The Constant Nymph Read online

  Sebastian was the youngest of Evelyn Sanger’s four children, and possessed the largest measure of good breeding. Though entirely graceless, he was often very gentlemanly in his manners. He was ten years old, but looked younger, being very small and fair, like his sister Teresa, with grave, green eyes and a great mop of hair. He now thought it his duty to go down the hill a little way and welcome his father’s guest.

  ‘How do you do,’ he said politely. ‘We are all so pleased that you have been able to come.’

  Trigorin stopped and wiped his forehead with a silk handkerchief. He perceived that this courteous urchin must be another of Sanger’s children. It looked more propitious than the other two.

  ‘This hill,’ he gasped, ‘is terrible!’

  ‘It’s a bit steep when you aren’t used to it,’ agreed Sebastian. ‘But we’ve got a nice view at the top. I’m afraid my sisters came up too fast for you. Women, you know,’ he added confidentially, ‘are inclined to run up hills. I’ve noticed it.’

  When they reached the level sward where the others waited for them he handed the guest over to his sisters with a great air, explaining:

  ‘I’m afraid I can’t come in just now. I have an engagement with this fellow.’

  And he pointed to a small peasant boy, rather younger than himself, who had been lurking in the shadow of the house. It appeared that they were going to look at some badger holes and the girls immediately demanded to be taken too. All the children set off hastily down the hill again, leaving Lewis and Trigorin alone on the Karinde Alp. Lewis said sulkily:

  ‘Well, I suppose we’d better go in, as there seems to be no one about.’

  They went round to the front of the house, which had a long veranda looking over the valley. Here they came upon a massive but very beautiful woman fast asleep in a hammock.

  ‘Madame,’ murmured Lewis, and they stood looking at her, uncertain what to do.

  Linda Cowlard, for she had no real right to Sanger’s name, was an exceptionally lovely creature, a vast dazzling blonde. Her origins were obscure, but it was believed that she had once been the daughter of a tobacconist at Ipswich. She had a magnificent constitution, no nerves and very few ideas; was, indeed, splendidly stupid. Sanger could not have found a more suitable companion. She had lived with him for eight years and showed, as yet, no signs of exhaustion. Her placid animal poise was, if anything, nourished by his insane jealousy and the violent quarrels which occasionally broke out between them. She was incapable of sustaining any severe shock, having the rudimentary nervous organisation which relieves itself in distress by loud, immediate outcries. Her indolence was terrific; she lay dozing all day and seldom finished her toilet before the afternoon. The management of the house she left to Sanger’s daughters.

  One child of her own she had, a little girl of seven years, whom Sanger had insisted upon calling Susan. Linda had modified this to Suzanne as being less common. The rest of the family derisively nicknamed their sister ‘Soo-zanne’ in order to show their contempt for her. It was a wholesome, plebeian-looking brat, pink and formless as a wax doll, garnished about the head with tight clusters of yellow curls. Linda was very fond of it, dressed it in white with pink ribbons, and defended it sourly against the animosity of Sanger, who declared that Susan was a posturing little monkey and should have been trained for a tight-rope dancer. The child did, in fact, look something of a stranger among the others; her healthy inferiority especially distinguished her beside the brood of the ill-starred Evelyn, with their intermittent manifestations of intelligence and race.

  The two young men looked at Linda and listened to a series of repeated hoots, going on inside the house, which Lewis identified as Kate practising her head notes. A full morning sun blazed upon the woman in the hammock but could hardly outshine her beauty. She wore a white dressing-gown, flung carelessly about her, and beneath it some flimsy under-garment all lace and ribbons. Trigorin, always susceptible, gaped at her, his eyes nearly popping out of his head. Her superb bulk was entirely to his taste, but he had not expected somehow to find anything like her at the Karindehütte. Part of his nature resented her intrusion there; he suspected that she might disturb him when he wanted to talk about music to Sanger. Still he could not but feel that she was the most desirable woman he had ever set eyes on.

  Lewis also stared down at her, with a wry smile, as if he had swallowed vinegar. Then he looked away, looked at the blue static mountains across the valley, and looked back again at Sanger’s mistress, and finally, catching sight of the perspiring Trigorin, burst into loud laughter.

