The Balliols Read online

  They were good letters: lightly written. The people and the places that she described were real. He did not discourage Jane from reading extracts from them to her friends. They were letters of which any parent might be proud. But he did not re-read them when he was alone. The letter in which he took the chief interest was one in which she described her meeting with Roy Rickman.

  “He’s a nice fellow,” she wrote, “handsome, very jovial. Usually the centre of a group. Generous, he gives a lot of parties. I think people like him; at any rate, he’s always with people. I sat next to him at a pahit party the other day. He’s much more interesting than I had expected. He writes poetry. He showed me some of it. I thought it rather good, though of course I don’t know anything about those things. Still, I think it’s rather remarkable that he should want to write poetry at all, don’t you?

  “He’s going about a great deal with the daughter of one of the planters. I don’t know if there’s anything in it. You know what things are like in a small place. If a man’s seen dancing with the same girl twice, he’s asked what his intentions are. But there may be something here. Everyone says there is. As far as I can see it would be very suitable. She’s an only daughter. Her father’s very rich. She’s perhaps a little older than the story books tell one is the ideal. I shouldn’t say she was much younger than Mr. Rickman. If at all. But she’s really rather lovely. Dark, pale skin; a rather languid manner. She looked as though she might be managing. But haven’t you always said that the man who marries money, earns it.…”

  Balliol commented on that letter as he returned it to Jane: “You prophesied a worldly marriage for the young man.”

  Regularly every five or six days through the autumn a letter came from Lucy. She was due to return to England in the spring. In November, however, one morning after Balliol had left for his office, two cables arrived from Singapore. One was from the woman whose guest Lucy was. It said: “Thoroughly approve Lucy’s choice. Writing.” The other was explanatory. “Want to become engaged to Stephen Chambers. Important lawyer. Writing full particulars. Love, Lucy.”

  Ruth and Hugh were in the house when the cables arrived.

  Said Ruth: “I had a feeling that something like this might happen.”

  Said Hugh: “I bet our father will make difficulties.”

  Hugh was wrong, however. Balliol was delighted. “It sounds what I believe is called ‘a very suitable alliance.’ I have made enquiries about Chambers. He is highly esteemed by the profession. I expect that Lucy will finish as her ladyship. He isn’t particularly young. He’s thirty-seven. But Lucy is one of those serious-minded women who wouldn’t take a young man seriously. She needs guiding. I don’t think she would be happy with anyone who wasn’t several years older than herself. No, I must say, I’m very pleased about it. Though I’ll be grateful, naturally, to have some particulars.”

  Jane asked if that would mean her living out of England.

  “There’s an old adage about a wife’s place being beside her husband.”

  Jane looked at him, with a puzzled expression, half opened her mouth as though she were going to say something, then seemed to think better of it.

  Said Francis: “Bags I Lucy’s room.”

  It was his first contribution to the discussion; everyone turned round to him as though some inanimate object had given tongue.

  “What do you mean?” asked Hugh.

  “She won’t be coming back. She won’t want her room any more, will she?”

  There was a silence as though they were all realizing for the first time the significance of Lucy’s marriage.

  “No, I suppose she won’t be needing her room any more,” said Balliol slowly. “Yes, I suppose you might as well have it, if you want it.”

  “Then may I have the cupboard moved and…”

  His father cut him short.

  “You may arrange it exactly as you like.”

  It was a month before they could hope to receive particulars from Malaya. During that month Lucy’s letters had the curious effect of old newspapers, in which you read prophetic leaders on issues whose outcome has been long settled. Everything she had to tell of her parties, her plans, of the people she had met, the people she was about to meet, were as dated by that cable as a last year’s frock. The letters, however, were read by the family with a far greater interest than those that had contained news. They had been written during the days before she had been proposed to; before at any rate, she had accepted the proposal; the days when she was falling in love; when she was making up her mind, having it made up for her. Had she been happy then: confident, uncertain, worried? The family read the letters eagerly, searching for clues to her state of mind when she had written them; studying them for clues as a detective will sift evidence.

  There were no obvious clues, however. These letters, as her earlier ones, were bright bulletins of fact and comment.

  “Have you noticed that she hasn’t referred to Stephen Chambers once?” Jane remarked.

  Said Balliol: “That’s the best proof there could be that she’s in love with him. She never did speak about the things that really mattered to her.”

  At last the awaited mail arrived. But the letters so long expected proved so conventional in content and expression that they told very little. There was an excitable, girlish letter from Lucy.

  “Darling Mum and Dad. It was sweet of you to cable out in that way. I’m so happy about it all. And I know you’ll love Stephen. He’s the finest person I’ve ever met. I’m so proud of him.…” There was a great deal more in the same key.

  From Stephen Chambers, there was a stiff, formal letter, expressing, appropriately, his devotion to Lucy, his fortune in securing her affection, his appreciation of her parents’ sacrifice in allowing their daughter to join her lot with a man whose life work lay far from home; his resolve to make her a good husband. He gave some facts about his income, position, future. The figures were impressive.

  “He is clearly able,” was Balliol’s comment, “to maintain her in what I believe is called ‘that standard of comfort to which she had been accustomed’.”

