The Flowering Thorn (20 page)

Mrs. Pomfret stared in astonishment.

“But of course Alec and Joan do lessons! It's holidays now, but they've been doing them all winter. Hadn't you noticed there were only two about in the mornings, instead of four?”

Lesley shook her head.

“They get behind things,” she explained. “Trees, and so on. It's only at meal-times, don't you think, that children can really be checked?”

“But didn't Pat tell you?”

“I don't think so. But it's only lately, you know, that Pat's begun to talk.”

Mrs. Pomfret gave her a sudden clear glance. Henry, as usual, had been quite right. There was a change. Aloud she said:

“You don't make Pat do any, then?”

It was Lesley's turn to look surprised. The idea of giving Pat instruction had never entered her head; and indeed, now that it had, she could scarcely see herself bending above the infant scholar. And yet Pat was now six: with his new-found boldness he had no more than a fortnight ago, on August 12th, directed her attention to the fly-leaf of the
Tailor:
‘To Pat on his birthday,' it said, ‘August 14th.' And Lesley had pulled herself together and bought him a cake and given a party for the four young Pomfrets.…

“Who teaches yours?” she asked.

“Why, Henry and I between us. Henry teaches them Latin and Arithmetic and French and History, and I teach them writing and spelling and easy things like English. But Alec's going to school in the autumn.”

‘School!' thought Lesley. There was school ahead of Pat too, and at the moment he didn't know a thing! She looked at Mrs. Pomfret's face: it was kind, intelligent, patient and firm.
She
could teach any child its alphabet.

“If I promise not to pay more than about fourpence a week,” said Lesley persuasively, “would you possibly consider taking Pat on as well?” And she braced herself in advance for the inevitable argument, during which Mrs. Pomfret was slowly beaten up from twopence to threepence by way of twopence-ha'penny. She gave in at last, however; and at a monthly cost slightly below Lesley's old cigarette bills, Patrick Craigie started his education.

3

Complementary, as it were, to Lesley's intercourse with the Vicarage, was her intercourse with the Hall. It was a phenomenon in its way almost as strange as the first, the opening stages of their acquaintance having been characterised on the one side by acute disappointment, and on the other side by acute malease. After the first unforgettable meeting Lesley's one desire, with regard to Sir Philip, was never to see him again; yet within a space of about four months she had somehow formed the habit of dining at the Hall, and often alone, no less than two or three times a week.

It was odd, it was inexplicable; but between the first meeting and the second—which Lesley, after dodging as long as possible, was at last forced into by a thunderstorm—something had evidently occurred to alter Sir Philip's attitude. (The unknown factor, indeed, was neither more nor less than a sound talking-to from the Vicar's wife; and therefore much too simple for Lesley to guess it.) He was charming, intelligent, and slightly formal: displaying even, in momentary glimpses, the tender and delicate respect with which age sometimes pays homage to the youthfulness of the young. Lesley had never met such urbanity. Wooed in spite of herself, she instinctively responded, and all unaware presented a change of personality at least as striking as the one she marvelled at. For if Lesley wondered, so did Sir Philip: and though with both on such super-best behaviour the acquaintance was naturally slow to ripen, the mutual sympathy when they both fell from grace—when Lesley swore again and Sir Philip told the wrong story—seemed to carry them at one stride into the easy territory of life-long friendship. It was not, however, until considerably later that Lesley received, in the course of one of their long after-dinner sessions, a clear-cut exposition of Sir Philip's attitude towards women in general and herself in particular.

They had been discussing, as not infrequently happened, the peculiar awfulness of Mrs. Sprigg.

“Every time she opens her mouth,” complained Lesley, “I have to send Pat on an errand. She gets bawdier and bawdier.”

Sir Philip threw up his hands.

“You can't do anything about it, my dear. All the Spriggs are bawdy, and always have been. They got set in their ways under the Georges.”

“And you?” said Lesley.

“Under Victoria the Good.”

“She really was, then?”

“Good? As good as gold: we've gone off the standard,” said Sir Philip. “Everyone was good in those days—either good or wicked. Things were a lot less streaky.”

