Angel (13 page)

“There's a lot Lord Norley's got to answer for—he can give away his parks and his art galleries and try to salve his conscience any way he pleases; but I've seen them Saturday nights, you've seen them, too, the men fighting outside the Garibaldi and the Volunteer and their children standing by with bare feet in the rain. That's where his money came from. Human frailty, I say to myself, when I pass his father's statue in the Butts. Human weakness lined
your
pockets, I say. I notice you're not wearing your Temperance badge today, Emmy.”

“They're coming! They're coming to the door. Oh, ring, Lottie, for the extra cups.” Mrs Deverell sped across the hall into the drawing-room where Angel and Hermione were sitting in silence with albums of engravings open on their laps and Theo was struggling, as he had struggled since luncheon, not to fall asleep.

As the door was opened, Hermione raised her head from her album with a look of pleased expectancy; for anyone different was welcome, might make time pass more quickly. Then it will be time to dress for dinner, she promised herself. And when
that
is over, there will be only four more meals left. She was ready for a little diversion, but quite unprepared for the scene which suddenly broke up the introductions. The young woman who had at first seemed to shrink back at the sound of her own name, blushed, hovered, trembled, then almost ran across the room, flung herself down on her knees at the hem of Angel's dress, took Angel's hand and kissed it. (“It was a lovely moment,” Hermione said afterwards to Elspeth and Willie Brace. “I wouldn't have missed it for the world. Angel so blissfully took it in her stride, as if it were as usual as anything could be. If she had had a sword and could have knighted her it would have been even more magnificent.”)

The two participants in the tableau seemed unaware of any other people in the room, and held their pose for what seemed to Theo to be an agonisingly long time.

“So that's how it was,” Lord Norley was saying to no one in particular. “As soon as she knew where I was coming, there was nothing for it but that
she
must come, too. All right, Nora, that's enough, my dear. Forgive her, Miss Deverell. Homage from one authoress to another, you know.”

“No, Uncle,” the young woman said firmly as she stood up. “I would rather you didn't mention my feeble scribblings in
this
house.”

“You are a writer, too?” Theo asked, feeling that someone should.

“I write a little verse,” she admitted.

“Under what name?” Hermione asked carelessly.

“Under my own name.” She appeared disappointed that her own name had meant nothing to them, and that her feeble scribblings were taken at her spoken valuation. No one made soothing sounds of recognition or approval, and she longed to tell them that Queen Alexandra had accepted one of her poems entitled “La Princesse Lointaine.”

“I'm afraid that in the . . . excitement, I didn't hear your name,” said Hermione.

“Miss Nora Howe-Nevinson,” Lord Norley said loudly. It was not an easy name to say and sometimes he made the most embarrassing mistakes. “My niece. And may I present my nephew, Mr Esmé Howe-Nevinson?”

Brother and sister were alike, too much alike to do either any good; for Nora's jaw was as square as her brother's and her upper lip as downy, while Esmé's skin was fine, as delicately coloured as hers was, his eyelashes were long and sweeping like a girl's and his brown, waving hair full of pretty golden lights.

Quite delicious! thought Hermione, as she took his hand.

“It was Miss Deverell, you know, Esmé,” said Lord Norley, “who gave us the Watts.”

“Most generous,” his nephew murmured.

“Presented a very fine Watts to the Norley Art Gallery,” Lord Norley explained to Theo. “You ought to make a point of seeing it. One of the Town's treasures. Miss Deverell herself is another.”

Angel was dreamy with so much adulation. It was a perfect afternoon that could offer such riches and offer them in front of Theo and Hermione. Hermione thought that she looked indecently sated: as if her self-infatuation demanded no more for a while: she was exquisitely at peace.

Then—so very soon—she was jolted from her trance. Esmé Howe-Nevinson handed round sandwiches, put a whole one in his mouth and settled down to a long study of Angel: he seemed to be regarding her with fascinated curiosity, with a lively, dancing look, unlike his sister's spaniel gaze. Angel was conscious of it and felt uneasy. As she poured out a cup of tea, her hands were clumsy; the smallest action she was obliged to make became an ordeal.

“Why Watts?” Esmé suddenly asked, still looking intently at her.

