Jill was twenty-four years old now, but in spite of marriage and widowhood she still looked like the nursemaid Nadine had briefly known in the Damerosehay nursery before the war. She was thin and undersized, with a plain pale face redeemed by very beautiful eyes of a clear shade of green, the green that is seen in the curve of a wave upon a shadowed day. Her mouth was tender and her chin was strong. In her neat gray flannel coat and skirt and white blouse she looked already the nanny she aspired to be. She wore no hat, and her tow-colored, lusterless straight hair was arranged in a neat roll round her beautifully shaped little head. She kept her ungloved hands very still in her lap. There was nothing about her to challenge attention, and for a brief moment Nadine marveled that any man had noticed her enough to marry her. Then she noticed again the tenderness of the mouth and the tranquillity of the hands. She opened her mouth to ask the usual questions and did not ask a single one of them. All she said was, “Jill, you will love my children.”
“Yes, madam,” said Jill simply.
“And help me to do my best for them.”
“Yes, madam.”
Desperately Nadine groped after the questions she had prepared, but succeeded in capturing only one of them. “Lady Eliot is afraid you will not be willing to live in London?”
“I’ll be perfectly willing, madam. I did tell Lady Eliot, when she asked me, that I liked the country best, but of course wherever the children are I will make myself contented.”
Nadine smiled suddenly, aware that Lucilla stood corrected, not of lying, for Lucilla never did, but of a slight exaggeration to gain her purpose.
“I’m glad you feel like that, Jill,” she said. “You see, General Eliot has an appointment at the War Office, and we have a very nice little house at Chelsea and so we are not likely to leave London.”
“I shall like Chelsea, madam,” said Jill. “There is the river and the gulls—like there is at the Hard.”
“You love the Hard?” asked Nadine.
“Yes, madam. I’m sorry my Auntie Rose is selling the Herb of Grace.”
“Is she? I did not know that.”
“Yes, madam. She lost my uncle a little while back. It was to help her over his illness and the funeral and all that I left the day nursery where I was working. She don’t feel she can keep on the inn alone. She’s going to live with Edith, her daughter-in-law. You know the Herb of Grace, madam?”
“I don’t think I do, Jill. I know the little hotel at the Hard, of course, but it’s not the one, is it?”
“No, madam, it’s further on down the river. It’s a nice old place, but it’s lonely and it don’t get much custom. It didn’t pay through the war.”
“I should think it would now that the war is over. People will be sailing again. There will be lots of white wings again on the Estuary and the river.”
“Yes, madam, but Auntie don’t seem to feel she can tackle it.”
“Yes, I understand. It’s the war. None of us feel we can tackle anything. I don’t feel I can tackle my children. When can you come to me, Jill?”
“Well, madam, I’d like to get Auntie Rose settled with Edith before I leave her. In another month?”
Another month! Nadine’s heart sank. She had been hoping for next week. Another month! But doubtless Auntie Rose’s need was just as great as hers.
“A month from today,” she said, firmly clinching it. “I’ll write to you from London, Jill, and tell you the train. Have you had a cup of tea?”
“I’ll have one when I get home, madam, if you’ll excuse me. I don’t want to keep the butcher waiting.”
“No, of course not,” said Nadine, levering herself forward from her Egyptian position. Whatever one did or did not do, nowadays, one had to keep on the right side of the butcher or there’d be no tidbits for the dogs.
“I’ll try to give satisfaction, madam,” said Jill as they shook hands, and then she slipped unobtrusively away into the shadows, opening and closing the door so softly that Nadine was hardly aware that she had gone until she found herself alone. “I’ll try to give satisfaction.” It was years since Nadine had heard that old-fashioned remark. Because she had not heard it for so long it struck her as being rather a wonderful phrase. Satisfied. No one ever was. The whole world was crying out with hunger of some sort, physical or spiritual. To try to satisfy. Jill was right. That was all one could do.
She stood still for a moment, one hand over her eyes, desperately conscious of her own particular hunger. For rest. For peace. For David. Most of all for David, because it seemed to be only with him that she could find the other two. During the war it had been comparatively easy to put aside her love for David. There had been so much to do and bear, and one had been so keyed up to the doing and the bearing. Now, though there was still much to do and bear, one wasn’t keyed up any more; the circle of acute consciousness had narrowed from one’s country to oneself again and the personal problems once more pressed intolerably. And David was no longer a flier, seldom accessible to his family and on his brief leaves seemingly withdrawn from them into another element; he was back on the stage again, back in London, back in his old place in the family, Lucilla’s favorite grandson, George’s nephew. She saw him often in the same little house in Chelsea where she had lived before the war, during the time of her separation from George, and where they had first fallen in love with each other; every time she saw him the longing for the love she had put from her grew more intolerable. . . . Suddenly she hated it all: Damerosehay, Lucilla, George, the children, her duty. . . . How idiotic it all was. Life was going by so quickly and she had never yet done a thing she wanted to do.
“Nadine!”
It was Lucilla’s voice calling her, and automatically she obeyed and went out to the hall.
