The Fountain Overflows (32 page)

It was not until the front door had closed that Mamma and Constance spoke. I had expected them to turn on me at once, but first they exchanged broken expressions of horror. “Why, she is half consumed!” exclaimed Mamma in loathing, and then nervously, as if she feared the answer, she asked, “But what exactly, what exactly is it that she has in mind to do?”

“She means, I suppose, to go away and leave them,” said Constance grimly.

“Only that?” pondered Mamma. “Well, one cannot warn people. And I have seen her husband. But still.” Her thoughts returned slowly to the visible world and me, and there came the cry which wrung me though I had been waiting for it. “How could you, Rose, how could you!”

But before I could give an answer, which would have been angry, for it was not in my nature to meet rage with anything but rage, Rosamund had spoken. She had sat down at the table, and, looking blind and stolid and more childish than usual, was drawing on the tablecloth with her fork. “You see, it was a horrible party. We did not tell you, because you were worried about Richard Quin. But it was a horrid party, and a horrid house. You have seen how horrid Nancy’s Mamma is. Yesterday she was very rude to all of us. She came down into the drawing room in a sort of dressing-gown, to look for a book she wanted to read while she was lying down, and she did not say how do you do to any of us. And then when we started playing games a servant came in and was rude to Nancy’s aunt, and you have seen, she is quite nice, she was not doing any harm, she only asked for some logs. She nearly cried.”

“Stop drawing on the tablecloth with that fork,” said Constance. “It ruins the linen.”

Rosamund obeyed with a readiness that established her as a good, submissive child. “Then Rose got into one of her states,” she said. I heard the announcement with surprise. Had I got into a state at the party? I had felt very cross, but I did not think that I had got into a state. Indeed I was unaware that I ever got into “states,” yet the expression had evoked sounds of recognition from both Mamma and Constance. “Then,” continued Rosamund, “the party got horrider than ever. We had been playing games but that all stopped, somehow, when the servant was so rude. People did not seem to want to go on. Then they all began to do things, some girls danced and others recited, and they wanted Rose to play the piano. But it was the last straw, the piano was terribly out of tune.”

“Oh, poor Rose!” cried Mamma.

“So Rose said she could not, but of course everybody was doing what they could, so it was a little awkward, and then somebody suggested this trick, and it just happened that Rose was the one who could do it. And she didn’t do it long. And then there was tea, and after it was finished we went into the drawing room, and we would have done what the others were doing, but Nancy’s Mamma sent for Rose, and she started this about fortune-telling. You don’t like her, do you?” she asked, turning a penetrating glance first on Constance, then on Mamma. “Well, she is nicer to grown-ups than she is to children. And Rose never meant to go this afternoon, but Miss Moon was with you when we came back from shopping. So you see that Rose is not to blame at all.” She went back to the childish trick of drawing on the tablecloth with a fork, and again obeyed when she was checked.

This explanation satisfied Constance and Mamma, who then and forever after regarded me as Mrs. Phillips’s victim, but it did not entirely satisfy me, though it had saved me from terrible disgrace. As soon as Rosamund and I were alone after luncheon I said, “But Rosamund, it didn’t happen quite like that at the party,” and she raised her eyebrows in bewilderment and answered, “But it did.”

“No, Rosamund, no,” I said, for my conscience was pricking me. “I was naughtier than that. I did suggest doing the trick, and I did enjoy it when Mrs. Phillips wanted me so terribly to tell her fortune that she nearly went mad offering to give us things.”

“I d-d-did not s-say anything that did not happen,” she protested, stammering very badly.

“I think I had better tell Mamma I really was naughty,” I said.

“But, Rose, if you do that, then my Mamma and your Mamma will think that I was not telling the truth,” she said plaintively.

Perhaps she was as stupid as we sometimes thought her. Indeed the importance of the incident seemed to have passed her by, she evidently did not realize that we had been within a hair’s breadth of one of those terrible clashes between Mamma and myself that had happened once or twice, when we had become fountains of rage and pain. Quite placidly she settled down to do some mending for Mamma, although I was not at ease and had serious qualms that evening when Mamma asked me to come into Papa’s study and talk to her.

