Dangerous Ages Part 29

"That you are going on with a married man. That you are his mistress,"

she said, putting it at its crudest, since Nan wanted plain speaking.

Nan sat quite still, smoking. The silence thrilled with Mrs. Hilary's pa.s.sion.

"I see," Nan said at last. "And it's no use my denying it. In that case I won't." Her voice was smooth and clear and still, like cold water. "You know the man's name too, I presume?"

"Of course. Everyone knows it. I tell you, Nan, everyone's talking of you and him. A town topic, Rosalind calls it."

"Rosalind would. Town must be very dull just now, if that's all they have to talk of."

"But it's not the scandal I'm thinking of," Mrs. Hilary went on, "though, G.o.d knows, that's bad enough--I'm thankful Father died when he did and was spared it--but the thing itself. The awful, awful thing itself. Have you no shame, Nan?"

"Not much."

"For all our sakes. Not for mine--I know you don't care a rap for that--but for Neville, whom you do profess to love...."

"I should think we might leave Neville out of it. She's shown no signs of believing any story about me."

"Well, she does believe it, you may depend upon it. No one could help it.

People write from here saying it's an open fact."

"People here can't have much to put in their letters."

"Oh, they'll make room for gossip. People always will. Always. But I'm not going to dwell on that side of things, because I know you don't care what anyone says. It's the _wrongness_ of it.... A married man.... Even if his wife divorces him! It would be in the papers.... And if she doesn't you can't ever marry him.... Do you care for the man?"

"What man?"

"Don't quibble. Stephen Lumley, of course."

"Stephen Lumley is a friend of mine. I'm fond of him."

"I don't believe you do love him. I believe it's all recklessness and perversity. Lawlessness. That's what Mr. Cradock said."

"Mr. Cradock?" Nan's eyebrows went up.

Mrs. Hilary flushed a brighter scarlet. The colour kept running over her face and going back again, all the time she was talking.

"Your psycho-a.n.a.lyst doctor," said Nan, and her voice was a little harder and cooler than before. "I suppose you had an interesting conversation with him about me."

"I have to tell him everything," Mrs. Hilary stammered. "It's part of the course. I did consult him about you. I'm not ashamed of it. He understands about these things. He's not an ordinary man."

"This is very interesting." Nan lit another cigarette. "It seems that I've been a boon all round as a town topic--to London, to Rome and to St.

Mary's Bay.... Well, what did he advise about me?"

Mrs. Hilary remembered vaguely and in part, but did not think it would be profitable just now to tell Nan.

"We have to be very wise about this," she said, collecting herself. "Very wise and firm. Lawlessness.... I wonder if you remember, Nan, throwing your shoes at my head when you were three?"

"No. But I can quite believe I did. It was the sort of thing I used to do."

"Think back, Nan. What is the first act of naughtiness and disobedience you remember, and what moved you to it?"

Nan, who knew a good deal more about psycho-a.n.a.lysis than Mrs. Hilary did, laughed curtly.

"No good, mother. That won't work on me. I'm not susceptible to the treatment. Too hard-headed. What was Mr. Cradock's next brain-wave?"

"Oh well, if you take it like this, what's the use...."

"None at all. I advise you not to bother yourself. It will only make your headache worse.... Now I think after all this excitement you had better go and lie down, don't you? I'm going out, anyhow."

Then Stephen Lumley knocked at the door and came in. A tall, slouching hollow-chested man of forty, who looked unhappy and yet cynically amused at the world. He had a cough, and unusually bright eyes under overhanging brows.

Nan said, "This is Stephen Lumley, mother. My mother, Stephen," and left them to do the rest, watching, critical and aloof, to see how they would manage the situation.

Mrs. Hilary managed it by rising from her chair and standing rigidly in the middle of the room, breathing hard and staring. Stephen Lumley looked enquiringly at Nan.

"How do you do, Mrs. Hilary," he said. "I expect you're pretty well played out by that beastly journey, aren't you."

Mrs. Hilary's voice came stifled, choked, between pants. She was working up; or rather worked up: Nan knew the symptoms.

"You dare to come into my presence.... I must ask you to leave my daughter's sitting-room _immediately_. I have come to take her back to England with me at once. Please go. There is nothing that can possibly be said between you and me--nothing."

Stephen Lumley, a cool and quiet person, raised his brows, looked enquiry once more at Nan, found no answer, said, "Well, then, I'll say good-bye,"

and departed.

Mrs. Hilary wrung her hands together.

"How dare he! How dare he! Into my very presence! He has no shame...."

Nan watched her coolly. But a red spot had begun to burn in each cheek at her mother's opening words to Lumley, and still burned. Mrs. Hilary knew of old that still-burning, deadly anger of Nan's.

"Thank you, mother. You've helped me to make up my mind. I'm going to Capri with Stephen next week. I've refused up till now. He was going without me. You've made up my mind for me. You can tell Mr. Cradock that if he asks."

Nan was fiercely, savagely desirous to hurt. In the same spirit she had doubtless thrown her shoes at Mrs. Hilary thirty years ago. Rage and disgust, hot rebellion and sick distaste--what she had felt then she felt now. During her mother's breathless outbreak at Stephen Lumley, standing courteous and surprised before her, she had crossed her Rubicon.

And now with flaming words she burned her boats.

Mrs. Hilary burst into tears. But her tears had never yet quenched Nan's flames. Nan made her lie down and gave her sal volatile. Sal volatile eases the head and nervous system and composes the manners, but no more than tears does it quench flames.

4

The day that followed was strange, and does not sound likely, but life often does not. Nan took Mrs. Hilary out to lunch at a trattoria near the Forum, as it were to change the subject, and they spent the usual first afternoon of visitors in Rome, who hasten to view the Forum with a guide to the most recent excavations in their hands. Mrs. Hilary felt completely uninterested to-day in recent or any other excavations. But, obsessed even now with the old instinctive desire (the fond hope, rather) not to seem unintelligent before her children, more especially when she was not on good terms with them, she accompanied Nan, who firmly and deftly closed or changed the subjects of unlawful love, Stephen Lumley, Capri, returning to England, and her infant acts of wilfulness, whenever her mother opened them, which was frequently, as Mrs. Hilary found these things easier conversational topics than the buildings in the Forum. Nan was determined to keep the emotional pressure low for the rest of the day, and she was fairly competent at this when she tried. As Mrs. Hilary had equal gifts at keeping it high, it was a well-matched contest. When she left the Forum for a tea shop, both were tired out. The Forum is tiring; emotion is tiring; tears are tiring; quarrelling is tiring; travelling through to Rome is tiring; all five together are annihilating.

However, they had tea.

Mrs. Hilary was cold and bitter now, not hysterical. Nan, who was living a bad life, and was also tiresomely exactly informed about the differences between the Forum in '99 and the Forum to-day (a subject on which Mrs. Hilary was hazy) was not fit, until she came to a better mind, to be spoken to. Mrs. Hilary shut her lips tight and averted her reddened eyes. She hated Nan just now. She could have loved her had she been won to repentance, but now--"Nan was never like the rest," she thought.

Nan persisted in making light, equable conversation, which Mrs. Hilary thought in bad taste. She talked of England and the family, asked after Grandmama, Neville and the rest.