The Diamond Waterfall (11 page)

Yes, that is how it began. Not even Papa himself to tell me. Oh, and then, and then that it should be
her

“Oh,” I cried, “not that one!”

“But Alice dear, yes—that one. She—”

I didn't like her when I saw her. I remember now, neat features, a nose a little hooked, and a very good figure. She had a firm speaking voice, which I suppose some might think pretty. And a tinkling laugh that is horrid. And expensive, fashionable clothes. And, worst of all—she is an actress. Yes, she is an actress. And quite, quite hateful.

Aunt Violet is away. I'd have wanted to run there at once. I spoke again to Nan-Nan, and she said she was sorry I should have found out like that. Then she cried a little, and I cried a little. And she said there would never be anyone like Mama. But that I must try and look at it like this: that Mama had been her very special baby—and so had I. So
that
could never be the same again.

They are not to be married until Easter. Miss Greene has contracted to stay in her show (I shall not go to see it!) until March. She does not plan to continue working. There are to be two features on her in the illustrated papers, Uncle Lionel says. She is determined to be a good mother to me as well as Papa's wife. I don't like that word “determined.” Often when someone is not pleased with me, they say “you are very determined today.”

They are often not very pleased with me now. Yet I don't think I used to be very naughty. I don't think I often wanted to be. It was easy to be good
then.
But now when Miss Fairgrieves must write about me, what Papa calls a “moral report,” whenever he is away from home for more than a day, then it is always full of “Alice has been as usual rather headstrong, argumentative, even secretive. …” But why should I not be secretive? I
have
a secret. It is that I loved Mama the best.

It had grown dark. The sea glimmered in the March evening. Lights were strung across the promenade, around the Casino.

“Marquez vos jeux, s'il vous plaît, messieurs, marquez vos jeux …”
The croupier had a high-pitched voice, insistent.

Lily looked at the faces above the dazzling white shirtfronts. Alert, tense, some wary, some knowing. Here in the
salle privée
were those willing to play for high stakes. Those who could afford to lose—or perhaps could not.

“Tout est marqué, messieurs?”

I have played for very high stakes, and I have lost.

“Faîtes vos jeux, s'il vous plaît, faîtes vos jeux …”

Tonight, the fourth of their honeymoon, Lionel was playing, but Robert not. Later, probably, Lionel would want to play
trente et quarante.
Robert would watch quietly, indulgently. He never suggested she should gamble—it was only Lionel who attempted to persuade her: “Not gamble? Shan't you essay
any
alteration in your finances? It is only lighthearted, after all.” It did not seem to her always so lighthearted. Just as the size of the winnings amazed her, so did the size of the losses terrify her. Two thousand, three thousand, more, in an evening. She saw it all in terms of Edmund's settlement: a brief holiday on the Riviera, and such a sum could vanish as if it had never been. (Or, less likely, magically become £20,000, £60,000 …)

“Les jeux sont faits, les jeux sont faits?”

Clatter. Turn of the wheel. Fortune's wheel. Everything, but everything, she thought, is a gamble. (Some, though, are more foolish than others. And I?)

Lionel had lost heavily yesterday evening at Monte Carlo. Robert had only laughed. Tonight, Lionel had said, he would do better. His theory was
“suivez la couleur. “
Red, for him. He explained that for that, patience and courage were needed. Lily could think only of him paying for little girls. She imagined it done with his winnings. Ten pounds a guaranteed virgin. Had that not been the price?

“Le trente … le rouge … quatre fois rouge …”

Earlier that evening she had been recognized as Lily Greene by some people staying at Cannes, to whom Lionel was slightly known. Invitations had been extended. Although Robert might not know the
beau monde
here, Lionel did. Enough of them to make their days and evenings full of distraction. Jewelry sparkled, all about the
salle.
Her own—so newly hers—shone from her head, her neck, fingers, arms. She knew that it had not gone unremarked.

“Rien ne va plus, monsieur. Monsieur, rien ne va plus. “

Oh how the company glittered. Lionel, winnings amassed, was having a good evening. He would attend the other tables. It was no use her wishing to leave. He said now, looking across the room:

“What an
omnium gatherum….
That couple there—no, to the right, he with the magnificent embroidered jacket—they are Hungarians. Quite an
embarras
of Slavs this year. And Romanians. There are
Romanians
rumored, I hear. The Balkans are fearfully represented just now. The Casino quite ablaze with them.”

