The Edwardians (26 page)

She paused for breath after rapidly delivering this little speech. She clutched the cloak about her and fixed Sebastian with a distressed but courageous gaze. “I don't want to hurt you,” she said more gently, “but I must tell you exactly how it is. I suppose it is as difficult for you to understand our ideas as it is for us to understand yours. I know what you are thinking—you are disgusted with me, and you are wondering why you ever wasted your time over a conventional little
bourgeoise
like me. To tell you the truth, I used to wonder too. To tell you even more of the truth, I knew I attracted you and I was pleased. But I never took it seriously. If I had taken it seriously I should have told John at once. But I didn't take it seriously, and anyway I was weak, because you represented everything I had always longed for. I am being so frank with you because I want you to understand. Perhaps I never really thought about it very much; I was so excited about you, and when you asked me to Chevron I nearly died of joy. There, now, you know all the depths of my silliness. You were offering me sweets, and I took them. But I love John, and he's my husband.”

“And if you did not love him?” asked Sebastian curiously.

“It would still be the same,” said Teresa; “marriage is marriage, isn't it?—not in your world, perhaps, but in mine—and I should hold on to that. Not one of my relations would ever speak to me again if I were unfaithful to John. Surely you must know that?”

Sebastian could not sympathise with these sentiments. He had acknowledged her dignity when she first spoke, but now she seemed to have switched over from something fundamental to something contemptible. Love was one thing; middle class virtue was another. This was as bad as Sylvia Roehampton, who could sacrifice him and herself to her social position. Sebastian was angry, because he saw his caprice broken against a rock. Was he never to find moral courage anywhere in the world, he demanded? It now seemed to him that that was the only quality worth having. (Reference has already been made, perhaps too frequently, to the intemperate nature of his moods.) He had tried the most fashionable society, and he had tried the middle class, and in both his plunging spirit had got stuck in the glue of convention and hypocrisy. The conventions differed—Sylvia had not hesitated to give herself to him—but the hypocrisy remained the same. He raved and stormed. He tried anger, only too unfeigned; and he tried persuasion, but neither could move Teresa. She was grieved, she was sorry, but she was softly stubborn; she even appeared incapable of understanding half he said. Indeed, he poured out such a torrent that no one but himself could have followed his arguments; no one, that is, who had not grown up as he had grown up, with the sense of being caught and condemned to a prearranged existence; who had not alternately struggled against his bonds and then drawn them tighter around him; who had not loved his good things and despised himself for loving them; who had not tried to solace himself with pleasures and with women who meant nothing to him; who had not wavered, in unhappy confusion, between an outward rôle that was almost forced upon him, and the inward passion for Chevron that was the one stable and worthy thing in his life. It was not surprising that Teresa should be puzzled by the abuse that he poured upon her or by the bitterness that he heaped upon himself.

The big clock, striking overhead, abruptly reminded her of her absence. What would John think, what would they all think? she cried. “We must go,” she cried, tugging at him; she was frightened now by this scene that had taken place between them; she only wanted to get back to safety and to John. “Do come,” she implored. Sebastian would not move; he leant against the window sill, looking wild and indifferent to earthly pleadings. “Please!” she cried childishly; and desperately added, “I can't leave you here alone, but I must get back.” She made the only appeal that meant anything to her; it was an unfortunate choice. “Do think of me,” she said; “think of John, think of my reputation.” At that Sebastian laughed. The contrast between her plea and his own feelings was—or seemed to him—too ironically discrepant. “Your reputation?” he said; “what does your reputation matter? You timid, virtuous wife!” The inner knowledge that he was behaving not only badly but histrionically increased his obstinacy. He was acutely ashamed of himself, since, for the first time in his life, he saw himself through other eyes; and saw his selfishness, his self-indulgence, his arrogance, his futile philandering, for what they were worth. Still he would not give way. He was as childish as she; for he was in what Wacey would have called a Regular State; and when people get into Regular States all the problems of their life rise up and join forces with their immediate sorrow. He had wanted Teresa; he had been thwarted by Teresa; so he remembered that he had wanted Sylvia and had been thwarted by Sylvia, and so by a natural process he had remembered everything else—Chevron, and his hatred of his friends, and the shackles that had been tied round him like ribbons in his cradle, and the sarcasm of Leonard Anquetil. “You shan't go,” he said, making a movement towards Teresa.

