Cluny Brown (18 page)

Even Cluny could have told him that this was a mistake, but he didn't tell Cluny why he had changed his mind. He forgot about her even while she stood there in front of him. And Cluny, as soon as she turned away, forgot about Mr. Belinski. It was Wednesday afternoon, and Titus Wilson would be waiting for her at the foot of the Gorge.

II

“So you've company at the house?” remarked Mr. Wilson. (It was the first time Cluny had seen him since Betty Cream arrived.) “I doubt you're all fine and busy.”

“One person doesn't make much difference—” said Cluny—“at least, not in the way of work.”

“Miss Cream was in the shop this morning. She's a very taking young lady.”

Without rancour, Cluny realized that any man who had just seen Betty would naturally want to talk about her.

“Don't you think she's beautiful?” she asked.

“I would like to see her with her face washed,” replied the chemist cautiously.

“Well, I have,” said Cluny, “and she's just the same, or very nearly.” She sighed. “It's hard to be plain all your life.”

Mr. Wilson made no pretence at misunderstanding her.

“We've all got to take what the Lord sends us,” he said consolingly. “Maybe you're not plain to your friends.”

“I'm plain to Uncle Arn, and he's known me all my life.”

“If I may make a personal remark—” said Mr. Wilson.

Cluny glowed at him.

“—you have sometimes a very intelligent look.”

They hurried on, Cluny looking as intelligent as possible. She had so little personal vanity that this meagre praise made her quite overlook his interest in Miss Cream. (After all, beauty didn't last, but intelligence did. It might even improve.) She said generously:—

“I think Miss Cream's clever too. At any rate, she isn't dumb. She's got everything.”

“It's early days yet,” observed Mr. Wilson. “Who knows what's in store for her?”

But Cluny—like Andrew, like John Frewen—could not visualize any sombre future for Betty Cream. Was it not obvious that she had only to say the word to become young Lady Carmel? Or if Andrew were not a brilliant enough match, were there not Dukes, Marquesses, Viscounts still unwed? Let alone Hollywood, thought Cluny Brown …

“If I looked liked that,” she said, “I'd go on the films.”

“Then you'd do a very daft thing,” said Mr. Wilson severely.

“I could be the funny woman in the comics.” (Cluny had already reverted to her own personality; she could never be any one else for long.) “The one who keeps a boarding-house. I could be a repressed spinster.”

“Now, see here,” said Mr. Wilson, really shocked, “that's no fit expression for a young woman.”

“I'm nearly twenty-one,” said Cluny.

Out of the tail of her eye she saw him frowning, and felt rather pleased. She had never baited Mr. Wilson before, and the fact that she was able to do so gave her a welcome sensation of power. Parrot, indeed! thought Cluny triumphantly; and wished it were the Professor, instead of Roddy, on the other side of the hedge.

“You're twenty-one and a baby,” said Mr. Wilson abruptly.

“I've been through a lot in my time.”

“Havers,” said Mr. Wilson.

But Cluny had now distracted herself. Hollywood and the Professor forgotten, she looked back over her twenty years, and they seemed to her very long. She hadn't made the most of them; but there were still one or two memories which she thought would surprise Mr. Wilson. That beautiful bathroom, for example, which she now saw as the permanent background to Mr. Ames. It was funny—whenever she conjured up that kindly figure in its yellow pull-over, she never saw it in the scullery or studio, but always by the bath.…

“It's funny,” meditated Cluny aloud, “how you always see a man in the same place.”

“Now what exactly,” asked Mr. Wilson, “do you mean by that?”

Cluny found she had meant more than she realized. The rule did not apply only to Mr. Ames, but also to Mr. Belinski, and to Titus Wilson himself.

“Well, whenever I see you, it's out in these lanes. Whenever I see the Professor, it's in the stables. I mean, I've seen you in the shop as well, and he's about all the time; but that's where you sort of belong.”

The chemist's brow gradually cleared. He thought he understood what all this daft talk had been leading up to. It was true, they did always meet in the lanes, they walked for about three hours with no more refreshment than the bars of chocolate he brought in his pocket; he thought that Cluny, in a very roundabout way, was reproaching him for never taking her home to tea. He said kindly:—

“With these fine days we've had, it's a long time since you've been to the house.”