  Linda opened her eyes, which were the colour of the gentians in the grass. She yawned, stretched her supple limbs like a large cat, and sat up.

  ‘If it isn’t Lewis,’ she exclaimed. ‘Well, you are a stranger. Albert never said you were coming. Have you brought a friend?’

  The blue eyes slid round to Trigorin.

  ‘Mr Trigorin, Mrs Sanger,’ muttered Lewis.

  ‘Pleased to meet you,’ said Linda, offering a large cold hand. ‘We knew you were coming. Kate’s been getting a room ready. Sit down won’t you, Mr Trigorin. And you too, Lewis.’

  They sat down and she took leisurely stock of the stranger. Usually she found the Karindehütte very dull. Albert’s guests were not always amusing. Too often they were like Lewis, whom she detested. This one, however, might have possibilities. He wore expensive clothes and his bulging eyes proclaimed him a conquest. She began, in her sleepy voice, to make remarks to him, punctuated by slow, evasive smiles. Trigorin, lost in the flame of those blue eyes, stammered replies in English which emotion had made almost unintelligible. He was as helpless as a swimmer swept away in a strong current. Lewis, nursing his knapsack on his knee, observed them and smiled to himself. Occasionally he got from the lady a glance which was by no means friendly and which hinted that he might remove himself.

  She had not always disliked him so bitterly. Once, some years ago, she had felt very kindly towards him and as good as told him so. But he, in spite of her conspicuous attractions, of which he was fully sensible, rejected her advances with some brutality. He did not think her worth a breach with Sanger. She concealed her fury as best she could and continued to treat him civilly, at least in public, in the hope that Sanger might one day become jealous and forbid him the house. Sanger saw through her manoeuvres and, in his turn, did not consider her worth a quarrel with Lewis, whom he valued beyond any woman in the world. But she persisted in the stratagem, being too stupid to devise any other method of attack.

  Presently Lewis bethought himself that he had better see Kate soon, if he wished to secure a bedroom to himself. He got up and was moving into the house when Linda called to him, over her shoulder:

  ‘Oh, Lewis!’

  He waited.

  ‘You didn’t see Antonier anywhere on the way up, did you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘God knows where she can have got to,’ piously commented Linda. ‘Albert seems to think it’s my fault, if you please! I tell him if he wants those girls looked after he’d better put them to school somewhere. Not that any decent school would keep them a week; but that’s another matter.’

  ‘A young lady is lost?’ enquired Trigorin, who was a little fogged. ‘One of your family?’

  ‘One of Albert’s children,’ replied the lady. ‘Not mine, you’ll please to remember, Mr Trigorin.’

  ‘She’ll turn up,’ said Lewis at the door. ‘These children all fall on their feet. Look at Sebastian!’

  ‘She’s not a child; that’s just where it is. She’s sixteen past,’ retorted Linda, adding ruminatively: ‘Dirty little cat!’

  Lewis left them and went into the large open hall which served the family as dining-room. Through it a door led into the music-room, an almost empty chamber with a dais at one end and a grand piano. Here Kate stood before an open window, her hands held out before her and lightly clasped, while she took in deep breaths and let them out in long, high notes. They were full, clear, honest
notes, very like Kate herself, who was the most honest thing alive. Her mother, Sanger’s first wife, had been Australian – clean, respectable, middle class, hard working and kind. Kate persisted in being all these things, in spite of her upbringing. She had none of the wildness of her half-brothers and sisters. She had rosy cheeks and neat, brown hair, was trim and comely, and wore shirt blouses. Her voice was promising and she worked strenuously, hoping, with her father’s backing, to succeed some day upon the operatic stage. She also ran the household and did all the work which the single manservant could not do. Every one respected and liked her. She was a little obtuse, but this was probably the salvation of her, since it enabled her to disregard the inconsistencies of her own life. A more perceptive young woman could hardly have gone on being so modest, sensible and affectionate without a little encouragement from her surroundings.

  Lewis listened for a few seconds and called down the room: ‘Very nice indeed, Kate.’

  ‘Oh, it’s you? We’d given up expecting you. Have you got the thing for us to act on Father’s birthday?’

  Kate and her brother Caryl gave their father his proper title. It was only Evelyn’s children who referred to him carelessly as Sanger.

