18

Aida and Matthew Druce arrived in Melbourne in the spring. Letitia gave a party to meet them at Scudamore. She was officially the hostess. Her health was too delicate and her memory too bad for her to make any arrangements. These were attended to by Amy. All adult relatives, except the Sam Montforts, were invited. Caroline Blair came, and old Sophie, all Harry’s generation, and some of their sons and daughters. Letitia, in a white lace mantilla, sat in a chair to receive the guests. She was gracious and smiling, in a vague, pleased, uncertain way. There was a painful moment when she asked Caroline why Don Gomez never came to see her now. She sent him a playful rebuke.

Richard, determined to wrap himself in a defensive armour of indifference, arrived late with Mary Montfort, hoping that this would be the first step in the establishment of casual relations.

As he followed Mary into the Scudamore hall he was surprised at his own lack of emotion. He only had a mild curiosity to see Aïda, the same quiet interest that one would have on revisiting a scene of childhood.

He entered the drawing-room behind Mary, and crossed to the fireplace to greet Letitia. She could not remember his name, but when told it said: ‘Ah, yes, they were such a pretty pair.’ It was obvious to every one that she was thinking of Richard and Aïda.

Aïda, with her husband, was standing behind Letitia’s chair. Amy, who, though her expression was disagreeable, had a good social manner, came forward and introduced Mary.

‘This is your little cousin Mary, not so little, now. I wonder if you would have recognized her. Richard, of course, you have met more recently.’

Amy gave Richard a bleak dutiful smile, and turned to some other guests.

Richard found himself shaking hands with Aïda, and at her touch all his mild curiosity had fled. He looked into her eyes and felt a kind of singing in his brain, and along his veins a throb of pleasure, such as he had not known during all the years of their parting. She had always had this power to stir in him an appreciation of the mere fact of existence.

Even without Amy’s reference, each at this moment would have been conscious of their last hour together in the broken loophole. The Victorian drawing-room, with its Brussels carpet, its pink and black chintzes and water-colours and glass chandeliers, their chattering relatives in leg-o’-mutton sleeves, their ancient grandmothers, all had faded and left only themselves, sighing, entwined, amid the creeping roses and the crumbling stones.

‘Richard,’ she said. Then she seemed to be aware of her surroundings. ‘Matthew, this is my Cousin Richard. We are sort of twins, you know, born on the same day.’

Richard’s sudden pleasure at meeting Aïda was followed by a slight resentment, partly against her, and partly against the short, mild professor at her side. The knowledge that he had no right to this feeling increased its bitterness. He had done nothing to win Aïda. She could not be expected to waste her life because of an abortive youthful romance.

He turned to shake hands with Matthew Druce. Aïda’s husband was a short fair man of about thirty-three, something like an old child. His sandy hair was like a boy’s hair, and fell over his forehead, but his face was colourless and rather sunken. He greeted Richard with a bright, perfunctory smile, and then lapsed into a nervous, wondering scrutiny of the twenty or more ‘in-laws’ who had come to inspect him. He had been wondering what such a congregation of related Australians could possibly be like, but they seemed very ordinary and he was relieved, though still anxious to escape, especially when Sim came. Sim, large, red, and bald, and noticeably well-dressed, seemed to fill the room. He came in, greeted Letitia and cast suspicious glances at the Allmans.

He had come partly to see Aïda, and partly on principle, to ‘place’ a new addition to the clan. He stayed for ten minutes, five of which were spent in a genealogical examination of Druce. He asked him if he were of the Derbyshire Druces, and expressed obvious disgust that he was not.

Matthew Druce knew no more of his antecedents than that his grandfather had been a surgeon in Oxford, whose son had gone to Magdalen Grammar School, and had won a scholarship to Jesus College.

Richard spoke to Aïda once during the afternoon. They were standing apart from the crowd.

‘Are you coming to see me?’ she asked.

He stroked the leaves of a fine, variegated aspidistra, of which Letitia was particularly proud. He did not think that he should visit Aïda, not if she were alone. Somehow, it did not seem honourable. But he could not refuse if she asked him.

‘May I come on Friday?’

‘Friday will do very well.’

