Part 17

It was the next morning that Vera showed me how little she was able to bear it. She had kept me singularly busy, as if afraid that I might wave a magic wand even more transformingly, and she came into the study where I was writing invitations for a garden-fête in aid of the Red Cross fund, and after giving me very dulcetly a long list of instructions, she went to the window and looked out for some silent moments at Mollie sauntering up and down with Sir Francis under the blue bubble of her parasol.

“I suppose you dressed her when you took her up to town that day,” she then remarked.

I had wondered how long Vera could keep under cover and I was pleased to see her emerge.

“Well, hardly that,” I said, marking off with my pen the names of the people on my list who were away and not to be counted on for help with the bazaar. “She badly needed some clothes and couldn’t afford expensive places; so I took her to my little woman. She was able to carry out Mollie’s ideas perfectly. She has charming ideas, hasn’t she? She knows so exactly what suits her.”

“Carry out her ideas? She hasn’t an idea in her head. Carry out yours, you mean, you funny creature. I can’t conceive why you took the pains to dress up the deadly little dowd.” Vera drummed with her fingers on the window-pane. Mrs. Travers-Cray had joined Mollie and Sir Francis, and they sat down in a shady corner of the terrace. Mrs. Travers-Cray, sweet, impassive, honey-coloured woman, was one of the few people for whose opinions and tastes Vera had a real regard.

“Oh, you’re mistaken there, Vera, just as you’ve been mistaken about her looks,” I said, all dispassionate limpidity. “She has heaps of ideas, I can assure you, and I saw it from the beginning; just as I saw that she was enchanting looking.”

“Enchanting! Help! Help! That little skim-milk face, with those great calf’s eyes! Who is the poor dear martyr thing who carries her eyes on a plate? St. Lucia, isn’t it? She makes me think of that--as much expression. You may have succeeded in making her less of a dowd, but you’ll never succeed in making her less of a bore.”

“Well, Mrs. Travers-Cray doesn’t find her a bore,” I remarked, casting a glance of quiet, satisfied possessorship at the group outside.

“Oh, Leila always was an angel,” said Vera, “and your little protégée has made a very determined set at her.”

“Sir Francis is an angel, too, then. He delights in her; that’s evident.” It was perhaps rather indiscreet of me to goad Vera like this, but I could not resist taking it out of her and rubbing it into her, and I knew that Sir Francis would vex her almost as much as Mrs. Travers-Cray. “And look at Milly,” I added. “You can’t say that Milly is an angel. The fact is that Mrs. Thornton is a very charming young woman, and that if you don’t see it you are the only person who doesn’t.”

“Another person who doesn’t see it is her husband,” said Vera. She was determined not to show that she was angry, but I could see how angry she was. “Sir Francis, of course, old goose, thinks any one charming if they are young and dress well and look at him with appealing eyes. It is her husband I’m really sorry for. It’s evident that he never spoke to a civilized woman in his life till he came here. He doesn’t show much signs of finding his wife interesting, does he? Poor fellow! It’s pitiful the way men fall into these early marriages with the first curate’s daughter they find round the corner. And now that she’s pushing herself forward like this, he is done for.” Vera, I saw, was very angry to be goaded so far.

“Surely she is the more interesting of the two,” I blandly urged. “Neither of them has a spark of ambition if it comes to pushing; they’ll be quite happy on their chicken-farm. But if it were a question of getting on and getting in with the right people, it would, I imagine, be she rather than he who would count. This last day or two has made that evident to my mind. In her soft, strange way little Mollie is unique, whereas he is only an honest young soldier, and there are thousands more just like him, thank goodness!”

Vera at this turned her head and looked at me for a moment. After all, even if I wasn’t angry, I, too, had given myself away. And it evidently pleased her to recognize this--to recognize that she wasn’t being worsted merely by Mollie’s newly revealed charm, but by my diplomacy as well. And it is rather a good mark to Vera, I think, that I don’t believe it ever crossed her mind for a moment that she had the simplest method of speedy vengeance in her hands--had simply to send me packing. Of course we should both have known that to use such a method would have been to reveal one’s self as crude and vulgar; yet a cattish woman who is very angry may easily become both. Vera didn’t. There are things I always like about her.

