She said no more. With admirable discretion, she avoided Maud, climbed into the first of the waiting cars with Steenie. The car drew away in the direction of the house. Maud watched it depart, her expression haughty. She turned to Jane, then Acland. She kissed them both.
“I shall come back,” she said, “when that woman has gone. No, Acland, I shall speak my mind for once. I have to say that I find your selection of her as a godmother quite inexplicable, and deeply unwise. I cannot understand, Jane, how you, of all people—”
“It was my decision, Maud,” Acland said in a quiet voice.
“Yours? Then I can only say it was foolish.” Maud drew herself up. “She has not improved—in fact, if anything, she is worse. That hat! That hat, in my opinion, was a calculated insult—”
Behind Maud, Winifred Hunter-Coote, who concurred with this view, gave a loud snort.
“Quite unsuitable for a christening,” Maud went on. “But then, she must always draw attention to herself. She feeds on it. I am glad to say I thought the hat most unbecoming—far too young for her. She is beginning to show her age.”
“Maud. Could we stop this, please?” Acland interrupted her. “It’s unkind and unnecessary. It’s upsetting Jane—”
“Jane?” Maud gave him her coldest look. “Jane is not the one who is upset.”
“Maud, I think that’s enough.”
“Did you see how she looked at my poor fox? She gave it a most
malignant
glance—”
“It was in the way, Maud.”
“It was
intentionally
in the way. I’d prefer her to look at my fox like that, than your baby—”
“Maud,
please
.”
“Very well. I shall say no more. I shall return to London.” Maud, somewhat flushed, adjusted the contentious fox. She glanced grandly to left and to right. It did not escape her notice that Freddie, listening to this exchange, was trying hard not to laugh.
“I shall say only one thing—and no, Freddie, it is not a cause for amusement.” She paused. “That woman is ill-bred. And what is more, it
shows
.”
“I’m in disgrace,” Constance said that afternoon, after lunch. Wexton and Steenie, she and Acland were walking down by the lake. Jane had retired to rest; Freddie had fallen asleep over a new novel by Dorothy Sayers; Winnie, with a quelling glance in Constance’s direction, had refused to join them. She was, she said in a meaningful way, retiring to her room, where she would write to her husband, Cootie.
“Winnie thinks I should be writing to Montague.” Constance made a wry face. “I have a sneaking impression she thinks I’m a less than dutiful wife.”
“She’s in Maud’s camp,” Steenie said, with an air of glee. “She disapproves of you violently, Constance. I think she took exception to your hat.”
“How unkind! And I took hours choosing that hat.”
“Maud said it was a calculated insult,” Steenie continued cheerfully, ignoring Acland’s warning look. “Do you know what Maud calls you? She calls you ‘that woman.’ She said you gave her poor fox fur a most
malignant
glance.”
“So I did,” Constance replied with spirit. She took Acland’s arm. “I must say, Acland, it is nice to come three thousand miles, to my old home, and be made to feel so welcome.”
“Oh, Maud doesn’t mean half she says,” Acland replied in an unconvincing way.
Constance gave him a little glance. “Oh, she does. I know she does. I can just hear her saying it: ‘That woman is a bad influence. I cannot
think
why you should select her as a godmother. Did you
see
how she looked at my poor fox?’”
Constance smiled. It was a brilliant piece of mimicry: Constance had Maud’s voice to perfection, its swoops, its glides, its exaggerated emphasis. For a moment, tiny though she was in comparison to Maud, she even contrived to resemble her, drawing herself up in just the way Maud had done, outside the church. Acland smiled; Steenie laughed; Wexton gave no reaction. Constance, reverting to her own self, gave a sigh.
“Oh, well, I cannot blame her. She once loved Montague, and she will never forgive me. I regret that. I always liked Maud, very much.”
She gave a shake of the head; they walked on for some way in silence. Acland wondered if perhaps Constance was more hurt by Maud’s remarks than she acknowledged, for there had been a certain defiance in her tone—a defiance he remembered from long before, when Constance, as a child, had used it to deflect the dislike she seemed always to expect from others.
They came, after some ten minutes, to a division of the paths. There, Constance paused.
“Do you know where I’d like to go? The old Stone House. Is it still there? Do you remember, Acland—your mother’s favorite place? I haven’t been to that part of the grounds for ages.”
