This did not vanquish Aunt Cissie. She canvassed, she had bazaars, she made the girls get up amateur theatrical shows, for her precious window. Yvette, who quite liked the acting and showing-off part of it, took charge of the farce called Mary in the Mirror, and gathered in the proceeds, which were to be paid to the Window Fund when accounts were settled. Each of the girls was supposed to have a money-box for the Fund.
Aunt Cissie, feeling that the united sums must now almost suffice, suddenly called in Yvette’s box. It contained fifteen shillings. There was a moment of green horror.
“Where is all the rest?”
“Oh!” said Yvette, casually. “I just borrowed it. It wasn’t so awfully much.”
“What about the three pounds thirteen for Mary in the Mirror?” asked Aunt Cissie, as if the jaws of Hell were yawning.
“Oh quite! I just borrowed it. I can pay it back.”
Poor Aunt Cissie! The green tumour of hate burst inside her, and there was a ghastly, abnormal scene, which left Yvette shivering with fear and nervous loathing.
Even the rector was rather severe.
“If you needed money, why didn’t you tell me?” he said coldly. “Have you ever been refused anything in reason?”
“I— I thought it didn’t matter,” stammered Yvette.
“And what have you done with the money?”
“I suppose I’ve spent it,” said Yvette, with wide, distraught eyes and a peaked face.
“Spent it, on what?”
“I can’t remember everything: stockings and things, and I gave some of it away.”
Poor Yvette! Her lordly airs and ways were already hitting back at her, on the reflex. The rector was angry: his face had a snarling, doggish look, a sort of sneer. He was afraid his daughter was developing some of the rank, tainted qualities of She-who-was-Cynthia.
“You WOULD do the large with somebody else’s money, wouldn’t you?” he said, with a cold, mongrel sort of sneer, which showed what an utter unbeliever he was, at the heart. The inferiority of a heart which has no core of warm belief in it, no pride in life. He had utterly no belief in her.
Yvette went pale, and very distant. Her pride, that frail, precious flame which everybody tried to quench, recoiled like a flame blown far away, on a cold wind, as if blown out, and her face, white now and still like a snowdrop, the white snowflower of his conceit, seemed to have no life in it, only this pure, strange abstraction.
“He has no belief in me!” she thought in her soul. “I am really nothing to him. I am nothing, only a shameful thing. Everything is shameful, everything is shameful!”
A flame of passion or rage, while it might have overwhelmed or infuriated her, would not have degraded her as did her father’s unbelief, his final attitude of a sneer against her.
He became a little afraid, in the silence of sterile thought. After all, he needed the APPEARANCE of love and belief and bright life, he would never dare to face the fat worm of his own unbelief, that stirred in his heart.
“What have you to say for yourself?” he asked.
She only looked at him from that senseless snowdrop face which haunted him with fear, and gave him a helpless sense of guilt. That other one, She-who-was-Cynthia, she had looked back at him with the same numb, white fear, the fear of his degrading unbelief, the worm which was his heart’s core. He KNEW his heart’s core was a fat, awful worm. His dread was lest anyone else should know. His anguish of hate was against anyone who knew, and recoiled.
He saw Yvette recoiling, and immediately his manner changed to the worldly old good-humoured cynic which he affected.
“Ah well!” he said. “You have to pay it back, my girl, that’s all. I will advance you the money out of your allowance. But I shall charge you four per-cent a month interest. Even the devil himself must pay a percentage on his debts. Another time, if you can’t trust yourself, don’t handle money which isn’t your own. Dishonesty isn’t pretty.”
Yvette remained crushed, and deflowered and humiliated. She crept about, trailing the rays of her pride. She had a revulsion even from herself. Oh, why had she ever touched the leprous money! Her whole flesh shrank as if it were defiled. Why was that? Why, why was that?
She admitted herself wrong in having spent the money. “Of course I shouldn’t have done it. They are quite right to be angry,” she said to herself.
