The Dangerous Years (4 page)

She led the way from the long hall, that stretched right and left, with numerous doors on each side. One of these opened to the drawing-room. Though it was large, it was over-crowded, and partially screened off by a huge, four-fold screen of painted leather, past the end of which protruded the end of a single-bed, where lay an open violincase. Out in the open, between two large french-windows stood a boudoir grand, littered with loose music sheets and albums. A performance must have been hastily interrupted, for the violin and bow had been laid on top of this debris, and a small bust had been knocked over. The maid picked this up and righted it, and Mary saw that it was a bust of Brahms.

The disorder was not out of keeping with the rest of the
room, for small tables and ill-assorted chairs stood about, most of them filled with papers, journals, books, a velvet house-coat, a brief-case, a lady's handbag (of enormous capacity), an evening scarf and several newly-ironed lace handkerchiefs smelling of eau-de-Cologne. A work-basket on legs stood beside a low arm-chair beside the farther window, against a radiator. It had overflowed, and bundles of socks, a shirt, and other undergarments, lay all round it. One arm of the chair was porcupined with needles and pins.

“How homely it looks,” said Joan, innocently. Her mother looked at her, however. She knew that assumption of innocence. It could be intimidating. She saw the colonel look too. So he was not lacking in perception. He was not a mere soldier, she told herself.

“More like an English country vicarage half a century ago, don't you think?” he said lightly.

The long curtains at the windows fluttered in the draught as the door opened, to admit the doctor's wife.

“Oh, forgive, forgive!” she exclaimed, in a deep contralto voice, rushing at Mrs. Winterbourne and towering over her. For a moment she hesitated, then convulsively put out her arms and folded the small Englishwoman in an embrace that almost lifted her off her feet. “I have known you so long, though we have not met, except once a year when you replied to Luke's letter. Ah, then I met you! Such expressive letters. You are literary, Madam? No? It is a gift wasted. And this is your daughter? She is like me, eh? Not made in Dresden! We shall have much in common. Are you like me, also, given to confusion, so untidy because of the way life goes, always something happening, always the unexpected? And have you a husband who is a saint, and a slave at the same time, the slave of half the population of Paris? No, I hope not, for your sake. I am the most harassed woman in France.”

Mary examined her features while she was speaking.
Her words belied her appearance, for the broad face was unlined, the fair hair, smoothly dressed, without a touch of grey. Good health, good spirits alone could stamp a face with such serenity. She shone like a sun. Mary instantly felt warmer, and let her slight anxiety about Joan fade away. Not even Joan could withstand such radiant goodwill.

The colonel, who had disappeared, returned with a tray containing glasses and two bottles, Dubonnet and Byrrh. The Englishwomen were not ungrateful, for they had missed afternoon tea, and had eaten nothing since the luncheon on the train.

Meanwhile, Madame was not deflected from her stream of exclamatory monologue. She told them that a half-hour of music, their one relaxation, had been as usual broken by an emergency case, a young man on whom a report had to be made before he could be allocated to one or other hospitals, that night. “Luke will be with us in a moment,” she concluded. “And if he is not, we will not wait, for you must be starving after the journey. How I dislike travel; the upheaval, the disorder. I like to live with my things round me, all in order and to hand.” She looked lovingly at the confusion of her work-basket and the cornucopia-like room.

A door opened and closed, upon a murmur of voices somewhere along the hall. But it was a false hope, for the doctor still did not come. Then the maid entered and announced that the meal was ready and that they should not wait longer. So the drinks were hastily swallowed, and Madame seized Mary by the arm and led her through a further door and a smaller sitting-room, also in a state of opulent confusion, most of it the flotsam and jetsam of the children's lives. Beyond this room the dining-room was surprisingly austere, with a long mahogany table elegantly laid, with two cut-glass candlesticks and crimson candles, three in each.

A large painting by Renoir, girls bathing against a background of smoky woodland, broke the austerity of the room. It glowed in the candlelight, giving as much as it took, and doubling the richness of the exchange, converting light into its own currency of colour. A cry of triumph, and a small girl broke into the room from the hall, the cord of her dressing-gown catching in the door and acting as a tether.

