“Annie-Laurie,” said Nadine, detaching herself composedly from his gaze, “you’ll find another dish of apple cream in the larder. Will you bring it, please?”
“Yes, madam,” said Annie-Laurie.
Her very distinctive voice fell into one of those queer silences that come suddenly at twenty minutes past the hour, and once again David looked at her with quickly concealed yet painful speculation as she left the room. He had had a severe shock, John Adair had noticed, when he had first set eyes on her, and he had been careful not to look at her again, until now, when the further shock of her voice had startled out of him that quick anxious glance. What did he know about the girl? She, at sight of him, had obviously had a shock, too, for that sealed-in look of hers had now bitten so deep that all the contours of her face were painfully sharpened. Forgetting about Sally for the moment John Adair pulled at his beard in high delight. Who’d have expected to find such an interesting bunch of personalities in this back of beyond? From the moment that he had set eyes on Malony and Annie-Laurie they had interested him intensely. The girl’s mask of a face, the man’s tragicomic monkey’s countenance: they were both of them worth a portrait when he’d finished with Nadine.
“Could you spare me a short sitting this afternoon?” he asked her, as they all sat in the garden by the river wall, drinking their coffee.
“I am afraid I am not free this afternoon,” she said. She was lying back in her deck chair, her hands clasped gratefully about the warmth of her coffee cup, a little smile lifting the corners of her lips. David was beside her and she was drenched in sun. The hunger had gone from her face and for the first time in John Adair’s acquaintance with her she looked happy. Just for the moment she had put her troubles from her, and was warm, and with David. John Adair knew what her refusal meant; today was David’s.
And David knew too, and did what he could. “Nadine, will you show me the house before I go?” he asked gently.
“Go?” she asked in a low voice, yet sharply. “You’ll stay till after supper, surely?”
“I promised to take Ben over to have tea with Grandmother, and I’ve asked Sally if she’d come too. Grandmother would like her, I think. I’ll restore them both in time for supper.”
“And stay for it yourself?”
“I can’t do that, Nadine. Old Hilary is coming to supper at Damerosehay.”
“For a man who’s supposed to be suffering from a nervous breakdown you seem to be living in rather a whirl of social gaiety.”
He laughed. “I’m here for some while, Nadine.”
It was a private conversation, indulged in under cover of a loud-voiced indignant discussion upon the iniquities of income tax that was being carried on by George, John Adair, and the fishermen. But John Adair, while trumpeting upon income tax as loudly as any, absorbed the whole of it into his protuberant right ear. He lifted an eyelid in Nadine’s direction. Her momentary look of happiness had vanished, and there was a trace of bitterness in her face as she looked at Sally, sitting on the river wall talking to Ben. For so experienced a man, David had really been extraordinarily tactless, and the measure of his tactlessness was the measure of his present indifference to Sally. Again he hated the fellow.
— 2 —
Yet in spite of her tenacity he did not on Sally’s account feel any bitterness towards Nadine. Indeed, he was astonished to find himself possessed of a perfectly genuine heartache for her. He would, he found, have given a good deal to have that fleeting look of happiness habitual with her, even though as a happy woman she would have been far less interesting to paint. Yes, within the bounds set by reason and age, he loved her.
“Still not free this afternoon?” he asked, as they stood at the garden gate an hour later, having just watched David, Sally, Ben, and the two old dogs speed away up the lane, and George take to the river with the two fishermen.
“Not this afternoon.”
He took her arm. “Nonsense. The twins are with their nanny. Annie-Laurie and her father are in charge of the inn. Come along.”
She looked up at him, met the keen glance of his tawny eyes, and knew that he knew. For a moment anger surged over her, to be followed by a most surprising sensation of peace. She met his steady look with an equally steady one of quiet acknowledgment. Once more, as on her first meeting with him, she had an absurd longing to fling herself on his chest and ask to be taken somewhere . . . to be free of it all.
“One of my sitters, a Catholic, told me once that a sojourn in my studio was almost as cathartic an experience as a visit to the confessional,” he said, as they walked slowly together up the lovely gracious staircase beneath the little figure of the white deer.
“Why ever?” asked Nadine.
“I thought it was a bit farfetched myself. Her idea was, I think, that when she saw her sins and sorrows splashed in paint upon canvas she felt somehow relieved of them.”
“You’ve an uncanny insight, haven’t you?”
“Yes, I think I have, but I combine it with discretion. And with something more. There is the seal of the confessional and the reticence of the surgery, and there is also the honor of the studio. A painter does not speak of what he reads in the faces that he paints.”
Nadine did not answer. They climbed up the attic stairs and reached the door of the studio. He opened it and stood aside, and she went in. It was a large room with two dormer windows looking north over the orchard. The walls and the sloping roof had been plastered and whitewashed but the old oak beams had been left untouched, with an oil lamp hanging from one of them. The room was wildly untidy, excepting only the corner that had been given to Ben, where his things were all in perfect order; it already looked as though John Adair had been working in the room for years. Yet there was beauty here. Rich colors gleamed from the stacked canvases, a pot of flowers stood by one window, and over the screen behind the model’s throne was flung a glorious strip of green velvet, mid-forest green, the background for Nadine’s portrait. She looked at the portrait. It was already to her inexperienced eyes well on the way to being finished. He had not spared her at all, and the youthfulness of the blue linen dress she wore was not echoed by the face above it. The lines about her eyes, the gray in her hair, had been if anything accentuated, and now that he had spoken of them she could see “the sins and sorrows” in her face. Yet he had given her a splendid beauty, a beauty that she did not think that she possessed. She was aware of her own loveliness, but there was something there, a sort of finality of beauty, that she knew was not hers.
