A Legacy (22 page)

"I suppose this means one ought to ask him . . ."

Jules took it up with simplicity. "We must take a picnic," he said.

"A picnic," said Caroline.

"Very well. I'll get them to put up something."

"Let me see to it, may I?"

"If you don't take all morning."

"Does he actually penetrate to your kitchen? Is he good at that, too?"

"Oh wonderful," said Sarah.

"I wish we could make use of him for Francis. Poor wretch, he's monstrously fond of good things."

"Plenty of those in this town; without our exertions."

"Ah, but it's these men who keep them up to the mark." Jules returned, looking thoughtful. "Mon Tenebreux, tell us the secret of your basket?"

"They carved the chicken," he said.

"We were not going to devour it whole," said Sarah.

"It's not the same," said Caroline.

"Not the same," said Jules.

"Can we start?" said Sarah.

"Would you mind if we stopped for one minute Avenue Victor Hugo?"

"Yes."

"You mean it's all right?"

"No."

"Sarah—what a very uncompromising mood. Can it be family life? And you two only so very slightly connected."

Sarah made no answer.

"Were you any nicer to him before? You did know each other?"

"Oh do get whatever it was you wanted, Jules," Sarah said in a rallying tone.

While he was in the shop, Caroline said, "Darling, sixpence for your thoughts."

"Jules's all very well, only such a bore—you do realize that he's almost thirty years older than you? And one can't talk."

"Oh I just go on, no one stops me."

"He would have—in fourteen years."

"That does seem long." Caroline gave Sarah one of the quick smiles that sometimes entered into their run of talk.

"It did," Sarah said with sudden lightness of heart.

They went through the Bois; but it was only after the Saint-Cloud Gate that they began to see the trees. At Saint-Germain-en-Laye Sarah herself suggested that they should stop to look at the fruit. And after that they were three people on an outing on a fine day who took much pleasure through their eyes. Jules said it was Ile-de-France weather and that the clouds, the shape of the whole sky, were different in Normandie, and Sarah agreed with him. Caroline now wanted to be shown this change, and they told her it came beyond the plain of Mantes, though Sarah said she would really have to wait until the hill three miles this side of Vernon.

The motor disposed. While the chauffeur dealt with whatever might be the matter, they found a farm, half cafe, wine-shop, grain-shop, where under a trellis in the garden they could eat their lunch.

"Now we can have their bread," said Jules.

He went himself to fetch a loaf. Caroline took it from him.

"It is warm," she said. She broke off a piece and held it out to Sarah.

"Don't tell me you found that sausage in my house," said Sarah; "I never have anything like it."

"It's what they get for themselves," said Jules.

"French servants are superior beings," said Caroline.

"Would you like me to find some for you?"

Sarah sat insulated as if by a haze of time; she saw Jules's offerings and profferings, the oblivious, the accustomed ease of Caroline's acceptance; she wished all women were

able to be like Caroline, but she wished it with a tender heart, and she had a sense of enrichment almost from the meaningless poignancy of the scene.

The owner of the place also ran a market garden, and presently invited them to do the round.

"Sheer Sisley," Sarah said. "One does see where they get it from."

Outside the potting shed stood a large box of freshly dug garden earth. Jules looked at it.

"Feel it," said the owner.

Jules took off a glove. Caroline, originally gloveless (she was apt to be a little careless in these matters), had her hand already in the box.

"Awfully good," said Jules.

"Loam," said Caroline, "see how crumbly . . . it's got a spring to it." She took another handful. "Sarah, look— Where are you?"

Sarah was standing at some distance with her hands folded.

Caroline took in this figure. So one might take a photograph; at the time she only saw it in a very brief succession of astonishment, reproof and pity. And when after a number of years they talked again about this day, Sarah said that she remembered it very well, though nothing about a box of garden earth; the motor had not broken down, they had never been even near Vernon, but had picnicked, as they had meant to, at an inn on the edge of the Forest of Fontainebleau.

Caroline was away again. Jules knew that she had gone to Venice.