  There was a rather flurried letter from Lucy’s hostess. “The kind of letter,” said Balliol, “that a house-master sends when your boy gets measles: excusing himself, saying he’s not to blame, that all care will be taken, that anyhow it’s something that has to be got over some time.”

  “I know, of course, that this must be a great surprise and shock to you; that you must be very anxious about it all; particularly as Mr. Chambers is so much older than Lucy. But I can assure you that he is really a sound man. Otherwise of course we wouldn’t have let her meet him. Though actually it was rather a surprise to us. But I do think he’ll make her a good husband; and they do seem devoted to one another; and though Lucy’s not the demonstrative type, it makes me quite sentimental seeing them together. I know you must be anxious, and I don’t suppose it’s the way you’d have preferred it to happen—Lucy having to live abroad and all that—but I really think that it’s something you’ll be very happy about in the end.”

  In this last letter a snapshot was included. “I know you’ll be curious to know what your future son-in-law looks like.” The snapshot was of a group, taken presumably at some tennis party. The men were coatless and in flannels. The women, in spite of their wide hats, suggested some assay at exercise. In the background was a long bungalow set about with palms. A circle of ink islanded the broad shoulders, the heavy jowl, the clean-shaven face, the close-cropped head of Lucy’s chosen.

  The photograph was passed in silence round the table, till it finally reached Francis. “Gosh!” he said.

  The following morning an announcement of the engagement appeared in The Times, Morning Post, and Telegraphy under which encouragement a cable signed Lucy and Stephen craved permission to be married in Penang in January. Jane looked interrogatively at her husband. She anticipated opposition. None came, however.

  “I don’t see why they shouldn’t. Cham
bers is the kind of man who knows his mind. He’s got his work out there. It would be senseless to bring him back here for a wedding. There would be nothing for Lucy to do. A year’s engagement can be a very amusing thing for a girl living in London if she’s got her young man over here. But there’s no point in separating them now. The sooner Lucy starts a life of her own the better.”

  Said Ruth: “And I’d been so looking forward to being a bridesmaid.”

  Said Hugh: “I feel as though I were being done out of a binge.”

  Said their father: “We’ll have festivities of some kind of our own.”

  Said Francis: “It won’t be the same thing.”

  It wasn’t. Certainly not for Helen, who instead of carrying a bouquet of flowers as a bridesmaid, was presented with a china doll that opened and shut its eyes, but which she broke within an hour of its arrival, and mourned tearfully for the remainder of the day; nor for Francis who, adjudged too young for dinner at the Savoy and a box at Wyndham’s, was instead taken by his mother to a matinée performance of Puss in Boots: nor, indeed, for the others was it a particularly successful evening. They did their best to pretend that they were enjoying themselves immensely. But over each in their separate way hung the knowledge that the corporate family life that they had shared for twenty years was over. One of them had gone; the rest would go.

  In the dark shadow of the theatre Ruth’s attention wandered from the play. A quarter to nine now. Eastwards in Malaya midnight would be long since passed. She remembered that last evening, and her pact with Lucy. But, of course, Lucy would never tell her anything. She had realized that when she had seen the photograph of Stephen Chambers: that tall, stern stranger who had been an undergraduate when Lucy was in her cradle. What could Lucy have to tell to a younger sister of her life with such a one? It would be something secret to herself. There was a freemasonry among married women from which girls were permanently excluded. However intimate you might be with a friend or a sister, that intimacy ended with marriage. Marriage was a club, in which guests could only be taken into certain rooms. Lucy was a member now.

  Yes, that was how it was; that was how it had been. You were curious about that club: what were its secrets: its privileges: its rules of membership. But no one would ever tell you. You had to be elected as a member first. That knowledge woke the spirit of devilry in Ruth. It would be fun to play the spy; to find out for oneself; to fool them all.

  If I ever get the chance, she thought.…

  Book III

  Ruth

  I

  It was in 1912 that Lucy was married. It was in the spring of 1914 that her first child, a girl, was born. In retrospect those months have acquired a significance that at the time they did not have. Europe was living under conditions that will never return. Russia was an empire, Austria and Germany were empires. In England the colonial formula included the dominions. There were such things as “gilt-edged securities” and trustee stocks. Money had a real value; the pursuit of wealth was a tangible ambition. The interests of the land controlled the cities. That world has passed. And because it passed suddenly, in an afternoon, historians of that period tend to idealize it, as a period of ease and plenty.

  For certain people, for certain classes it may have been. But for the vast majority life was not in its essentials so very different from what it is to-day. As a schoolboy I have only second-hand evidence to go upon; but the conversation of schoolmasters and the guests at my father’s table followed much the same course that it does now. Then, as now, the country was going to the dogs. Only then it was the Radicals, not the Socialists, who were driving it to the kennels. The land, property, invested wealth, were being plundered by a spendthrift government. Only then capital was being taxed out of the country, not out of existence. There was talk of the weak hand in India. We should have soon lost our empire; have sunk to the level of a third-rate power. Germany was building ships, the Liberal government was cutting down the army, National bankruptcy was imminent. That was how general problems were discussed.

