Before the Bombardment

Front matter

PMD 0

CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY, SACRAMENTO

This book is due on the last date stamped below.

Contents

PREFACE Be A oe toe eS REVEILLE = < = s = THE DAWN OF FRIENDSHIP - - SITUATION VACANT - - - In Rooms Seg ee FACING SOUTH ise) at ee a= TERMINUS - ~ - - - ON THE TRACK - - - - THE NEW REIGN = =<--s CANNON AND ANCHOR - = TREATS Seat seth oe, a = BEHIND THE LINES =P a5 = NORTHERN CARNIVAL --~ - - No BIGGER THAN A Man’s HAND THE FLOODGAYS - - - - CHURCH-INTERIOR 5 a a Avis! Avis! Avis! - -) - LADIES OF THE OLD SCHOOL - THE SALON - - - - - AMIEL LES VISE weg ge = ee St. MARTIN’s SUMMER - - WINTER A Sate ae ees PROMENADE a eye = RS TEA ae ee ee THE POOL - = - =i ll LAST POST > se ee ee SITUATION REQUIRED - - - EPILOGUE Se el

Preface

THE gentle reader is invited to approach this novel as if it were a historical romance, an alas! imperfect but imaginative reconstruction of an epoch, the memory of which is almost obliterated, an inquest into the causes and conditions that preceded and perhaps were partly responsible for its effacement. The scene is laid, mainly, in an English seaside town during the opening years of the twentieth century ; and the story is as much concerned with this town as with any of the characters that move through its streets.

To understand how far that period with which we deal has retreated from us, it is only necessary to find a fashion-plate of twenty years ago and match it against a Cretan wall-painting in the Ashmolean museum. The distant, mysterious inhabitants of that lost world are infinitely nearer to us in their clothes, and probably in their outlook, than our own parents.

And then seaside towns are always silted up with the debris of the past century. The predominant note at Newborough, before the bombardment, was one of long settled comfort and confident respectability. The town faced the world with a Credo the grounds of which it refused even to examine. This belief in the inherent rightness and essential righteousness of the prevailing system was, in reality, but a survival of that Swiss Family Robinson attitude toward life which the English

10 PREFACE had adopted at the outbreak of the nineteenth century and had maintained until its close; and this belief it is, which throws so inexplicable a charm over the whole period. Elsewhere, in the years down which our narrative is laid, it may be that this confident pose was breaking up: but as a wild flower, imagined to be extinct, or an obsolete but unobtrusive wild animal, may yet linger on in a remote Welsh mountain or wide Yorkshire moor, so in this wind-bound, sea-pounded town, the nineteenth century has been allowed to project its heavy shadow across the opening years of the young era. For it is a mistake to think that a century ends everywhere at the same time, however clear may be the transition from one of these artificially made periods to another. Mr. George Moore has described exquisitely how the eighteenth century lay hidden among the lakes and woods of Ireland until the year 1860; and no doubt the enthusiastic amateur of dead epochs can still find the nineteenth century much poorer, rather angry, but none the less sure and respectable, lurking in unobserved corners, in Parliament, in the Church, in a seaside hotel.

AMALFI

Chapter I Reveille

** When blood is nipp’d, and ways be foul, Then nightly sings the staring owl, To-who ;

To-whit, to-who, a merry note,

While greasy Joan doth keel the pot.”’ THE tin tongue rattled on, high up under a dome. So loudly it clacked and racketed through the silence of this vast edifice that, surely, it must have pierced through the layers of cloud, at this season stretched like blankets, one over another endlessly, and must now echo through the ultimate blue imbecility beyond This cerulean lining, however, was in the winter a thing utterly incredible ; while the grey blankets above and beneath yet invited slumber, warm deep slumber. But on and on it cackled, this idiot tongue, trying to inform the sleeper of its monotonous and invariable message, Slave to a slave. It seemed fearful of betraying a trust. Six o’clock, six o’clock, six o’clock, it hammered and ranted.

