To the North (2 page)

He liked talking and was amused by himself, but did not put up this barrage for no other reason. The fact was, he had caught once or twice while he talked a rather strange look from her, gloomy, dreamy, exalted, and feared that given an opening she might begin talking about herself. She might tell him life was difficult, or how terribly things upset her. Married and so communicative: he dreaded to be involved with her.— His fears were groundless, she was only wanting to tell him about Umbria— More probably she was a widow, for the unhappy decisiveness with which she had ordered her wine bespoke the woman obliged for years to do things for herself and who did not enjoy doing them.

Neither Cecilia nor Mark had nice characters; all the same, this encounter presents them in an unfair light. On a long journey, the heart hangs dull in the shaken body, nerves ache, senses quicken, the brain like a horrified cat leaps clawing from object to object, the earth whisked by at such speed looks ephemeral, trashy: if one is not sad one is bored. Recollect that this was a journey begun after lunch, through a blighted fag-end of Italy, through Switzerland in the rain. At the moment, also, both their personal backgrounds were inauspicious. A quarrel had precipitated Mark’s departure from Rome: anger shot red through his present mist of depression. Cecilia, a widow of twenty-nine, was wondering why she had let frail cords of sentiment and predilection draw her back from Italy to the cold island where, in St. John’s Wood, the daffodils might not be out. She had spent too much money and got too few letters while she was abroad; she wondered if she were ruined, if friends had forgotten her. Mistrustful, tentative, uncertain whether to marry again, she was quite happy only in one relationship: with her young sister-in-law Emmeline.

Mistrust, in fact, underlay the whole of the interlude, which finished with brandy for Mark and a green Chartreuse for Cecilia. Still, they got on well enough, each determined to please while closing the heart against pleasure. They were both left with curiosity, some little piqued self-regard, and promised to meet in London, if not again on the journey: he made certain she was in the telephone-book. Back in her carriage, Cecilia blew out her air-cushion, wrapped her fur coat round her knees and, with a murmured apology, put up her feet by the hip of the general’s wife. She could not afford a sleeper. She read for a little, took two aspirins, then nodding, decided that Markie’s manner (for Markie was what his friends called him) had been impertinent: she would avoid him to-morrow.

Returning next morning from breakfast Cecilia saw from the corridor Mr. Linkwater humped at the far end of a carriage, on a flying background of battle-fields under new culture, unsuccessfully shaved and looking distinctly cross. Avoiding his eye she passed hurriedly on down the train. At Boulogne the day was windless, the boat slipped from shore to shore like a pat of butter over a hot plate. Markie discovered Cecilia; for some time they paced the deck. Folkestone appeared, the flags on the Leas lifeless, hotels staring out at nothing: England showed a blank face. Nodding inland Markie said: “Are you staying here long?”

“I have no idea,” said Cecilia.

WHAT IS THE MATTER, EMMELINE?” said Lady Waters.

Nothing was the matter, but Emmeline found this too difficult to explain, so she looked mildly at Lady Waters out of the corners of her shell-rimmed spectacles, and said nothing.

Lady Waters was quick to detect situations that did not exist. Living comfortably in Rutland Gate with her second husband, Sir Robert, she enlarged her own life into ripples of apprehension on everybody’s behalf. Upon meeting, her very remarkable eyes sought one’s own for those first intimations of crisis she was all tuned up to receive; she entered one’s house on a current that set the furniture bobbing; at Rutland Gate destiny shadowed her tea-table. Her smallest clock struck portentously, her telephone trilled from the heart, her dinner-gong boomed a warning. When she performed introductions, drama’s whole precedent made the encounter momentous… . Only Sir Robert, who spent much of his time at his club, remained unaware of this atmosphere.

Lady Waters had had no children by either, marriage. Her first had made her Cecilia’s aunt-in-law, her second, Emmeline’s first cousin once removed. Cecilia had met Henry Summers (Emmeline’s brother) for the first time dining at Rutland Gate. One was not a connection of Lady Waters’ for nothing; Cecilia had heard a good deal of Henry and Emmeline Summers, while they had had frequent occasion to smile at the name of their Cousin Robert’s new wife’s hypothetical niece, who was always abroad or had just left London. Then Cecilia and Henry, both bidden to dinner, had met: unconscious, chattering amiably while their relative’s large premonition darkened and spread above them, they became friends, intimates, lovers and quite soon afterwards married. That dangerous marriage was after Georgina Waters’ own heart: when, within less than a year, Henry died of pneumonia, she had to conceal her relief that, given Henry’s nervous make-up and Cecilia’s temperament, there had been no time for worse to come of it.

