Family Gathering Read online

  Helen shook her head.

  “Well, you must get Jeremy to tell you one day—it’s entirely a family matter, of course, and rather delicate. You see, there was no doubt that they were sent off, but they never arrived, and though Mrs. Bellamy knew of our distress about the whole thing, she didn’t once mention having put down a new wallflower bed, but there they were. It was a horrid thing to have happened, and nobody supposes for a moment that Mrs. Bellamy would take anything that didn’t belong to her—the idea is absurd—but people do make mistakes, and it was such a pity that the mistake happened over the wallflowers. Nobody could expect Lucille’s grandfather to urge her to marry a man whose mother produced wallflowers without any explanation. It was really quite extraordinary how they appeared. There used to be an odd man at Port Said in the old days, don’t you know, who used to come on to one’s ship and do some quite wonderful tricks. One of them was to pretend to plant some seeds on the deck, and then he’d cover them up and say ‘Galley, galley, galley’, and the next moment some very strong-looking plants sprang up in the most mysterious way—exactly like Mrs. Bellamy’s wallflowers. We all want to help Lucille as much as possible, but it’s a great responsibility to foist upon her a mother-in-law who behaves so oddly. Don’t you agree, Helen, my dear?”

  Helen could only nod her head. She felt unequal to forming any rational opinion on the subjects of Lucille’s engagement, Sir Jason’s suspicions, the wallflowers and the galley-galley man. Jeremy watched her with a bland expression and Helen wished it were possible to do something violent to wipe it off.

  “Well,” said Lady Rome, rising, “we shall all have to go to this party, I suppose—I told Lucille and Mr. Macdonald about it on my way to see you, and they both looked quite glum. I suppose Mr. Macdonald really feels quite worried about it.”

  This was something of an understatement. Duncan was at that moment seated in the sewing-room, looking at Natalie with a desperate appeal in his eyes.

  “She won’t,” he said. “It’s no use, Mrs. Rome—I’ve done all I can, and she won’t—she won’t say anything, she won’t do anything, she won’t—”

  He stopped, and Natalie stared at him in misery equal to his own.

  “I know, Duncan,” she said. “I feel so very sorry for you, but I talked to Lucille myself. You mustn’t blame her—”

  “Blame her?” Astonishment lifted Duncan out of his despondency. “Blame her! I don’t blame her! I love her for being what she is—I love her because she’s sweet and soft and—and sort of tender. I never saw any girl like her before—never—never. They were all full of—of chat and bounce and hideous lipstick and hair looking sort of—sort of tortured. I still can’t believe that Lucille’s quite real—when I first saw her, I thought I was looking at one of those pictures that chap painted who always painted angels. That’s what she is, too—it sounds silly, but I don’t care—I think, and I don’t care who knows it, that she’s the nearest thing to angels that they have down here.” He fell into a reverie and roused himself to repeat Natalie’s words once more. “Blame her!” he said. “There’s nothing to blame her for. She’s what she is—and that’s the way I like her. She hasn’t got any go, thank God, and she can’t argue and she hasn’t got any fighting equipment—she’s just Lucille, that’s all. If she could get up and tell that Bellamy to go to hell, she’d be some other kind of girl, and I can’t stick the other kind—bossing people and pushing them round like—like—”

  He pulled himself up with a jerk, but it was impossible for Natalie to look at his crimson countenance without knowing that he had been about to say “like Helen”. She found her face burning, and struggled to make something clear.

  “You were going to say Helen,” she said, “but you would have been wrong. I think that perhaps—down here—Helen does give the impression of being—”

  She stopped, unable to use the word overbearing in connection with her daughter. “But you must understand,” she went on, “that Helen has always had to make her own decisions and—more or less—to manage her own life. Not only that, but she has had to manage mine, too, because I—like Lucille—never managed to make up my own mind. When a person has had to do the managing for two people for many years, it becomes, perhaps, a habit,” explained Natalie. “You may find,” she added timidly, “that when you’ve known Lucille a long time you might even have to become a little—a little managing yourself.”