“It’s not quite right,” she said.
“No. I’ve got too far ahead in time. That happens sometimes even in photography, you know. At the time it is taken a photo is not a good likeness, yet, two years later, it is. It’s odd that that should happen in such a mechanized art as photography. In a portrait it is understandable.”
“Why?”
“There’s a patient angel in us all, the spirit in the making. And he has two faces. He is the two things that you may be if you do this, or that. Sometimes you see the one looking out of the window, sometimes the other.”
She looked at him with tender amusement. How ridiculously childish even the cleverest of men could be at times. “And this unattained beauty that you have given me?”
“You’ll attain it. The first time I saw you, in the train, I said to myself, ‘She’s not at the height of it yet.’ It waits, that beauty, for the denial to give the humor to the lips, the gentleness to the eyes.”
“What denial?”
“You know, or you should know, what needs cutting out of your own life. Some quite trivial thing, probably, perhaps no more than some reservation of thought. But it’s enough.”
“Enough?”
“To keep you stewing in your own juice, pulled both ways and getting nowhere. Cut it, that thought or whatever, and you’re free, and probably others too. We’re so bound together in this com
plicated world that the spiritual condition of each one of us is as catching as the measles.”
“Oh, words, words!” said Nadine impatiently.
“Yes. Sit down, will you, and we’ll make a start.”
She took her place on the throne, and for an hour, as he worked, such talk as they had was the easy trivial gossip that befitted the warm sleepy afternoon. She did not avail herself of the honor of the studio to tell him anything at all about herself. He had not really expected that she would; she was too proud a woman. And he loved her pride. Seeing it, as he did, as a threat to the happiness of his Sally, yet he loved it. With what dignity had she accepted the fact that he knew of her unbecoming love for David. There had been no plea to him to keep her secret, no attempt to justify herself, merely a queenly acceptance of inevitable consequence. Undoubtedly she had greatness in her, yet could she ever do it? Could so proud a woman ever admit to herself that a man who had once most deeply loved her now longed, though he might be as yet unaware of his longing, to leave her and pass on? He wished he could ease things for her, give her some sort of prop to cling to while her pride broke beneath her. There was his own love, but it was without passion, a poor sort of exchange for the fire that her temperament had always needed. Yet such as it was she should have it. And presently there would be compassion, of which little things, chief among them her attitude to that suffering girl, Annie-Laurie, proved her capable. With denial, compassion would grow. That was inevitable.
He might in thought extol compassion, but he had none for his sitters. As he painted, the woman he thought he loved ceased to exist as a woman. Paintbrush in hand he was as a heathen priest before the altar of sacrifice. Rather than let the fire go out he flung in anything or anybody (except perhaps Sally, who was himself) with no compunction whatever. Nadine was almost fainting with exhaustion before he noticed it, and then only because he found her suddenly no longer paintable.
“Tired?” he asked in surprise.
“Of course not,” said Nadine, putting her hand to her forehead and finding it damp. “But it’s time I saw to the supper.”
He looked at his watch in astonishment. “Did we have tea?”
“We did not,” said Nadine.
“Quite unnecessary,” he said. “The French don’t.”
“I’m not French,” said Nadine. “I’m half Russian; and they have it all the time.”
He came to her, gave her his hand as she stepped down from the throne, and released now by his art saw at last how tired she was. “I’m a brute,” he said, but quite without penitence, and took her in his arms. Finding herself where she had already so absurdly desired to be, she stayed there gratefully. He tightened his grip, which was that of a lion. “I love you, my girl,” he said.
She began to laugh. “You expect me to believe that?”
He raised her face, looked at it, and kissed it. “Yes, you’re a beautiful woman, and you know it.”
She went on laughing. “And you’re making love to me because of some nefarious purpose of your own. Don’t I know you!”
“Well, whatever purpose I may have in expressing it, the thing’s genuine right enough. You’re a darn beautiful woman!”
They went downstairs together laughing. He had eased her pain more than he knew.
CHAPTER
9
— 1 —
They’re late, dear,” said Lucilla to Margaret. “I do hope they haven’t had an accident.”
“It’s only just half past four,” said Margaret. “And you know David is always late.”
“David must take dear Ben back again in good time. It wouldn’t be good for his weak chest to be out too late in the evening.”
“That will be all right, Mother. David will be obliged to take Ben back in good time. Hilary is coming to supper.”
“Yes, dear, I know,” said Lucilla, with a touch of asperity. “I myself invited Hilary to supper to prevent David having supper at the Herb of Grace. The evening is such an emotional time. Is that clock right, dear? If they don’t come soon I shall see very little of my dear Ben. I told David to be back by four. Are you sure there’s enough for tea, dear?”