"Does one? At this time of year?" he said.

"Apparently," said Sarah.

"Wouldn't you like to? Then I could join you. Is it a good idea?"

"No."

"I believe you may be right," he said.

Sarah let this go.

But he lingered; and in the door he said, "I have an impression that Miss Trafford's lover must be a married man."

Sarah enjoyed taking this apart in a letter. But she did not send it. She often tore up the letters she wrote to Caroline; it was something nobody had to know but herself.

The next time Caroline came back from London she said to Sarah with stiff lightness, "They do know now, it was unmistakable. The houses we were asked to together, and the houses we were not— Not that I ever saw him. Well—hardly. I suppose Venice, even in November, was a mistake. A menace the way people seem to travel these days. Of course we went on to Ravenna quick enough— the cold —but one forgets one knows all those Italians. Well, someone must have blown it." She had spoken as if she were reciting a lesson to the wall. Now she glanced at Sarah. Sarah showed nothing. She took a breath and went on, "Oh, nobody as yet has cocked an eyebrow. They are waiting—you could hear it tick—which way the cat's going to jump. And Sarah—I know that too now."

Again their looks did not meet. "Do you think I might have a glass of water? Just some water. I'm not going as Jules would say me trouver mal"

Sarah went for it herself, and held it to Caroline almost clumsily.

Caroline drank the water. "Better now," she said. "Such a nuisance." Then in a stronger tone, "I don't want to talk about it. Now: yes. Not again. Sarah? you saw it all the time, didn't you? / had no idea/'

"Caroline—"

"It never occurred to me that once it was out it would be all up." Here she held Sarah's look, as if to dare her to smooth this down. "Extraordinary, isn't it?" she went on,

"I, who always think of myself as knowing everything. I didn't think it could make any difference to us what people said, or knew. In these cases what is knowing? Appearances. My dear—they're never conclusive, unless one's been exceptionally foolish or reckless, or unlucky. One just doesn't admit. If one's front's good enough one can get away with anything. What's in one's favour, actually, is that it's considered so enormous for a girl to go to bed with a man—yes, darling, that is what it amounts to. People cannot believe it. Unless they're pushed to. It's only those poor brave things who go about breaking lances for Free Love who cop it; and that's what they went out for, so really they are all right too. Oh I'm not saying it doesn't tell against one, the appearances, in some quarters; that one isn't in for some sticky moments—some people seem positively predisposed to belief. Here's where old front comes in. Shall we say one gets away leaving a few feathers? But ruin —No."

"A lucid disquisition," said Sarah.

"It was this I thought you were afraid of for me."

Sarah let it sink in. "It was part of it. I should have said more."

"Could you?"

Sarah considered this, with her own lucidity.

"There are so many things always between two people," said Caroline.

"What?" said Sarah.

"I felt you did not like him."

"I did not know him."

"Ah—but you could have admired! You were rather tight-fisted, you know. And you must have seen him for what he is if you saw that he would not let his wife, nor me, become exposed to what is coming on us now?"

"I saw that such situations are not tenable."

"As he cannot protect both me and her, he will do the only thing he can. Abolish the situation. Simple, isn't it? A simple piece of arithmetic."

Sarah looked stricken.

"Oh but not yet," said Caroline. "Not yet. He doesn't know what's going on, thank God. Aren't the people most concerned always supposed to hear last? I must do everything to keep it off, I must try to get him somewhere safe. Perhaps we'll go to Ireland. . . . Our last host there was convinced I was my mother. What a fool I've been! Because he's always had mistresses, because he's rather like me in all this, open — Once, early on, when we'd managed to get away and there I was first at the inn on a Friday afternoon with a dog and no luggage, he came into my room with a book and a basket of apricots. ... I thought — Oh I don't know what I thought. That he'd take it like me, that he wouldn't mind. Now I see that he cannot. . . . He cannot leave me to face the talk, and he cannot leave her to hear it. He likes her immensely, you know. She is very nice. Yes, I might say I know her. I've seen her. Oh before; years ago when I was first out. She's forty-five now. I'm glad I did. It seems to make it easier now— not an unknown face. I don't think she'd remember me. She must not have a face and name thrust on her. He's always been plain about what she can count on from him."