She was an elfin creature, small, compact, with two flying pigtails and a pair of brimming grey eyes, so intense that the rest of her anatomy appeared to be the mere trailer, like the tail of a meteor. She flew at her mother, and the cord tore itself from her gown with a flick, the tassel hitting the skirt of the maid, who stood with a huge bowl of soup between table and door.

“I've come to say good-night, Mummy,” she cried. Then, oddly enough, she turned to the visitors, curtsied like a French child, and spoke in French. It was only when Joan replied in English and shook her newly-bathed hand, that she realised her mistake, and broke into a peal of laughter.

“Will you be here to-morrow, then?” she said eagerly. “I am half-English, you know, though I've never been to England. If you live there, may I come and see you one day?”

“You certainly may,” said Joan, with solemnity, giving the child all her attention, while the rest of the adults looked on with amusement.

“Adrian won't come in. He's two years older than me, but he's too shy.”

Mary started. Adrian! Her husband's name! The boy must have been named after him. Yet the doctor had never mentioned in his letters that he had children. Indeed, he had never written about himself, or his life, other than to say that his professional work kept him very busy, too busy to come to England. Now here she saw him in the
middle of a warm, embracing family life, with this generous and expressive French wife, this adorable child, and this brother who so far had been no more than a pleasant courier. But he too was obviously something more. That certainty hardly occupied her mind at the moment.

“Adrian!” she exclaimed. “But that is my husband's name, Mrs. Batten!”

“Yes, that is so,” said the mother, who was blandly extricating herself from the embraces of her daughter, as from those of a small octopus.

The maid, having safely deposited the tureen in the centre of the table, now took up the child and carried her from the room, under a rain of playful blows, and cries of “I'm going to England, to England” chanted as a kind of passacaglia, in time to the firm tread of the Frenchwoman.

“I shall look forward to meeting Adrian, then,” said Mary, quietly to Mrs. Batten, who was now seated at the head of the table, while the colonel leaned over her to ladle out the soup and hand it round. Nobody was instructed where to sit, so Mary took the chair on the right hand of her hostess, opposite the colonel. Joan hesitated, looked at the vacant chair beside the colonel, then walked round the table and sat down beside her mother. Mary looked up, and found that his elusive grey eyes were touched with laughter, and that he was looking into her own, demanding protection.

At that moment, the doctor came in.

His stoop was the more noticeable under the bright light; or maybe he was tired at the end of the day's work. He shut the door carefully, went round behind his wife and touched her shoulder with his hand as he passed. He stopped beside Mrs. Winterbourne, stooped and looked into her face, his piercing eyes full of mischief.

“I see no sign of fatigue, after the journey. You must have iron constitutions, both of you.” He nodded at Joan, but she ignored the compliment, and went on busily at her soup. She had taken a swift glance at him, however, and followed it with another as he sat down at the head of the table, on her right hand.

“Why, Tom, deserted by the ladies?” he said to his brother, as he noticed the vacant chair on his right. But Tom was at the sideboard,
fatiguing
the
salade
with all the up-handed ceremony of a regimental drummer at work. He carried the huge bowl to the table, and then began to collect the soup plates, to help the maid who had now brought in a dish of veal escalops with golden-brown potatoes.

“The children safe?” asked the doctor, along the table. His wife rose and walked round with his soup-plate, which he attacked belatedly, stopping to look first at one guest, then the other, without comment. His wife stood behind him while he consumed his soup, and the second course
had to be served by the colonel, who dished it out from where he sat opposite Mrs. Winterbourne. She held the plates for him, and was thus able to examine him more closely.

He had a family likeness to his brother, but it was blunter, more equivocal. The doctor's character spoke out instantly; simple, direct. She felt the positive force of it though he had not yet declared himself in any way, or indeed said more than a few words. The colonel appeared to be putting up a façade of almost self-conscious ritual, as though his gestures, and his words, were studied with a view to disguising his nature. Mrs. Winterbourne's curiosity was whetted. She looked at him again, asking herself if he really intended to hide something. But what could a man at that time of life, with his career determined and almost concluded, want with subterfuge? She dismissed the suspicion, and turned her attention to the doctor, who was now sitting back and studying her openly, his hand to his lips, wiping them with a napkin.

