Nellie cocked her short-sighted eyes up to the sky and said: “The nights are drawing in.”
I had accompanied her down the long garden path of The Beeches. She paused at the gate and said, “I shan’t be long.” She patted my arm, gave me a wan smile, and trotted away to the right, to the Wesleyan chapel.
She was warmer in her manner towards me. I was forty. She was a year older. We had been married for fifteen years. Each of us realised the limitations of that companionship. Nothing had ever set it on fire; nothing had given it glory. During the last couple of years its comfortableness had deepened. I think perhaps Nellie was glad to have me to herself. Dermot and Sheila had gone to live in London, taking Eileen with them. Maeve had left Mary Latter. She had lapped up all that Mary Latter had to teach her, and now she was playing her first part in a London theatre. I hadn’t seen her in it. I should have to run up to town soon. Her work, when I had seen her once or twice with the Latter Company in Manchester, had surprised and thrilled me.
Rory was in Dublin. I knew less of him than of the others. He had written occasionally to Oliver, but now Oliver was away at school, so I didn’t see even letters.
I leaned on the gate, looking up and down the empty road. Autumn melancholy was upon the suburb and upon me, too. There was a faint wind in the beeches over my head, and they sounded dry and done. A few yellow leaves spun through the beams of a street lamp, that was contending with the twilight. Down in the meadows, where I had been accustomed to play football with Oliver, the white mist would be crawling across the fields, as I had so often watched it crawl when, a boy, I looked out through Mr. Oliver’s study window.
An inexpressible sadness settled upon me. I felt that a phase of my life was ended. Oliver gone. The one family in Manchester that had meant anything to me gone. Nellie was still there, sensing my trouble, being maternal. I wondered what she would say if I tried to carry our relationship, after a long cessation of intimacy, beyond the realm of sad male and comforting mother-woman. We still slept together and served each other in the office of a blanket. That was something. There was a nip in the air tonight.
I walked back to the house with a pipe in my teeth and my hands in my pockets. There was not even work to do. I had finished a novel a week ago—my twelfth—and I was loose-ended and aimless, a prey to harpy-emotions that came crowding out of the nostalgia of the October twilight. I felt an urgent desire to tear up my roots, have done with Manchester, and match myself against some environment that was new.
In my study I looked at the eleven novels in the elegant case that Dermot had made for them—leather-bound presentation copies from my publisher. He could afford them too; he had done well out of me. Soon the twelfth would stand beside the eleven. Then the case would be full. I had not noticed that before. It seemed to me an omen.
Leave novels alone for a bit. After all, I had nothing more to say about Manchester and the people who lived in it. Those twelve books would be a sufficient monument so far as that part of my life was concerned. The critics said I had done for Manchester what Arnold Bennett had done for the Five Towns. I had: and more. I had stayed on the spot and worked with the material under my eyes.
Prowling about, restless as a beast in a zoo cage, fiddling with this and that, I knew suddenly that I would write no more novels about Manchester. I wanted to leave the place; I wanted to go to London. Maeve was growing up. Time I thought about that play for her.
The corners of the room were full of shadow and I was ruminating in my easy chair when I heard Nellie’s voice calling from downstairs. “William! Are you there? Can you spare a moment?”
I went down and found her in the hall with a big gaunt parson. “Oh, William, this is Mr. Wintringham.”
I had seen his name on the chapel boards: the Rev. W. Wilson Wintringham. He was over on some special business: anniversary services yesterday, a lecture on “The Message of Whitman” tonight. You were no good at all to these chaps unless they could dig a message out of you. It appeared that there had been a breakdown in transport arrangements. The Rev. W. Wilson Wintringham had to get home that night and the car which was to take him to the railway station at Wilmslow had not appeared.
“I thought if you were not busy tonight—” Nellie appealed.
I told the Rev. W. Wilson Wintringham that I would be pleased to take him to Wilmslow. I would have been pleased to take him to Jericho or anywhere else. A blow in the fresh air was just what I needed, and since taking to motoring a year ago I had come to like it more and more. Far too much to employ a chauffeur, though that was what Oliver wanted me to do. “But Uncle Dermot’s got a chauffeur now.” Well, he can keep him.
Mr. Wintringham thanked me in a sort of consecrated basso profundo which caused his Adam’s apple to bob up and down like an egg in an old brown stocking. I invited him to take a whisky and soda—“the sort of drink Whitman would have appreciated, I’m sure, Mr. Wintringham”—but he declined, and Nellie urged me to make haste or we would miss the train.
I got out the car—an open four-seater—and off we went, Nellie beside me in front, the Rev. W. Wilson Wintringham nursing his despatch-case full of the message of Whitman in the back.
“And what do you think is the message of Whitman, Mr. Wintringham?” I shouted, as we turned left by the squat old church at Cheadle.
“Well, generally speaking, just brotherly love,” Mr. Wintringham’s bass roared over the engine.
“And how’s brotherly love getting on in this old world? I suppose you’re in a position to keep an eye on these things?”
“Rather!” he agreed heartily. “Reports from the foreign field, you know. I think you’d be surprised if you knew how the evangel of love is catching on in the world, if you’ll allow me to put it that way.”