She escaped him; she fled out of the beautiful room, leaving her cloak where it fell, lying in a pool of moonlight. Sebastian stared at it after she had gone. Its wrinkled gold was turned to silver. Its sable lining was as dark as the shadows within the great bed. It was as empty and as crumpled as everything that he had ever desired.

Five years had passed,
when, for the second time in this chronicle, but for probably the thousandth time in her life, Lucy again poured out her heart to Miss Wace. But it was in a mood of hopefulness, not of despair, that she now sought Wacey in the schoolroom. “I really think something may come of it, Wacey!” she said in triumph, but sinking her voice as though she feared lest some malignant spirit should overhear. “They were playing tennis together all yesterday afternoon, and now he has taken her for a walk in the park. Don't you think that looks as though he intended something? You know how he hates girls as a rule. Of course, I daren't ask him. If I did, he might kick up his heels and be off. He might go and join Viola, or worse. You know how he hates to be watched or questioned. He might ruin all our hopes. She's a nice girl, Wacey. Not pretty, but perhaps that's all the better. She's well-born enough to make up for any lack of looks; she's docile, and quite obviously she adores him. And I daresay I could do something about her clothes, once her old frump of a mother is out of the way. Why don't you say anything, Wacey? You're as dumb as a fish.”

Lucy took herself off to Mrs. Levison, leaving Miss Wace to mourn the prospective bride's homely appearance. All her hopes of a Radiant Young Couple were vanishing. The girl was definitely plain, and Miss Wace could not believe that Sebastian was in love with her. There was a great difference between Radiant Young Couples and Settling Down. Sebastian meant to settle down. That was Miss Wace's reading of it. She sighed.

Mrs. Levison took a more sensible point of view. “If I were you, Lucy,” she said, “I should be delighted. You'll never have any trouble with that girl, and that's about the best one can say of any daughter-in-law. I don't see why you shouldn't continue to live here after they're married. You know quite well that you wouldn't like to leave Chevron, Lucy, and the alternative would be the Dower House or Sir Adam. You've never been able to make up your mind about Sir Adam in all these years, and now you may be glad you didn't. If you play your cards cleverly you may get everything your own way. Sebastian doesn't seem to notice much what happens—I sometimes think, you know, that Sylvia did him more harm than any of us realised at the time—and the girl will never dare to lift a finger against you. She'll have her babies to keep her quiet. She looks a good breeder,” said Mrs. Levison, coarsely, “and I daresay Sebastian will make her thoroughly miserable, so between motherhood and worry she oughtn't to give you much trouble.”

“You always had a lot of good sense, Julia,” said the duchess.

“Whereas,” continued Mrs. Levison, developing her theme, “a lively, pretty daughter-in-law would put your nose completely out of joint. For one thing, Sebastian might be in love with her, and then he would support her in everything against you. Out you would go, my dear. He doesn't care a rap for this girl, and once he is married he will be only too glad to shut his eyes to anything that goes on. You would hate to play second fiddle, Lucy.'”

“Yes, I should,” said Lucy frankly. “After all, Julia, we're not getting any younger, and one likes to hold on to whatever one has got. With so much Socialism about, one doesn't know what may happen; and now the King is dead I expect it will get worse; I always felt that he kept things together somehow,” she said vaguely. “Oh dear,” she said, “how things are breaking up. There's Romola gone to China, and Sylvia disappeared out of our lives, and Harry has become a bore, and people are quite disagreeable about Sir Adam now that he no longer has the King behind him, and now, of course, the Court will become as dull as ditch water.

“Poor things,” said Mrs. Levison, apparently referring to the new sovereigns; “we must all do what we can to help them.”

“Yes,” said Lucy dubiously. She was not sure how far King George and Queen Mary would relish Julia's assistance. “In the meantime, what will become of us? Eadred Templecombe says England is going to the dogs. It really looks like it, when girls like Viola can defy their own mothers and go off to live by themselves in London. I always knew that I ought to have taken a firm line about that, and told her that I would wash my hands of her forever, but Sebastian took her part and I was helpless. Heaven only knows what she does in London, or what kind of people she sees. All self-respect seems to be going out of the world. Sebastian has some extraordinary theory that people are becoming more honest towards themselves. All I can say is that we may not have been honest, but we did at least know how to behave. It is all very puzzling. Naturally one wants to hold on to anything one can.”