But where did the horrible wincing of her flesh come from? Why did she feel she had caught some physical contagion?
“Where you’re so SILLY, Yvette,” Lucille lectured her: poor Lucille was in great distress —“is that you give yourself away to them all. You might KNOW they’d find out. I could have raised the money for you, and saved all this bother. It’s perfectly awful! But you never will think beforehand where your actions are going to land you! Fancy Aunt Cissie saying all those things to you! How AWFUL! Whatever would Mamma have said, if she’d heard it?”
When things went very wrong, they thought of their mother, and despised their father and all the low brood of the Saywells. Their mother, of course, had belonged to a higher, if more dangerous and “immoral” world. More selfish, decidedly. But with a showier gesture. More unscrupulous and more easily moved to contempt: but not so humiliating. Yvette always considered that she got her fine, delicate flesh from her mother. The Saywells were all a bit leathery, and grubby somewhere inside. But then the Saywells never let you down. Whereas the fine She-who-was-Cynthia had let the rector down with a bang, and his little children along with him. Her little children! They could not quite forgive her.
Only dimly, after the row, Yvette began to realise the other sanctity of herself, the sanctity of her sensitive, clean flesh and blood, which the Saywells with their so-called morality, succeeded in defiling. They always wanted to defile it. They were the life unbelievers. Whereas, perhaps She-who-was-Cynthia had only been a moral unbeliever.
Yvette went about dazed and peaked and confused. The rector paid in the money to Aunt Cissie, much to that lady’s rage. The helpless tumour of her rage was still running. She would have liked to announce her niece’s delinquency in the parish magazine. It was anguish to the destroyed woman that she could not publish the news to all the world. The selfishness! The selfishness! The selfishness!
Then the rector handed his daughter a little account with himself: her debt to him, interest thereon, the amount deducted from her small allowance. But to her credit he had placed a guinea, which was the fee he had to pay for complicity.
“As father of the culprit,” he said humorously, “I am fined one guinea. And with that I wash the ashes out of my hair.”
He was always generous about money. But somehow, he seemed to think that by being free about money he could absolutely call himself a generous man. Whereas he used money, even generosity, as a hold over her.
But he let the affair drop entirely. He was by this time more amused than anything, to judge from appearances. He thought still he was safe.
Aunt Cissie, however, could not get over her convulsion. One night when Yvette had gone rather early, miserably, to bed, when Lucille was away at a party, and she was lying with soft, peaked limbs aching with a sort of numbness and defilement, the door softly opened, and there stood Aunt Cissie, pushing her grey-green face through the opening of the door. Yvette started up in terror.
“Liar! Thief! Selfish little beast!” hissed the maniacal face of Aunt Cissie. “You little hypocrite! You liar! You selfish beast! You greedy little beast!”
There was such extraordinary impersonal hatred in that grey-green mask, and those frantic words, that Yvette opened her mouth to scream with hysterics. But Aunt Cissie shut the door as suddenly as she had opened it, and disappeared. Yvette leaped from her bed and turned the key. Then she crept back, half demented with fear of the squalid abnormal, half numbed with paralysis of damaged pride. And amid it all, up came a bubble of distracted laughter. It WAS so filthily ridiculous!
Aunt Cissie’s behaviour did not hurt the girl so very much. It was after all somewhat fantastic. Yet hurt she was: in her limbs, in her body, in her sex, hurt. Hurt, numbed, and half destroyed, with only her nerves vibrating and jangled. And still so young, she could not conceive what was happening.
Only she lay and wished she were a gipsy. To live in a camp, in a caravan, and never set foot in a house, not know the existence of a parish, never look at a church. Her heart was hard with repugnance, against the rectory. She loathed these houses with their indoor sanitation and their bathrooms, and their extraordinary repulsiveness. She hated the rectory, and everything it implied. The whole stagnant, sewerage sort of life, where sewerage is never mentioned, but where it seems to smell from the centre of every two-legged inmate, from Granny to the servants, was foul. If gipsies had no bathrooms, at least they had no sewerage. There was fresh air. In the rectory there was NEVER fresh air. And in the souls of the people, the air was stale till it stank.