“Yes, it is,” agreed Cluny, rather surprised. “How's Mrs. Wilson?”

“Much the same. The first wet day, you must come back and have tea.”

The effect of these words was just such as he had anticipated: Cluny, thinking of old Mrs. Wilson in her shawls, remembering the odd cosiness of that first encounter, smiled up at him; and they walked on in their usual amity, following the old pack-road, pleasantly and safely engrossed in the history of Britain's internal trade.

III

It was fortunate that Andrew, envisaging a week of simple rural pleasures, and no more, had not done so with much conviction. Friars Carmel boiled with passion, and the week looked like being a month.

In the first place, Colonel Duff-Graham came to lunch, and invited them all back for the week after. Betty agreed to stay on for this festivity. The original date of her departure once abandoned, no other was fixed. Lady Carmel, accustomed to the month-long country visiting of her youth, began to plan picnics and excursions for the warmer weather, and Betty, who thought nothing of running across to Paris for the weekend, agreed that it would be a pity to come all the way to Devon and see nothing of the country. She settled down: took to gardening with Lady Carmel and playing piquet with Sir Henry; and all sorts of upsetting thoughts began to cross Andrew's mind.

A more conceited young man would have jumped to the conclusion, against any evidence, that when Betty came to Friars Carmel, it was in pursuit of himself.

Andrew was not conceited, and he was trained to examine evidence. He admitted that Betty's situation, with regard to male society, was out of the usual: to break off relations with every young man who proposed to her would leave her practically without an acquaintance, and to the common loss. (Andrew also admitted that she behaved like a gentleman; never was the name of one suitor breathed to another. It was the suitors, like John Frewen, who gave themselves away.) Moreover, in the circles in which they both moved, sentiment was so rarely admitted as a spring of action that Andrew instinctively discounted it. There had also come into fashion a simple, forthright mode of behaviour the exponents of which cheerfully went ahead, doing whatever they wished to do, readily explaining their motives, paying their way, so to speak, by their frankness. To this school Betty Cream eminently belonged, and Andrew was by now intellectually convinced that she had come to Friars Carmel because she liked the country in spring, and that she was staying on because she liked Friars Carmel.

So far, so good; and his own attitude was in theory just as simple. Betty's presence was a matter of indifference to him. If it amused her to stay on being the perfect girl guest, let her; if it amused her to treat him as a favourite brother—which was what she did—O.K. by Andrew. Conversely, there was no reason in the world why, after the official week of her visit was past, he should not go up to town again and get hold of a man he knew at the Air Ministry. The only complication, and one that he had introduced himself, was the Professor.

Andrew felt an extraordinary reluctance to go to London leaving Betty and Belinski at Friars Carmel.

For Adam Belinski had abandoned himself unreservedly to his temperament. Where was now the gentle Professor whose even quietness had won the elder Carmels' hearts? He talked either much too much, or not at all; he boasted, or gloomed; he wore caddish shirts. At times he was undeniably amusing, and Betty was easily amused; his silence had a quality which some girls might have considered flattering. Andrew found him obnoxious all round.

“Doesn't it ever get monotonous?” he asked Betty one evening. They were playing billiards; Belinski, after marking for them for half an hour, had just thrown down his chalk and walked out.

“Doesn't what get monotonous?”

“Having men fall head over heels in love with you as soon as you appear. Lying down to be walked over, like Belinski. I should think you'd find it boring.”

Betty thoughtfully chalked her cue.

“As a matter of fact, it isn't at all. It's very interesting. You see, I'm not intellectual, I can't cut bits out of newspapers, but I am interested in people. And when they're being in love, you do get to know them.”

Andrew threw a hasty backward glance over his own recent conduct.

“That's why I keep my friends,” added Betty. “I find out much sooner than most women what a man's really like, and if I think he's nice, I'm not likely to be let down later on. I expect they feel the same about me.”

