Love in a Cold Climate (25 page)

In the end, Cedric was traced to Paris (“Simply extraordinary,”
she said. “Whatever could a Canadian be doing in Paris? I don’t quite like it.”), and an invitation to Hampton was given and accepted.

“He comes next Tuesday, for a fortnight. I wrote out the dates very carefully indeed. I always do when it is a question of a country-house visit, then there is no awkwardness about the length of it. People know exactly when they are expected to leave. If we like him he can come again, now we know that he lives in Paris, such an easy journey. But what do you suppose he is doing there, dear? I hope he’s not an artist. Well, if he is, we shall simply have to get him out of it—he must learn to behave suitably, now. We are sending to Dover for him, so that he’ll arrive just in time for dinner. Montdore and I have decided not to dress that evening, as most likely he has no evening clothes, and one doesn’t wish to make him feel shy at the very beginning of his visit, poor boy.”

This seemed most unlike Lady Montdore, who usually loved making people feel shy, it was well known to be one of her favourite diversions. No doubt Cedric was to be her new toy, and until such time as, inevitably, I felt, just as Norma felt about Mrs. Heathery, disillusionment set in, nothing was to be too good for him, and no line of conduct too much calculated to charm him.

I began to think a great deal about Cedric. It was such an interesting situation and I longed to know how he would take it, this young man from the West suddenly confronted with aristocratic England in full decadence, the cardboard Earl, with his empty nobility of look and manner, the huge luxurious houses, the terrifying servants, the atmosphere of bottomless wealth. I remembered how exaggerated it had all seemed to me as a child, and supposed that he would see it with very much the same eyes and find it equally overpowering.

I thought, however, that he might feel at home with Lady Montdore, especially as she desired to please, there was something spontaneous and almost childlike about her which could accord with a transatlantic outlook. It was the only hope, otherwise, if he were at all timid, I thought he would find himself submerged. Words dimly
associated with Canada kept on occurring to me, the word lumber, the word shack, staking a claim. (Uncle Matthew had once staked a claim, I knew, in Ontario, in his wild young poker-playing days, with Harry Oakes.) How I wished I could be present at Hampton when this lumberjack arrived to stake his claim to that shack. Hardly had I formed the wish than it was granted, Lady Montdore ringing up to ask if I would go over for the night. She thought it would make things easier to have another young person there when Cedric arrived.

This was a wonderful reward, as I duly remarked to Alfred, for having been a lady-in-waiting.

Alfred said, “If you have been putting yourself out all this time with a reward in view, I don’t mind at all. I objected because I thought you were drifting along in the wake of that old woman merely from a lazy good-nature, and with no particular motive. That is what I found degrading. Of course, if you were working for a wage it is quite a different matter, so long, of course,” he said, with a disapproving look, “as the wage seems to you worth while.”

It did.

The Montdores sent a motor car to Oxford for me. When I arrived at Hampton I was taken straight upstairs to my room, where I had a bath and changed, according to instructions brought me by Lady Montdore’s maid, into a day dress. I had not spent a night at Hampton since my marriage. Knowing that Alfred would not want to go, I had always refused Lady Montdore’s invitations, but my bedroom there was still deeply familiar to me. I knew every inch of it by heart. Nothing in it ever changed, the very books, between their mahogany book-ends, were the same collection that I had known and read there now for twelve years, or more than half my life: novels by Robert Hitchens and W. J. Locke, Napoleon,
The Last Phase
by Lord Rosebery,
The House of Mirth
by Edith Wharton, Hare’s
Two Noble Lives, Dracula
, and a book on dog management. In front of them on a mahogany tall-boy was a Japanese bronze tea-kettle with embossed water lilies. On the walls, besides
the two country-house old masters, despised of Davey, were a Morland print “The Higglers Preparing for Market,” a Richmond water colour of the “old lord” in a kilt, and an oil painting of Toledo either by Boy or Lady Montdore, whose styles were indistinguishable. It was in their early manner, and had probably hung there for twenty years. This room had a womb-like quality in my mind, partly because it was so red and warm and velvety and enclosed, and partly because of the terror with which I always used to be assailed by the idea of leaving it and venturing downstairs. This evening as I dressed I thought how lovely it was to be grown-up, a married woman, and no longer frightened of people. Of Lord Merlin a little, of the Warden of Wadham perhaps, but these were not panicky, indiscriminate social terrors. They could rather be classed as wholesome, awe inspired by gifted elders.

