XII ANNETTE

          Hurrying wind o’er the heaven’s hollow And the heavy rain to follow.         
          CHIMES.

ANNETTE in Westmoreland had the small happenings in the household in Fern Square week by week as far as her mother knew them. Every Friday evening Mrs. Folyat used to write five letters: a short one to Annette, a long one to Leedham because he was so far away, one to a friend in Potsham with whom she had corresponded ever since her marriage, and two to elegant relations. She had no power of consecutive thought, and her letters rambled and ambled, a queer mixture of narrative and comment, all things being equal in interest (or the lack of it)—“Just fancy, the verger’s son is married, and only eighteen! Did I tell you that Betsy, the new cat, had four kittens in the kitchen drawer? Your pa is very well, but the other day I had to go to the dentist and he made a face over the bill, and I said ‘I am your wife. You have to keep me in repair.’ He looked so surprised and I was surprised at myself. Was it not a fool thing to say? Frederic is working very hard, but Serge is making a dreadful litter in his room with his brushes and paint. I do hate untidiness and shiftlessness. You will be quite a stranger here when you come. Mary is getting on very well with her music-lessons. She plays the viola now, not the violin. It is easier to get into an orchestra if you play the viola. I hope you are doing your duty, &c., &c. . . .” The letter always wound up with a common form parental sermon, which Annette always skipped. She did not get many letters, and her mother’s regular epistles were a boon to her. She was dreadfully afraid of the       [Pg 120]servants at High Beck, and letters gave her a feeling of security against them, for they witnessed to the fact that she had ties with the world outside. Occasionally, when Mrs. Folyat mounted her gentility hobby-horse, she would leave her letters lying open in her room in the certain knowledge that they would be read and discussed below stairs.

She had never seen Serge, for she was born after his departure from St. Withans, but he had always been far more real to her than her other brothers and sisters. He was a romantic figure to her, and when he cropped up again in her mother’s letters she imagined him to herself as a being handsome beyond all other men and brave and strong. She used to regale her pupil with tales of his adventures, borrowing from Scott or Thackeray when her own invention gave out, and she made him so entrancing that her pupil announced her intention of marrying him when she grew up. She had first of all imagined him richer than anybody had ever been, but after a letter from Minna—a poor correspondent with excellent descriptive powers—telling of Serge’s homecoming she then imagined him poorer than anybody had ever been, and she invented a lady with boundless wealth who should marry him, restore the family fortunes, and take her (Annette) away from teaching.

On the whole Annette had little cause to complain. Her employers were stupid but not malicious. It never occurred to them that she might need a change from the society of her pupil. Annette was so young in years—younger still in mind—that they regarded her rather as a companion than as an instructress, and lost all idea of authority, so that Deedy, the child, was always playing her parents off against her governess. Annette used to weep many tears over her ineffectuality, but then, having a sense of humour, she would laugh at the idea of herself, who had never successfully learned anything, being paid to instruct another child in French, English grammar, orthography, arithmetic and algebra. She grew fond of Deedy, and Deedy’s parents were affectionate with her, as, being kindly people, they would have been with any [Pg 121]strange child staying in their house. They led a very quiet life in Westmoreland. Young people hardly ever came to stay with them, and their house was conducted with the regularity of Mr. Fender’s office. Prayers were read by Mr. Fender at eight to the four servants on one side of the room and Annette on the other. Breakfast was at half-past. Lessons were from ten till one. Deedy had to be taken for a walk in the afternoon, generally up the beck, for she had a pool where dwelt a fairy and a hippogriff (inventions of Annette’s) and loved to send written messages to them over the little waterfall. At six Deedy was taken to see her mother in the drawing-room, and Annette had a free hour. At seven Deedy was put to bed, and the rest of the day was Annette’s unless she were desired to play to Mrs. Fender in the evening.

It was a dull life, but it left much time for dreaming, and sometimes Deedy was very amusing. She had an eager prying curiosity and was much interested in God.

“What’s an only begotten son?” she asked one day.

“It means the only one.”

“Am I only begotten?”

“Yes.”

She thought for a very long time. Then:

“Why didn’t God get another one?”

“Oh, Deedy. Hush!”

“Why do you always say ‘Hush’ when I ask questions?”

Annette laughed.

“Because I don’t know the answer.”

“Does anybody know? Does your father know?”

“Yes.”

“How does he know?”

“Because he’s a clergyman.”

“Doesn’t my father know?”

“Perhaps he does.”

“I wish I wasn’t only begotten.”

“I don’t think it makes much difference.”

“I wish I had a brother like Serge.”

“I’ve never seen Serge, so, you see, it doesn’t really make much difference.”

