XIII IMBROGLIO

          Quisque suos patimer manes.         
          AENEID, vi.

ANNETTE was soon absorbed into the household. Mrs. Folyat never could keep any information to herself, and Gertrude and Mary quickly made Annette feel that she was in disgrace and saddled her with their domestic duties. Mary devoted herself entirely to music, rehearsing for concerts, and practising with amateur quartettes, and Gertrude gave all her time to her betrothed. She met him every day at his office and walked home with him, unless they were going to the theatre. Then they would dine out, Bennett having gone without his mid-day meal in order to have money enough. They had the whole of Sunday together always. He would accompany her to early celebration at St. Paul’s, breakfast at Fern Square, go to St. Saviour’s morning and evening, and spend the afternoon in the Park, for she had given up her Sunday-school class.

Their engagement was not yet announced, and he had not told his family, nor had Gertrude met any of his relations. Bennett’s face had grown more and more melancholy, and Gertrude had not spoken to Minna for weeks because, whenever she brought her lover to the house, Minna persisted in singing:

    The pain that is all but a pleasure we’ll change

    For the pleasure that’s all but pain,

    And never, oh, never this heart will range

    From that old, old love again.

Annette thought Bennett very handsome, and she was greatly impressed by his silence and tragic mien. She [Pg 132]told herself that he must be enormously in love with Gertrude since his emotions weighed upon him so heavily, and she thought Minna odious for making fun of him. She was very happy herself. She liked doing the housework and being useful to the others, and though her mother and sister were rather tyrannical with her, she had discovered a warm corner in her father’s heart in which to take refuge. Indeed her return had made a great difference to Francis. He sought her company and talked intimately with her and teased her, and showed her a side of himself that was hidden from the others. He would take her for long walks, and to see the queer characters among his poor, and often he would ask her to sit with him in his study while he was working. Sometimes, instead of working he would read aloud to her—Fielding, or Sterne, or the poets, and he would make translations of Italian or French poems, or the odes of Horace for her, and he would tell her that she was being much more use to the world teaching him, who was old enough to learn, than wasting time and her employer’s money in pretending to instruct little girls.

Except with her father and occasionally with Serge Annette never went out and knew nothing of what was happening in the town, and had even no clear idea of its geography. She gave no thought to past or future, and was quite content to go on living in the tranquil present. She reverted to her childish belief that her father was the most wonderful man in the world, with Serge a good second, and if she could have spent her life in ministering to them both she would have been more than satisfied. She was rather afraid and shy of other women, but the helplessness of men appealed to her, and she loved repairing their garments, always so sadly in need of it, and she would darn socks that any other woman would have thrown away. Nobody praised her, and nobody took much account of what she did save only the one little servant, Ada, who adored her.

To Annette the most mysterious and awful person in the house was her brother Frederic. She could make nothing of him. He looked very pale and unwell, but [Pg 133]became peevish under any comment on his appearance, however sympathetic. He was for the most part very silent when he was at home, though that was not often, but suddenly he would break into the wildest spirits and chatter and talk nonsense and laugh a great deal, and make fun of his mother and then be very affectionate with her, and it would seem that of all her children Frederic had the most affection from his mother. He would flatter her and talk about the great riches he was going to make and the wonderful lady he was going to marry, the daughter of a rich client, of whose estate he would be appointed trustee—when he had his own office. That was always the proviso—when he had his own office, and Annette was given to understand that it would be very soon, and then if there was one man more important than any other in the town, that man would be Frederic. Mrs. Folyat would listen excitedly to all this and shake her ringlets, and say to him:

“My dear, my dear, you must look after the girls.”

“Of course,” Frederic would respond, “rich husbands all round.”

“But they must be gentlemen.”

“Gentlemen! Of course.”

And if Minna were there, she would say with honey and gall in her voice:

“Is Bennett Lawrie a gentleman?”

Mrs. Folyat would say, frigidly:

“He is very poor, but he is extremely well connected.”

Frederic would swagger a little, and say:

“After all, you know, it was I who brought him to the house.”

Then Minna:

“We all know that all Frederic’s friends are gentlemen—and ladies.”