  Private problems were discussed on a similar note of gloom. Never, I heard, had the book trade been so bad. Books were luxuries. The public would pay ten shillings for a stall but struck at four and six for a novel. Yet then, as now, a great many publishers and quite a few writers were drawing comfortable sustenance from that bankrupt enterprise. People were worried then about much the same things that they are to-day; only in a different way. Those who describe the pre-war years as a period of peace, prosperity and plenty, are in the main idealizing their youth, manhood or maturity; the time when they had the faith, strength, confidence to take difficulties in their stride.

  In a similar way historians of that period try to detect signs of an approaching climax in those last months, as though Europe recognized that it was living through an epoch’s close; was saying to itself, “This is too good to last. Let us make the most of the moment before it flies.” I do not believe there was such a feeling. Looking back now to the parties, moods, meetings of that last summer, recognizing now from the distance of knowledge, their “last moment” quality, we fancy that we lived and enjoyed in a “last moment” spirit. But there was no indication that we should never see again that group of persons gathered together beneath that roof. One happy hour followed upon another in an orderly succession of such hours. They had no particularly dramatic quality.

  At the same time those months in retrospect have an appeal to the imagination that no other months can have. It is like looking at snapshots of ourselves in an old album. “Were we really like that?“ we think. For though the world may be very much the same now in its essentials as it was then, we ourselves are different. In the summer of 1914 we were dreaming dreams that we were never to dream again.

  Myself, I was just sixteen. The horizon was widening every hour. At school I was half-way up the sixth, I had just earned a place in the eleven. Through my father I was exploring every holiday fresh fields of literature. Life was full, with every prospect of it growing fuller. My ambitions of the kind that are associated with that age were violently contradictory. On the one hand I wanted to be a poet, of the Dowson school, living in a garret, the prey of disastrous but intense romance, of subtle and sad experiences out of which would flower a sheaf of sonnets—that on the one hand. On the other there was the Balzacian desire to cut a dash, to wear smart clothes, to present myself at stage doors with bouquets. Ascot, Ranelagh, Cowes, were the passwords to a world that was waiting to receive me. I looked at a wardrobe stocked with velvet jackets, loose ties, tam o’shanter caps, and at another with silk hats, opera cloaks, patent-leather shoes, gold-mounted canes and could not decide which to patronize.

  It was inevitable that in this mood of indecision I should see focused in the personality of Hugh Balliol the sum of my Balzacian aspirations. Three years of Oxford and a year of London had made him the complete man about town. He was tall, broad-shouldered, narrow-waisted; with the kind of figure that tailors thank heaven for. Every time I saw him he seemed to be wearing a new suit. His ties, socks, and the crêpe handkerchief at his breast pocket were symphonies in green, brown, orange, purple. He walked with a swift stride as though he were on his way to something extremely important, the happy, carefree expression on his face suggested that that something was extremely pleasant. “It would be lovely,” I thought, “to live a life like that.”

  In the case of the majority of one’s friends one likes to isolate one particular moment, one fortunate combination of time and place, to say of it: “That’s how I’d like to remember him. He was at his best then.” When I think of Hugh Balliol, I like to remember a July day when he came down for the M.C.C. to play against the school. It was not that he enjoyed any spectacular success. As far as I can remember he did not reach double figures and his bowling was ineffective. But he was easily the most distinctive person on the field. His trousers looked as though they had just been taken from the press; a silk shirt fluttered back against his skin, showing the muscles on his
chest. He moved with an easy grace between the wickets. The very indifference with which he accepted his lack of success proved how much success came his way. Where he had failed to-day, he had succeeded yesterday and would succeed tomorrow. I pictured his thoughts already centring upon the London to which he would return that night. Probably he had arranged some party or other. While for me the cloistered day was at its close, he would be walking down the steps of a restaurant, a head waiter would be bowing him to a table, a girl would be at his side. The drama of the day would have only just begun.

  “I don’t suppose he’s got a trouble in the world,” I thought.

  Which is the way in which a great many very young people feel about their seniors, but in point of fact Hugh Balliol had at that time remarkably few troubles. His main trouble was one that I should never have suspected. And was provided by his inability to impress with a sense of his own importance the heir of his father’s chairman, the Honourable Victor Tavenham. It was not a question of jealousy, it was not a question of rivalry, it was not so much that Victor Tavenham did the same things as Hugh rather better than Hugh did them, but that he did not recognize that Hugh was in any kind of competition with him.

  Victor Tavenham was on the brink of thirty. He was a bachelor on whom a great many designing mothers had their eye. He was tall, elegant, slim, with a long nose, pale blue eyes, a high forehead, and a look of that which cannot be otherwise described than by the French word “race.” There was an air of carelessness about his elegance, as though he had dressed hurriedly. Something was always slightly out of place; yet nothing in his manner suggested that the fact of having to hurry had flurried him in any way. He was a polo player, rated at four goals. He had a handicap of five at Prince’s. His name had been linked two seasons back with an exceedingly prominent actress. It was understood he was not interested in marriage. Everything that Hugh did, he did better. Finally, not only had he a considerably larger income, but he did not have to earn it.