“You think the reign of universal love and peace is appreciably nearer?” I asked, feeling like a junior reporter conducting an interview.
“No doubt! No doubt!” I could almost hear the gristly knob rasping up and down in his throat. “I predict that the next ten years will see an extension of Christ’s Kingdom on earth that will surprise those who are not watching the signs. It’s a blessed thing to be young today, Mr. Essex. The young will see signs and wonders. The poets were not mistaken—Whitman, Browning—”
“Oh, Browning. His message is that it’s good to sing in the bath.”
The Rev. W. Wilson Wintringham laughed suddenly, disconcertingly, like a horse neighing. I could feel his breath on my neck. “Well, here we are,” I said thankfully.
We were lucky in not having to wait to see him off. The train drew in as we reached the platform. A moment later we were watching the red tail-light receding and diminishing in the bloomy dusk.
A great orange disc of moon had climbed into the sky. I fixed a rug round Nellie’s knees and got in beside her. “Nellie,” I said, as soon as we were off, “I’ve finished with Manchester. I’ve got nothing more to do here. I want to get out.”
She gave a tremendous start. “Get out! But, William, we’re so comfortable!”
“Yes, I know—too comfortable.”
“Well, I call that downright ungrateful to Almighty God,” she said, as though the Adam’s apple had got into her throat. “Too comfortable! You should give thanks for your blessings, not cry them down.”
“Nellie,” I answered, “there are two things to be said to that. One is that your religion tells you to shun comfort like the plague. Sell all that thou hast. Not peace but a sword. That sort of thing. And there’s this: that if I give thanks for my blessings, I’ll give them to two people: to your father who accumulated the capital that allowed me to start in business and to myself whose darned pig-headed determination kept me writing till I wrote something worth reading.”
She fell into a sulky silence for a while, then said: “You never think of me. You just announce what you’re going to do.”
“Do you remember,” I said, “a long time ago I announced that we were shifting from Hulme to The Beeches? Don’t you think it’s been a good thing that we did?”
She made no answer. “Very well, then,” I continued, “be reasonable. You will be consulted about the house we are to live in and everything else that concerns you, but leave Manchester I must, or I shall perish. You’ll like London.”
“London!” she breathed. “London! But I’d be terrified. You don’t understand. You must not take me away from here.”
“Don’t let’s talk about it any more just now,” I said. “Think it over quietly.”
I felt that the slight advances she had been making to me lately were chilled. She sat silent and resentful at my side. We came through Cheadle and turned left into the road that led straight home.
I gave the car an extra turn of speed. The full harvest moon shone down on the road and over the dark hedges and the fields sleeping at either hand. There is a path that comes through those fields. I had often used it myself. It brings you straight on to the road. There is no pavement. And that night came two lovers, oblivious of all save themselves under the enchantment of the moon. Oblivious of the car, a brutal thing that could not exist in their fairyland.
Straight out into the road they walked, arms wrapped around each other, and only then, caught in the sudden blaze of headlights did they pause, wrenched back to the world of sense. Then they stood stock-still while my heart cried: “Oh, poor young fools! Leap! Backwards or forwards. But leap!” and Nellie’s hand went to her mouth, smothering a cry.
They did not leap. They dithered now forward, now backward. On me, then, the decision fell, and I drove the car full pelt between them and the hedge through which they had come. I suppose it was all a matter of three seconds, and already joy was springing up in me at having missed them, when I found that the car was not coming round on to the road again. There was a tearing of shrubs and saplings, a sudden remembrance, piercing me like a knife, that the hedge hid a sharply-falling bank. Then we were through the hedge, and my mind was recording everything with a dreadful slow-motion exactitude: the bonnet sticking its snout into the earth half-way down the bank, the end of the car lifting, poising, dropping forward, the car sliding with us beneath it for a little way, then coming to a standstill. I raised my arms, trying foolishly to lift the weight that oppressed us; I tried to move my legs, and agony forced a cry from me; I called “Nellie! Nellie! Are you all right?” but there was no answer, and when I ceased to shout and struggle in order to concentrate all my attention on listening for her breathing, I fell into panic, for there was no breathing, no movement, no sound at all, except the sound of men shouting and of hands rasping on the fabric of the car as it was seized and lifted.
A fractured thigh for me. A broken neck for Nellie. They said she must have died instantly. A statement was taken from me in hospital, but I could not attend the inquest. Dermot came down from London and made the formal identification. Dermot and Sheila arranged and attended the funeral in the Southern Cemetery. It was a long time before I saw the grave. Early in the new year I hobbled out of the nursing-home, whither I had gone from hospital. My new car was waiting for me, with a chauffeur at the wheel. I did not think I should want to drive again in a hurry, so here was Martin, a pleasant-looking youth enough, but wearing that impassive mask that chauffeurs have. Oliver would be pleased, anyway.
The amenities are beautifully considered at the Southern Cemetery. There is a monumental mason’s where you may back your fancy, letting it range from a simple marble “surround” to a variety of angels: angels with heads bowed in sorrow, angels erect and triumphant bearing rewarding wreaths, angels kneeling with hands joined in prayer, and just angels, ready to do for a fee paid to the monumental mason a mercenary watchman’s job of standing guard till judgment day. Next to the monumental mason’s is an excellent public-house, where fortitude may be acquired before the cemetery is entered and sorrow assuaged when it is left.