Through an unconscious cunning born of long experience, the sleeper was able to transform the brief moments which this metallic music occupied into the most lingering period of the entire day. While still fast asleep, she could calculate precisely the last second of the alarum, and only when the final syncopic deathrattle was strangled in the clock’s throat, did she, almost automatically, leave the sandy plains or issue forth from

II the aromatic summer pine-forests of her native northern Germany. Indeed the bell itself usually played some part in the dream, serving both to lengthen and end it. Now her withered limbs must lumber out of bed into the frozen air; she must switch on the light and tumble into her tousled, rumpled clothes lying on a chair, and by a judicious, though not too protracted, application of brush and sponge arrange the wisps of flaxen, flocculent hair, the straight pale eyes, the long shapeless nose, the lump on the forehead above the right-hand almost invisible eyebrow, into their usual weekday perspective, imparting to them by this process a cohesion and sense of focus which they had lacked as she lay there sleeping. All these attributes which have been described now centred round a personality, and formed Elisa, the Prussian housemaid at a hotel in the North of England. Every morning she must pass through these extraordinary experiences and mutations which constitute getting-up and dressing in this part of Britain during the winter months.

Every morning it grew colder, colder and colder, and all for fourteen pounds a year! Ten years of it. She couldn’t go on doing it for ever, really she couldn’t, though it was better than that first place, at the Rectory ! Angrily, dumbly, she shook out her body, turned off the light, and creaked blunderingly out of the room. Now she was wading through the familiar stillness, a silence infringed by a thousand crepuscular crepitations, of the hotel-corridors. As she moved, these minute, crackling vibrations were lost in the cascades of sound which her clumsy feet unloosed to dash up against tiled walls. Soon it would be light, she supposed; and, before dawn came, there were the grates and the fires,

REVEILLE . 13 the stoves and the boilers, the floors and the staircase, todo: and, not properly, her work. It was a man’s work, but just because she was a foreigner, she must doit. She repeated to herself the names of her hated enemies— the grates, the fires and the stoves, the boilers and the floors and the staircase. The lilt of the words gradually formed in her mind into a Housemaid’s Miserere, to be repeated, rather meaninglessly but with a sense of comfort. She would feel better by and by. She must light the fires.

The flames were first born in a faint blue flicker, and then swiftly growing lusty, purred and coquetted at her from their iron cages. The rhythm of their lithe and feline movements woke the reflections that had been slumbering in their nests, high among the overwhelming gold frondage of cornice and capital, which had been overgrown in a breath by the bronze forest of the darkness. Directly the light was turned off, the forest overgrew all this splendour, as an Indian jungle swallows up a city on the very instant of its desertion. To turn on the light was, similarly, the excavation of a buried town. And now the fire woke all these little reflections up in the branches, making them stir and preen themselves, and peep out of their dark high nests, as a wild creature moving through a forest at night would wake all the young birds, set them quivering and twittering.

At any rate, Elisa said to herself, it would grow warmer now. But no sooner had she thereby attempted to instil life into her starved hands and feet than it became necessary for her to draw aside the heavy plush curtains and open the shutters. With an air of protest she threw these clattering back against the wall; immediately, the cold twilight poked and scratched at the window-panes with its sharp black claws, then moaned like a hunted animal that craves shelter. Blue frost flowers could be seen expanding and contracting on the glass, and the cruel wind squeezed through every crevice, and conducted a paper-chase high into the grey air of the open plot outside, while within the grates the flames for a moment shrank back, became sensitive plants that closed, opened and closed, their red petals. Now there were the floors: no peace all day long, not a scrap of it (and the chilblains!). Bad enough in the summer, it was; but the visitors made it lively (though the other servants—being only ‘‘ temporaries ’’—got all the tips, of course) and never even half a day’s holiday. She might work her fingers right off her hand, she might, without anybody as much as minding. And nasty, too, because she was a foreigner. ‘‘ Remember you are only a German,” the manager had said. ‘‘ German,” indeed, and none the worse for that, she supposed ? And she gave the shutter a real bang, as she thought of it, with the back of her brush; that would teach them, perhaps; wake them up. Tea for those Two at eight o’clock. A lot of tea she’d get, she shouldn’t wonder. What had they come here for, in the winter ? To give trouble, extra trouble, that was all, with their tea and hot water bottles at all hours. ‘‘ German,” indeed ; and she struck the shutter a second time. The blow resounded up the stairs, through the empty corridors and rows of vacant rooms. ‘‘ Good gracious, ‘ Tibbits,’ whatever can that be ?”’ called out the deep, broken voice of Miss Collier-Floodgaye, timid in spite of its rather masculine tones And the more experienced Miss Bramley in the patient and effusive voice of a paid companion, answered, “‘ Nothing, dear! It’s quite

