The Edwardians (3 page)

Lucy expected no answer to this, and Lady Roehampton gave none. That was consistent with her usual manner. She had a way of suddenly dropping a subject; it was a trick she had often found convenient, and since she enjoyed all the assurance of a beautiful woman, she was able always to impose her own wishes upon her audience. So now she could abandon the subject of the letter, and revert to Sebastian, who had aroused her interest: “That dark romantic boy of yours, Lucy,—tell me about him. When does he leave Oxford? Is he going into the Guards?” Lucy was never reluctant to talk about Sebastian; moreover, Lady Roehampton had no son, only a daughter of whom she was reputed jealous. “My dark romantic boy, Sylvia! how absurd you are, he's only an untidy schoolboy,—a colt, I tell him,—I hope he won't get spoilt, if women like you take too much notice of him. He's a nice boy, I admit, though he's apt to be moody.”

“But that's his charm, my dear Lucy: Sebastian sulky is irresistible. Promise me you will never ruin him by persuading him to appear good-tempered.” “How perverse you are, Sylvia; I believe you really like people to be disagreeable. So that you can win them round. You would like Sebastian to snarl at you for half an hour, if at the end of forty minutes you were sure of having him at your feet.” “What nonsense you talk, Lucy; I knew Sebastian in his cradle. But you needn't shut your eyes to the fact that he will have great attraction for women. That casual, though charming manner of his. . . . I doubt if he knows so much as my name.” “My dear Sylvia, you are one of his favourites; when I tell him you are coming, he says, Thank goodness for that.” “That means,” said Lady Roehampton, gratified at having caught the fish for which she was angling, “he is bored by most of our friends.” “Worse than that, Sylvia,” said Lucy, settling down to a grievance, “sometimes I think he really dislikes them. He says such sarcastic things,—quite unlike a boy. Cutting things. They make me quite uncomfortable. At other times he seems to enjoy himself. I can't make him out.”
“Adolescence,” said Sylvia, blowing a long thread of smoke from her cigarette, for although she never smoked in public she could enjoy a cigarette in the privacy of her bedroom. “If I could really think that!” sighed Lucy; “if I could be sure he was going to turn out all right! It's a great responsibility, Sylvia.” “You could always marry again, Lucy,” said Lady Roehampton, looking at her friend. “Yes,” said Lucy, instantly on her guard, “I could, but I prefer keeping my difficulties to myself, on the whole. I am quite prepared to run Chevron for Sebastian until he marries. But, Sylvia, we must dress.” “Dinner at half-past eight?” “Dinner at half-past eight. What are you going to put on? The Nattier-blue taffeta? I always think you look better in that than in anything else. Don't hurry, darling. I shall be late anyhow.”

One half of Sebastian detested his mother's friends; the other half was allured by their glitter. Sometimes he wanted to gallop away by himself to the world's ends, sometimes he wanted to give himself up wholly to the flattering charm of pretty women. Sometimes he wished to see his whole acquaintance cast into a furnace, so vehemently did he deprecate them, sometimes he thought that they had mastered the problem of civilisation more truly than the Greeks or Romans. “Since one cannot have truth,” cried Sebastian, struggling into his evening shirt, “let us at least have good manners.” The thought was not original: his father had put it into his head, years ago, before he died. But this brings us to Sebastian's private trouble: he never could make up his mind on any subject. It was most distressing. He had, apparently, no opinions but only moods,—moods whose sweeping intensity was equalled only by the rapidity of their change. He could never accustom himself to their impermanence; whatever state of mind was upon him at the moment, he instantly believed to be his settled outlook upon life. Momentarily alarmed when it deserted him, he changed over at once in oblivious optimism. Between-whiles, when no particular mood possessed him, he worried over his own instability. Something, he thought, must be wrong with him. He contrasted himself with the people he knew: how calm they were, how certain, how self-assured! With what unfaltering determination did they appear to have pursued their chosen path from its beginning right up to its end!—No, not yet right up to its end. Most of the people he knew at home were in their middle age; some certainly were old, the old Duchess of Hull, for instance, progressing, though still indomitably, towards her grave; but it was obvious that as they had begun, so did they mean to conclude. The world would be with them, late, as soon. They had known their own minds; they had stuck to their opinions. They had made their choice. How enviable! They had settled their scheme of values. How reposeful! But was it, he wondered, a very good choice? Were those values so very valuable? His mood underwent a violent revulsion. He wanted suddenly to be up on the roof again, this time under the stars. Sulky and critical, he shut his disappointed spaniels into his bedroom and went downstairs to obey his mother's summons.