The car stopped at the cemetery gates, and in the drear winter afternoon the marble angels shone, reminding me of that far-off day in Blackpool when Nellie and I considered the pictured angels on the walls of our boarding-house. I remembered, pottering among the graves with a stick in each hand, how that night she had taken me walking and how we had reached the cliffs at Norbeck and stood there holding on to one another while a sullen sea thudded on the beach and the wind howled round us in the dark.
I wondered whether I could have made life happier for Nellie. I had done all that the copybooks ordered. I had given her a home and supported her handsomely in it. I had given her a child that a mother might be proud of. I had been monogamous. Yet, walking through that flat expanse, under the grey lowering Manchester sky, with the monuments of the innumerable dead strewing the ground as far as the eye could reach, I reflected that I might easily have been a worse man and a better husband.
Dermot had told me how to find the grave amid that afflicting wilderness of graves, and it was with a shock that my eyes fell presently upon a humble piece of marble bearing the name Nellie Essex. At first, my mind, bemused by reverie, merely felt surprise that so soon Nellie should seem so much at home among the dead. Already the lettering looked old, the grave unkempt, as though it harboured an habituated and domestic ghost. Then I realised, with a catch of the breath, that I was looking at my mother’s grave.
I had not known her Christian name. To my father, and to all of us children, she was always “Mother” when she was anything at all more than someone to be casually addressed. I had not seen the grave before. It seemed to me unbearably poignant that in such a place, at such a time, I should learn the simple secret of her identity, of the one thing that had been hers alone, her name. It was all she had, and no one had bothered about it.
Standing on the path, leaning on my two sticks, I gazed for a long time at the grave, then turned, walked a pace or two, and there, on the other side of the path, was the mound of clay that I had come to seek. Here, also, lay Nellie Essex, unrecorded as yet in marble, sleeping beneath the sodden remnants of the flowers that pity had heaped for concealment of the crude fact of burial. Broad white satin ribbon, stained by the earth into which the rain had beaten it, was draggled among the flowers. There were a few black-bordered cards, with the writing already indecipherable, anonymous valedictions.
Standing there in the path with a stick in each hand, I could almost touch the two graves of the women who, both, had been Nellie Essex. They had not known each other. At most, perhaps, in years gone by the younger Nellie Essex had been accustomed to hear her mother speak of Mrs. Essex for whom, in kindness, a bar of soap must be wrapped with the week’s wash.
Washed... washed... washed... Sweeping through the gates of the New Jerusalem, washed in the blood of the Lamb.
I went slowly away, leaving to their sleep side by side two women who had loved me and whom I had not loved.
*
That was a Saturday afternoon. There was a letter waiting for me at the nursing-home when I got back. “Dear Uncle Bill”—I glanced at the signature—“Maeve.” She was coming to see me tomorrow. “And you’ve got two things to thank for the pleasure—first, Livia; and, secondly, the intelligent management of this theatre which doesn’t put the play on on Mondays. That gives us a lovely long week-end. I wonder when all managements will be so sensible and save poor actresses from nervous breakdowns? Livia is bringing me in her car. Man! She’s a fiend of a driver, and that’s just as well—there’ll be so much more time to spend with you. The Sunday trains are dreadful. We shall start as soon as it’s light, and you will wake up with burning ears, for we shall be talking about you all the way. Livia isn’t doing this for me—oh dear no! She’s dying to meet you. She’s read all your books, and I don’t think she quite believes that I know you. How wonderful to be a Person, whom mere people want to know! However, I live in hopes. It’ll come!”
Well, that was a pleasant letter to get. I didn’t feel quite so lonely now. I had my own room at the nursing-home. A maid came in and pulled the curtains, shutting out the prospect of bare boughs and evening mists. She switched on the lights, and the primrose walls and pale green curtains seemed to draw closer and more comfortably about me. My fire was going well, my tea was brought in.
Livia... That would be the girl Dermot had told me about when he was up for the funeral. I remembered that he had seemed a bit hurt. He and Sheila and Eileen were living at Hampstead. There was plenty of room for Maeve, but she preferred to live alone—“or rather with a girl—Vaynol—Livia Vaynol,” Dermot said. There was a snap in his voice.
“He’s jealous, Bill. Take no notice of him,” Sheila said. “It’ll do Maeve all the good in the world to make her own friends and live as she wants to live. After all, she’s had four years of knocking about with Mary Latter. She’s no fool.”
“She’s only eighteen,” Dermot objected.
“And how old is Rory? You’ve pushed him out into the world.”
Dermot’s eyes sparkled angrily. “Is there any comparison between the two things?” he demanded. “Rory’s with a responsible man.”
“He’s not where we can descend on him in ten minutes as Maeve is,” Sheila persisted. “Livia’s all right. She’ll do Maeve no harm.”
