“It always seems a little odd,” she said, “to come home to Damerosehay and not be welcomed by the children.”
In the prewar days, when Nadine had been separated from George and had been managing an antique furniture shop in London, and her three elder children, Ben, Tommy, and Caroline, had lived with Grandmother at Damerosehay, it had been their habit to await the advent of especially beloved visitors at the corner between the cornfields. It was odd not to see Ben’s and Tommy’s dark heads and Caroline’s sunbonnet bobbing about in the sun.
“Odd and wrong,” said Hilary decidedly. “Children ought to live in the country.”
“Ben and Tommy and Caroline are at school in the country for most of the year,” said Nadine tartly, “and they thoroughly enjoy the contrast of the London holidays.”
“And the twins?” asked Hilary.
“The twins go to a little nursery school in Chelsea,” said Nadine. “If they didn’t they’d kill me. In the country there are no nursery schools.”
“There are other things,” said Hilary. “I am told that in the country the mortality among mothers is less high than in the towns. You can turn children loose in the country.”
“You have no experience,” Nadine informed him, “of what happens when the twins are turned loose.”
She looked at her brother-in-law suspiciously. Who had put it into his head that country life was better for mothers as well as for children? Grandmother? If Grandmother had got it into her head that she and George and the children must all come and live in the country then she was not going to enjoy her forthcoming visit.
“You’ll be glad of a cup of tea,” said Hilary, sensing agitation in her. It was the chief thing that he knew about women, that they could always be calmed down by the fact or even by the prospect of a cup of tea.
But the beauty of the marshes, even more than the prospect of tea, was already calming Nadine. They had laid aside all terror today, and their mystery was that of beauty only. It was that moment of approaching sunset when the flaming patches of gorse, the wild marsh flowers, the sea grasses, the crimson peaty earth, and the creeks and gullies of blue water were yielding to the last demands of the sun all that they possessed of glory. The line of the distant sea was jade green, the sky turquoise. The old Castle, built upon a tongue of land jutting out into the Estuary to the east, had parted with its usual somberness and gathered an amber warmth into its old stones. Beyond the Estuary the white cliffs of the Island had lost the hard chalky look that had been theirs when the sun was high, and seemed fashioned all of pearl.
And now they were in Little Village, with the glinting Harbor to the right of them, the cottages among their fuchsias and tamarisks to the left, and before them the old oak wood that protected Damerosehay, with the broken gate leading into it.
“Is anybody ever going to mend that gate?” asked Nadine.
“I shouldn’t think so,” said Hilary. “It always has been like that.”
“If that isn’t Damerosehay all over!” said Nadine. But she spoke more in pleasure than exasperation. It was because Damerosehay did not change that in this chaotic, tumbling, terrifying world it was a place of such comfort.
The moss grew thickly on the drive, and on the lichened boughs of the old gnarled oak trees the new coral-tipped young leaves were burning like candles. It was strange, thought Nadine, that creatures so gloriously fresh and young as those bright leaves could draw their life from anything so old and twisted as those oak trees. . . . It gave one hope. . . . About the twisted roots of the trees a few late narcissuses held up their white stars most proudly in the grass, and to the left of the drive the beautiful wrought-iron gateway that pierced the high red-brick garden wall gave her a glimpse of heavenly color: flame-colored tulips, forget-me-nots, deep red wallflowers, and golden broom. The scent of the flowers came over the wall in great gusts of perfume, and somewhere in the unseen garden a blackbird was singing in the ilex tree.
