Return I Dare Not Read online

  “I might have known it. I might have known we should have trouble the minute I saw what type she was. I ought to have turned her out of the house right away without waiting. But I was working so hard. I was finishing a serial against time, and I did need help in the house. I couldn’t afford a good servant … or of course I’d never … and after the last help I’d had, a French slut who stole my stockings, she seemed quite surprisingly capable and keen. So I trusted to luck in spite of Ford being in the house and her being so attractive. I hoped she’d think herself a cut above him. I hoped he’d be put off by her airs. She gave herself plenty, God knows. Not answering back, or anything like that, you know, and doing what she was told, but going about like a duchess in disguise. It was all I could do to keep my hands off her sometimes. I may be a vulgar old woman, but I was paying her twenty good pounds a year after all, and she seemed glad to get it.”

  “Paying? But did you know who …”

  “No. Of course I didn’t know who she was. What d’you suppose? She came to me, I tell you, with a false name and a lying tale about living in Ireland. Rivers she called herself. And why she did it, God only knows. I suppose they kept too strict an eye on her at home. I expect there was something behind it that we never found out. Of course I meant to send her packing the moment I could hear of anyone better. But when I did it was too late. I turned her out of the house. I parted them. But he’s never forgiven me. I lost him. She took him away from me. He’s never trusted me since.”

  “And if you’d known who she was?” asked Hugo curiously.

  “I’d have acted very differently.”

  “Yes. But how?”

  She could not tell him how, though she had been debating the point in her own mind ever since the day when she and Gertie had recognised Laura’s photograph in a weekly paper. A great opportunity had been missed. That was clear. If she had acted differently she might have been spending this week-end at Syranwood herself instead of in a bungalow where all the cooking was done on an oil stove.

  “But her people would never have allowed it,” she pointed out.

  “Allowed what?”

  “Allowed them to marry. They were too young.”

  “But did they want to be married?”

  “Why yes. Haven’t I told you? He’s never forgiven …”

  “I mean, did Laura want to marry him, really?”

  “I should hope so, considering the lengths she went with him.”

  “She really took him seriously?”

  “And why not?” cried the mother bridling. “Oh yes. It was the real thing all right. I could see that in her face. I watched them coming in late one night, and I had her out of the house next morning before you could say knife. I asked no questions. But …”

  But if she had known she would have asked a great many questions. And the Rivaz parents might have come to heel. They might even have insisted on the marriage, and in that case they would have been obliged to pay the piper. They and not she would have sent Ford to Yeshenku.

  “The mistakes one makes,” she sighed.

  Hugo had left off patting her hands and looking sympathetic. He was frowning.

  “She must have been very young,” he said slowly.

  “Eighteen or nineteen. And Ford not much older.”

  The age of Marianne, he thought.

  “And you turned her out because you thought …”

  “Oh! Now you’re shocked, are you?”

  He looked as though he was about to apologise for being shocked.

  “It wasn’t exactly a … a nice thing to do …” he mumbled.

  “I had Ford to think of,” began Mrs. Usher. “A mother …”

  “I know. I know,” agreed Hugo hurriedly. “I’ve never been a mother. I’ve no business to …”

  He got up and went to look over the bushes at the pool. It was empty. Bechstrader had gone in to lunch.

  “I really must go,” he said.

  But Mrs. Usher had risen too and was confronting him.

  “Being a mother doesn’t excuse everything,” she said firmly. “I did wrong. I know that.”

  “I’m sure it was a horribly difficult position.”

  “I turned her out. I thought she was poor and had no friends. I left her to shift for herself. I’d have killed any woman who treated my own daughter like that. And I’ve often thought, since, when he turned against me: this is my punishment for doing wrong. I must bear it. People say I’m hard. But you’ve got to be hard when you’re up against it as I’ve been all my life. I tell them that I could be damn soft-hearted on five thousand a year. But I was worse than hard to her. I was cruel. It’s my cruelty I’m being punished for. And I thought I could bear it. I could have borne it. I could have stood losing him. But not this. Not seeing him making a fool of himself now, when it’s too late. That’s much too much. I must stop it. I must do something.”