Jane came up and demanded that Aïda should sit by her and tell her all the news. Richard followed her with his eyes as she crossed the room. There had been a kind of hardness between them, a mutual reproach, as if each blamed the other for destroying some common possession, a possession they desired to recover, but were unwilling to admit their desire.

Friday was a bright, windy spring day. Along the drive of Scudamore, rows of daffodils bent and rustled in the breeze. Near the house a wattle, in full bloom, was waving above a bed of violets. The sharp air was full of the scent of spring flowers. A coachman was pacing his horses slowly up the drive. The cold bright sunlight caught the harness and the polished fittings of the carriage. Richard noticed that it was the Blair carriage. He frowned. Probably Mrs. Blair would be with Aïda. He admitted to himself that he wanted to see her alone. He had not thought ahead of that.

As he arrived at the porch a maid came out and beckoned to the coachman. She was followed by Caroline, who shook hands and stood talking about the weather while her carriage drove up. With age her nose had become more aquiline. Her eyes were very dark, and her white hair was dressed high, like Princess Alexandra’s.

The maid waited till she had driven away.

‘Her ladyship isn’t up to-day, sir,’ she said.

‘I called to see Mrs. Druce.’

‘Yes, sir.’

She led the way into the drawing-room and announced him. Aïda was standing by the fire.

‘You’ve just missed Aunt Caroline.’

‘No. I met her at the door.’

‘Where will you sit?’

He chose a chair away from the fire. They both seemed on the defensive, taking security in a formality of manner. They were silent for a moment. Aïda sat on a stool to stir the fire. Richard watched her. He knew that he had only to see her for a few days for him to be more desperately, hopelessly in love with her than ever. If he were to leave her now, he would take with him a regret, a heartache perhaps for what might have been, more than for the actual pain of parting. She appeared to him more attractive than before. Her body still had its grace, if anything of greater perfection. Her skin had that warmth, that glowing life which had never failed to stir his senses. And now she had the mind of a woman. There was more of her to love and to be loved.

Through sheer inactivity he had lost her. He began to blame Sim and Jane for spoon-feeding him all his life, for not teaching him to make any effort on his own behalf. But Aïda had given him no encouragement. She had not answered his letters. She could not have cared. He was hurt and wanted to hurt her.

‘You were not a very good correspondent,’ he said.

‘No. I can’t write letters.’

‘You used to write when I was in England.’

‘I had seen you more recently. It is so hard to write to a person whom one has not seen for a long time. They don’t know one’s environment. A letter then is only a kind of statement that one has not forgotten. Its matter can hardly be of interest.’

‘Then my letters were not interesting to you?’

‘I didn’t say that. You have the gift of writing interesting letters. I tried once or twice to write as you do but the result was silly. Then I felt foolish and didn’t write at all.’

‘Not even to say that you hadn’t forgotten. You had, I suppose.’

She did not answer.

‘Did you only come to see me to reproach me?’ she asked after a pause.

Again there was a hardness in her voice, a hardness assumed to protect herself from pain.

He wanted to pierce her armour. For the moment that was his only concern.

‘I loved you, Aïda,’ he said, ‘more than I ever loved any one. In fact, I never did love any one else. I don’t think you have treated me very well.’

‘How have you treated me?’

He gave in under the counter-attack.

‘I know,’ he said humbly, ‘I’m sorry. But I had no money.’

‘No.’ She accepted the explanation as natural. None of the young men she had known in Europe had worked.

‘You see,’ she added. ‘If I had not married Matthew I should now be alone in that horrible castle. It’s no good having recriminations.’

‘Why d’you say “horrible castle”? I thought you loved it. I thought it a beautiful place.’ Again he was a little bitter.

‘You don’t know then? No, of course not. I thought Cousin Sim might have known and have told you. Mother had always been afraid of father. I don’t know why. He was always perfectly considerate of her before us, but she seemed terrified of him. I think she haled him. I have seen her staring at him with a kind of horror across the dinner table. He was very fond of Jimmy and Jimmy was devoted to him. He doesn’t care much for me, I think because I am not Catholic. Mother and I always felt outsiders. She used to come into my room sometimes at night, and sit there saying nothing, holding my hand. Then she would kiss me and perhaps give a little shudder before going off to the great gloomy bedroom she shared with father. She was dreadfully anxious for me to marry an Englishman, and when we met Matthew in Madrid, and he was attentive to me, she begged me to marry him. I held out for some time, but she was so urgent and there seemed no reason why I shouldn’t, and at last I gave in. Mother seemed tremendously relieved, out of all proportion to the occasion it seemed to me. Matthew came out in the Easter vacation and we were married at the British Embassy. When mother said goodbye to me after the wedding, she was terribly upset. I never saw her again. I am sure she killed herself. I have never heard of her sleep-walking before.’

