A Legacy (18 page)

"Edu—"

"What?"

"Well may you ask."

Edu and Sarah left cards on the Feldens. Clara asked Gustavus when he'd come with her to return the call. "Must we still bother with those Merzes?" said Gustavus.

"I don't have to go to the Palace?" said Julius. "One hears it's hideous. Besides we shall not be here."

"You must," said Edu and Sarah.

"My father didn't like the Kaiser; not that he knew him."

"It's not the same one."

"Jules's father might not have found him an improvement."

"Is it true that you're to be given the Red Eagle?" said Edu.

"Oh I hope not," said Julius.

"It'll be hard to refuse."

"Do you know I thought of that. Perhaps my brother Gustavus could have it in my place, he used to be fond of that kind of thing. You think I ought to suggest it?"

"Can you transfer a decoration?" said Edu.

"Why don't you speak to Bernin?"

"Yes," said Julius, "he may have heard something about it."

"Jules—about those diamonds?"

"Yes?"

"Melanie's diamonds?"

Jules only just perceptibly flinched at the name. "Oh, those brooches and things," he said.

"They might want to have them for their granddaughter. Nobody's said anything so far, but don't you think it would be a good idea to have them put in a safe? Incidentally where are they?"

"The maid would know," said Julius.

"I meant to ask you about the ring. Wouldn't you like to keep that? The one you gave her? The topaze."

"My father's ring. Yes, I would."

"Jules did you ever buy that house?"

"What house?"

"Your house. The one in France."

"Oh no, it was quite the wrong house."

"Then you could buy one now? You know Edu and I wanted you to have a house."

"Oh but it was as good as having one, the one in Spain particularly—I made so many changes."

"That was taken on a lease?"

"It was rented."

"On what terms?"

"The servants did all that. Pedro. He went to the notary for all those stamps."

"Jules, may I ask whether you have got the price of a house now?"

"The price of a house? Oh, I shouldn't think so. You see, I've been wanting to speak to you about that, there seem to be so many debts."

"Debts?" said Sarah, and realized that she spoke too sharply.

"You know—bills for things."

Count Bernin thought Jules's idea sensible. The right gesture—same family, elder brother, after all Gustavus had rendered services—and he passed on the suggestion to the proper quarters. His Majesty agreed. The man at the head of the Decorations Department happened to be a general; the old boy looked up Felden and found he was a chap in

the Baden Body Dragoons—a bit young, some secret mission very likely, the way they were scattering about Red Eagles nowadays—and in due course the Order of the Red Eagle Second Class was given to Johannes. Gustavus waited; believed himself forgotten; but for once Count Bernin, who was pleased with his own prudence in small matters, refused to do anything about it.

Clara said that Sarah was a nice simple woman and she believed very fond of Jules, and took the horse omnibus out by herself. Sarah was at home.

She rang for tea, but Clara said if she did not give too much trouble might she have a small cup of black coffee, just one small cup, she always felt all in at that hour. "You know how much poverty there is in this town."

The windows stood wide open to the long northern afternoon. A smell of lime came in from the garden. Sarah looked at her Pissarro—a wheelbarrow, a blue dress, insubstantial, in fluffy grass below light fruit trees. "Have you any idea what Jules is going to do?" she said.

He would have to marry again, said Clara. A woman of his own faith.

Sarah remarked that this excellent project could hardly be put under way in the next few weeks.

Indeed not, said Clara.

"And what does he propose to do until this woman—of his own faith—has materialized?"

"Do?"

Sarah sat back.

"Oh, I see," said Clara. "Naturally I offered to take the child meanwhile, my godchild. Naturally. It would not be easy; at my age. I am forty-nine. And my time is not my own. But you know, he won't hear of it? He seemed surprised. He says he's going to look after it himself. He's attached to it already. His father was like that."

"And where is he going to live this parental idyll?"

"Where? Oh France I expect, or Spain. Yes, Spain very likely. I should think they'll be leaving us quite soon."

"Baroness," said Sarah, "your brother-in-law won't be at all well off now."