It took Annette a little time to pick up the threads of all the family jokes and allusions, and to disentangle the personalities of the various outlying characters who were used for purposes of fun or bickering, or, occasionally, as a weapon to enforce silence. Not all of these personages came to the house, and some of them seemed only to have [Pg 134]a shadowy existence in the family consciousness. There were two or three mysterious and almost mythical young men associated with Minna. Mary’s personality seemed to be filled out with a vague widower of mature years, who made mincing machines and was said to propose to her once a fortnight, Gertrude was altogether submerged in Bennett Lawrie, while, whenever Frederic became too obstreperous or offensive it was enough to breathe the name “Annie” to reduce him to a laconic moroseness. This Annie was the more real of all these extra-familiar characters, and Annette was very curious about her. She kept cropping up at the most out of the way moments, as every member of the family found it necessary at one time or another to remind Frederic of her existence. She was never given any surname, nor, apparently, was it known where she lived or how, or what she was to Frederic, or Frederic to her. Annette associated her absurdly with Sister Anne in Bluebeard, and from that again jumped to the cloud which was no bigger than a man’s hand. For no reason at all she regarded Annie as a figure of disaster and was vaguely sorry for her and pitied her. Her pity became concrete one day when an accident brought her nearer to Annie and gave her the whole story.

The lining of Frederic’s office coat had worn to tatters. Going over his wardrobe Annette discovered this and took the coat into Serge’s room, which she used when Serge was away at the Art School, and began to mend it. When she had repaired the lining she turned out the pockets, and among other papers—a theatre programme, two pawn-tickets, and a race-card—came on a grubby blotted letter written on cheap notepaper in a large wavering scrawl. Rather idly at first, and with no qualms or scruples—(all families read all letters that come into their hands)—she read it. There was neither address nor date. It was very short.

    “DEAR FRED.—You must answer my letter, you must, you must. What am I to do? I can’t prevent mother finding out soon, and she can’t bear any more, she has [Pg 135]had so much to bear. I can’t tell her it’s you, but it’s the thinking I can’t stand when you don’t write to me. If you could only get me away somewhere, like you said you would. I’m just the same, but I can’t write like I used to. It’s the work in the house that’s so awful, with the lodgers being beastly. Dear Fred, do please write to your

    ANNIE.”

At first it conveyed nothing to Annette. She was conscious of suffering behind the words and rather stupidly fumbled about in her mind for what it was that Annie’s mother must find out soon. Abruptly she came to it and dropped the letter, and hot tears came to her eyes, tears of shame. She had never come face to face with this thing before, and it horrified her, but through the horror of it was the knowledge that Annie was wanting Frederic to write to her, and she thought that she must find Frederic at once and tell him. Then she remembered that she ought not to have read the letter, and she thrust it back into the pocket of the coat and hurried back with it into Frederic’s room. That done, she went downstairs, saying to herself:

“I wish I didn’t know. I wish I didn’t know.”

With sudden self-criticism, half humorously, she added:

“But I do know, so it isn’t any good wishing. I mustn’t tell. I mustn’t tell.”

Her heart was fluttering as she entered the drawing-room, feeling that everybody must know the secret she had discovered. She was surprised to find her mother in her usual chair nodding over her book and Minna talking in the window-seat with a young gentleman, whom she introduced as Mr. Basil Haslam.

“Mr. Haslam is a friend of Serge’s,” said Minna, “and Mr. Haslam’s brother is a great friend of Frederic’s.”

“Perhaps he knows,” thought Annette.

But no. Basil Haslam bowed politely to Annette and took no further notice of her, and went on with his conversation with Minna. Annette went away and down [Pg 136]to her father’s study, and there she found Francis and Bennett Lawrie in earnest conclave. Did they know? They gave no sign. Francis was smoking, and tapping on the ground with his foot. Bennett was leaning forward and talking emphatically and waving his long hands rather wildly in the air.

“I can do it,” he said. “I know I can. I shall never do any good in business. I must lead men. I must move them, lift them up, show them the way to higher things.”

Annette stopped in the doorway, and said:

“Am I in the way?”

“Not at all,” returned Francis. “Come in. Mr. Lawrie is being very entertaining. We were discussing the possibility of his taking Orders.”

“That would be lovely,” said Annette.

Bennett turned to her.

“You think I could do it, don’t you?”

It was the first time he or any of the young men who came to the house had spoken to her directly, and Annette felt curiously grateful to him. She stammered:

“I . . . I’m sure you . . . you could.”

“It’s what I’ve wanted to do all my life, only I’ve always thought it impossible. You’ll laugh, I know, sir, but I used to preach sermons when I was a boy, just to myself in my bed-room, and I made a little altar when I was sixteen. I never dared talk about it at home. They always laughed at me. I never dared tell them what I wanted to do. They said I must go into an office when I was sixteen, and I went there. . . . You know we, Gertrude and I, thought you would take me as curate as soon as I was ordained, and then when I got a living we could be married.”