There was no more said at the time. Livia Vaynol, I gathered later, was not much older than Maeve—twenty or so. She was an orphan with a little money: just enough to allow her to contemplate with humour a series of failures. She had scrounged a small part in the Mary Latter Company. That was where Maeve had met her. But she was not good enough. Then she had been in the chorus of a musical comedy and had hated it and left. She had dabbled with writing. She had, indeed, had a few short stories published in magazines. Now she was trying both to compose songs and to do what Sheila vaguely called “designing.” “You know,” she said, “she just draws shapes—squiggles—that look as if they meant something, but I can’t see what. Dermot says they’re good. He admits that much. He says that some day he may take her up for carpets and hangings and that sort of thing. Exclusive designs. The fact is, the poor child hasn’t discovered what she wants to do, and she’s not going to sit down and just live on her little income. I like her for that. And she’s so good-humoured about it all—never discouraged.”
Well, that was Miss Livia Vaynol; that was all I knew about her.
*
“My dear, what a woman you are!”
Maeve had come impetuously into the room. Crippled as I was, I couldn’t get up quickly, and she stood looking down at me, holding both my hands in hers, as I sat in my chair. She was wearing a close-fitting little coat of grey astrakhan and a round hat of the same material. Her face was as white as ever, but the black eyes that had a hint of blue in them swam with pleasure, and her mouth was very red. Her hands gripped mine tight, and her body, which had grown tall and flexible, swayed above me with an emotion that I could feel passing into her hands. I wondered if she would kiss me. She didn’t.
She sat down at my feet, leaning against the arm of my chair. “You poor dear,” she said. “I’m so sorry.”
“Don’t let’s talk about that. Tell me about your journey. And where is your friend—my admirer?”
“It was a wonderful journey, I suppose, as those journeys go. But I hate motoring, you know. It doesn’t make me sick, thank God, but it’s such a waste of time. Except that I was coming to see you.” She gave my knee a pat. “That made it bearable.”
“And when am I to see Miss Vaynol?”
“Oh, Livia’ll be up in a moment. She’s seeing that her precious car’s all right.”
“Tell me about your play.” I tamped down the tobacco in my pipe, and Maeve sprang up to get the matches from the mantelpiece, struck one, and held it while I puffed.
“Oh, the play’s grand,” she said, sinking down to the floor again, “and I’m on in every act. Five minutes in the first, then a really important scene lasting for eleven minutes in the second, and off and on a lot in the third. It’s a marvellous chance.”
“And you’re making good use of it. I know. Just hand me that book.”
She brought the book from the table. “See,” I said. “Here’s what The Times says: ‘Miss Maeve O’Riorden is a new actress who brought to the part of Henrietta Shane a talent that gave us both a fine performance and, what is more important, the promise of better work in the future.’ And here’s the Telegraph...”
“Oh, Man, that’s sweet of you—to bother with my old cuttings,” Maeve cried, jumping up and looking at me with her eyes shining.
“Well, look at the book,” I said. “See what lovely stout leather binding it has! See how many pages! I had it specially made. And look at the title-page, written in my own best hand: ‘Maeve’s Progress.’”
“Oh, you shouldn’t! You shouldn’t!” she cried.
“Oh, yes, I should. See, they’re all here. This is the very first. It crept into an Accrington paper when you were on your first tour with Mary Latter. Whitby, Aberdeen, Edinburgh, Carlisle, Birmingham. I’ve got your whole career taped out. Look! Here’s one from a Cape Town paper—that’s Mary Latter’s South African tour.”
“You darling!” she said. “Are you so much interested in me—in my career,” she corrected herself with a blush, “as all that?”
“This is only the preamble,” I laughed. “Wait till we come to the important chapter: ‘Maeve O’Riorden in William Essex’s plays.’”
She took the big book in her slender hands, placed it upon the carpet, and turned the leaves. “There’s a terrible lot of pages,” she sighed. “I wonder shall we fill them all?” She lifted to mine the eyes swimming with emotion in her white face. “No one cares so much about me as you do,” she said. “You’ve wanted this from the beginning, haven’t you, as much as I have?”
“My dear, I’ve wanted it as much as I’ve ever wanted anything, except perhaps to see Oliver doing things that will make me as proud as you do.”
“Oh, Oliver.” She got up and placed the book on the table. “And what is Oliver going to do?”
“I don’t know. He’s away at school now.”
“Yes, I know. He’s fifteen, isn’t he?”
“Yes.”
“Older than I was when I went off with Mary Latter.”
“You mean—?”
“He’s having a jammy life, isn’t he?” She shrugged her shoulders with a faint dislike, then turned eagerly at the sound of footsteps on the stairs. “Livia!” She opened the door, and Livia Vaynol came in. “This is Uncle Bill,” said Maeve, “or, if you want to be reverent, William Essex.”
Livia Vaynol was the first woman I knew to wear short hair. As she came into the room she pulled off a leather motoring helmet and at the same time shook her hair free from constriction. The shake was hardly necessary, for the hair seemed of its own accord to ray out suddenly into a nimbus of spun gold round her head. I think that hair, which had its own startling quality of vitality, was the first thing anyone noticed about Livia Vaynol. It was the colour of corn, a gold that was almost white, yet sparkling and gathering to itself any light there was. Livia knew all about the attractiveness of that hair, and I was afterwards to discover that her favourite hat, whenever the occasion made it possible, was the simplest thing, fitting close to her head like a skull cap, allowing the hair to flow out all round it. Always the hat was of rich velvet: sometimes crimson, sometimes deep blue.