Lucilla was sitting on the chair beside the telephone, holding the receiver in her hand. “It’s someone ringing up, dear. But I really can’t hear. I’m so deaf, you know. I’m no good at the telephone.”
Her voice was full of distress. She hated these modern inventions, telephone, and radio; they did nothing but make a noise and pour out information one was generally better without. She pleaded her deafness as exemption from participation in these benefits of science, but her family noticed that her deafness only seemed to trouble her when it was a question of answering the telephone or turning on the news.
“No one’s ill, are they, dear?” she asked anxiously, as Nadine took the receiver.
“No, I don’t think so. . . . Why, it’s George. . . . Hullo, old boy. . . . You all right? Children all right? You’ve only just got Grandmother’s letter? What letter? What did you say? You can get off for a few days and come down with the children?”
“I think, dear, that this call is really for me,” said Lucilla gently, and courteously but firmly she removed the receiver from Nadine. “It’s Mother, George,” she said, and thereafter there was silence while she listened to George. Her deafness did not seem to be troubling her just at the moment. “Yes, dear,” she said at last. “Come down tomorrow and bring the children. A little holiday will do you good and it will be nice for Nadine to have you here, too. You can manage a week? That’s good. Dear boy, I’m so glad.” Then still holding the receiver she turned to Nadine, a smile of sheer happiness irradiating her face like sunshine. “I wrote a little note to George, dear, after you had said over the phone that he would not be able to come down with you. I said to try his hardest and to bring the children. I thought a little holiday would do you all such good. It seems he’s only just got my letter. It was delayed in the post. But it’s all right, dear, they’re coming—twins and all. George will drive them down tomorrow morning.”
Lucilla’s joy was so lovely a thing to see that Nadine could say nothing to quench it, but she found it difficult to force an answering smile, for if George was driving them all down in the car they’d be here by lunchtime tomorrow and her period of peace was not goi
ng to last very long. Also George had said something that she did not quite understand. “Only just got Mother’s letter. Tell her I’d like to have a look at the old place.”
He might, of course, have been referring to Damerosehay, but she had a feeling that he was not. What old place had Lucilla suggested he should have a look at? She bent over and very gently took the receiver from Lucilla’s hand, even as Lucilla had taken it from hers. “You still there, George? Yes? Darling, bring my slacks down with you, will you? If we’re staying a week I’d like my slacks. And a couple of shirts too. The blue one and the yellow one. Pamela will see about the children’s clothes. Good-by, darling. Don’t forget the slacks.” And she hung up the receiver. Lucilla hated slacks, and out of deference to her sensibilities Nadine had never worn them at Damerosehay. But now she was just going to.
— 4 —
All her life Lucilla had changed her dress twice in the day, once for tea and once again in the evening, and she still did so, even though what she still insisted upon calling dinner was now no more than Bengers for herself, bread and cheese for Margaret, and whatever else they could scrape up when visitors came. Until the war she had requested that the rest of the family dress too, but now she could no longer insist upon that; they said they had nothing to change into, and in any case, what was the point of changing when as soon as a meal was over you had to put on an overall and wash up? Lucilla alone, in the black lace dress she had had for fifteen years, bridged the gap between the gracious manners of the past and what she hoped would be the gracious manners of the future.
For Lucilla was not without hope for the future. She had lived long enough to know that the spring always comes back. Also she knew that if it was to be a flowering spring one must make one’s preparations. She was making hers. She herself, she knew, would not see this spring, but her grandchildren and perhaps her children would, and it was for them that she prepared. She sensed in her children, and in David, her grown-up grandson, and in his contemporaries a deep and desperate fatigue. They seemed to her to be just standing about in the rubble and looking at it despairingly, not knowing what to do about it. They knew they ought to set about rebuilding but they seemed too tired to make a start. They lacked initiative. When they could they had gone straight back to their prewar jobs, as David had done, or to their old neighborhood, as Nadine had gone back to that little house in Chelsea, automatically seeking the old grooves as a strayed cat automatically turns homeward. But though they were back in the old grooves they were back there without the old ardor. From the old homes and the old jobs the virtue had gone out.
What they needed, Lucilla considered, was either new homes and new jobs, or else the infusion of some fresh spirit into the old things that should transform them like water poured into wine. Everywhere, in everything, there must be a rebirth, and it was her business as head of the Eliot family to do what she could to make it anew before she died. It might have been argued that her own fatigue was as deep as that of any of her family, and that at her age she had earned the right to sit back and let them plan for her rather than she for them, but Lucilla did not see it that way. For one thing, she realized that the old are to a large extent spectators in the game, and standing a little aloof from the lives of their children allows them a clearer perspective than the livers of them can hope to get. And then humble as she was she could not help but be aware that the experience of a long life had put more sense into one of her little fingers than into the whole of the rest of the family put together. And lastly, Lucilla liked managing. She was a born organizer, and tired though she was could no more refrain from organizing than a bird from singing. If in her rebuilding she should have to override the wills of others with her own she would do it without compunction, for in what she had planned there was no self-seeking.
