The Balliols Read online

  It was Ruth who received notice from the Balliols’ friends. It was she who made the advances, who made friendship easy. Leaning forward across the table, she asked question after question about the evening’s party.

  “Tell me all about it. How many will there be? Eight in all, that’s counting yourselves. And who’ll they be? Aunt Stella. She’s always here. I can’t think why you ask her. I know Lucy thinks she’s marvellous. But I think she’s dull. Too serious. And who else? Mr. Rickman. Who’s he? A friend of Daddy’s. He’s old, then. What? No, quite young? About twenty-five? Is he good-looking? You’ve never met him? How funny, asking someone that you’ve never met. Yes, I daresay, even if he is a friend of Daddy’s. And who else? The Shirleys. Oh, but I think she’s irritating. He’s all right. I like him. But she’s so la-di-da; sounds so kind and good, and really isn’t that at all. Mummie, I think it’s going to be an awful party. What’ll you do afterwards? Sit about and talk?”

  “Darling, what else could we do?”

  “So many things. You could dance, you could go out somewhere. There must be places somewhere in London where people can enjoy themselves.”

  “We shall enjoy ourselves, in our way.”

  “But, Mummie, in what way? I shall never give that sort of party when I’m grown up.”

  Lucy had taken no part in the conversation. She had let her sister babble on. Now that Ruth’s curiosity was in part assuaged, she interrupted.

  “Shall I have a chance of seeing Aunt Stella to-night?”

  “Darling, I don’t see when.”

  “Couldn’t she come up and see me before dinner?”

  “There won’t be time. She’ll arrive just before dinner’s served. It would upset things.”

  “Then couldn’t she come up afterwards, when Daddy and the men are sitting downstairs in the dining-room?”

  “It’s rather difficult, that kind of thing breaks up the conversation. Besides, there’s the coffee.”

  “Couldn’t she have the coffee with me? Mother darling, please, couldn’t she? I haven’t seen Aunt Stella for so long.”

  “I can’t see why you should want to see her,” Ruth interrupted. “I don’t find her any fun.”

  “You wouldn’t. You’re too young. Please, mother, you will try, won’t you?”

  “I’ll try. But I can’t promise.”

  “You’ll promise to tell her that I asked?”

  “I’ll promise. And now you must run along, both of you. I’ve got a great deal to do and I’ve got to say good night to Francis.”

  Francis was already tucked up. He was the youngest by many years and had been actually born within the century. Jane had never thought she would have a baby after Ruth. Three were plenty. Francis coming after an interval of seven years touched feelings that she had thought never to know again. As a result he meant more to her than her other children. Yet with him she had the feeling she had with none of her other children that she loved him more than he loved her. He was a reserved child; not sullen as Lucy was, but secretive, as though he were harbouring grievances. Edward just shrugged his shoulders. “If I were the kind of man to let myself be worried, I should be worried about that boy. He’ll be what the advocates of Montessori methods call ‘an interesting case’:” which to a mother was not consoling.

  Francis was still awake when she came into the nursery. Curled up in the corner of his bed, he was watching the lamplight from the street below flicker on the ceiling. He turned his head as the door opened, but he did not, as Hugh would have done at his age, jump up on his knees, with his arms stretched wide to fling about her neck. He just lifted himself upon his elbow.

  She came across and sat beside him on the bed.

  “Did you have a nice day, darling?”

  “Yes, I took my boat out.”

  “You missed mummy, though, a bit?”

  “Of course I did. Nurse isn’t really interested in my boat.”

  “Were there lots of other boats there?”

  “Lots and lots. And ever so many other boys. And…” he paused, looking down and away from her, “… when shall I go to school, Mummie?”

  “Darling, I don’t know. Not just yet.”

  “I’d like to go to school.”

  “Why?”

  “I’ve got no friends. Other boys have friends. I haven’t. They’ve got brothers and sisters of their own age, I haven’t.”

  “Well, darling, you’re not six yet, you know.”

  “How soon do boys go to school?”

  “Not till they are seven, at the earliest.”

  “I wish I were seven.”

  “You’ll be seven soon enough. I must tuck you up now. Mother’s got to go and dress.”

  “He doesn’t really love me,” she thought, “not really.”

  On her way down the passage she passed Edward. To a house containing eight bedrooms only two bathrooms were allotted. He looked inappropriately youthful in a silk, claret-coloured dressing-gown.

  “Preparing for the last charge of a forlorn hope,” he said.

  IV

  The reference to a forlorn hope explained the nature of six out of the last nine dinner parties that the Balliols had given. Edward was trying to find a husband for his sister Stella. For a long time she had been a problem. She was rapidly becoming a situation. She was within a few months of thirty, and though Balliol readily agreed that the time had passed when a woman who was not married by twenty-three never would be married, and an unmarried woman was an unwanted parasite, in Stella’s particular case he did feel not only that in marriage lay her one salvation, but that unless she was married shortly she was destined for a regretably dramatic spinster-hood. He had come to this conclusion when she had expressed the opinion that if women really meant to get the vote they had better do something drastic.

