No doubt there was a shortage of bedrooms, for a great many guests came and went, and once we were eighteen to dinner. Marcus and I sat next to each other and when the ladies retired we retired too, to bed. I can remember the pink glow of the candles and the shine of the silver, the stately, ample figure of Mrs. Maudsley at one end of the table and the thin figure of her husband with his stiff upright carriage at the other. Sitting down, he looked taller than when standing up. She always seemed to take up more space than was necessary to her, and he less.
I don’t know what he did with himself all day, but my impression is of meeting him unexpectedly in some passage or doorway and of his stopping to say: “Enjoying yourself?” and when I had said: “Yes, sir,” he would say: “That’s good,” and hurry on. He was a wispy little man with a long drooping moustache, eyelids that drooped over his blue-grey eyes, and a long thin neck round which he wore the highest of high collars. It would have been as difficult to think of him being master of the house as it would have been to think of his wife not being mistress of it.
Her face is a blur to me now, so many impressions have overlaid the original; but when I see her in dreams (for I have not been able to keep her out of them), it is not with that terrible aspect she wore the last time I saw her, when her face could hardly be called a face at all, but with the look of a portrait by Ingres or Goya, a full, pale face, with dark, lustrous eyes, a fixed, unchanging regard, and two or three black curls, or crescents of curls, stealing down over her forehead. In dreams, oddly enough, her attitude towards me is as cordial as it was at the beginning of my stay, when I only half sensed the danger behind her fascination. Can it be that her spirit would like to make it right with me?—for she must long ago be dead—she was then, I suppose, in her middle or late forties, and seemed old to me. Marcus had her colouring, but not her beauty.
I suppose it was my first evening when, the honoured guest, I sat next to her at dinner.
“And so you are a magician?” she said, smiling.
“Oh,” I replied modestly, “not really. Only, you know, at school.”
“You’re not going to bewitch us here?” she said.
“Oh no,” I answered, wriggling, a habit I had when I was nervous, and I made a mental note to reproach Marcus for this breach of trust.
She never looked at anyone, it seemed to me, except with intention and as if she didn’t mean to waste the look. Her glance most often rested on her daughter, who usually sat between two young men. “What do they find to talk about?” I remember thinking. “They seem so interested—more interested than she is.”
I didn’t possess the ordinary schoolboy’s royal gift for fitting names to faces—perhaps because I had been at school such a short time. I was introduced to everyone, of course, and Marcus told me who was coming and who was leaving and something about them; and I dutifully put their names down in my diary, Mr. This and Miss That—they were generally single. But the few years that separated us were wider than an ocean; I think I should have had more in common with a Hottentot child than with these grown-ups in their late teens and early twenties. What they thought, what they did, how they occupied themselves, were a mystery to me. The young men down from the university (as Marcus assured me they were), the young women with even less to identify them, would greet me on their way to or from the tennis court or the croquet lawn; the men in white flannels, white shoes, and straw hats, the women, also in white, with hourglass figures and hats like windmills; all white, or nearly white, save for the men’s black socks, which sometimes showed above their buckskin shoes. Some found more to say to me than others; but they were only part of the scene and I never had, or felt I ought to have, the smallest personal relationship with them. They were they, and Marcus and I were we—different age groups, as we should say now.
And that was why, for the first day or two, I never properly took in the fact that one of “them” was my host’s son, and another his daughter. Blond (as they mostly were), dressed in white, swinging their tennis rackets, they looked so much alike!
Denys, the son and heir, was a tall, fair young man with unfinished features and a conceited expression (schoolboys are quick to diagnose conceit). He was full of plans and opinions that he would press for more than they were worth—which even I could tell was not very much. He would grow warm enlarging upon the advantage of such and such a project until his mother, with a few cool words, would puncture it. I think he felt that she despised him, and he was the more anxious to assert himself against her and exercise the overt authority that his father never exerted. Between Mr. and Mrs. Maudsley I never saw a sign of disagreement; she went her way and he went his, gnome-like, leaving a trail of gold. I should hardly have known they were married, accustomed as I was to the more demonstrative manner of my parents. He alone, it seemed to me, was not included in the plans that Mrs. Maudsley made for everybody, for she had us all, I gradually realized, on a string, which I came to think of as the beam of her dark eye. We seemed to come and go unnoticed, but really we did not.
