The great moment

Front matter

Gass

Book

*

Foreword

The Great Moment is a story dealing with the study of conflicting instincts in a girl, inherited from a highly civilized aristocratic English father and a wild Russian Gypsy mother. Nadine is anything but a heroine! She is indeed a primitive creature in many respects, and so, in these tired sophisticated days, may be interesting on that account. The hero, Bayard Delaval, represents splendid American manhood. The public will have to say whether they think I have por¬ trayed him well! At all events, he is an attractive character, and many girls would like to meet him! Every scene in the book is drawn from life, and from intimate knowledge of such persons and such places. To me it would seem presumption ever to write of what I do not personally know. I wanted to make an American hero, because I have a deep respect for the young American spirit, which is not well enough known in Europe. So this is my little contribution to better acquaintance, and as such I leave it in the hands of my kind readers.

New York, June, 1923 ELINOR GlyN face of the Madonna in the ikon gently smiled, as in pity at human failings.

But now the chief of the troop called a halt, and the obedient girls drew back into line. Only Nada, the lovely, wicked, unbiddable Nada, was determined to go on, and when the chief seized her roughly to pull her back, she turned upon him and bit his arm! With a cry of rage the man wiped the blood with his sleeve, and would have beaten her; but the Englishman rushed forward and took her from him, and then with the spring of a panther she was on the table, and sweeping the glasses and dishes aside with her red booted feet, she began the maddest dance. The musicians, exalted to frenzy, never had played so well, and amidst a scene of indescribable excitement and intoxication, at last, exhausted, the beautiful wild thing fell back into Sir Edward’s arms.

* * * * *

And the memory of her kisses stays with him still. * * * * *

Out there in the chill November sunlight he could see his daughter, Nadine. How like she was growing to Nada—what was to be done?

*****

Miss Blenkensop walked on a little ahead. Nadine was in one of her impossible moods, and it was best to leave the child to herself. She had stopped for a moment to speak to one of the gardeners, old Prodgers, who was sweeping the dead leaves from the lawn.

Hester Blenkensop’s life at Pelham Court could not be considered as a bed of roses, in spite of the liberal salary she received, and the complete authority she exercised. The truth was that her charge, Nadine Pelham, had a temperament ill suited to the conven¬ tional standards of this admirable governess!

Miss Blenkensop could never be quite certain what she meant to do next, or how any fresh aspect of even the most ordinary branch of knowledge she was trying to drum into her head, was going to affect her! But Sir Edward trusted her completely, and she was not a woman to betray a trust.

So she stayed on year after year—buried away there down in the country, miles from anywhere, in a secluded corner of Somerset, far from the world. That everything was conducted with a bygone state helped a little. Hester Blenkensop liked state and regularity, but she could have wished that Sir Edward came to his home oftener—the responsibility of Nadine’s educa¬ tion and training in suitable ideas of correct behaviour was no light burden, and seldom touching the outside world made her fear that rust might accumulate. For she liked to feel that she was well up in modern scientific ideas, and she read anything that she could get hold of—so long as it had nothing to do with sex. Sex was nasty, and should be ignored, if it could not be alto¬ gether stamped out. No true lady should admit that there was such a thing! and Miss Blenkensop meant to take good care that Nadine Pelham never heard the word mentioned even. Sex, indeed! Stuff and nonsense, modern nervy rubbish!

Miss Blenkensop’s face was as hard as nails; she was thinking that it was a great pity that the natures of parents should have to come out again in their children, instead of there having been some sensible plan evolved where they could all be made to suitable patterns. And why should the worse parent invariably seem to leave the indelible mark ?

Here was Sir Edward Pelham—everything that an English gentleman should be—dignified, reserved, given to no excesses, and to think that he should have married a Russian gipsy, a wild creature who could neither read nor write! And who, in her short two years, of life at Pelham Court, had scandalized the whole neighbour¬ hood. The parson’s wife, Mrs. Gleeson, had whispered terrible things into Miss Blenkensop’s virgin ears, when she first came to Pelham, about the dead Nada!

