THERE ARE FOUR SEASONS, page 25
She glanced at the portrait of Philip that hung over the mantelpiece. The red-gold hair and beard seemed to catch the light, the grey-green eyes were afire with restless purpose. . . . Her mind went back over the five years since his death, and she felt again the flood of glad thankfulness that had at first almost quenched her sorrow. He had come back to her. He had changed his mind at the last minute and come back to her. . . . There was no other possible explanation of his return on the same night on which he had said he was leaving her for ever. Like her he had realised that nothing could take the place of the love that had united them for so long; he had seen, as she had seen, the vision of the old age that lay before them, and realised that he needed her help and comfort. And then—well, after all, it was typical of the man. Hurrying home to her, he had caught sight of the lake, tranquil and beautiful in the moonlight, and had decided on an impulse to take the boat out onto it before going indoors. He had probably meant to do some sketching. His sketching block had been found not far from the body. There was nothing strange in it to anyone who knew Philip. He obeyed every passing impulse, and it was common knowledge that he could not swim, that, once before, his restless movements had upset the boat and he had been rescued with some difficulty by Lionel who was with him.
There was not the slightest doubt in Vicky’s mind—or in the minds of any of the jury—that his death was an accident. The inquest had been a purely formal affair and the verdict “Death by misadventure” a foregone conclusion.
Vicky’s sorrow at his death had been very real, but even now, after all these years, that feeling of thankfulness and joy still predominated. He had come back to her at the end. She hadn’t lost him, after all. . . .
Her face hardened as she thought of Mrs. Hindely. She had consoled herself soon enough. Vicky had read the announcement of her marriage only a month afterwards.
She thought over the arrangements for the day. There really wasn’t very much to arrange. The children were coming in time for tea and going back the next afternoon; all except Margery, who would be staying for a few days.
Paula had said she couldn’t come at first, but had wired early this morning to say she was coming down with Noel and Margery.
Vicky was rather worried about Paula. She had been engaged three times and had broken off each engagement for no valid reason. As a result, she had got the reputation of a jilt, and the mothers of local eligibles looked at her askance.
This did not worry Paula, for she spent as little time in Six Elms as she could, and professed a great contempt for its inhabitants.
A year ago she had suddenly decided to train as a dancer, and had gone to live at a hostel in London while she attended a dancing school. Vicky had asked Mark to see that both dancing school and hostel were respectable and to keep an eye on her, and he had sent reassuring reports, but still Vicky couldn’t help feeling worried.
After her training she had got a small part in a musical comedy, which, however, only ran for a short time. Now she seemed to spend her time going about with a crowd of noisy young people, whom she sometimes brought over to Six Elms at the week-end. They screamed and laughed and romped and chaffed each other and made up their faces and wore clothes that Vicky secretly thought outrageous.
“She’s no right to bring them over, Miss Vicky,” Andrew would say indignantly, seeing how depressed Vicky was after these invasions.
“Oh, but, Andrew, don’t you see,” Vicky would answer, “it’s all right as long as she brings them. I’m sure it is. . . . But I do wish she’d make nicer friends.”
She had seen little of Lionel since his wedding to Elaine last year, but Mabs, she knew, stayed with the young couple frequently. Elaine was pregnant, and the baby was expected in about four months’ time.
Noel had taken a post in a boys’ school after leaving Oxford, but he had soon tired of teaching and now lived in a small flat in Bloomsbury and contributed poems and articles to high-brow reviews. He was very proud of his flat, but Vicky secretly considered the rooms bleak and comfortless, with their bare stained boards, plain distempered walls and sparse bits of furniture. She found it harder to keep in touch with Noel than with any of the others. He would insist on talking to her about Bernard Shaw and Edward Carpenter when she wanted to gossip about the occupants of the other flats.