“Anyway, you may be thankful you have plenty of money,” said Mrs. Levison, with the bitter note that always came into her voice when she spoke of other people's fortunes.

“For the moment, but one wonders how long one will be allowed to keep it. There are terrible rumours flying about. Sebastian is a perfect fool. He is almost as bad as Viola. He says he is going to join the Socialist party. A Socialist duke! Did you ever hear of such a thing? If we don't all hold together and support our own class, where shall we be? That's what I say to him. But Sebastian has always been odd. Do you remember that dreadful time two years ago, when he threatened to marry the keeper's daughter? I never knew whether he really meant it or not. And lately I have heard that he has been seen about with some little model he has picked up in Chelsea.”

“The sooner he gets engaged to Alice, the better,” said Mrs. Levison firmly.

“I quite agree. I am on tenterhooks whenever that girl is in the house,” said Lucy. “Whenever Sebastian comes into my room I look up to see whether he has got anything to tell me, but he always throws himself down on the sofa with the
Tatler.
But still I do think there is something in it. He has never shown any interest in a girl before—a girl of his own class, I mean, of course; I don't count the keeper's daughter. But now he has made me invite Alice for three weekends running.”

“And you have to endure her parents, my poor Lucy!”

“I know. They aren't much trouble. Lord O. talks to Sebastian about his farms. And Lady O. amuses me. She is torn in half between her desire that her Alice shall marry Sebastian and her intense disapproval of the rest of us. She tries so hard to be civil, and it does go so obviously against the grain! She is used only to people like the Wexfords and the Porteviots. Did I tell you what Potini said to me last night? You know how tiresome he is with his views on the English character? Well, he said to me,
“Ma petite duchesse”
—he
always calls me that—“
ma petite duchesse,
in Lady O. you have the English terrrrritorial arrristocracy personified. Look at her bosom—it is like two turnips. Look at her teeth—they are like twelve sarsen stones.”

Mrs. Levison gave her scream of exaggerated amusement, the scream which had been responsible for half her success in a society to which she did not properly belong. But, indeed, Lucy's mimicry had been exact.

“Oh, Lucy, you are
impayable!
Dear me, it makes me sad when I remember how the poor dear King used to enjoy your imitations. You were one of the few people who could always keep him amused. How awful it is to think that all those good times are over. We shall be like a flock of sheep, leaderless.” No one could expect Mrs. Levison's metaphors about sheep to be realistically very accurate. “We shall have to make a little temple of our own, out of our ruins. You and Romola between you—when Romola comes back—must build it. We must hold the fort, mustn't we, Lucy?” She glanced at Lucy, and, shrewdly perceiving that this thesis was unwelcome, changed the subject. Not in vain had she always relied upon her wits. “Meanwhile, of course, there is the Coronation to be got over before things can become normal again, but engagements don't wait for coronations, do they, Lucy? There is no reason why the engagement shouldn't be announced at once. There would be plenty of time left”—by plenty of time left, Mrs. Levison meant plenty of time before the end of the season—“plenty of time left for the wedding to take place. The Coronation isn't till the twenty-second of June. It would be nice if you could get them married in, say, the first week of July.”

Lucy thought, too, that it would be very nice. Meanwhile, it was necessary that Sebastian should make up his mind. There was the whole difference between an unspoken proposal and a spoken one. Lucy, with her vague apprehensions of disturbances in the air and her distress over the breaking-up of her own set, felt that she would give much to get her own family affairs settled. She had always lived in the dread that Sebastian would make some terrible or eccentric marriage or would involve himself permanently in some hopeless liaison; but now the advent of Lady O.'s Alice seemed to promise a solution that, to Lucy, would be like sinking back into a comfortable armchair. She could not pretend that Sebastian was very ardent in his courtship. He pursued it, indeed, with the utmost languor; but he did pursue it. That was the main thing. He made his mother renew her invitation to Alice over and over again—an invitation which, needless to say, was always accepted—and when Alice was at Chevron he dutifully appropriated her; took her off for walks and rides; allowed her to play with the puppies of Sarah and Henry, while Sarah and Henry soberly looked on; conceded that she was “good with dogs,” and consulted her as to the new golf course he was planning. Lucy could not imagine that his interest in so dull and meek a girl could have any source other than a desire for marriage. Like Miss Wace, she could not believe that Sebastian was in love.