  ‘I finished it this morning,’ said Lewis. ‘We can begin rehearsing after lunch.’

  ‘But the tiresome thing is that we can’t begin without Tony, and we don’t know where she is. Didn’t you hear?’

  ‘I heard she was off somewhere.’

  ‘I hope she’s all right,’ observed Kate, looking anxious. ‘I don’t like it. You know, she’s awfully silly sometimes.’

  Lewis did know, and secretly thought that Antonia was bound to get into a scrape sooner or later. But he did not wish to distress Kate by saying so, and, to change the topic, remarked:

  ‘By the way, I brought a fat Russian ballet dancer up with me. I picked him up in the inn at Erfurt.’

  ‘Mr Trigorin? Yes, I know. Father invited him in the way he does, you know. I do hope he’ll be civil to him. He’s so furious with him for coming. He couldn’t remember who he was at first, when we got the letter. Where is he now?’

  ‘On the veranda.’

  ‘Oh! Is Linda there?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Oh.’

  Kate grew pink, but all she said was:

  ‘Then I needn’t bother about him. What is he like?’

  ‘He looks,’ said Lewis viciously, ‘like one of those men who exhibit performing fleas. And that’s all he is; on a wider scale of course. He’s done well out of it Linda likes his clothes.’

  ‘Oh, dear! Perhaps he won’t stay long! Father is fearfully busy writing a new last act to “The Mountains”. Often he’s up all night and Caryl too. Caryl’s had to put all his own work aside, poor dear. And the worst of it is, Father’s too ill to be working at all. I’m sure he is, and so is Caryl. You’ll be shocked when you see him. He looks all wasted and shrunken up sometimes, and his eyes so yellow and bloodshot. He gets queer, giddy turns, but he says it’s only because he’s thirsty!’

  ‘Can’t you make him see a doctor?’ asked Lewis anxiously.

  ‘No. He says perhaps he will when we leave here, if he isn’t better. He’s very difficult. Men are really perfectly impossible sometimes.’

  ‘Yes, aren’t they? I quite agree. But look here! Where am I going to sleep? Who else is here?’

  ‘Nobody. But the family is spread all over the house, and father turned Linda out of his room the other night and said she could go and sleep by herself until he had finished “The Mountains”. I’ve put Mr Trigorin in the spare room. Of course it’s got two beds in it …’

  ‘No, Kate. I’ll sleep on the doorstep, but not with the flea trainer. Is there nowhere else?’

  ‘Well, there’s the little room in the annexe. It’s very small and it’s never been disinfected since Tony and Tessa had scarlet fever there two years ago. I meant to burn a sulphur candle but I forgot. Do you mind?’

  ‘Not a bit. Germs are better than Trigorin any day.’

  ‘And it’s tiresome going out there if it rains. However, if you don’t mind … Let’s go across and have a look at it.’

  They went out and climbed the hill at the back, a little way to a second hut. The lower part was used as a storehouse and the two bedrooms above were reached by an outer stair and balcony. Kate led him into a tiny room with two camp-beds in it and nothing else. Floor, walls and ceiling were of wooden planks and smelt of the forest. A dusty rosary hung from a nail by the door and the walls above the beds were covered with childish writing, for Teresa and Antonia had enlivened their scarlet fever by scribbling rude remarks about each other. Kate glanced at them and blushed. She did not like to think of Lewis reading these sisterly pleasantries, and determined to send Caryl at the first opportunity with a plane to plane them off.

  ‘This is very nice and quiet,’ said Lewis,

  ‘Of course it is that,’ agreed Kate. ‘I’ll bring in Roberto’s chair and table. Come and help me fetch them.’

  They went into the larger room next door which belonged to Roberto, the Italian manservant. It had a bed, a table, a chair and a yellow tin trunk. On the trunk lay Roberto’s bowler hat, and on the chair, a cherished testimony to his peasant blood, Roberto’s umbrella, which, on the finest Sundays, went to Mass with him.

  ‘I don’t see why we should take the poor fellow’s only chair,’ observed Lewis.

  ‘Oh, he doesn’t sit on it. He has no time to sit. He only uses it for keeping his umbrella on. We always take it if we want it.’