“Oh, it’s still there. It’s not in very good repair—like everything else—but it’s still there.”
“Shall we go and look at it now? May we? Steenie, Wexton, will you come? I remember it so well. Gwen used to keep her watercolors there, and her flower press. Boy took our photograph there one morning, I remember. Let me think—Gwen was there, and you, Steenie. Oh, and my father.”
She stopped. She made a small gesture. She turned away, then walked apart a few steps.
All three men stared at her back. Seeing that Acland was puzzled, Steenie mouthed the word
comet.
“We were in the Stone House that day,” he said in a low voice. “The morning of the comet party. I think it might not be a terribly good idea to go there. You know how she is when she remembers—”
“I’m going back to the house in any case,” Wexton announced abruptly. “It’s cold. Are you coming, Steenie?”
To Steenie’s surprise, Wexton—who usually ambled along—set off for the house at a smart pace, without a backward glance. Steenie, who was anxious to tell Wexton all about his quarrel with Vickers, but who was also filled with a sudden unease, hesitated. He looked at Constance’s back. He looked at Acland.
“You go on,” Acland said.
“You’re sure?”
“Yes. Go on. We’ll catch up.” He lowered his voice. “It’s all right, Steenie. She’s obviously upset. Give her a minute or two.”
“Oh, very well.”
Steenie turned with apparent reluctance. He began to walk away, hesitated, glanced back, then ran to catch up with Wexton. Once Steenie was at his side, Wexton slowed. Both men paused to look back; Constance and Acland were now out of sight.
“My dear,” Steenie said with a sideways glance. “Ought we to leave? I’m not entirely sure Acland’s safe….”
“Nor am I. However, it’s his problem, don’t you think?”
“I wouldn’t like to see him hurt—or Jane, for that matter.” Steenie hesitated. “It’s
probably
all right—after all, it wouldn’t be terribly apposite timing, would it? Just after the christening. On the other hand, with Constance—”
“Quit meddling, Steenie. Come on. Let’s go back to the house.”
“You’re sure?” Steenie sighed. He turned with some reluctance. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe she was genuinely upset. I have seen it before—when something brings her father back. She did love him, Wexton.”
“Oh, yes?” Wexton did not sound convinced. “You remember that story you told me once—her father’s novel, the nail scissors?”
“Yes.”
Wexton shrugged. “If she loved her father so much,” he said simply, “then how come she cut up his books?”
“Do you want to go back?” Acland said when they had reached the Stone House.
“No. No. Truly—it’s all right. I’m glad we came. Not all my memories hurt, you see. I always liked this place. You can watch the woods and the lake from here. Do you remember, Acland—your mother used to have a table here. And her watercolors and her easel—over there. And then there were her books—on these shelves. My father’s novels. He had them bound in vellum, especially for her.”
Constance wandered about the small room as she spoke. She seemed oblivious to the damp of the building, the chill of its stone floor. She touched the pillars of the loggia outside, which fronted toward the lake, then retreated into the building’s one room, gesturing, touching.
Acland stood watching her in an uncertain way. Despite what she said, he felt it had been unwise to come here. He hesitated, half in the building and half out, leaning against one of the loggia’s pillars. He lit a cigarette. One of the black swans moved across the lake, then disappeared behind a clump of sedge.
Alone,
he thought,
and palely loitering.
He was unable to remember the rest of the poem.
Constance seemed reluctant to end this exploration. He watched her move back and forth, her breath making small white clouds in the cool of the air. She drew off her gloves and ran her hand over the bookshelves. Her rings glittered. Acland thought she looked small, delicate, lovely, and solemn: an odd exotic creature to find at Winterscombe. She wore no hat. Her Egyptian hair framed her face. Her expression was forlorn, almost disconsolate, as if—now the others had left them—she could drop the defensive mask of mockery and gaiety.
She wore a soft coat of some dark-gray material—an unusually somber choice, for Constance—which gave her a religious air, reminding him of a nun, a nurse, some quiet and ministering female influence. Beneath this coat he could just glimpse the whiteness of a blouse, its collar crumpled against the stem of her throat. As he looked at her, Constance, unconscious of his gaze, unfastened her coat. It swung back as she reached up to touch the place where a picture had once hung. She traced the mark it had left on the plastered wall. Beneath the pale silk of her blouse, the line of her breast was clearly visible. Acland could see the jut of the flesh, the outline of the aureole. Startled, even shocked by the lack of underclothing, he looked away.