Hate kindled her heart, as she lay with numbed limbs. And she thought of the words of the gipsy woman: “There is a dark man who never lived in a house. He loves you. The other people are treading on your heart. They will tread on your heart till you think it is dead. But the dark man will blow the one spark up into fire again, good fire. You will see what good fire.”
Even as the woman was saying it, Yvette felt there was some duplicity somewhere. But she didn’t mind. She hated with the cold, acrid hatred of a child the rectory interior, the sort of putridity in the life. She liked that big, swarthy, wolf-like gipsy-woman, with the big gold rings in her ears, the pink scarf over her wavy black hair, the tight bodice of brown velvet, the green, fan-like skirt. She liked her dusky, strong, relentless hands, that had pressed so firm, like wolf’s paws, in Yvette’s own soft palm. She liked her. She liked the danger and the covert fearlessness of her. She liked her covert, unyielding sex, that was immoral, but with a hard, defiant pride of its own. Nothing would ever get that woman under. She would despise the rectory and the rectory morality, utterly! She would strangle Granny with one hand. And she would have the same contempt for Daddy and for Uncle Fred, as men, as she would have for fat old slobbery Rover, the Newfoundland dog. A great, sardonic female contempt, for such domesticated dogs, calling themselves men.
And the gipsy man himself! Yvette quivered suddenly, as if she had seen his big, bold eyes upon her, with the naked insinuation of desire in them. The absolutely naked insinuation of desire made her life prone and powerless in the bed, as if a drug had cast her in a new molten mould.
She never confessed to anybody that two of the ill-starred Window Fund pounds had gone to the gipsy woman. What if Daddy and Aunt Cissie knew THAT! Yvette stirred luxuriously in the bed. The thought of the gipsy had released the life of her limbs, and crystallised in her heart the hate of the rectory: so that now she felt potent, instead of impotent.
When, later, Yvette told Lucille about Aunt Cissie’s dramatic interlude in the bedroom doorway, Lucille was indignant.
“Oh, hang it all!” cried she. “She might let it drop now. I should think we’ve heard enough about it by now! Good heavens, you’d think Aunt Cissie was a perfect bird of paradise! Daddy’s dropped it, and after all, it’s his business if it’s anybody’s. Let Aunt Cissie shut up!”
It was the very fact that the rector had dropped it, and that he again treated the vague and inconsiderate Yvette as if she were some specially-licensed being, that kept Aunt Cissie’s bile flowing. The fact that Yvette really was most of the time unaware of other people’s feelings, and being unaware, couldn’t care about them, nearly sent Aunt Cissie mad. Why should that young creature, with a delinquent mother, go through life as a privileged being, even unaware of other people’s existence, though they were under her nose.
Lucille at this time was very irritable. She seemed as if she simply went a little unbalanced, when she entered the rectory. Poor Lucille, she was so thoughtful and responsible. She did all the extra troubling, thought about doctors, medicines, servants, and all that sort of thing. She slaved conscientiously at her job all day in town, working in a room with artificial light from ten till five. And she came home to have her nerves rubbed almost to a frenzy by Granny’s horrible and persistent inquisitiveness and parasitic agedness.
The affair of the Window Fund had apparently blown over, but there remained a stuffy tension in the atmosphere. The weather continued bad. Lucille stayed at home on the afternoon of her half holiday, and did herself no good by it. The rector was in his study, she and Yvette were making a dress for the latter young woman, Granny was resting on the couch.
The dress was of blue silk velours, French material, and was going to be very becoming. Lucille made Yvette try it on again: she was nervously uneasy about the hang, under the arms.
“Oh bother!” cried Yvette, stretching her long, tender, childish arms, that tended to go bluish with the cold. “Don’t be so frightfully FUSSY, Lucille! It’s quite all right.”