On leaving Lady Roehampton, Lucy went to her own room: the great house was quiet; all the guests were safely shut into their rooms till dinner; no one was about, except a housemaid beating up the cushions or a footman emptying the wastepaper basket. Along the passages, the windows were open, for it was a warm July evening, and the pigeons cooing on the battlements made the silence murmurous as though the grey stone of the walls had itself become vocal. Lucy hurried through the empty rooms. She detested solitude, even for half an hour; the habit of constant company—it could scarcely be called companionship—had unfitted her for her own society, and now she sagged and felt forlorn. She ought to look into the schoolroom, she thought, and say good night to Viola, who, in dressing gown and pigtails, would be eating her supper, but the idea, no sooner than conceived, filled her with boredom. She decided to summon her favourite Sebastian instead. Reaching her room, where her maid, Button, was laying out her dress, she said, “Send word to his Grace, Button, that I should like to see him here for a few minutes.”

Oh, the weariness of life, she thought, sitting down at her dressing table; and then she remembered how Leonard Anquetil had looked at her when she had shown him the garden after tea, and a slight zest for life revived. She sat with lowered eyes, smiling a downward smile, while her thoughts dawdled over Leonard Anquetil and her fingers played with the jewels laid out on the dressing table. She had recently had the family jewels reset by Cartier, preferring the fashion of the day to the heavy gold settings of Victoria's time. The top of the dressing table was of looking glass, so that the gems were duplicated; rubies tonight, she thought idly
,
picking up a brooch and setting it down again; last night she had worn the emeralds, and her depression returned as she reflected that someday she would have to give up the jewels to Sebastian's wife. She did not want to become either a dowager or a grandmother; she did not want to renounce her position as mistress of Chevron. Its luxury
and splendour were very pleasant to her. Perhaps she would end by marrying Sir Adam after all, before Sebastian and his bride could turn her out; it would be a come-down to marry a Jew, and physically Sir Adam was not appetising, but then his millions were fabulous, and she could make him buy a place quite as imposing as Chevron. Not as beautiful, perhaps, but quite as imposing. Her hands strayed over the rubies; yes, and he would buy jewels for her too; her own, this time; no question of heirlooms. Besides, Sir Adam could do whatever he liked with the King. If only Sir Adam were not physically in love with her, she might really consider it.

Sebastian came in, and Lucy became brisk again.

“Give me a wrap, Button. You can start doing my hair. Sebastian, give me the plan of the dinner table. On the table there. No, silly boy. Button, give it to his Grace. Now, Sebastian, read it out to me while I have my hair done. Oh, George Roehampton takes me in, does he?
Must
he? Such a bore that man is. And Sir Adam the other side. Don't pull my hair like that, Button; really, I never knew such a clumsy woman; now you have given me a headache for the rest of the evening. Do be more careful. Well, I am not going to enjoy myself very much, I can see: Sir Adam and George Roehampton. However, it's inevitable. Or no, let me see for myself. That Miss Wace is such a fool that she may quite well have made a muddle of the whole thing. Come and hold the plan for me to see, Sebastian. Button! you pulled my hair again. How many times must I tell you to be careful? Once more, and I give you notice, I declare I will. Tilt it up, Sebastian; I can't see.”

Sebastian stood beside his mother holding the red leather pad, with slits into which cards bearing the names of the guests were inserted. As she stood holding it, he watched his mother's reflection in the mirror. With her fair hair and lively little crumpled face, she looked extraordinarily young for her age as a rule, but now she was busily applying cream and wiping the cosmetics from her face with a handkerchief, at the same time as Button removed the pads from under her hair and laid them on the dressing table. ‘Rats,' her children called them. They were unappetising objects, like last year's birds-nests, hot and stuffy to the head, but they could not be dispensed with, since they provided the foundation on which the coiffure was to be swathed and piled, and into which the innumerable hairpins were to be stuck. It was always a source of great preoccupation with the ladies that no bit of the pad should show through the natural hair. Often they put up a tentative hand to feel, even in the midst of the most absorbing conversation; and then their faces wore the expression which is seen only on the faces of women whose fingers investigate the back of their heads. Sebastian had watched this hair-dressing process a hundred times, but now seeing it take place in the mirror, he observed it with a new eye. He stared at his mother's reflection, with the pool of rubies in the foreground, and the uncomely ‘rats,' as though she were a stranger to him, realising that behind the glitter and animation in which they lived he had absolutely no knowledge of her. If he had been asked to describe his mother, he must have said, “She is a famous hostess, with a talent for mimicry and a genius for making parties a success. She is charming and vivacious. In private life she is often irritable and sometimes unkind. She likes bridge and racing. She never opens a book, and she cannot bear to be alone. I have not the faintest idea of what she is really like.” He would not have added, because he did not know, that she was ruthless and predatory.

