Merry Go Round Page 2

  Miss Ley had ever a discreet passion for the rhetorical, and there was a certain grandiloquence about the phrase which entertained her hugely. She felt that it was unanswerable, and with great dignity walked out. No communication passed between the two ladies, though Miss Dwarris, peremptory, stern, and Evangelical to the end, lived in full possession of her faculties for nearly twenty years. She died at last in a passion occasioned by some trifling misdemeanour of her maid; and, as though a heavy yoke were removed from their shoulders, her family heaved a deep and unanimous sigh of relief.

  They attended her funeral with dry eyes, looking still with silent terror at the leaden coffin which contained the remains of that harsh, strong, domineering old woman; then, nervously expectant, begged the family solicitor to disclose her will. Written with her own hand, and witnessed by two servants, it was in these terms:

  I, Elizabeth Ann Dwarris, of 79 Old Queen Street, Westminster, spinster, hereby revoke all former wills and testamentary dispositions made by me, and declare this to be my last will and testament. I appoint Mary Ley, of 72 Eliot Mansions, Chelsea, to be the executrix of this my will, and I give all my real and personal property whatsoever to the said Mary Ley. To my great-nephews and great-nieces, to my cousins near and remote, I give my blessing, and I beseech them to bear in mind the example and advice which for many years I have given them. I recommend them to cultivate in future strength of character and an independent spirit. I venture to remind them that the humble will never inherit this earth, for their reward is to be awaited in the life to come, and I desire them to continue the subscriptions which, at my request, they have so long and generously made to the Society for the Conversion of the Jews and to the Additional Curates Fund.

  In witness whereof I have set my hand to this my will the 4th day of April, 1883.

  ELIZABETH ANN DWARRIS

  To her amazement, Miss Ley found herself at the age of fifty-seven in possession of nearly three thousand pounds a year, the lease of a pleasant old house in Westminister, and a great quantity of early Victorian furniture. The will was written two days after her quarrel with the eccentric old woman, and the terms of it certainly achieved the three purposes for which it was designed: it occasioned the utmost surprise to all concerned, heaped coals of fire on Miss Ley's indifferent head, and caused the bitterest disappointment and vexation to all that bore the name of Dwarris.

  2

  IT did not take Miss Ley very long to settle in her house. To its new owner, who hated modernity with all her heart, part of the charm lay in its quaint old fashion: built in the reign of Queen Anne, it had the leisurely, spacious comfort of dwelling-places in that period, with a hood over the door that was a pattern of elegance, wrought-iron railings, and, to Miss Ley's especial delight, extinguishers for the link-boys' torches.

  The rooms were large, somewhat low-pitched, with wide windows overlooking the most consciously beautiful of all the London parks. Miss Ley made no great alterations. An epicurean to her finger-tips, for many years the passion for liberty had alone disturbed the equanimity of her indolent temper. But to secure freedom, entire and absolute freedom, she was ever ready to make any sacrifice: ties affected her with a discomfort that seemed really akin to physical pain, and she avoided them – ties of family or of affection, ties of habit or of thought – with all the strenuousness of which she was capable. She had taken care never in the course of her life to cumber herself with chattels, and once, with a courage in which there was surely something heroic, feeling that she became too much attached to her belongings – cabinets and exquisite fans brought from Spain, Florentine frames of gilded wood and English mezzotints, Neapolitan bronzes, tables and settees discovered in out-of-the-way parts of France – she had sold everything. She would not risk to grow so fond of her home that it was a pain to leave it; she preferred to remain a wayfarer, sauntering through life with a heart keen to detect beauty, and a mind, open and unbiased, ready to laugh at the absurd. So it fitted her humour to move with the few goods which she possessed into her cousin's house as though it were but a furnished lodging, remaining there still unfettered; and when Death came – a pagan youth, twin brother to Sleep, rather than the grim and bony skeleton of Christian faith – ready to depart like a sated reveller, smiling dauntlessly and without regret. A new and personal ordering, the exclusion of many pieces of clumsy taste, gave Miss Ley's drawing-room quickly a more graceful and characteristic air: the objets dart collected since the memorable sale added a certain grave delicacy to the arrangement; and her friends noticed without surprise that, as in her own flat, the straight, carved chair was set between two windows, and the furniture deliberately placed so that from it the mistress of the house, herself part of the aesthetic scheme, could command and manipulate her guests.