“If that’s all the thanks I get, slaving my half day away making dresses for you, I might as well do something for myself!”
“Well, Lucille! You know I never ASKED you! You know you can’t bear it unless you DO supervise,” said Yvette, with that irritating blandness of hers, as she raised her naked elbows and peered over her shoulder into the long mirror.
“Oh yes! you never ASKED me!” cried Lucille. “As if I didn’t know what you meant, when you started sighing and flouncing about.”
“I!” said Yvette, with vague surprise. “Why, when did I start sighing and flouncing about?”
“Of course you know you did.”
“Did I? No, I didn’t know! When was it?” Yvette could put a peculiar annoyance into her mild, straying questions.
“I shan’t do another thing to this frock, if you don’t stand still and STOP it,” said Lucille, in her rather sonorous, burning voice.
“You know you are most awfully nagging and irritable, Lucille,” said Yvette, standing as if on hot bricks.
“Now Yvette!” cried Lucille, her eyes suddenly flashing in her sister’s face, with wild flashes. “Stop it at once! Why should everybody put up with your abominable and overbearing temper!”
“Well, I don’t know about MY temper,” said Yvette, writhing slowly out of the half-made frock, and slipping into her dress again.
Then, with an obstinate little look on her face, she sat down again at the table, in the gloomy afternoon, and began to sew at the blue stuff. The room was littered with blue clippings, the scissors were lying on the floor, the work-basket was spilled in chaos all over the table, and a second mirror was perched perilously on the piano.
Granny, who had been in a semi-coma, called a doze, roused herself on the big, soft couch and put her cap straight.
“I don’t get much peace for my nap,” she said, slowly feeling her thin white hair, to see that it was in order. She had heard vague noises.
Aunt Cissie came in, fumbling in a bag for a chocolate.
“I never saw such a mess!” she said. “You’d better clear some of that litter away, Yvette.”
“All right,” said Yvette. “I will in a minute.”
“Which means never!” sneered Aunt Cissie, suddenly darting and picking up the scissors.
There was silence for a few moments, and Lucille slowly pushed her hands in her hair, as she read a book.
“You’d better clear away, Yvette,” persisted Aunt Cissie.
“I will, before tea,” replied Yvette, rising once more and pulling the blue dress over her head, flourishing her long, naked arms through the sleeveless armholes. Then she went between the mirrors, to look at herself once more.
As she did so, she sent the second mirror, that she had perched carelessly on the piano, sliding with a rattle to the floor. Luckily it did not break. But everybody started badly.
“She’s smashed the mirror!” cried Aunt Cissie.
“Smashed a mirror! Which mirror! Who’s smashed it?” came Granny’s sharp voice.
“I haven’t smashed anything,” came the calm voice of Yvette. “It’s quite all right.”
“You’d better not perch it up there again,” said Lucille.
Yvette, with a little impatient shrug at all the fuss, tried making the mirror stand in another place. She was not successful.
“If one had a fire in one’s own room,” she said crossly, “one needn’t have a lot of people fussing when one wants to sew.”
“Which mirror are you moving about?” asked Granny.
“One of our own, that came from the Vicarage,” said Yvette rudely.
“Don’t break it in THIS house, wherever it came from,” said Granny.
There was a sort of family dislike for the furniture that had belonged to She-who-was-Cynthia. It was most of it shoved into the kitchen, and the servants’ bedrooms.
“Oh, I’M not superstitious,” said Yvette, “about mirrors or any of that sort of thing.”
“Perhaps you’re not,” said Granny. “People who never take the responsibility for their own actions usually don’t care what happens.”
“After all,” said Yvette, “I may say it’s my own looking-glass, even if I did break it.”
“And I say,” said Granny, “that there shall be no mirrors broken in THIS house, if we can help it; no matter who they belong to, or did belong to. Cissie, have I got my cap straight?”
Aunt Cissie went over and straightened the old lady. Yvette loudly and irritatingly trilled a tuneless tune.