“It is good to meet again after these many years, Mrs. Winterbourne,” he said. “Time can give us confidence. I know that often I will venture to-day, where I would not have dared even ten years ago. I suppose experience is a kind of ammunition, that adds to our strength and assurance. I don't know. It's dangerous to generalise.”

“One escalop, Mrs. Winterbourne,” interrupted the colonel, handing it across the table to her, and following it with the
salade
.

He behaved as though he were afraid of plunging below the surface of social life.

“Don't spoil the meal with philosophy, Luke. We shall all have indigestion.”

The doctor smiled at him, reassuringly.

“Why worry, Tom? I'm only counting the shots in the locker. You've been trained to do that, surely?”

Tom did not take this easily, however. Mary saw him
frown, and the hand that held the next plate fumbled a little. He put down the plate in front of his brother, then snatched it up again and put it down for Joan, muttering an apology. “We're used to serving him at once, in case he's called away.”

Joan ignored this again. She could not bring herself to accept his rather timid overtures. She was only a little less hostile to the doctor. Mary felt almost ashamed of her daughter's boorishness, and put herself out to be agreeable, especially to the two men. The effort was so successful that the colonel instantly recovered poise, and during the rest of the meal addressed himself almost exclusively to her, leaning across the table with small confidences and gallantries, to which she responded willingly enough, since they amused her. His efforts were so patent, so boyish, and nonetheless acceptable for being old-fashioned.

Joan must have observed this, for she retreated into a moroseness that even Mrs. Batten must have felt, for she began to talk to the young woman, across the conversation of the other two, questioning her about her work at Cambridge, and enquiring into her husband's research. She appeared to be knowledgeable, and Joan saw this as a means of escape from so much personal chatter. The table became quite lively, with the doctor maintaining a centre of communicative silence, toward which the consciousness of all the others gravitated.

This harmony was broken suddenly by the maid, who came in, looked menacingly at the colonel, and said, “The English solicitor on the telephone!”

“Oh Lord!” he exclaimed; then looked helplessly at his brother, and from him to Mrs. Winterbourne; a secondary gesture implying that he had brought her into the orbit of his confidence. She found herself being mildly alarmed on his behalf. Poor man, she thought, he's worried over something. And she watched him as he went reluctantly from the room.

The doctor looked at her, and smiled.

“The Law!” he said. “It's something quite outside my brother's range. And it worries him. I suppose when these professional soldiers come out of the army, that cosy nursery, they feel the cold winds.” He leaned across Joan, and spoke confidentially to her mother. “You see, Tom never got beyond lieutenant-colonel. You appreciate the difference?”

“Certainly we do!” snapped Joan.

“Ah yes, I am sure you would,” said the doctor suavely. He turned to her with an ironic inclination of the head. She had the sensation that he was willing to wait indefinitely for her to declare herself on some matter, or any matter, as though assured that she would play into his hand in spite of herself.

“I hope …” began Mary, who now found herself quite unaccountably interested in the colonel and his affairs. But before she could proceed, the door opened a few inches, and he poked his head in, beckoned to his brother, and said, “Can you come a minute?”

“Ah,” replied the doctor, smiling, and following the colonel to the telephone in the hall. He had forgotten to shut the door, and the talk with the ‘English solicitor' could faintly be overheard. “Yes! Yes! But they can't hold him responsible for
that
!” Followed by indistinguishable monosyllables, and a tattering voice at the other end betraying considerable emphasis. “Go back? Certainly not. He had better remain here until things are sorted out more clearly. You realise that he is quite inexperienced; I said
quite
inexperienced, in your world. Well, the world with which you have to deal! I won't say more on the telephone. But you can be sure of us here. The anchor holds very fast, I can tell you!” There was another outburst from the English shore. Then the doctor said soothingly, “Yes; I am certain it will be instructive to him. You may be sure he will always …” but the maid came
in again and closed the door, while she collected the plates and put the cheeses on the table.