  No sooner was Miss Ley comfortably settled than she wrote to an old friend and distant cousin, Algernon Langton, Dean of Tercanbury, asking him to bring his daughter to visit her new house; and Miss Langton replied that they would be pleased to come, fixing a certain Thursday morning for their arrival. Miss Ley greeted her relatives without effusion, for it was her whim to discourage manifestations of affection; but notwithstanding the good-humoured, polite contempt with which it was her practice to treat the clergy in general, she looked upon her cousin Algernon with real esteem.

  He was a tall old man, spare and bent, with very white hair and a pallid, almost transparent, skin; his eyes were cold and blue, but his expression singularly gentle. There was a dignity in his bearing, and at the same time an infinite graciousness which reminded you of those famous old ecclesiastics whose names have cast for ever a certain magnificent renown upon the English Church; he had a good deal of the polished breeding which made them, whatever their origin, gentlemen and courtiers, and, like theirs, his Biblical erudition was perhaps less noteworthy than his classical attainments. And if he was a little narrow, unwilling to consider seriously modern ways of thought, there was an aesthetic quality about him and a truly Christian urbanity which attracted admiration, and even love. Miss Ley, a student of men, who could observe with interest the most diverse tendencies (for to her sceptical mind no way of life nor method of thought was intrinsically more valuable than another), was pleased with his stately, candid simplicity, and used with him a forbearance which was not customary to her.

  'Well, Polly,' said the Dean, 'I suppose now you are a woman of property you will give up your wild-goose chase after the unattainable. You will settle down and become a respectable member of society.'

  'You need not insist that my hair is greyer than when last you saw me, and my wrinkles more apparent.'

  At this time Miss Ley, who had altered little in the last twenty years, resembled extraordinarily the portrait-statue of Agrippina in the museum at Naples. She had the same lined face, with its look of rather scornful indifference for mundane affairs, and that well-bred distinction of manner which the Empress had acquired through the command of multitudes, but Miss Ley, more finely, through the command of herself.

  'But you're right, Algernon,' she added, 'I am growing old, and I doubt whether I should have again the courage to sell all my belongings. I do not think I could face the utter loneliness in which I rejoiced when I felt I had nothing I could call my own but the clothes on my back.'

  'You had quite a respectable income.'

  'For which the saints be praised! No one can think of freedom who has less than five hundred a year; without that, life is a mere sordid struggle for daily bread.'

  The Dean, hearing that luncheon would not be ready till two, went out, and Miss Ley was left alone with his daughter. Bella Langton had reached that age when she could by no stretch of courtesy be described as a girl, and her father but lately, somewhat to her dismay, had composed a set of Latin verses on her fortieth birthday. She was not pretty, nor had she the graceful dignity which made the Dean so becoming a figure in the cathedral chapter: somewhat squarely built, her hair, of a pleasant brown, was severely arranged; her features were too br
oad and her complexion rather oddly weather-beaten, but her grey eyes were very kindly, and her expression singularly good-humoured. Following provincial fashions in somewhat costly materials, she dressed with the serviceable plainness affected by the pious virgins who congregate in cathedral cities, and the result was an impression of very expensive dowdiness. She was obviously a capable woman who could be depended upon in any emergency. Charitable in an unimaginative, practical way, she was a fit and competent leader for the philanthropy of Tercanbury, and, fully conscious of her importance in the ecclesiastical hierarchy, ruled her little clerical circle with a firm but not unkindly hand. Notwithstanding her warm heart and truly Christian humility, Miss Langton had an intimate conviction of her own value; for not only did her father hold a stately office, but he came from good county stock of no small distinction, whereas it was notorious that the Bishop was a man of no family, and his wife had been a governess. Miss Langton would have given her last penny to relieve the sick wife of some poor curate, but would have thought twice before asking her to call at the Deanery; her charitable kindness was bestowed on all and sundry, but the ceremonies of polite society she practised only with persons of quality.

  'I've asked various people to meet you at dinner tonight,' said Miss Ley.

  'Are they nice?'

