CHAPTER XIX
Henry Wimbush's long cigar
burned aromatically. The History of Crome lay on his knee; slowly he turned over the pages.
'I can't
decide what episode to read you tonight,' he said thoughtfully. 'Sir Ferdinando's
voyages are not without interest. Then,
of course, there's his son, Sir Julius.
It was he who suffered from the delusion that his perspiration
engendered flies; it drove him finally to suicide. Or there's Sir Cyprian.' He turned the pages more rapidly. 'Or Sir Henry. Or Sir George....
No, I'm inclined to think I won't read about any of these.'
'But you
must read something,' insisted Mr Scogan, taking his
pipe out of his mouth.
'I think I
shall read about my grandfather,' said Henry Wimbush,
'and the events that led up to his marriage with the eldest daughter of the
last Sir Ferdinando.'
'Good,'
said Mr Scogan.
'We are listening.'
'Before I
begin reading,' said Henry Wimbush, looking up from
the book and taking off his pince-nez which he had just fitted to his nose -
'before I begin, I must say a few preliminary words about Sir Ferdinando, the last of the Lapiths. At the death of the virtuous and unfortunate
Sir Hercules, Ferdinando found himself in possession
of the family fortune, not a little increased by his father's temperance and
thrift; he applied himself forthwith to the task of spending it, which he did
in an ample and jovial fashion. By the
time he was forty he had eaten and, above all, drunk and loved away about half
his capital, and would infallibly have soon got rid of the rest in the same
manner, if he had not had the good fortune to become so madly enamoured of the
Rector's daughter as to make a proposal of marriage. The young lady accepted him, and in less than
a year had become the absolute mistress of Crome and
her husband. An extraordinary
reformation made itself apparent in Sir Ferdinando's
character. He grew regular and
economical in his habits; he even became temperate, rarely drinking more than a
bottle and a half of port at a sitting.
The waning fortune of the Lapiths began once
more to wax, and that in despite of the hard times (for Sir Ferdinando
married in 1809 in the height of the Napoleonic Wars.) A prosperous and dignified old age, cheered
by the spectacle of his children's growth and happiness - for Lady Lapith had already borne him three daughters, and there
seemed no good reason why she should not bear many more of them, and sons as
well - a patriarchal decline into the family vault, seemed now to be Sir Ferdinando's enviable destiny. But Providence willed otherwise. To Napoleon, cause already of such infinite
mischief, was due, though perhaps indirectly, the untimely and violent death
which put a period to this reformed existence.
'Sir Ferdinando, who was above all things a patriot, had
adopted, from the earliest days of the conflict with the French, his own
peculiar method of celebrating our victories.
When the happy news reached London, it was his custom to purchase
immediately a large store of liquor and, taking a place on whichever of the
outgoing coaches he happened to light on first, to drive through the country
proclaiming the good news to all he met on the road and dispensing it, along
with the liquor, at every stopping-place to all who cared to listen or
drink. Thus, after the Nile, he had
driven as far as Edinburgh; and later, when the coaches, wreathed with laurel
for triumph, with cypress for mourning, were setting out with the news of
Nelson's victory and death, he sat through all a chilly October night in the
box of the Norwich Meteor with a nautical keg of rum on his knees and
two cases of old brandy under the seat.
This genial custom was one of the many habits which he abandoned on his
marriage. The victories in the
Peninsula, the retreat from Moscow, Leipzig, and the abdication of the tyrant
all went uncelebrated. It so happened,
however, that in the summer of 1815 Sir Ferdinando
was staying for a few weeks in the capital.
There had been a succession of anxious, doubtful days; then came the
glorious news of Waterloo. It was too
much for Sir Ferdinando; his joyous youth awoke again
within him. He hurried to his wine
merchant and bought a dozen bottles of 1760 brandy. The Bath coach was on the point of starting;
he bribed his way on to the box and, seated in glory beside the driver,
proclaimed aloud the downfall of the Corsican bandit and passed about the warm
liquid joy. They clattered through
Uxbridge,
Henry Wimbush paused, and once more put on his pince-nez. 'So much by way of introduction,' he
said. 'Now I can begin to read about my
grandfather.'