“I don't understand,” she said suspiciously.

“I meant, why did you choose Watts, of all painters? Or
didn't
you choose him? Perhaps it was the Town Council or some such set of ignorant old duffers.”

“I won't allow that,” said Lord Norley. “They're a fine body of men and not one of them a ha‘p‘orth better off for all their trouble.”

“You don't approve of Watts?” Angel asked Esmé. “I will take full responsibility.
My
choice,
my
money,
my
ignorance.”

“And I asked
why?”

“Watts is too famous a painter to need an ignorant writer to justify him.”

“I consider you rather discourteous, Esmé,” said Lord Norley.

“And so do I,” said Nora passionately.

“I don't mean to be. I had often wondered how those appalling pictures get into the provincial art galleries and here was my chance to find out. Forgive me, Miss Deverell, if I seemed to you to be rude. It must have been such a very expensive picture and so soon will be worth nothing. I regretted the waste of money.”

“Esmé!” said Nora. Her voice sounded automatically shocked, as if he had scandalised her many times in the past and now her reactions were only formal.

“I must ask your advice in future,” Angel said. She turned away from Esmé and fidgeted with the china on the tray in front of her.

“Yes, do,” he said seriously. “It would give me great pleasure.”

“Esmé is a painter himself, you know,” said Lord Norley, glad that the awkwardness was passing off so well.

“I
see
,” Angel said softly.

“Such horrible pictures! Barmaids and jockeys, barges in the fog, back-streets in the pouring rain, slag heaps . . . the seamy side of life. . . .”

“And allotments,” Nora said spitefully. “Don't forget the allotments, Uncle, with all the horrid little tool-sheds and rubbish-heaps.”

“And cemeteries,” Esmé said cheerfully. “I am particularly fond of my cemeteries.”

This imperviousness to criticism—even about painting which sounded to her as unpromising as could be—astonished Angel. Mischievousness made Hermione lean forward and say: “May I tell you that I know and admire your work, Mr. Howe-Nevinson? It is a great privilege to meet you.” She smiled engagingly and let her eyes rest on him.

“Good God,” Theo prayed. “Don't let
her
go down on her knees.”

“Thank you,” Esmé murmured faintly. “So kind!”

He knew that Hermione was lying, and why; and was amused for her sake that his sister and Angel reacted with indignation, as she had obviously intended. He was sorry that her satisfaction had to be so private. He would have been glad to share it and to find out why even such a little triumph was necessary to her.

“Well, there now,” said Lord Norley, in a comfortable voice. He was full of such vague phrases. Chairman of so many committees, he carried everywhere with him the conviction that conflict hindered, even in private life. Lack of agreement held back the agenda. Any dissent, in a drawing-room as elsewhere, filled him with the anguished thought that he would not be able to leave on time, to hurry back to his hobbies. Acquisitiveness he had inherited; his father had simply acquired money and had handed on so much of it that the urge to collect could run, in his son, into more varied channels, to the tracking-down of lustre jugs, Greek coins, old prints and maps of Norley, butterflies, birds' eggs, Oriental Spode. When he turned from the sunlight of these pleasures, people seemed only insubstantial; his niece and nephew, for instance. He was always kind to human beings, in the manner of a man who does not like dogs but would not countenance any cruelty to one. He gave them his time and some of his attention. Restless shadows, they moved before him. He handed them prizes, counted their votes, raised his hat to them in the street, dined with them, attended their funerals. He thought it right that they should claim some of his time, as on this afternoon, so that he should not spend the whole of his life indulging in his own pleasures; but they meant very little to him; he understood the smallest part of what they said, and all the finer shades of meaning in their conversation eluded him.

“
When
have you seen any of Esmé's pictures?” Nora asked Hermione.

“Oh, I never can remember dates.”

“I really meant ‘where'?”

“Well, he
did
have that exhibition I arranged for him in Bond Street,” said Lord Norley, telling Hermione, although, he did not realise it, exactly what she wanted to know.

“It was delightful,” she murmured.

“As far as I could see, no one ever went to it,” Nora said, leaning back in her chair again, defeated.

“How kind of you to arrange it for him, Lord Norley,” Angel said.

