Hetty Dorval (4 page)

“I don’t know what church you belong to, Mrs. Dorval,” said Mr. Thompson kindly, “but I’m very sure we’d all be glad to see you on Sunday.”

“Oh, I don’t go to church,” said Mrs. Dorval in her unhurried way, “but Mouse goes. She loves going to church, don’t you, Mouse? Where are you? … I’ll tell her about it. Mouse will be sure to come.” Mrs. Dorval’s light easy way relegated church to something which infinitely did not matter.
“Oh, are you going?” gently. “That was a most beautiful prayer you made for us, Mr. Thompson. How very kind of you to come!” And then with a little gush of friendliness to the departing Mr. Thompson, “Good-bye!”

I admired Mrs. Dorval’s disposal of Mr. Thompson; yet there was something somewhere that was not quite right.

I heard the front door close, and Mrs. Dorval opened wide the bedroom door, without any comment to me. I came out and saw Mr. Thompson going down the hill in the dusk. I think now that there was a burning sort of goodness and directness in Mr. Thompson against which Mrs. Dorval had had to defend herself with her weapon of lightness.

Mrs. Broom came in to take away the tea things. “Now Mouse,” said Mrs. Dorval, “I will not be called upon. I will not have my life complicated here … people coming in like this! I do not propose to spend my time paying attention to all kinds of people. You know perfectly well that I can’t have people running in, and you must stop it.” (It might have been Mrs. Broom’s fault.) “All I ask of anybody is to be left alone and not be interfered with. I’m sure I always leave people quite alone and interfere with nobody.”

“You!”
said Mrs. Broom with a peculiar intonation. And she gave a short little laugh that sounded to me like “Ha!” as she went out with the tea things.

Mrs. Dorval was quite serene now that she had handed Mr. Thompson and the population of Lytton over to Mrs. Broom. She took off her hat and tossed it on to the couch. Then she went to the piano and began to play. I sat still and bolt upright.

She turned to me. “Do you like singing?” she asked, and without waiting for an answer, she began to sing.

This old song was new to me, but the simple repeated phrases within their small compass of notes made the tune familiar before it died away.

“Oh …” I began, but she went on as if I were not there.

(“Why, that’s Mrs. Dorval her very own self!” I thought, bedazzled.) And then she sang some comical-sounding French songs. They made me laugh, though I couldn’t understand them. She had a sweet, true voice, and strong, although for the most part she sang softly. You could see that she loved singing. As for me, a country child, I had come under a very fancy kind of spell, near to infatuation.

She stopped. I felt suddenly that I had stayed too long, and said so. She came with me to the door and told me to be sure to come and have tea with her again, and of course I said “Yes” ardently. I was very happy because she seemed to like me.

“But,” she said slowly, “perhaps you’d better not tell other people that you’ve been. If they know that you come they’ll all come – calls, calls, calls, and I don’t want them, I can’t bear it – no, don’t say a word to anyone, will you, Frankie? Promise! Save, me, won’t you?”

Whatever she had asked me, then, I would have agreed to do, and this seemed a small thing to promise, so I did. But
it passed through my mind that it would be a funny thing if I came to this house and my mother couldn’t come, that is, even if she wanted to. But I was only twelve, and was under a novel spell of beauty and singing and the excitement of a charm that was new, and I went away almost in a trance. As I mounted Maxey I caught sight of Mouse standing in the doorway a step above Mrs. Dorval, who gave a wave of farewell.

“Keeping your hand in, I see, Hester,” said Mouse disagreeably and quite loudly.

“Don’t be ridiculous, Mouse,” said Mrs. Dorval, and went inside.

As I rode down the hill I tried to collect my impressions. Through all the surprise and delight ran a mean little disturbing thought. I was to tell no one of my visit. Not Mother and Father?

I did not tell Ernestine or anyone in Lytton, and nearly a week had passed before I was at the ranch again and by that time I had become used to the idea of not telling.

