A Little Treachery

25

Her thoughts that night were painful and sleep-destroying. Whenever she drifted out a little way towards unconsciousness, many bizarre and troubling visions began to stir in the latent confusion of that state; now she saw Mrs Stewart with a fantastic crop of pale hair and a furious expression in her fanatic eyes, now Simon’s faintly barbaric yet aristocratic little profile turned from her in contempt; but, more persistently than the rest, and with peculiar intensity, a diminished, brightly coloured view of the back of the cottage in the afternoon sunshine presented itself to her, with a figure stealing along the path – and that figure – That figure at the door took variable forms, one of them heart-rending.

All hope of sleep had been driven from her. She got up some time in the small hours, crept noiselessly downstairs and then found, very faint, in dust, on the polished tiles by the garden door, the fragmentary print of a man’s heel.

Then she smiled. She smiled at her own folly in supposing, however fleetingly, that Emmy could ever have entertained her own torturing, far-fetched vision; and she smiled ironically to see them both so occupied with their own concerns and anxieties as each to think the other might be agitated by them. For what did she care if Emmy served to draw upon this house additional evil? She was unspeakably indifferent to it.

Her half-terrible hope was gone, and she locked the door without further thought and returned to her bed.

Thus she had remained, wearily conscious, for many hours, but at last woke to hear the birds sing in a tumult of wind. It was not long after five. Through the roaring gusts, in the half-darkness, a scattering of piping and cawing notes was flung raggedly, the sound bringing images of frail claws gripping the twigs, feathers ruffled to the downy depths, tails turned awry, and the uplifted heads and swelling throats from which poured this music riding on the rough air so triumphantly. But her heart sickened to death. April was near; and her wits almost turned at the thought of Clem still unliberated.

Presently a bubbling song arose from the next room – through which Emmy continued peacefully sleeping, apparently, for it went on unrebuked, uninterrupted. The little boy was singing.

But at breakfast Simon was found to be not yet altogether in a singing frame of mind. He was again dumb, difficult about his food, playing for attention; and future trouble in plenty seemed indicated.

Later in the day, Catherine, from the upper sitting-room, heard talking in the kitchen. Emmy was telling some long, vivacious story on which the little boy kept breaking in with questions put in a peremptory tone and answered by Emmy with equal briskness. She felt relieved and smiled to herself as, in bored abstraction, she went about her business upstairs. Working with an open door, she could hear that the talk continued. At last, from the landing, she caught the words, ‘Go on – you are not an actress!’ ‘I am.’ ‘Well, then, do you go on the stage?’ ‘Did, when I was your size.’ ‘Say a piece, then. Sing!’

Then Emmy did sing; some racing, galloping song in a foreign language – Catherine could not even guess at what it was – a song which had a nasal wail in it, which was ugly, almost comic, yet was thrown out with such a coarse, storming vigour that Catherine herself stood transfixed. The adult listener stood transfixed, her mouth unconsciously yielding to an astonished, diverted smile which lingered throughout the performance. As for the little boy, he could be heard laughing, clapping, stamping in time with the intoxicating tune, and at the end breaking into frantic demands. ‘Go on, go on! Do it again, Emmy! Go on – do it again!’

Catherine stood there in hesitation, still with the vase and duster in her hand which she had held throughout.

The little boy’s reactions to herself and to the girl differed profoundly, as the next few weeks were to show her. With her, he was rather quiet and fond of posing her with odd problems. She felt that, having taken her in and become used to her, he did not ‘mind’ her; he accepted her without further thought and perhaps was actually soothed by the lack of demand on his emotions. She was humbly astonished on finding that he relied on her. She could not tell why she did not feel more warmly towards him, she felt surprised that she had ever thought him a disagreeable child. He was not even spoiled to any gross extent. But, unless treated firmly, he was inclined to be autocratic with her, appearing to think that she was there to wait upon him. Also, the dark, shining eyes could look meltingly when he wished to cajole. It was a surprise to Catherine to discover that this big boy of six liked to be petted at times and to be treated like a baby; liked her to rub her palm over his head, which she had done once or twice at first, idly, amused at his springy hair. Now there were times when he would come and put his head in her lap. And she found what she would never have expected to find in a child, quite a degree of reasonableness. So why was he not dearer to her? He was charming.

But with Emmy it was all different. He was anxious, he was excited – for there seemed no other word for that air of warmth and the hot cheeks and the quick inclination to laughter or tears. More oddly still, it was not upon the whole a noisy excitement. She could not tell the cause of it, not even after she had studied curiously Emmy’s behaviour. The girl joked, teased, rattled away to him about her own affairs, as if to an equal, and treated him altogether with a common-sense naturalness, which, if it lacked refinement, seemed otherwise unexceptionable. Any affection she showed him had a note of irony. The sentimentality she sometimes put on with him was always caustic (but did Simon know it?) She was, in fact, inclined to deal with him rather roughly, though with ill-humour. She stood no nonsense. There were moments when she made no bones about crying, ‘You little beast!’ and smartly cuffing him, at which Simon would howl and stamp frantically – he was not accustomed to such a type of correction. But none of this turned him from her. He was back at her side, begging, fondling her. Then he blossomed, he opened out, he was a bustling little creature, ingenious, tumbling about for her amusement, anxious, wild to please. Indulged in this, he showed off and became tiresome. But nothing brought him to heel more quickly than Emmy’s threat to import her two boys from London – ‘boys much nicer than someone she knew, boys she loved.’ Simon passionately contested this. Jealousy fired up and burst out, and he was at first uncontrollably angry, till, reduced to an abject state of jealous fear by the unbearable threat, he would fall into a pitiful subservience, promising brokenly to be nice, to be nicer than Emmy’s boys.

But at times there was something less comprehensible, a stolid mood, a refusal to speak, when Emmy would declare that she didn’t know what had got into the kid, with his sulks.

Sometimes, glancing out of the window and seeing Emmy and the boy together in the garden, Catherine tried to take an outside view of the situation.

Hillocks and heights there still were in that untamable domain, now again abandoned to the rank growths of spring, and upon one of these they had made a small clearance; Emmy had dug a little trench about it, and this was their ‘lawn’ – this was what their lawn had come to! It had the advantage of being far down the garden and private, half-screened and peaceful. There she could see Emmy sitting, drawing away industriously, and Simon squatting beside her. Then, ‘What is she talking about?’ Catherine might wonder with sudden uneasiness. Simon was so still. Well, he was watching Emmy at her drawing, or he was trying his hand at imitating her. He loved to see the little gross pictures welling from her deft pen – and it was not to be supposed that he would take any harm from their tendencies; it seemed impossible that a child of his age and upbringing could understand what he saw. And Emmy teased him and laughed at him, and that was all, crying, ‘Sweetie-pie!’ and pinching him when he became sentimental.

Catherine saw vaguely that some intervention was needed. She also knew that it would not come from herself. One movement might set the boat rocking dangerously. She could not endure it. She could not risk it.