She clung to Sebastian as the only hope she had left in life. She was beginning to feel her age, and the things of her youth were beginning to shrink all round her. It was unpleasant to observe the alteration in values. Viola, for instance—so recently as in nineteen hundred and six Viola had allowed herself to be taken to all the right parties, but in nineteen hundred and ten Viola had rebelled; on one unforgettable evening at Chevron, after dinner, she had announced that she had taken a flat in London. “You prevented me from going to Cambridge, mother, but you can't prevent me from doing this. I'm of age.” That phrase had entered Lucy's soul as a dagger. She had never heard it before as applied to a girl; she had heard it only as applied to young men, in connection with festivities, and fireworks, and tenants' balls, and the presentation of silver salvers, engraved with a double column of names. Then it was due and proper; on the lips of a girl it was unforeseen; it was immodest. But it was also unanswerable. Lucy's authority shrivelled as muslin in a fire. And as her legal authority shrivelled, so did her personal authority turn suddenly into a thing which had never enjoyed any real existence. She could do nothing but stammer and weep before Viola's cold, though regretful, logic. She had appealed to all the standards within her range. “If you won't think of me,” she had said, “think at least of your position and the example you are setting!” Viola had smiled, patiently but inexorably. “Oh, darling mother!” she had said, “all that rubbish!” To Lucy it was not rubbish; it was the very bricks of life. In her anguish she had revealed some of the secrets of those who would not sin against their code. “Look at the Templecombes,” she had said; “twenty years of misery rather than give a bad example to the world. Remember Lavender Garrow, who went off with Caryl Thorpe, and was never heard of again. That was all the reward she got for her independence.” “But,” Viola had said, “I don't want to go off with anybody. I only want to lead my own life.” “That's almost worse,” Lucy had groaned; “up to a certain point, people can sympathise with lovers—only, of course, they can never be received—but for a woman to go off with herself is unheard of. People won't understand. You will lose caste, Viola, utterly. You will never be invited anywhere. You will bring shame on me and on Sebastian. What excuse shall we be able to give, when people ask us where you have gone to?” At this point Sebastian had failed her. He had ceased pulling Sarah's ears; had allowed Sarah to fall with a flop on the floor, much to her indignation; and had stood up with his back to the library fire. “I entirely sympathise with Viola, mother,” he had said; “I think she has every right to lead her own life, as she says, if she wants to. She happens to have her own money, but if she hadn't, I should certainly give her a sufficient income. I wish I had her courage, and I envy it. She won't be stifled by you, or by Chevron. She wants to be a separate person, and not just a piece fitted into a picture. As to the example she is giving, I hope a lot of girls will follow it. When you are eighty,” he had said, squashing himself down into the same armchair as his mother and putting his arm round her shoulders, “you will dodder and say how proud you were of your daughter.”

Lucy was not yet eighty—far from it; and she was not yet proud of her daughter. Indeed, so far was she from proud, that she continued to make so many excuses for Viola's absence that her friends began to wonder whether there was not, in fact, some very discreditable reason for Viola's unusual behaviour.
“Qui s'excuse,”
said the new Duchess of D.,
“s'accuse,”
and Viola was struck off the list. Lucy was thereby justified in her prediction, to her mingled grief and satisfaction. It was a consolation to be able to say “I told you so!” but a mortification to go unaccompanied by a daughter to D. House. It was still more of a mortification to find that Viola did not care.

Still, she had Sebastian. Sebastian had not yet broken loose. He grumbled and he rumbled, with a noise like an approaching storm; but, then, he had done that ever since the age of sixteen. Lucy sighed as she remembered how poor Sylvia Roehampton had said that Sebastian sulky was irresistible. Sebastian had sulked, at intervals, for years. She had always been a little bit in awe of him. Perhaps she might be thankful now that he should have released his mood in periodic sulks, spread over so many years, rather than affect docility like Viola, and then suddenly break away as Viola had broken. “I'm of age.” Sebastian had never said that, or anything analogous. His obstinacies had always been much softer, much more in keeping with the traditions that Lucy understood; at moments, certainly, he had been tiresome; he had given her frights, as when he threatened to marry the keeper's daughter; but he had never done anything beyond the natural extravagance of a spoilt young man. His worst threat was to join the Socialist party; and Lucy could generally dismiss that as too impossible to offer any very serious danger. She had, too, a comfortable, old-fashioned conviction that marriage would cure him of such fantasies. They were included, even for Lucy, in the category that Miss Wace labelled Wild Oats.