The Edwardians (14 page)

Margaret was staring at her in complete amazement.

“Viola! But what do you mean? Surely one must have some principles? One must consider one's . . . well, one's class? Mother always brought me up to believe that, and I'm sure your mother did too. I always had it drummed into me. Not in so many words, perhaps; but it was always taken for granted. That's why I feel so badly now. You see, Adrian was in a paper parcel. One doesn't know who his parents were, and naturally father and mother don't like it. I quite see that. It's different for me, because I love him; but I suppose that ought not to count. Aunt Clemmie says one was not put into this world for self-indulgence.”

“Does your mother say that too?”

“I am sure she would say it. I know mother believes in doing one's duty. She opened two bazaars last week.”

“And was photographed, and given a bouquet of orchids?”

“No, they were malmaisons.—But Viola, I see you are laughing at me. You puzzle me dreadfully. I feel that you are full of ideas and express only half of them. It is very disturbing. It's like talking to a Socialist,” said poor Margaret.

“Have you ever talked to a Socialist?”

“No, of course not. But that is what I imagine it would be like. One would feel he was restraining himself—letting only a few drops come through, though a great Niagara was behind them. Dreadful people—wanting to upset everything. Aunt Clemmie explained it to me. Everything we believe in would go by the board. All decencies. All principles. Oh, Viola,” said Margaret, “I do try so hard to keep my head. Between Adrian, and mother and father, and now you, I feel in a whirl. Adrian says that love is the only thing which matters. Father and mother say behaviour is the only thing which matters. Goodness knows what
you
say. You talk about cardboard trains, till I don't know where I am. What would Sebastian say?”

“Sebastian?” Viola looked as though Margaret had jerked her. She paused. “Leave Sebastian out of this; Sebastian, I think, doesn't know his own mind. So far, he takes what he wants, and doesn't know why he is unhappy. He doesn't talk to me. I fancy he doesn't talk to anyone. He just lives, and tries not to think. People like us must never think, for fear of thinking ourselves out of existence. If Sebastian thought at all he would go back to Chevron.”

Viola could have said a great deal more about Sebastian, but she felt some reluctance to discuss him with Lady Roehampton's daughter—for unlike the simple Margaret, she was well aware of the liaison between them. She changed the subject, therefore, but because her resentment was strong and bitter she still hovered secretly round it, saying: “At least let us do our parents the justice of saying that they exact nothing from us which they would hesitate to exact from themselves. Your mother, for instance, would fling anybody aside rather than provoke a scandal. So would mine,” she added; for it sounded invidious to single out Margaret's mother; but she had already committed herself, and Margaret caught her up.

“My mother, Viola? A scandal? But who should she fling? There has never been any scandal about mother. You can't think how nice she is to father, even though their tastes are quite different. Anyway, how very seldom one hears of scandals in connection with people like us! It is always among the working-classes that those dreadful murders happen, or else in Naples.”

“Margaret, you really are delicious. I didn't mean to say anything against your mother, and I think the way she has brought you up is a great tribute to her moral sense. There! are you satisfied? Don't worry, my dear; I meant nothing, and it was only an imaginary case.”

But Margaret persisted. “You did mean something, though perhaps not about my mother. Do you mean that people—the people we know—sometimes do things they oughtn't to do? Really awful things? The worst? Viola, tell me. I never thought of it before, but now I feel that perhaps things go on all the time which I don't know or notice. You seem to know a lot more than I do.—Oh dear,” she said, “what
would
Aunt Clemmie say?”

