The Fox's Walk (32 page)

“My cousin Florence,” Aunt Katie was saying, “when her father was Ambassador to St. Petersburg, was asked to tea by one of the archduchesses, and the Archduchess took her to the nursery to see her children and asked Florence to let her know how they were getting on with their English. Florence told us the little archdukes and duchesses spoke excellent English, but with a strong Waterford accent!”

Miss Kingsley smiled; otherwise no one seemed to find the story amusing. Fortunately at that moment Uncle William returned to the table.

“The Archduchess's children,” he said, sitting down heavily, with a hearty laugh, “a strong Waterford accent!”

“What did your cousin tell the Archduchess?” I asked Aunt Katie. I had the feeling that this particular meal was one during which any innocuous conversational gambit, even from a child, would be welcome.

“Oh, I expect she said their English was perfect. What else could she say?”

I now wonder if Aunt Katie had, consciously or not, introduced the subject of accents because she knew I was worried about Miss Kingsley's future at Glenbeg. Was she hinting to Mrs. Bryce that, if she wanted her daughter to grow up to take a place in Waterford society, a good governess could steer the girl past some of the vulgarities and ignorance of social conventions that held back her parents? I don't know, but it seems possible that Uncle William, at least, was making that point.

Before lunch we had had a full account of Rosamund Gwynne's travels around Ireland, and Grandmother, without betraying a glimmer of the curiosity that so appalled her in Mrs. Bryce, now knew the full extent of her putative daughter-in-law's friends and acquaintances in Ireland. She had been staying in the politically more stable—in the sense that those loyal to England were more firmly in charge—north, and I could tell that she found the atmosphere there more sympathetic.

“When did you last hear from Hubert?” Uncle William asked Miss Gwynne, as soon as he was comfortably settled in his chair and had eaten enough of his beef to be certain it met his rigorous standards. (The butcher was a character of some importance in our lives, and our convention was to make sure that the relationship was adversarial enough to keep him on his toes. The butcher with whom Aunt Katie had maintained such an arrangement for years had recently been “left” by her—the word uttered with the same gravity and outrage as though it had been a husband rather than an unsatisfactory tradesman with whom she had severed relations—and both the old ladies and Uncle William watchfully anticipated the moment when the honeymoon period with the new butcher would be over.) “We haven't had a word for over a month—the post is terrible, of course.”

“Terrible,” Rosamund Gwynne agreed. “And, of course, I have been traveling and I have had to change my plans, so I'll probably get a whole stack of letters all at once.”

Grandmother didn't say anything and her expression remained one of polite interest, but I could see the idea that her only surviving son, from whom she received one letter a month, was inundating this ordinary young woman with “stacks” of what we were supposed to infer were love letters was not one that sat well with her.

I wonder now to what extent Mrs. Bryce and Rosamund Gwynne had planned the course of conversation. I have to assume that Miss Gwynne had confided something close to the true state of affairs to her friend and that Mrs. Bryce had described to her—while glossing over Grandmother's attitude of distant condescension toward herself and her family—the generally haughty and cold atmosphere of Ballydavid and the imperious character of the woman Miss Gwynne planned to have as a mother-in-law. I was very aware that no member of my family had so far mentioned the words “engagement” or “marriage” and that Uncle William was the first to volunteer a reference to Uncle Hubert. I saw Mrs. Bryce gather herself, much in the uncomfortable way that Patience did approaching a jump, for this opportunity to take the conversation to the next stage. It occurred to me that Grandmother would not have given either of her guests the cue they needed to make some reference to the unofficial engagement that, if unchallenged, would establish Rosamund Gwynne's position in our family. Grandmother would score an enormous victory if she could get through the visit without ever acknowledging that my mother had written to her about the engagement. What she wished was to be able to say goodbye to Rosamund Gwynne on the doorstep, with the polite sentiment that she hoped they would meet again sometime. If she could succeed in that, she was capable of allowing Miss Gwynne to stay at Glenbeg for a month without any further contact. Uncle William's approach was different. He believed in getting to the bottom of things, and since, once started, he was prepared to worry his quarry with the single-mindedness and lack of inhibition of a terrier, he often did, even if the process left bystanders bemused and embarrassed. Mrs. Bryce, of course, didn't know this and consequently felt compelled to do something to advance her friend's cause.