Hilary’s Ford gave a final bounce, collided with the mounting block beside the front door, and rocked to a standstill. Hilary drove abominably, and yet he never had a real accident, like so many expert drivers. The house of Damerosehay boasted a porch, added in the eighteenth century to the much older building, with a room built on top of it looking out towards the marshes. The porch was in itself like a little room, with benches upon each side and small windows framed in honeysuckle. It was the delight of every child who came to the house. The front door was of beautiful old mahogany, with a brass knocker and slit to the letterbox and a big brass door handle. Hilary turned the handle and they went into the dim stone-flagged paneled hall with the beautiful old staircase curving away into the dimness. Everything was just as it always was, the old carved oak chest in its accustomed place with a bowl of glowing tulips set upon it, the dogs’ leads hanging from their accustomed hook, set incongruously beneath the beautiful French mirror on the wall. And the smell of Damerosehay was just the same, the mingled scent of wood smoke, flowers, furniture polish, dogs, and oil lamps. The Eliots were always going to install electric light, but somehow they never did. Something always seemed to happen to prevent them, such as a world war, or the absorption of available funds by the county drainage system, which always required to have a lot of money spent upon it, but yet somehow was never really satisfactory. Besides, the Eliots rather liked the soft light and the soft smell of oil and were loath to part with them, with the exception of Margaret, Grandmother’s daughter, who did the lamps.
“Here’s the Bastard,” said Hilary, as a curious mass of gray fur, like an animated hearthrug, came scurrying from the shadows with frantic yappings and barkings of delight, cast itself at Nadine’s feet, and slobbered ecstatically over her shoes. Nadine sighed patiently, for her shoes were new. Also she disliked displays of emotion and could never feel for the Bastard that intense affection that was felt by other members of the family.
The Bastard was of a great age, seventeen years old, and had lived at Damerosehay all his life. He was an institution. No one knew what he was, but he was more like a sheep dog than anything. He had become in old age immensely fat, and found it difficult sometimes to get his breath. He was also rather blind. But he still liked being alive, and Margaret spent hours brushing him, washing him, scenting him with delicate violet powder, dosing him, and cooking him special food, staving off with every means in her power that desperate day when he wouldn’t like mortal life any more and they would have in mercy to take it from him. But that day was some way off yet, for the mainspring of the Bastard’s existence was a passionate devotion to the Eliot family; he found his joy in life in the expression of it, so that he did not much mind his aches and pains, or the indignity of his obesity.
It was otherwise with the chow Pooh-Bah, to whom the maintenance of personal dignity and the preservation of personal beauty were of prime importance. In this he was like Nadine, and they had always got on very well together. It was with real respect and liking that Nadine, having perfunctorily patted the Bastard, withdrew her feet from beneath his crushing weight and held out her hand to the dignified figure of the Chinese aristocrat, who was pacing to meet her with cordial but critical appreciation of her merits writ large upon his noble countenance.
He, too, was old, though not so old as the Bastard, and the fur on his nose and the tip of his beautiful tail was white, but he still kept his graceful regal figure, and the rest of his coat was still the color of a ripe cornfield with the sun on it. He inclined his splendid head slightly to receive her respectful caress as a king would graciously extend a hand to be kissed, and then led the way with dignity towards the drawing-room door, ushering them as a seneschal would do into the presence of the queen.
CHAPTER
3
— 1 —
Grandmother sat in her armchair by the wood fire in the drawing room. In old days she had always got up to receive her visitors, but nowadays, with her rheumatism so much wo
rse than it used to be, she could no longer rise gracefully from her chair, so she remained contentedly seated. She had always been beautiful, was beautiful now, and had every intention of remaining beautiful until the end of her days. She did not in the least begrudge either the spending of a great deal of time and trouble upon the outer façade of beauty, or the curtailing of her activities by the elimination of those which she could no longer accomplish with grace. It seemed to her children and grandchildren that she did not mind growing old. There was nothing of desperation in the firm hold she kept upon her beauty; it was rather that she appeared to be taking good care of something entrusted to her care, but did not seem to regard it as an integral part of her.
“Nadine, my dear, I am so glad to see you,” said Grandmother. Her voice had deepened with old age, but lost none of its eager warmth, and it had gained that lilt of music that comes into the voices of the old when they are without querulousness. “You’re alone, dear?”