'One
moment,' said Mr Scogan, 'till I've refilled my
pipe.'
Mr Wimbush waited.
Seated apart in a corner of the room, Ivor was
showing Mary his sketches of Spirit Life.
They spoke together in whispers.
Mr Scogan had lighted his pipe again. 'Fire away,' he said.
Henry Wimbush fired away.
'It was in
the spring of 1833 that my grandfather, George Wimbush,
first made the acquaintance of the "three lovely Lapiths,"
as they were always called. He was then
a young man of twenty-two, with curly yellow hair and a smooth pink face that
was the mirror of his youthful and ingenuous mind. He had been educated at Harrow and Christ
Church, he enjoyed hunting and all other field sports, and, though his
circumstances were comfortable to the verge of affluence, his pleasures were
temperate and innocent. His father, an
East Indian merchant, had destined him for a political career, and had gone to
considerable expense in acquiring a pleasant little Cornish borough as a
twenty-first birthday gift for his son.
He was justly indignant when, on the very eve of George's majority, the
Reform Bill of 1832 swept the borough out of existence. The inauguration of George's political career
had to be postponed. At the time he got
to know the lovely Lapiths he was waiting; he was not
at all impatient.
'The lovely
Lapiths did not fail to impress him. Georgiana, the eldest, with her black
ringlets, her flashing eyes, her noble aquiline profile, her swan-like neck,
and sloping shoulders, was orientally dazzling; and
the twins, with their delicately turned-up noses, their blue eyes, and chestnut
hair, were an identical pair of ravishingly English charmers.
'Their
conversation at this first meeting proved, however, to be so forbidding that,
but for the invincible attraction exercised by their beauty, George would never
have had the courage to follow up the acquaintance. The twins, looking up their noses at him with
an air of languid superiority, asked him what he thought of the latest French
poetry and whether he liked the Indiana of George Sand. But what was almost worse was the question
with which Georgiana opened her conversation with him. "In music," she asked, leaning
forward and fixing him with her large dark eyes, "are you a classicist or
a transcendentalist?" George did
not lose his presence of mind. He had
enough appreciation of music to know that he hated anything classical, and so,
with a promptitude which did him credit, he replied, "I am a
transcendentalist." Georgiana
smiled bewitchingly. "I am
glad," she said; "so am I. You
went to hear Paganini last week, of course. 'The Prayer of Moses' -
ah!" She closed her
eyes. "Do you know anything more
transcendental than that?"
"No," said George, "I don't." He hesitated, was about to go on speaking,
and then decided that after all it would be wiser not to say - what was in fact
true - that he had enjoyed above all Paganini's
Farmyard Imitations. The man had made
his fiddle bray like an ass, cluck like a hen, grunt, squeal, bark, neigh,
quack, bellow, and growl; that last item, in George's estimation, had almost
compensated for the tediousness of the rest of the concert. He smiled with pleasure at the thought of
it. Yes, decidedly, he was no classicist
in music; he was a thoroughgoing transcendentalist.
'George
followed up this first introduction by paying a call on the young ladies and
their mother, who occupied, during the season, a small but elegant house in the
neighbourhood of Berkeley Square. Lady Lapith made a few discreet inquiries, and having found that
George's financial position, character, and family were all passably good, she
asked him to dine. She hoped and
expected that her daughters would all marry into the peerage; but, being a
prudent woman, she knew it was advisable to prepare for all contingencies. George Wimbush, she
thought, would make an excellent second string for one of the twins.
'At this
first dinner, George's partner was Emmerline. They talked of Nature. Emmerline protested
that to her high mountains were a feeling and the hum of human cities
torture. George agreed that the country
was very agreeable, but held that London during the season also had its charms. He noticed with surprise and a certain
solicitous distress that Miss Emmeline's appetite was
poor, that it didn't, in fact, exist.
Two spoonfuls of soup, a morsel of fish, no bird, no meat, and three
grapes - that was her whole dinner. He
looked from time to time at her two sisters; Georgiana and Caroline seemed to
be quite as abstemious. They waved away
whatever was offered them with an expression of delicate disgust, shutting
their eyes and averting their faces from the proffered dish, as though the
lemon sole, the duck, the loin of veal, the trifle, were objects revolting to
the sight and smell. George, who thought
the dinner capital, ventured to comment on the sisters' lack of appetite.