“My sister is very beautiful,” Marcus said to me one day. He announced it quite impersonally, as who should say “Two and two make four,” and I received it in the same spirit. It was a fact, like other facts, something to be learned. I had not thought of Miss Marian (I think I called her this to myself) as beautiful, but when I saw her next, I studied her in the light of Marcus’s announcement. It must have been in the front part of the house, for I have an impression of light, which was absent in our part, Marcus’s and mine; I believe I had some schoolboy notion that the front of the house, where the grown-up people lived, was the “private side” and that I was trespassing when I went there. She must have been sitting still for my scrutiny, for I have the impression that I was looking down on her, and she was tall, even by grown-up standards. I must have taken her unawares, for she was wearing what I afterwards came to think of as her “hooded” look. Her father’s long eyelids drooped over her eyes, leaving under them a glint of blue so deep and liquid that it might have been shining through an unshed tear. Her hair was bright with sunshine, but her face, which was full like her mother’s, only pale rose-pink instead of cream, wore a stern brooding look that her small curved nose made almost hawklike. She looked formidable then, almost as formidable as her mother. A moment later she opened her eyes—I remember the sudden burst of blue—and her face lit up.
So that is what it is to be beautiful, I thought, and for a time my idea of her as a person was confused and even eclipsed by the abstract idea of beauty that she represented. It did not bring her nearer to me, rather the opposite; but I no longer confused her with the other young ladies who circled, planet-like, around the perimeter of my vision.
Those early days were a time of floating impressions, unrelated to each other, making little sense, let alone a story. Scenes linger with me—generally in tones of light and dark, but sometimes tinged with colour. Thus I remember the cedar on the lawn, its dark foliage and the brightness of the turf around its shadow; and I also remember the hammock of crimson canvas slung on two poles beneath it. The hammock was a novelty that had just succeeded the corded, knotted kind that caught your buttons and dragged them off. It was much frequented by the young people and I can still hear them laugh as it tipped them out and spilled them on the grass.
Of this there is no mention in my diary. Of the stables there is more than one, but I have no recollection of them, though I carefully entered the names of five of the horses: Lady Jane, Princess, Uncas, Dry Toast, and Nogo—Nogo I thought deliciously funny, but I can’t remember what he or any of them looked like. I can, however, remember the coach-house, though the diary is silent about it. The lamps, the springs, the shafts, the dashboards, with their shining paint and super-polish, fascinated me. And the smell of harness leather—to me more captivating than the stronger horse smells. The coach-house was a treasure-house to me.
Enough of the vagaries and inconsistencies of my memory. But one thing that I had forgotten the diary
did bring back—and not only the fact, but the scene with the utmost vividness.
“Wednesday 11th of July. Saw the Deadly Nightshade—Atropa belladonna.”
Marcus wasn’t with me, I was alone, exploring some derelict outhouses, which for me had obviously more attraction than the view of Brandham Hall from the S.W. In one, which was roofless as well as derelict, I suddenly came upon the plant. But it wasn’t a plant, in my sense of the word, it was a shrub, almost a tree, and as tall as I was. It looked the picture of evil and also the picture of health, it was so glossy and strong and juicy-looking: I could almost see the sap rising to nourish it. It seemed to have found the place in all the world that suited it best.
I knew that every part of it was poisonous, I knew too that it was beautiful, for did not my mother’s botany book say so? I stood on the threshold, not daring to go in, staring at the button-bright berries and the dull, purplish, hairy, bell-shaped flowers reaching out towards me. I felt that the plant could poison me even if I didn’t touch it, and that if I didn’t eat it, it would eat me, it looked so hungry, in spite of all the nourishment it was getting.
As if I had been caught looking at something I wasn’t meant to see, I tiptoed away, wondering whether Mrs. Maudsley would think me interfering if I told her about it. But I didn’t tell her. I couldn’t bear to think of those lusty limbs withering on a rubbish-heap or crackling in a fire: all that beauty being destroyed. Besides, I wanted to look at it again.