“Yes, Grandmother,” replied Nadine. “Did you expect me not to be?”
“I just thought, dear, that perhaps George and the children might have come with you after all,” said Grandmother, trying to keep the disappointment out of her voice.
“The whole family would have been too much to inflict on you,” said Nadine lightly. “And George can’t leave the War Office. I told you that, you know, when you rang up. . . . Darling, how are you?” And Nadine bent to kiss her mother-in-law with mingled love, resentment, and exasperation. She did most deeply love Lucilla, but she did not forget that in the past, when it had come to a battle of wills between them, Grandmother had won, and she could never quite accept with acquiescence, as did the rest of the family, the fact that this frail old woman, sitting here in this absurd old-fashioned room and never even raising her voice, molded the entire Eliot clan as wax in her fingers. Nadine was a woman of strong character, and the knowledge that since she had taken the name of Eliot she had scarcely ever had her own way made her at times feel like a cat with its fur stroked backwards.
Grandmother, Lucilla Eliot, had spent practically the whole of the greatest war in history either sitting in her armchair by the fire, or on really hot days sitting in her wicker chair out in the garden under the ilex tree, the Bastard lying at her feet with his chin propped on one of her shoes and Pooh-Bah sitting beside her. She had left the fire or the ilex tree only to go to church, bed, to meals in the dining room, or to pay a rare call upon an old friend. It was the opinion of her children and grandchildren that dear Grandmother had felt the war very little. Nothing that happened, not even the eruption of evacuees into her home, had ruffled outward serenity, and she had made very little comment upon it. The change in her appearance that had taken place during the six years they put down merely to the passing of the years. Old people did not feel things very much, they said, and what a comfort that was.
But as a matter of fact the six years of the war had been for Lucilla a time of mental and spiritual activity and of suffering, as great as any she had known And she had had to go through it all without her beloved old maid, Ellen, who had always been through everything with her before, and whom she had loved more than anyone had any idea of, except perhaps Hilary.
Damerosehay, which nearly twenty years ago had been bought by Lucilla as a sanctuary where the whole family could come to be remade when the turmoil of life in the world had chipped bits off them, had through long periods of the war been obliged to say good-by to its peace. The English Channel was to the south of the marshes, the estuary, leading to one of the greatest of the naval ports, bounded them upon the east. Enemy planes had passed over day and night, guns had roared out at sea, and the old house had rocked to the explosions of bombs falling in the marshes.
Lucilla was a brave woman, and physical danger had no terrors for her, but quiet was essential to her well-being, and she had suffered excruciating torture from the racket. Through long noisy nights she had lain rigid in her bed, her hands gripping the sheets upon either side of her, trying not to cry just because the noise made her feel so terribly exhausted. Her one desire upon these occasions had been to be let alone, but she had never been let alone. Her daughter Margaret, and any visitors, evacuees, or servants who might be with them at the time, had always come along in dressing gowns to sit with her lest she should be frightened. . . . At least so they had said. . . . It was, as it happened, they who had been frightened, and their subconscious reason for coming had been to stay themselves upon her courage. This they had done, exhausting her still further. But she had given no signs of her exhaustion. She had kept them laughing through the night, telling them tales of her youth, and when the raid was over, she had made them tea with her little electric kettle and sent them back to bed to sleep soundly until morning, while she lay awake too tired to sleep.