She lifted a hand to her hair. Touched the hard edge of diamonds. Jewels, jewels, jewels.

“I shall not take on any Hungarians. The year before last—no, '95, there was quite an imbroglio with a Count Andriyadi. You would not credit …”

Lionel, Lionel. On and on. She wondered that she had ever found him amusing. Ten days on the Riviera. She could think only that she would rather be in Paris. Perhaps, in Paris, everything would be better. She had been promised Paris.

“But first, my dear, Nice. It will suit Lionel better. Then we can be three weeks in Paris. Your heart's fill of Paris.”

But why Lionel anyway? My honeymoon.
Why Lionel?

They had arranged March for the wedding. Her contract for the play ran out then. She had decided anyway to leave the stage. Had not Robert said, “Of course, I want a son”?

It was not naturally as smart a match as the failed one of the summer, but the reactions were all the same gratifying. She frankly enjoyed the extra publicity, the little notices in the press. The congratulations. The surprise of her family. There was an unexpected sense of achievement, as of a decision sensibly made. She was doing a
wise
thing.

The conditions. Ah yes, the conditions. She was to honeymoon in Paris. He asked only that Lionel might accompany them on the trip. “We are not only brothers but friends. And he is, of course, excellent company.”

He had barely noticed her raised eyebrows. Had taken her surprised silence for consent. And the matter had not been mentioned again. Until perhaps too late. Lionel's trunks labeled Nice … Paris.

One of the more pleasant surprises, on a protracted visit to The Towers in January, had been to meet the new bride at the Hall. Sadie Hawksworth. Petite, vivacious, full of common sense and bubbling over with ideas for this and that: for life in England, Yorkshire, Flaxthorpe. She said within hours of their meeting, “I can't
wait
for you to come and live here too. My, what fun we shall have.”

The Greenwoods were, to say the least, taken aback at the match. She did not know what they would have said if it had been Edmund, but it was the title now which amazed them. (Although Dad, she knew, saw himself as in line for one someday. Services to the City of Leeds …)

Difficulties had arisen almost at once. Robert informed her (he did not ask) that the wedding would be in Flaxthorpe. It would be expected of him, he said, which to her seemed reasonable. But to Dad, it was an insult. She feared he might have an attack, apoplectic, so high his color, so great his anger. “Not
good
enough, eh? Is that it—only tradespeople, are we? And what are
they
—have we heard
that
yet?” Ma, standing by, looking anxiously from one to the other, face puckered, tears hovering.

But if I'd not run away, and made good … Irritably she had said to him, Lily Greenwood again now:

“If I'd not escaped when you made a prisoner of me … Do you want me telling everyone how my own dad behaved? If I hadn't run away and made good, you'd never have been the father of
Lady
Firth. You may say that soon—‘My daughter, Lady Firth … ”'

Next it was Ethel to make difficulties, because she hadn't been asked to be a bridesmaid.

“Of course I'd have said no. But that I wasn't
asked
—you always were uppity.
Honor thy father and mother and thou shalt have length of days
—you never read the Bible, do you? Your pride won't go unpunished. If it'd been
me
wed …”

But it was not Ethel to be wed, grown now into a heavy, sour-faced thirty-year-old who bullied Ma, when not doing good deeds (how often her victims must have had to remind themselves—the deed, not the doer).

Harry complained good-naturedly of life with Ethel. Counting the days and months until he would be twenty-one and could join Daisy and Joszef, happily settled in New York now. He dare not tell Dad his plans, he said. (“I'd not put it past him to lock me up.”)

In the end it was not Ethel who boycotted the wedding, but Alice. It was not that Lily had had great hopes, so early on, of winning over Robert's daughter. Indeed the first meeting after the announcement had been a sullen affair, with the child, pinched face, eyes cold with anger, scarcely able to speak. Alice's only remark, when impulsively (and foolishly?) Lily had opened her arms to embrace her:

“I have noticed—actresses are always acting.” And she had backed away in such a fashion that Lily could only let her arms drop.