  She began to walk hurriedly along the path towards the house, and Hugo pursued her, urging her to stop and think.

  “You can’t do anything now. This isn’t the moment.”

  “Oh, don’t worry me. I must see him. I must see her.”

  It was impossible to convince her that, this time, she could do nothing, and that the passions which she had thwarted once might now have passed beyond her control. Hugo argued and reasoned, but she merely continued her way along the path, buttoning and unbuttoning one of her gloves and muttering:

  “Perhaps if I talked to her. She may still care for him. I’d humble myself, if that’s what she wants.”

  “But not now. You can’t just now. They’re all having lunch.”

  “Are they? What time is it?”

  “Nearly half past two. What about your friends? Aren’t they still waiting for you in the churchyard?”

  “I expect they’ve gone on to the Inn at Ullmer. We were going to have lunch there.”

  “Then hadn’t you better …”

  “No, I hadn’t better. I’ve a right, I suppose, to call at a house where my own son is staying? Lady Geraldine may be an earl’s daughter, but she can hardly show me the door.”

  “It’s lunch time,” persisted Hugo.

  “Then she’d better give me some lunch. No. It’s no use arguing. Where Ford is concerned you can’t argue with me. If you don’t want to be mixed up in it, you’d better go in first. I’ll give you ten minutes and then I shall walk up to the front door and ask for him.”

  “Oh well …”

  They were in sight of the house already, having emerged from the bushes on the far side of the lawn. But there were so many people standing about on the drive that even Mrs. Usher was daunted. Clearly they had all finished lunch and were waiting to see somebody off. A car was purring at the front door. Lady Geraldine and Aggie appeared in the portico. They were kissing one another on both cheeks. Hugo’s heart sank with a thud.

  “Is that somebody arriving?” asked Mrs. Usher.

  “No. It’s Aggie. Going away.”

  “What? Where is she? Oh, I see. In the fawn two-piece.”

  Aggie was going. There would be no more opportunities of pleasing her. Aggie was bored. All through lunch she had been telling them how dull his play was. She climbed petulantly into the car and was whirled off down the drive. He felt that everybody knew why she was going so soon, and now he would have to face them, hungry and out of spirits. If only he could snatch a meal first he would probably do it better.

  “I don’t see Ford anywhere,” he commented. “What do you want me to do about it?”

  “Aren’t you going in?”

  “They seem to have finished lunch.”

  He was edging away back into the bushes. And Mrs. Usher also felt that her courage was deserting her. She meant to get into the house, but would sooner have done it when fewer people were looking on. Later in the afternoon perhaps, when they had all gone away and she had reinforced herself with a large whisky and soda she might come back.

  “I think,” she said, “that I’d better jo
in my friends at the inn after all. They’ll be wondering what’s happened to me and they might wait lunch. It’s too late to ask for anything here. And I do feel that a little refreshment is indicated.”

  “Much better,” agreed Hugo. “And, do you know, I think I’ll come too. It’s really too late to ask for lunch here. Do you mind if I come with you?”

  She did not mind at all. She was pleased at the chance of showing him off to her friends.

  “They’re nice girls,” she said as they set off again through the trees. “And they’ll adore meeting you. It’ll be the great thrill of their lives. As long as you don’t mind lunching with a monstrous regiment of women.”

  “Not at all,” said Hugo. “I do that everywhere.”

  And he tried to remember what it was that he had heard Adrian say about this quotation. He had an idea that there was a catch in it somewhere and had made a note never to use it until he had looked it up. Probably it came in Shakespeare.

  The labour of living up to Syranwood did not grow lighter and it would be quite a rest to lunch at the Ullmer Arms with a few Joeys and Squirrels. Aggie might come and go, but they would be none the wiser. He could be sure of never boring them.

  19. Paradise Lost

  He hoped that nobody had caught sight of him, skirmishing about among the bushes. But, as usual, he had forgotten Marianne. She saw him and came to the conclusion that he was past praying for. He picked up women as a serge skirt picks up burrs. No sooner was Aggie out of the way than he must needs collect a new one. And when Solange, meaning to be kind, spoke in praise of him, she said nothing and looked glum.