She took up now one of my lists, and while she scanned it said, smiling with cousinly good-humour:

"Ah, but you can hardly expect me to look upon you as a judge of that, Judith darling--how much a man counts, I mean, and how much he doesn’t. You are so essentially a woman’s woman, aren’t you? I suppose it’s just because you are so crisp and clever and unromantic that men don’t feel drawn to you, foolish creatures! So that you never get a chance, do you, of finding out anything about them except their way of brushing their hair and the colour of their ties. You’re a first-rate woman’s woman, I grant you, and you’re very clever and you’ve succeeded in foisting your little friend on silly Sir Francis and on Leila Travers-Cray, and it’s all rather dear and funny of you, and I’ve quite loved watching it all and seeing you at work; but you won’t succeed in foisting Mrs. Thornton on her husband, and he’ll hardly give you an opportunity of finding out whether he’s anything more than an honest young soldier. I have found him,"--and Vera now spoke with a simple candour,--“quite, quite a dear; with a great deal in him--sensitiveness, tact, flavour. So much could have been made of him! I, in my little way, could have taken him up and started him. But what can one do for a man who has a wife who doesn’t know how to dress without help and who will push herself forward? No; I’m afraid Mrs. Mollie, after she’s left your hands, Judith dear, will tumble quite, quite flat again. _Would_ you mind, darling, getting all the invitations off to-day? We mustn’t be slipshod about it. And don’t forget to write to the merry-go-round man, and to Mark Hammond to see if he’ll sing.” So, having delivered what she hoped might be a somewhat stinging shaft at my complacency, Vera trailed away.

If I hadn’t so goaded her I don’t believe, really, that she’d have taken the trouble that she did take to prove herself right and me wrong. There had been, before this, little conscious malice or intended unkindness. But now the claws were out. During the next day or two it at once justified and infuriated me to watch the manifold little slights and snubs of which poor Mollie was the victim, the dexterity with which, while seeming all sweetness, Vera essayed to belittle and discompose her, to display her as ignorant or awkward or second-rate. Only a woman can be aware of what another woman is accomplishing on these lines, and though Captain Thornton once or twice showed a puzzled brow, her skill equalled her malice, and he never really saw. I was prepared for it when Mollie came to my study one morning and shut the door and said:

“I’m afraid I can’t stand it any longer, Judith.”

“It has been pretty bad,” I said. “She’s been so infernally clever, too.”

“Our time is really nearly up,” said Mollie, “and I’m trying to think of some excuse for getting Clive to feel we’d better go before it comes. Only now she’s telling him that I am jealous of her.”

Pen in hand, I leaned back and looked up at my poor little accomplice. This, I recognized, was indeed Vera’s trump-card, but I certainly hadn’t foreseen that she would use it.

“Has he told you so?” I asked.

“Oh, no, he wouldn’t. He couldn’t, could he? But I know it. Men are very transparent, aren’t they, Judith? He is always urging me to see more of her, and telling me that she is so kind, so clever, such a dear, and that I’d really think so, too, if I’d try to see more of her. And when I say that I’m sure she is, and that I hope I shall see more of her, he thinks--I can see it--that I’m only playing up, and between us, her and me, he is rather wretched and uncomfortable. What shall I do, Judith? You saw the way at tea yesterday, when she was talking about pictures, she was really sneering at father’s, and when I tried to answer,--because I felt I had to answer about that,--making me seem so rude and sullen. Clive knows nothing about pictures; so he didn’t understand. And it’s all the time like that. I have to pretend not to see and be bland and silent; or, if I try to answer, she turns everything against me.”

“Be patient. Give her a little more time,” I said. “She’ll run to earth if you give her a little more time.”

“But it is so horrid, between Clive and me, Judith: if I say what I think to him, he will only see it as jealousy, so even with him I have to pretend, and it makes me feel as if I were growing to be like her, and I can’t bear it.”

I meditated while poor Mollie dried her eyes, to which the irrepressible tears had risen. “Ask him if he can’t arrange for you to see more of her,” I said presently.