  “What do you mean by something drastic?”

  “You’ll see that soon enough,” had been her answer.

  “And that means,” he had told Jane afterwards, “that before we know where we are, she’ll be waving banners in Whitehall.”

  From the start Stella had been a problem. At a time when most girls in the country were content to fill the period probationary to marriage with tennis racquets, croquet mallets, water-colours, crochet hooks, pianos and the novels of Marie Corelli, Stella had insisted first on a University education and a degree, then, as the prelude to a career, the independence of a latch-key and a chequebook.

  That in itself might have not been too ominous. A number of girls were demanding such rights in the days of Ann Veronica. But whereas the majority of fathers knew that such campaigns and the consequent arguments in favour of careers were merely feminine excuses for cultivating masculine acquaintanceship with greater freedom, old Mr. Balliol had never in Stella’s case been able to console himself with that belief. She had demanded her right to an un-chaperoned life in London, simply so that she might exercise that privilege of which women in a lower walk of life were most anxious to be relieved; the right of earning her own living.

  “She’ll get tired of it soon,” Edward Balliol had prophesied; “within four years, she’ll be marrying as other women have married, for a home.”

  But four years had passed and six and seven, and Stella had shown no signs of dissatisfaction with her life. On the contrary, she appeared to derive an increasing satisfaction, not only from the work itself—she was now in charge of thirty stenographers in the Morrison Teach-Yourself-By-Post Institute—but from the position that that work gave her. She had attached herself to various phases of the woman’s movement. She sat on committees. She addressed meetings. In private she expressed her opinions not as though she were saying, “I, Stella Balliol, believe this,” but as though she were the spokesman of a group. She said We more often than I. Behind her trim, neat sentences you seemed to hear the steady rhythm of a march.

  It was when this interest in the future of women generally began to declare itself in favour of a direct championing of women’s rights,
that her brother felt it was high time she married.

  “We must find her a husband,” he told Jane.

  Jane was dubious.

  “Will that be easy?”

  On that point Balliol himself had been none too confident. He had tried by arguing with his wife to reassure himself.

  “She’s not old.”

  “I know.”

  “She’s not bad-looking.”

  “No.”

  “She’s good company.”

  “Yes.”

  “She’ll have a certain amount of money when our father dies.”

  “I know, but all the same.…”

  Jane paused. It was difficult to define the exact nature of the obstacle. Clearly though one was aware of it. Stella was amusing, capable, and quite nice-looking. She was honourable and loyal. She would have a reasonable amount of money. She was the kind of woman of whom it would be possible to say, “She’d make the right man an admirable wife.” Yet her brisk manner, her self-confidence, her readiness to meet men on equal ground prevented you from thinking of her in terms of courtship. It was possible to picture her as a wife; but not as a fiancée.

  The various unmarried men that Balliol invited from time to time to dinner parties at which she had been present found her conversation easy and entertaining. When the women had left the room they would invariably, before opening a masculine topic, make some such remark as “By Jove, that sister of yours is an interesting girl,” going on to some such generalization as “We’ll have to be pretty careful or girls like that will be taking our jobs away from us. They’ll be ruling offices as well as roosts.”

  These professions of admiration were not, however, followed by the desire for any increased acquaintance with their inspirer.

  It was when Balliol was practically at the end of his eligible acquaintance—of bachelors that was to say between thirty-five and fifty with worldly prospects or achievement—that Jane had suggested the possibility of a younger man falling in love with Stella.

  “You know what they say about the attraction of opposites. There are a great many weak, diffident men who want someone that they can rely upon, who expect their wives to take their mother’s place. Very likely Stella herself wants someone she can look after, instead of someone who’ll look after her; a thing she can do very well for herself.”

  It was to this suggestion that Roy Rickman owed his invitation.

  “I’ll ask him, but it’s a long forlorn hope,” was Balliol’s comment.

  It did not seem even that to him when Stella made her entrance at exactly twenty-nine minutes past seven; alert, animated, informative, taking the centre of the floor with her first remark.

  “Have any of you seen the Peace cartoon in Punch?”

  Punch had come out that evening and they had all seen it. At the head of a long flight of steps stood a house with its gate opened, headed “Disarmament.” On the steps were figures representing the various nations: Russia, England, Italy, France, Austria, Germany. Each figure armed to the teeth was pointing its neighbour to the door. “After you, please,” the caption ran.

  “It’s so typical,” she said. “Punch confirms people in their prejudices. In a cartoon like that they see their own reflection in the glass. They dismiss the matter from their minds. They say ‘Of course disarmament is absurd. No one’s going to take the first step.’ That’s why we never get anywhere.”

  An animated argument began at once. Disarmament was a subject on which they all held opinions that they were anxious to express. Stella acted as a kind of chairman. A discussion continued with such zest that the announcement of dinner was not the relieved ending of the mauvais quart d’heure, but the annoying interruption of an interesting talk.