That marriage so brief as hardly to lose its character of an event had transformed Cecilia from a young girl at once vehement and mysterious into a bewildered widow. She did not know where to turn. Incredulity, with which she had entered upon her happiness, remained the note of her grief. Emmeline Summers’ suggestion that they should set up a house together had worked out well. At that time both young women had found themselves solitary: Cecilia’s mother, never very affectionate, her whole heart given to her two sons killed in the war, had remarried soon after Cecilia met Henry and gone to live in America; Henry and Emmeline Summers had been orphans from childhood, with no relatives nearer, few friends more trusted, than Sir Robert Waters, their father’s cousin. They brought themselves up side by side, Henry some years ahead; very much alike, as though the same tree had divided. During the year of her brother’s marriage Emmeline, perhaps a little forlorn, had been much abroad; one might say that she and Cecilia had had hardly time to take stock of each other before their eyes met across a grave.

Their views of life and their incomes combined comfortably; they did not ask too much of each other and from one happy point of departure both went their own ways. Emmeline had put some of her capital into a business, in connection with which she left home for most of the day; while many acquaintances and a quick succession of interests soon kept Cecilia once more amused and alert: she went out a good deal. Lady Waters, however, still viewed the arrangement with an unshaken mistrust. Women could not live together, sisters-in-law especially. How much did they speak of Henry, how lively a bond was their loss? While Lady Waters considered that unreserve, in other company than her own, must be debilitating, reticence could only be morbid. Painful expectancy, brought her frequently to their house; as they did not come to her with their troubles she came to them, and was their constant visitor. This they could think of no way to prevent.

They had gone to live in St. John’s Wood, that airy uphill neighbourhood where the white and buff-coloured houses, pilastered or gothic, seem to have been built in a grove. A fragrant, faint impropriety, orris-dust of a century, still hangs over parts of this neighbourhood; glass passages lead in from high green gates, garden walls are mysterious, laburnums falling between the windows and walls have their own secrets. Acacias whisper at nights round airy, ornate little houses in which pretty women lived singly but were not always alone. In the unreal late moonlight you might hear a ghostly hansom click up the empty road, or see on a pale wall the shadow of an opera cloak… . Nowadays things are much tamer: Lady Waters could put up no reasoned objection to St. John’s Wood.

Cecilia’s and Emmeline’s house was in Oudenarde Road, which runs quietly down into Abbey Road, funnel of traffic and buses. It had big windows, arched stairs and wrought-iron steps at the back leading down to a small green garden. Cecilia, hesitant over the agent’s order, looking about at the temptingly sunny spaces of floor, had remarked: “It’s a long way from everybody we know …” But Emmeline said: “We never know whom we are going to meet.” From the first glance the house had smiled at them and was their own. So here they had settled.

This afternoon of Cecilia’s return, when, unannounced at her own request, Lady Waters swept her furs and draperies through the narrow hall into the drawing-room, Emmeline had been doing the flowers. She did not often do flowers and was uncertain of the effect. Tulips spun and flopped at her in the wide-mouthed vases: how did Cecilia ever make tulips stand up? Lady Waters begged Emmeline to go on with what she was doing, saying she also loved tulips, but presently asked Emmeline why she was so restless. The simple arrangement of tulips could not account for this pausing and stepping about —Lady Waters had never done flowers. Emmeline wished she had told the maid she was not at home: as she was generally out at this hour it had not occurred to her. It would, however, have taken more than a formula to turn Lady Waters away: if one were out she came in and waited. Unfamiliar afternoon light in the drawing-room and Emmeline’s thoughtful solitude had been precious… . Emmeline’s manners were perfect, but when she was very much bored she seemed to contract physically and took on an air of mild distress.