She looked at me with a general trust, yet a particular scepticism.

“But she will make that seem as if I were trying to force myself on them; because she’s always with him, isn’t she?”

“Only now because she keeps him, not because he wants to stay. I’m quite sure that he wants to be more with you. I think you can manage it, Mollie. Just say, when he next urges: 'Oh, but I’d love to, Clive. Only you must tell me when. Perhaps sometime you’d take me to the dream-garden when you think she’ll be there and that she’d care to have me, and then, when you get us started, you could leave us. You could go and take Judith for a stroll.' Something of that sort.”

She eyed me sadly and doubtfully.

“I’ll try whatever you tell me to try, but I feel afraid of her. I feel as if she cared, really cared, to do me harm.”

“She’s been proved wrong,” I said, “and I’ve rather rubbed it in; but at the worst, Mollie, she can never harm you now as there was danger of her doing. It’s better, far better, you’ll own, for your husband to think you’re jealous and a naughty angel than for him to think you’re a second-rate one.” With this aphorism, for the time being, she had to be contented. I myself felt sure that the hour of reckoning was to come.

It was next afternoon, after lunch, Vera being engaged in the drawing-room with visitors, that I met Captain Thornton on the lawn with his wife. Mollie was very large-eyed and rather pale, and I inferred from her demeanour that she had taken a step or made a move of some kind.

“Do come with us, Miss Elliot,” said Captain Thornton. “I’m just taking Mollie along to the dream-garden. She wants to have a little talk, all to herself, with Lady Vera, and Lady Vera told me to wait for her there till these people were gone; so it’s just the thing. And you and I can leave them together, do you see? People never get really to know each other unless they are alone together, do they?”

“No, they don’t,” I replied. “Though sometimes they never get to know each other when they are alone together,” I couldn’t resist adding; but as I saw a slight bewilderment on his honest face I indulged in no further subtleties, and made haste to add, “Does Vera know that you were going to arrange a meeting?”

“Oh, not a bit of it. That’s just the point,” said the guileless young man. “I want her to think that it’s all Mollie’s doing, you know; because she’s got it into her head that Mollie doesn’t really care about her. Funny idea, isn’t it? As if Mollie could be like that to any one who’s been as kind to us as Lady Vera has! But I’m sure that if they have a few quiet talks it will all come right. Mollie is so undemonstrative; I told her that. It needs time for her to get used to anybody.”

Mollie, her arm within her husband’s, cast across his unconscious breast a grave, deep glance upon me as he thus quoted his defence of her. What was she to do with Vera, the glance perhaps asked me, too, now that she was to have her? What account of the interview would Vera serve up to Clive? Was not her last state to be worse than her first? I tried, in my answering glance, to reassure and sustain, yet I myself felt uncertainty about this fulfilment of my counsel.

We reached the dream-garden. Vera and Captain Thornton had been there for most of the morning, and books and papers were piled on the seat where the grey and purple cushions denoted attitudes of confident tête-à-tête.

Captain Thornton and I talked about the war, and I saw, with a mild, reminiscent irony, remembering Vera’s sting, that he was perfectly prepared to give me every opportunity for judging him. I felt, indeed, though Vera had so absorbed him, that he had never cared to talk about the war with her. She and the other angels were there to help one to forget, but with me he was glad to remember. It was I who heard Vera’s swift footfall approaching. Captain Thornton, stooping to mark out with books and pencils the plan of a battle, had, I think, almost forgotten the coming interview, and until Vera appeared among the cypresses, flushed above her pearls, he remained unaware. She stood there at the top of the steps for a moment, looking down at us, at Captain Thornton and me, our heads so close together, and at Mollie in her blue and with her unrevealing little face, and I saw from her expression, as she took us all in, that she had not been succeeding so well with Captain Thornton as Mollie and even I had feared. It was a smouldering irritation against him that flared up with her anger against Mollie and me.