  Having made her little sally in Helen’s defence, she turned her mind once more to Duncan’s problem.

  “His mother,” said Duncan, “has invited all the family to something that has an official smell to me. She wants the whole thing tied down. She’s going to make it all so open and public and—and witnessed, that Lucille will be into it good and proper.”

  “I’m afraid,” said Natalie, “that Lucille won’t do anything, and Jeremy doesn’t feel—”

  “That it’s his show. Well,” agreed Duncan, “it isn’t. It’s Lucille’s and mine.”

  “Her grandparents,” said Natalie, “are—”

  “I know—the wallflowers,” said Duncan. “I bet she did swipe them, too.”

  “The only thing I can tell you—that will help you, I mean,” said Natalie, “is this—Lucille’s wedding isn’t to take place until her father comes home, and I promise you that he won’t let her marry Philip if she—if she doesn’t love him.”

  “She doesn’t,” Duncan assured her. “She loves me. And that Bellamy can stage as many parties as he likes—he won’t get rid of me. I don’t know what the hell I can do, but I’ll do—I’ll do something.”

  “It’ll be rather difficult,” said Natalie.

  “It’ll be impossible,” said Duncan. “But I’ll do it.”

  Chapter 16

  On the day before Philip Bellamy’s return, Jeremy, looking from the fitful brightness of the day to the settled gloom on Duncan’s countenance, suggested a day in the open.

  The idea, at first brushed aside as impracticable so early in spring, soon began to present advantages which had not been apparent at the outset to the four concerned in the project. They would be in the big car, which was so roomy that, even if the weather forced the party to seek shelter for most of the day, nobody could feel cooped up. Helen’s ankle could be supported with maximum comfort and she would be able to see something of the countryside. The run would be beneficial, moreover, to the car’s battery, which needed charging. Finally, Lady Rome remembered that five people less to lunch would be a nice rest for Cook.

  “Four,” said Jeremy.

  “My dear Jeremy,” said his grandmother, “you’ve left out poor little Alexander. You couldn’t leave the little fellow behind.”

  “Darling granny,” said Jeremy, “this is strictly á quatre and Alexander would be frightfully de trop—”

  Lady Rome, finding it impossible to believe that Alexander would not be welcome in any language, smiled kindly at what she termed Jeremy’s little jokes and went to order five packed lunches.

  Helen was glad to be going out. She was tired of her sofa, tired of parrying Jeremy’s thrusts, and—most of all—tired of thinking.

  She had never thought very deeply. There had never been a time in her life when deep thought seemed called for. Problems arose, were sifted, a decision was arrived at and the problems then vanished. Helen, and Helen’s friends, had always believed that complicated issues only arose out of muddled thinking. They told themselves, and each other, that, difficult as things were for the young in the present age of post-war adjustments and shortages, they had the training and experience to view life with absolute clarity and deal with its problems swiftly, skilfully and, above all, tidily.

  It had seemed a very satisfying state of affairs in London. If Helen had ever carried a banner, she felt sure that Cool Efficiency would have been embroidered upon it. It was a proud standard, and she had endeavoured to unfurl it at Romescourt—and she realized, sitting on her sofa and staring at the small log fire, that it had fluttered very
briefly and now looked very limp and neglected.

  It had been humiliating, but she had been upheld by the thought of returning, soon, to the places where clear thinking and efficiency still meant so much. But she could not disguise from herself the fact that the curious feeling—half discomfort, half fear—that came over her at odd moments and which she had attributed to tiredness, still gripped her whenever she thought of returning to London. It came upon her unexpectedly —she would feel it in the middle of a conversation with her mother about the little house, or when Lady Rome was discussing the lateness of the spring blossom. Without warning it would creep over her slowly and pass, leaving her palms damp and her knees curiously weak.

  Not until the first severe pain of her ankle had left her and she found herself installed on the sofa was Helen able to examine her feelings. She found that she was deeply relieved at the prospect of staying at Romescourt, and happier than she had been for many weeks. It was impossible, after this, to shrink from the truth, but Helen, for the first time in her life, refused not only to think clearly, but to think at all.

