A Legacy (21 page)

heard of the Magnificat. The family ate meat on Fridays. (One didn't have to look for whom to blame for that.) All my people, I was forced to conclude, and especially my mother were on some grounds or other in a state of mortal sin. No doubt was left on where this must ultimately lead them. It was debated whether it was permissible for me to eat the Friday meat. Abstinence, they said, was only a Commandment of the Church, and Obedience came before those. Yet was I not bound to own up and ask them to dispense me from the latter? It might go to their very hearts, it might. Since when, said someone else, was Con-fessorship obligatory when it was known it was a Grace? The highest below Martyrs. Martyrs and Confessors— It was agreed that the course would be an advantageous one for me. The Remissions! A thousand years at least off Purgatory. The final consensus seemed to be that I would be perfectly en regie if I ate what was given to me but did not ask for a second helping. My own solution was to secrete my Friday bacon and give it to the dogs. The aspiration I myself most cherished was to be an acolyte. Practice for this function filled some of the time supposed to be spent with Fanny. I was told such future was not possible because of my being a girl; yet virgins had served mass in the Catacombs, all one needed nowadays was a Dispensation from a Cardinal. It was suggested that I should ask my father to write to one, or better still, ask my godmother to see the Archbishop.

"He wouldn't say no to her."

"Wouldn't he though now — ?"

A light had sprung to their eyes, and it was at such a moment that our butler, a kind Frenchman, would disperse us by being of a sudden present. I regretted this, but knew that he was right. In return he'd ask me into the pantry and teach me a game called Pigeon vole. He told me many friendly and delightful stories, and I never minded his keeping an eye on me. It is to this gracious

man that I owe the intimations of that sense of lighter heart, of deep-grooved pleasures, daylight and proportion, that sense of inalienable benefits received, the lines of that sustaining love I was to feel thereafter for his country.

One did not ask anything of my godmother, who was also my Aunt Clara, one submitted to being asked by her. What she did not ask one—I knew the answers that would satisfy her, but they were things impossible to say. She always believed one. She did not come to see us very often, but when she did she was everywhere. Before, Henrietta and Mademoiselle went about the house putting away things like Fanny's gramophone; Papa often stayed upstairs, and during these visits my mother was nice to him. I did not find Aunt Clara frightening, she only embarrassed one; and though she took no general notice of me, she always insisted on a private talk. I knew that my mother tried to stop her.

"My godchild—?"

The only one of us who came out on these occasions as herself was nanny. When she thought it was enough, she appeared and marched me off. The admiration of the house was with her.

"I should be sorry at my time of life if I didn't know how to deal with dowagers. Papist or C. of E., if you ask me, their bark's worse than their bite."

This I felt did not at all describe Aunt Clara nor her powers; the results however were on nanny's side. The pragmatic method, as my mother would have said.

The presence that I welcomed was the other tall lady's, my mother's friend in the wonderful clothes, such as she sometimes but by no means always wore (I could admire clothes ideally, contemplatively—feathers, jewels, silks, unconnected with coverings for such as myself); when she was here my mother was different and the afternoons were not so slow. I loved to watch them as they sat together under the trees, or upstairs in my mother's drawing room,

the one that had the French windows and the picture that was like another garden, look at them, sometimes hear their talk—

"I could take up Greek again— I'm reading Faust. Of course you haven't. I've never met a German yet who has. Perhaps my circle is not entirely representative."

"I must have a generous nature after all. The way I'm not holding it against you to have been so unpardonably right— "

"The ball, as my poor mother would have said—she really did say those things, you know; I was just beginning to mind, when she died—well, the ball was at one's feet. . . . Poor woman, she was right too. I would have held it against her. Yes, of course, my sweet, you may have cream."

The splendid lady looked impatient.

"Sarah—this is your one great fault," my mother said. She hugged the King-Charles. "Oh, you meant the child? Is she here too? All the time? Do go away, duck; go and learn something."

