Cluny Brown (19 page)

“There's Roddy,” said Sir Henry. “Who's that with him?”

With a movement of surprise, Lady Carmel recognized her parlour-maid. Hatless, her pony tail flying, Cluny Brown raced after the dog and caught him just as he was about to plunge into the brook. Their mingled cries were distinctly audible.

“It's Brown,” said Lady Carmel, rather quietly. Every one else was looking the same way, and Andrew and Belinski were grinning.

“That's right, she's from your place,” said the Colonel. “Comes over on Wednesdays and gives Roddy a run.”

The fact that it was not Wednesday, but Thursday, struck Lady Carmel rather forcibly. However, with no family lunch to serve, it was quite possible that Mrs. Maile had given the girls permission to slip out.…

“Moves well,” said Sir Henry.

“Of course, Mrs. Maile spoke of it,” said Lady Carmel. “It's very kind of you.”

For some reason the Colonel felt defensive.

“Roddy's taken to her,” he explained. “She looked after him in the train. Very nervous beast.” He felt this put matters on a better footing, and so in fact did Lady Carmel. The nerves of a well-bred dog deserve every consideration.

“Very kind indeed,” she repeated, more warmly. “And I know Brown appreciates it. She's a very sensible girl.”

At this moment Roderick made a second bound at the water and brought Cluny down in the rough grass. They appeared to roll over each other. Then Cluny scrambled up, and observed the group on the terrace, and almost waved to them.

She didn't; but the uncompleted gesture was oddly definite. Across two lawns, across the brook, they saw the instinctive movement of her arm suddenly arrested; it might have been said that they saw a thought strike her. Andrew glanced quickly at his mother; Lady Carmel's look remained deliberately bland. But Belinski, was on his feet.

“If one may take a stroll?” he asked politely.

“Of course!” cried the Colonel. “Go along, all of you—and leave us fogies to our slumbers.”

II

The three young people walked quickly down the slope, Andrew and Adam each thinking how he could get rid of the other. Cluny Brown, who had set them in motion, was temporarily forgotten; indeed by the time they reached the brook she and Roderick were crashing through the far spinney. But Betty's curiosity had been aroused; when any man looked away from herself, she was naturally interested.

“Andrew, wasn't that your parlour-maid?”

“Yes, darling,” said Andrew. “That was our remarkable Cluny Brown, who has upset Mailey and Syrett, and even my mamma, by her passion for dogs.”

“Why should she not have a dog of her own?” asked Belinski.

“Because parlour-maids don't,” replied Andrew. “That's the only answer I can find. Well, now we've deserted the party, what are we going to do?”

“Let's go birds'-nesting,” said Betty. “Andrew, what a time you must have had here as a boy!”

“It wasn't bad.”

“By which he means,” said Belinski, looking at Betty ironically, “that the beauty of his early surroundings is still the strongest influence of his life. He has the heart of a vegetable.”

“Where were you brought up, Professor?”

“In a succession of flats, each one smaller than the last, in Warsaw, where my father was a school teacher. He also took resident pupils, so that I had to sleep in the eating room.”

“It doesn't sound very gay.”

“It was not gay, but it was interesting. There were always people talking till midnight. Sometimes they threatened to commit suicide, sometimes they discussed politics or their love-affairs. As a consequence I grew up with the heart, as the mind, of an artist. I think it has made me a very interesting man,” said Belinski simply.

They had reached the edge of the spinney and there turned, looking back at the group on the terrace. The figures of Sir Henry and the Colonel did not stir, but as they watched Lady Carmel rose to her feet.

“Your mother's moving,” said Betty.

“She's going to look at the greenhouses,” said Andrew. “She always does.”

“And what does your father always do?” asked Belinski.

“As soon as he wakes up, he'll go and look at the stables.”

“And they have been doing so for fifty years?”

“I suppose for as long as they've known the Colonel. Why not?” asked Andrew, rather sharply.

“Why not, indeed? In fifty years' time you will no doubt always walk up to this wood. I am happy to assist at the birth of a tradition.”

