Mrs. Egerton

‘A pleasant house to stay in,’ thought Mr. Duncan Chartres. It seemed to glow with a dark patina, as though life had polished it through many years. The austere furniture, the bits of brocade and enamelled snuff-­boxes, the very dovecot in the paved court, seemed symbolic. They had a message to convey. If only, thought Mr. Duncan Chartres wistfully, he himself had struck deeper roots into life, he might have been able to receive it. This feeling of his had something to do with Mrs. Egerton herself. There seemed to be a story going on in the house which he couldn’t unravel. It was tantalising, like a design in a tapestry that had been worked only in places. Perhaps he, too, was part of the pattern. One thing was certain, the figure which symbolised Mrs. Egerton was an integral part. You could see that she was the tall queen in the centre of the picture; but whether Leila Barrow’s fantastic face would look out of the woof, or the cloven hoof of Mr. Prinsep print a mark on the sward, or the small, sharp visage of Virginie Toussaint peer from a turret window, you couldn’t tell.

He had met Mrs. Egerton’s husband moth-­hunting in Switzerland and had received a casual invitation to visit him some day at a house in the Cotswolds. The name was vaguely familiar. Then he remembered that a girl he used to know had married a clergyman somewhere in those parts. It would be odd if he came across her. Odd, and perhaps a little disconcerting.

But when he arrived and found that it was like a house in a book, when he had sniffed its subtle aroma, he knew that such a meeting was unlikely. And Mrs. Egerton, the hostess, with her black hair parted in the middle and her profile that was like the curve of the young moon, how she teased you with her resemblance to something once seen and now forgotten! Her silk wrap, which was sometimes twined about her but was oftener found lying over a chair, or on the stairs, or out in the garden, seemed so instinct with her personality that it was an adventure to pick it up. Its soft, warm texture and the fragrance of lilac which clung about it, stayed in the memory long after one had restored it to her.

If Mrs. Egerton praised a book to you, you found in it new meanings and a stranger beauty than you had discovered for yourself. She had that sort of power.

He liked to watch her measuring the tea out of an elegant, polished canister inlaid with a golden shell. The blue flame under the spirit-­kettle seemed to be part of a spell she was preparing. The tea tasted faintly of blackberries, or perhaps it was the little spray of bramble on the yellow cups which made you think so.

And if you said—‘what delicious tea!’ she never replied—‘It’s so much a pound. I get it at Fortnum’s,’ like all other hostesses.

She said—‘A friend of mine sends it from China. It comes in a painted chest. And sometimes he sends a little poem about a white heron, or a lover who walks in the snow, so it ought to be nice tea.’

Whenever she said ‘a friend of mine’, her eyelids, which were like magnolia petals, drooped over her eyes, and you couldn’t help thinking that the friend must be a rare sort of person, someone very fastidious and difficult to know, who would tell her Chinese fairy tales.

Mr. Duncan Chartres found himself wishing he had something very special to confide in her. But there was nothing at all. His few love-­affairs, which had once seemed so poignant, dwindled here into mere suburban flirtations, tallow-­dips in the light of the full moon. He was ashamed to remember the occasional heartache he still indulged in after a dream of Hester Dale. Dreams are queer. After seven years or so, a woman you scarcely give a thought to now in your waking hours will stab you to the heart with some forgotten look or gesture.

‘She did care after all. Perhaps the truth is that I hurt her mortally,’ you think. You remember her little childish wrists and that she was frightened of thunderstorms and that she once sent you a pot of heliotrope on your birthday.

But it doesn’t last, you know. Morning comes, and by the time you have shaved, any sweetness in the thought of Hester Dale has evaporated. You had been angry with her for years. She used to laugh at the wrong things, and her hair was always untidy. She married a curate.

One didn’t talk to a Mrs. Egerton of things like that. Only very deep and true things could be confided to those delicate ears. What was there deep and true in his life?

In the presence of the depths and subtleties of the people in this house, he felt like Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. Those girls with smooth, parted hair, who sat on the sofa and talked in low tones to Mrs. Egerton, were lovely and strange. Yes, even the plain ones achieved in that atmosphere some exotic spiritual beauty. They had an air as though poems had been laid at their feet. Numerous letters came for them with foreign postmarks. They smiled secretly at breakfast over their letters, turning over the thin, closely-­written sheets with their long fingers.