Lucilla made her plans during those two periods of the day, at two o’clock and again at six-thirty, when she went to her room, rested, and changed her dress. They were blessed periods, and without them she felt that she could scarcely have gone on living. Increasingly, as the years went by, her beautiful bedroom had become for her a sort of sanctuary. There was a deep peace in it; she did not quite know why, unless it was that for so many years it was here that she had prayed most deeply and most often, so often, that now when she opened her bedroom door prayer brimmed up in her as automatically as it did when she crossed the threshold of Hilary’s church at Big Village.
Having toiled up the stairs on this particular spring evening Lucilla entered her room, shut the door, and looked about her. In the old days Ellen would have been here, standing waiting for her by the window, one hand crossed over the other. Ellen would have helped her into her dressing gown, and then she, Lucilla, would have lain down on the sofa and watched Ellen get out her black lace dress from the wardrobe, shake out its folds, and then take the appropriate petticoat, shoes, and handkerchief from their appointed places. All this Ellen would have done with the solemnity of a religious rite, and then she would have brushed Lucilla’s hair with the silver-backed hairbrushes; while she brushed they would have talked about the children and the grandchildren and the dogs, about the delinquencies of the maids (if they happened to have any) or the daily help (if there was one), about the dreadful way the younger generation behaved, and whatever the world could possibly be coming to. Easy talk, not appearing to go much below the surface of things, yet in reality going deep because the two women knew each other so well that with a lightly spoken sentence they could reveal to one another almost the whole of their unspoken thoughts.
Well, Ellen’s bodily presence was no longer here, and Lucilla missed it intolerably, yet as she moved about her room, doing for herself what Ellen used to do for her, she always found herself talking to Ellen, and her perplexities presently melted away as they had been wont to do when in the old days Ellen had applied to them the acid of her strong common sense.
Today, following her usual program, Lucilla took off her dress, put on her soft gray dressing gown, and lay down on the sofa. She prayed a little, and then she placed upon her lap the big black velvet bag from which she was never separated, and which contained her handkerchief, spectacles, a bottle of eau de cologne, the silver box which in the old days had always contained sugared almonds for the delectation of the grandchildren, but which nowadays, when there weren’t any sugared almonds or any grandchildren in permanent residence, contained merely Bisodol tablets for her indigestion, and the current letters from her family. She searched through the bag and took out her spectacles and the last letter from her son George.
“I am afraid,” she said, speaking to Ellen, “that I am perhaps not being quite straight with Mrs. George. I am working behind her back. Yes, I am. And I hate it when people do that with me. Yet what can I do? I have to think first of my son.”
Lucilla’s chronic difficulty in realizing that her children were not only grown-up, but elderly, was further increased in the case of her son George by the fact that he never had fully grown up. He was a brilliant soldier, a fine mathematician, he had won nearly every honor which it was possible for him to win in his profession, including the Victoria Cross, but yet there was a part of him that had never grown up. The part of his mind that he applied to the technicalities of his profession was keen and fine as tempered steel, but the part of it that he applied to religion, politics, and domesticity had not developed very much since his school days. He was Church of England, a conservative, a faithful and loving husband, a kind and loving father. But his religion had never consisted in more than believing in God without having even asked himself what he meant by God, and in going to church to set a good example to the regiment or the children; his politics were just a matter of believing that whatever those damned Labor fellows did was sure to be disastrous. His love for his wife was the unwavering worship of a good dog for his master, and his love for his children the protective, infinitely careful affection of a good master for his dog; in neither case was it very discerning.
/>
He had been a very brave little boy, very loyal and very loving, and he was a brave, loyal, and loving man. His courage and loyalty had always been obvious, but not his love, because he had been an inarticulate little boy and he was an inarticulate man. Only Lucilla understood the power of his loving and the suffering it caused him in his life, and only she had ever been able to solve his personal problems for him because only she had succeeded in knowing about them without being told.
As a little boy, he had come to her room, fair-haired, blue-eyed, and ruddy (he was one of the beautiful Eliots), and standing on one leg like a stork had thoughtfully wiped his nose on the back of his left hand. Then she had known there was something wrong. A little gentle probing on her part had revealed that he had bad toothache, had had it for days but hadn’t said anything, and was only now standing on one leg and wiping his nose on the back of his hand because the thing had got to such a pitch that he really could not endure it any more.
Nowadays, when he came to see her, it was much the same. He would stand beside her on the hearthrug in the drawing room with his back to the fire so that the warmth of it could not reach her (a habit of all the Eliot men), shift his weight to his right leg, and thoughtfully rub his left ear. Then she would know that either the war was going worse than usual, that things were not as they should be between him and Nadine, that he was anxious about one of the children, or that his war-battered body was really making it very difficult for him to keep his end up. Passing in a gentle flow of talk from one subject to another she would know which it was because when she reached the troubling one he would shift his weight from his right foot to his left and stop rubbing his ear. Then she would speak hopefully upon the subject, not able to advise him, because he could not reveal his mind to her, and anyhow if it had to do with tanks she lacked technical knowledge, but comforting him and clearing his mind by the mere fact that her love was taking the trouble to try to understand. . . . He loved her very much, as did all her children and her grandchildren.