  She listened to Lady Rome’s account of an article Sir Jason had once written on pests in vegetables, and wondered whether self-analysis was as important as she had once thought it. For if you once stepped out of cool, clear water into a muddy pool, it was no use peering into it. You couldn’t see anything and, if you could, it wouldn’t help. It didn’t get you out of the mud, so it was better to stop analysing why you were there and merely think about the best way of getting out again.

  “So you see,” said Lady Rome, “it shows that the only way to keep pests down is to do something beforehand and not just hope that the poor plants won’t catch anything, like children and measles.”

  “I see,” said Helen. She saw that two people could start from diametrically opposite points and still arrive at the same mud hole. She and Lucille—

  “But you’re probably not very much interested in these things yet, my dear,” said Lady Rome. “When you get your own vegetable garden—”

  She and Lucille. She, with her clear head, and Lucille with her muddle-headedness—it all came to the same—

  “—so you must take some warm wraps,” Lady Rome was saying. “And I’ve told Jeremy he must take plenty of cushions—some at your back, don’t you know, and one to give you that nice soft feeling under your knees.”

  It was a comfortable journey. Jeremy, with a great deal of apprehension, had agreed to drive the car, which he asserted had a trick of moving into the middle of the road in spite of all his efforts to prevent it. This he attributed to Lucille’s habit of letting the car wander by itself. Helen was to sit beside him, her foot supported by a small stool and several cushions. At the back were Lucille and Duncan, Alexander and the food.

  “That’s all right,” said Jeremy, when all were settled. “Now where do we go?”

  “You must go to Marford Woods,” said Lady Rome. “Alexander does so like that little stream that runs through them and—”

  “We don’t want wet woods and streams,” said Jeremy. “We want a nice sheltered place with plenty of sun.”

  “There’s that charming clearing just beyond the game-keeper’s cottage,” his grandmother reminded him. “You can put the car there and be very comfortable. Good-bye, Alexander. Have a nice day. How jolly you all look. Good-bye, good-bye.”

  Marford Woods were more than twenty miles away. Jeremy drove slowly, pointing out places of interest to Helen and adding extremely improbable items of local history.

  “Look—there’s Shannon’s Tree,” he said. “An old man lived in that cottage near it about a hundred years ago. He had three beautiful daughters—nobody had ever seen such lovely girls—and they were as good as they were beautiful, so their papa felt that only the best thing in husbands was good enough for them. He turned all the local offers down and waited for something really worthwhile to show up. But nothing did— rich nobles didn’t seem to pass by his cottage, somehow. He did a bit of thinking and one day he cooked up a lot of maps with details of buried treasure—fine old gold plate, I think it was. He went up to London and arranged with one or two of the Palace cleaners to leave the maps somewhere where the richest nobles would be able to spot them—then he came home. Pretty soon, you know what happened?”

  “I don’t even care,” said Helen.

  “Well, noble after noble arrived with shovels and things, and began to dig under Shannon’s tree, and as it was a hot summer, they swea—I beg your pardon, they perspired freely and out came the three lovely girls dressed in cool swigged muslin and—”

  “Sprigged.”

  “Is that it? Well, you’re in the trade—you ought to know,” said Jeremy. “Out they came with jugs of nice cold Devonshire cider—and don’t let anybody delude you into the belief that the real stuff isn’t potent. With a jugful of that inside the nobles and a cool little hand on their heated brows, it wasn’t long before all three daughters were very well married. The owners of the cottage still keep the original shovels used by the seekers after treasure. Nice story of paternal devotion, don’t you think?”

  “M’m,” said Helen.

  “I’m glad you’re interested,” said Jeremy. “There—on the right—up on that hill—you can see Miller’s Tower—it was built by a fellow called Jock Miller, and he used to climb up and watch for Bonaparte in the days they thought old Boney was going to land. They explained to him that old Boney’d probably land at a port, but Jock Miller said you couldn’t be too sure. How’s the foot?” he broke off to inquire.