When I was ready I went down to the Long Gallery, where Lord and Lady Montdore were sitting in their usual chairs one on each side of the chimney piece, but not at all in their usual frame of mind. They were both, and especially Lady Montdore, in a twitter of nerves, and looked up quite startled when I came into the room, relaxing again when they saw that it was only me. I thought that from the point of view of a stranger, a backwoodsman from the American continent, they struck exactly the right note. Lord Montdore, in an informal green-velvet smoking jacket, was impressive with his white hair and carved unchanging face, while Lady Montdore’s very dowdiness was an indication that she was too grand to bother about clothes, and this too would surely impress. She wore printed black-and-white crepe-de-chine, her only jewels the enormous half-hoop rings which flashed from her strong old woman’s fingers, and sat, as she always did, her knees well apart, her feet in their large buckled shoes firmly planted on the ground, her hands folded in her lap.

“We lit this little fire,” she said, “thinking that he may feel cold after the journey.” It was unusual for her to refer to any arrangement in her house, people being expected to like what they found
there, or else to lump it. “Do you think we shall hear the motor when it comes up the drive? We generally can if the wind is in the west.”

“I expect I shall,” I said, tactlessly. “I hear everything.”

“Oh, we’re not stone deaf ourselves. Show Fanny what you have got for Cedric, Montdore.”

He held out a little book in green morocco, Gray’s
Poems
.

“If you look at the fly leaf,” he said, “you will see that it was given to my grandfather by the late Lord Palmerston the day that Cedric’s grandfather was born. They evidently happened to be dining together. We think that it should please him.”

I did so hope it would. I suddenly felt very sorry for these two old people, and longed for Cedric’s visit to be a success and cheer them up.

“Canadians,” he went on, “should know all about the poet Gray, because General Woolf, at the taking of Quebec …”

There were footsteps now in the red drawing room, so we had not heard the motor, after all. Lord and Lady Montdore got up and stood together in front of the fireplace as the butler opened the door and announced, “Mr. Cedric Hampton.”

There was a glitter of blue and gold across the parquet, and a human dragon-fly was kneeling on the fur rug in front of the Montdores, one long white hand extended towards each. He was a tall, thin young man, supple as a girl, dressed in rather a bright blue suit; his hair was the gold of a brass bed knob, and his insect appearance came from the fact that the upper part of the face was concealed by blue goggles set in gold rims quite an inch thick.

He was flashing a smile of unearthly perfection. Relaxed and happy, he knelt there bestowing this smile upon each Montdore in turn.

“Don’t speak,” he said, “just for a moment. Just let me go on looking at you—wonderful, wonderful people!”

I could see at once that Lady Montdore was very highly gratified. She beamed with pleasure. Lord Montdore gave her a hasty glance
to see how she was taking it, and when he saw that beaming was the note he beamed too.

“Welcome,” she said, “to Hampton.”

“The beauty,” Cedric went on, floating jointlessly to his feet. “I can only say that I am drunk with it. England, so much more beautiful than I had imagined (I have never had very good accounts of England, somehow), this house, so romantic, such a repository of treasures, and, above all, you—the two most beautiful people I have ever seen!”

He spoke with rather a curious accent, neither French nor Canadian, but peculiar to himself, in which every syllable received rather more emphasis than is given by the ordinary Englishman. Also he spoke, as it were, through his smile, which would fade a little, then flash out again, but which never altogether left his face.

“Won’t you take off your spectacles?” said Lady Montdore. “I should like to see your eyes.”

“Later, dear Lady Montdore, later. When my dreadful, paralyzing shyness (a disease with me) has quite worn off. They give me confidence, you see, when I am dreadfully nervous, just as a mask would. In a mask one can face anything. I should like my life to be a perpetual
bal masqué
, Lady Montdore, don’t you agree? I long to know who the Man in the Iron Mask was, don’t you, Lord Montdore? Do you remember when Louis XVIII first saw the Duchesse d’Angoulême after the Restoration? Before saying anything else, you know—wasn’t it all awful, or anything?—he asked if poor Louis XVI had ever told her who the Man in the Iron Mask was? I love Louis XVIII for that—so like
one.”