But at the moment there was no hat: there was nothing but that sudden apparition of the golden hair, so immediately impressive that I did not at once notice the broad white brow, the eyes that had the blue colour of a cornflower, the compassionate mouth, and the way the whole face fell down to the small pointed chin, so that it was shaped like the petal of a rose.
She was wearing a stained leather jerkin, and below that a tweed skirt and brogues. Her clothes seemed altogether too utilitarian for so decorative a person. We shook hands, and I said: “Miss Vaynol, you look like a fine flower in a jam-jar.”
“I’ve brought a suit-case with me,” she said, “containing one or two porcelain vases.”
Her red mouth opened in a smile, revealing the even whiteness of her teeth.
“Yes, Uncle Bill,” said Maeve, “you needn’t worry about that, if you’re thinking of taking us out to dinner. Livia’s a dressy young piece, though you’d hardly believe it to look at her now.”
“It certainly is my intention to take you out to dinner,” I said.
“Do you remember the first time I did that? The night we saw Irving and Ellen Terry? It seems a long time ago.”
“Ages.”
“And we drove home in a four-wheeler. You were asleep in my arms, with my coat pulled round you.”
“The child hasn’t forgotten it, Mr. Essex,” Livia said. “It’s a memory she treasures like a pearl. She’s told me about it. Don’t blush, Maeve, darling. I’d be as proud as Punch to have famous men tucking me up in their coats. I was brought up among stockbrokers. They never called themselves that, of course. They were ‘in the City.’ Wonderful life, isn’t it—buying something you’ve never seen from someone you’ve never met, and selling it for more than you gave for it to someone you’ve never heard of. Wonderful fellows. I’ve written a song about them. Like to hear it? You shall, anyway.”
Maeve, clearly, was used to the oddities of Miss Livia Vaynol. She was unsurprised by this sudden threat to break into song. For my part, though the time was to come when I should hear Livia’s songs before anyone else, I was perturbed when Livia’s voice broke into the silence of that Sunday afternoon in Victoria Park.
Livia’s voice was not good for singing, but the words amused me, and I congratulated her.
“Oh, a trifle,” she said airily. “First-fruits. You see the idea? Chorus girls with top hats, marching to and fro across the stage, carrying attaché-cases. There’s much more to come. I have great schemes for this young woman, Maeve O’Riorden.”
“But Maeve’s an actress, not a singer,” I protested. “’Pon my soul, Miss Vaynol, I’ve set my heart on making Maeve an actress for years past, and we can’t have you butting in and turning her into a ballad-singer.”
Livia made a gesture that I was to get to know as characteristic. She raised both hands to the golden fluff-ball of her hair and threw them up sharply as though she would toss the bright bubble into the air. “Poof!” she said. “An actress isn’t just a solemn hussy reciting someone else’s words. An actress must learn to do everything. She must dance, she must sing. Hasn’t Maeve told you about the dancing and singing?”
“No.”
“Oh, you don’t know half the tricks we’re up to. Yes, the child’s working. Singing, tap-dancing, everything. We’ll make her an all-rounder yet.”
I looked at Maeve questioningly. “It’s all true, Uncle Bill,” she said, “and I’m loving it. Can’t you imagine a big musical show, with everything for a leading lady?—singing, acting, dancing? I’d love that.”
Livia Vaynol patted her on the head. “Beware of this man,” she said in sepulchral tones. “I can see what he thinks is your Destiny. Sudermann, Ibsen, Strindberg. Perhaps even Shaw. Perhaps even himself. God alone knows. We’ll beat him yet.”
Then she laughed merrily and once more sent her hair flying with a “Poof!” “Anent tonight,” she said. “Let us be practical. Where do we sleep?”
“Ackers Street,” said Maeve. “Don’t forget I’m an old trooper. I know some rooms—”
“Ackers Street be damned,” I said. “You will both stay at The Beeches.”
*
For the first time since I had left it to drive to Wilmslow with Nellie and the Rev. W. Wilson Wintringham, I sat in my study. The girls were to share the bedroom that Nellie and I had used for so long. They were there changing now.
A maid had been left in charge of the house until I made up my mind what to do about it. I knew that I would not live in The Beeches again. There was no reason why I shouldn’t have left the nursing-home some time ago; but I was comfortable, well looked after, and there was room to spare. I might as well remain in the place till I left Manchester for good.
We hadn’t all been able to squeeze into Livia Vaynol’s car, so Martin had brought mine round. He was waiting now to take us to the Midland Hotel to dinner. I had not changed. Though I could get about now well enough with my sticks, and hoped to discard them soon, changing was a bore in my condition. I sat there waiting for the girls, as I had sat waiting for Maeve eight years before, that day when she and Rory had quarrelled in the garden about Standish O’Grady and his “poetry.”
I could hear, my door being open on to the landing, the girls laughing and talking in that room which for so long had known only the grim uncompromising presence of Nellie. The bedroom door opened, and Livia Vaynol came out alone. As I watched her cross under the landing lights, unselfconscious, not aware that I was watching her, her beauty came upon my heart with almost a physical shock. She was very tall and moved with a slow stateliness. Her dress was of blue velvet decorated with small stars of silver tinsel. I can’t decide to this day whether such a scheme was childish and a little tasteless. I only know that Livia carried it off, that the little stars seemed as she walked to wink against the night-blue fabric of the dress, and the pale globe of her hair was suspended moonily above the whole midsummer-sky creation. Her bare arms shimmered like milky ways.