Margery had gone to the Slade School of Art immediately on leaving school. She was quiet and reserved, only occasionally now showing the moodiness and gusts of temper that had made her adolescence so trying. She shared rooms with another girl student—an earnest, rather plain, girl of whom Vicky heartily approved. As in the case of Paula, she had asked Mark to keep an eye on her, but Vicky felt no anxiety about Margery. She was working hard and deeply interested in her work.
She had said that she wanted to rent a studio in London and take up portrait painting when she had finished her training. Vicky made no objection, but she thought that Margery would probably marry and did not take the idea of a career for her very seriously. Already Brian Halstone, a friend of the Allwoods, had begun to haunt the Hall whenever Margery was at home. A short time ago he had come to see Vicky and, stammering with embarrassment, had asked if she thought he had any chance. She had told him that Margery was so reserved it was difficult to know what she felt, but that, at any rate, she was sure there was no one else.
He was a good-looking pleasant youth, modest and unassuming in manner, and Vicky felt drawn to him. He also had the necessary “prospects”—a good post under his uncle, who owned a large leather factory in Fenton.
The next time Margery was at home he had come over almost every day, and Vicky, watching the child, had noticed a subtle change in her—a soft new radiance, a mellowing of her youthful austerity. Before she went back to London Vicky was sure that she was in love.
Brian was coming over to see her to-morrow. Perhaps he would propose then. Margery would be the next to marry, she thought dreamily. They were all gradually leaving her. She could do nothing more to help them . . . only resign herself now to the insidious onset of old age.
The carriage, which had gone to the station to fetch them, drew up at the front door, and they tumbled out, talking and laughing.
“Mummy, you’re too absurd not to have a car. Everybody’s got one nowadays.”
“Darling, old Tompkins would be so hurt and he’d never learn to drive one. . . . Give me your coat, dear.”
“Well, it’s time he retired. You never take him out in the rain because of his rheumatism, so I don’t see what good he is, anyway. You ought to pension him off and scrap the carriage and buy a car. If you don’t do it soon you’ll be the laughing-stock of England.”
“Don’t be so absurd, Paula. And I don’t like motor-cars. They’re noisy and smelly and never get anywhere. Now come in and have some tea and tell me all your news.”
Paula linked her arm affectionately in Vicky’s as they went into the drawing-room.
“Dearest, I’ve had an offer to go out to Paris. A sort of cabaret job. An awfully good one.”
“Paula!”
“Oh, Mummy, don’t be so ridiculous. Honestly, we might all be about six by the way you fuss. Queen Victoria’s dead and it’s nineteen hundred and ten. I’m perfectly capable of taking care of myself in Paris or anywhere else. Anyway, I’m not going.”
“Oh!” gasped Vicky in relief.
“I think I’d miss London even in Paris. Do you remember Frances Merton?”
“No, dear,” said Vicky, taking her seat at the tea-table. “Have I met her?”
“She’s been over here ever so often, darling. She raves about you. You’re the most beautiful woman she’s ever seen. She says I’m like a copy of you by a very bad artist.”
“How ridiculous!” said Vicky indignantly, and they all laughed. “Anyway she says so. . . . But the point is that she’s opened a place in Bond Street for lessons in ballroom dancing and she’s asked me to help her. I went last week to see what it was like and it was quite fun.”
“It sounds more sensible than the other,” said Vicky. “I do hope you’ll like it. I’d love to think that you’d really settled to something.”
“Settled!” mocked Paula. “I hope I never settle to anything. It’s the most ghastly thing that could ever happen to anyone. I know it was the ideal and ambition of the Victorian age, but Heaven preserve me from it!”
“I think you’re very absurd,” said Vicky, feeling, as usual, just a little bewildered by them all. They had such odd and dangerous ideas. She couldn’t believe that they had ever been the shy trusting children who had clung to her and looked to her for everything.
“You’ve got too many ornaments in this room, Mummy,” said Noel. “You’re obsessed by the horror vacui which is one of the marks of a primitive civilisation. Why not leave a foot or two of wall uncovered?”
“They’re very nice pictures,” said Vicky, looking round. “We paid quite a lot for some of them.”