Lady Montdore indicated me. “This is our cousin—and a distant relation of yours, Cedric—Fanny Wincham.”

He took my hand and looked long into my face, saying, “I am enchanted to meet you,” as if he really was. He turned again to the Montdores, and said, “I am so happy to be here.”

“My dear boy, we are so happy to have you. You should have
come before. We had no idea—we thought you were always in Nova Scotia, you see.”

Cedric was gazing at the big French map table. “Riesener,” he said. “This is a very strange thing, Lady Montdore, and you will hardly believe it, but where I live in France we have its pair. Is that not a coincidence? Only this morning, at Chèvres, I was leaning upon that very table.”

“What is Chèvres?”

“Chèvres—Fontaine, where I live, in the Seine et Oise.”

“But it must be quite a large house,” said Lady Montdore, “if that table is in it?”

“A little larger, in every dimension, than the central block at Versailles, and with much more water. At Versailles there only remain seven hundred
bouches
. (How is
bouche
in English? Jets?) At Chèvres we have one thousand five hundred, and they play all the time.”

Dinner was announced. As we moved towards the dining room, Cedric stopped to examine various objects and touched them lovingly.

“Weisweiller—Boule—Riesener—Jacob … How is it you come to have these marvels, Lord Montdore, such important pieces?”

“My great-grandfather (your great-great-grandfather), who was himself half-French, collected it all his life. Some of it he bought during the great sales of royal furniture after the Revolution and some came to him through his mother’s family, the Montdores.”

“And the
boiseries!”
said Cedric. “First quality Louis XV. There is nothing to equal this at Chèvres. It’s like jewellery when it is so fine.”

We were now in the little dining room.

“He brought them over too, and built the house round them.” Lord Montdore was evidently much pleased by Cedric’s enthusiasm. He loved French furniture himself but seldom found anybody in England to share his taste.

“Porcelain with Marie Antoinette’s cypher—delightful. At Chèvres we have the Meissen service she brought with her from Vienna. We have many relics of Marie Antoinette, poor dear, at Chèvres.”

“Who lives there?” asked Lady Montdore.

“I do,” he replied carelessly, “when I wish to be in the country. In Paris I have a pavilion of all beauty,
one’s
idea of heaven.” Cedric made great use of the word “one,” which he pronounced with peculiar emphasis. Lady Montdore had always been a one for one, but she said it quite differently—“w’n.” “It stands between courtyard and garden. It was built for Madame du Barry. Tiny, you know, but all one needs, that is to say, a bedroom and a bed-ballroom. You must come and stay with me there, dear Lady Montdore. You will live in my bedroom, which has comfort, and I in the bed-ballroom. Promise me that you will come.”

“We shall have to see. Personally, I have never been very fond of France. The people are so frivolous. I greatly prefer the Germans.”

“Germans!” said Cedric earnestly, leaning across the table and gazing at her through his goggles. “The frivolity of the Germans terrifies even one. I have a German friend in Paris, and a more frivolous creature, Lady Montdore, does not exist. This frivolity has caused me many a heartache, I must tell you.”

“I hope you will make some suitable English friends now, Cedric.”

“Yes, yes, that is what I long for. But please, can my chief English friend be you, dear, dearest Lady Montdore?”

“I think you should call us Aunt Sonia and Uncle Montdore.”

“May I, really? How charming you are to me! How happy I am to be here. You seem, Aunt Sonia, to shower happiness around you.”

“Yes, I do. I live for others, I suppose that’s why. The sad thing is that people have not always appreciated it. They are so selfish themselves.”

“Oh, yes, aren’t they selfish? I too have been a victim to the selfishness
of people all my life. This German friend I mentioned just now, his selfishness passes comprehension. How one does suffer!”

“It’s a he, is it?” Lady Montdore seemed glad of this.

“A boy called Klugge. I hope to forget all about him while I am here. Now, Lady Montdore—dearest Aunt Sonia—after dinner I want you to do me a great, great favour. Will you put on your jewels so that I can see you sparkling in them? I do so long for that.”