  “I shall go to see this play of his,” said Solange.

  She was in high spirits and inclined to think well of everybody. For she had discovered that it was quite possible to reach East Prussia before noon on Wednesday and Adrian’s journey had been the main topic at lunch.

  “It’s just a sample of what I can do,” she said. “I can be very inconvenient unless I’m placated. Now he’s got to get up at five and catch the six-thirty at Basingstoke.”

  “He won’t. He’ll manage to miss it.”

  “But wasn’t your grandmother an angel, Marianne? She might almost have been one of us. She talked of nothing else at lunch and she’s ordered a special breakfast for him. Do you think she guesses?”

  “She may. She guesses most things.”

  They had gone up to Miss Wilson’s room, but they were not practising their music. It was too hot. Ever since lunch the heat had been increasing in sudden jerks, like a car changing gear. Marianne sprawled on the battered sofa while Solange sat on the floor by the window sewing a button on to her shoe.

  “I wouldn’t mind being old, if I could be sure of being like your grandmother. She has such fun.”

  “Yes,” said Marianne. “I’ve often thought that. Don’t you think it would be a good plan if we could skip the next bit and jump straight into old age? I do.”

  “The next bit? What next bit?”

  “The bit that comes after this. After we’ve left off being what we are now. We’re all right now. We haven’t made any frightful mistakes yet. But sooner or later we shall get into some muddle or other.”

  “I don’t see why.”

  “Nor do I. But everybody I know has.”

  Solange did not agree. She thought that the next bit was going to be fun.

  “I haven’t done anything yet,” she pointed out. “I’ve got to go to Freiburg, and be a toxicologist, and fall in love, and see the Grand Canyon, and have some babies (when I’m married I mean, not yet) and learn to play the recorder.”

  “You’ll be busy,” said Marianne. “I wonder if you’ll do any of it.”

  “Why not? I’ll do some of it, anyhow. What do you want to do?”

  Marianne sighed and said:

  “I don’t know. It’s too hot to think.”

  Solange looked round at her disapprovingly.

  “What’s the matter with you to-day, Marianne? Do you know, you remind me of an awful picture I once saw in a farm-house. One of those printed annual supplements, done, I should think, in the ’nineties. A pop-eyed girl in a fringe and a blue sash. And it said: ‘Standing with reluctant feet where the brook and river meet?’ ”

  “That’s poetry,” said Marianne suspiciously.

  Solange laughed, and when she had finished laughing there was silence in the room. Both were aware that a slight chill had invaded their relationship. Those confidences yesterday had been a mistake. If Hugo had been a dancing partner Solange would have known what to say. She could have teased her friend about a May Week romance or shared with her the excitements of a first Commemoration Ball. But she winced and shied away from something inexplicable, some hint of profound gravity, which lay behind Marianne’s ridiculous preoccupation. For her own part she had no intention of being bothered by such weighty problems until she had had her fling. They were a mistake and they spoiled enjoyment. She meant to have a lot of fun before she sat sighing and dreaming over anybody.

  “You’re getting sentimental,” she said crisply.

  Marianne did not deny it, because she did not want to argue.

  “But what’s the difference between emotion and sentiment?” she asked after a pause.

  “Well, a sentiment is a feeling that doesn’t get you anywhere. I mean, it’s sentimental to go to church and get very worked up and ecstatic and then come home and behave like a pig to your family.”

  “Um … yes …”

  “And it’s sentimental to … think too much about a man … unless you’re going to marry him … or something.”

  By something Solange meant consummated passion and Marianne understood her perfectly well.

  “But how can you help …?”

  “Anybody can control their feelings if they try.”

  “Have you ever tried?”

  “Well, once I had a rave on our elocution mistress at school. And she married and went to India. I thought my heart was broken. So I distempered our staircase and repainted the banisters bright red. It was a filthy job, but it cured me.”

  “I see.”

  Marianne lay for a moment on her back, staring at the ceiling. Then she leapt to her feet.

  “I’m going to wash Tango,” she said.

  “I thought you hated washing dogs.”

  “I do.”