“Oh!” she said, a dreadfully significant monosyllable on Vera’s competent lips. It expressed surprise and weariness and the slight embarrassment of the civilized confronted with the barbarian. “Oh!” she repeated, and she descended the steps, Chang trotting after her with his countenance of quizzical superciliousness. “I’m so very, very sorry.” She did not look at any of us now; her voice was exceedingly inarticulate and exceedingly sweet. “I’m afraid there’s been a mistake. It’s the other gardens that are for my friends. I’m charmed always to see them there. And there are so many other gardens, aren’t there? But this is my own dream-garden, my very own; for solitude, where I come to be alone. One must be alone sometimes. I get very tired.”

We had, of course, all risen, Clive staring, while, still with those weary, averted eyes, Vera softly beat the desecrated cushions and shook them into place.

“It’s my fault,” Clive stammered. “I mean--I didn’t understand. I thought you and Mollie could have a talk here. She wanted to get to know you better, and I suggested this.”

Vera had sunk down in her corner, patting her silken knee, so that Chang sprang up upon it and settled down among the pearls. “I’m very, very sorry,” she gurgled, with oh, such vagueness! “It’s my one corner. My one place to be alone. I don’t see people here unless I’ve asked them to come.” She took up a review and opened it, and her eyes scanned its pages.

We were dismissed,--“thrown out,” as the Americans say,--and we retreated up the steps, Mollie helping Clive, and down the flagged path and out into the lime-tree alley.

It was a display so complete that it left me, indeed, a little abashed by the success of my manœuvres, while at the same time I felt that I mustn’t let Captain Thornton discern the irrepressible smile that quivered at the corners of my mouth. When we were out on the lawn he turned his startled eyes on me.

“Really, you know, I’d no idea, Miss Elliot--what?” He appealed to me.

“That Vera could lose her temper?” I asked.

Clive continued to stare.

“It comes to that, doesn’t it? What else can it mean?” He looked now at his wife. “To speak like that to you, Mollie! And when she’s been saying she wanted so awfully to make real friends with you.”

Mollie, I saw, was dismayed. The triumph had been too complete. She could not keep up with it.

“I am sure that Lady Vera is very badly overwrought about something,” she said. “She wanted particularly to be alone and she found us there, and it put her on edge.” Actually she was trying to patch up his fallen angel for him.

“But she told me to wait there for her.--Sent me off to wait for her when those people came,” said Clive. “It seems to me that it was you she minded finding. And yet she’s been going on about your never coming to talk to her. She’s been going on about it like anything.” He caught himself up, blushing, and I saw that Vera was all revealed to him. I hardly needed to pluck another pinion from her, though I didn’t resist the temptation to do so, saying:

“You see, Vera is rather jealous. She can’t bear sharing things--her friends of her dream-garden. She liked to have you there, but she didn’t like to have Mollie there. Did she tell you she wanted to make friends with Mollie? She’s never taken any pains to show it, has she?”

“Oh, please, Judith!” Mollie implored.

“But he sees it all now, Mollie, so why shouldn’t I say it?” I inquired. “Her point has been, Captain Thornton, to keep you in and to keep Mollie out, and she very nearly succeeded in doing it.”

“Please, Judith! It’s not only that. She’s been such a real friend to you, Clive! I’m sure she is overwrought about something, and it will be all right when you next meet her.” But Mollie pleaded in vain.

“I’m hanged if it will be all right!” said Captain Thornton.

Vera made no attempt to reinstate herself. It was part of her strength never to try to recover what was lost. She kept up appearances, it is true, but that was for her own sake rather than in any hope, or even wish, to regain his good opinion. When we all met at tea, she came trailing in, with Chang under her arm, and as she sank into her place, diffusing the suavest unconsciousness, she said to Mrs. Travers-Cray:

“Charlie Carlton’s been killed, have you heard? This war is something more than I can bear.”

Charlie Carlton, as I knew, was a cousin of the recent callers and a most remote friend of Vera’s; but it was the best that she could do for the occasion, and all that she was inclined to do, though a melancholy smile, as impersonal as it was impartial, was turned more than once on Captain Thornton and Mollie as she inquired whether they liked sugar in their tea or had enough cream. She had made their tea for six weeks now, and after the first week she had never forgotten that they both liked sugar and both disliked cream. But she thus washed her hands of intimacy while keeping up the graces of hostess-ship. They might have arrived that afternoon.