REVEILLE 15 all right. It must be Elisa. She should be in, in a few ‘minutes now, with the tea. How did you sleep, dear?” “ But it’s not light yet, Tibbits,” the first speaker protested. ‘‘ No, dear, but it’s nearly eight o’clock,’”’ and Miss Bramley could be heard chinking the gold chains of her little watch, as though she were hauling ina cable, hand over hand.

These two visitors were quite unaware of the intense nature of the interest, almost amounting to a commotion, for which their presence in the hotel was responsible. In these two rooms, and in these alone, were to be found the rarest of specimens, winter visitors. The other rooms lay in empty rows all these long months, filled with a bitter green light such as filters through into an aquarium, waiting for their next denizens. ,The other hotels in Newborough were equally guiltless of visitors: for English seaside resorts had not yet determined to inaugurate winter seasons with that wild and continuous display of Christmas hilarity, paper-caps, and any quantity of objects in paper, wool or cardboard, to be thrown at friends. The hotel managers had not yet grasped the fact that to induce the famous Continental gaiety—that spirit of Carnival—which must always be their aim, in English hearts, two things and two things only were essential—incessant noise and a multitude of pellets, balls, bullets, rolls of paper and streamers with which the jovial guests could pelt one another. No, at the time of which we are writing, guests during the dark months were an unwanted treasure. In the summer the town was ready for them, but in the short cold days it did not welcome nor even solicit them .. after all, it was a warm-weather place: and there must be something unusual . queer . . . about people who came to a hotel here in the winter. And the visitors could not have many friends, could they? or they would be spending Christmas with them? Then who were they, and why had they no friends ? Newborough was intent on an answer

CHAPTER fi

‘Here T am, an old man in a dry month,

Being read to by a boy, waiting for rain.’’ EVEN when Miss Collier-Floodgaye first came to Newborough, she appeared to be in failing health. Old, old with the strength and dignity of an antlered oak, in the manner of that tree, it seemed that—unless she was uprooted by some sudden fury of a wind—her gradual decline might extend over a considerable period. But her dark figure was only, really, to flit for a few winters across a darkening screen.

Her origin was, undoubtedly, an obscure one, and in her conversation she never referred or gave the most minute clue to it. In the build of her gaunt body, though, in the sweep of her features, in her large bones and stately stature, there lingered, surely, something rustic rather than urban. That deep, bold voice, which was her most marked characteristic, still held, it might be, the dying notes of a harsher, more Doric music. A farmer’s daughter, perhaps; but assuredly she was no tradesman’s offspring. And then, too, she was lacking altogether in the liveliness of the city.

Her dress was a Suitable translation of her. Sombre, with never a touch of colour, it enhanced her personality, adding to it the aged, grape-bloom dignity of a raven. Never intricate, bewildering or bewildered, as was the apparel of so many old ladies in Newborough, it yet conveyed a certain battered and buffeted pride that was not to be found in all their laces, shawls, frills and brooches. Her large hands were knotted and veined, unexpectedly virile, the counterpart of her voice. The few gold rings which adorned them were rather unexpected, and she wore no other jewellery. One ring in particular, remains in the memory, a ring designed to represent intercoiled snakes, with ruby eyes that flashed a piercing fire as she moved her bony hand. About this there was a subtle atmosphere, as if it were the testimony of an incident in the past, or would be the witness of some event in the future. Her slow gait, her halting step, the tapping of the malacca cane which aided it, all enhanced the difference between Miss Collier- Floodgaye and the ordinary dweller in hotels, and endowed her a little, even, with the air of the Wicked Fairy who went unasked to the Christening—not that any aura of evil emanated from her, but that there was undoubtedly a quality of strangeness clinging to her; which also raised her high above any symptoms of silliness that she might display. The whole effect, her very physique, the structure of her face, her deep voice, strong grey hair, and brown eye in which sometimes gleamed a brown-red light, seemed indicative of the hovering, somewhere in the air about, lurking behind, or just out of sight, ahead, of Tragedy. Yet she was ordinary enough in many ways. Though not so well informed as numerous invalid ladies of Newborough with regard to the constant crossing and recrossing genealogies of the county families, she, too, could spend happy hours in tracing a lost stitch in one of these intricately knitted septs.