She wished that Noel would have his hair cut shorter and not wear such curious neckties. It gave her an obscure comfort to see that he was making an enormous tea, picking out the iced cakes and obviously enjoying them.
“And just look at that,” said Paula, pointing to the table that was covered with photographs of them all at various stages of childhood.
“And that and that,” laughed Margery, pointing to the mantelpiece and grand piano whose surfaces also were covered by little Lynnakers in silver frames.
“I like them,” said Vicky firmly. “Especially that of you all together.”
“The one with the waterfall-and-rustic-bridge background or the tessellated castle?”
“I adore the one of Noel with nothing on sitting on the tiger skin.”
“Really, Mother!” said Noel, outraged, noticing it for the first time. “I say, that really is the limit!”
“You were just like that,” said Vicky dreamily. “You had the loveliest curls.”
They laughed, then Paula said:
“When I was helping Frances last week, I had to deal with the funniest client you ever saw. He was enormous and as clumsy as an elephant and completely unselfconscious. He’d come to learn the tango and he was going to learn the tango. He was utterly absorbed in learning the tango. I’ve never seen anyone so earnest and solemn and so perfectly hopeless as a dancer.”
“I expect you get some very funny people there,” said Vicky, with a sigh.
“If by ‘funny’ you mean common, of course we do, but this particular man happened to be Sir somebody something, a baronet, and has quite a large estate in Hampshire.”
“I daresay,” said Vicky darkly, “but even so . . . I do hope you’ll be careful, Paula.”
“She’s starting again,” moaned Paula. “Gag her, someone.”
“Will you teach me the tango cheap, Paula, if I come to you?” said Margery.
“I’ll teach you here after tea for nothing at all,” said Paula. “Honestly, Gerry, you ought to go about more. It’s dreadful the way you stick round with a crowd of girl art students. I’d be ashamed.”
“I’m quite happy, thanks,” said Margery.
Her blue eyes were soft and dreamy, there was a faint wild-rose colour in her pale cheeks. She is in love, said Vicky to herself. Her thoughts hovered over her with brooding tenderness. Little Margery . . . her baby . . .
“You never go out with any man but Mark,” went on Paula.
“How do you know she doesn’t?” said Noel. “She’s what our fathers would have termed a sly little puss. By the way and to change the subject, what a horrible mess they’re making of the station end of the village!”
“Do you mean the new villas?” said Vicky.
“ ‘Villas’ forsooth! Yes, aren’t they ghastly? Who’s responsible for them?”
“I think they look rather nice,” said Vicky.
“Good God!” burst out Noel. “The foul proportions, the utter lack of taste!”
“They’re fascinating inside,” said Vicky. “They’ve got electric light and a new sort of boiler in the kitchen that uses much less coal than the open ranges and heats all the house. They make this big old house seem terribly behind the times. Noel, dear, if you’d like more of those little iced cakes, just ring. There are heaps in the kitchen.”
“Me?” said Noel, as if bewildered and affronted by the suggestion. “No, thank you. I never eat much at tea.”
“Dorothea Milner’s gone to prison again,” said Paula. “Did you read about it in the paper?”
“What was it this time? Putting a bomb in a pillar-box or serenading Asquith with ‘Votes for Women’?”
“Trying to set fire to a church, I think. Funny to think of her and Miss Everett as leaders of the Movement, isn’t it?”
“I think it jolly fine of them,” said Margery. “I’d join them myself if I’d got the pluck.”
“Well, thank Heaven you haven’t then,” said Noel. “But never mind the shrieking sisterhood just now.” He gathered the glances of the other two significantly and went on, “We’ve really come down to talk to you seriously, Mother.”
“I thought you’d come down to see me because it was my birthday last week,” said Vicky.
“Well, so we have, but we’ve been thinking about you a good deal lately. This house is far too big for you, and we’ve come to the conclusion that you ought to find something smaller.”