“And now, Yvette, will you please clear away,” said Aunt Cissie.
“Oh bother!” cried Yvette angrily. “It’s simply AWFUL to live with a lot of people who are always nagging and fussing over trifles.”
“What people, may I ask?” said Aunt Cissie ominously.
Another row was imminent. Lucille looked up with a queer cast in her eyes. In the two girls, the blood of She-who-was-Cynthia was roused.
“Of course you may ask! You know quite well I mean the people in this beastly house,” said the outrageous Yvette.
“At least,” said Granny, “we don’t come of half-depraved stock.”
There was a second’s electric pause. Then Lucille sprang from her low seat, with sparks flying from her.
“You shut up!” she shouted, in a blast full upon the mottled majesty of the old lady.
The old woman’s breast began to heave with heaven knows what emotions. The pause this time, as after the thunderbolt, was icy.
Then Aunt Cissie, livid, sprang upon Lucille, pushing her like a fury.
“Go to your room!” she cried hoarsely. “Go to your room!”
And she proceeded to push the white but fiery-eyed Lucille from the room. Lucille let herself be pushed, while Aunt Cissie vociferated:
“Stay in your room till you’ve apologised for this! — till you’ve apologised to the Mater for this!”
“I shan’t apologise!” came the clear voice of Lucille, from the passage, while Aunt Cissie shoved her.
Aunt Cissie drove her more wildly upstairs.
Yvette stood tall and bemused in the sitting-room, with the air of offended dignity, at the same time bemused, which was so odd on her. She still was bare-armed, in the half-made blue dress. And even SHE was half-aghast at Lucille’s attack on the majesty of age. But also, she was coldly indignant against Granny’s aspersion of the maternal blood in their veins.
“Of course I meant no offense,” said Granny.
“Didn’t you!” said Yvette coolly.
“Of course not. I only said we’re not depraved, just because we happen to be superstitious about breaking mirrors.”
Yvette could hardly believe her ears. Had she heard right? Was it possible! Or was Granny, at her age, just telling a barefaced lie?
Yvette knew that the old woman was telling a cool, barefaced lie. But already, so quickly, Granny believed her own statement.
The rector appeared, having left time for a lull.
“What’s wrong?” he asked cautiously, genially.
“Oh, nothing!” drawled Yvette. “Lucille told Granny to shut up, when she was saying something. And Aunt Cissie drove her up to her room. Tant de bruit pour une omelette! Though Lucille WAS a bit over the mark, that time.”
The old lady couldn’t quite catch what Yvette said.
“Lucille really will have to learn to control her nerves,” said the old woman. “The mirror fell down, and it worried me. I said so to Yvette, and she said something about superstitions and the people in the beastly house. I told her the people in the house were not depraved, if they happened to mind when a mirror was broken. And at that Lucille flew at me and told me to shut up. It really is disgraceful how these children give way to their nerves. I know it’s nothing but nerves.”
Aunt Cissie had come in during this speech. At first even she was dumb. Then it seemed to her, it was as Granny had said.
“I have forbidden her to come down until she comes to apologise to the Mater,” she said.
“I doubt if she’ll apologise,” said the calm, queenly Yvette, holding her bare arms.
“And I don’t want any apology,” said the old lady. “It is merely nerves. I don’t know what they’ll come to, if they have nerves like that, at their age! She must take Vibrofat. — I am sure Arthur would like his tea, Cissie!”
Yvette swept her sewing together, to go upstairs. And again she trilled her tune, rather shrill and tuneless. She was trembling inwardly.
“More glad rags!” said her father to her, genially.
“More glad rags!” she re-iterated sagely, as she sauntered upstairs, with her day dress over one arm. She wanted to console Lucille, and ask her how the blue stuff hung now.
At the first landing, she stood as she nearly always did, to gaze through the window that looked to the road and the bridge. Like the Lady of Shalott, she seemed always to imagine that someone would come along singing Tirra-lirra! or something equally intelligent, by the river.
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