But, however much interested in them, it was clear that she had never met a member of these tribes in all her long lifetime. Had she, then, been housekeeper to some rich man who had bequeathed her his fortune ? No, for surely her fate had been more interesting, more cruel, even. She was possessed of a dignity that was inborn and ingrained, while her education was as good as that of any other lady of her period. Was she, perhaps, the natural daughter of a distinguished man ? But this, again, hardly seemed a solution of the problem : for her life appeared to cover only the last fifteen years out of some seventy-four or five.

Once I thought I had discovered the secret . . . had she been married, fettered for life to lunatic or criminal ? Might not such a history account for the fear—if fear it was—that was felt in all the things personal to her? She wore no wedding-ring, but there was not about her any suggestion of spinsterhood. In the end, this theory, too, was discarded; for it seemed impossible in face of so many contradictory facts to reach any conclusion. She never explained where she had lived as a child, girl, young or middle-aged woman, nor did she ever allude to the part of the country from which she had sprung. Indeed, she had apparently contrived to be born into the world without human agency, fully dressed in black, at the age of approximately sixty years. Her past had thrown no discernible shadows. She had no friends to whom she could refer ; and no adventures which she could relate had befallen her. She wished, it seemed, to be accepted as she was, the creature only of immediate past and present.

In disposition the old lady was, most obviously, kind, generous and amiable. Of this there could be no doubt. Yet in all the long, accumulating treasure of her years, she had so far caught and made fast no friend except Miss Bramley, a paid Companion.

Now of all professions in this world, that of salaried friend is usually the most degrading, pernicious in its effect upon employed and employer: a declaration in common of their spiritual bankruptcy. For a poor woman to be forced to sell her friendship is infinitely more evil than for her to be obliged to sell her body. The prostitution is at the same time more prolonged and more hypocritical. The avowed prostitute declares an infamous trade by her ways and appearance. But paid Companionship is a less obvious, more subtle betrayal of personality ; a rarer, less robust vice of weaker souls: while for an old lady to have to descend into the ‘‘Agony ” or other columns of the 7zmes in order to buy friendship is as repulsive, surely, as the spectacle of an old man purchasing his love in the market-place. It is a vice unexcused by any inflammation of the senses: a form of slavery infinitely guileful, pathetic, and fatal alike to vendor and purchaser. It is a fraud committed by two undischarged and unrepentant spiritual-bankrupts, each intent on the deception of the other. Nor is the excuse of training valid, as it is in cases where Companion and Companioned are related. For example, the plight of martyr-daughter, of patient victimniece, so frequently to be observed in seaside towns and health resorts generally, may appear, at first glance, to be more tragic than that of the paid Companion because the former reap no financial benefits, hirereved slight, from their martyrdom. In reality, however their ultimate reward is more certain. The niece bound to hypochondriac aunt, the daughter chained to invalid mother, is but passing through a severe apprenticeship,