  They carried the furniture next door and Kate made up the least rickety of the camp-beds, saying:

  ‘You can use the other for putting things down on. Is that all, Lewis? Then I’ll be off as I’ve a lot to do. Father often has his meals upstairs, which gives extra trouble. You’re quite fixed? Mittagsessen will be … when I’ve cooked it … soon …’

  She gave him an amiable smile and ran off. She was the only person in the family who had no positive feelings, one way or the other, towards Lewis. She just regarded him as one of the many people who depended upon her for comfort. He, for his part, liked her very much, was grateful to her, and was generally both obliging and civil in his dealings with her. She let him alone, and that was a thing which very few women could do, seemingly, in spite of his plain face and unmannerly ways.

  When she was gone he threw himself down upon the newly made bed and pulled from his knapsack the MS score of a one-act opera called ‘Breakfast with the Borgias’, which he had promised the Sanger children to write for their father’s birthday. It was to be acted by the family, who could most of them sing in tune, and by any guests who happened to be about. He began to read it through, correcting it in places with a stubby pencil, and writing in fragments of libretto as a guide to the performers, who were to compose their own words when they had learnt their tunes and got the hang of the plot.

  Presently he let the music slip to the ground and lay back on the hard little bed, smoking and dreaming. Through the window he could see the cloudless sky and a piece of bright pink mountain. Very far off a cow bell tinkled drowsily and he meditated upon the peculiar, unearthly quality of a sound that comes up from below. He felt so tremendously high up; almost half-way to heaven. Turning his head to the wall he read:

  ‘My sister Teresa is a little …’

  And a half-hearted attempt at erasure, as though even Antonia could occasionally feel ashamed of herself.

  3

  In spite of Sanger’s contempt for England, the mothers of the children at the Karindehütte had all been British. Vera Brady, his first wife, had been the leading lady of a third-rate opera company of which he was chef d’orchestre. He was then quite a young man and remarkably unsuccessful. They had gone on tour in the Antipodes, were married at Honolulu, and knocked about the world together for a good many years. She was an excellent woman, with a fine voice and extreme powers of endurance; her devotion to Sanger kept her beside him through mis
fortune, hardship and neglect. Of her children none survived their precarious infancy save the two youngest. These were born during a period of comparative prosperity when Sanger, who had begun to attract attention, held for a short time a permanent post in a German town with a famous Conservatorium. Vera was able to quit the stage and set up the respectable household for which she had always craved. All her instincts were domestic and she was very happy for a time, bustling round her little flat and passing the time of day with congenial housewives at church and market. Caryl was born and she was able to rear him in peace and decency. She believed that her other children had died because she had been forced to work so hard in those nightmare years when she had nursed her babies hastily, in draughty dressing-rooms, awaiting her call. Caryl lived, and grew plump and strong, and was a comfort to her. This interlude was brief; new troubles soon gathered round her. Sanger’s infidelities had become almost a commonplace in their wandering life, but she had always been able to fly from gossip and at least she was sure that each episode must be brief. Once or twice he had run away from her, but he always came back. Now that she was planted in one town she could no longer ignore the scandalous legends which collected round his name. It was hinted to her that the place would soon be too hot to hold him, and though she persistently shut her eyes and ears she could not help knowing all about Miss Evelyn Churchill. The entire district was ringing with it.

  This young lady was Sanger’s pupil. She had come from England to study music and report had it that she was of very good family. She was talented, beautiful, and Sanger’s junior by twenty years, but she had lost her head and her heart and she was advertising the fact in the high-handed way peculiar to women of breeding who are bent upon flying in the face of accepted convention. The affair became an open scandal and the Churchill family threatened to come to Germany and stop it. The young lady replied by going to Venice, taking Sanger with her.

  Poor Vera, brooding in the little home where she had expected to be so happy, began to decide that life was altogether too hard for her. She was not proof against this last blow. Sanger’s women were not, usually, of a calibre to occupy him for long, but Miss Churchill was a rival of a different order. She was exceptionally intelligent, her health and beauty were not impaired by long years of hardship, and she loved him to distraction. With such a mistress he had no further need for Vera, and the thought broke a heart which should by rights have cracked some fifteen years before.