When Emmeline had nothing to say, or could not trouble to think, she would turn her head sideways, appearing thoughtful. She paused gently before she spoke, as though fearing she must disappoint you. She was tall, with slight narrow figure and hands; her movements were leisurely and inconsequent. At twenty-five she looked very young, or perhaps rather ageless. Her red-bronze hair, not cut very short, sprang from a centre parting to fall in loose waves each side of her narrow oval face. The spring of her hair, the arch of her eyebrows, her air between serenity and preoccupation made her look rather like an angel. She was not quite angelic; though she was seldom exactly difficult Cecilia sometimes found her a shade perverse: she mistook theory for principle. Her spectacles, which from an independence that would rather blunder than be directed she seldom wore, had frail tortoiseshell rims the same tone as her hair, and made her look very much more serious and intelligent. She had put on her spectacles now to look at the tulips, for she was very short-sighted: they discomfited Lady Waters.

Vaguely trailing a tulip, Emmeline stood by the tallboy smiling in silence at Lady Waters. It was hard to believe that her manner could mean nothing. Lady Waters, who had apparently come to stay, loosened her furs impressively and settled among the cushions. She had a fine, massive figure and dressed with expensive disregard of the fashions.

“It is disturbing for you,” she said, “Cecilia’s perpetual rushing abroad and then home. It is a pity she cannot settle.”

“It makes variety,” said Emmeline, looking into the tulips.

“One can have too much variety.”

“Can one? … I rather like sometimes having the house to myself, though I shouldn’t like it always.”

Lady Waters, naturally pouncing on this, remarked that Cecilia could not be a restful companion. Emmeline, deferring in silence to this opinion, abandoned the tulip, sat down in a low chair and pulled at a strand of green wool in the knee of her skirt: this appeared to absorb her. Her faculty for idleness was remarkable; Lady Waters thought she must be anaemic.

“Cecilia,” their relation continued, “never seems to be happy when she is not in a train—unless, of course, she is motoring.”

“It depends rather where she is going.”

“She goes where she likes: it’s neurosis. I’m really anxious about her.”

“I often wish she would fly.”

“She would arrive too quickly,” said Lady Waters. “Also, I understand that one cannot talk in an aeroplane. I really dread these journeys; she picks up the oddest acquaintances.”

“Yes,” agreed Emmeline.

Though Lady Waters spoke of her niece with severity and deplored her behaviour to everyone, her real feeling for Cecilia was of the warmest: she liked her a good deal better than she liked Emmeline. Heart-to-hearts with Emmeline often proved unrewarding; Cecilia was better value, more generous, less recessive; Lady Waters had known her from childhood, had successfully married her once and hoped to do so again. So that she was accustomed to speak of Emmeline far more guardedly, merely saying that that glacial manner was unfortunate in a girl, and that Emmeline kept her intelligence for the office. Henry Summers, however, had had his weaknesses; it was always possible Emmeline might run deep.

Drawing up her black moiré skirt and approaching one foot to the fire, Lady Waters glanced thoughtfully round the room. “You have made it all look very bright,” she said, “I hope Cecilia will notice. Do you
really
expect her? Has she wired to say she is coming?”

“She hasn’t wired to say she is not.”

“So you stayed at home to welcome her. That is really good of you, Emmeline; I know how you value your working time. I do hope she will not disappoint you. When did you hear from her last?”

Emmeline, wondering how to get Lady Waters out of the house before Cecilia—at any moment—arrived, looked up anxiously at the clock. Her movement was not unobserved; Lady Waters warned her at once against tension. The only way with Cecilia was absolute calmness: Henry had always found that: it was Georgina’s own way; Cecilia and she got on perfectly.

“And—I know, Emmeline, you won’t mind my suggesting —you must not let Cecilia dominate you. In an unconscious and very sweet way, she is very pervasive. You and I who love her can say so between ourselves: she has a strong personality. For you who are younger and much more unformed that must often be difficult. In a way, I am like that myself: I have a strong personality; I need the strongest self-discipline. Marriage makes one look into oneself …” She paused.

“I expect it does,” agreed Emmeline.

“Now Cecilia, tragically, never had time for the discipline stage in marriage; her marriage was all like a dream. I feel sometimes it simply enlarged her egotism. While with you— as, of course, in a sense, with poor Henry also—”