I could learn but little. Various people had tried to teach me to read, and the various phonetics had left me confused. For I had no language. Or I had too many; acquiring and forgetting them with great rapidity. My mother talked to me in English, and so of course did nanny, who spoke it even to the servants who seemed to get her wishes the way I got those of Fanny. To papa my mother mostly talked in French, or in what I knew was Spanish; he addressed me in French at the times I knew it, and otherwise in Southern German which, as he talked it, was not like the German spoken sometimes by my sister and always in the other house, and which resembled, but was not really like, the patois of the maids which was a language of its own. Mademoiselle, who came from Neu-chatel, was supposed to keep me up in French and the

village priest had started me on Latin; yet without the steadying recourse to books the ebb and flow of my attainments was erratic. And to add to the confusion I had an Italian name. I was called Francesca.

"Mummy—I've got it."

"What?"

"The question."

"Let's hear it."

"Mummy," I said, "why are you here?"

Jules had proposed to Caroline Trafford on the morning after meeting her. He was turned down, stayed another half hour when he had heard his fate and came away in high good spirits.

This mood held through all that winter and the spring; enough of it was left to trundle him, not unpleasantly, through August and July when Miss Trafford was in Ireland and he in attendance at a German spa. In Paris in the autumn it flowered forth again. There seems to be a tide in men's existences when they are contented and at peace with their condition against all reason and certainly their own, almost against their wills. Jules believed he loved Miss Trafford, had tried to tell Sarah that life without her was impossible; he had been refused, and refused in a way that left no doubt that she could not as much as think of him. Yet there he was, not only comfortable, merry as a grig, going about evening and day running errands, sighing, enjoying himself, complaining, he also felt carefree; for the first time in his adult life he did not probe his fates, he forgot them.

To Sarah, borne more consciously on the same wave, Caroline said, "The French National Archives were no idle lie—I have a great deal of time. An elderly man replete with knowledge — But Sarah, so alive! much more alive than I. Always fresh, always round. . . . There isn't a dry corner anywhere. And so just. The miracle of hold
ing so much and holding it so lightly. Nothing's too complex or too small. He turns to it, no he doesn't do that— he's there—he is attention, with his tolerance, his good humour, the fantastic learning he sports like a nosegay he's just plucked from the hedges, his impeccable human values, and, of course, his powers of feeling. Whatever he touches becomes more. Whole. And every time, you know, it's done as if it were the first. A man who's spent his life trying to understand men, action, the world, and who's still moved! He makes other historians look not just cast-iron, but breezy.

"And he works, you know. We have no idea, you and I—He thinks one has to, one must pay out what one takes in. So there he goes, day after day. To add six lines to a page. And I wait. No, it's not waiting; I like the time. I like the space. To turn round the moment ... In the street—standing still, sleep-walking in the Tuileries—"

"Caroline," said Sarah, "you should not cut yourself off so entirely. You are seeing nobody but him and me. And Jules."

"Ah yes, and Jules." Their eyes met over this. "He protects my sleep-walking. I'm very grateful to Jules. Do you know people are beginning to talk about him and me? Can it be the reward of innocence?"

"You should sometimes see your own people," said Sarah.

"Francis is that. In the only permissible sense."

"You should see those who are in a narrower one; and you should see them publicly."

"And it was you who told me to be careful. They might not be talking about Jules. In London, this time, I thought I caught some rather queer looks; you know, the face that dares not speak its question. Oh intangible. Straws in the wind— What surprises me, is my paying notice. People have always talked about me; I can't say—can I?—that I haven't given them cause. Oh don't let's think about it."

"Caroline," Sarah said, "I wish you'd reconsider about
staying with me when you're here. Please don't say no again at once."

"Darling, I am grateful. But no . . . It's better as we are. I'm not cut out to be a guest, no more than you are, so we don't have to make bones about that. We don't like other people's roofs; even our best friends'. As for the rest, you must know that half the women in my family have died alone in undusted villas in the Brenta."

"You have not reached that stage."

"Oh no," said Caroline.