'"Pray,
don't talk to me of eating," said Emmerline,
drooping like a sensitive plant.
"We find it so coarse, so unspiritual, my
sisters and I.
One can't think of one's soul while one is eating."
'George
agreed; one couldn't. "But one must
live," he said.
'"Alas!"
Emmerline sighed.
"One must. Death is very
beautiful, don't you think?" She
broke a corner off a piece of toast and began to nibble at it languidly. "But since, as you say, one must live
...” She made a little gesture of resignation.
"Luckily a very little suffices to keep one alive." She put down her corner of toast half eaten.
'George
regarded her with some surprise. She was
pale, but she looked extraordinarily healthy, he thought; so did her
sisters. Perhaps if you were really
spiritual you needed less food. He,
clearly, was not spiritual.
'After this
he saw them frequently. They all liked
him, from Lady Lapith downwards. True, he was not very romantic or poetical;
but he was such a pleasant, unpretentious, kind-hearted young man, that one
couldn't help liking him. For his part,
he thought them wonderful, wonderful, especially Georgiana. He enveloped them all in a warm, protective
affection. For they needed protection;
they were altogether too frail, too spiritual for this world. They never ate, they were always pale, they
often complained of fever, they talked much and lovingly of death, they
frequently swooned. Georgiana was the
most ethereal of all; of the three she ate least, swooned most often, talked
most of death, and was the palest - with a pallor that was so startling as to
appear positively artificial. At any
moment, it seemed, she might loose her precarious hold on this material world
and become all spirit. To George the
thought was a continual agony. If she
were to die ...
'She
contrived, however, to live through the season, and
that in spite of the numerous balls, routs, and other parties of pleasure
which, in company with the rest of the lovely trio, she never failed to
attend. In the middle of July the whole
household moved down to the country.
George was invited to spend the month of August at Crome.
'The
house-party was distinguished; in the list of visitors figured the names of two
marriageable young men of title. George
had hoped that country air, repose, and natural surroundings might have
restored to the three sisters their appetites and the roses of their cheeks. He was mistaken. For dinner, the first evening, Georgiana ate
only an olive, two or three salted almonds, and half a peach. She was as pale as ever. During the meal she spoke of love.
'"True
love," she said, "being infinite and eternal, can only be consummated
in eternity. Indiana and Sir Rodolphe celebrated the mystic wedding of their souls by
jumping into Niagara. Love is
incompatible with life. The wish of two
people who truly love one another is not to live together but to die
together."
'"Come,
come, my dear," said Lady Lapith, stout and
practical. "What would become of
the next generation, pray, if all the world acted on
your principles?"
'"Mamma! ..." Georgiana protested, and dropped her
eyes.
'"In
my young days," Lady Lapith went on, "I
should have been laughed out of countenance if I'd said a thing like that. But then in my young days souls weren't as
fashionable as they are now and we didn't think death was at all poetical. It was just unpleasant."
'"Mamma! ..."
Emmeline and Caroline implored in unison.
'"In
my young days -” Lady Lapith was launched into her
subject; nothing, it seemed, could stop her now. "In my young days, if you didn't eat,
people told you you needed a dose of rhubarb. Nowadays ..."
'There was
a cry; Georgiana had swooned sideways on to Lord Timpany's
shoulder. It was a desperate expedient;
but it was successful. Lady Lapith was stopped.
'The days
passed in an uneventful round of pleasures.
Of all the gay party George alone was unhappy. Lord Timpany was
paying his court to Georgiana, and it was clear that he was not unfavourable
received. George looked on, and his soul
was a hell of jealousy and despair. The
boisterous company of the young men became intolerable to him; he shrank from
them, seeking gloom and solitude. One
morning, having broken away from them on some vague pretext, he returned to the
house alone. The young men were bathing
in the pool below; their cries and laughter floated up to him, making the quiet
house seem lonelier and more silent. The
lovely sisters and their mamma still kept their chambers; they did not
customarily make their appearance till luncheon, so that the male guests had
the morning to themselves. George sat
down in the hall and abandoned himself to thought.
