Her own arrogance appalled her. Who and what did she think she was that she should expect this famous and accomplished man to love her? She was much younger than he was, she had neither gifts nor beauty to match his. And yet, trying to see things as they were, as was her habit, aware that excessive shame was just as distorting to the judgment as excessive arrogance, she knew that she ought to be his wife. That pang of recognition with which she had looked at her father’s drawing of him had been like a push in the back, saying, “There you are, that’s what you were made for, hand yourself over and be quick about it.” But you couldn’t hand yourself over if you weren’t taken.
And at this point her thoughts would come up against Hamlet’s words, “The readiness is all,” and cling to them as to a rock. That put it in a nutshell. That was the only possible attitude to life and death as well as to love. You had to be ready to be used or not used, picked up or cast aside, and it didn’t really matter which it was provided you yourself were pliant to fate like a reed to the wind.
Then she would understand that though she had recognized David as her mate it would not really matter if he did not recognize her as his. It was one of the glorious things about life that for the pliant there was never really any lasting emptiness. They said that even into the emptiness of physical blindness there crept eventually new awareness and new powers. Though David never took her to the place in his life that was rightfully hers, something else would eventually fill that emptiness, some extension of the power of his art or some other love. And for herself, if she could manage to welcome sorrow as readily as joy it would shape her as deftly as joy could have done to whatever beauty of being it was within her power to reach. . . .
But at this point her reasonableness would give way beneath her and she would find herself back where she started from, shamed and miserable and not knowing what on earth to get David for Christmas. . . . And it was at this point, this very morning before she caught her train, that in a mood of complete hopelessness she picked up a bit of Venetian glass from a counter, meekly paid the huge price demanded, and stowed the parcel away in her bag. She had not opened it since. It was in the suitcase with her other presents. She did not even remember very clearly what it was, some sort of a cup, the handle formed by the curved body of some animal or other, crystal, blue and green, like clear water. She thought it was pretty. Venetian glass almost always was.
She was very tired and her head was aching, a most unaccustomed state of affairs with her. Never mind. She was going back to that bit of Hampshire between the river and the sea that was now to her the most beloved spot on earth, that was home. She supposed it wasn’t really home but it felt like it. She knew she would never love any houses as she loved the Herb of Grace and Damerosehay. Especially Damerosehay, the House of the Perfect Eaves. She had gone there a lot lately to see Lucilla, and the more she went the more she loved Lucilla and the house. Every time she left them she felt as though she were tearing herself up by the roots. She had taken her father to see Lucilla and, as Nadine had foreseen long ago, she liked him. And he liked her. And his liking seemed to bind her even more firmly to the place that was David’s home.
That was why she loved it so much, of course, and Lucilla so much. They were David’s. They had made him. She had given herself so utterly to this love of hers that it permeated every part of her being and nothing that was not connected with David seemed to have any value for her any more. . . . How on earth was she going to get through the rest of her life if . . . She pulled herself up abruptly and groped after Hamlet, but she couldn’t seem to get hold of him; she was too tired. . . .
She shivered, though it wasn’t a cold day, and pulled her long soft brown fur coat more closely about her. She pulled off her hat, lay back in her corner seat, and shut her eyes. Though her head was aching too much for her to reason with herself she could think of nice things: the Cumberland hills, the lambs, her Nanny who had taught her this trick of detachment. “When you’re sick or sorry, child,” she had said, “think of other things as much as you are able. It’s just practice. Start young and you’ll get the trick of it.” And most astonishingly, after a little while of going back to childhood and remembering Nanny in her blue print dress, with her white apron on and her sleeves rolled up, Nanny turning on the bath water and humming a little song as she did it, she fell asleep.
— 2 —
Lucilla, meanwhile, was giving her favorite grandson a piece of her mind. Margaret was out and they were having an early tea together in the Damerosehay drawing room, early, because John Adair’s car was out of order, George had taken the boys to the local meet in his, and an SOS from the Herb of Grace had informed David that his car was Sally’s only hope of getting home that night.
Lucilla, when really roused, could give those she loved a piece of her mind in such a manner that their very souls squirmed within them. Those she did not love were never treated to these spiritual flayings; for after all, as she was wont to say when making it up afterwards, it is only when you love people very much that you care really desperately how they behave. For Lucilla was not one of those who are blind to the faults of those they love. Quite the contrary. The more she cared for people the more did she see their faults and labor for their removal with the perseverance of someone with a piece of emery paper rubbing away at the rust on a bright sword.
She now sat extremely upright in her chair by the fire, one hand holding a delicate fan between herself and the blaze, the other holding the arm of her chair for support; for though she gave no sign of weakness in voice or demeanor she really found these deliverings of pieces of her mind as much of an ordeal as did the recipient of them. The Bastard lay at her feet, his chin on her shoe. Pooh-Bah lay on the hearth, his chin on his extended paws. Though lying as still as though carved out of stone neither dog slept and their eyes gleamed brightly. They knew David was getting it. They were, so to speak, standing by to see fair play. Lucilla’s cup of tea was untouched and she ate nothing. David, on the contrary, was going on steadily with his tea. Upon these occasions he always employed himself if he could. It kept up his morale.