  “What nonsense! On a Sunday. Come and play tennis if you must do something energetic ”

  “No. I’m going to wash Tango.”

  The stable-yard was deserted, for all the men had gone off in their Sunday clothes to walk with their girls upon the downs. And Marianne rediscovered her equanimity in that tidy world of corn-bins, sluiced brick pavements, and polished leather. She even relished the tarry smell of the soap which she used for Tango. All the old-time noises of her childhood were around her; the jerk and squeal of the pump-handle, the clatter of her buckets on the stone floor, and the pigeons lazily coo-rooing on the roof. She was safe in the yard. She was shielded against the encroaching tide of the larger world, the future, which had begun to undermine the present. This place was complete and enclosed, a rectangle of plain stone buildings containing just what it needed for itself and nothing unnecessary. The pigeons never flew far away from their roof and the pale sky above it had no vagrant clouds. Only a little turret with a weather-cock stood up, breaking the long line of slates and pointing its four arms to wider horizons.

  She put on a white overall and dragged Tango into an empty loose box. As she scrubbed him, and went clanking in and out with her buckets, she whistled the old tune that Bates, the coachman, used to whistle when he cleaned che harness:

  Have ye heard John James O’Hara

  Playing on his old trombone?

  Have ye heard John James O’Hara?

  Ain’t he got a lovely tone?

  Old Sousa’s band’s all right …

  ”Oh dear!”

  She sat back on her heels and pushed the tawny hair out of her hot face
. She had a pain somewhere. But if Solange was right, then washing Tango ought to banish it.

  Have ye heard John James O’Hara

  With his tiddle-iddle-um-tum-tara …

  Washing Tango was hard work and the buckets were heavy. But she wanted to work very hard and tire herself out so that to-night, when she went to bed on the roof, she would go to sleep at once. She did not want to lie awake as she had lain last night. Because in the daytime she could rule her thoughts, but at night she could not. Lying in bed, under the balmy canopy of the sky, she had let them stray down a forbidden road. And as her limbs grew relaxed and drowsy she had begun to dream of the impossible as if it could happen. For it was impossible that she should ever gather him into her arms and soothe him to sleep there, holding him safe, away from all these people. It could never happen. And very immodest too, she supposed, to think of such a thing. At least, anybody else would think it immodest. And she blushed deeply as she bent over her buckets and tried to think of herself telling Solange.

  “I want to sleep with him.”

  Well, that was an awful thing to say. And not a bit true either. Because when people talked of sleeping with a person they meant something quite different, something that Marianne knew all about but never quite believed in. It happened to people, and some day it would happen to her, but not for ages, and when it did her grandmother had assured her that she would like it. Also she had been obliged, in the schoolroom, to read a great deal of poetry which hinted the same thing. But the hens and ducks and cows of the Ullmer Farmyards did not seem to like it much, and her earliest ideas on the subject had been gathered from them. Perhaps this was because they could not read. Anyhow the whole business was incredible. It had nothing to do with this pain that she could not banish, this longing to take him to her heart and, somehow, make him happy.

  “To-morrow he will go away,” she thought.

  She took her bucket to the door and flung water out on to the bright stones. It glittered in the sunlight and rushed in a shining torrent towards the grating in the middle of the yard. Soon it was gone and the damp stones were drying. The little commotion, the splash and the clatter died down and she could hear the pigeons on the roof again. Leaning against the door-post she stood still for a moment in the sunlight, resting her tired back. And she felt a swift pang of envy for the stable men who could stay for ever at Syranwood, safe in this small solid world, listening to the pigeons, working all day amid the friendly companionship of the animals, keeping their domain so bare and clean, and standing sometimes like this, to rest, in the sunlight against a door-post. Very soon she would have to go away. She had only been sent there to be kept quiet, for Mathilde had thought the life of foreign legations too unsettling. At Syranwood she had grown up, under the care of her grandmother and a governess, had kept a Nature note-book, was confirmed in Ullmer church, and rode ponies which got larger as her legs grew longer. Now she was supposed to be all ready for the next bit. In the autumn they spoke of sending her to her mother in Rome.