'At any
moment she might die; at any moment she might become Lady Timpany. It was terrible, terrible. If she died, then he would die too; he would
go to seek her beyond the grave. If she
became Lady Timpany ... ah, then! the solution of the
problem would not be so simple. If she
became Lady Timpany: it was a horrible thought. But then suppose she were in love with Timpany - though it seemed incredible that anyone could be
in love with Timpany - suppose her life depended on Timpany, suppose she couldn't live without him? He was fumbling his way along this clueless
labyrinth of suppositions when the clock struck twelve. On the last stroke, like an automaton
released by the turning clockwork, a little maid, holding a large covered tray,
popped out of the door that led from the kitchen regions into the hall. From his deep armchair George watched her
(himself, it was evident, unobserved) with an idle curiosity. She pattered across the room and came to a
halt in front of what seemed a blank expanse of panelling. She reached out her hand and, to George's
extreme astonishment, a little door swung open, revealing the foot of a winding
staircase. Turning sideways in order to
get her tray through the narrow opening, the little maid darted in with a rapid
crab-like motion. The door closed behind
her with a click. A minute later it
opened again and the maid, without her tray, hurried back across the hall and
disappeared in the direction of the kitchen.
George tried to recompose his thoughts, but an invincible curiosity drew
his mind towards the hidden door, the staircase, the little maid. It was in vain he told himself that the
matter was none of his business, that to explore the secrets of that surprising
door, that mysterious staircase within, would be a piece of unforgivable
rudeness and indiscretion. It was in
vain; for five minutes he struggled heroically with his curiosity, but at the
end of that time he found himself standing in front of the innocent sheet of
panelling through which the little maid had disappeared. A glance sufficed to show him the position of
the secret door - secret, he perceived, only to those who looked with a
careless eye. It was just an ordinary
door let in flush with the panelling. No latch nor handle betrayed its position, but an unobtrusive
catch sunk in the wood invited the thumb.
George was astonished that he had not noticed it before; now he had seen
it, it was so obvious, almost as obvious as the cupboard door in the library
with its lines of imitation shelves and its dummy books. He pulled back the catch and peeped
inside. The staircase, of which the
degrees were made not of stone but of blocks of ancient oak, wound up and out
of sight. A slit-like window admitted
the daylight; he was at the foot of the central tower, and the little window
looked out over the terrace; they were still shouting and splashing in the pool
below.
'George
closed the door and went back to his seat.
But his curiosity was not satisfied.
Indeed, this partial satisfaction had but whetted its appetite. Where did the staircase lead? What was the errand of the little maid? It was no business of his, he kept repeating
- no business of his. He tried to read,
but his attention wandered. A
quarter-past twelve sounded on the harmonious clock. Suddenly determined, George rose, crossed the
room, opened the hidden door, and began to ascend the stairs. He passed the first window, corkscrewed
round, and came to another. He paused
for a moment to look out; his heart beat uncomfortably, as though he were affronting
some unknown danger. What he was doing,
he told himself, was extremely ungentlemanly,
horribly underbred.
He tiptoed onward and upward. One
turn more, then half a turn, and a door confronted him. He halted before it, listened; he could hear no
sound. Putting his eye to the keyhole,
he saw nothing but a stretch of white sunlit wall. Emboldened, he turned the handle and stepped
across the threshold. There he halted,
petrified by what he saw, mutely gaping.
'In the
middle of a pleasantly sunny little room - "it is now Priscilla's
boudoir," Mr Wimbush remarked parenthetically -
stood a small circular table of mahogany.
Crystal, porcelain, and silver, - all the shining apparatus of an
elegant meal - were mirrored in its polished depths. The carcase of a cold chicken, a bowl of
fruit, a great ham, deeply gashed to its heart of tenderest
white and pink, the brown cannonball of a cold plum-pudding, a slender Hock
bottle, and a decanter of claret jostled one another for a place on this
festive board. And round the table sat
the three sisters, the three lovely Lapiths - eating!