“No, no, the least I could do. Always pleased to help. His own parents—my poor sister Carrie—passed on, you know.”

He turned to have a little chat about widowhood with Mrs Deverell, who lost her head and began to describe her own long struggle to make ends meet and pay for her daughter's school fees.

“Mother, will you have some more tea?” Angel said in a clear, loud voice. The words seemed to freeze in crossing the room and broke with a brittle commotion in Mrs Deverell's head. She started and stared and shook her head. Theo came to her with a dish of sponge-cakes and stood by her, smilingly, soothingly, as she ducked down her head and snatched at a cake she did not want, but she was glad to have him there, screening her.

“Would you ever come to see my paintings?” Esmé asked Angel as they were leaving. “Although, of course, you would not like them. I expect you would say that when there is so much ugliness in the world, why add more to it, wilfully. But I have forestalled you and said it first, so now you will have to think of something else.”

“If I come,” she reminded him.

“If you come.”

He left it at that and turned away to speak to her mother.

“
When
shall I come?” Angel asked him, just as he was going—it seemed to her that it might be for ever.

“Nora shall write to you,” he said. He followed his sister out of the house, humming a little tune.

At dinner, Hermione suggested that Theo should take Angel for a drive in the De Dion Bouton. “Mrs Deverell and I will be quite happy here chatting. I will lend you my dust-coat and veil and goggles, and if you go as soon as dinner is over you will have plenty of time before dark.”

Angel had never been in a motor-car before. She was dressed up and helped to her seat, and Hermione and Mrs Deverell came out to the gravelled sweep and waved goodbye. There was an air of gaiety about the occasion. Hermione looked forward to an interesting têete-à-têete with Mrs Deverell and Mrs Deverell felt suddenly free of constraint.

Perched up as high as the dusty hedges, Angel felt giddy and nervous. The landscape looked bilious through the green mica goggles; the breeze flapped the veil against her mouth. Theo had put on a cape and a cap with ear-flaps and was unrecognisable except for his beard. By the water-tower, where there were some old cottages, children in pinafores stopped their play, leant on their hoops and stared as the car went by.

The hedgerows were creamy-green with cow-parsley, buzzing with flies which rose up from horse-droppings. The sky looked quite thundery and the elm-trees heavy with darkness until Angel lifted her goggles for a moment's reassurance and saw the cloudless blue and the fields of buttercups bright in the sunset.

“I don't know where we are going,” Theo shouted. “We will let the motor take us where she will.”

Angel had no idea where she was. Although they were near to her home, she had no sense of location: her walks were always aimless and left no impression on her, except to remind her vaguely of mud in one direction and a bull to beware of in another.

“Are you enjoying this, or disliking it very much?” Theo asked.

“I feel very happy.”

There was a strange ring of enthusiasm in her voice, and he would have turned to look at her if he had dared to take his eyes from the narrow, twisting road. The drive exactly suited something in her mood; she liked the sensation of being borne along, relaxed, secure behind her veil and isolated by the noise and, because of it, freed from the difficulties of conversation, left to her own thoughts.

“It was a dramatic compliment Miss Howe-Nevinson paid you,” Theo said after a while. “I am glad when writers have such compensations for all their pains and setbacks.” For himself, he could not imagine a worse punishment than to have someone pay such embarrassing homage; but he knew that Angel had taken it differently and as it was meant. “He—the brother—was handsome,” he added.

“In a girlish way,” Angel said pettishly.

He let her drift back into her day-dreaming. He guessed where her thoughts were, for he had overheard her desperate words: “
When
shall I come?” as Esmé had turned to go, and knew that she must have been hard-pressed to bring herself to say them. She was bound to fall in love some time or other, he thought. But I hope no harm comes of it. He could not imagine any brightness or ease ahead of her. Her sternness, the rigorousness of her working days, her pursuit of fame, had made her inflexible: she was eccentric, implacable, self-absorbed. Love, which calls for compliance, resilience, lavishness, would be a shock to her spirit, an upset to the rhythm of her days. She would never achieve it, he was sure. For all the love in her books, it would be beyond her in her life. He said: “If we go off to the left, we shall find our way back to the main road. It will be in the homewards direction and we can be back before the light goes.”