[Pg 122]

“You’ve never been only begotten, so you don’t know, Miss Folyat.”

Annette left it at that. She never knew what Deedy was thinking. She hardly knew what she thought herself, and her notions of other people were axiomatic, based on uncritical acceptance of her mother’s assumptions. She regarded herself as a very ordinary person—(at school she had thought herself neither above nor below the general run of girls, and had done the things they did, and talked of the things they talked of, very largely because they did them and talked of them). She felt a little resentfully that Deedy was an extraordinary person, but put it down to her deformity and pitied her. Being very active herself she could imagine no greater misfortune, except perhaps being deaf, like Beethoven, than to be unable to run and jump and swim. She loved swimming, and every morning would go up the beck to Deedy’s pool and plunge into the cold water or sit under the little waterfall. And then she would lie in the soft grass and rub her body over with crushed flowers, and laugh for the joy and freedom of it all. And she would come back with her hair lank and wet—there was very little of it, and that thin in texture—and wake Deedy and tell her how the morning was full of song. . . . Often when they sat by the pool in the evening the child would make her talk about the water and how it felt when it kissed her body, and one day Deedy said:

“Swim now.”

It was a very hot August day, and Annette had been narrating an adventure of Serge, based on the works of Edward S. Ellis, how he had swum two hundred yards Under water in an American river and surprised and captured an Indian spy. The description of under-water had been singularly vivid, and the beck was in mid-flood and very clamorous. Annette slipped out of her clothes and dived into the pool and lay there floating, her eyes closed and her hair floating out and her white body shimmering mysteriously through the water. Deedy crawled to the edge of the pool and looked down.

“Don’t lie still. Swim!”

[Pg 123]

Annette kicked up a white spume of water and Deedy clapped her hands.

“Now work your arms!”

Annette swam swiftly to the waterfall and sat under it and played with the water with her hands. Then she dived again into the pool and brought up a round pebble which she gave to Deedy as a present from the hippogriff. Deedy flung it back into the water.

“Why, Deedy, you’re crying!”

“I hate you. You’re ugly.”

Annette became conscious that the child was staring at her body. She blushed, hastily snatched up her clothes and ran away behind an elder-bush. All her joy had vanished and her thoughts were filled with the whisperings of the little girls at the school in Edinburgh. It was part of the delight of her life here in Westmoreland that all such griminess had been left behind. She was so hurt in the sudden loss of her joy that she could not think nor make any effort to understand. All her thought was to get away as quickly as possible, to get away from Deedy. She dressed rapidly, wound up her hair, wet as it was, and in absolute silence hurried home with Deedy.

In the house she found two letters waiting her, one from her mother, one from Minna, both announcing the same thing, Gertrude’s engagement to Bennett Lawrie. Mrs. Folyat wrote:

“My dear, he is a very earnest and worthy young man and he simply adores Gertrude. He is in business in a very large firm. He is a gentleman. His grandfather was a Scotch minister, and his grandmother was the daughter of a laird. Gertrude is very happy. They fell in love over some theatricals they did in the school-room. Everybody said he was much better than any professional. Frederic brought him to the house. Frederic has such nice friends. Your father has built a greenhouse out in the back garden. The engagement is not to be announced for a year as it will be some time before they can afford to marry. I hope you are attending to your duties and giving all satisfaction to dear Mrs. Fender . . .

Minna wrote:

[Pg 124]

“Dear Annette. Fancy! Mother Bub is engaged, and Mottle-tooth is green with envy. He is like a shorn lamb, and Mother Bub will eat him cutlet by cutlet, with little paper frills round them. He’s a clerk in an office and his father’s a drunkard, and when he stays too late an old Scotch servant comes and fetches him away. He’s about thirty-nine years younger than Bub, but she couldn’t face the thirties—or is it the forties? Serge is very funny about it. Ma is very excited and romantical. Pa hasn’t said a word, and I’m not sure even that he knows. I rather like the Lamb, myself, and he is rather beautiful. I suppose if Bub goes off and Mottle-tooth and me, there’ll be room for you at home. Someone will have to look after Ma . . .”

Minna’s flippancy rather offended Annette. Hardly having been at home for so many years she had many delightful fictions about the house in Fern Square. She regarded its inmates as a united and happy family, and herself as the only outcast. It was Home to her, and she enveloped it with all the unreal emotions roused in vast audiences by Madame Patti with her rendering of the famous song. She was touched by the very thought of love and pictured Gertrude radiant and all the house glowing with the happiness of this new event. The poverty of the young man only made it all the more delightful. The first play she had ever seen was Caste, and she often cried when she thought of it. It seemed enviable to her to have Eccles for a father-in-law.