Andrew turned to Betty and asked her whether she would like to go on through the spinney, or back to the house. Betty chose the house. Walking back between the two men, she began to chatter, about Cynthia who was to be her bosom friend, about Cynthia's rabbits, about the guinea-pigs she had kept in her youth. Just before they reached the brook, however, she broke off and said to Belinski:—

“Apologize.”

He looked at her with not quite convincing astonishment.

“For what?”

“For being so clever.”

“Because I made an interesting ethnological observation—”

“Apologize!”

“You are quite right,” said Belinski unexpectedly. “I am in very bad taste. Andrew, I am sorry.”

“Oh, damn,” said Andrew. He looked from Betty to Belinski, who were now regarding each other very amiably, for their sudden bicker seemed to have put them on a more intimate footing, and went on across the bridge. The other two followed close on his heels—rather dutifully, Andrew felt, with a propitiating docility, as though he needed humouring. Betty slipped her hand through his arm, and Belinski, on his other side, made flattering comments on English domestic architecture. Andrew did not know why he wanted to swear again, but he did.

III

“Here come your youngsters,” said the Colonel, opening his eyes. “Henry, that's a very pretty girl.”

“Pretty as a picture,” said Sir Henry.

Colonel Duff-Graham continued to observe the approaching trio.

“That foreign chap,” he said suddenly. “Find him much trouble about the place?”

Sir Henry looked surprised.

“The Professor? Lord, no. He's writing a book.”

The Colonel nodded solemnly. To him, as to his old friend, authorship put a man, if not quite outside the pale of common humanity, at least into a special class—like vegetarians. But he was pleased to have had an author at his table, especially one guaranteed by the respectable title of “Professor”; and he felt that his party had gone off unusually well.

IV

Cluny returned to the house feeling slightly apprehensive, for her excursion had not in fact been sanctioned by Mrs. Maile: she had simply run out. It was rash to go to the Colonel's at all, when she knew the family was lunching there, and rasher still to let Roddy off his lead. However, Lady Carmel returned, and no summons followed, and by seven o'clock, when it was time to take round the water-cans, Cluny was breathing more easily.

She liked taking the cans round. Her sociable nature welcomed any personal contact, even if it consisted of no more than a shout to the Professor, who was usually in his dressing-room, or a decorous “Your hot, water, my lady,” to Lady Carmel; so the extra can for Miss Cream was a positive source of pleasure. “You ought to see her in her dressing-gown!” said Cluny—perhaps rashly, since she said it to Mr. Belinski; but indeed Betty Cream in a cloud of blue chiffon was a very lovely sight. She had just slipped into it, standing with one foot bare and one thrust into a cherry-coloured slipper, when Cluny entered the room that same evening.

Cluny always took a good look at Miss Cream; now, for the first time, her curiosity aroused by the events of the afternoon, Miss Cream took a good look at Cluny. She was an extremely competent judge of another woman's appearance: almost impartial, since her own looks defied competition, with standards high but catholic. But Cluny puzzled her. Beautiful eyes, a good skin—yet not the faintest chance of ever qualifying as a Lovely; tall, and height was coming in again, but either gawkily built or made to look so by her dress. Clothes would matter a lot to her, if she could achieve the unusual without collapsing into the art-and-craft. Miss Cream surveyed this conflicting evidence, threw it away, and jumped to the correct verdict that no catalogue of attributes could explain Cluny Brown's chief and rare quality: she looked like some one.

In Cluny's own circles, as has been seen, this was not an asset at all; in Miss Cream's it was cardinal. In the three years since she had come out she had seen scores and scores of nicely dressed débutantes coming out after her, none of whom looked like anything in the world but nicely dressed débutantes. Even the plain ones were not plain enough to be striking, and the pretty were all pretty in the same way. “In
my
way,” thought Betty dispassionately; only in her this conventional English beauty was raised to its highest point. She perceived, for a fleeting moment, a bond of union between herself and the tall dark girl with the water-can: they were neither of them dependent on external circumstances. In her own case these were highly favourable, but they were not all-important. Her beauty was inextinguishable; and it was equally plain that neither domestic service nor its repressive uniform had been able to extinguish the peculiar quality possessed by Cluny Brown.