So what could one expect from Nada’s daughter?

“Blenkie! Blenkie! Adolphus and Jacob have six lovely little fluffy babies, Prodgers tells me! I did not know boys could have children! ” and Nadine came up at a run. “ Do hurry, and I’ll take you to see them.”

Miss Blenkensop flushed painfully; she had never wanted her charge to have those guinea-pigs. One could not be quite sure how any animal would turn out, even if it was called Adolphus or Jacob! But Nadine rushed her along until she came to the hutch beyond the potting-sheds, next to the stable-yard.

The child was wild with delight. Her black curly hair flying in the November wind, and her eyes—“ blue as the fairy flax ”—brilliant with excitement. Some young things—all her own—whom she could play with presently! Where on earth could they have come from in the night? But there was no use in asking Blenkie anything!

“ Aren’t they heavenly! ” Her voice was awed, as with reverential care she pushed Adolphus to one side, and displayed Jacob endeavoring to hide a numer¬ ous progeny.

“ I am told guinea-pigs eat their young if you look at them, Nadine,” Miss Blenkensop remarked severely. “ Come away, dear, and leave them alone for the present.”

Nadine’s blue eyes filled with angry tears. “ Jacob and Adolphus could never be cannibals, Miss Blenken¬ sop,” she said indignantly.

But old Prodgers had arrived on the scene by now: “ It would be wiser, Miss, to leave them for a day or two,” he said. So, reluctantly, Nadine allowed herself to be taken away.

They were going into the chapel across the lawn to put the wreath on Nada’s tomb, a duty performed every Saturday, summer and winter. But to-day the wreath was a particularly nice one, for to-morrow would be the tenth anniversary of the death of the beautiful gipsy. Nadine knew every bit of the carving upon the tomb—fine marble in excellent taste—and she had wondered ever since she could think what the mother was like who slept inside it? It seemed very confus¬ ing to her that they had to put flowers on a bit of stone, if the person beneath it could not feel or see anything, and was in reality up in the sky somewhere, singing with angels! She had argued with Blenkie about it often, but could get no satisfactory answer.

“ The spirit of your mother is in heaven, my dear,” Miss Blenkensop always replied, feeling herself uncom¬ fortable at having to assert a fib: for of course such a person as Nada would not be up there, but down in a region unmentioned in polite society!

“ Then, if mamma is in heaven, why must we put flowers on the tomb, Blenkie ? ”

“ To her memory, dear.”

“ But no one wants to remember mamma. Papa won’t talk of her, ever—you won’t tell me anything about her—Nanna never spoke of her—Augustine never saw her, of course. Mrs. Acton speaks of some¬ thing else whenever I have asked her about mamma, because she must have known her, since she’s been the housekeeper since Adam!—and you won’t let me talk to the housemaids, even old Mary, who was here when I was bom. Why must I put flowers to mamma’s memory ? ”

And, driven into a comer, Miss Blenkensop replied:

“ Because your father wishes it.”

When she quoted Sir Edward, Nadine knew that this was final, and with a rebellious sigh, she usually abandoned the conversation. To-day she was worked up, the advent of the guinea-pigs’ family had excited her. Her father’s unexpected return last night had dis¬ turbed her. Life seemed a complicated affair, full of inhibitions. If Nadine could have worded the concen¬ trated essence of her soul thoughts, as she knelt by her mother’s tomb that November day of 1913 when she was nearly eleven years old, they would have expressed themselves in the cry of Sterne’s starling: “ I can’t get out—I can’t get out—”

Meanwhile, in the library, Sir Edward was musing. He owed an obvious duty to the child. He must do everything he possibly could to crush out that unfortunate wildness in her which Blenkensop’s report showed every time he returned home. To surround her with the quietest influences, to keep her away from the world, no one could be better than Blenkensop, and the French maid, Augustine, had the highest references; but with the instincts she would be bound to inherit, as well as the beauty, of her mother, the most careful training would be necessary to eliminate the Russian gipsy in¬ stincts, and shape her into the Pelham mould.