F
ollowing my first visit to Hester Dorval I had an existence that was not natural for a child. While I lived my life in the accustomed routine of school and of visits home to the ranch each week, I, who had never had secrets, was possessed by two desires which were secret. One was not to disclose by any slip of speech my acquaintance with Mrs. Dorval lest I should embarrass or disturb her, and the other desire was that I should in some way see her again and could accept the invitation to come and have tea with her. Everything turned on these things. But I lived in a glass goldfish bowl where the behaviour of each fish was visible to all the other fishes, and also to grown-up people outside and in the vicinity of the glass bowl. So I took to being very secretive indeed, with myself at all events, and possibly Ernestine may have noticed this too. I was not as happy as I had always been, and yet I was happier, because I had something exciting waiting always round the corner. Several times when I went home I was on the brink of telling Father and Mother about my chance meeting and my visit, and yet I always stopped, because much as I admired Mrs. Dorval I was un-sentimental
enough to realize that there was something silly and unreasonable in her exaction of a promise from me that I should not tell that I had been to see her, and I would rather not reveal this to my parents, promise or no, lest they should find her ridiculous. And then there was this – they might for some unknown grown-up reason stop me going to the bungalow.

It could not be expected of a child of twelve that she should recognize in the space of an afternoon the complete self-indulgence and idleness of a new and charming friend, but there is no question now about the self-indulgence and idleness of Hetty. She was capable of kindness and consideration as long as her comfort was not in any way disturbed. If any person or any thing threatened her comfort or her desires, then that person or thing no longer existed as far as she was concerned, and such a person or such a thing was for her exactly as though he, she, or it had never been. Mrs. Broom must have known this for a long time. I had seen Mrs. Broom’s strange attitude of devotion to and criticism of her employer in that one short afternoon, and I could not help wondering about it. I thought perhaps Mrs. Broom was some relative of Mrs. Dorval’s, but then it did not seem likely that Mrs. Dorval would keep her relative in the kitchen. Civilized men and animals have, we see, a different moral and sexual code. And again amongst animals the code varies. The wild goose, for example, a moral bird, and the domestic promiscuous cat, appear to have entirely different values. Why this is so, is puzzling. Mr. and Mrs. Goose, they say, but not Mr. and Mrs. Cat. Hetty Dorval was a human cat in some ways, and yet cats have sometimes malice, and they sharpen their claws. But Hetty had no malice. She was as incapable of bearing malice as of bearing resentment. She simply shed people, and I only once caught a glimpse of her claws.

I saw her once or twice during my rides out and in, and she seemed indifferent but on the whole pleased to see me. During that winter I managed two or three times to go up to the bungalow, by some manoeuvring and by some hoodwinking of Mrs. Dunne and also of Ernestine, which did not raise me in my own estimation. The first time it was dark but not late, because of course it got dark very early in winter amidst the high hills – and I ran up the last slope and saw the lights in the bungalow windows where no curtains were drawn. There were no passers-by and there was no need to draw the curtains. I saw as I passed the window on the way to the front door that Mrs. Dorval sat at the piano singing. She was wearing what I suppose was a tea-gown or negligée sort of dress of light blue. I had never seen anything of that kind before, and she looked to my eyes like a princess. Mrs. Broom sat sewing. This woman was formidable to me and I was sorry to see her in the room. I listened and looked during two or three songs and then when Mrs. Dorval dropped her hands to her knees and turned and spoke to Mrs. Broom I summoned up my courage and darted to the door and knocked.

Mrs. Broom opened the door, looked at me and turned, and spoke over her shoulder to Mrs. Dorval. Then she told me to come in, and I was aware that she picked up her sewing and went at once to the kitchen.

“Frankie! Frankie Burnaby!” said Mrs. Dorval with delight and with a welcome in her tone and in her face, “why haven’t you been to see me again? I’ve been looking and looking for you! You mustn’t neglect me like this!” Neglect her!

I glowed with pleasure and I believed her words and the tone of her voice and her gentle welcoming smile; and it wasn’t till afterwards that I thought that a woman as clever as Mrs. Dorval, who could read French, play the piano all up and
down the keys and sing, and ride too, would surely know that she herself had put me, by virtue of my promise, into a difficult position that prevented my coming to see her with any ease or frankness, and that she had put me in a very deceiving position with my elders too. With my parents, for instance. The reason was that nobody existed for her as an individual who had ties or responsibilities and a life of his or her own. People only existed when they came within her vision. Beyond that she had neither care nor interest. She took me by my hands. “You’re
cold!”
she said compassionately, and drew me to the fire. She went to the kitchen door, and I admired the way her long blue gown swept the floor, and the way that the long open sleeves fell loose from her arms and hands. She called, “Mouse, here’s Frankie Burnaby freezing to death. Make us some cocoa, will you?”