Mr. Duncan Chartres had only circulars, and perhaps a letter-­card from his sister at Hornsey. Life, he thought with a sigh, had passed him by.

Then he remembered the bluebells in the beech wood. He would go there and paint, and forget all about luncheon. As these people so often did, when they practised quartettes in the drawing-­room. In the Chartres family, one never forgot one’s meals; but here they were so absent-­minded that it was sometimes difficult to get enough to eat. It often happened that at one o’clock, when the gong was punctiliously sounded by a long-­suffering servant, none of the house-­party, except Mr. Chartres patiently attentive in the hall, his hands smelling pleasantly of scented soap, was to be found. He would wish on these occasions for some business so engrossing that the common needs of life might be forgotten.

They were writing love-­letters, he supposed, or reading poetry or practising the violin, leading their darkly-­glowing lives with a beautiful and passionate sincerity. Whilst he stood merely waiting and listening to the old clock measuring out second by second the span of life.

But once in the beech wood, that sense of his inability to extract the magic out of the hours left him.

He stepped very carefully into the lake of blue, found a clear space under a tree, and sat down. Shafts of sunlight fell through the green tent over his head. He looked up into that strange green heaven of light, and wished he were a bird to inhabit so majestical, so emerald, a house. A gold bee blundered out of the haze, and a thrush burst into rapture somewhere out of sight. Waves of sweetness assailed his senses. He was drowned in light and fragrance and dew. He closed his eyes and sat very still. After a while he sighed and drew out his sketch book.

Many people have painted bluebells and a few have essayed poems in praise of their beauty, but no one yet appears to have captured their peculiar grace. Mr. Chartres was scarcely aware, so exalted his mood, that he was about to perpetrate another bad water-­colour sketch of a bluebell wood. He opened his paint-­box and surveyed the colours. Cobalt, rose-­madder, a touch of Chinese white, of cerulean blue. The hours passed like minutes. His shoes were wet with dew and last night’s rain-­drops slipped over the beech leaves on to his coat. A careless bird splashed his hat, and it seemed a delicate little attention.

He held out his sketch and looked at it. That beech tree on the left, with the silver ripples on its sleek grey skin, was delicious, and the group of little birches on the right provided the proper balance. Greatly daring, he proceeded to wash in the bluebells. When he looked at his watch it was half-­past two. He rose and stretched himself with a feeling of great elation. But he knew the deceptive nature of pictures. They play you tricks. Look at them when the mood has passed, and you find too often that the lustre has departed. Like shells out of the deep, they lose their faery hues when the light-­bestowing dews have dried. But perhaps this one, unlike all the rest, would keep the tints of ecstasy. Perhaps he might even dare to show it to Mrs. Egerton. His heart beat faster at the thought.

They were having tea on the lawn when he returned. The girl with the rather large nose whose name he found it hard to remember was teasing Leila Barrow about her vellum book. Mr. Chartres quailed at her daring. It was well known that her mysterious book was one of the subjects which must not be touched on with Miss Leila Barrow. It was tied up with a silver cord in a rather difficult knot. Sometimes one came on her writing in it in an empty room, and if one did not immediately beat a retreat, she closed it with a snap and got up and went away. But of course one soon got to know a little thing like that, and took care never to disturb her when she was alone. No one had ever found the book untied.

Mr. Chartres had heard much speculation, in Leila’s absence, as to its contents, but hitherto no one had ventured so far as he was aware, to speak of it to Leila herself.

Mr. Prinsep, particularly, was very curious about it. ‘Do you think,’ he had asked the girl with the large nose whom they sometimes called Augusta—but her real name, as Mr. Chartres occasionally called to mind, was Miss Virginie Toussaint—‘that she has ever shown it to Mrs. Egerton?’

‘Everyone, sooner or later,’ said Augusta, ‘tells a secret to Mrs. Egerton. It’s as safe as whispering it down a well.’

‘Innumerable people confide in me, too,’ said Mr. Prinsep. ‘Would it surprise you very much if she let me see that book one day?’

‘Yes,’ said Augusta, mercilessly, with a swift, sideways glance at his profile; and you could tell from that look that she, too, thought he had a goatish face.