Sir Edward looked up to the portrait above the mantelpiece of an ancestor of his of Elizabeth’s time. They had come down in unbroken line—always re¬ spected—always admirable members of their rank and name. And now an accident had robbed him of his dead brother’s son, a promising boy—and the whole thing would go to a distant cousin, Eustace by name— one whom he had never seen. Oh! what a tragedy that he himself had no son. And yet—and yet—nothing bad was known of Eustace, a worthy youth just enter¬ ing the diplomatic service, and if Nadine had been a boy? Who knows?—and here Sir Edward sighed again; and, rising, rang the bell.

“ Tell Miss Blenkensop to come to me,” he said to the footman who answered it, “ as soon as she comes in.”

And presently the door opened and the governess entered, a little breathlessly.

“ What have you to report about my daughter, may I ask, this time ? ”

Sir Edward was always sententious, and if he mixed in the world in London and Paris in an up-todate way, none but the ceremonious manners of a bygone time were seen in his home.

Miss Blenkensop had nothing special to complain of—only Nadine’s irrepressible personality—unac¬ countable fits of depression, and equally unaccountable bursts of gaiety. Her worst action in the last fortnight had been to pour her bedroom jug of water down upon the Reverend Mr. Gleeson, who had come up with some papers about the village concert, and was in conver¬ sation with herself, just under Nadine’s window!

“ I hate Mr. Gleeson,” was all Nadine would say when reproached and scolded about it, and nothing would make her apologize! “ 4 1 shan’t say I am sorry ’ is what she said, Sir Edward. ‘ He has no business to have such a red nose! ’ ”

For a moment the flicker of a smile came into Nadine’s parent’s eyes. It was certainly true Mr. Gleeson was no beauty, and his nose was a beacon well known all over the parish, but this was not sufficient reason for him to have had a bedroom jug of cold water poured over him on a chilly November day!

“ I smoothed the matter over as best I could at the rectory, Sir Edward. I am afraid I was obliged to tell an untruth, and say it was an accident, but I could not take Nadine to church on the Sunday after, for she went into fits of laughter whenever Mr. Gleeson was mentioned, and put out her tongue in a most unseemly way, and I really feared it might happen in the sacred edifice; but some guinea-pigs that she was given by Johnny Parker, the new head keeper’s son, took her attention off the matter, and now she has for¬ gotten about it ”; then Miss Blenkensop blushed uneasily. “ I had hoped the animals were males, Sir Edward, and Nadine had christened them ‘ Adolphus ’ and ‘ Jacob/ but unfortunately Jacob has had a large family, and Prodgers gave me to understand that these unpleasant incidents occur very frequently among these species of the animal world/’

“ You had better dispose of them quietly, Miss Blenkensop,” and Sir Edward turned to the window, where beyond Nadine could now be seen taking jumps backwards and forwards over the big broom made of twigs with which old Prodgers had been sweeping the lawn. Its end was propped on to a garden bench, and the old man himself balanced the handle to make a hurdle—raising it higher and higher each time. Then when she had had enough of this, with a wild whoop she kicked the broom into the air, and was off racing round and round the beautiful velvety lawn, which stretched away down to the Italian garden, calling to the two new sheep-dogs with shrill shouts of joy.

“ So full of life! ” her father said with unconscious admiration. And then he sighed.

Chapter II

M USIC had a powerful effect upon Nadine, espe¬ cially certain kinds. Sir Edward had a party to shoot his large coverts early in the December of 1913, and among them an attache from the Russian Embassy, Prince Kurousov—a rather decadent wit, with a pretty talent for the violin. Nadine, who came down in the afternoon for tea with Blenkie, took a violent fancy to him; she sat as close to him as she could, and gazed up into his face, and when he began playing Russian music in the crimson drawing-room after tea, it seemed to Sir Edward that the spirit of Nada lived again in their child.

