To the North (7 page)

“A friend of Cecilia’s, Robert,” she said repressively.

“Which friend of Cecilia’s?”

“A Mr. Linkwater.”

“Never heard of him—do you think he’s bumptious, Emmeline?”

“My dear, it was Emmeline who just said so.”

“Then I dare say Emmeline is quite right.”

“But I like him,” said Emmeline.

“If we are disturbing you, Robert,” said Lady Waters, “we had better go into the garden.”

“No, don’t do that,” said Sir Robert, and put up
The Times
again quickly.

Emmeline, who had been eating a lump of sugar, said thoughtfully: “I don’t think bumptious is really the word.”

“Oh, I’ve no doubt he is clever. But I did not like his expression; there was something about his eye that I did not like; it reminded me of a basilisk.”

It was beneath Emmeline to ask Lady Waters where she had seen a basilisk. She said: “He’s not at all sorry for himself,” selecting the very quality that had not commended him to Georgina.

“Why should he be sorry? I’ve no doubt he has a very nice time. Cecilia seems very much taken up with him.”

Emmeline, who had a transparent skin, turned faintly pink as she said: “I don’t think they meet much.”

“Nonsense,” said Lady Waters. Her look drank in the blush; she was accustomed to find Emmeline quite impassible. “Evidently,” she said, “you agree with me.”

“I don’t quite know what we are talking about,” said Emmeline with extreme gentleness. She looked out wistfully at the garden. She had not come down all this way into Gloucestershire, in the middle of what she and Peter considered the Whitsun rush, to sit indoors discussing attractions as though they were at Rutland Gate. She had no doubt that Cecilia had already told her aunt all about Markie, far more than she knew. Emmeline, longing to play tennis before dinner, rather sadly selected one more lump of sugar and crunched it up.

“All that sugar cannot be good for you, Emmeline— All I can say is, I hope this will not come to much.”

“I don’t see why it should.”

“You are very young, Emmeline.”

“You don’t think the others might like to play tennis?”

“I don’t think they are much in the mood,” said their hostess darkly.

“You don’t think it might cheer them up?”

“I’ll take you on, Emmeline,” said Sir Robert joyfully.

“Don’t get hot,” said his wife, as the pair stepped out through the window. Sir Robert did get very hot; in his braces he was soon rushing about the court. He played, however, a stonewall game and beat Emmeline, who was erratic. Gerda Bligh soon appeared in an arch of the beech hedge, mournfully, like Cassandra, while Tim Farquharson, attracted by the sound of the balls, put down his pen and came to hang round the court. He was a little afraid of Emmeline, who had been his ex-fiancée’s friend; for her part she found him a harmless young man, though inferior.

“I’ve written eight letters,” he could not help saying to Gerda Bligh when the sett was over.

“They won’t go till Monday now,” said Sir Robert cheerfully. “You should have given them to the postman.”

“But nobody told me.”

“Yes, that’s too bad; you should have given them to the postman.”

“
Does
an afternoon post come in?” said Emmeline suddenly. Her white sweater slung round her shoulders, absently knotting the sleeves round her neck, she turned to look at Sir Robert as though he had said something she did not quite know how to take. Her hair blown back, she had for a moment a curious distant look, not like a woman’s.

“Naturally,” said Sir Robert, who from the moment he had not too willingly hung up at Farraways his own quite honourable hat, had accepted everything here in its fixed order.

Emmeline getting up, left them; she walked rather slowly away from the white seat in front of the beech hedge, as though she might never return. Did she expect a letter? Perhaps even she hardly knew what drew her indoors, or set her feeling her way through the dark hall to the table where posts lay. By the gong, she found Markie’s letter: square, blue and compact— and at once wished he had not written.

“A letter has come for you, Emmeline,” said Lady Waters, appearing.

“Yes, Georgina.”

“I see you have found it.”

Not replying to this observation, Emmeline went on upstairs. Though Lady Waters naturally had not examined the letter, she had seen from across the hall that the vigorous handwriting was unfamiliar, and wondered what stranger could be in close enough touch with Emmeline to know where she was for two days. It was quite simple: Markie, knowing that Emmeline was to be with the Waters somewhere in Gloucestershire, had looked up Sir Robert in
Who’s Who
.