Sometimes he read his poems to them in the evenings. And Mrs. Egerton listening with her rapt look would have tears in her eyes. But Leila Barrow once said privately to Mr. Chartres afterwards—‘It isn’t great poetry: it comes from his head. He is clever, you know, at gathering up the fragments spilled from the hearts of real poets.’

‘Some exquisite lines,’ murmured Mr. Chartres, remembering Mrs. Egerton’s face.

‘Um-­m-­m. Synthetic,’ said Leila, with her belittling smile. That was why he thought her vellum book must be very interesting. But he would as soon have asked to have a look at it as to have asked her for a kiss. There was something fierce and virginal and secret in her air. A man might snare Leila Barrow, but he would never really possess her. As well marry a moonbeam, thought Mr. Chartres, as a woman whose thoughts are secret and inviolate.

When, then, Augusta, in her rather harsh voice spoke of the book to Leila, Mr. Chartres looked at her in a hurried, furtive way.

But Leila was perfectly calm, even smiling a little.

She looked across at Mr. Chartres, who was waiting to be asked if he had got lost, waiting for some sign that he had been missed from the luncheon table. But none came.

‘We have been talking of El Greco,’ she said. But whether to turn the conversation or to bring him into it, he couldn’t tell.

‘It is very important,’ said Augusta, ‘to know people’s attitude towards El Greco before establishing relations with them.’

‘Tea?’ asked Mrs. Egerton, with her far-­away look. She handed him a cup with a little fleeting smile.

‘Dear,’ said Augusta, putting her head on one side and looking at Mrs. Egerton in her quizzical way, ‘you do remind me of a flower we used to call Black-­eyed Susan.’

‘It is curious,’ said Mr. Prinsep, ‘the number of things Mrs. Egerton reminds people of.’

‘It must be very pleasant,’ Mr. Chartres interjected nervously, ‘to remind people of flowers.’

He wanted them to go on talking of Mrs. Egerton. It was so illuminating to discover the effect she had on others. What did the text books say of Helen of Troy and the old men at the gates?

‘Yes—or trees. The most charming people I know call trees to mind—like Leila,’ said Mrs. Egerton. Her dark eyes dwelt on Leila, tenderly. ‘She is a willow in springtime. There is a pale haze of loveliness about her, and some of last year’s dark leaves . . . like old dreams.’

Leila sat smiling, her black lashes veiling those green eyes which were the colour of peridots. Flattery in no way embarrassed her. Mr. Chartres thought she didn’t really deserve admiration so exquisite. She was too sophisticated, proud and disdainful. No one was important enough to be told her thoughts. If she said anything, she said it gingerly, off the tip of her tongue, as though she told you—‘You can have that much from me’—as one throws a few scraps to a dog.

But her real thoughts were locked in her secret little heart, or maybe confided to her mysterious book.

Mr. Chartres had treasured for some days now her remark about Mr. Prinsep’s poetry. He couldn’t help feeling a little proud that she had said that to him about the hearts of poets.

He was feeling most happy, with his sketch book tucked under his chair, almost as if he had already gained the freedom of the proud city in which they all seemed to dwell. He, too, had forgotten a meal and gone out into the wilderness to be alone. He had found ecstasy. He had never been so happy in his life. When he came back, Mrs. Egerton had smiled at him as if she knew what celestial business he had been about. So elated was he that he dared to hope he was already of the elect company of her friends; that when he had gone, she might speak of him, too, as ‘a friend of mine’, and droop her eyelids.

Presently they all drifted away, and left him alone with her. It was the moment for which he had been waiting. He stooped and felt under his chair.

‘Mrs. Egerton,’ he began. But she was strumming a little tune on the table with her fingers. ‘That phrase,’ she said, ‘how it haunts me.’

He was rather red in the face from stooping, as he leaned towards her and said in a confidential way—‘Mrs. Egerton, I’d like to show you . . .’

‘Excuse me—one moment . . . I must catch Burgess about those bulbs.’ She got up and trailed away across the lawn, leaving her wrap on the grass.

Mr. Chartres sat quite still. His heart slowed down to a quieter beat and he felt exaltation ebbing from him, as colours fade from the sunset.