I tried to get up, but at that moment she saw me, crossed the room in a few quick strides, and placed both hands on my shoulders. I think she must have felt the tremor which passed through me. She smiled, and said: “Please—don’t get up.”
She crossed over to the fireplace, where the light winked and danced on the stars of her dress. The book-case that Dermot had made to contain my novels was over the fireplace. They were all there now. The last had arrived a few days before, but it was not yet published. Livia ran her slender fingers along the titles. “What lovely editions,” she said. “I know them all.” And then, turning towards me: “I’m really very proud to know you. I suppose a lot of people tell you that?”
“Not many. I don’t know many people.”
“Forgive me for acting like a child when I first met you. I’m like that. One can’t be serious all the time, and I’m particularly liable to go silly when I meet someone I’m a little bit nervous of.”
“Yes, I realised that.”
“You would, of course.”
“But you seem quite self-possessed now. And very lovely. D’you mind my saying that?”
“Why should I?” she asked frankly. “If you really mean it.”
“I do.”
She sat down in a chair facing mine and crossed one knee over the other. The folds of velvet flowed down in regal lines from the hard round point of her knee. She swung her blue velvet slipper gently up and down and considered me thoughtfully. Her regard was so calm and inscrutable and prolonged that I found myself shifting uneasily in my chair, and I wondered whether I was blushing like a schoolgirl. Presently she said: “When I put my hands on your shoulders just now, you trembled. Why was that?”
What answer I should have made to that extraordinary question I do not know. But at that moment the bedroom door opened. Livia put a finger to her lips and whispered: “Here’s Maeve!” There was something conspiratorial about the gesture, something suggesting confidences between us that no one else must share, that gave me a queer thrill of satisfaction and pleasure.
Livia rose as Maeve came into the room and went to meet her with a frank smile. Now that they were both in their evening clothes, I saw how much taller than Maeve she was. Maeve had not changed her preference for crimson. Her dress fell in straight lines, giving her all the height it could, and this she had enhanced with a Spanish comb stuck in the back of her hair. But even so Livia out-topped her.
Maeve put her arm through Livia’s, and they stood there side by side, the crimson smouldering against the night-sky blue. “You’re lucky to have two such handsome wenches to take to dinner, Uncle Bill,” Maeve said; and as I got slowly to my feet I felt that that was true. “Nothing like it will be seen in Manchester this night,” I said. “Get your cloaks and let’s be off.”
*
We all three sat in the back seat. Maeve’s arm was through mine, and on the other side I could feel the warmth of Livia Vaynol’s thigh. We had not gone far when something familiar in the appearance of a cyclist who shot past us, head down, hatless, rather dishevelled-looking, caused me to twist and try to look through the small back window of the car. “Surely—surely,” I murmured, perplexed, “it can’t be!” but at the same moment Maeve’s grip on my arm tightened and she exclaimed: “Uncle Bill! Did you see that? Wasn’t that Oliver, or am I dreaming?”
I told Martin to turn back home. As the car pulled up at the gate, Oliver was wheeling his bicycle up the long garden path. “Stay here, my dear,” I said to Maeve, “and you too, Miss Vaynol. I shan’t be long.”
“No, indeed, I shan’t stay here,” Maeve exclaimed. “Good gracious! Boys don’t appear suddenly like that from a school miles away unless something serious is up. We’d better see what’s the matter. Where is Oliver’s school, by the way?”
“Fifty miles away. And hard going. Come, then.”
Oliver stood under the light in the hall, his face pale and drawn, his golden hair wind-blown about his forehead. He was wearing no hat or overcoat, and his clothes were mud-splashed. He was altogether a dreadful apparition. From childhood—and he was now fifteen—he had been finicky about his clothes. I had never seen him in such a condition. It struck me to the heart. The girls in their bright cloaks and I in my careful clothes stood round him in a wondering semi-circle. He was wearing flannel bags and an old tweed jacket. He thrust his hands into the jacket pockets and grinned at us rather sheepishly. “Hallo, Dad! Hallo, Maeve!” he said. “I feel rather—ashamed. You all look so gay.”
“This is Miss Vaynol,” I said. “My son Oliver.” The formality of it struck me as absurd.
Oliver and Livia Vaynol looked steadily at one another, and I had a strange feeling of exclusion—that Maeve and I were both excluded from that regard. Colour had ebbed back into Oliver’s cheek. His long hand made a conscious gesture as he brushed back the hair from his forehead. A smile came into his blue eyes. Then, to my surprise, he put into words the thoughts that had occurred to me when first I saw Livia Vaynol come out of her room that evening. “You look like a moon-girl, Miss Vaynol. ‘With how sad steps, O Moon, thou clims’t the sky.’ You’ll find that in Palgrave.”