But the noise, and the necessity for bolstering up the others, had been as nothing to the torturing anxiety of those years. In the First World War Lucilla had lost two of her five sons, one of them her son Maurice, the great love of her life, and had suffered great anxiety for the other three. In this war, of the three sons left her, Hilary, George, and Stephen, only George had been fighting, but the two sons of her son Stephen, the lawyer, were in the services, and also David, Maurice’s only son, whom she had brought up from his babyhood and who meant to her quite simply the whole of her world. Stephen’s sons had been killed, one in Norway and one in Greece, and day by day she had waited for news of David’s death in the air. The first war had taken his father; this one would take him. On the first day of the war she had made up her mind to that, arming herself beforehand to face what would be the worst thing that could possibly happen to her. The fact that it hadn’t happened, that by some miracle David had come through safely, had not altered the fact that for six years she had expected it to happen. Through every day of those six years she had never heard a ring at the bell or a step in the hall without steeling herself to face the shattering of her world. The perpetual anticlimaxes, when the ring at the bell had been only the butcher, and the step only Margaret back from her Red Cross working party earlier than usual, had been in themselves exhausting.
And then, for a woman of Lucilla’s vivid imagination and deep sympathies, her own personal sorrows and anxieties had not been the only ones that she had had to bear. She had borne also as much as she was able to of the sorrow of the world. For she had learned really to pray. For the first time in her life she had discovered prayer to be not what it had hitherto been to her, “the occupation of the praying mind or the sound of the voice praying,” but a ceaseless offering up of the whole personality, of every thought and word and action, as sacrifice. And it was exceedingly tiring. . . . So that what with one thing and another Lucilla had spent a very active six years. . . . But sitting in her chair before the fire or under the ilex tree, knitting hour after hour for the forces or for the evacuée children who surged about her, she had been careful to give no sign, either by word or look, of the extent of her endurance. It had been her opinion that in wartime old people were a great nuisance, and the best thing they could do was to keep, at whatever cost, a tranquil exterior, and get on with their knitting. She was too humble a woman to assess her wartime activity at its true value.
But it had left its mark, and Nadine, who had not seen Grandmother for more than a year now, was saddened at the change in her. She had to hold her tall slender figure so rigidly now to keep herself from sagging that she had lost some of her grace; her blue eyes were sunken and her face was deeply lined. But she was still most beautiful, the indefinable elements of her beauty, her elegance and dignity and luminous vitality, seeming to have deepened in quality now that the more obvious loveliness had faded. And her fastidious daintiness was as apparent as ever, and to Nadine deeply touching because she guessed at what cost it was achieved. There was no Ellen now, and Margaret was the clumsiest creature who ever lived, so it must have been she herself who had dressed her lovely white hair so perfectly, and se
wn such spotless lace at the neck and wrists of her simple black frock with the faint scent of verbena clinging to its folds; the task could have been neither quick nor easy for her rheumaticky hands.
“You’re just the same, Grandmother,” lied Nadine, as she bent to kiss her, speaking with as much intent to comfort herself as to please Grandmother.
Lucilla smiled as she returned the kiss, and did not contradict the lie. Indeed she answered it with another. “So are you, my dear.”
Then they looked at each other and laughed with complete sympathy and comprehension, two beautiful women who had a very low opinion of the stark realities of life and a very high opinion of covering them up with a little persiflage.
Nadine straightened herself and looked about her. Thrones had fallen, armies had vanished into oblivion, great cities had been wiped off the face of the earth, but the Damerosehay drawing room had not changed the position of a single ornament. The Dresden shepherds and shepherdesses, lambs and cupids, stood just as they had always stood upon the mantelpiece, gay patches of color against the great carved overmantel; the Sheraton chairs stood in the same positions upon the same Persian rugs; the stiff eighteenth-century chintz that covered the sofa and armchairs was the same; and bowls of flowers stood where they had always stood. The drawing room was not what it had been seven years ago; there were many more darns in the rugs, more cracks in the chintz, and the dents and scratches presented to the chair legs by the kicking feet of the grandchildren had been added to by those of the evacuées. Like Lucilla it had suffered a slight tarnishing of the outward façade of its beauty, but the essence of it was unchanged.
— 2 —
There was a peculiar rattling sound in the distance.
“It’s Margaret with that detestable trolley,” said Lucilla, and her delicate old face went suddenly pink with annoyance.