“I don’t know about enough,” said Margaret. “There’s all there can be until the fats come tomorrow. Somehow we always seem to have someone extra to tea the day before the fats come instead of the day after. I’ve used the last scrap of margarine and the last scrap of sugar. I never saw anything like the way David eats. He’s so spiritual-looking, too.”
“It’s his nerves, dear. They need feeding. What’s the time now?”
“It’s still half past four. Are you worried about anything, Mother?”
“I’m worried about David.”
“But he’s better, I think.”
“I know. Much better; though of course he can’t see it, poor darling. It’s not so much his health I’m worried about.”
“Then what is it, Mother?”
“Dear, dear Margaret,” said Lucilla. The density of her daughter was a continual astonishment to her. Before the war David and Nadine had lived through an emotional upheaval as shattering as an earthquake in this very house, before her very eyes, and yet she hadn’t noticed anything. Well, it made her very restful to live with. Being without curiosity and purged of pride she asked no questions and staked no claim for a place in family councils.
She was just content to look after them all, with just an occasional queer outbreak, like the buying of that abominable trolley.
“Whatever should I do without you, Margaret?” said Lucilla lovingly.
Margaret stretched out a hand and laid it on her mother’s. Though they had their upsets they had drawn increasingly closer to each other of late years. They had been through a good deal together by this time. Margaret did not press the subject of what it was about David that was worrying Lucilla. Indeed she had forgotten she had asked the question. She also was a very tired woman, and her fatigue took the form of being unable to think about anything except food for more than two consecutive minutes. . . . Except, of course, the garden. . . . Her hand still on Lucilla’s she looked out of the window at the glory of her Michaelmas daisies, purple and mauve and white, at the loveliness of the Japanese anemones, and the sturdy first flowering of the chrysanthemums. She would have liked to get in a little gardening before it was dark, but with Hilary extra to supper it might not be possible. These fine autumn days were so precious . . . these lovely days. . . . What in the world could they have for breakfast?
Serve me right, thought Lucilla, for treating Nadine as I did. I wanted to get her away from David and London, and immediately David, who hasn’t been near Damerosehay for months and months, has a breakdown and comes down to stay indefinitely. . . . Serve me right. . . . But George is better in health and happy at the Herb of Grace. George, my son, is happy.
“I don’t think there’s anything more tiring, dear, than expecting people who don’t turn up, do you?” she said to Margaret.
“I think not expecting people who do turn up is worse,” said Margaret. “Because then you haven’t got anything to eat.”
“You mustn’t attach such importance to food, dear. Other things in life are more important.”
“No, Mother. Without food there isn’t any life.”
“There they are!” said Lucilla, her face flushing rosily like a girl’s, her deadly fear of an accident lifted off her.
Margaret had not heard anything, but that did not surprise her. Lucilla knew when David was near by some sixth sense. And a minute later there was the sound of the car in the drive, and then a commotion of footsteps in the hall, the dogs barking happily and Ben’s voice talking to them. Then came David’s clear voice and a girl’s answering, deep-toned and lovely, and their two voices chimed together in music that sent Lucilla’s heart leaping up in delight, just as it did when the season of larks came round again and waking up in th
e half dark of a spring morning she knew that once more the fitting thing had come to pass in the fitting hour.
“Who’s that?” she said, and found her heart was beating fast. She struggled up out of her chair. “Margaret!” she whispered urgently. “Is the room looking nice? Am I tidy?”
“Why, of course, Mother,” said Margaret in astonishment, stretching out a hand to steady her.
Lucilla mastered herself and stood waiting, superbly beautiful, and already in her heart she thanked God.
They came in. “Grandmother,” cried David in astonishment, “you get lovelier every day.” And he came to her and hugged her, suddenly oblivious of everybody and everything. There wasn’t anybody like her. There never would be. Other loves came and went, but hers had been steadfast since the day of his birth.
“The same thing cannot be said of your manners, David,” she said.
He laughed and released her. “This is Sally Adair, Grandmother. She’s staying with Nadine.”
“How nice of you to come and see an old woman, dear,” said Lucilla. This was her usual opening gambit with the young, but with Sally’s clear truthful eyes looking into hers she suddenly thought what a silly thing it was to say. Sally seemed to think so too. “Why?” she asked. “People get nicer and nicer as they live. And houses. And everything.”
“If they’re good stuff at the start,” Ben warned her.
“Vintage port,” said David. “To get nicer and nicer you must love the sun and give good juice when you’re bruised. . . . This is my aunt Margaret.”
Sally’s eyes had already gone to Margaret with the same sweet look of humility with which they had greeted Lucilla, a look that had touched Lucilla as deeply as though the child had knelt and kissed her hand. It was as though before the old woman’s frailty and the elderly woman’s weariness her own abounding health and strength did homage, as though instinctively she was grateful, as are all the lovers of life who, accepting with such joy, must give again lest they die, to those whose need disposes them to accept the largess of love. She’s gold, sang Lucilla’s heart. She’s the true gold.