“It is a mercy he is out,” she said. “I wanted to talk to you alone, and this is such a little house, and there are so many of us, it is hard to find a place for a private conversation. But if we had a bigger house no doubt we should not be so close together.” She sat down at Papa’s desk and looked proudly round the room and its bookshelves. “So many books, and your Papa has read them all. You should be very proud of him. It is a pity we do not live in some country where clever men are honoured.”

She had grown much younger since morning. “Is Richard Quin much better?” I asked.

“Yes, the doctor is astonished, he is so much improved. But it was because I was so anxious about him that I was cross with you this morning when Mrs. Phillips came. Rose, I do not know how to say it to you, but do not ever do any thought-reading or anything like that again.”

“I promise, Mamma.”

“Oh, it is not to please me. It is because it is really dangerous. You see, you are allowed to read the newspapers now. I hope you will not attach too much importance to them. They give you a picture of an ordinary world that does not exist. You must always believe that life is as extraordinary as music says it is.”

“Yes, Mamma.”

“It is always wrong to have anything to do with the supernatural. When the dead come back, or the future is no longer a mystery, then there is doubt and filth. There should not be if the world were what it is represented in the newspapers, but it is never that. We are for some reason meant to live within limits, as music lives within a certain range of sound, and within a structure of rhythm. But you know all that. Well, if we do not live within limits, it all goes wrong.”

“Yes, Mamma.”

“So you see, you did a thought-reading trick at a party and then that brought Mrs. Phillips to this house.”

“Yes, Mamma.”

“I am sure of that, I know it,” said Mamma. “And, my dear, you ought to know it too. I would not have taken you to Knightlily Road if I had known about the poltergeist there, but you saw it, and having seen it, do not forget it. It was a hideous thing in itself, and it carried doubt with it. A lot of people came down from a learned society and investigated it, and some of them actually said Rosamund was playing tricks.”

“That was a shame,” I said. “I saw things happen she could not have done.”

“Oh, no, she did not do it,” said Mamma. “She is good, like Richard Quin, good, as other people are not. But it got about the neighbourhood. And other people said that the mischief was done by someone who had the key of the house and crept in and laid traps.” She paused, and I knew that it was Cousin Jock who had been accused. “But there were things happened that not even the most inventive malice could have contrived by natural means.” She paused again; and I thought it possible she was considering whether Cousin Jock could have contrived them by unnatural means. “Oh, Rose,” she said, speaking with some emotion, “if you played enough thought-reading tricks, if you dabbled long enough with the unseen, you might end up a medium, promising fathers and mothers to raise lost children from the grave in a dark room, and sometimes keeping faith with them but sometimes cheating them, and always disturbing the dead and keeping them from their duty. It could happen to any of us, if we let it.”

“Yes, Mamma, I will never do it again,” I said.

“I know you won’t. But, Rose, life is so mysterious, and one knows so little about it. I was cross with you today because I thought if there was wickedness about, it might be why Richard Quin was so ill.” She looked at me with the simplicity of a child opening its heart to another. “Do you think that was very foolish?”

“No,” I said. “He is so good, wickedness must hate him.”

“I think so too. That is why I was frightened.” She sighed and looked about her at the shelves again. “So many books and none of them really to the point. To this point, I mean. Your Papa never keeps a book he does not think well of. Now to supper.” She suddenly cast her arms about me. “Oh, Rose, I hate being angry with you, you are the nearest to me of all you children.”

I asked in wonder, “Am I really, Mamma?”

“Yes, Mary is so far away, and Cordelia—”

“Oh, her,” I said. “No, I thought you loved Richard Quin best.”

“He is not mine, he belongs to Papa,” she explained. “Why, they are exactly alike.”

I was puzzled, for I could see no resemblance between my dark, glowering Papa and Richard Quin, who was bright as silver. Quite often it seemed to me that she knew things about Papa that we did not, though I did not see how that could be.