Prince Kurousov played something with the “ Red Sarafane ” wailing through it, and he remembered that this was the very air which the gipsies had woven into their music to please the Grand Duke, and which Nada had danced to, on that unforgettable night when she first melted into his arms. Nadine jumped up from her seat beside Miss Blenkensop, and, picking up her little skirts, began to pirouette about the room, all sense of shyness or decorum quite forgotten in her pleasure. The guests were delighted, and full of admiration. Only Lord Crombie looked on with a glass fixed in his knowing old eye, and Sir Edward winced with the pain of his memories.

“ You’ll probably have to be careful with that child, Ned,” Lord Crombie said—they were companions in the diplomatic service, and very old friends. “ Watch 14 her movements, she has not learned these from her dancing mistress! ”

Nadine’s little shoulders were fluttering in a rhyth¬ mic fashion, and there was a good deal more stamp than tiptoeing in her gyrations. A wild delight came over Prince Kurousov.

“ Beautiful little Russian gipsy! ” he said, throwing down his violin and picking her up in his arms. But Nadine turned upon him with a fierce gesture, and showed all her strong white teeth. If he had not let her go that instant she would have bitten his arm.

A great anger came over Sir Edward—anger and fear—and he advanced towards the child with a look in his grey eyes which seemed to freeze the blood in her veins.

Before he could speak to her, Lord Crombie linked his arm in his, and drew him towards the group of men by the fireplace—while Lady Crombie stretched out her hands to the little frightened creature, and drew her to her side, telling her lightly how charmingly she had danced. Nadine pulled herself together, the years of stern rule and discipline re-asserted their influence, and she sank upon the sofa beside this kind friend trembling all over, but bravely keeping back her tears.

“ Papa—did not think I danced—well,” she whis¬ pered, with a sob in her rather deep voice, which always had a husky note in it. “ He was very angry—oh! dear Lady Crombie—why? ”

“ I think you imagined it, darling; we all admired you so much. Did the Russian mistress teach you, who was teaching my little nieces in London this spring? but you have caught the spirit of the Russian dancing far better than they did.”

“Russian? No, no one has ever taught me any¬ thing Russian. I have an old Frenchman from Yeominster every Saturday, Monsieur Peritet; we do all the positions and valses and one steps, but when Blenkie plays in the evenings I always dance by myself, and I make the dances up as I go on.”

Lady Crombie took the little olive-ivory face in her hands, and looked kindly into the blue eyes.

“ Are you lonely, dear little girl,” she asked ten¬ derly, “here in this great house, with no one to play with but your dogs ? ”

The tears welled up slowly now and brimmed over.

“ I don’t know; I suppose I am. I wouldn’t be if everything I want to do was not wrong.”

Some of the other guests came up then and joined them, and Lady Crombie could say no more; but when her husband came into her dressing-room as she was resting before dinner, she said to him:

“ I think Ned is making a terrible mistake in the way he is suppressing that child; she wants love and kindness and understanding, not Miss Blenkensop all the time.”

Lord Crombie warmed his back at the fire: he was a whimsical old bird, and nothing much escaped him.

“ There are two methods of dealing with savages; you beat them into submission, and they think you are a god; or you arouse their devotion, and they serve you as a slave. Nadine is half-savage, you know, and Ned is not the kind of nature to call forth much devo¬ tion—dear old pal that he is.”

“ I am glad you said half savage,” Lady Crombie retorted indignantly. “ She is the sweetest, most tender¬ hearted little creature, and anything could be got out of her by sympathy and love; but they will drive her to wickedness before she is grown up—unless they crush the life and spirit out of her quite.”

“ Ned has some pretty terrible memories with the mother, you know; nothing would tame her, she dis¬ graced him at every moment, but he adored her to the end.”

“ The more reason, then, that he should try to under¬ stand her child.”

“ Well, Ill give him a hint how the matter has struck you, Viola. Meanwhile, you’d better dress, or you will be late.”

But that night Nadine cried herself to sleep—and in her uneasy dreams she could always hear the “ Red Sarafane.”