  It was all very like Stella, Balliol thought, as he shepherded his guests into the dining-room. The particular kind of impression that she made on men was typified by her opening an argument with the one cartoon in Punch that precluded any kind of personal discussion; no reference to “you and I” was possible: there could be no alternative to a weighing of abstract points of view. In consequence his guests would think of her afterwards not as someone who was something, but as someone who held certain views.

  That was the whole trouble about Stella. She wasn’t negative. Far from it, she was a personality, the most definite personality in the room. But she produced an impersonal impression. He looked at her as she took her seat beside young Rickman. Yes, that was what was wrong with her. She was handsome, with her firm, clear-cut features, her clear skin, her bright hazel eyes, her brown hair puffed forward high upon her forehead. Her dress was fashionably cut. There was nothing frumpish about her. At the same time he could not imagine a man wanting to make love to her. He strained his ears to hear what they were saying. As he might have suspected. Campbell Bannerman. Land values. Irish policy.

  Two places away from her on the other side Jane Balliol was watching the effect that Stella was making on Roy Rickman. It was not going to be a success. She had been certain of that from the first sight of Rickman. He wasn’t the kind of young man to fall in love with somebody like Stella. He was handsome, broad-shouldered, athletic-looking; his hair was a lightish brown with a hint of red in it. It was longish, swept back and parted at the side. There was the break of a wave in its sleek expanse, that under the light gave it a burnished look. His manner was easy, open, rather confidential. His voice was deep. He was laughing half the time. It was a loud boyish laugh. It was almost a punctuation mark, so frequently did it round off his sentences. When he listened, it was intently, watchfully; with an encouraging smile, as though he were saying, “Yes, yes, how right you are. I’ve never seen it in quite that way before.” He must be good with men, she thought. I can understand that he’s good in business. What was it that Edward said he was? “What they now call a representative and in our fathers’ day would have called a tout.” He gets his friends to buy motor-cars and wine and insure their lives. I wonder if he likes doing that kind of thing. A young man has to take what he can get nowadays. But having to make use of one’s friends in that way. He looks too nice for that. I hope he’s enjoying himself now. It’s a good dinner. I wish Violet wasn’t so slow passing the side dishes. Mrs. Shirley’s practically finished her fish, and the sauce hasn’t reached her yet. I think she might have waited. Ruth’s right about her. She is la-di-da. I hope she and Stella don’t start quarrelling afterwards.

  “Yes, Mr. Shirley, I quite agree with you. George Alexander is too well dressed.”

  Really, but Mr. Shirley’s very tiresome. I can’t think why we asked them; because he plays golf with Edward; which means that he buys port from Edward. But I don’t see why on that account I should have to be bored by his company and made uncomfortable by his wife’s. I don’t see why men can’t keep their business lives and their home lives separate. They ought to be able to. What else are offices for? They say that business friends get offended when you don’t invite them to your homes. Well, I don’t see why they shouldn’t be offended. If you’re useful to them in business they won’t cut off a nose to spite a face. I think it’s silly.

  “Of course, Mr. Shirley, there is this to be said, that if you give people what they want, if you put them in a good temper, that’s to say, you stand more chance of getting what you want out of them.”

  Oh, but I’m so bored. There’s the entrée. I do hope Martha hasn’t forgotten the cayenne pepper with the sweetbread. Well, that’s half the meal. Now I can start talking on the other side. I wonder what Mr. Rickman will be like.

  She extricated herself from the conversation in the gradual monosyllabic manner that coincides with the removal of the fish plates. There was silence round the table that Edward, observing, broke up with an essay at general conversation, that in its turn subsided into the even flow of duologues, as each man turned towards his left.

  Thought Jane, I shall know what he’s like now. I wonder how he’ll start the conversation. It’s always amusing to see what a man says first. Thou
gh it’s always the same thing, really. If you know him already it’s, “Have you seen anything of the Jacksons lately?” If you don’t know him, “Have you seen Tree’s new show?” Perhaps he’ll be different.

  He was: surprisingly different.

  He turned and looked at her, then smiled. It was the kind of smile with which you welcome an old friend in a crowded room; of whose presence you have been for a long time aware, but from whom you have been kept apart. You edge your way towards each other; your eyes meet across a sea of shoulders; you think, ‘in another minute, in two minutes at the outside’; and when you meet at last it is with a feeling both of relief and of excited anticipation. There was all that in the smile with which Roy Rickman turned to her.

  One would think that he’s been waiting all the evening for a chance to talk to me. Perhaps he has.

  Stella Balliol not only had no use for small talk, but possessed none. She not only did not want to discuss personalities, the theatre, servants, holiday resorts, income tax, except in their larger sense of a social and economic problem, but could not. In consequence, since she liked talking and since talk invariably centred round her, small talk was impossible in her company. Even when she was alone with other women.