10

W
E HAD
a specially magnificent Christmas that year, though we were specially poor. For some reason that was left unstated Constance and Rosamund stayed with us all through the holidays; and they helped Mamma to make our dresses, which were the best we ever had; and Rosamund was beautiful to dress up. Richard was in good health by Christmas Day, and Papa had made for him an Arabian Nights Palace with looking-glass fountains in arcaded courtyards, and domes painted strange colours, very pale, very bright. When we saw it none of us could speak, and Mamma put her hand on his arm and said to us, “No other father could do this for his children.” Several times, I remember, she came and sat on the floor with us when we were playing with it, and exclaimed every now and then, “How does he think of such things? How does the idea come into his head?” Very soon I forgot the existence of Mrs. Phillips and Aunt Lily. But one morning all four of us, Cordelia and Mary and Rosamund and I, went into the best confectioner’s at Lovegrove, to buy some meringues for Richard Quin’s birthday tea; and because the assistant said there would be a batch of pink meringues coming up in a minute, we waited and watched the shop behind us reflected in the mirrored wall behind the counter. There was then something called “the confectioners’ licence” which played its part in suburban society; and the place was a cave of well-being, crammed with tables at which well-dressed women, with cairns of parcels piled up on chairs beside them, leaned towards each other, their always large busts overhanging plates of tiny sandwiches and small glasses of port and sherry and Madeira, and exchanged gossip that mounted to the low ceiling and was transformed to the twittering of birds in an aviary.

“Isn’t that the aunt who comes to school and takes Nancy Phillips home when her nose bleeds?” asked Mary.

“Yes, and that is Nancy’s Mamma,” said Cordelia. “She looks very fast.”

I found them in the mirror. They were not chattering. Aunt Lily had an elbow on the table and cupped her chin in one hand, while her other hand twiddled the stem of a wine-glass, and she coquetted with nothingness. Mrs. Phillips was pushing her empty glass back and forwards on the tablecloth, rucking up the linen. As I looked up her fingers closed tightly round the stem and she sat back in her chair, as if she had made an unalterable resolution. Her swarthiness still recalled people far darker than herself, sweeps and miners. She wore a beige beaver hat even larger than the huge invitation to the wind she had worn at our house, and a bird with a greenish iridescent breast stretched black wings across its width; and that the edifice did not waver was proof of her brooding stillness. Suddenly her hands jerked at the fur on her shoulders, a tie made of a dozen or so small brown pelts, and threw it over the back of the chair beside her. Then she was still again.

“Could you put aside what we want of the meringues,” I said to the shop assistant, “and then we could go away and come back?” But she told me they would be coming up at any moment.

Mary, her eyes on the mirror, said, “Mrs. Phillips’s furs—” and stopped.

“What about them?” said Cordelia. “They are sure not to be in good taste.”

“It is not that,” said Mary. “They look downspent.”

“Downspent?” said Cordelia. “There isn’t such a word.” Mary said nothing, and Cordelia got irritated. “What do you mean?”

“I mean downspent,” said Mary.

“I tell you there’s no such word,” fussed Cordelia. “We’ll look for it in Papa’s big dictionary when we get home, but we won’t find it, there’s no such word.”

“There ought to be,” said Rosamund.

As we stared in the mirror, the fur tie slid down the back of the chair and fell on the seat, with the despair of a delicate beast revolted by a gross owner. Mrs. Phillips was one of those people who are natural emblems. One thought absurd things about her which could not be true, which were confused with recollections of disturbing dreams till then forgotten. Her fur cannot have had any opinion about her. Yet we felt a vague unease, we stood beside the piles of cakes and wrangled as to whether one should make up new words, whether it must be taken that there was enough language to fit everything that happened.

About a week later, Rosamund and Mary and I were playing with Richard Quin on the sitting-room floor after tea. It was sad in a way, for it was the last night Rosamund was to be with us, she had to go home because her school started again two days later. Mamma and Constance were sitting by the fire, Constance doing some last services in the way of mending, Mamma comparing the fingering in two editions of a Beethoven sonata that had been bothering both Mary and me. We had the Arabian Nights Palace out on the floor, and we were happily quarrelling about the exact details of a story Papa had told us to fit a particular courtyard when Cordelia came in. She had been playing at a concert and she was still in her outdoor clothes. Standing in the doorway, pulling off her gloves, she said, “Do you know what I heard at my concert? Nancy Phillips’s father is dead. He died last night.”