There was much truth in this. Among their Bloomsbury and Chelsea and Mayfair playmates, whose friendships, like their love-affairs, often had a touch-and-go quality, Betty's own relations were noticeably stable. She knew people for years. There were men with whom Andrew had been friendly at Cambridge, but with whom he had since lost contact; every now and then he met one or other of them in the company of Betty Cream. When they married Betty naturally saw less of them, but few wives did not welcome her presence at a dinner party; Betty was always dining out in places like Ealing and Wembley and Burnt Oak and Turnpike Lane …

“What d'you want them all for?” asked Andrew, with genuine curiosity.

“I like them. I like having friends.”

“If you're not careful, you're going to spend your whole life going to see people.”

Betty leaned over the table, apparently studying the position of the balls.

“No, I don't think so,” she said vaguely. “I'm nearly twenty-two.”

Both she and Cluny were rather conscious of their ages, and conscious of having put their first youth behind them.

Chapter 18

I

The next day brought lunch at the Colonel's. It was fine and warm, so that they were able to take coffee on the terrace, the view from which served as a useful topic for those whose conversation had been exhausted at table. The good Colonel's luncheon parties were not as a rule very lively: he was a widower, and his one daughter bred Blue Beverin rabbits. At the moment she was visiting a friend in Kent who bred Angoras, and the Colonel regretted this very much, because he wanted her to meet Betty Cream. He felt that contact with Betty might do Cynthia good, might open her eyes, as it were, to something besides Blue Beverins, and he had actually sent a telegram urging her return.

“You must meet my daughter,” said the Colonel earnestly, as they took their places round the coffee table. “She's coming back in a day or two.”

“I'd love to,” said Betty. She was quite used to this situation; mothers of attractive sons might sometimes cold-shoulder her, but with fathers of plain daughters she always made a hit. She felt really sorry for the poor girls, and had been known to accompany them to the Flower Show. The daughters either disliked her at sight or (if particularly plain) developed tiresome schoolgirl crushes; but Betty was always ready to try again, and reiterated her anxiety to meet Cynthia Duff-Graham.

“I dare say you'll make great friends,” pursued the Colonel optimistically. “Won't they, Allie?”

Lady Carmel, incurably truthful, merely smiled. She could not honestly assent. But her son had fewer scruples.

“Bosom friends,” agreed Andrew warmly. “Girlish confidences and all that. I'm sure Betty needs a confidante.”

“Oh, but I have one,” said Betty. “I'm keeping a little diary.…”

Lady Carmel listened to this exchange with a doubtful mind. She was troubled about Andrew and Betty, who appeared to her to be complicating a perfectly straightforward situation for no discoverable reason. She blamed Andrew the more: unaware that he had proposed already, she couldn't imagine why he didn't at once do so; she thought he was putting Betty in a very tiresome position; indeed, Lady Carmel didn't quite know whether to admire Betty's extreme self-possession, or blame her too for not giving Andrew more encouragement. So her attitude towards the pair of them had become slightly reserved; nothing would stop Sir Henry from behaving like a prospective father-in-law, but Lady Carmel herself withdrew as it were to the observation-post of simple hostess-ship. For this both Betty and Andrew were grateful: acting on completely mistaken premises, Lady Carmel was in fact behaving in the wisest possible way; but unfortunately she did not know it.

She looked at Betty reflectively: there she sat, surrounded by four men all more or less in love with her; and because she had a fair mind Lady Carmel grudged only one of them. Such beauty had its rights—to the sentimental regard of Sir Henry and the Colonel, to the exaggerated devotion of the Professor; but Andrew was different. Andrew might take harm. Lady Carmel thought of love as it had flowered so gently, so steadily, for her husband and herself, and unconsciously sighed.

For some minutes no one spoke, not even of the view. The Colonel and Sir Henry, sipping their brandy, drowsed in the sun like a couple of bumble-bees. Adam Belinski never took his eyes from Betty's face. Andrew lay back, not relaxed, but rigid. Betty smiled at her own thoughts, and Lady Carmel tried not to think at all. From an æsthetic point of view that made a remarkably satisfying group—mellow age set off by lovely youth, the exotic note introduced by Belinski, a background of proportioned grace: a conversation-piece, without conversation. The only feature lacking was a handsome dog, and even he now suddenly appeared. But he appeared in the wrong place: instead of lying at his master's feet, Roderick was lolloping along on the far side of the brook, at the bottom of the second lawn, and out of the picture altogether.