Viola looked at her round, puzzled face. She felt very much inclined to enlighten Margaret. She felt inclined to say, “Very well, if you want the truth, here it is. The society you live in is composed of people who are both dissolute and prudent. They want to have their fun, and they want to keep their position. They glitter on the surface, but underneath the surface they are stupid—too stupid to recognise their own motives. They know only a limited number of things about themselves: that they need plenty of money, and that they must be seen in the right places, associated with the right people. In spite of their efforts to turn themselves into painted images, they remain human somewhere, and must indulge in love affairs, which sometimes are artificial, and sometimes inconveniently real. Whatever happens, the world must be served first. In spite of their brilliance, this creed necessarily makes them paltry and mean. Then they are envious, spiteful, and mercenary; arrogant and cold. As for us, their children, they leave us in complete ignorance of life, passing on to us only the ideas they think we should hold, and treat us with the utmost ruthlessness if we fail to conform.”

But Viola left this indictment unspoken. She thought privately that Margaret was very well suited to the future that Lady Roehampton desired for her; as the wife of Tony Wexford she would do admirably. In twenty years time she would be setting nicely in the mould that had shaped Lady Wexford
m
è
re,
Lady Porteviot, and her own aunts. Adrian was a freak that had somehow entered her life, and Viola moreover suspected that enterprising young painters were not unwilling to better their social position; for she could not imagine that an attractive young Bohemian like Adrian should really have fallen in love with Margaret. She had concealed from Margaret the fact that she had seen him at the Café Royal, a place which she frequented in the strictest incognito. No, they were not, Viola thought, made for each other.

So she tried to repair the damage she had done, and Margaret went away disconsolate, having received some advice of which her mother would very heartily have approved, but feeling that Viola at the last moment had failed her. There was no hope in anybody. Viola had begun by criticising her parents—and in such terms, too, as Margaret had never heard before—but had ended by supporting them. What was poor Margaret to believe? She had never been so much aware of her own ignorance and inexperience. Her mother's gaiety depressed her now, and the usual chatter tinkled falsely in her ears; she found herself analysing and judging, instead of accepting everything with a fascinated admiration.

Leonard Anquetil would have been amused had he known how his leaven, transmitted through Viola, was working in the heavy girl he had seen at Chevron, but to whom he had not spoken a word. He knew it about six months later, for when Margaret had gone Viola sat down to her weekly letter; it reached him at Manaos, and diverted him greatly.

True to his self-imposed schedule, Lord Roehampton presented himself in Sylvia's room exactly as the week elapsed. That is to say, he had received the packet at three o'clock in the afternoon, and at three o'clock in the afternoon he tapped on Sylvia's door. His train was due to leave for Newmarket at four-fifteen. Sylvia was sitting in front of her mirror preparing to go out. They had had half a dozen people to luncheon; it had been a successful party; she had recorded vaguely how nice George could be as a host, in his simple way; she was feeling well-disposed towards George, principally because she had persuaded him to keep his Newmarket appointment instead of accompanying her to the Opera that night, and partly also because Margaret, officially engaged to Tony Wexford, was now on a visit to her aunt Ernestine. George had been a great help to her over that business, and it all served to put her in a good temper. So she smiled at him in the mirror as he came up behind her. She was pinning on her hat at the moment, and her maid was standing by with the pins, wearing an anxious expression and making little darts and pounces which on a less propitious day might have annoyed Sylvia, but which now she accepted without much notice, simply because she felt free and happy and in a good humour with all the world. No George, no Margaret; she could be quite fond of them now she was rid of them. Dear George; a good sort, conveniently dense, but a good sort, none the less, even though his collars were always too high for him and his bowler hat too small. “Dear George,” she said aloud.

“You can go, Sheldon,” he said to the maid. “Her ladyship will ring when she wants you.”

Sylvia sat round and stared at him; he, so mild, had never behaved in so arbitrary a way before. “Dismissing my maid, George! but I'm getting ready to go out. Aren't you starting yourself? What on earth is the matter?”