_for the whole time she is learning the tricks of that intricate and difficult art which herself will one day be called upon to practise. Not the faintest nuance of malice, not the most delicate shade of ill-temper is wasted on her, since these are intended to be skilful weapons for future use in her own hand Hereditary secrets and possessions are these, passed on from mother to daughter, from daughter to niece, from niece to daughter, for innumerable generations. In a lesser way, the preservation of these secrets, the loyalty which informs the entire body of such a society, is reminiscent of a medieval guild. And further, since daughter and niece are supposed to be free agents, they garner an additional reward in the popularity of an imagined sacrifice (“‘ She has been so good, given her whole life to looking after the old lady’’), while the paid Companion is not pitied, because the public knows that she “is paid to put up with it.’’ For those who are not parties to this particular bargain of mother and daughter, aunt and niece, refuse to recognize its existence. How are they, then, to comprehend that the brutal ill-temper of the elder woman, the mild reproach of the younger, the constant and maddening sequence of grumbles from one, the patient and galling brightness of the other, are merely so many essays in technique, like a prima donna’s rendering of scales ? They will not understand that a properly constituted and hypochondriac elderly relative takes years to manufacture; that, like a Damascene blade, before being ‘“‘turned-out,’”’ she must be tempered by fire, plunged into icy water, hammered by iron, submitted to countless tests, innumerable processes, constantly and over a long period of years. Fortunately those who are privy to the bargain recognize its nature, extent and obligations. It would, indeed, be a Wicked Aunt (infinitely more serpentine in evil than the Wicked Uncle of the Babesin-the-Wood) who, in breach of unwritten contract, left away her fortune—for to be as unpleasant as this it is necessary to have substantial private means—a very foolish Mother’s Right-Hand, who, mistaking the educational nature of her crucifixion, cast away all the subtle weapons of her armoury—resignation, meekness, altruism and abnegation—and packed her trunk But each can threaten, as the climax of a series of manceuvres that have extended over several months, that she will do so, without endangering her prospects or incurring the genuine displeasure of the other: for each knows that such a pretence is merely the most effective, final and dramatic move in the whole pageant of this tactical display—the big gun which is held in reserve and can never in reality be dragged up

Alas, with a paid victim of alien blood, the relationship between employed and employer is beyond comparison more tragic, more devastating in its effect on both. If the Companion is free at any moment to give notice of the severance of her friendship at a given date, the whole basis of illusion (the very thing for which she is paid—the “‘ goods”’ in fact) is shattered beyond repair. It becomes, therefore, an understood, though undefined and unmentionable clause in the unwritten contract of such employment that it is to continue throughout the lifetime of the elder lady: the agreement can only be terminated by her death. For the Companion to die first would put her completely outside the pale: it is a sin which cannot even be referred to in the presence of old ladies.

Similarly, to give notice would be ‘not to play the game”’: for it might hinder the Companioned one from venting her temper, giving rein to her malice, or indulging fully that other fault, whichever it may be, that has hitherto prevented her from making—or at any rate from keeping—unsalaried friends. For the Companioned one is, actually, paying a person to be her friend, in order that herself may continue unchecked in some particular line of vice so violent that no friend unpaid would tolerate it. That is why she has to pay.

And, in the case of a professional Companion, there is another powerful financial motive besides her ordinary emolument: a hope, never, alas, to be a certainty, of a fortune to reach her as a posthumous gift from the elder lady. Unfortunately the employer seldom feels bound to the strict execution of this part of the unwritten contract, seldom feels morally compelled to carry it out, in the way that mother or aunt would feel it incumbent upon them to provide for their daughters or nieces For mother and aunt learnt their trade in the same hard school, and hold their very worldly goods on the condition, however undefined, that they enable their hereditary secrets and family tricks to be handed on, like the small blue flame of a sacred lamp in a temple, from one generation to another. The unrelated-companioned does not hold her possessions on such easy terms. She does not belong to so strict or haughty a caste. She must buy herself into the companioned-class. Compared with mother or aunt, she is what the Jewish profiteer who purchases a country seat is to the old landlord from whom he acquires it. She has no traditions, and is bound by no sense of obligation. Further, she knows that the gambling clause of the unwritten contract—that one which relates to her will—often hovers in the mind of her Companion: and this serves to summon up before the elder lady what she most wishes to forget—Death !—and accordingly irritates her the more, lashing her into extremes of sulking and ill-temper. And then, even at the end of these rather fragrant moments of surrendering to her ruling vice, the employer is again reminded, by the restraint and forced ‘‘ pleasantries’ of her Companion, that the latter dare not answer her back, or give notice, for fear of an alteration in her will—Death again! Thus the jangling skeleton of the richer lady is for ever dancing between them, clacking its castanet-like bones with a ghastly grace: while still alive, her own ghost dogs her and seeks to envenom still further the relations between employer and employed.

