EVERYBODY was disappointed that Dick had not come, but they, none of them, not even Kerran, understood how bitter a blow it was for Louise. They were all so pleased to see Ellen and the children, this matriarchal tribe which came trooping possessively into the castle. They had exclaimed when they counted the heads in the boats, they had asked one another where Dick could be, but their spirits had not fallen to zero.
Child after child had been lifted out and deposited on the shore. They came stumping up towards the castle, clutching boats and spades and buckets. There were only four of them, yet they were like an army, generalled by Ellen and the nursery maid. They beamed at Louise in the confident belief that they were welcome. They volunteered dull pieces of information. They expected to be kissed.
“Such a wonderful crossing!”
“Oh, Aunt Louise, we’ve brought our spades and buckets.”
“Where is the nursery?”
“We came in the Irish Mail!”
“Are there dungeons in this castle?”
“Why, Louise! You’re looking quite sunburnt! Dick? Oh, he couldn’t come. He had to stay in London. Listen! I’m afraid we’ve had to leave some luggage at Killross. Could one of the boats go back for it?”
Louise stood thunderstruck. No Dick? And what was to become of all the fun which she had planned? Even a Russian novel must have a hero.
The invasion swept past into the castle, where Muffy and Maude were only too ready to swell the prosaic bustle of unpacking and settling in. She felt that their “party” had received a formidable reinforcement. For already she had mentally divided the castle community into two sections. There was her own group, who were to enjoy the pleasures of cultivated idleness, and there was the useful domestic rabble of women, children and servants. It was important that the activities of the latter should not be allowed to impinge upon the tranquillity of the former. The rabble must be kept in its place. But now it seemed to be ubiquitous.
For the first time she began to wonder if it was not a disadvantage to be the only woman in her group. It had been quite easy to dispose of Maude before Ellen came, but the spectacle of the pair of them, so arrogantly commonplace, so determined to turn the abode of romance into a seaside lodging-house, was disconcerting. She did not tell herself outright that a close understanding between these two was undesirable, but it was an impulse, born of some such thought, that lay behind a new cordiality which she suddenly felt for Maude. She compromised. Ellen had Muffy, anyhow: to balance them there had better be Louise and Maude, even though that might mean certain sacrifices. Maude, in spite of her deficiencies, must have a sort of place in the superior group. Ellen was better qualified for such promotion, but she had put herself out of court by leaving Dick behind her.
It was easy to get on terms with Maude. For the sake of a little confidential gossip she was ready to forget all her grudges. And she saw Louise’s point at once. Dick ought not to have allowed Ellen to come alone.
“Supposing it had been a rough crossing!”
“Lifting heavy things up on to racks!”
“Gordon would never …”
“Barny would never …”
“She looked fagged out when she got here.”
“I’m so glad I persuaded her to take breakfast in bed. Muffy’s looking after her.”
“I know.”
Ellen had her own allies. Muffy, who would not even allow Barny to have a chill, was now brushing Ellen’s hair. Muffy had been making a fuss about Ellen the very first night she was in the castle. She had planted her standard on the keep and sat inside it drinking tea and disapproving of Louise. Louise and Maude were both against Muffy, and that drew them together.
They continued to abuse Dick. It was a conversation which could only have been held between two women, for no man would have understood that they were really blaming Ellen for allowing Dick to allow her to come alone. Everything which they said against Dick was really an arrow aimed at Ellen.
“But this Dr. Thring,” repeated Louise, “if this Thring person has asked Dick to look after his cases I suppose Dick could equally well hand them on to somebody else. He’s not the only gynæcologist in London. Gordon’s just the same. They like to think they’re indispensable. You can’t ever get them away without manœuvring a bit.”
“I know. And considering all this we’ve heard about how much he overworks, she ought to have played every card in her hand to get him away.”
They had been strolling on the grass slope in front of the castle, and at this point Louise made a gesture which definitely turned these tentative openings into an alliance. She sat down on a stone bench, by the water’s edge, and signed to Maude to sit beside her.
They settled to it.
“I don’t think she manages him very well, do you?”
“No. I do not. But then, I never …”
Maude bit her lip. She had been about to say that no nice woman could hope to manage such a nasty man. But that would have broken up this pleasant atmosphere of sympathy. They were united over Ellen, who had failed to tame her wild hawk, but they were not really agreed over Dick.
“She doesn’t understand her job, as his wife, in the very least,” said Louise. “She lets him overwork himself. All this unpaid hospital work, and lecturing, surely by now he ought to give up all that. She doesn’t seem to realise that people are beginning to talk about him as the man. Oh yes, I know they all do a certain amount of it, but she ought to discourage it as much as she can. She shouldn’t calmly submit to letting this Thring, or whoever he is, thrust his patients on to Dick, while he goes for a holiday. It isn’t as if they were making this sacrifice in order to get Dick on professionally. If it were anybody very important…. But then she’s no idea of pushing him. Socially, I mean. A wife can do so much. I’m not a snob … I hope …”
“Of course not,” said Maude, genuinely forgetting great-aunt Harriet.