All this made her forget her unhappiness by the water, and she forgot Deedy’s prying stare and lived through the next few days in a dream of young love.

On the third day she had a rude awakening. After dinner in the evening she sat playing to Mrs. Fender. Mr. Fender came in and whispered to Mrs. Fender for some time, perhaps half an hour. Then he went out. Mrs. Fender sat silent for some moments, then she said.

“Miss Folyat!”

Annette stopped playing. Mrs. Fender was sitting bolt upright in her chair by the hearth, with a book on her knees. It was a brown book—“Enquire Within Upon [Pg 125]Everything.” There was a peculiar asperity in her voice and her whole manner was big with disapprobation. She looked very like the Red Queen as she opened her mouth square and said again:

“Miss Folyat! Come here!”

Annette rose and went to her.

“Sit down!”

Annette sat down. Mrs. Fender screwed herself up to a cold anger and went on:

“I am sorry for your father’s sake and your mother’s.”

Annette’s heart went down into the pit of her stomach and then up into her throat.

“I must ask you,” said Mrs. Fender, “to pack up your trunks this evening and to be ready to catch the first train in the morning. I repeat that I am sorry, but it is necessary.”

Annette’s brain reeled. She blurted out:

“What is it! What have I done!”

“Done? What have you done? You can ask that? Miss Folyat!”

“I’ll go, of course. But tell me what it is that I’ve done. I haven’t stolen anything or—or . . .”

“I cannot tell you what it is. It pains me too deeply to think of it. You—you have polluted the mind of my child who was entrusted to your care.”

Annette understood. Deedy had been asking questions. She had been cross-examined, and the gentle art of making mountains out of molehills had been called into play. This sudden presentation of a new aspect of her escapade in swimming in the pool bewildered and crushed her. She could make nothing of it, could hardly grasp what was in the Red Queenish mind, and felt only the futility of saying anything.

“You will pack up your things to-night and be ready to catch the first train in the morning.”

“Certainly.”

“Have you no words of regret?”

“No.”

Annette had no words of any sort. She only wanted to get away, only to get away and cry.

[Pg 126]

“I have written to your mother,” said Mrs. Fender.

“Oh!” Annette gasped and she thought: “How mean! How mean! She will make mother think just the same as she does.”

She rushed out of the room, upstairs, and flung herself on her bed and cried. She went on crying until she fell asleep and did not wake again until the early morning. It was raining, and she felt very miserable and began to cry again. She wept all through breakfast, wept as Mrs. Fender put money into her hand and gave her a frigid farewell. She wept because she did not see Deedy, and she wept because she did not want to see Deedy. She wept because she was leaving the beautiful hill and the beloved beck. She wept in the carriage all along the five miles to the station, and the rain came pouring down. The clouds were low on the fells. They almost seemed to reach the water of the lakes. All down the fells were little silver streams, and the water ran and trickled all over the roads. The light was dull and grey. The colour seemed to be washed out of everything. The lakes were black, and dour figures walked the roads.

In the train she had a compartment to herself and she wept until she could weep no more, and then miserably she looked out of the window at the miserable country, drenched and drowned. Soon she came to the sea, and that was so dismal that her sorrow overflowed and nothing but absurd laughter was left, and she laughed, and suddenly her thoughts woke again, and she said to herself that she was going home. Serge was at home, and a lot of people, and they had jolly fun together, and they were all happy because Gertrude was engaged, and because they were all happy no one would be unkind to her.

Blacker and blacker grew the skies as the train rolled southward, and the ascending smoke of thousands of chimneys met the downpouring rain. The smoke meant home to Annette, and she was glad of it. It was rather fun to be sent home suddenly like this. It was like the time when there had been measles at school and she had been sent home in the middle of term.

Soon between one town and another there was no [Pg 127]country, no green save that of a football field here and there. Everywhere chimney stacks and the derricks of collieries, and great sidings full of trucks, and miles and miles of wet slate roofs, with here and there a dark church steeple or tower. At last she saw the tower of the Collegiate Church. The rain had ceased. A watery smoky sunbeam stole through the clouds to welcome her.

Her father was at the station to meet her. She threw her arms round his neck and hugged him. He kissed her warmly and said:

“Dear, dear. What a young woman you have grown!”

It came on to rain again, and in the four-wheeled cab Francis peered out of the window and said:

“It was like this when we came here from St. Withans.”

“How is Ma?” asked Annette with sudden trepidation.

“It has been a great shock to her,” said Francis, “and she has been very unhappy about it. We have agreed to say nothing to the others and to pretend that the little Fender girl is ill.”

Annette was immensely relieved. She had been most alarmed at the thought of what Minna would say. She wanted reassuring, and she asked her father again:

“Are you angry with me?”