* * * * *

The war produced very few changes at Pelham Court—beyond all the men-servants under fifty dis¬ appearing from view. Sir Edward returned to the Foreign Office, which he had retired from years before, and was often away on distant missions. Miss Blenkensop worked at war comforts incessantly, and Nadine also. But Nadine hated sewing, she always longed to be a soldier, and go out and fight! It had one effect, however, which had strong influence upon the child’s character. Instead of her studies being continued in Dresden and Paris, as her father had planned, for six long years she and Miss Blenkensop remained buried at Pelham Court. Decrepit elderly masters came down from London, and did what they could, and Hester Blenkensop herself was a person of great cultivation: so Nadine at the age of eighteen, when Sir Edward returned in 1920 from Japan, was a girl well polished in literature and the polite sciences; but of the world and life she was as absolutely ignorant as she had been at ten.

The first night she and her father dined together— Blenkie had a headache, and was in her bed—fortu¬ nately, Sir Edward felt! as he was able to study his child uninterruptedly during the meal. She had grown into a beautiful young woman—that was what jumped to the eyes at the first glance!—and with a something of fascination about her not easy to define. Was it her over-voluptuous mouth?—or the strange contrast of her bright blue eyes with that ivory-olive skin? She was still slender and childish-looking in figure, but some¬ how nothing of the child seemed to be left in her eyes. They were mysterious and passionate, and made people feel uneasy when they looked at them long.

Her manner was sullen, with bursts of cdlineries — little fascinating caresses she bestowed upon her father and her beloved sheep-dogs from time to time.

“ Papa, I am sick to death of Pelham Court. I loathe the country. I want now to go out and sample the world.”

“ We must see about it, Nadine.”

“ Which means you don’t intend to take me! ” A rebellious light came into her eyes, although she still stood in absolute awe of her father, just as her mother Nada had done. There was something in the cold cynical regard of Sir Edward which froze most people, and which dominated completely that savage half in Nadine. It was that part of her spirit which she had inherited from him which alone was able to stand against him, but that was not sufficiently developed yet to show! As she spoke, there came to her father the old feeling of fear—what would it mean when once she knew the world?

Marriage was the best thing which could happen to her—and fortunately a very suitable one could be arranged, for was not Eustace Pelham at home on leave from Rome, and if only the two young people could be brought together now, before Nadine had seen a choice of partners, the desire of his heart might be accomplished, and the family could go on through his daughter as well as his cousin’s son. He would write to the Crombies, who were coming down next week for a farewell visit before they left on the mission to Washington, and ask them to bring Eustace with them; he had been one of Lord Crombie’s secretaries in Teheran before going to Rome.

Sir Edward’s eye then travelled to Nadine’s simple dress. Yes she would look very different in some pretty Paris clothes. Lady Crombie, who knew all about these sorts of things, could be asked to bring some. She was in Paris now; he would write her a long letter to-night, there would yet be time. So with all these thoughts in his head he had not been paying much attention to Nadine, who had fallen into silence.

What would the return of her father mean? The years had seemed so long to her! These years of war and restriction, buried in the country, and he had come home so seldom! Of course he could not help that, poor papa, he had to do his duty; but now war was over, and surely in the coming season he would take her up to London and let her enjoy life!

There was one book which Nadine loved: it was the story of the knight Bayard, “ Sans peur et sans reproche.” Miss Blenkensop, while completely dis¬ couraging even the simplest novels, had had sense enough to see that such a nature as Nadine's must have some hero to worship, and when a beautifully illus¬ trated copy of this admirable gentleman's adventures came down among birthday gifts for her pupil’s four¬ teenth birthday, Miss Blenkensop was delighted to encourage interest in it. In fact she looked upon the book as sent from heaven, for here was a romantic his¬ tory absolutely devoid of any allusion to sex. Here was a knight whose love for the Lady of Frussasco could be dwelt on, and the beauty of it extolled. And in short, Bayard had been made to stand as a type of perfect man—and in Nadine’s pure wild heart he became en¬ shrined as king. She had built her own romance around him as she grew older, and now Bayard, for her, repre¬ sented the lover who would come and set her free, who would take her far away from Blenkie and papa, and Pelham Court, out to see the world.

