Cluny Brown (13 page)

“Darling,” said Andrew, as they finished their coffee, “would you like to marry me next month?”

“No, thank you,” said Betty. “What a fool idea, darling.”

“It's my mother's, actually,” explained Andrew, “and when you look at it, it's rather sound. I say, ‘There's going to be a war.' She says, ‘All right, get an heir.' Their generation at least has its feet on the ground.”

“Well, I don't belong to it,” said Betty. “If there's going to be war, I shall be belligerent.”

“Driving Generals round in cars,” said Andrew sardonically.

“Better me than an able-bodied male. What about you?”

Andrew hesitated. He had a private idea that in the event of war he would do something rather special, he did not know exactly what, but his fluent French and German and his knowledge of Europe put him, he felt, in a special class. If he didn't quite see himself hanging round the Reichstag in a false beard, no more did he see himself on the barrack-square. There was something about Betty's clear and inquisitive gaze, however, that prevented his explaining this, and in the end he merely shrugged his shoulders and got the bill.

“Let's go somewhere and dance,” said Betty.

Not without satisfaction, Andrew indicated his jacket.

“We can't. Wrong clothes.”

“Oh, don't be so hide-bound,” said Betty sharply. “You're just like John, all you can think of is Claridge's.” (The injustice of this remark annoyed Andrew very much.) “We can go to Covent Garden, or Hammersmith, and at least there'll be room to move.”

She stood up. Andrew held her coat, and as she slipped into it let his hands rest a moment on her shoulders; and this brief contact had the effect of making him forget all her worthless qualities.

“And if there isn't a war?” he asked.

“You won't be in such a hurry to reproduce your kind.”

“The offer still stands.”

Betty turned to look at him, brushing his chin with her golden topknot.

“Andrew,” she said, “do you notice that out of all our crowd, we're the only ones who talk about war? John does too, sometimes, but no one else. Why is it?”

“I don't know. Unless we've got more sense.”

“Then I wish we hadn't. It's rather blighting.”

She walked quickly towards the door, too quickly, for she had to stand there waiting while Andrew got his change, and he annoyed her by being so slow. She couldn't see herself as he did, in the moment when she turned and set her heels together and lifted her impatient chin. Her full, tightly waisted coat was crimson, opening on the primrose of a dress that frothed into ruffles at the neck, and out of the deep and pale colours her golden head rose brighter than a Lent-lily. Against the drabness of the little restaurant, she startled: not Andrew alone was held at gaze. But Betty was used to being stared at, and in fact liked it. She decided to give the waiters a treat, and bent on each in turn—young Mario, grizzled Pierre, the aged Bertrand—her most angelic smile.

“I love this place,” she said clearly, blessing them. “We'll come again.…”

But as soon as they got outside she ceased being an angel and baited Andrew so unmercifully that he heard the midnight chimes alone, as he tramped round and round, round and round, round and round Bloomsbury Square.

II

The next day was Sunday. This made little difference to Andrew and John Frewen, who were not church-goers: they had breakfast at the usual time, which was in any case late, read all the papers, and by lunchtime had usually slight headaches from sitting over a gas-fire. If Sunday, in Bloomsbury, had any character at all, it was that of being the most characterless day of the week. At Friars Carmel, on the other hand, it meant sausages and kidneys at nine instead of bacon and eggs at half past eight, and the car round for church at a quarter to eleven, and the Vicar to midday dinner, and an afternoon of peculiar stillness—in fact, every moment of the day, until Sir Henry at last pulled down the weights of the grandfather clock, was as strongly impregnated with Sundayishness as Lady Carmel's linen cupboard with lavender. Friars Carmel kept up its standards—in every respect save one, and for that one backsliding Mrs. Maile honestly and remorsefully took the blame.

