? If I count the days …”

“Kiss me. Let me kiss you.”

“Where all the world can see?
And
Alice from her window!” “Later, later. No, don't cry. We must go indoors now. Back to the playacting.”

“Yes. Back to our playacting.”

She could do nothing. There was nothing on earth she could do. She had heard things now which she could not ever have wanted to know. What she had learned was so terrible that she would never, never, tell anyone. Horrible, disgusting …

If I could only go back, she thought, not just to this morning, but to before Uncle Lionel in the darkroom. To before Mama died. When she loved and needed me.
Before.

I am an alone child. They think I am grown up, and part of me is. Old and sick and sad. It is all a tangle past unraveling. One thing is certain though, after what I've seen, I never want to marry. Never.
Never.

Country Life,
March 1903

Our photograph this week is of Lady Firth, wife of Sir Robert Firth of The Towers, Flaxthorpe, in the North Riding of Yorkshire. Before her marriage Lady Firth was the well-known actress Lily Greene. She returns to the stage this spring playing the lead in
Princess Violet,
a new musical play by the Irish composer John Plunkett, with book by Ernest Harley.

There was no escaping it now. It had been in the end quite a sudden decision, although the idea had been growing in her mind all through the long, lonely summer of 1902. Her children, on the one hand such a joy and yet … seeming to belong to other people. Nan-Nan, Alice. Even one August afternoon when she had been sitting in the garden, little Teddy running with a bloodied knee into the arms of Gib Nicolson.

And Hal: often she felt that for him she was not real at all, a visitor perhaps—who might or might not stay awhile. Yet Sadie's Jack, how confidently he ran to his mother, to show her this, tell her that—and as confidently ran away again. Sadie with her three beautiful children (and all of them Charlie's). She is still my greatest, my only friend, Lily thought. It is Vicky again, without the unhappy ending. But just as I never told Vicky about Frank, I've told her nothing of Val. Now it is too late. I could not, now. And then, Teddy, the rest of the story …

To become an actress again. Not only the summer of heartbreak, parted it now seemed forever from Valentin, but the despair of the cold dark winter following decided her. A casual remark at a dinner party to the effect that, had she remained on the stage, it might now be her playing opposite Seymour Hicks in
The Earl and the Girl.
(“It would quite match
The Duke and the Shopgirl,
do you not think?”)

Robert had surprised her then by saying, lightly, “But she has my permission to return, whenever she wishes.”

A little later, the idea grown in her mind, she broached the subject. He seemed less willing:

“I did not intend—a remark merely, on a social occasion.”

She let it go, but a week later she tried again. This time he was angry. “Your duty is here,” he told her. “As my wife. As mother to my son.”

“Any son or daughter should be proud of a mother on the stage.” She regretted her words immediately.

“Your
daughter,” he said, coldly angry. “There is no need to mention daughter.”

Humbly, she said, “I realize you have the last word. That I need your permission. I implore you …”

This servile attitude—that she should have to beg! She could sense his satisfaction, knowing he had the power to allow, or to forbid. And she was afraid too, remembering how he had rained blows on her. Could she ever be sure he would not do it again?

She tried another approach, saying less earnestly, “It would amuse Lionel tremendously. Those charming times we had at the Savoy. Romano's. Just to think …”

He shrugged his shoulders. “Have your way then.”

“Thank you. I—”

He cut her short. “It will do no harm—and you will tire of it soon enough.” He added threateningly, “But one breath of scandal …”

To her surprise, she found almost immediately a suitable play. She felt that it must be
meant,
and wrote at once to Val, certain that he would be able to come and see her. They would have of course to be enormously careful (“One breath of scandal”) but just to know he was in the audience, that they might meet afterward, for however short a time, would make everything worthwhile.

She rented a small, pretty flat, began rehearsals, and traveled home on a fast LNER train at each weekend. About three weeks before the opening, she realized she had made a mistake.

She had expected there to be some difficulties, returning to the stage after six years' absence, but not for it to be so unhappy.
The Duke and the Shopgirl
had brought excitement, comradeship, and little or no rivalry.
Princess Violet
was its mirror image.