'At
George's sudden entrance they had all looked towards the door, and now they
sat, petrified by the same astonishment which kept George fixed and
staring. Georgiana, who sat immediately
facing the door, gazed at him with dark, enormous eyes. Between the thumb and forefinger of her right
hand she was holding a drumstick of the dismembered chicken; her little finger,
elegantly crooked, stood apart from the rest of her hand. Her mouth was open, but the drumstick had
never reached its destination; it remained, suspended, frozen, in mid-air. The other two sisters had turned round to
look at the intruder. Caroline still
grasped her knife and fork; Emmerline's fingers were
round the stem of her claret glass. For
what seemed a very long time, George and the three sisters stared at one
another in silence. They were a group of
statues. Then suddenly there was
movement. Georgiana dropped her chicken
bone, Caroline's knife and fork clattered on her plate. The movement propagated itself, grew more
decisive; Emmerline sprang to her feet, uttering a
cry. The wave of panic reached George;
he turned and, mumbling something unintelligible as he went, rushed out of the
room and down the winding stairs. He
came to a standstill in the hall, and there, all by himself in the quiet house,
he began to laugh.
'At
luncheon it was noticed that the sisters ate a little more than usual. Georgiana toyed with some French beans and a
spoonful of calves'-foot jelly. "I
feel a little stronger today," she said to Lord Timpany,
when he congratulated her on this increase of appetite; "a little more
material," she added, with a nervous laugh. Looking up, she caught George's eye; a blush
suffused her cheeks and she looked hastily away.
'In the
garden that afternoon they found themselves for a moment alone.
'"You
won't tell anyone, George? Promise you
won't tell anyone," she implored.
"It would make us look so ridiculous. And besides, eating is unspiritual, isn't it?
Say you won't tell anyone."
'"I
will," said George brutally.
"I'll tell everyone unless ..."
'"It's
blackmail."
'"I
don't care," said George.
"I'll give you twenty-four hours to decide."
'Lady Lapith was disappointed, of course; she had hoped for
better things - for Timpany and a coronet. But George, after all, wasn't so bad. They were married at the New Year.
'My poor grandfather!' Mr Wimbush
added, as he closed his book and put away his pince-nez. 'Whenever I read in the papers about
oppressed nationalities, I think of him.'
He relighted his cigar. "It was a maternal government, highly
centralized, and there were no representative institutions.'
Henry Wimbush ceased speaking.
In the silence that ensued Ivor's whispered
commentary on the spirit sketches once more became audible. Priscilla, who had been dozing, suddenly woke
up.
'What?' she
said in the startled tones of one newly returned to consciousness; 'what?'
Jenny
caught the words. She looked up, smiled,
nodded reassuringly. 'It's about a ham,'
she said.
'What's
about a ham?'
'What Henry
has been reading.'
She closed the red notebook lying on her knees and slipped a rubber band
round it. 'I'm going to bed,' she
announced, and got up.
'So am I,'
said Anne, yawning. But she lacked the
energy to rise from her armchair.
The night
was hot and oppressive. Round the open
windows the curtains hung unmoving. Ivor, fanning himself with the portrait of an Astral Being,
looked out into the darkness and drew a breath.
'The air's
like wool,' he declared.
'It will
get cooler after midnight,' said Henry Wimbush, and
cautiously added, 'perhaps.'
'I shan't
sleep, I know.'
Priscilla
turned her head in his direction; the monumental coiffure nodded exorbitantly
at her slighted movement. 'You must make
an effort,' she said. 'When I can't
sleep, I concentrate my will: I say, "I will sleep, I am
asleep!" And pop! off I go. That's the
power of thought.'
'But does
it work on stuffy nights?' Ivor inquired. 'I simply cannot sleep on a stuffy night.'
'Not can
I,' said Mary, 'except out of doors.'
'Out of doors! What a
wonderful idea!' In the end they decided
to sleep on the towers - Mary on the western tower, Ivor
on the eastern. There was a flat expanse
of leads on each of the towers, and you could get a mattress through the
trapdoors that opened on to them. Under
the stars, under the gibbous moon, assuredly they would sleep. The mattresses were hauled up, sheets and
blankets were spread, and an hour later the two insomniacs, each on his
separate tower, were crying their goodnights across the dividing gulf.