This was all absurd, monstrous. “Oliver,” I said, “your presence requires some explanation.” I took him by the arm, and led him towards the stairs. “Maeve, would you mind putting in a call to this number?” I gave her the number of Oliver’s school. Then he and I went up the stairs to my study. At the turn of the landing I paused and looked down. Maeve was at the telephone. Livia Vaynol stood as if rooted to the ground, watching Oliver’s dragging progress. He smiled down at her, but she did not return the smile. She just stood there, one hand holding her cloak about her, watching him.
“That’s a marvellous girl, Dad,” he said as he came into the room.
“Sit down,” I said, unable to keep irritation out of my voice. “Would you rather discuss now what has brought you home, or wait till the morning? You must be exhausted.”
“I’m very tired,” he said. “I’ve been riding for hours. I came through a lot of rain.”
“You mean you don’t want to talk tonight? I can understand that. Hadn’t you better go straight to bed?”
“I’m very hungry,” he said, “and I’d like a bath.”
“Then you’d better have a bath quickly, and come with us. We’re going out to dinner.”
“Oh, may I?” he cried. “I didn’t expect that. That’s very good of you.”
The fact was, I didn’t want to let him out of my sight that night. I remembered the strained look of his face under the lamp. It was no time either to harass him or to leave him to his own devices.
“Well, get along and bath,” I said. “And remember, we discuss this first thing in the morning, seriously.”
He looked relieved, nodded, and went to the bathroom.
While he was bathing the telephone call came through. I told the headmaster that Oliver was at home, and begged him to excuse discussion of a grave matter by telephone. I would bring Oliver to school myself in the morning. The headmaster sounded grim, and reluctantly he left it at that.
The girls were hovering, restless and disturbed, about the hall. I took them to my study, where there was a fire. “What a beautiful boy!” Livia exclaimed, as she sank into a chair.
“Don’t waste your sympathy on him,” said Maeve with sudden surprising sharpness, and coming over to my chair she knelt at my feet and took both my hands in hers. “You poor darling,” she said. “It’s you—you look so worried. As if you hadn’t had enough to put up with lately. I do hope it’s nothing serious. Oh, dear! I couldn’t have a moment’s peace with Oliver. Forgive me for saying that?”
I nodded, squeezed her hands, and gazed rather miserably into the fire. We said nothing more, just sat there, till Oliver came into the room. With the happy ability of the young, he had recovered his poise and his looks. His face was shining; his hair, which he wore rather long, had been brushed and brushed till it glistened in the light. He had put on a suit of grey flannel with a double-breasted jacket and a bright tie and brown shoes. He at once addressed Livia Vaynol as though there were no one else in the room. “Father says I can come out to dinner with you!”
She did not answer him, but said to the rest of us: “Well, shall we go?”
She got up, and Oliver sprang to help her with her cloak. My leg had stiffened a little. Maeve helped me to my feet.
*
I was at The Beeches at nine the next morning. Maeve was in my study. “Isn’t Oliver up yet?” I asked her.
“No. Livia has just taken breakfast to his bedroom.”
“He’s fortunate.”
“Very,” Maeve said dryly.
Oliver was sitting up in bed, with a bright tousled head. Livia Vaynol was sitting on the edge of the bed, watching him eat, and he was doing that with great heartiness. She rose as I entered. “Is this the inquisition?” she asked sadly. I nodded, and she went dragging from the room.
I sat down in that easy chair wherein, so long ago, I had concealed the copy of The Cuckoo Clock which Oliver had stolen from Rory. The memory came back to me with a stab, and I feared to open the matter which had brought me there. Oliver did not help me. He went on delving into the shell of a brown egg.
“Livia prepared this breakfast, all by herself,” he said. “She told me. It’s good.”
“Livia?”
“Miss Vaynol. She said I was to call her Livia.”
I allowed that to pass. “Well—?” I began lamely.
“It was Grimshaw,” he said. “I’ve told you about him. I don’t like him.”
“Yes, you’ve told me about him, and I’ve met him. Don’t you remember—last half-term? He was put on to explain to parents some of the work his form was doing. I thought he was intelligent. He’s a scholarship boy, isn’t he?”
“Yes. His father’s a butcher in Wigan.”
“You should feel at home with him, seeing that your father was a baker’s boy in Hulme.”
Oliver flushed and glowered. “Well, go on. What happened between you and Grimshaw?”
“He’s always getting at me.”
“Getting at you? As I remember him, he’s a small weak boy.”
“Yes, that’s it. He thinks no one will hit him.”
“I see. There was a fight?”
“Not exactly. He was getting at me again, and I saw red, and before I knew what I was doing I kicked him—”
“You kicked that poor wretched child?”
Oliver burst out explosively. “Well, don’t you understand? I didn’t mean to. He makes me see red. It’s the way he gets at me.”
I summoned up the image of the small, spectacled Grimshaw, evidently with a waspish tongue that knew how to get under Oliver’s skin.
“Well?” I prompted him again.
“We were standing at the top of some steps—you know, the steps that lead down to that little courtyard behind the gymnasium. I kicked him in the shin and he went backward down the steps. Rawson was there, and he said: ‘Christ, Essex, you’ve killed the little sod.’ He lay quite still at the bottom of the steps, with blood on his face.”
I felt sick, took the tray off the bed to give myself something to do, and then sat down again.