"Jules? I suppose not. There never was much to the Felden property. They are not men attached to money."

"It is what men live on."

Here Clara made the movement of her mouth that had contributed so much to the boredom of Gustavus's life.

Sarah began again. "I don't think you quite realize the position. When Jules was married to my sister-in-law, it was arranged that they receive an annual income from her parents. This was in the form of an allowance to their daughter; no independent provision was made for Jules at the time."

"I'm afraid I do not understand about such matters," Clara said. "If there is anything your husband would wish to say to mine—"

Anger now gained Sarah. She half rose; desisted. Even sitting, both women were tall; both would as lief have stood. "I see it's no use," she said. "What do you expect them to say to each other—?" Then she subsided. "I was trying to help. . . ."

Clara flung out her fine hands. The swift gesture from that rigid body brought out something excessive. "Forgive me—of course one must speak. It is only that I do not understand about settlements. What is it that you want to say to me?"

"I don't know," said Sarah.

"Jules will have less money now than when his wife was alive? That is not hard to say."

"I never thought she would die," said Sarah.

"Didn't your

Again impatience swept her. "Let us keep to the point," she said. Then, "Less money? Possibly none."

"He'll still have his own."

"That was gone long ago."

"No, no. How could it?"

"It wasn't a great deal to begin with and he spent too much."

"He spent too much," said Clara. "One does do that."

"I believe you're the most frivolous woman I've ever met," said Sarah.

"Then you say Jules will be in actual want?"

"Your words." Sarah thought of Frankfort; of her father: in his study explaining to them all exactly where they stood. Questions—answers. She looked again at her Pissarro. Her father would not have bought it. She had never liked Frankfort.

"Do you like this picture?" she said.

Clara stabbed her lorgnette in the direction of the wall. "What is the subject?" she asked.

"A farmyard in Normandy, if you like."

"I do not see the use of these things," said Clara. "Is it not insisting on error, this making images of what is itself illusion?"

"What?" said Sarah. "Is that how you see it? All of it? Illusion. You may be right; for me it is this that can make a farmyard real."

Clara made another attempt at looking. "Surely not? Oh I cannot believe that—this is a harmless painting. We could ask him to live with us at Sigmundshofen only that the house is to be shut up. It's so very large. Now that my brother is to be in the cabinet again—he doesn't want me to talk about it, but why not? as it is true—we shall all be moving to Berlin. Yet I don't see why we could not leave some rooms open for Jules, and the child. There'd be the caretaker. The farm is rented, though we seem to be getting eggs— I'm afraid there wouldn't be any actual money. There're so many claims on mine—Gustavus never seems to have any either; my brother has been very generous but I really don't think I can come to him again ... I daresay Jules will be all right. There's the Catechism and school I built on the grounds, that will be convenient later on. We'd be coming down every year for the Landtag Elections, perhaps Jules could give my brother a hand— In Lent we open the house to the Saint-Eustatius Association for their retreat."

"Has Jules stayed with you before?" said Sarah. "We asked him; I don't think he ever came."

The next day Sarah took him to Voss Strasse. On their way in she stopped. "Oh look at them! So beautiful. Your cats."

He seemed taken aback. He glanced at the yellow creatures on their pedestals. "I'd forgotten about them," he said.

"They give me pleasure every time. I really must see that they're left to me."

"Oh I shouldn't," he said.

"I ought to have warned you. One is not supposed to mention anything, anything that's happened. I find it ghastly. But don't."

"Naturally," said Julius.

They all lunched together. Afterwards Jules went up to the nursery.

In the evening Sarah said to him, "You really enjoy, do you, the company of this baby?"

"Well, yes."

"They'll never let her go. You see they are afraid."

"It's my child; I could take her away."

"Perhaps you could. I see great trouble ahead. They connect abroad with illness— The child's a German subject. They could do many things. Perhaps these places were not healthy—"

"What can I do?" said Julius.

"How sad you look," said Sarah.