He wrote:

“Dear Emmeline,—As Wednesday does not suit you, what about Friday? I can put something else off: we must not let this fall through. So please do wear yellow and do not be late again. I’m sorry you found me tiresome the other night, though you cannot expect me to agree with you. Had that never happened before? It is quite usual. And really there did not seem to be much to say; you do rather dispose of any little thing one brings up. However, no doubt we shall find more to say later on.

“If it would restore confidence, we will go and dance somewhere on Friday, instead. Or you can tell me more about trains —you did not seem to think much of my books. Anything you like. I do miss you: it is that funny look in your eyes, like a foal coming up wind to inspect one. I would do anything to amuse you, but the fact is you are so dazzlingly beautiful I really don’t care if you’re amused or not.

“Don’t be late on Friday; there’s never enough time. And don’t put off, like last week, or I shall come round and fetch you. Cecilia would be amazed. How nice she is; I’m so glad I talked to her in the train. Remember me to your aunt—or cousin?—who said I must be an extrovert.

“Yours, “Markie.

“P.S.—Friday: 8.15.”

Emmeline pushed this bumptious letter into a drawer, but still did not feel quite alone. It was not in her nature to shut a drawer violently: an edge of the blue envelope still stuck out. Her room was full of late light that, reflected through the big windows up from the lawn, filled the mirrors, struck on the polished bed-end’s mahogany whorls and blinded a print of calm ruins hanging over the mantelpiece. Emmeline, as though someone had touched her, was confused by a curious pleasure and trepidation. She heard Markie’s voice and confronted his sceptical eyes, the eyebrows above them twitching up in a question: her faculties stood quite still. Seeing herself in the mirror she turned away, dreading the touch of a thought, even her own. She received from the glowing walls of her room an impression of space, of a vast moment.

This impact of Markie upon her was disproportionate with her life. No one had troubled her, something in her had forbidden anything but indirectness and delicacy. A splinter of ice in the heart is bombed out rather than thawed out. At her desk in the window she wrote back quickly, before reflection could intervene:

“Dear Markie,—Yes, I can come on Friday, thank you, though it seems a pity you should have to put something off. I will try to be punctual, though we are kept very late at the office just now. I do not mind if we dance or not. I am sorry you thought me unreasonable; I suppose other people are often surprising.

“I can leave my car at the garage just round your corner so you need not call for me. But why should Cecilia be ‘amazed’?

“Yours,

“Emmeline.”

Remembering that this letter could not leave here till Monday, and that it would be quicker to take it with her to London, she slipped it into the drawer beside Markie’s and, at dinner, thought of their odd companionship among her gloves and handkerchiefs.

Cecilia, though she had trouble enough with her friends, never expected anyone to act out of character. She felt so certain Emmeline would think Markie awful that she had mentioned the prejudice to her aunt as a
fait accompli
and had prepared the way for his dining at Oudenarde Road with a good deal of apprehension. True to her resolution to take fewer taxis, she had been seeing her friends at home; hence her orbit and Emmeline’s touched more often. Cecilia had long fixed Emmeline in an idea of her own as fastidious and mildly difficult and, though hurt if she deprecated the close friend of the moment, found Emmeline’s distaste for most of her circle— or a distaste she liked to attribute to Emmeline—rather tonic and bracing: Cecilia did not think much of most people herself. Emmeline’s standpoint was one of Cecilia’s few landmarks.

When, some days after their journey, Markie had rung up and invited himself to see her, Cecilia, not wishing to meet him on these terms, had countered at once by an invitation to dinner, which she as soon regretted. “He is clever, of course,” she had said to Emmeline, “and hard-headed …” but she felt discouraged and thought of going to bed with a temperature. All the same, she had begged Emmeline to be there. She did not feel Markie would mix at all well with most of her friends, and would rather face, afterwards, Emmeline’s coolness than their polite reserve. She invited, to make up a fourth, a young friend just down from Cambridge who should be too much flattered at being present at all to be critical of his company.

Markie came and—at least in the general view—conquered. Turning rapidly to and fro between Cecilia and Emmeline— having almost no neck he veered bodily from the waist, which gave one an alarming sense of his full attention—or traversing round the table his rapid fire of talk, he dominated the party. His wit was incisive, spectacular, mordant: the young man from Cambridge, 
é
bloui
, hardly glanced at Cecilia. … It was one of those one-man evenings which, though successful, leave one rather depressed. Cecilia, yawning when they had gone, kicked off her gold shoes before the fire.