Miss Collier-Floodgaye’s motives, however, for hiring a friend were rather irregular. No violent temper or brutal fault marred her character. But owing to events —of which it was possible for others to feel the existence, though not to conjecture the kind—she was sad (sombre rather than sad, perhaps) and lonely and rich: and, though undoubtedly courageous (for courage was a virtue that could be detected even in her mien) it appeared as though she were a little frightened, alarmed, it may be, by the accumulation of her years. She did not wish to be left alone in a silence, a silence in which the few voices that spoke were those of the dead. It is doubtful if the old lady was frightened of anything more tangible than her own memories.

But she yearned for friendship . certainly she yearned for friendship: and since, through lack of charm, by a total deficiency in all social qualities, she was debarred from making a friend in the usual way (however much she longed and strove to do so), she was in the end obliged to buy one. When this purchase had been completed, she hoped, perhaps, by means of one friend, who would always be in her company, thus learning to understand and appreciate her, to make others. Miss Bramley, in fact, was in part decoy, in part interpreter ; for the old lady needed someone who would translate and dramatize her for other people.

And it seemed to Miss Collier-Floodgaye that she had found what she wanted. So unused was she to the ways of a friend that she was able to accept the over-effusive manner of her new Companion as the genuine coin of friendship. She could not test this mintage by experience, discount it by previous disappointments, or in any way compare the genuine money with the counterfeit

Chapter III

“ Freeze, freeze, thou bitter sky, That dost not bite so nigh As benefits forgot : Though you the waters warp, Thy sting is not so sharp As friend remember’d not.”

MIss TERESA BRAMLEY’S life had been no easy one From the beginning she had been given her full share of difficulties. She was one of the two daughters of Canon Bramley, of Torquay. Her other important relative was her father’s aunt, Miss Titherley-Bramley, who for many years lived at Newborough. Both her father and this aunt were supposed to have private fortunes.

At the age of twenty-six, Miss Bramley had found herself alone in the world, for her mother had died many years ago, and her sister, married to a former curate of the Canon’s, was too busy child-bearing to be of very much use to anyone The Canon had been so distressed at his aunt’s death—or rather at the unexpected fact that her estate had, so to speak, predeceased her— that he never really recovered from the shock of it, soon afterwards dying himself. After his own death, a discovery of a similar sort was made. Miss Titherley- Bramley had failed to leave any evidence behind her of her long passage through this world, while the chief proofs of the Canon’s travail here below were Miss

_ Teresa Bramley, Mildred (her married sister) and a few faded photographs.

Miss Teresa Bramley was, therefore, left behind with no assets except her youth, a simple country freshness, rather than prettiness, an indifferent education, a naturally charming voice unassisted by any training or knowledge of music, a disposition at once affectionate, religious and extremely malleable, together with a few more assertive, more tangible certificates of genteel birth and upbringing.

Personal belongings are perhaps among the most pathetic forms of human self-expression. Nelson’s pigtail at Greenwich Hospital, the cat that once belonged to Petrarch, and stuffed now, is still to be seen in his house, the giant turtle in the Zoological Gardens which, traditionally, was the pet of Richard III, King Alfred’s jewel at the Ashmolean, the tortoise-shell-veneered cane that once aided Beau Brummell in his rather unsteady walk, the crescent-shaped hat which Napoleon wore on his return from Elba—perhaps the most remarkable resurrection of the last thousand years—and now to be seen in the palace of Fontainebleau, all these are infinitely more poignant than the written stories of their illustrious proprietors. It is these relics of vanished affection, vanity or fashion, which portray the men who owned them, summon them up before us much more clearly than the most magic brush or the finest pen. Miss Bramley’s personal property (net) and private treasures, after the Canon’s affairs had been wound up and his debts paid, comprised :