If only she had been a little less absent-­minded, he would have shown her his picture. He would have said . . . oh, things he had never told a mortal soul. (Surely he would have been inspired to find them to tell.)

He turned over the pages of his book and looked at his sketch.

It brought back with a rush those blue and green hours in the wood. How people got between you and your felicity! Only one person, he thought, and for some obscure reason tears sprang to his eyes, one person alone had had the gift of effacing herself behind beauty. Hester Dale. Perhaps real happiness is only to be found with the people you are not afraid of, people as colourless as water—water which reflects nothing but beauty? Only Hester, lost Hester, could have entered that quiet shrine without disturbing a leaf.

And he knew then that his picture was not for Mrs. Egerton’s dark, abstracted gaze; for none of the bright alien eyes in this house.

He imagined Hester in a dress she used to wear long ago—a white dress with blue squares. He showed her the picture. ‘What do you think of it?’ he asked her, carelessly. (It didn’t matter, really, what she thought.)

‘Oh, Duncan, I like it!’ she said, with her nervous little laugh, putting up her small freckled hand to her untidy hair. And the pupils of her eyes dilated as she looked at the picture, so that they grew dark and strange. No one had such betraying eyes as Hester, with the queerest capacity for growing from light to dark.

In his imagination, Hester’s eyes grew into pools of darkness, and her nostrils twitched delicately (strange, how one remembers the odd little tricks of a woman after years and years), as she put her head on one side and looked at the picture.

‘Oh, Duncan, it’s so . . . so . . . dewy,’ she said, at length, ‘and, you know, you’ve got that wet, silver look that sunlight has in a wood in the spring. And the bluebells . . . Oh, dear! They make one faint with bliss.’

‘I knew you would understand, Hester. I wish I could see you again. But you wouldn’t be happy in this house. I couldn’t see you, you candid child, with those sophisticated people—Oh, they are very charming, my dear; the kind of women one reads about in books, or sees on the stage. I’d always dreamed of marrying a woman like that, but until now I never met one. I’ve been lonely, working in the City, living in Hornsey. No one has ever talked the same language, cared for the things I’ve cared about. Not you, Hester. Though you had something these others lack. Sympathy, my dear. You were really rather sweet.

‘I am afraid I hurt you pretty badly. But you went off with your golden head held high. You never gave a sign, did you? Oh, that riled me! I said—“Trivial little thing, she’s incapable of feeling,” and gritted my teeth . . .’

At this moment, Mrs. Egerton came back over the lawn, her arm linked in a strange woman’s; and that faintly-­golden phantom, Hester Dale, faded away.

‘Another siren,’ thought Mr. Duncan Chartres. Under the curve of a wide country hat, he saw a gleam of yellow hair.

He felt tired and lonely, sitting by the deserted tea-­table, and hungry too. No one wanted to see his water-­colour. No one cared what he thought. Their own lives, their own thoughts, were so rich and strange, what had he to offer that could possibly interest them?

He gathered up his things and retreated into the house, walking, rather absurdly, on tip-­toe.

‘Who is that?’ said the golden-­haired woman, stopping short. ‘He walks like someone I used to know.’

‘Oh, a queer little fellow my husband picked up. Percival,’ said Mrs. Egerton, ‘makes mistakes, and I suffer for them.’

‘Is his name Chartres?’

‘Why, yes, I believe it is. Something of the kind,’ said Mrs. Egerton. ‘But I can’t speak of funny little men on an evening like this.’ She flung her arms wide, as if to embrace the dreaming hour.

‘Such beauty,’ she said, ‘it’s almost too much for frail humanity to bear. One craves to be—why, what else but just immortal spirit?’

The other, her face very fair and innocent under the wide curves of her country hat, smiled up at Mrs. Egerton.

‘Yes,’ she said, gently, ‘I know.’

‘My dear,’ said Mrs. Egerton, ‘you are such a rest to me. There is no one to whom I so unburden my heart.’

As she said good-­bye at the gate, the visitor glanced up for a moment at the windows. But Mr. Duncan Chartres was busy packing his sketch away at the bottom of his trunk. He didn’t know that just at that moment life was taking some notice of him. He didn’t guess how delicately ironical it was being at his expense.