“You must do one thing or the other, David,” said Lucilla. “You must either ask Sally to be your wife or you must take yourself off out of her way. You must know that you are an extremely attractive man; you must know that she loves you; and to be perpetually with her as you are, perpetually battening upon her youth and strength and draining her sympathy, and giving nothing whatever in return, is so cowardly and so selfish that I cannot reconcile the man that you are now with the man I have hitherto known. I do not know what has come over you, David; I simply do not know.”
“Grandmother, why should you think that Sally loves me? Has she told you so?”
“Don’t be ridiculous, David! Of course not. She’d die sooner than tell me, or anyone. She has a fine reticence; never would that girl willingly allow a trouble of her own to make things uncomfortable for other people. But though I am an old woman I thank God that I still retain the use of my eyesight and my mental faculties. The young, and Sally is very young, are never as skillful at hiding what is happening to them as they think they are. Now don’t prevaricate, David. Can you sit there and tell me that you do not know that Sally loves you?”
David put down his teacup and faced her squarely. “No, Grandmother, I don’t sit here and tell you anything of the sort. I didn’t know for some while, and then—it was the day we found the frescoes—I suddenly did know. But I knew too that not to be loved in return would do her no harm. She’s too fine a creature to let frustration embitter her.”
“Really, David,” said Lucilla with powerful indignation, “you are an extremely hard man. I do not know when I have heard a more cynical or arrogant remark. Is it your habit, nowadays, to go through life inflicting pain on others and then rejoicing in the excellent effect it will have upon their characters? Has this dreadful war made a sadist of you?”
She’d got hi
m there. He went white and could not answer. All through those years that had been one of the questions that had haunted him. . . . Shall I get used to this killing, shall I get accustomed to inflicting agony, shall I, at last, think nothing of it?. . . . But though she was as deeply wounded by the blow she had dealt him as he was, she went inexorably on.
“How you can not want to marry Sally I am unable to understand!”
“I do want to marry her, Grandmother. With all my heart and soul I want to marry her.”
Lucilla’s icy self-command suddenly crumpled. Her fan fell on the floor and both her hands came out to him in a touchingly childlike gesture of pleading. “Then, David, my darling, why in the name of common sense and love and mercy can’t you—David, mind what you’re doing with that wretched trolley!”
David had now abandoned the attempt to eat any more tea and had pushed the trolley impatiently aside. It rucked up a rug and shunted against a little table with books upon it. The table went over, and the books. “O.K.,” said David callously. “Nothing to smash.” He could be at times, as Lucilla had said, a hard man.
“I dislike American colloquialisms about as much as I dislike trolleys,” said Lucilla. “But neither as much as I dislike criminal stupidity.”
“Grandmother, is it criminal stupidity to look at this from the viewpoint of Sally’s eventual happiness? Can I make her happy? Much older than she is. Not particularly healthy. In a rotten state of nerves. Worst of all, not really in love with her. Have I any hope of making her happy? I’m too scared to try. I’ve lost my nerve for—nearly everything.”
“How can you say you’re not in love with her when you want, so you say, with all your heart and soul to marry her?”
“I don’t feel about her as I have, in the past, about—other women.”
“One woman,” corrected Lucilla. “Nadine. David, do you still feel yourself bound in spirit to Nadine?”
“No!” said David softly, yet with a sort of violence. “She’s—pretty effectually—cut me right out—”
Lucilla, as she paid a startled silent tribute to her daughter-in-law, saw light. So Nadine had done it, completely and wholeheartedly, at last. But she’d done it too suddenly, as all things that are desperately hard to do are done as a general rule too suddenly. David, though wanting release, had nevertheless been stunned by its suddenness, perhaps its apparent brutality, that had not been really brutality at all, but just the quick slash of the surgeon’s knife. It had also perhaps humiliated him. He was proud. He had wanted to be cast aside, and yet when given what he wanted he had been insulted. How typical of poor human nature! She smiled at him with tenderness. Naturally he needed time to recover his balance.
“Darling,” she said in sudden penitence, “I don’t think it was quite fair of me to say that you battened upon Sally and drained her. I’m sure you did not mean to do that.”
“No, I did not mean to do it, but I see now that I did it,” said David. “I was like a leech at that time, a leech with you too. But lately, I’ve been careful. The frescoes helped. Since the day I told you of, Sally and I have scarcely been alone together; we’ve been working all the time on the walls with her father and Ben. She’s been more interested than any of us. She’s not given me a thought.”