When he looked back once more, Constance was sitting on an old wooden bench, a bench once placed on the loggia outside. She seemed to have forgotten his presence completely. Her head was bent, her hands clasped, her gray coat wrapped around her. Once again Acland was reminded of a nun, a penitent. He smiled to himself—it was an unlikely image for Constance. She is lovely, he thought to himself, and, remembering the time when she had been ill, when he had gone to her room in London, he felt an old affection welling up, distant and yet strong, like the memory of a perfume. She looked, he thought, very young; fragile, vulnerable, costly, highly finished—the kind of object a person might glimpse through the glass window of some expensive shop. They would stop, look at it, think
That is lovely, but not for me
—and then pass on.
“I shouldn’t have come to Winterscombe.” Constance looked up at him, her face sad and pinched. “I shouldn’t have come. I shouldn’t have asked to be Victoria’s godmother. I’ve put you in an impossible position, I know that. You’ve been very kind, and gallant—but it wasn’t fair. I’m sorry, Acland. All I’ve done is irritate everybody. Even Jane. Why do I do that? I don’t mean to—yet I can see it happening. Oh, I wish I’d never worn that stupid hat….”
“It was a very pretty hat.” Acland smiled. “I liked it.”
“Oh, Acland—such a gentleman! That’s not the point, anyway. The hat is trivial—I know that. It’s me, not the hat. I don’t belong here, and I never did. It was wrong of me to force myself on you. And yet, I’m glad I was there. I’d never been to a christening before. The words—the words are extraordinary, don’t you think? ‘Steadfast in faith,’ ‘joyful through hope,’ ‘the waves of this troublesome world.’ You see?” She smiled. “I have them by heart. Waves—I understood that. I hate the sea. And the world is troublesome.”
“The words are moving—even if you don’t believe. They have a power of their own.” Acland walked into the Stone House. He looked at his mother’s bookshelves. He sat down.
“They make you believe, I think. While they’re being said.” Constance gave a small shiver. “They make you believe in impossible things. Redemption, change … I don’t know. I did mean it, you know, when I made all those promises this morning. Such solemn ones! I know no one else will think that I could—but I did mean them. I want you to know that.” She shivered again. “It’s cold here, Acland.”
“Shall we go back?”
“No, not yet. I want to stay—just a while longer. It’s only my hands that are cold. Will you hold them, Acland? Yes, like that. Rub them a little bit. The fingertips; Oh, that’s better. They felt freezing. I think the circulation had stopped.”
Acland held her hands. He chafed them between his own, as she asked, until they felt warmed. Then, since there seemed no reason to release them, he continued to hold them. He looked down at them; he rested her right hand, then her left, across his palm.
“So many rings. You always wear so many rings.”
“I know. I don’t know why. I like them. I’m greedy for rings. Just little ones. They remind me of people. You see that one there, with the blue stone—Boy gave me that, when I was fourteen. Montague bought that one. The opal came from Maud—before I fell out of favor.”
“You cried today, in the church. I saw you.”
“I know. I’m sorry. I thought no one had seen.”
“You were very discreet. Just two tears, then two more.”
“Crocodile tears, Maud would say.” Constance smiled. “That’s not true either. I don’t cry very often. Not like Steenie. I save the tears up, perhaps. No, that’s not true. They have a will of their own. I cried when my dog Floss died—but I couldn’t cry when I lost my father. Isn’t that strange?”
“Not necessarily.”
“Acland, may I ask you something? Something I’ve always wanted to ask you—and never have?”
“If you want.”
Constance hesitated. “You won’t be angry? It’s about my father.”
Acland released her hand. He drew back a little. Constance looked at him in an anxious way. He, too, seemed to hesitate, perhaps be about to refuse. Then he shrugged.
“Ask away. I expected you to ask—one day.”
“The night of the accident”—Constance fixed her eyes upon his—“did you think it was an accident—as everyone said?”
“It’s twenty years ago, Constance.”
“Not to me. To me it is yesterday. Please, Acland. Tell me.”
Acland sighed. He leaned back against the bench. He turned away. He looked out across the grass toward the lake and the woods beyond. He rested his eyes upon the trees and the deepening gray of the sky. After a silence he said, “No. At the time—I didn’t think of it as an accident.”