“I’m much obliged to you for letting me know your plans, but it means time and money. We could send you to a theological college, when you’re . . . How old are you?”

“Nineteen,” said Bennett, with a hot blush.

“Nineteen. When you’re twenty-one. The money is the difficulty. I have very little.”

[Pg 137]

“My uncles are both rich men. I’m sure they would help if you would speak for me, and tell them what you think.”

“Oh! do!” said Annette.

Bennett darted a look of gratitude at her.

“What I think!” Francis smiled. “You haven’t given me much time yet. I like you. I like your enthusiasm. I’ve no doubt you would make a good clergyman, but it is a very poorly paid profession . . .”

“That doesn’t matter at all,” cried Bennett. “It’s the work that matters.” And he rushed off into a long tirade which Annette thought very splendid, and Francis punctuated with thin blue puffs of smoke from his pipe.

“On the whole,” said Francis, reflectively. “On the whole I think it would be better when I meet your father to say nothing about your relationship with my daughter.”

Bennett seemed to be on the point of protesting. Francis hurried on:

“I take it seriously, I assure you. My daughter considers herself engaged to you. She is old enough to know her own mind. On the other hand, I don’t think I can give you any official recognition until there is some more immediate prospect of your being able to provide a livelihood for the two of you.”

Bennett was embarrassed by all this, and his enthusiasm oozed away and left him blank and expressionless. Fortunately—perhaps deliberately—he had his profile towards Annette, and she found it very beautiful. She had a queer feeling that her father was teasing the young man, and she wanted to defend and help him. His ambition was altogether laudable, and he was in love (so she believed); the two things were interdependent and both must be promoted. Had it been in her power she would have turned Bennett into a clergyman there and then, and handed him over to Gertrude with her blessing.

Gertrude came in just then and shattered Annette’s bountiful altruism of desire by saying:

“You here!”

And Annette, who had been inflated by her dreams for [Pg 138]Bennett and his fervency, felt at once like Cinderella, and she crept away to the kitchen, taking in her mind the picture of Gertrude embracing her father and Bennett shaking her father’s hand.

At once the whole scene became curiously remote, as remote as Minna and Basil Haslam in the drawing-room, as remote as her mother nodding foolishly to the buzz of their whispered conversation, as remote as Deedy Fender and all her old life in Edinburgh and Westmoreland. Real only to her then were the happy days of her childhood in Cornwall, and joyous moments here and there—a wild scamper on Arthur’s Seat; a long swim in the Firth of Forth, an affectionate talk with a girl at school, a word of praise from a mistress whom she had adored. Then, like tripping over a stone, she came back to Annie. Annie who was in sore trouble. Annie who wanted only a word from Frederic. . . . She heard Serge’s step in the hall, on the stairs, then his big voice saluting Basil Haslam, and then the two of them go upstairs to the studio-bedroom at the top of the house. She heard Gertrude and Bennett come out of the study and go upstairs. They stopped on the landing, and she heard them kiss.

Ada, the servant, was out, and she looked round the kitchen and thought how cosy it was, how much nicer, really, than any other room in the house, except, perhaps, the study. Upstairs Serge laughed. No one else in the house laughed—not like Serge. He was always so happy. No one else was happy like that. Not her father, nor her mother, nor Gertrude, even though Bennett Lawrie loved her so. . . . Bennett Lawrie was a vivid figure to Annette. He was so intense, but he never laughed. She felt that she would like to make him laugh. She began to invent foolish jokes and antics that perhaps might make him laugh, and was so busied with them that without her hearing him Frederic came into the kitchen and stood above her.

“Get me some supper,” he said, “I’m devilish hungry.”

“Oh! You!”

[Pg 139]

Annette lit the gas and stood staring at him with her hand above her head, leaning on the gas-bracket. He looked very white and mean and shrivelled, and the skin under his eyes was puffy.

“What are you staring at?” he said. “I’m hungry.”

Annette put food in front of him, and he ate wolfishly.

“I’m devilish hungry,” he said. “I’ve been walking miles. I’m tired and hungry. I’ve walked miles.”

“Did you go to see her?” It was out before she was aware.

Frederic dropped his knife into his plate with a clatter.

“What the devil do you mean? Who?”

“Annie.”

Frederic gripped her wrist and jumped to his feet and thrust his face close to hers.

“For God’s sake!” he said under his breath. “For God’s sake! What do you mean? Don’t you blab. Don’t you blab!”

“You’re hurting me.”

“What do you mean?”

“I read her letter. It was in your coat. I was mending it. I didn’t mean to. Why don’t you write to her.”

“What letter? I don’t know any letter.”