  'They're not positively disagreeable. Mrs Barlow-Bassett is bringing her son, who pleases me because he's so beautiful. Basil Kent is coming, a barrister; I like him because he has the face of a knight in an early Italian picture.'

  'You always had a weakness for good-looking men, Mary,' answered Miss Langton, smiling.

  'Beauty is quite the most important thing in the world, my dear. People say that the masculine appearance is immaterial, but that is because they are foolish. I know men who have gained all the honour and glory of the earth merely through a fine pair of eyes or a well-shaped mouth.... Then I have asked Mr and Mrs Castillyon; he is a member of Parliament and very dull and pompous, but just the sort of creature who would amuse you.'

  While Miss Ley spoke a note was brought in.

  'How tiresome!' she cried, having read. 'Mr Castillyon writes to say he cannot leave the House tonight till late, I wish they wouldn't have autumn sessions. It's just like him to think such a nonentity as himself is indispensable. Now I must ask someone to take his place.'

  She sat down and hurriedly wrote a few words.

  MY DEAR FRANK,

  I beseech you to come to dinner tonight at eight, and since when you arrive your keen intelligence will probably suggest to you that I have not asked nine people on the spur of the moment, I will confess that I invite you merely because Mr Castillyon has put me off at the last minute. But if you don't come I will never speak to you again.

  Yours ever,

  MARY LEY

  She rang the bell, and told a servant to take the letter immediately to Harley Street.

  'I've asked Frank Hurrell,' she explained to Miss Langton. 'He's a nice boy – people remain boys till they're forty now, and he's ten years less than that. He's a doctor, and by way of being rather distinguished; they've lately made him assistant-physician at St Luke's Hospital, and he's set up in Harley Street waiting for patients.'

  'Is he handsome?' asked Miss Langton, smiling.

  'Not at all, but he's one of the few persons I know who really amuses me. You'll think him very disagreeable, and you'll probably bore him to extinction.'

  With this remark, calculated to put the younger woman entirely at her ease, Miss Ley sat down again at the window. The day was warm and sunny, but the trees, yellow and red with the first autumnal glow, were heavy still with the rain that had fallen in the night. There was a grave, sensuous passion about St James's Park, with its cool, smooth water just seen among the heavy foliage, and its well-tended lawns; and Miss Ley observed it in silence, with a vague feeling of self-satisfaction, for prosperity was a comfortable thing.

  'What would be a suitable present for a poet?' asked Miss Langton suddenly.

  'Surely a rhyming dictionary,' answered her friend, smiling. 'Or a Bradshaw's Guide to indicate the aesthetic value of common-sense.'

  'Don't be absurd, Mary. I really want your advice. I know a young man in Tercanbury who writes poetry.'

  'I never knew a young man who didn't. You're not in love with a pale, passionate curate, Bella?'

  'I'm in love with no one,' answered Miss Langton, with the shadow of a blush. 'At my age it would be ridiculous. But I should like to tell you about this boy. He's only twenty, and he's a clerk in the bank there.'

  'Bella!' cried Miss Ley, with mock horror. 'Don't tell me you're philandering with a person who isn't county. What would the Dean say? And for heaven's sake take care of poetical boys; at your age a woman should offer daily prayers to her Maker to prevent her from falling in love with a man twenty years younger than herself. That is one of the most prevalent diseases of the day.'

  'His father was a linen-draper at Blackstable, who sent him to Regis School, Tercanbury. And there he took every possible scholarship. He was going to Cambridge, but his people died, and to earn his living he was obliged to go into the bank. He's had a very hard time.'

  'But how on earth did you make his acquaintance? No society is so rigidly exclusive as that of a cathedral town, and I know you refuse to be introduced to anyone till you have looked him out in the Landed Gentry.'

  Miss Ley, singularly unprejudiced, ridiculed her cousin hugely for this veneration of the county family; and though her own name figured in Burke's portentous volume, she concealed the fact as something rather discreditable. To her mind the only advantage of a respectable ancestry was that with a whole heart she could ridicule the claims of blood.

  'He was never introduced to me,' answered Bella unwillingly. 'I made friends with him by accident.'

  'My dear, that sounds very improper. I hope at least he rescued you in a carriage accident, which appears to be one of Cupid's favourite devices. He always was an unimaginative god, and his methods are dreadfully commonplace. . . . Don't say the young man accosted you in the street!'