“Rosamund has never been to the East,” she said.

“When are you planning your visit, Miss Gwynne?” Uncle William asked.

“Oh, please, do call me Rosamund,” Rosamund Gwynne said, as she had an hour before in the drawing room. “I don't expect I'll go until Hubert and I are married. But it's such a long time until his next leave that maybe I won't be able to wait———”

Aunt Katie managed a polite and sympathetic smile; Grandmother stiffened as though Rosamund Gwynne's hint that she might not be able to wait was faintly indecent; Uncle William was, or seemed, confused—but again no one picked up the cue.

“But you will be married in London, won't you?” Mrs. Bryce asked, a note of desperation in her voice. “I'm counting on it. St. Georges, Hanover Square and clouds of orange blossom.”

The silence that followed this was broken only by Aunt Katie's indrawn breath as she glanced involuntarily at Sonia.

“Orange blossom,” she said eventually, then tried to collect herself. “June, then—that's the season, isn't it?”

“I'm sure it's grown in greenhouses now for London florists,” Uncle William said absentmindedly.

Although each one of us who had been present on Easter Sunday remembered Sonia's words, words that had come seemingly from nowhere, only I had heard Rosamund Gwynne since referred to—by Miss Kingsley at the Bryce's dining-room table—as Mademoiselle.

“Alice will be a dear little bridesmaid.” Mrs. Bryce seemed to have lost her head completely.

“I don't think Alice's uncle much likes the scent of orange blossom.” It was the first time Sonia had spoken since we sat down to lunch. She said it quietly but clearly, the words hard and graceless.

For a moment no one said anything, but it felt as if everyone in the dining room had been sucked away from the table to either end of the room to form two opposing teams: Rosamund Gwynne, Mrs. Bryce, and Clodagh at one end; my family, with Sonia as a visiting center forward, on the other; Miss Kingsley alone unallied, but no one in much doubt as for whom she would cheer (for her sake, I hoped, silently).

“How do you know?” Clodagh asked in the same unpleasant and superior tone that had made me dislike her when we had first met at my birthday party.

“How would you know?” Rosamund Gwynne asked simultaneously, and in much the same tone. I hated her.

Sonia smiled faintly and looked at her plate. The Ballydavid team knew that Sonia's pronouncements were never expanded upon or clarified. It now occurred to me that Sonia might be speaking metaphorically, and, although I enjoyed a challenge to the claims of Miss Gwynne, I feared for Sonia in the same way that I feared for Miss Kingsley when I saw her overplay her hand.

“Really!” Mrs. Bryce said, her disapproval apparently aimed at Grandmother who she seemed to imply was not able to ensure the behavior of her dependents.

It was Grandmother's turn for a faint smile.

“I'd forgotten,” she said. “How odd. Of course. Hugh doesn't like orange blossom; it gives him hay fever—it makes him sneeze and his eyes water.”

I wondered, and I wondered if everyone else wondered if what Grandmother said was true. Had she invented Uncle Hubert's allergy to the flower on the spot? She was unlikely to be challenged: Uncle Hubert was on the other side of the world, and, even if Miss Gwynne wrote to enquire—and unless the engagement was somewhat more definite than it appeared to be, such a question might be hard to word—a denial of his distaste for
Citrus sinensis
could be some months away.

In fits and starts, short silences and shorter banalities, we finished lunch. I ate the charlotte russe without quite tasting it. Soon we were crossing the hall to the drawing room where I imagined our guests would linger for a token moment or two before making their excuses, and then their pony and trap would be brought round to the front door. But it didn't happen like that. The post had arrived while we were eating lunch, and a letter with my mother's handwriting lay on top of two or three others. I saw Grandmother's eye light upon it.

“Katie,” she said to her sister. “Why don't you show Mrs. Bryce and Miss Gwynne where they can wash their hands?”

Aunt Katie and Mrs. Bryce turned obediently toward the stairs. The only downstairs water closet in a house inhabited solely by women, the owner not in her first youth, was designated the gentlemen's cloakroom and, thus, women who needed to relieve themselves had to climb the stairs and avail themselves of one of the two drafty bathrooms on the upper floor.