“Well, everybody came crowding up. They took him into the san., and old Foxey”—who was Fox the headmaster—“went tearing along there. I hadn’t moved off the steps, and when Foxey came back he said as he passed me: ‘Come to my study in ten minutes.’ I couldn’t face it. That’s all.”
“I see. That’s all. Without knowing whether Grimshaw was alive or dead, you cleared out.” (But I didn’t imagine there was much the matter with Grimshaw, or Fox would have told me on the telephone.) “I am returning you to school this morning,” I said. “What do you say to that?”
“I’m glad. I ran away just like I kicked him—without thinking; but now I want to face it out.”
My heart gave an irrational leap of gladness when Oliver said that, fixing candid blue eyes upon me. I didn’t pause to consider that there was no option, that he would have to face it out whatever his views might be. “I’m delighted to hear that,” I said. “That’s the first decent spot in a rotten business.”
“But you do believe, don’t you,” he pleaded, “that I just acted thoughtlessly?”
“I must believe that, if you say so.”
“And you won’t tell Livia what happened?”
I didn’t want to spare him everything. “I should be ashamed to,” I said. “You’d better dress. We leave here at ten.”
*
The interview with Fox was not easy. He was not a very intelligent man; he had one or two half-baked social ideas, and I had found before this that in conversation he worked them to death. He was, or said he was, proud that most of his scholarship boys were tradesmen’s sons, and on every occasion he rubbed that in by a loud insistence on all his boys being treated alike. Why there should be any need to labour the point, why a butcher’s son should not be as estimable a young animal as a stockbroker’s or some other artful dodger’s, I could not make out.
Fox sat back in his big armchair and swung his pince-nez in a fashion which I think he must have observed in some statesman. “The fact is, you know, Mr. Essex, that Oliver think’s he’s somebody.”
“In itself, that’s a good thing to imagine,” I said. “So far as I can make out, the trouble in this case is that he’s not a big enough somebody. Young Grimshaw, I gather, has the secret of making him feel small—a nobody rather than a somebody.”
“Yes,” Fox consented, with a satisfied smile, “I have observed that my faith in tradesmen’s sons is more often justified than not. In the case of Grimshaw, there is certainly a gift for the telling phrase that a boy from any social stratum might envy. But what I mean,” he continued, putting on the pince-nez and looking at me over them with a preposterous solemnity, “is that Oliver seems to assume, because he is the son of a distinguished man, that he may, shall I say, take it out of a boy less fortunately circumstanced.”
“I entirely disagree,” I said. “I don’t think that has anything to do with it. If it had been the Prince of Wales, Oliver would have kicked him just the same. Don’t let’s get all wrapped up in theories about it. The facts are simple: there’s a boy with an annoying tongue; Oliver couldn’t stand his tongue, lost his temper, and kicked him. Now, whatever the provocation, it is agreed that kicking is a dirty trick, and what to me seemed worse than the kicking was the running away without discovering what were the consequences of the kick.”
“As you know, they were fortunately light. A bruise on the shin, a superficial cut on the head, a brief fainting.”
We were interrupted by a knock at the door. It was the father of young Grimshaw, who had received an alarmist report and seemed relieved that his son was little the worse. Mr. Grimshaw was a sturdy, hale-looking chap, and I gathered the impression that he was a better man than his son was likely to be. He shook hands with me without hesitation. “Ah’ve bin talking to yon young beggar of mine,” he announced to me and Fox, who seemed rather colder with tradesmen than with their scholarly offspring, “an’ Ah’ve told ’im if ’e can’t keep a civil tongue in ’is ’ead Ah’ll put ’im into t’butcherin’. ’E always was a one for lip. ’E’s tried it on wi’ me once or twice an’ Ah’ve given ’im a clip in t’lug. That soon stops ’im. Ah reckon your boy won’t be ’earin’ much more from ’im, Mr. Essex.”
I thanked Mr. Grimshaw for this very generous view of the matter, but explained to him that perhaps Mr. Fox could hardly be expected to see it in so simple a light. “I think when you came, Mr. Grimshaw, our conversation was just about to reach the question of what disciplinary action it might be necessary to take.”
Fox swung his spectacles and pursed his lips gravely, but Grimshaw burst in heartily: “Nay, it’d be a bloody shame if a boys’ rumpus led to all sorts of ’owdy-do...”
Fox interrupted stiffly: “It is Mr. Essex’s son who is now in question, Mr. Grimshaw. If you will please allow us...” and he rose and steered Grimshaw out of the room. “Well, don’t do anything daft,” I heard that forthright man expostulating as he disappeared down the corridor.
And Fox, I soon gathered, for all his pretended judicial weighing-up of the matter, was not going to do anything daft. There was some question of my joining the governing body of the school. I suppose my name would have looked well on the prospectus. Anyway, when I asked point-blank: “Do you want to expel Oliver, or would you like me to remove him from the school?” there was a lot of tut-tut-tutting and deprecation of over-hasty action. Some added discipline, no doubt, would meet the case. When I left, I was wondering not whether Oliver was good enough for Fox, but whether Fox was good enough for Oliver.
Oliver himself, in the school courtyard, was explaining to a group of admiring fellows, including young Grimshaw whose head sported a star of sticking plaster, that this was his father’s car and his father’s chauffeur.