Every week, as Mrs. Maile took her place in church, she instinctively glanced at the pew behind. The purpose of this glance had once been to review the maids' Sunday hats: not a new flower, not a turned ribbon, but caught and trembled under her eye; now it rested on empty air. Once five heads at least had been bent to her inspection; now she couldn't get even Hilda and Cluny to church. They had every excuse, they had too much to do—but Mrs. Maile felt that were she still in her prime, she would have got them there somehow …

Another point troubled her. They had too much to do, but were they doing it? Mrs. Maile was as reluctant to turn her back on them as a lion-tamer upon a cage of lions. When she thought of Cluny and Hilda at large in the empty house (for she put no confidence in Cook, and little in Syrett) it was all she could do to keep her mind on the service. Not that the housekeeper suspected them of prying—certainly not of pilfering: they were good honest girls. Required to put her suspicion into words, Mrs. Maile would have said that she feared they might be playing billiards. This really imaginative piece of deduction, from what she knew of Cluny's character and influence, surprised even Mrs. Maile. It could not but distract her; and they were often at the Second Lesson before she got her thoughts under control.

As a matter of fact, Hilda's and Cluny's favourite employment during this unguarded hour was the comparatively innocent one of laying traps for Mr. Syrett to find out if he really wore a wig. (Their ruses were too numerous to detail, and all failures. They never, though they often planned to, applied the crucial test of a lighted match.) They never went into the billiard room, and until the day after Andrew's rejection by Miss Cream Cluny had never been into the library. On that Sunday morning, for the first time, she set her ear to the door just as the Vicar gave out his text; softly opened it, as Lady Carmel put away her spectacles; as Sir Henry (reverently) closed his eyes, she slipped in. A Sabbath calm enveloped the great room; secure in the virtue of others, Cluny embarked on her quest.

It was no easy one. Gazing on the thousands and thousands of books—they looked to her like millions and millions—Cluny felt her heart sink. She had none of the library user's technique: to find four lines, in all that, struck her simply as looking for a needle in a haystack. However, she stepped to the nearest shelf and pulled out the first volume that came to hand:
A Sportsman in the Levant
. It was solid prose. So were the next four. But the sixth
(My Garden in Spain)
cheated: it had verses at the head of each chapter. Cluny read one or two of them in an unhopeful sort of way, moved down the shelves and found herself up to the neck in Shakspere, Byron, Milton, Browning—poetry every word of it, pages and pages, books and books, the glory of English literature tight-packed and appalling. Some spirits indeed might have soared; might at a verse, a line, have taken fire and lived from that moment in a changed universe; but not Cluny's. Her spirit, omnivorous of experience, had no use for experience at second hand, even were that hand Shakspere's. Only the living voice could catch her attention long enough to inflame it. If she pulled out book after book, opened and quickly shut them, it was simply with a gambler's irrational hope; and she had just flung herself down in the very attitude of the penniless rake—legs outstretched, hands thrust deep in her apron pockets—when Mr. Belinski quietly entered the room.

He looked at her in surprise. Cluny, without moving, gazed morosely back.

“What the hell are you doing?” enquired Mr. Belinski.

Whacked as she was, Cluny just managed to counter.

“Why aren't you at church?”

“Because I am a wicked man. If you are contemplating suicide, they will be back in about fifteen minutes.”

Cluny wearily pulled herself out of the chair and stared down at the heap of books. Then she glanced at Mr. Belinski, who quickly and accurately read her mind.

“No, they will not think it is I,” he said firmly. “If necessary I shall deny it. What were you looking for?”

“A piece of poetry.”

“Any piece?”

“No, of course not. A piece I heard.”

Mr. Belinski looked at the catholic array at her feet and lifted his eyebrows.

“I see you have a long task. You don't know the author?”

“Not unless—” Cluny was suddenly struck by a new thought—“not unless Mr. Wilson made it up himself. And I don't think he did, because he said he'd learnt it. It began ‘Blest.'”

“Blest pair of sirens,” suggested Mr. Belinski.

Cluny shook her head.

“No. Something about hours days and years slip something by.”

Mr. Belinski reflected a moment, and to Cluny's amazement and admiration repeated the whole stanza.

“However did you know?” she marvelled.

“It is the second and less quoted verse of a very famous poem,” said Mr. Belinski.

“Thus let me live unseen, unknown,

Thus unlamented let me die;

Steal from the world, and not a stone

Tell where I lie.

“The man who wrote it would do anything to make himself conspicuous.”

Cluny did not quite take this in. To her a piece of poetry was something that existed in a vacuum.

“Would you write it down for me?” she asked. “I want to learn it.”