Lesley looked at him with interest.

“I keep forgetting how long it is since you were young,” she said thoughtfully. “Were there still demi-reps?”

Sir Philip shifted in his chair.

“There were,” he said, “and a young woman like you wasn't supposed to know about them.”

“A young woman like me would probably have been one,” said Lesley. “What were they like?”

“They were excellent company, and they never met one's wife. Some of them were also extremely expensive.” He broke off, coffee-spoon suspended, and in his eyes the unmistakable expression of a man who is going to boast. “My dear Miss Frewen, I've spent fifty pounds and more on one day's entertainment of one young woman. We wound up, I remember, with a genuine champagne supper—champagne in the flower-vase, champagne in the finger-bowls: not a drop of anything else allowed on the table. It caused quite a sensation. And there's another thing I remember: the flowers were camellias, and after an hour or so in the champagne they went a deep ivory yellow. I'm possibly the only man in England,” said Sir Philip, “who can give you that first-hand information.”

“I should say it's extremely probable,” agreed Lesley.

He looked at her over his coffee-cup.

“It strikes you as wicked extravagance?”

In something of a dilemma Lesley shook her head: the thing that did strike her was not the wickedness but the vulgarity. Astonishing that a man of such quick and delicate perceptions—of such wide and sophisticated experience—could still look back with pride on a leaf from a novelette! It was a vulgar period, of course, full of practical jokes and private menageries: but even so one would not have expected the illusion to last.… Aloud she said:

“I only hope the lady was worth it. Was she?”

Sir Philip considered.

“Not in herself, no. Because, of course, no woman could really be worth fifty pounds for one day. But as the excuse for a glorious burst, as an incitement to throw caution to the winds—she was worth every penny of it. In my experience it's a pretty general rule that no man can get really reckless of money unless he's got a woman with him. Drinking is different, of course: in fact, woman's more often than not in the way: but then drink never gave me the same feeling.
I
could only get it by throwing the guineas about.” He drank off his coffee and took another look into the past. Women and wine, just as the song said! Both of them expensive, and particularly the women. “But take them all round,” finished Sir Philip thoughtfully, “they gave deuced good value.”

Lesley looked at her cigarette.

“And you didn't mind the—the obviousness of it?”

“On the contrary. One knew where one was. Nowadays, I believe, there's a fashion to have a bar in the drawing-room: personally it wouldn't appeal to me. I don't like to find either barmaids in the drawing-room or ladies in the bar: and under Victoria the Good one didn't.”

“Form at a glance, in fact,” murmured Lesley.

Sir Philip nodded.

“For instance”—his old eyes glinted humorously at her—“any woman in the kind of frock you wear for dinner, my dear—”

“Was at once assumed to have fallen from virtue.” Lesley laughed.

“Exactly,” said Sir Philip. “Especially if she used your language as well. It would have been taken as a direct invitation to dishonourable advances. As I said before, one knew where one was.”

“But isn't it much more convenient,” argued Lesley, “to have me just as good company, and socially correct as well? To be able to say what you like
and
introduce me to your aunts?”

“But I can't say what I like. I'm what you probably describe as inhibited,” said Sir Philip. “My dear Lesley, let me explain. The first time you came to dinner I was completely at my ease: in fact I had only one regret, which was that you hadn't turned up a year or two earlier. That's what I thought you were. But now I know you're not—and in spite of your truly appalling language, I did know it very quickly indeed—that particular kind of ease is completely gone. And the other sort—the drawing-room sort—can't take its place; you won't let it.”

Lesley nodded intelligently.

“You mean the things that amused you when you thought I was a pros—”

“Please!”

“— A light woman, then—no longer amuse you now that you find I'm not?”

“Exactly.”

“But why not?”

“Because knowing that you really are a lady, I'd like you to behave like one,” said Sir Philip.