Atropa belladonna.
3
IT ALL BEGAN with the weather defying me.
The Monday I travelled on had been a cool temperate day, but the next day the sky was cloudless and the sun beat down. After we had fled from luncheon (I seem to remember we left all meals incontinently, like escaping prisoners, only staying to ask if we could get down), Marcus said: “Let’s go and look at the thermometer—it’s one of those that mark the highest and lowest temperature of the day.”
Maddeningly, and unreasonably—considering how often I was to have recourse to it—I cannot remember where the thermometer was; but yes, I can; it hung on the wall of an octagonal structure with a pointed roof, situated under a yew tree. The building fascinated me—it had something withdrawn and magical about it. It was thought to be a disused game larder, put under the yew tree for coolness’ sake, but this was only a hypothesis; no one really knew what it was for.
Marcus told me how the instrument worked, and showed me the small, stumpy magnet that drew the markers up and down. “Only we mustn’t touch it,” he said, reading my thoughts, “or my father would be angry. He likes to do the thermometer himself.”
“Is he often angry?” I asked. I could not imagine Mr. Maudsley being angry, or indeed anything else, but this was almost the first thing one wanted to know about grown-up people.
“No, but my mother would be,” Marcus replied obliquely.
The thermometer stood at nearly eighty-three.
We had run all the way from the luncheon table, partly to make good our escape, partly because we often ran when walking would have done as well. I was perspiring a little, and remembered my mother’s oft-repeated injunction: “Try not to get hot.” How could I not get hot? I looked at Marcus. He was wearing a light flannel suit. His shirt was not open, but it was loose at the neck; his knickers could not be called shorts, for they came well below his knees, but they also were loose, they flapped, they let the air in. Below them, not quite meeting them, he wore a pair of thin grey stockings neatly turned over their supporting garters; and on his feet—wonder of wonders—not boots but what then were called low shoes. To a lightly clad child of today this would seem thick winter wear; to me it might have been a bathing-suit, it looked so inadequate to the proper, serious function of clothes.
The record of these sartorial details is before me, for Marcus and I were photographed together; and though the light has got in at one corner, and the background and ourselves are tilted alarmingly, the faded reddish-brown print does display the uncanny perception possessed by the camera in those days when it could not so easily lie. I am wearing an Eton collar and a bow tie; a Norfolk jacket cut very high across the chest, incised leather buttons, round as bullets, conscientiously done up, and a belt, which I have drawn more tightly than I need have. My breeches were secured below the knee with a cloth strap and buckle, but these were hidden by thick black stockings, the garters of which, coming just below the straps, put a double strain on the circulation of my legs. To complete the picture, a pair of obviously new boots, looking larger for being new, and with the tabs, which I must have forgotten to tuck in, standing up boldly.
I have my hand on Marcus’s shoulder (I was an inch or two taller as well as a year older than he) in the attitude of affection which, in those days, was permitted to the male sex when they were photographed together (undergraduates and even soldiers draped themselves about one another), and though the unfortunate slant of the photograph makes me look as if I was trying to push him over, I also look fond of him—which I was, though the coolness and deep-seated conventionality of his nature made it difficult to be intimate with him. We were not much alike, and had been brought together by factors extraneous to our real personalities. His round face looks out on the world without much interest and with a complacent acceptance of the situation; my rather long one is self-conscious and seems aware of the strain of adaptability. Both of us were wearing straw boaters, his with a plain band, mine with the school colours; and their tilted crowns and brims make two hard diagonal lines, inclined planes along which we seem to be rushing violently down a steep place.
I was not unduly dismayed by the heat, my dread of which was at least as much moral and hypochondriacal as physical, for I still half believed in my ability to influence the weather, and that night I prepared a good strong spell to bring the temperature down. But like an invalid whose fever defies the doctor, the weather did not respond, and next day, when our post-luncheon scamper had taken us to the game larder, the thermometer had climbed to nearly eighty-five and was still pushing up the marker.
My heart sank and, making a great effort, I said to Marcus:
“I wonder if I should sport my cricket togs?”