"Meanwhile—"

"The Hotel du Rhin is a fortress. You've only got to look at the American visitors—such youth, such ostentatious nonprotectedness, such open virtue. The least one can do is believe in it. No, Sarah, don't make your point. Remember my trump, remember that I have Brown. I may be alone in the world, I may have no hearth nor home, I'm still chained to that sacred presence, an unsackable family servant. Brown does as well as the American women's faces."

"I've been thinking of taking a house," Sarah said. "I'm tired of this ghastly flat. I should like to feel settled where you are."

"Oh no, don't do that!"

She had said it quickly in a direct young voice. Sarah, used to the deliberate, the teasing manner of her friend's speech, was startled.

"Let's all stay as we are. No plans."

"But my dear, why?"

"Because—well, because—" she was herself again— "it seems to be something I have in common with Jules. I am superstitious."

Sarah, restless, unused to not carrying out her projects, bought a motor.

"But you had one?" said Caroline. "This one's faster."

"I see. It must be so worrying for the horses."

"What horses?"

"On the road."

Sarah shrugged this aside. There was a silence filled by Caroline's looking at some aspects of her friend's existence. A little later she said, "I ought to mention, my dear, that we have coal mines. One coal mine."

This was clearly an amende honorable, but for once Sarah had not followed.

"To tell you that we also—we—my family—I—at a cost, well, let us say to more than horses, are drawing profits from what we might call progress."

"Why not?" Sarah said in her dry tone. And this expanded into another silence; presently interrupted by herself. "These are sentimentalities . . . luxuries . . ."

"Ah! but they are not."

"My dear child."

Caroline could take this. She could see herself as the young woman who lived abroad, made Fabian points, spent her money and did little about anything. She could also see over her shoulder. And the descendant of Whig humanists said with the serenity of a collective emotion, "Sarah, not luxuries."

Sarah waited; almost patiently.

But Caroline lacked the heart to break her mood. She was still young enough in experience to be met by many things for a first time. She was stricken by the lack in Sarah, affected by her own revulsion, lamed by a sense of general recession and an intimation of large loneliness, and her nature was not well equipped to deal with these. An idea came to her rescue like an arrow. They were to have met at seven, now they must meet at once: she knew where to find him. She had made up her will. "I must go," she said.

Sarah said, not without gentleness, "What do you reproach me for? I have not made this order."

"You don't mind enough," said Caroline.

There was again a pause.

Then Sarah shook it off. "That's hypocrisy, my dear. Lip service, typical—" she stopped.

"Of perfidious Albion?"

Then almost at once they looked at what they had done, at the newspaper world they had let into the room; they both stared at the carpet as if they expected to see bits of crockery lying there. Caroline knew it was up to herself to find the word, and felt the seconds going. Then she heard Sarah.

"My dear—we'll be talking about the Naval Race next." She said it rather well.

Caroline rose. "Oh, aren't we all strangely and fearfully made," she said in great dejection. "And now I really must go; I'm already late—which won't surprise you." This was her token of return to their accustomed manner, and Sarah accepted it as such.

"Would you ring for a cab for me?"

"I'll send you in the motor," said Sarah. "It's at the door."

"Oh, do," said Caroline.

This motor seemed to make itself a place. Whenever, later on, Caroline tried to think about that period of her life, she saw Sarah's motor. Sarah's motor (it was its sole identity) with herself in it going somewhere at great rate; Sarah's motor being sent for her, Sarah's motor waiting at all the doors. It solved and created many of their problems —being in two places at one time, or almost; then failing altogether to get them to a third, and it seemed to impose its pattern on their days. The motor, Sarah made known over the telephone, should be taken out, could not be taken out; she started to pursue her painters down the Seine, and at times they got as far as Giverny. It must have been one of those wonderful Octobers, so much longer too, that people used to enjoy in Paris in those days.

"There's Jules."

The motor having kept them waiting, they were caught by him on Sarah's doorstep. He swung his hat to them.