4

Purely out of regard for his feelings, Lesley did so. It came more easily than she would have thought; it came almost as easily as being bright. For the qualities required by Sir Philip, in his definition of a lady, approximated very closely indeed to the qualities required by herself as the essentially modern characteristics of a young woman of the world; an intellectual integrity, the custom of polite intercourse, and in temper the aristocratic habit of never giving a damn. Their only real divergence was on the definition of polite, which to Lesley meant cultivated, amusing, or, quite simply, modish, and to Sir Philip unexceptionable. Unexceptionable, that is, to a person of slightly more than average intelligence. No more than Lesley had he an appetite for bread-and-butter; he only did not like raw meat.

Within these limits, however, his conversation was at least as interesting as that of Toby Ashton. He knew six European capitals, the countries of the Near East, and could remember as far back as the début of Yvette Guilbert. He had adored, with apparently equal fervour, a Duchess of Devonshire and Mlle. Demay—she who sang at the Ambassadeurs, in 1892, a song called ‘
Moi, je casse les noisettes en m'asseyant dessus.
' He had known George Moore as a painter and did not think much of him; he never did think much of the Irish, they were always harping on their ancestors. He himself had ancestors, naturally, but he didn't keep harping on them. Lesley, indeed, sometimes wished that he would; one or two of them, from the rare glimpses vouchsafed, seemed to have had some very odd traits indeed. There was a Sir Philip of the Civil Wars, who, throughout that most troubled period of England's history, had been chiefly distinguished by an extreme susceptibility to draughts. (He was also, it is true, an experienced and indefatigable soldier: but whenever the campaign permitted he at once returned to the Hall and to his special draught-proof chair, which to judge by contemporary description must have closely resembled the later sedan.) Another Sir Philip, a generation or so earlier, had such strong simplicity of character that he always took off his clothes when he felt hot. The mannerism was at least harmless (unlike that of Sir Giles, who threw daggers to express distaste), and beyond refusing all invitations for the dog-days, not even his wife did anything about it.

Descended from such a line, it was scarcely possible that Sir Philip should have been dull. And he was not dull. He was deeply interesting. So was Mr. Pomfret. Nor had Lesley ever been bored in the company of Mrs. Sprigg. In fact, it might almost be said that she was never bored at all. There was a constant intercourse, a continual deepening of acquaintance; instead of knowing a hundred people by sight she would soon know half a dozen by heart. An eventual return to Town was still, so to speak, the vanishing point of her perspective; but the lines were four years long, and in the meantime, for her consolation, there was this new and startling discovery: that the country is populated by really quite interesting persons.

CHAPTER FIVE

Running downstairs one morning in September, Lesley was halted at the door of the sitting-room by a brilliant and novel blaze of colour. For a moment she stood bewildered, as though before a floor and wall that had blossomed overnight; but the truth was not in fact so far to seek. It was only early sunlight pouring through the transparent blue and rose of unlined chintzes: she had forgotten, before going to bed, to pull back the new curtains.

The incident was a trivial one; not so its consequences. All through breakfast Lesley's thoughts kept returning to that extraordinary vision of a charming room. For the first time in months she consciously looked about her; and the Brixton décor, nearly eighteen months shabbier than when she first saw it, completely failed to amuse. It was hideously ugly, it would very soon be sordid: but until Sir Philip had recovered from the bathroom, there was obviously nothing to be done.

Lesley cleared the table and set back the chairs. They were made of some reddish, sticky-looking wood, by comparison with which the one chintz cover, its delphiniums notwithstanding, was a positive relief. Lesley plumped up the cushion, turned towards the door again, and as she did so noticed a three-cornered flap of wall-paper hanging loose under the ceiling. Almost without thinking she put up her hand and tore down a two-foot strip of buff chrysanthemums, crimson ramblers and variegated stocks: for the palimpsest was three deep.

Behind the stocks appeared a couple of cabbage roses, wrinkled hard over an uneven surface. Lesley seized a knife from the tray, and scoring at random felt the blade slip from plaster and bite on wood. She thought—

‘Oak!'

It was a beam running crosswise the whole width of the wall; and having traced out its length Lesley stood still as Michelangelo before his imprisoned angel. She had received a vision. Her eye had penetrated through rep, maple and four layers of paper to a dwelling-place perfect in conception, harmonious in detail, and as much her personal creation as a child or a poem.