“Markie,” she said, “is fatter than I remembered. And poor little Evan was quite dumb.”

“He’s more thick than fat,” said Emmeline, accurate. “And Evan was listening.”

“He must learn not to listen like that—like a fish. I’d forgotten he was so young. Markie talks like all young men of Evan’s age long to talk, but that’s no reason why he should be encouraged.”

“Still, I think they enjoyed themselves.”

“I’ve no doubt they did,” said Cecilia. “But did we? That is the question.”

“I like Markie,” said Emmeline, leaning her cheek on the side of the mantelpiece. “I think he’s so funny.”

“You wouldn’t care for him really; he isn’t at all your sort of person.” Having disposed of this, Cecilia shook out the sofa cushions that Markie had sat on and lay down among them herself. “But then,” she continued, crossing her ankles, “whom does one really like? That’s what I keep asking myself. Here we go ruining ourselves asking people to dinner. I shall begin going out again, Emmeline; I don’t think taxis are really much more expensive and it’s easier to get away from people. Here I am, worn out listening to Markie; it’s like watching something catch too many flies on its tongue. And I shall have more of it, I’m lunching with him on Thursday.”

“Are you?” said Emmeline, who was lunching with him on Saturday.

Cecilia’s lunch with Markie had not been a success; he was so rude she felt he could only have asked her out of politeness: she felt pale and gloomy. When they parted: “Well,” he said briskly, “this has been delightful.” She could not agree with him. To make matters worse, they had run into Lady Waters. 58

… However, Cecilia’s dividends were coming in, her new clothes had arrived; she was having a very gay time and all possible interest in Markie soon dwindled away. She only regretted having spoken of him to Lady Waters, who never forgot, with whom the subjects of former confidences remained mournful and monumental, a whole hall of petrified kings… . Markie, too well advised to encounter Cecilia over the wire, soon traced Emmeline to her number at Woburn Place.

Emmeline, during these weeks, had seen Markie a good many times. He impressed her with his good sense, his extensive and intimate knowledge of Europe, his quickness of mind and the information on almost all topics he could command. While he talked, she would look at him thoughtfully: she had had no idea till he wrote that he found her difficult. For some time she had found his physical personality vaguely unpleasing, though she took little stock of these things: she jumped as though she had been struck the first time he put out her way an eager but nerveless hand. He had the effect of suspending her faculties not unpleasantly, like some very loud noise to which one becomes accustomed. She was surprised by the kind of woman he admired in restaurants and had had no idea till he wrote that he thought her beautiful. For some time—until, in fact, their own friendship was well established— she took him for granted as some sort of family friend: such had come and gone. He sailed in her waters under Cecilia’s ensign.

When Emmeline realised Cecilia no longer saw him she was alarmed; it was as though a door shut upon her and Markie, leaving them quite alone for the first time: the nature of their relationship changed for her. When she understood that Cecilia had not realised
she
still saw Markie, taking fully for granted that he was out of the family, Emmeline was dumbfounded. Reserve had kept her at all times from discussing her friends with Cecilia, whose incuriosity was immense: at this point, a profound shyness inhibited Emmeline. This was her first break with innocence. Something weakened in her defences that were not till now defences, so unconscious had they been and so impassable. The soft, enquiring foal’s eyes she still fixed on Markie had a new shadow behind them. The evening of that enlightening talk with Cecilia she had promised to dine with Markie: she almost did not go: she went, and she came away shaken. He had not been slow to interpret that new wary shadow behind her eyes.

“Wednesday,” he had repeated, leaning into the car as he saw her off, just after midnight. But Emmeline, every nerve quivering from that collision, had leaned away from him in her white fur coat. “I can’t,” she had said, despairing. She shot into gear, accelerated, and the small car went spinning, terrified, up the empty streets to St. John’s Wood. Emmeline, trembling, went to her room and wept. She recollected his goodness of heart, his engaging friendliness, how his face lit up when they met. There had been some mistake. Stepping out of the yellow dress she had put on so cheerfully she had racked herself with contrition. All next day she worked desperately, to the exclusion of thought, and to-day, two days later, came down to Farraways, where she would walk with Sir Robert.