“No, I don’t think I’m a snob. But one does realise, one has to realise, that there’s a snobbish element in all worldly success. One regrets it, but it’s so. It isn’t always the most brilliant men who get to the top of the tree, it’s the men who know how to climb, unfortunately. One doesn’t want Dick to push himself. One’s glad he isn’t that kind, it’s all part of his charm. But one wants him to be pushed. Ellen doesn’t realise … but she’ll have to realise.”
Louise jerked her head in an angry way that she had when people would not realise and would have to be made to realise.
“Or if they weren’t so comfortably off,” suggested Maude cautiously. “But then, they don’t have to worry about money.”
This was a delicate subject, for the money was mostly Ellen’s. Dick was making a good income for himself, now, but he would never have been able to marry when he did if his bride had not been well dowered. And some of the Annesleys thought that he took it very coolly, that he had too many children, enjoyed his comfortable home too much and treated Ellen’s money as if it had fallen, like manna, from the skies. His arrogance annoyed them, and, though they all knew that no man could work harder, they would have preferred to see him show a little embarrassment at his position. Maude, especially, thought this, because she and Barny were poorer than the rest owing to Barny’s unfortunate habit of speculating. She was the only one of them who really believed that Dick had married for money.
“Oh, I wasn’t thinking of that,” said Louise, in the tone of one who can afford to be above such things. “But she doesn’t understand him. She’s neither the one thing nor the other. She takes a narrow view of his career. She has no ambitions for him, and she takes no trouble from the worldly point of view. And on the other hand she isn’t the right companion for him … as a man. They’ve no interests in common, except their children. He’s intellectual and she isn’t. He is imaginative and sensitive and she is about as romantic as a leg of mutton.”
“Then you think he’s not happy with her?”
Louise pondered. This was a point which should not have been pressed in such a hurry. They were feeling their way towards it, but she was a little disconcerted at being asked such a question so soon.
“He’s very loyal to her. No … I don’t think one can go as far as that. I think he’s been quite happy with her, up till now. I don’t think one can call it an unhappy marriage … quite …”
But neither would she call it a happy marriage. How could it be when Ellen had not learnt to manage Dick, and did not even understand him? Louise and Maude were happily married. They lived on a nicely-balanced see-saw. They sacrificed themselves, consciously, and the security which they had achieved was worth the trouble. Maude held umbrellas over Barny’s head and Louise was obliged to live in North Oxford. Sometimes they complained of the demands which had been made on them, but more often they boasted of the rewards they had reaped. Their husbands were faithful and domesticated.
But there was no see-saw in the Napier household, no sacrificial compromise. Dick gave Ellen children, spent her money, told her what to think, and made her, to all appearances, a happy woman. She was satisfied, not with herself, but in him. And to Louise, who had never known an instant’s satisfaction in the whole of her life, this primitive serenity was galling.
“No,” agreed Maude, “they get on all right. But it’s a fluke.”
“That’s just what I was thinking.”
“If anything should happen …”
“I know.”
“Well, after all, supposing Dick were to be very much attracted by someone else? Has she ever thought of that?”
“My dear Maude, Ellen doesn’t think. That’s the one thing one has to remember about Ellen. She doesn’t think.”
“I suppose I’ve got a horrid mind.”
“Not at all. It’s a possibility that no woman should ever forget. She’s a fool if she does.”
Maude drew a long breath and risked it.
“I mean … well, this stopping behind in London, for instance. It may be all quite true, I’m not saying it isn’t. But if I were Ellen I don’t think I should awfully much like the idea of leaving him to his own devices in London.”
Louise sat up with a jerk. Her face grew very red.
“What on earth are you suggesting?”
“Oh dear! Oh dear! I said I’d got a horrid mind.”
“You have, Maude. He isn’t that kind of man at all. I know him better than you do. He’s not the kind who’s kept late at the office on business. It wasn’t that sort of thing that I was thinking of.”
“Then what …”
“Not vulgar little infidelities. She needn’t ever be afraid of that. But how would she manage if he ever fell really in love? Because I don’t think, though I’d only say this to you, mind you, I don’t think he’s ever been what I call romantically in love with Ellen. It began when they were too young. He told me once that he first made up his mind to marry her when she was fourteen, when she was only a child. Well, he couldn’t have felt about her then what a man feels about … about a mature woman. He must have idealised her in a transcendental sort of way … the way young men do. And then he married her and she turned into a nice prosaic wife. I don’t think he knows what it is to be passionately in love.”
Maude shook her head solemnly.
“I see what you mean. But for all that, and in spite of you saying that I’ve got a horrid mind, if I’d been Ellen I shouldn’t have left him behind in London. I’d have brought him with me or stayed to keep an eye on him.”
This was really too much. The dinginess of Maude’s mind was more that Louise could bear. It was impossible to sustain any prolonged communication with it, even for the sake of mutual support.
Louise got up abruptly, and said that she was going to take all the children for a bathe on the other side of the island.