  The foot appeared to be doing well. Helen was, indeed, leaning back comfortably and feeling restful and secure. She was beginning to sense something about the companionship of Lucille and Jeremy that had a pleasant and unaccustomed family flavour. She had not expected to feel any kinship towards her mother’s new relations, but this morning she felt very much one of them. Lucille was a sister—quiet and charming— and Jeremy—Jeremy was a peculiarly maddening brother.

  They found the clearing and parked the car on a sunny patch near the stream. Jeremy fashioned a little boat from the bark of a tree and presented it to Alexander. The vessel was attached to a long piece of string and moored to a stump until lunch was over.

  Everybody enjoyed the meal. The doors facing the sun were opened and food eaten half in, half out of the car. Alexander was perched on a coat spread over the warm radiator, and Jeremy dispensed food from the running-board.

  “Sandwiches, mostly,” he said. “That’s what I miss most nowadays—those whopping picnic lunches we were brought up with.”

  “Yes,” agreed Duncan. “Like that bit in the book about Toad, where they go picnicking and take all that stuff—how did it go?—coldhamcoldtongue—”

  “All right, all right,” said Jeremy. “Don’t rub it in. We’ve got a fairly good assortment here. Sausage rolls and—what would you say these were?—some kind of very dead beef flattened out. Here you are, Alexander. I’ll give you a drink in a minute. What’s this lot? Honey sandwiches—they look good.”

  “That’s Alexander’s packet,” said Lucille.

  “Alexander’s? Well, he’s got my beef, so I’d better have his honey,” said Jeremy.

  Soon everybody was eating. Alexander ate two sausage rolls, three meat sandwiches, a piece of tart, and finished up with a drink of strong coffee. Jeremy very much enjoyed the honey sandwiches, some light sponge cake, two chocolate biscuits, a stick of barley sugar and a refreshing drink of milk.

  Things were even more pleasant after lunch. Duncan took Lucille for a walk, and Alexander, slipping the boat from its moorings, walked slowly along the bank of the stream pulling his craft behind him.

  Jeremy made Helen comfortable in the car, leaving the door open to let the sun rest on her, and settled himself on some coats spread on the running-board. He gave a sigh of contentment.

  “Nice, isn’t it?” he observed. “I mean, just you and me. Ours,” he pointed out, “is a nice sort of relationship—es
pecially for me.”

  “I don’t see how,” said Helen.

  “Well, I like being your brother, for one thing,” said Jeremy. “It’s—it’s sort of interesting. And I like the feeling of having you all to myself. We can get so friendly—much more friendly than we could if your fiancé were here—don’t you agree?”

  “No, I don’t,” said Helen. “I don’t think his not being here makes the slightest difference.”

  “That’s an unlover-like statement,” said Jeremy, “but I suppose you mean that it oughtn’t to make any difference to my behaviour. Well, it does, of course. It’s extraordinary how different one feels if a girl’s fiancé isn’t nearby. It gives one a feeling of freedom, somehow. I can say things to you—pleasant, harmless things, which I couldn’t say if some watchful and suspicious fellow were sitting looking on. I couldn’t tell you how lovely you look now, for example, half in sun and half in shadow, leaning against that dark blue cushion. What would whatever-his-name-is say, f’rinstance, if I took your hand—like this—and said that I thought that engagement ring looked awfully out of place? He wouldn’t like it at all. He’d think I was making love to you—and of course I am, but he wouldn’t know how safe it was.”

  “What’s safe about it?” inquired Helen.

  “You,” said Jeremy. “That’s what I like about you. There are some girls I wouldn’t like to—shall we say practise on. Girls like Lucille, for example—look at what happened when Duncan came along and refused to count poor old Philip in. She simply fell in love and landed herself in a hell of a hole. But you—” He paused.

  “I?”

  “You,” said Jeremy. “Nothing like that could ever happen to you. You’re so—so strong and so sure and you know exactly where you are and how you got there. You wouldn’t get yourself into any holes, and if you did—”