"I suppose so," Sarah said.

"We talked of it. Of course. How we can never marry each other—or really go off together. He cannot leave her. If they'd both been younger . . . But for a man of his age to leave a woman of hers—it would be barbarous, unthinkable."

"And you, do you really feel this?"

Caroline raised her face. "I do."

"That gives her a queer champion."

"I know, Sarah. There's that too."

There was silence.

"I've often wondered."

"Yes?"

"The things one wonders about. What it is like at forty-five? What one is like; what one does want, what one feels?

I never dared ask you. I am not asking you today. . . . Today does not count."

"Caroline," Sarah said, "have you never been jealous?"

"I thought of her being dead."

"Have you wished it?"

"I have not let myself. I don't want it. It would have struck at everything. One could not live in such a world. It would have struck at what binds him and me. If I had not managed to keep clear of this I should go insane now."

"It strikes at oneself," said Sarah.

But Caroline's mind was not on Sarah. "There was never any choice in it for me. I'd do the same again today. One does not take the crown of life."

"My dear," Sarah said, "you are still very young."

"That," Caroline said, giving herself a little shake, "may yet be the worst of it. I wish, I wish it hadn't come so early." She put her hands to her face.

Sarah brought herself to ask. "What will you do?"

Caroline uncovered her face, the beautiful face, all smoothed now for an instant by surrender, "I don't know."

Sarah had a definite, a physical sense then of a want that could be filled. And it came to her what she must say. When, whenever the moment comes, I will take you away. To the East, round the world, to China. . . . We will stay away for two years, for three, for more. For whatever time it will take until you can bear to return, to go back to your country and the life you must have there and which is before you.

I can do this. I will leave my daughters to strangers and my husband to his pursuits. They do not need me.

I will do it so that you shall be numbed; stunned by movement, people, impressions, by quick changes and fatigues. You will be bound to and borne by a huge apparatus of travel.

I will do it so that the voices you shall hear will be Dutch, or French, or the voices of Orientals. I will see that there are men whose admiration you will be able to absorb without awareness and who will not remind you.

If you want dangers you shall have them; if you want to do things that are not often done by women I will arrange them. If you want art, great art, not tasteful objects, which will astound and live when we shall long be dead, I will teach you. I am able to command people and you do so by your presence. Everything that can be done in countries such as these for a woman such as you will be done for you. And to you it will be dust and ashes and great emptiness.

You will not be interested; you will not be pleased. You will be very unhappy. But the time will pass. I will wear it out for you. I will drive the time for you. And there will be your youth, your curiosity, your habit of taking life with full hands. You will find ease. And one day you will be ready to go back to all that is still yours. And you will not have been harmed.

She felt herself filled with certitude and strength and a great wave of love for the young woman before her. "Leave it to me. I will see you through. I will take you away." The words were in her and she knew that Caroline would seize what was held out to her, as a child accepts to have itself led upstairs from a room of wreckage. But she hesitated; held back by the sense of how paltry, helpless, conventional and meagre her plan must sound to Caroline—held back by the consciousness of her own joy.

Then Caroline spoke again and the moment had passed.

"It is rather a problem isn't it?" she said in what Sarah had called Miss Trafford's about to ride against a six-barred gate voice. "As, technically, I shall be alive. I'm not the kind that dies. Not like the dogs who starve on their master's grave. It would have to be the front door. They howl, too, and that would be so mal-vu. How does one dispose of a life when there's so much of it left? It's going to be a long twenty years. It's not that I propose to die at forty-five— her age—but en ces cas-ld ce ne sont que les premiers vingt ans qui coutent"

"I had thought—" Sarah said.

"There's one thing I'm positive about, I shan't go back

to England. I could not bear that. No. . . . Fortunately there's nothing for me in England now that I haven't even got a home any more. I shall never want to live in England again."