He stood facing her. She got up. "I should wait a bit," she said, turning to the window. "On Wednesday they're all leaving for Bad Kreuznach; it's their date for the cure. Why don't you go with them?" She pulled the curtains. "It's not a bad little Spa . . . They've taken a whole floor. . . . They might as well begin to get used to you."

T
omorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow. . . . Life, in the neat sad dry little French phrase that bundles it all into its place, life is never as bad nor as good as one thinks. La vie, voyez-vous ga n'est jamais si bon ni si mauvais qu'on croit. Never as bad, never as good. . . . When? At the instant of calamity, at the edge of fear? when the bad news is brought, and the trap felt sprung, or the loss strikes home? At low ebb, in tedium, in accidie? In the moments of renewal? the transfiguration of love, the flush of work, the grace of a new vision, the long-held now? Or later, when the doors shut, one after another, and regret moves in the heart like a steel coil? Never as good, never as bad, but a drab, bearable half-sleep banked by a little store of this and that, subsiding after visitations and alarms, a drowsing, often not uneasy, down the years, an even-paced irreversible passage—life, the run of lives, the sum of life? Is it consoling? is it the whole truth? Is it inevitable? The years that followed the death of her husband's sisters cannot have been happy ones for Sarah—Edu's gambling, Edu's waxing debts, Edu's unchanging nature: the whole repeated cycle that had pressed her into a graceless self-reliance; she was growing old; time was passing; everything that happened, or not happened, could be seen as adding to the final shape; and as we know her she must have been living on her own close terms with disillusionment. Her children were growing up. Into stiff, matter-of-fact, secretive girls, unlike the girls of her own youth, curiously out of sympathy with their parents and their time. When they had been small she had looked forward
to the future when they would be old enough for her to love them; meanwhile, she had seen that they were given everything she believed they ought to have, had indeed watched over them with almost compassionate concern, prospecting their evolving looks as one scans a company report. She had a great fellow-feeling for women and was resolved that her daughters should have everything from straight backs and teeth to interests, to prepare them for their lot; now it was found they could not love her. What she had done to Edu, she had largely done for them; perhaps they judged her, took their father's side; she could not tell. What did they say about it to each other? did they talk? did they get on? There was about these young creatures a hardness and sufficiency that puzzled and intimidated Sarah who did not know that it was said to come from her. She admitted to herself another disappointment —their minds had not grown interesting. Yet what grieved her most was that she saw in both of them signs of the sources of her own frustration.

Of none of this she spoke. Few people were at ease with her; nobody laughed with her at her jokes. For the two or three eminent men who came to her house, and for the painters who dined with her and whose studios she visited, she was too rich, too idle, her manners remained too uncompromising, to think of her as anything but a hostess or a patron. They blossomed under her Midas's touch; her most intimate conversations were with her brother-in-law's mistress, and her most refreshing talks were with lawyers.

Yet throughout her troubles Sarah never took her hand off Julius. When they were both in Berlin he was her constant companion. Whenever her consciousness was startled again, as it occasionally was, into attention to his idiosyncrasies, he exasperated her and she showed him the impatience one shows to an otherwise well-kempt and handsome dog who has once more dragged the same old bone into the drawing room. Yet as a rule his presence soothed
her; she liked being chaperoned by him in auction rooms, she had come to see him as the pleasant person to have in one's family, and she could assure herself that she had shepherded his existence into a predictable, and not intolerable, course. He had his flat in Paris, was courted by the dealers quite as much as she was, took a house in February wherever he wished to, in Morocco, in Corsica, in Spain; seemed attached, as far as she could make out, to a series of agreeable women. Had the old Merzes not continued to pay Melanie's allowance year in year out, quarter after quarter, into his account, and not as much as mentioned it? Had they not once cr twice paid a mild miscellany of debts? He spent less time in Germany than she did. He stayed at Voss Strasse for Christmas and in summer followed them en villegiature; otherwise he came and went as often or as little as he believed he must or dared, and to see his daughter, the ugly, cosseted, ignorant little girl, wrapped in muffs and ermine, on whom he seemed to bestow the same exaggerated devotion already bestowed on her by Emil, Gottlieb, Marie, Grandmama and Grandpapa.