But the good knight would certainly not have recognized the picture her imagination had made of him, could he have returned to earth! When she thought of the future, it was invariably of some roman¬ tic meeting with her hero; and in some modern way she felt that she, too, would give a broidered sleeve to spur him on to victory! Perhaps he would be a politician, perhaps a soldier; but whoever he might be, she meant to be his star!

The book itself, with its beautiful binding, had become a sort of talisman; she had it always on her table near her—although now she seldom opened its leaves, and the real story of Bayard interested her no more.

* * * * *

Her father’s shrewd eyes were looking through and through her as they sat at dinner. Yes, it would not do to wait, or let her have a season in London; with the licence which had broken out since the war, there never would be any holding her when once she mixed with other young girls.

He realized that rebellious thoughts were coursing through her mind, and that it would be wiser to change their trend. So he exerted himself to amuse her—he drew her out, encouraged her to talk, and for the first time treated her as a grown-up responsible being. Nadine’s ivory-olive cheeks flush with the pale scarlet tone which made her so brilliantly glowing whenever the least excitement or emotion moved her. Sir Edward’s subtle sardonic wit had always made her a little uncom¬ fortable. She knew as a child when he was being witty. She had a vague feeling that she ought to understand and smile, but she never did quite. She liked plain things, over which you could make no mistake about the fun of them. Nada had been wont to fly into ungov¬ ernable passions when Sir Edward laughed quietly, and Nadine had often longed to do so too. But to-night he made no allusions beyond her comprehension, and when she kissed him good-night, it was with more affection, and good fellowship, than had ever been between them before.

Then Sir Edward sat down at his writing-table, and indited a long epistle to his friend Viola Crombie. He took both husband and wife into his confidence. He told of the wish of his heart, that Nadine should marry his heir—since the place was entailed, and went with the title—and asked for their co-operation. Eustace should be broached upon the subject, and his consent obtained to the idea—and then Lady Crombie should choose some becoming frocks in Paris for Nadine, and have them sent over; and finally in a fortnight, when they would be coming down to Pelham Court to pay a farewell visit before leaving for Washington, they should bring Eustace Pelham with them.

All this completed, Sir Edward addressed the envelope with a sigh of relief.

And Nadine opened her window wide on this gusty April night and held out her arms. She felt something new was coming towards her. She knew not what.

Chapter III

O N the day, a fortnight later, when the Crombies and Eustace Pelham were expected, Nadine was having a wild gallop through the park. Old James, the groom who had accompanied her when on horseback since her childhood, had much ado to keep up with her.

“ Mad as a March hare, is Miss Pelham sometimes, give you my word,” was how he expressed it. “ She’s like a cat with the wind in its tail.”

The very fact of the Crombies arriving was a pleas¬ ure to Nadine, although she had heard nothing of Eustace. Anyone, from the outside world made a change, and two of the dresses had come from Paris, and that was also a joy. But there was always Blenkie, watchful and restraining, and it was only when out with old James that Nadine ever got away from her. She might not hunt—that too was forbidden—but she could gallop to her heart’s content along Forwood Gorse and the West Down—with James behind her.

Sir Edward was sitting alone in the library—that lofty, oak-panelled room with its many books—things were shaping themselves. Lady Crombie had written that Eustace Pelham had taken kindly to the idea of an alliance with the daughter of the head of the family. He was quite of the opinion that it would be a good plan to keep fortune and property together and he would ask Nadine to become his wife on the first suit¬ able moment during his visit.

“ There is no romance about Eustace, Ned,” Lady

Crombie wrote, “ (you will say, of course, that that is a fortunate thing!)—he has seen too much of the world to retain any illusions, and he shares your views that marriage turns out more happily if based upon material suitability. You will be answerable for Nadine. I can only tell you, my dear old friend, that I am glad that it is not my part of the business, for perhaps Nadine will not like him at all, and upset the whole apple cart.”