Mr. Belinski obligingly went to a table and did so. Cluny followed, like a child following a Punch and Judy, to watch over his shoulder and admire again as the neat lines ran out of his pen. For the first time he had really impressed her.

“I do think you're clever!” she said sincerely.

“I am, very clever,” replied Mr. Belinski, without looking up. “Who is Mr. Wilson?”

“He's the chemist.”

“If he is endeavouring to form your mind with this sort of stuff, he must be a great fool.”

“He isn't!” cried Cluny indignantly.

“Do you mean he isn't trying to form your mind, or he isn't a fool?”

“Neither. And it isn't stuff, you said yourself it was famous. I think it's beautiful.”

“If you had a smattering of education you would realize that perfection of form can give validity to any sentiment, however preposterous. ‘Steal from the world' my foot,” said Mr. Belinski colloquially.

But Cluny, without paying much attention, took the finished copy and folded it very carefully and put it in her apron pocket. Mr. Belinski watched her with a peculiar expression.

“Don't you want to know who wrote it?”

“Is he alive?”

“No, he's been dead about two centuries.”

“Oh,” said Cluny, at once losing interest. “Well, thank you very much.”

“If there's anything else I can do for you, let me know.”

“Then you might just put those books back,” said Cluny. “I ought to be cleaning the bath.”

Chapter 13

I

The Roddy episode taught Hilda and Cluny a useful lesson: that between three and four in the afternoon it was quite easy for one or other of them to slip out on their private affairs, and no one the wiser. Hilda ran out to see Gary: her mother's cottage was on the hither side of the village, which made things easy for her, but if Cluny wanted to go (for instance) to the chemist's, she had to run all the way, and arrived looking as though she had come for an antidote to poison. If there were any one in the shop Cluny looked through the door, paused as though she had left her purse behind (or as though the poison must by now have worked, and there was no hope) and made off again. These proceedings, in so small a village, could not fail to attract attention, and Mrs. Maile received several unexpected enquiries as to the state of health at Friars Carmel; but before she caught up with their origin Cluny had for once found Mr. Wilson disengaged. She entered, and asked for cough drops.

“Is it for yourself?” asked Mr. Wilson.

“No, for Hilda,” said Cluny. This was more or less true; Hilda had no cough, but she liked anything to chew or suck. Mr. Wilson selected a moderately priced brand (sixpence) and wrapped the package with his usual care. He was very much the chemist; so different from the Mr. Wilson of the lane that Cluny had to take a firm grip on her resolution. She did so.

“Will there be anything else?” asked Mr. Wilson.

“Yes,” said Cluny. “Listen”: and standing with her hands behind her back she repeated from beginning to end the whole of Mr. Alexander Pope's verses on the subject of Solitude.

“Well, well!” said Mr. Wilson. He was obviously more moved than his features, so long set in lines of endurance only, were able to express. They worked to a smile. “And where did you find it?” he asked.

“In the library. At least, I didn't find it myself,” said Cluny honestly, “I asked the Professor.”

“And then you got it by heart?”

“Yes,” said Cluny.

He did not ask her why; the reason was obvious, she had done it to please him. And Cluny could have done nothing in the world to please Mr. Wilson more. She brought him, as she might have brought a bunch of flowers, an intellectual achievement; and the fact that he guessed it to be about her first filled Mr. Wilson with a pedagogue's delight.

“You've got it perfect,” he said solemnly, “and it's no an easy piece. You've a good brain in that shaggy head.”

Cluny blushed furiously. It was a moment of exquisite embarrassment to both of them, and fortunately a moment was no longer than it lasted. The shop door opened, in came a customer, and Cluny fled.

On the way back, however, she stopped to buy herself two snoods, one black, one scarlet, with bows to tie on top. With her usual generosity she gave the black snood to Hilda (as well as the cough drops) and Hilda was so pleased with it that the next afternoon she ran off to the village on her own account to change it for a scarlet one like Cluny's. Thus adorned they appeared in the servants' hall after dinner, and were met by universal reprobation. Mr. Syrett said they looked like ponies at a Show, Mrs. Maile said she had never seen such a thing, and even Cook came out of her habitual silence with a reference to Christmas crackers.