“Why are you staring like that, Sebastian? You make me quite shy.” Her hair was about her shoulders now, and Button was busy with the curling-tongs. She heated them first on the spirit lamp, and then held them carefully to her own cheek to feel if they were hot enough. “Bless the boy, one would think he had never watched me dress before. Now about that dinner table, yes, it's all wrong; I thought it would be. She has clean forgotten the ambassador. Button, you must call Miss Wace—no, Sebastian, you fetch her. No, ring the bell; I don't want you to go away. Why on earth can't people do their own jobs properly? What do I pay Wacey a hundred and fifty a year for, I should like to know? Oh dear, and look at the time; I shall be late for dinner. I declare the trouble of entertaining is enough to spoil all one's pleasure. It's a little hard, I do think, that one should never have any undiluted pleasure in life. Who's that at the door? Button, go and see. And Miss Wace must come at once.”

“Lady Viola would like to know if she may come and say good night to your Grace.”

“Oh, bother the child—well, yes, I suppose she must if she wants to. Now, Button, haven't you nearly finished? Don't drag my hair back like that, woman. Give me the tail comb. Don't you see, it wants more fullness at the side. Really, Button, I thought you were supposed to be an expert hair-dresser. You may think yourself lucky, Sebastian, that you were born a boy. This eternal hair, these eternal clothes! they wear a woman out before her time. Oh, there you are, Miss Wace. This plan is all wrong—perfectly hopeless. I don't go in with Lord Roehampton at all. “What about the ambassador? You must alter it. Do it in here, as quick as you can. Sebastian will help you. And Viola. Come in, Viola; don't look so scared, child; I can't bear people who look scared. Now I must leave you all while I wash. No, I don't want you now, Button; you get on my nerves. I'll call you when I want you. Get my dress ready. Children, help Miss Wace—yes, you too, Viola; it's high time you took a little trouble to help your poor mother—and do, all three of you, try to show a little intelligence.”

The duchess retired into her dressing room, from where she kept up a flow of comments.

“Viola, you must really take a little more trouble about your appearance. You looked a perfect fright at luncheon today; I was ashamed of you. And you really must talk more, instead of sitting there like a stuffed doll. You had that nice Mr. Anquetil, who is perfectly easy to get on with. You might be ten, instead of seventeen. I have a good mind to start you coming down to dinner, except that you would cast a blight over everything. Girls are such a bore—poor things, they can't help it, but really they are a problem. They ruin conversation; one has to be so careful. Women ought to be married, or at any rate widowed. I don't mean you, of course, Wacey. I'm ready for you, Button.”

Button vanished into the dressing room, and for a while there was silence, broken only by irritable exclamations from within. These inner mysteries of his mother's toilet were unknown to Sebastian, but Viola knew well enough what was going on: her mother was seated, poking at her hair meanwhile with fretful but experienced fingers, while Button knelt before her, carefully drawing the silk stockings on to her feet and smoothing them nicely up the leg. Then her mother would rise, and, standing in her chemise, would allow the maid to fit the long stays of pink coutil, heavily boned, round her hips and slender figure, fastening the busk down the front, after many adjustments; then the suspenders would be clipped to the stockings; then the lacing would follow, beginning at the waist and travelling gradually up and down, until the necessary proportions had been achieved. The silk laces and their tags would fly out, under the maid's deft fingers, with the flick of a skilled worker mending a net. Then the pads of pink satin would be brought, and fastened into place on the hips and under the arms, still further to accentuate the smallness of the waist. Then the drawers; and then the petticoat would be spread into a ring on the floor, and Lucy would step into it on her high-heeled shoes, allowing Button to draw it up and tie the tapes. Then Button would throw the dressing gown round her shoulders again—Viola had followed the process well, for here the door opened, and the duchess emerged. “Well, have you done that table? Read it out. Louder. I can't hear. Yes, that's better. I'm sorry, Sebastian, you'll have to take in old Octavia Hull again. Nonsense, she's very amusing when she's not too fuddled with drugs. She'll be all right tonight because she'll be afraid of losing too much money to Sir Adam after dinner. Now, Wacey, off you go and rearrange the cards on the table. And you too, Viola. There are too many people in this room. Oh, all right, you can stop till I'm dressed if you like. Button, I'm ready for my dress. Now be careful. Don't catch the hooks in my hair, Sebastian, you must turn round while I take off my dressing gown. Now, Button.”