“I don't———” Rosamund Gwynne started to say, before Grandmother interrupted her.

“My room is at the top of the stairs on the right. You'll find—” she said, making a vague gesture that suggested that her guest might wish to readjust her hairpins in front of the winged looking glass on her dressing table.

After a moment, Miss Gwynne followed the others up the stairs. Grandmother picked up Mothers letter and took it into the drawing room. When Mrs. Bryce and Rosamund Gwynne came downstairs, Grandmother was waiting for them in the hall.

“Would you like to see the garden?” she asked, with a quick glance at Miss Gwynne's feet to make sure she hadn't come to lunch in satin slippers. “It's a little early for there to be much to see, but a stroll after lunch might be nice.”

“I think I'll just go and have a word with O'Neill about the wind charger,” Uncle William said. The excuse was more genuine than it seemed; Uncle Williams answer to political unrest was to improve his house and land: the Rising seemed to have lifted him to a level of determination that would allow him to overrule Grandmother and to install electricity at Ballydavid.

Uncle William disappeared to the stable yard. Sunday afternoon was a time that O'Neill might well have thought his own, but he was always pleased to see Uncle William, and each found in the other an enthusiastic collaborator for his plans, schemes, and projects, both large and small.

Clodagh and I also went round to the stables, pausing only long enough for Miss Kingsley, not included in the original expedition, to run upstairs before we went to visit Patience, an animal that now spent a large part of the day at Glenbeg and was thus hardly a novelty. Somewhere between the dining room and the front door Sonia seemed to have evaporated.

“I don't see why we have to go and see Alice's pony,” Clodagh said crossly.

“What would you rather do?” Miss Kingsley asked.

“I want to go home.”

“Your mother and Miss Gwynne are in the garden with Lady Bagnold. If you like, you and I could walk home. I don't know how suitable your shoes are, though, for such a long walk.”

I was well aware of the inadequacy of the entertainment I was offering, and, after I had given Patience a quartered apple and stroked her lovely, soft nose, we turned back toward the house. A cloud-laden wind was blowing from the west and I could feel a light drizzle on my face.

“Why do you have that woman living with you?” Clodagh asked. “My mother says she's some kind of fortune teller.”

“Clodagh,” Miss Kingsley said warningly.

“Your grandmother doesn't go to church, does she?”

I muttered something about Sonia being a guest rather than a permanent feature of our household, but Clodagh's last question cast an entirely new light on how Sonia was seen by some of our neighbors. I was worldly enough to have gathered on my own that Sonia was rackety, down on her luck, inconvenient; now I understood that the Bryces and presumably other of our narrowminded and generally disapproving Protestant neighbors considered Sonia's powers and our exploitation of them wrong and possibly sacrilegious. A grossly exaggerated version of her capabilities had probably circulated through the parish, and doubtless her earlier connection with the scandalous Mrs. Hitchcock had not been forgotten.

The drizzle also brought the grown-ups back to the house, and shortly afterward Grandmother was offering Mrs. Bryce and Rosamund Gwynne tea. The invitation was not intended to be accepted. (I could see on the hall clock that it was not quite three o'clock.) Soon Bridie was dispatched to have the pony and trap brought to the front door.

“Well, this has been delightful,” Grandmother said. “We must see each other again soon. Is there any possibility that you might come and stop with us after your visit with Mrs. Bryce?”

Uncle William came into the hall from the door behind the stairs in time to hear this invitation. I flickered a glance at him, but his face was as politely and pleasantly expectant as I hoped mine was.

Rosamund Gwynne was going a few days later to Tipperary and after that to stay with another friend in Queen's County and then back again to Waterford—she seemed to have a large range of hospitable acquaintances—but she would be delighted to visit us in August.

We stood, protected from the light rain by the veranda, as the Glenbeg party got into their trap. Good-byes and thank-yous were mingled with the polite pleasant anticipation of the longer summer visit as Mrs. Bryce took the reins. We waved until they had left the graveled sweep and the pony was trotting down the avenue. For several moments after they had left earshot and after even an unusually long-sighted lip reader could have interpreted our conversation, no one said a word.