  Bella Langton could not have told Miss Ley the whole story of her acquaintance with Herbert Field, for the point of it lay to some extent in her own state of mind, and that she but vaguely understood. She had arrived at that embarrassment which comes to most unmarried women, when youth is already passed and the monotonous length of middle age looms drearily before them. For some time her round of duties had lost its savour, and she seemed to have done everything too often: the days exasperated her in their similarity. She was seized with that restlessness which has sent so many, nameless or renowned, sailing like stout Cortez across unknown seas, and others, no fewer, on hazardous adventures of the spirit. She looked with envy now at the friends, her contemporaries, who were mothers of fair children, and not without difficulty overcame a nascent regret that for her father's sake, alone in the world and in all practical concerns very helpless, she had forgone the natural joys of women. These feelings much distressed her, for she had dwelt always in a world of limited horizon, occupied with piety and with good works; the emotions that tore her heart-strings seemed temptations of the devil, and she turned to her God for a solace that came not. She sought to distract her mind by unceasing labour, and with double zeal administered her benevolent institutions; books left her listless, but setting her teeth with a sort of angry determination, she began to learn Greek. Nothing served. Against her will new thoughts forced themselves upon her; and she was terrified, for it seemed to her no woman had ever been tormented by such wild, unlawful fancies. She reminded herself in vain that the name of which she was so proud constrained her to self-command, and her position in Tercanbury made it a duty, even in her inmost heart, to serve as an example to lesser folk.

  And now Miss Langton took no pleasure in the quiet close where before she had delighted to linger; the old cathedral, weather-beaten, grey and lovely, no longer gave its accustomed message of resignation and of hope. She took to walking far in
to the country, but the meadows, bespangled with buttercups in spring, the woods, with their autumnal russet, but increased her uneasiness; and most willingly she went to a hill from which at no great distance could be seen the shining sea, and for a moment its immensity comforted her restless heart. Sometimes at sundown over the slate grey of the western clouds was spread a great dust of red gold that swept down upon the silent water like the train of a goddess of fire; and presently, thrusting through sombre cumuli, like a Titan breaking his prison walls, the sun shone forth, a giant sphere of copper. With almost a material effort it seemed to push aside the thronging darkness, filling the whole sky with brilliancy; and then over the placid sea was stretched a broad roadway of unearthly fire, upon which might travel the mystical, passionate souls of men, endlessly, to the source of the deathless light. Bella Langton turned away with a sob and walked back slowly the way she came. Before her in the valley the grey houses of Tercanbury clustered about the tall cathedral, but its ancient beauty pressed her heart with bands of pain.

  Then came the spring: the fields were gay with flowers, a vernal carpet whereon with delicate feet might walk the angels of Messer Perugino, and she could bear the agony no longer; in every hedgerow, on every tree, the birds sang with infinite variety, singing the joy of life and the beauty of the rain and the glorious sunshine. They told her one and all that the world was young and beautiful, but the time of man so short that every hour of it must be lived as though it were the last.

  When a friend asked her to spend a month in Brittany, sick of her inaction, she accepted eagerly. To travel might ease her aching heart, and the fatigue of the journey allay that springing of the limbs which made her feel apt for hazardous undertakings. Alone the two ladies wandered along that rugged coast. They stayed at Carnac, but the mysterious antique stones suggested only the nothingness of life; man came and went, with hope and longing, and left the signs of his dim faith to be a mystery to succeeding ages; they went to Le Faouet, where the painted windows of the ruined church of Saint Fiacre gleam like precious stones: but the restful charm of these scenes had no message for a heart thirsting for life and the love that quickens. They passed to the famous calvaries of Plougastel and Saint Thégonnec; and those grim crosses, with their stone processions, (the effort at beauty of a race bowed down by the sense of sin), oppressed her under that grey western sky with dismay: they suggested only death and the grave's despair, but she was full of expectation, of longing for she knew not what. It seemed to her as though, she knew not how, she were sailing on that dark silent sea of which the mystics speak, where the common rules of life availed not. Travel gave her nothing that she sought, but increased rather her unquiet; her hands itched for work to do, and she went back to Tercanbury,