Lily had told her, she hoped tactfully, that she was asking six girls from the show to be her attendants. “I thought that—best. My own sister, she is not asked either.” I must not do anything, she thought, anything which draws attention to my taking her mother's place. I could not expect her to be bridesmaid.

But she had not bargained for a complete refusal to attend. It had been more than awkward. Robert would not discuss it. “She is often difficult. I take no account of it. Lionel frequently finds her impossible—especially if thwarted.” Nor did he ever speak of his first wife, Alice's mother. Lily, left to her imaginings, pictured a termagant, for no good reason. Lionel had mentioned her only once—“Florence,
Flora
rather—we had to be careful not to ask of her more than she could give”—and had left Lily to puzzle out the meaning.

In the end it had been simply “A high fever unfortunately kept Sir Robert's daughter from attending the wedding ceremony, which was blessed with unwontedly blue skies, as if Someone above were more than glad to
know that The Towers is to have a mistress again. All Flaxthorpe rejoiced. The new Lady Firth is of course Lily Greene, the actress. …”

More than one local reporter suffered from a runaway pen. But the sun
had
shone, and the small church, massed with early daffodils, narcissus, hothouse lilies, was full to overflowing with guests in spite of the heavily-whittled-down list. Lionel had been much in evidence. Harry had looked handsome, very. She had caught his eye as she came down the aisle. And in that second had made her glance say “Thank you, Harry, for opening the door.”

Luggage, so much luggage. Although she and Robert arrived at their London hotel quite late, and admittedly she was somewhat tired from the journey, the strain of the ceremony, she was all the same a little surprised when they booked in and were shown to a suite which Robert explained was hers—alone.

“I have two rooms on the floor below—”

“And Lionel?”

“He is also on the next floor. You were—not expecting him to join you?”

She wondered if that were a joke. If humor, it was heavy. She said, “I'm afraid that really”—she shrugged her shoulders—“really—I don't understand.”

He laughed then, and put his arms about her. “It's a simple matter of consideration. I am not tired, you are. You need a sound night's sleep to prepare you for the taxing journey tomorrow. A stranger in the bed—is not restful.” He paused. “Later—in France, things will be quite different.”

And so they had better be, she thought, a little indignantly. She felt a frisson of gratitude at his thoughtfulness; then, reminded absurdly of Ethel (who had not so much wanted to be a bridesmaid as to be
asked):
it is not that I look forward to it, she thought, if Frank was anything to go by, but at least I would expect to be, tonight, a little irresistible.

A night on the train. That
did
exhaust her. She slept badly—again in a compartment to herself, with an adjoining door which Robert had locked on his side. (She had tried it.) She locked her own door against Lionel.

He and Robert had in any case disappeared to drink and play cards (the express had a gaming saloon) soon after dinner. She had pleaded, more than truthfully, a headache, and had settled to read. She had brought with her Tennyson's
Idylls,
and the latest Mrs. Humphry Ward. But her head hurt too much for either. Most of the night, the sound of the train wheels kept her awake.

Nice. She would have liked Nice—if she had not been in such a hurry to be in Paris. They had a suite, very sumptuous, in the Hotel Excelsior. Beneath their balcony the sea shimmered blue. Almost the end of the winter season now, but a freshness about everything. The cypresses, the olives, green
to gray to green in the ever-changing light. And roses, climbing, rambling, hanging over walls, draping archways, luxuriantly in bloom.

That first night when she was ready for bed, the maid dismissed, she sat at the dressing table some moments, adjusting the lace jabot of her wrap. When Robert came up, before going through to the dressing room, he rang for brandy. And champagne for her.

“You should not have,” she said. “Truly, I want nothing. We drank very well with dinner.”

After he had taken two large brandies very fast (too fast for what looked a very fine
marque),
he led her over to the sofa and, sitting beside her, put his arm around her. His eyes looked softer than she had ever seen them, but he wasn't looking at her. He chatted of this and that, idly. Then, getting up: “Wait,” he said, “please wait there.” His voice urgent, constrained. Then he said, “That must come off.”