On Mary the
sleep-compelling charm of the open air did not work with its expected
magic. Even through the mattress one could
not fail to be aware that the leads were extremely hard. Then there were noises: the owls screeched
tirelessly, and once, roused by some unknown terror, all the geese of the
farmyard burst into a sudden frenzy of cackling. The stars and the gibbous moon demanded to be
looked at, and when one meteorite had streaked across the sky, you could not
help waiting, open-eyed and alert, for the next. Time passed; the moon climbed higher and
higher in the sky. Mary felt less sleepy
than she had when she first came out.
She sat up and looked over the parapet.
Had Ivor been able to sleep? she wondered. And as
though in answer to her mental question, from behind the chimney-stack at the
far end of the roof a white form noiselessly emerged - a form that, in the
moonlight, was recognizably Ivor's. Spreading his arms to right and left, like a
tightrope dancer, he began to walk forward along the roof-tree of the
house. He swayed terrifyingly as he
advanced. Mary looked on speechlessly;
perhaps he was walking in his sleep!
Suppose he were to wake up suddenly, now! If she spoke or moved, it might mean his
death. She dared look no more, but sank
back on her pillows. She listened
intently. For what seemed an immensely
long time there was no sound. Then there
was a patter of feet on the tiles, followed by a scrabbling noise and a
whispered 'Damn!' And suddenly Ivor's head and shoulders appeared above the parapet. One leg followed, then the other. He was on the leads. Mary pretended to wake up with a start.
'Oh!' she
said. 'What are you doing here?'
'I couldn't
sleep,' he explained, 'so I came along to see if you couldn't. One gets bored by oneself on a tower. Don't you find it so?'
It was
light before five. Long, narrow clouds
barred the east, their edges bright with orange fire. The sky was pale and watery. With the mournful scream of a soul in pain, a
monstrous peacock, flying heavily up from below, alighted on the parapet of the
tower. Ivor
and Mary started broad awake.
'Catch
him!' cried Ivor, jumping up. 'We'll have a feather.' The frightened peacock ran up and down the
parapet in an absurd distress, curtseying and bobbing and clucking; his long
tail swung ponderously back and forth as he launched himself upon the air and
turned again. Then with a flap and swish
he launched himself up the air and sailed magnificently eastward, with a
recovered dignity. But he had left a
trophy. Ivor
had his feather, a long-lashed eye of purple and green, of blue and gold. He handed it to his companion.
'An angel's
feather,' he said.
Mary looked
at it for a moment, gravely and intently.
Her purple pyjamas clothed her with an ampleness that hid the lines of
her body; she looked like some large, comfortable, unjointed
toy, a sort of Teddy bear - but a Teddy bear with an angel's head, pink cheeks,
and hair like a bell of gold. An angel's
face, the feather of an angel's wing.... Somehow the whole atmosphere of this
sunrise was rather angelic.
'It's
extraordinary to think of sexual selection,' she said at last, looking up from
her contemplation of the miraculous feather.
'Extraordinary!'
Ivor echoed.
'I select you, you select me.
What luck!'
He put his
arm round her shoulders and they stood looking eastward. The first sunlight had begun to warm and
colour the pale light of the dawn. Mauve
pyjamas and white pyjamas; they were a young and charming couple. The rising sun touched their faces. It was all extremely symbolic; but then, if you choose to think so, nothing in this world is not
symbolical. Profound
and beautiful truth!'
'I must be
getting back to my tower,' said Ivor at last.
'Already?'
'I'm afraid
so. The varletry
will soon be up and about.'
'Ivor....' There was
a prolonged and silent farewell.
'And now,'
said Ivor, 'I repeat my tightrope stunt.'
Mary threw
her arms round his neck. 'You mustn't, Ivor. It's
dangerous. Please.'
He had to
yield at last to her entreaties. 'All
right,' he said, 'I'll go down through the house and up at the other end.'
He vanished
through the trapdoor into the darkness that still lurked within the shuttered
house. A minute later he had reappeared
on the farther tower; he waved his hand, and then sank down, out of sight,
behind the parapet. From below, in the
house, came the thin wasp-like buzzing of an alarm-clock. He had gone back just in time.