When she came back to the fireplace she curled up on the couch and looked at me so kindly that I wondered why I had not somehow broken through and come before and settled down again to this warm pleasure. However, I had come prepared to ask a question which had been puzzling me, and this I did at once while I remembered.

“Mrs. Dorval,” I said, “is Mrs. Broom your aunty?”

“My aunty?” said Hetty, her eyebrows pointing up in surprise. “No, she’s no relation at all. What makes you think so? But she’s all the parents I’ve ever had. My father and mother died in China. I don’t remember them, but Mouse was my Nanny and she’s stayed with me always. She doesn’t approve of me but she spoils me and I couldn’t do without her. And I don’t believe Mouse could do without me, either. When I was at the Convent, Mouse was always near and looked after me in the holidays. My parents had arranged that,” she said vaguely.

How romantic! China. An orphan. The Convent. And
here we were sitting by the fire in Lytton and Mouse bringing in the cocoa; and after the cocoa Hetty played and sang again. It was the most wonderful evening I had ever spent in my life. She did not press me to stay, and I had a feeling when I left that it was a matter of indifference to her whether I stayed or went, for of course the presence of an admiring child could not have been much of a diversion for her. I’m sure I had begun to bore her. But I would go again.

I spent two or three evenings like that. I longed to tell Father and Mother, and yet I was so far embarked and involved that I feared to do it, and trusted to luck that somehow it would be all right. So I kept quiet. And then one day in spring Ernestine said to me, “Did you know that Mr. Dorval came today?”

I said stupidly,
“Mr
. Dorval?” By this time I had forgotten that probably Hester Dorval was not living entirely in a vacuum and that there must be some reason for her existence in Lytton, and things that I did not know. “Have you seen him?” I asked.

“No,” said Ernestine, “but Billy Miles was down at the train when he came in, and he had lovely suitcases and he went right away up to the bungalow. He’s tall.”

“Is he nice?” I asked anxiously.

“I don’t know whether he’s nice or not,” said Ernestine.

Talk had begun again in the town about Mrs. Dorval and about her husband. Everyone happened to mention that he had come, but no one knew anything. Even my parents said casually they had heard that a Mr. Dorval had come to town. Had I seen him? I said, “No,” which was true.

But a few days later, Ernestine, standing beside me on the Bridge and looking down at the rushing water, said, “What do you say, Frankie, if we go up to the bungalow some night
and look in at the window? He’s got the big black horse up there that Mr. Rossignol’s been keeping down at the stable, and Mr. Rossignol says they go riding every day but they never come into town, and next thing he’ll be gone and we’ll never have seen him. What say, Frankie?”

I jumped at the idea, because I was dying with curiosity to see what Hester Dorval’s husband would be like, and I was longing to see into the living-room again. If I went with Ernestine I didn’t have to tell her I’d ever been there before. Ernestine had seen Mrs. Dorval, but only at a distance, and she was terribly curious. She had planned this because her parents were going to the skating rink for a meeting that night. Mrs. Dunne would be going too, so it would be easy for us to get away.

When our elders were well on their way, Ernestine and I met, and walked through the lovely spring evening, still dark, up the hills between the sage that smelled so much stronger at night, or perhaps one noticed it more. When the lights showed in the bungalow we slowed up and became a little more stealthy and crept along till we reached the lighted windows. We felt rather mean, but excited.

We tiptoed up to a window, and saw the live firelight playing on the room, and a lighted lamp or two. Mrs. Dorval was curled up on the couch as usual, and the lamplight fell upon her face. We had to be very careful, for her eyes were towards us, and her look might mean anything. She was watching with her tender happy smile a big man in the armchair, whose back was towards us. He was talking, and by the puffs that we saw, he was smoking a pipe. Hetty listened to him, and it looked as if she were following with indolent fond attention everything he said. Each word. Each look. No one but he in the room. No one but he in the world.