He replied at once: “I wouldn’t if I were you. Only cads wear their school clothes in the holidays. It isn’t done. You oughtn’t really to be wearing the school band round your hat, but I didn’t say anything. And, Leo, you mustn’t come down to breakfast in your slippers. It’s the sort of thing that bank clerks do. You can put them on after tea if you like.”
Marcus was old for his age in most ways, just as in most ways I was young for mine. I winced at the reference to bank clerks, and remembered that on Sundays my father had always come down to breakfast in his slippers. But it had been a shot in the dark; I had never told Marcus of my father’s lowly social status.
“And, Leo, there’s another thing you mustn’t do. When you undress you wrap your clothes up and put them on a chair. Well, you mustn’t. You must leave them lying wherever they happen to fall—the servants will pick them up—that’s what they’re for.”
He spoke without emphasis but with so much authority that I never for a moment doubted he was right. He was the arbiter of elegance and fashion to me just as surely as—more surely than—I was to him an expert in the black arts.
At tea-time someone said to me: “You are looking hot. Haven’t you something cooler to wear?” The voice didn’t betoken much solicitude for my state, it had an undertone of teasing; and defending myself against that, I said at once, mopping my face with a handkerchief, for I did not yet know that one should dab it: “Oh, I’m not really hot. It’s just that Marcus and I have been running.” “Running, this weather?” said another voice, with an affected sigh in which I detected sarcasm, the schoolboy’s bugbear; and hot as I was, a chill went through me and I seemed to hear the taunt “vanquished” and see the grinning faces.
It was indeed the beginning of a mild persecution—very, very mild and concealed in smil
es and kindly faces; the grown-ups could not have known it was one. But it became the thing to say to me, when they came across me: “Hullo, Leo, still feeling hot?” and “Why don’t you take your jacket off—you’d be more comfortable without it”—with a light laugh for this impossible request, for in those days dress was much more ceremonious and jackets were not lightly discarded. I came to dread these pleasantries, they seemed to spring up all round me like rows of gas-jets scorching me, and I turned redder than I was already. The frightful feeling of being marked out for ridicule came back in all its strength. I don’t think I was unduly sensitive; in my experience most people mind being laughed at more than anything else. What causes wars, what makes them drag on so interminably, but the fear of losing face? I avoided even Marcus, for I didn’t dare to tell him what was troubling me.
That night I worked out a new spell. I could not sleep, partly from misery and excitement, partly because the Aberdeen, which was also feeling the heat, kept moving about in search of fresh places until he was lying half-way across my pillow. Under the pillow lay my diary. I got it from under the dog without disturbing him, and in the dark I managed to put down the spell on paper, without which formality I felt it would be useless. It was a good spell, hatched in the small hours with which I had then so little acquaintance, and it worked; next day the thermometer did not reach seventy-seven, and I felt calmer in my mind and much less hot.
I did not look so, for at tea-time the gentle raillery began again. I took it in better part this time, for I was fortified by the knowledge, which my well-meaning tormentors apparently did not possess, that the temperature had really dropped. But it went on and soon I became as wretched as before. I did not realize that au fond they were trying to take an interest in me and were using my unseasonable clothes and perspiring face to draw me out. It seemed doubly hard that a Norfolk jacket should be out of place in Norfolk; I had imagined that everybody would be wearing one. Suddenly I caught sight of myself in a glass and saw what a figure of fun I looked. Hitherto I had always taken my appearance for granted; now I saw how inelegant it was, compared with theirs; and at the same time, for the first time, I was acutely aware of social inferiority. I felt utterly out of place among these smart rich people, and a misfit everywhere. Nothing is more heating than embarrassment; my face flamed while it dripped. If only I could think of some verbal quip to turn the tables on them, the sort of thing a grown-up might say! “I may look hot,” I said defiantly, “but I’m quite cool underneath, I’m a chilly mortal, really.” At this they burst out laughing and tears started to my eyes. I hastily gulped down some tea and began to perspire anew. Suddenly from behind the silver tea-kettle I heard Mrs. Maudsley’s voice. It was like a current of cold air blowing towards me.