“You do. She wants you to write to her.”

“I have written.”

“Go on with your supper, then.”

“You won’t tell any one. Promise you won’t tell any one.”

“No. All right. I won’t tell any one.”

“You’re a queer one, Annette. You don’t seem to mind.”

“Mind!”

Annette was astonished to find that she had got beyond being distressed or shocked. She was hardly at all interested in Frederic’s state of mind or condition. She felt that something must be done, and she wanted to know exactly what. Annie, whoever or whatever she might be, was unhappy and something must be done to help her. Annette turned to Frederic and said:

[Pg 140]

“What are you going to do?”

He replied:

“What can I do? Don’t look at me like that. I’m not so bad as all that, I’m not.”

“But it is wicked.”

“I know it is, but you can’t help it. I don’t know. Everything seems all wrong. You go along quite quietly for months and months, and then suddenly everything’s all wrong. It’s queer to be talking to you like this. You don’t understand the least little bit, though you are such a queer one. But I can talk to you just because you don’t understand.”

“I do understand,” said Annette.

“How could you? You’re only a little girl. Annie Lipsett—that’s her name. She’s going to have a baby. I suppose I ought to marry her. Lots of fellows do get married like that. I can’t afford it. I don’t love her. That’s what’s so horrible. I don’t love her, and I can’t pretend that I do, I can’t make myself believe that I do. I was so beastly miserable, that’s what it was. Things go wrong, and they stay wrong, and then you want something and clutch at it and miss it. Miss it all the time. It wasn’t just a beastly thing, I swear it wasn’t. I was so miserable, that’s what it was. I’m miserable now, and the worst of it all is that I’m enjoying it. That’s the sort of brute I am.”

Annette found that she was crying. Large tears welled out of her eyes and trickled down her cheeks into her mouth. The thing was closing in on her from all sides and suffocating her. Her imagination was baffled. She had thought herself bold, and suddenly she was out of her depth. She struck out blindly, and presently found a footing on the hard rock of conventional morality. From a suffering human being, craving sympathy, Annie Lipsett became a wicked woman to be condemned and shunned, a base creature who had enticed and enchained Frederic. Her footing on this rock was very insecure. Soon she was swept off it and flung hurtling down an empty sense of the treachery of her own emotions.

She heard Frederic saying again:

[Pg 141]

“Don’t you tell any one!”

She muttered a reply. Frederic finished his supper and she removed his plate and the empty dish into the scullery. Frederic followed her, She trembled from head to foot, and longed only for him to leave her. He stood plucking at the roller-towel on the door, and he said:

“If any one did to you what I’ve done to her I should have to horsewhip him. Isn’t it odd? I should think it simply absurd if anybody wanted to horsewhip me.”

Annette had a sudden gust of rage and through her clenched teeth she threw at him:

“If you don’t go away I’ll smash a plate in your face.”

Frederic laughed nervously.

“You are a queer one,” he said. “But we’re a queer family, and this is a queer house, isn’t it?”

Annette rushed by him, all her nerves tingling and throbbing, and flew upstairs until she came to Serge’s room. There she stood gasping, and presently broke out laughing and crying together. Serge gave her water and slapped her hands, and motioned to Basil Haslam to leave the room. Basil went and Annette clung to Serge and began to sob. Her laughter ceased, and when she had done crying Serge laid her on the bed and sat holding her hand for a long time, during which he forbade her to speak. Her head began to ache furiously, and every little sound in the house became explosive and a torment to her. Serge seemed to realise that too, and began to talk to her in a low, soothing voice. He described the bay at Cape Town as the ship heaves and throbs her way out of it with the little fringe of lights on the water’s-edge under the mountain, and he told of long days at sea, the whole voyage home to England, the most beautiful country in the world. Something he gave her of what it had been to him to see green fields again and English skies and orchards and red poppies in the corn, and little, comfortable, cool English rivers.

She hardly heard what he said. His voice lulled her, and his presence, the pressure of his hand were infinitely soothing. Soon she fell asleep, and while she slept he did not stir.

[Pg 142]

She woke happy and smiled at him, peering through the darkness for his kind eyes. She told him then, and because he said nothing she asked him if he did not think it wicked.

“Wicked!” he said. “There’s good in it and bad too, just the same as there is in everything and everybody. Their happiness has been theirs, their folly has been theirs. Their unhappiness must be theirs too. You and I can do nothing to alter it. We can only help Frederic if he wants help. We can’t help him if we make the blunder of applying an abstract moral formula to what is to him a very concrete, actual, human mess. Keep it to yourself, my dear. You will understand one day.”