“I know I ought, dear, but——”
“It’s a lot of trouble to run and it needs an enormous staff of servants and it simply eats money and it’s a long way from us all and——”
“Yes?” said Vicky.
“Well, we’ve all been talking it over, and Lionel’s found an ideal flat for you in Hampstead. You could run it easily with two maids or even one, and it’s within easy reach of Lionel and the rest of us. We can keep an eye on you and you can keep an eye on us——”
“And you can scrap half this rubbish,” said Noel, including the whole room in a sweeping gesture.
Vicky stared at them, bewildered.
“But—but what about Andrew?” she said at last.
“Andrew?” repeated Noel incredulously.
“Yes. What will he do?”
“Good God! What should he do? Get another place, of course. What on earth has Andrew to do with it?”
“He’d easily get another place, darling, if that’s what you’re worrying about,” said Paula. “Now that Ellen’s dead, he could go anywhere. For the matter of that, his brother would take him into his motor-cycle works. I believe he’s offered him a job there more than once.”
“Andrew! Good God!” exploded Noel again.
“You will take the flat, won’t you, dearest?” coaxed Paula. “Lionel will see to all the business part of it. You can sell this house and just keep enough furniture for the flat. Lionel will see to everything. . . . It’s a darling flat, isn’t it, Gerry?”
Margery roused herself from her day-dreams.
“It’s lovely,” she said.
“And Noel’s terribly good at decoration and that sort of thing. He’s got wonderful ideas for it, all planned out ready.”
“Plain walls,” said Noel, “and just one picture in each room. And just a few good pieces of furniture. Half the stuff you’ve got here is sheer junk, but I can pick enough out to furnish the flat perfectly, and we’ll get rid of the rest.”
Paula was looking at her, head on one side.
“Frances was right, you know, Mummy. You are beautiful. But you simply take no trouble with yourself. I mean, you do your hair the same way you did it when we were children, and you don’t dress well. . . . Yes, I know Miss Popkins or whatever she’s called does her best, but she’s only a village dressmaker, and she’s made your dresses exactly like that for years and years and years. It would smarten you up all round to come and live in town.” Vicky gave a little laugh in which surprise, dismay, amusement, and a faint indignation, were mingled.
“Darlings, you must really give me time to think it over.”
“We’ve thought over it for you, my sweet, from every possible angle,” said Noel patiently. “If you’ll only say ‘Yes’ we can get the thing in train at once.”
“I want to think it over,” repeated Vicky obstinately.
“She belongs to the generation that thought things over,” sighed Paula. “Mummy, it would be terribly good for your soul to do something on impulse for once in your life.”
“Perhaps,” said Vicky dryly, “but it’s not going to be this. . . . Now, if you’ve finished tea, do be good children and run over to Ivy Lodge to see Auntie Celia. She’ll be so hurt if you don’t.”
They didn’t mention the matter again, but, as Vicky thought over what they had said, her indignation increased. The calm way they were taking possession and disposing of her! She was to be uprooted from the place where she had spent her whole life, she was to be robbed of all her treasures, she was to be deprived even of Andrew, she was to be planted in a horrible fiat, furnished by Noel, with plain walls and nothing pretty anywhere. Once they got her there, of course, they’d have her completely under their thumbs. Paula would make her wear uncomfortable clothes, and Noel would make her live in rooms like barns, and she’d have to do all sorts of things she didn’t want to do and meet all sorts of people she didn’t want to meet. She set her lips. Oh, will I? she thought grimly. We’ll see about that. . . .
“Promise you’ll let us know about the flat by the end of the week,” said Noel, as he and Paula were setting off for the station the next day.
“Yes, I promise,” said Vicky.
Paula looked at her critically.
“You’ll be quite an asset, darling,” she said, “when we’ve smartened you up.”
When they had gone, Vicky and Margery turned back into the house.
“I think I’ll go over to the Vicarage,” said Margery, taking her hat from the hall chest.
“Yes, do, dear. They’ll be glad to see you. I believe Mark’s there.”