Betty sat down on the bed and put on her other slipper. She said:—

“I saw you out with Roddy.”

Cluny beamed.

“Isn't he beautiful? We meant to go another way, but he bolted. He likes to get me in the brook.”

“Does he ever?”

“Oh, yes,” said Cluny. “But I soon dry off. It makes a change.” She lifted the china jug from the basin and set the brass one in its place. “Shall I pour this out for you?”

“Good heavens, no,” said Betty impatiently. Most intelligent persons with whom Cluny came in contact felt a vague dissatisfaction with whatever Cluny was doing: Betty now felt it absurd that she should be messing about with water-cans. (Cook had made one of her few but apt remarks on this very point: she said Cluny always looked pro tem.) This feeling was so strong that after only a moment's hesitation Betty was led to break one of the first social laws—never interfere with some one else's maids.

“Do you like this sort of job?” she asked baldly.

“No,” said Cluny. “But it's good for me.”

Their common youth made any further explanation unnecessary. It was not so long since Betty had been taking a domestic-science course, because that was considered good for her. She said energetically:—

“There must be lots of other things you could do. For instance, if you're so fond of dogs, you could be a kennel-maid.”

Cluny at once looked pleased and enthusiastic, as she always did when any one would talk to her about herself. It was easy to attach too much importance to this expression. Betty tucked her feet under the folds of her blue gown (like a goddess sitting in a lotus) and considered the matter with growing interest.

“I've a cousin who breeds Cockers, to begin with,” she said. “He knows absolutely every one. And there's the woman in Mount Street where Mother got her poodle—”

“Oh, has your mother a poodle?” cried Cluny.

“Two. She over-feeds them. It's criminal.”

Cluny looked aghast. She herself always went to fetch Roddy with a pocketful of biscuit, for along with her Cockney impulse to pick things went the Cockney impulse to give animals things to eat. However, she was very quick in the uptake.

“There's nothing worse,” she lamented, shaking her head. “Especially if they don't get much exercise.”

“They get none, unless I'm there. You know, I believe you're simply cut out for a kennel-maid.” Betty did at that moment see Cluny very clearly in a long white coat, leading a Cocker spaniel up to get First Prize; and the picture looked much more natural than Cluny in cap and apron. “If you like, I'll write round and make enquiries. I'll write to my cousin tonight.”

It was very odd. No two people could have been less alike, but Cluny suddenly found herself reminded by Miss Cream of Aunt Addie Trumper. She hesitated.

“What,” she asked uneasily, “does a kennel-maid do?”

“All sorts of things. There's grooming and feeding and exercising, and cleaning out kennels, and worming, and you'd probably learn to strip and trim as well.”

“And all just dogs?”

“Of course. If you're so fond of them—”

“I am fond of them. But I don't know that I want
just
dogs,” explained Cluny.

“There'd be people as well, naturally. And you'd go to all the shows—”

“Dog shows?”

“Of course—and meet all the other dog people. My cousin loves it.”

“I expect he's fonder of dogs than I am,” said Cluny apologetically, “because myself I think I'd go nuts.”

With a friendly smile she left the room and galloped off to fill the other cans. (Cluny's habit of galloping down the long corridors was something Mrs. Maile had not yet got her out of.) She did not give Miss Cream's proposition another thought—Cluny knew by instinct that whatever else she was, she wasn't one of the dog people—but she recognized the prompting good-nature. She felt she hadn't done Miss Cream justice, a feeling which, being proud, she very much disliked.

Cluny always left the pantry door open, in case anything should be going on outside. Now she heard Mr. Belinski speak to Sir Henry in the hall, then come upstairs, and when he reached the top she put out her head.

“Here a minute!” called Cluny.

Mr. Belinski came into the pantry. Cluny turned off the taps and faced him seriously.

“You know you're always calling me a cat? I was, a bit. About Miss Cream. And I was wrong, because she's sweet.”

“She has been sweet to you?” asked Mr. Belinski jealously. “How?”