‘Good God!’ Richard said quietly.

Aïda showed no emotion.

‘I thought I might as well tell you how things happened,’ she said.

‘Aïda!’

She looked up, into his eyes.

‘Then you hadn’t forgotten.’

‘No. I hadn’t forgotten.’

‘But we have to forget now, I suppose.’

Aïda shrugged her shoulders. That was like Richard. He would break down her defences and then remember his honour.

‘You are cruel.’

The atmosphere was tense. The door opened, they both looked up quickly, and a maid announced Mrs. Riley.

Dora fluttered into the room. Since her marriage her clothes had become gayer. She gave the impression of having pinned odd tufts of feathers and flowers about her person as irresponsibly as one would decorate a church. Wisps of fair hair stuck out from under her bonnet. She stood staring at them with her rather vacant eyes, and then said:

‘Oh—er—I’m interrupting. I’ll go up and see Grantie.’

Dora’s tact was always advertised and labelled. Her whole manner and intonation drew attention to the fact that she was being tactful. ‘Grantie,’ a corruption of ‘Great-auntie,’ had been their childish name for Letitia. Dora was the only one who clung to it.

‘There is no need to go,’ said Aïda.

‘Oh, yes, I’ll go,’ Dora replied with a mixture of archness and self-abnegation, and she left the room.

Dora had relieved the tension. When she had gone they turned to each other with a smile at her faint absurdity. This shared amusement at a third person adjusted the atmosphere and left them with a mutual understanding, and something of their old untroubled content in each other’s society.

They continued to sit apart, talking of ordinary things, of the alternations to Melbourne, of how they had spent their days since their last meeting.

Letitia became tired of Dora, and hearing that Richard was down-stairs, sent her to fetch him for five minutes’ conversation. Dora remained with Aïda.

She did not look at her, but as she spoke glanced out of the window, or at the carpet. The pretty confusion of her dress was indicative of the confusion of her mind. She knew of Richard’s and Aïda’s earlier attachment and her sentimentality made her regretful of its apparent ending. Therefore she had tactfully left them alone together. Now from the litter of her mind she sorted out the notion that a married woman should not be alone with a former sweetheart. ‘Sweetheart’ was the word she used to herself.

Aïda had moved composedly in high European society, where all kinds of strange things happened, where every one had that assured manner which terrified Dora. Dora felt in her presence much as a Methodist Sunday-school teacher might feel in that of an urbane Cardinal. And now, though by all the rules of Katie Seymour she should be disapproving of Aïda, she was so nervously anxious to appease this being from another sphere, that she talked all the time about Richard.

But when Richard came down she offered to drive him home in her pony chaise. As the Methodist might with the Cardinal, she attributed every possibility of evil to Aïda, and was afraid that if she left him there any longer, there might be an immediate scandal. Dora thought that she was being very tactful in offering to drive Richard home. An impressment in her manner registered tact.

‘I don’t think that I’ll come yet,’ said Richard.

Dora was importunate.

Richard opened the door for her. She went out almost tearfully, with a sense of impending disaster. Matthew might return and find them embracing each other. He might shoot Richard. Her mind always leaped to extremes.

When she had gone Richard turned to Aïda. Both knew what Dora had been thinking, and knew that it was only the first silly but significant cloud of the storm which would burst if they were to see much of each other. The contentment of the previous hour was troubled by a touch of hunger, a hunger caused by the knowledge of the barriers between them, which were not of their own building. Matthew Druce as a man to be loved had completely faded from Aïda’s mind. Now he returned to it, but only as an obstacle.

They sat for a long time, holding each other’s hands, until it grew dark, and a maid came in to light the gas and attend to the fire.