“I? No, no, my dear. Angry! What’s the use? Perhaps you’ll be happier at home.”

“I think I will. I didn’t do anything really. I only bathed without any clothes on.”

“It is not a usual practice with governesses.”

“I expect I ought never to have been a governess. I often used to feel much younger than Deedy.”

“There’s something in that, something in that. None of you seem to be properly grown up. I don’t know what will happen to you all. . . . I expect your mother will talk to you about your ingratitude and wickedness. She and I don’t agree about it.”

They reached Fern Square. Mrs. Folyat had taken to her bed to nurse her grief, and also by way of impressing Annette with the awfulness of the thing she had done. [Pg 128]Annette went up to her and endured an hour’s tearful homily on the sinfulness of the flesh. She sat by her mother’s bedside with her hands in her lap and her head bowed, and thought comically of Mrs. Fender reading “Enquire Within” and discovering from its pages how to treat wicked governesses.

On the way down the dark stairs she met a man with a beard whom she did not know.

“Hullo!” he said. “Who are you?”

“Annette.”

He kissed her.

“I’m Serge. They didn’t tell me you were coming home. Anything wrong?”

“I’ve lost my place.”

“Did you like it?”

“Not much.”

“Then it doesn’t matter.”

“Mother’s terribly upset about it.”

“That doesn’t matter. She’s always upset. We are a queer lot, and she hasn’t the ghost of a notion how to handle us. She’s baffled because we’re not like people out of a novelette, angels engaged in dodging the wickedness of a horrid world.”

Annette’s own view of things was rather like that. She had always believed it to be her duty to keep herself unspotted by things temporal, though she had no idea how to set about it. Her mother had said many unjust and unfair things to her. She was feeling rather resentful and was pleased with the audacity of Serge’s criticism. All her upbringing had been based on the sanctity of parental authority and the parental person, and she was fearful and fascinated by such defiance of it.

“Come up to my room,” said Serge, “and let’s have a look at you, and you can tell me about yourself—if you want to.”

He took her arm and led her upstairs to the top of the house, where he had a room under a north skylight which served him as bed-room, sanctum, and studio. It was a litter of paper, boots, drawing-boards, drawings, pipes, and cigar-boxes. He put on an old dressing-gown, lit a [Pg 129]pipe, and made Annette sit on the bed, and stood and looked at her. She felt very happy and smiled at him.

“You’ve got the most interesting face of the lot,” he said presently, “though that isn’t saying much. What’s brought you home?”

She told him the whole story.

“I see. Poisoning the little beast’s mind with the sight of your body. I see. It’s part of the game to pretend that you haven’t got such a thing. Sorry, but I find it quite impossible.”

Annette’s traditional modesty twinged, and she shifted a little uneasily on the bed. Serge marked that and went on:

“Sorry. I won’t talk about it if it makes you uneasy. You believe in souls and bodies separate, the soul prisoned in the vile clay, and all that. I don’t. I believe that the two things are one and indivisible. If you don’t believe that, you are apt to take all the surface happenings of life much too seriously, and you lose all sense of proportion and humour and make the most ridiculous messes for yourself and everybody connected with you. Superficially considered, I am a bad egg, so are you. I’m getting on towards middle-age and can’t make my own living, much less prevent other people making theirs, which is what success seems to mean in commercial life. As for you, you’ve been thrown out of your situation without a character, and it will be extremely difficult for you to find another. Looked at a little more closely and searchingly we are seen to be two wonderful people—all people are wonderful—with immense potentialities for happiness or unhappiness. Does all this bore you?”

“No. Please.”

“What I’m really trying to get at is that there are only two kinds of people—the people to whom everything that happens is experience, and the people who turn everything that happens to them into a form of self-indulgence, even the most horrible, even the most painful things. Our father is the first kind of person, our mother is the second. Our father was really shattered by the death of our brother James. Our mother has been feeding herself fat on it [Pg 130]ever since. Any love that they may have shared was buried in the grave with James. More briefly, the two kinds of people are those who can love and those who cannot. Gertrude is besotted about young Lawrie, but she is quite incapable of loving him. Minna could love a certain kind of man, one who could swamp her mockery with love. There aren’t many of them.”

Annette sat listening to him open-mouthed. He took paper and charcoal and did a rough sketch of her, but did not show it her.

“I like that story,” he said. “It’s the most satisfactory reason I ever heard for getting thrown out of a governess’ job. You can’t live in a house like this, or a place like this, and live without trouble. You have to fight for your life, or lose it. I’m going to work now. Get out. Go and make Minna talk about Bennett Lawrie. She’s amusing.”

“Thank you,” said Annette.