Mollie and her husband rose beautifully to the situation, for their last two days at Compton Dally; that is, Mollie rose, for the husband at such times has only to follow and be silent. I don’t think that she could have shown a grace and a distance as achieved as Vera’s had it not been for those charming clothes of hers. You must have something to rise from if you are to float serenely above people’s heads; otherwise you merely stand on tiptoe, very uncomfortably. Mollie and Vera might have been two silken balloons, passing and repassing suavely in the dulcet summer air. And on the last day Vera’s sense of dramatic fitness prompted her, evidently, to the most imperturbable _volte-face_: she showed to Mollie a marked tenderness. To Captain Thornton she was kind, perfectly kind, but that she found him rather dull was evident. It might have been Mollie with whom she had spent all those hours in the dream-garden.

“Must you really go, dear?” she asked.

Mollie said that she was afraid they must. She had heard from her aunt, who was waiting to take them in, and, owing to all Vera’s kindness, Clive was now quite strong again. Vera did not insist.

“I’ve _so_ loved getting to know you!” she said, holding Mollie’s hand at the door of the motor on the morning of their departure. “It’s been _such_ a pleasure. You must often, often come to Compton Dally again. _Good_-bye, dear!”

But Mollie knew, and Vera knew that she knew, that never again would they be asked to Compton Dally. Meanwhile, if the war isn’t over and Jack hasn’t come back, I’m to go and stay with them next spring on the chicken-farm.

EVENING PRIMROSES

IT had been a hot day and there seemed to be thunder in the air, but she was afraid there would be no rain that night. The abandoned garden needed it sadly; though, as she reflected, rain would encourage weeds rather than the few remaining flowers. Poppies had sown themselves everywhere, degenerates of the Shirleys which, three years ago, had spread their silken cups in the large bed at the foot of the lawn. Their withered stalks cracked beneath her steps in the paths and glimmered under the unpruned branches of the cordon apple trees. There were thistles, too, sorrel, and tall nettles, a matted carpet of bindweed and groundsel in the little kitchen-garden, once so neat, and, of course, as poor Charlie had predicted, the Michaelmas daisies had eaten up nearly everything in the herbaceous border. That was one of the last questions he had written to her: “How are my pink phloxes? Have the Michaelmas daisies smothered them?” They had. It was the season at which the phloxes should be in fullest flower, but not one was to be seen; the dense, fine foliage of the daisies had advanced in a wall of green nearly to the border’s edge.

It was still oppressively warm. A toad hopped indolently away and paused at the box edging, lying up against it, his front feet extended, as if so wearied by the heat that he took his chances of discovery. She stopped to look at the clumsy creature, in which so little of nature’s accurate grace was expressed; and as she stood there, a sudden rustle in the box betrayed another inhabitant--this time a baby hedgehog which, too young for fear, moved busily about among the flat dandelion plants that rosetted the path, and even, encountering the tips of her shoes, stopped to examine them carefully before moving on again. The baby hedgehog would have amused Charlie. He had always been delightful about animals; he and the boys had always had that great interest in common.

Yes, the bird-boxes were still there. She could see one in the big apple tree and one fixed to the porch of the house, under the rose. How well she remembered the frantic delight that hailed the hatching of the first brood of tits. And the day when Charlie had deemed it prudent to withdraw the door for a peep at the beautifully fitted mosaic of bright little heads and bodies within, lifting up Giles in his holland pinafore for a long, blissful gaze. Six years ago that must have been.

The light was altering now, and when she turned at the end of the path, a great moon had risen across the lane and seemed to hang in the branches of the walnut tree that grew in the field beyond. A great, shining, heavy moon, and mournful, it seemed to her; her desolate thoughts, she was aware, lending their colour to everything. Heavy, mournful, desolate; that was the rhythm of her own steps passing along in the twilight, pursued by the unformulated consciousness that lay behind all these pictures of the past; pausing at last, as if to let the dogging sorrow overtake her, as she came to where, near the summer-house, against the wall, the evening primroses grew.