She gave an interview to
The Lady,
summing up the plot for them.

“It's a simple tale. Princess Violet, who's thirty and has so far rejected all suitors, has at last consented to marry a rich but elderly prince from a neighboring kingdom. Then she meets in the castle grounds a young man who is being pursued by foreign agents. She agrees to hide him. To say any more would be to spoil it.”

In another interview, the journalist said:

“There has been mention of the precious stones and jewelry in your home, Miss Greene, particularly the remarkable waterfall of diamonds. Recently, Miss Fannie Ward wore on stage some of her own diamonds—about twenty thousand pounds' worth, I believe. Is there any possibility that as Princess Violet you will—”

Lily had interrupted her sharply. “No. None at all.” She had felt quite sick.

But the plot—was not that part of the trouble? A parallel of the love story between her and Valentin. A woman of thirty about to marry for security, the “beautiful” younger man from a faraway romantic country, their secret and apparently doomed love. A stupidly happy ending only compounded the mockery.

The first night, Robert in a front row, and Lionel, the mocking Lionel. Afterward the fulsome praise for something she knew to be bad. And in the morning, the critics.

“Miss Greene delighted us,” said the
Morning Post,
“she might never have been away. Indeed perhaps she does not realize she
has
been away, and that she is no longer Shop Girl turned Duchess, but a Princess deeply, hopelessly in love. She does not sing her love songs as if she meant them. Her performance is pretty but wants passion.”

Well, she thought as she read it, this caricature of my own plight, and I cannot even convey it onstage.

But the public liked the play—and her. Advance bookings for the London Season were already excellent. She realized then that mistake or no, she would have to continue. She had heard nothing from Valentin. She felt worried and despairing. And she was homesick, longing for her children. The weekend journeys were no longer possible now the show had opened.

Each night, in a dress of mauve chiffon embroidered with paillettes, she sang nonsense:

“Every diamond a tear I shed for you …”

Really! There must be an honorable way out.

Early June, and Robert came to spend three weeks with Lionel. Suppers at Gatti's, Romano's, the Savoy. She saw that he was proud of her, that there was a further easing of the war between them. But she could think only that Valentin might come during these weeks. And what then?

Although Robert stayed at the flat, they had separate bedrooms. She would have pleaded tiredness had he suggested anything. Better relations between them must not encourage that. She was glad to see the red leather jewel case had not accompanied him.

One night during the second week they returned after an exhausting supper together in a
cabinet privé
during which he had repeatedly accused
her, quite falsely, of flirting with a Mr. Coleman, a financier, the evening before: “He's a Jew, and has his eye on you—I am not blind to these things.”

As soon as they reached the flat, he began again:

“You do
realize
he is a Jew?”

“Yes, for all the importance it has. Yes. And now, isn't that enough? I tire—”

He said suddenly, “Oh, but you are so beautiful. Now. Stand like that. When you are angry—”

“I am not angry, just tired. And I dislike thoughtless prejudice.”

“Yes, angry. And beautiful. No one, you know, no one has ever looked as you do in the Diamond Waterfall.” He paused. “If I could picture, imagine that you wore it now—I might—”

She thought, suddenly acutely weary,
Why not?
Why not have another child and be out of all this? The quinine pessary that was to have protected her forever after…. Why not just submit, and see?

It was bad, but at least no worse than she had feared. He said afterward, “The Waterfall, my dear, your next visit to Flaxthorpe—would you wear it? In the bedroom. My camera,” he spoke offhandedly, “if I had one still, I would pose you.”

“With nothing on?” she said acidly. “Whom for—
Country Life?”

She suffered it three more times, wearing on one occasion an ornate Egyptian gold necklace just purchased by Robert as a celebration gift for her success in the show, which it was now thought would run till Christmas. A few weeks later, the morning after a performance attended by King Edward and Queen Alexandra, she was very sick. Fatigue, excitement, too much champagne? She knew better.