She saw then that he looked very odd; he had taken off his London clothes and had changed into a tweed suit, but his face was flushed and he kept putting his hand up to his tie and taking it away again. He kept the other hand in the pocket of his jacket, fumbling with something in the pocket, half drawing it out and then thinking better of it and thrusting it back again. It seemed as though by his order to the maid he had temporarily emptied his cistern-full of determination, and was waiting, for it to fill up before he should draw off some more. Meanwhile, he fixed Sylvia very hard with his gaze, and kept swallowing, so that the Adam's apple in his throat bulged uncomfortably against his collar and made him cough two or three times in a way which appeared to annoy him, as though he felt it to be foolish. An absurd idea occurred to Sylvia; “he is going to be sick,” she thought; and then she thought, “he has got some bad news to tell me,” and her mind flew to Margaret, for she knew that George would not waver thus over any bad news concerned with Sebastian. He would say straight out, “I have just heard that Sebastian was hurt today playing polo,” or whatever the accident might be, so she cast that terror from her mind as soon as it had entered it, and at the same time she felt the blood leave her body as though it had all been drained suddenly away, such was the fear that she had had and such the relief in realising that it was unfounded. “George?” she said, and going up to him she took hold of him by the coat lapels.

“It's that,” he said, moving away from her and throwing the packet of letters down upon the dressing table.

A glance was enough for her.

“How long have you had these?”

“A week.”

“A week? And you said nothing?—Where did you get them, may I ask?”

“Post. Anonymous.”

“Well, what are you going to do?”

“That depends upon you.”

“Upon me? Do you want me to tell you that they're a forgery?”

“No. They're not a forgery.” The Chevron writing paper lay open on the table, and the hot words spilt out in Sebastian's writing.

“Are you going to divorce me, George?” Absurdly her mind flew to the Templecombes.

“I've been thinking it over. At first I thought I must divorce you, but that would mean a terrible scandal. I don't think I could face it. Besides, I dislike the idea of exposing these things to publicity, it gives such a shocking example. I have decided that I shall not divorce you if you will do what I say.”

“And that is?”

“You must know what it is.”

“Give up Sebastian?”

“Naturally.”

“But, George,” she said, frightened of his hard look, appalled by this sudden catastrophe, desperately trying to find a way out, “how can I—it isn't practicable—I shall meet him everywhere—and what should I say to Lucy? I could promise you that there shouldn't be anything more of . . . of that sort, but how can I give up seeing him altogether?”

“I have thought of that. We shall shut up this house and go down to Wymondham. You have had twenty years of this kind of life. I put up with it to please you; now you shall put up with Wymondham to please me.”

“Oh God, you've given me no time to think—won't it satisfy you if I swear to give him up as my lover?”

Lord Roehampton did not answer; he looked at her with an expression of hatred and contempt.

“George? You would be punishing me quite enough: I love him.”

“Leave that out, please; I don't want to know anything about your feelings.”

“Don't you even want to know what I shall feel “about you if you break my heart and shut me up in the country? What sort of life do you suppose we shall have together? We shall be civil to each other in front of the servants, and in front of Margaret, but underneath I shall hate you. Be generous to me, George, and you shan't regret it. Let me keep him as a friend.”

“Sylvia, how can you make such a childish proposal? It only shows me how vain and irresponsible you are. You might be my daughter, not my wife. I see,” he continued, his grievance rising, “that you have no appreciation of my generosity,” and now indeed he began to see himself as a man full of magnanimity which has been overlooked and tossed on one side, instead of being acknowledged with instant tears of remorse and gratitude. All the pompous solemnity latent in him was suddenly called out when Sylvia, as he conceived it, attempted to put him in the wrong. “No other man,” he went on, “would have given you a second chance. Another man would have turned you straight out of the house. And instead of thanking me—instead of going on your knees to me almost—you dare to plead with me, you dare to ask for further favours.”

“You might be a Victorian husband,” she cried, getting angry in her turn.

“Oh, my standards differ from yours, I daresay,” he answered; “I've never been very up-to-date, I've only been content to let you enjoy yourself without noticing that you were fooling me, and now that I find you out and make you the most generous offer that any man in my position could make, you turn on me and imply that I am treating you harshly.”