“Really?” said Lucilla dryly. But she still smiled at him, and David realized that the worst of her displeasure was past. Very soon, now, she would melt altogether, and later still she would be overwhelmed with misery at the thought of her own anger, and her misery would be as devastating for them both as her anger had been. But she had not reached that point yet. “We must get this clear, David,” she said. “You think you do not love Sally because you do not feel for her the passion you felt for Nadine. You’ll never feel that again. Nature knows what she’s doing, and she does not allow us to be torn by passions we’ve not the strength for. You’re too old and tired for that sort of thing.”
“There you’ve put it in a nutshell, Grandmother. Sally isn’t. She’s young and ardent.”
“Not in the way you mean. Don’t you know anything about women? Don’t you know the difference between a woman like Nadine and a woman like Sally? Nadine—she can’t help it, poor dear—was born a hungry, unsatisfied woman. Her perpetual search after perfection is a lovely thing in her; because of it her home and her person will never be less than exquisite, but it makes all the normal relationships disappoint her by their imperfection, so that she looks beyond them for happiness. At least she did until now. I think that perhaps, just lately, a glimmering of sense has been vouchsafed to her. Sally—and she couldn’t help it either—was born the other way round. She does not demand gifts of life; she just loves it for itself, and her humility makes her feel that what she is given is always far too much. She’ll feel exactly the same about you as she does about life. You won’t disappoint her.”
“I’d give my right hand to be sure of that,” said David miserably.
“There’s no need to do anything so dramatic, dear,” said Lucilla dryly. “All you’ve got to do is to rely on my judgment.”
“Grandmother,” said David smiling, “I believe you think that if the whole world relied on your judgment the millennium would come.”
“So it would,” said Lucilla calmly. “I’m not eighty-five for nothing. This modern craze for putting the young in positions of authority—headmasters in their thirties, bishops without a gray hair on their heads, generals who scarcely need to use a razor—ever since it took hold the world’s gone steadily downhill. . . . But we’re wandering from the point, dear. . . . To return to Sally. She’s a born mother. You want children, don’t you?”
The suddenness of this question startled him so much that he answered with equal suddenness, “With my heart and body—far more desperately than I can tell you. With my mind—no. What sort of world is this to bring them into? That’s another consideration that’s holding me back.”
“A very cowardly consideration, dear. A mere shirking of responsibility. It’s a heavy responsibility, of course, a double one, responsibility for the children themselves and responsibility for the world they must live in. But I know of no better incentive for the building of a decent world than the possession of children who must live in the world you’ve built.”
“You talk, Grandmother,” said David wickedly, “as though you thought the building of the new world was the responsibility of the young, or the moderately young.”
“Of course. So it is.”
“But you’ve just said that only the old—”
But Lucilla was not to be caught out. “Not a word did I say about the young sitting down and doing nothing. They must build, of course, but relying upon the judgment of the old.”
“I see.”
“I only wish you did, David,” sighed Lucilla.
“Grandmother, I should feel so utterly ashamed, taking so much from Sally and giving her so little.”
“Do you no harm to feel ashamed. Do you a world of good. As I’ve told you before, you’re too proud.”
“And then my rotten health. I’m afraid she won’t have an easy time with me.”
“I don’t suppose she will. I haven’t exactly had an easy time with you myself. Yet the glory and joy of my life has been to be your grandmother.”
He was kneeling beside her, hugging her as he had been used to do as a small boy. Wave after wave of penitent misery swept over her. What a brute she had been to him. What a brute! “Did I lose my temper, David? Oh, my darling, forgive me! Please forgive me!”
“Nothing to forgive,” said David. “I always enjoy your scoldings. And they always clear the air. A regular cartharsis, they are. What I don’t enjoy is your self-reproach afterwards.”
“But, my darling, I said the most dreadful things to you. I’d no right. I didn’t mean any of them.”
“Then am I not to rely on your judgment?”
She pu
shed him away from her, her penitence swept away by a sudden return of irritation, and looked at the clock. “Yes, dear, of course. Look at the time! Kneeling on the floor there asking silly questions! Weren’t you to meet dear Sally? And look at the time!”
David jumped up. “Plenty of time if I step on the gas. . . . Look at the state the room is in! We might have been having a tornado in here instead of just a domestic crisis.”
“Leave it, dear. Margaret can see to it. It’s all the fault of her wretched trolley. Hurry, David.”
David hurried. He was just opening the front door when he found Lucilla beside him. “You know what a child she is for giving presents. Or perhaps you don’t know. I do. Worse than Caroline. She’ll have Christmas presents for everybody. You haven’t got a thing yet, I know. You always leave everything till the last moment—” She held out her hand. On the palm lay the glorious emerald ring, her greatest treasure, that she had worn all her life. He took it, and kissed the palm. “Grandmother, you’re the gracious star. You’ve put apparel on it.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, dear. But believe me, David, what you are doing is right and fitting. Give yourself to it and you’ll soon know.”