CHAPTER I

NATHALIE SWAN

No one perhaps in the United Kingdom was quite so frightened as was
Nathalie Swan on the third day of November 1924, sitting in a
third-class carriage about quarter to five of a cold, windy, darkening
afternoon. Her train was drawing her into Paddington Station, and how
she wished that she were dead!

She sat in a corner on the hard, dusty seat, her hands clenched, her
heart beating with hot, thick, hammering throbs. She wished that she
were dead. She was an orphan. No one in the world needed her. The
Proudies whom she was abandoning had been very, very good to her, but
certainly did not need her. The famous Mrs. Frost to whom she was going
would almost surely not be good to her–and as to needing her . . .

Open upon her lap was a number of that shiny geographically illustrated
paper the _London News_, and among other portraits was one of Hans
Frost, and under it was written:

Mr. Hans Frost, whose Seventieth Birthday occurs on
November 3. His friends and admirers are marking the
occasion with a suitable presentation.

Kind Samuel Proudie had not known that the photograph was there, when at
Polchester Station he had bought illustrated papers and flung them on to
her lap. She herself had, of course, not known it, and it had been with
a kind of shock that she had recognised the well-known features, the
square rugged face with the deep, penetrating eyes, the round head with
its short, thick, black hair, the face austere like a priest’s, the
shoulders broad, the body rather squat, the short sturdy legs, standing
there in the beautiful book-lined library–no man of seventy here
surely. Not even a man of letters. Rather priest plus prize-fighter plus
(in some implied kindly geniality) Father Christmas without the beard.

And then at the last something enigmatic. . . . Or did one imagine that
because one knew how great he was?

Nathalie was nineteen years and no fool. She had had this face in front
of her, framed in a neat black frame for the last six years, had carried
it with her everywhere, had had it always in her bedroom wherever she
might be. For was he not her uncle, her famous, marvellous uncle whom
she had never seen, but had made her hero, her conception of God,
indeed, ever since she could remember?

How tiny, but how defiant, she had been on that first morning at the
Polchester High School, when, hemmed in by tormentors, she had boasted:
‘You can do what you like, but I’ve got a grander uncle than you have!’

The name, Hans Frost, had meant nothing to them until they had inquired
of fathers and mothers at home, but then, after those inquiries, she had
received her coveted glory.

‘Mother says he’s the most wonderful writer. What’s he like? Does he
take you to theatres when you’re in London?’

And then must come the sad confession that she had never seen him, that
he had perhaps never heard of her, that he was her uncle only because he
had married her aunt.

And yet some glory lingered. The time had come at last when she read his
books. Always surreptitiously. They were forbidden. Mrs. Proudie thought
them shocking. All except the fairy stories, and they might also be
shocking, did one understand what they meant. . . .

Nathalie read some of the fairy stories first: _The Crystal Bell_, _The
Duchess of Paradis_, _The Palace of Ice_. She did not at the time bother
about inner meanings. She took the pictures for what they were. The
Prince in _The Crystal Bell_ crossing the Lake of Fire, the Duchess of
Paradis opening the casket of jade, the Dwarfs in _Green Parrots_ tying
the tails of the monkeys together while they slept. Then (she was
seventeen now) she came to the novels. She saved up her money and bought
_The Praddons_, _The Silver Tree_, _Joy has Three Faces_ and _The
Chinese Miracle_.

Of these she liked _The Praddons_ best. She could follow that easily
with its crowds of people, its London scene and its definite story of
Isabel Praddon and her unhappy marriage. She noticed that the later in
his life the books appeared the more difficult they became.

She always cut pieces from the paper when they concerned him. The
greatest time was when, in his fifty-ninth year, he was dangerously ill.
The whole of London, the whole of England, even the whole of Europe and
America, waited breathlessly.

She read how groups of people lingered outside his door, how the King
and Queen sent inquiries, she remembered the newspaper headlines on the
morning after the crisis of his illness was successfully passed.

He had never, perhaps, been quite so famous again. The war had
immediately followed. Uncle Hans’ mother–dead many years–had been a
German. He had lived in retirement during the war, had said very little.
After _The Chinese Miracle_, which came out in the autumn of 1914, he
had published nothing in the war years save his volume of essays, _The
War and the Artist_.

At school during those years she had been torn between her loyalties.
She was patriotic, of course, but Uncle Hans was as much her God as
ever. It wasn’t her fault or his that his mother had been a German. But
she had not mentioned him when she need not. She had not been a coward,
but perhaps–a little of a diplomatist. . . .

She worshipped Uncle Hans, but she did not worship Aunt Ruth. For one
thing she had never seen Uncle Hans and had seen Aunt Ruth. Aunt Ruth
had, in 1919, spent two whole nights under the Proudie roof. She had
been visiting friends in Cornwall, and, passing through Glebeshire,
stopped for two nights in Polchester to ‘see her little niece.’ She had
been all kindness and condescension, lovely to look at and lovely to
smell. Very sweet to the Proudies, who were no relation and had looked
after little Nathalie all these years simply because Mrs. Proudie and
Nathalie’s mother ‘had been girl friends together.’

Nathalie had been only fourteen at the time. She had been given holiday
from the High School, and Aunt Ruth had taken her for a drive–and that
drive had been for Nathalie the most terrifying of all her life’s
experiences.

Aunt Ruth had been determined to be kind, and was probably satisfied
that she had been. As they sat on the broad back seat of the handsome
motor-car Aunt Ruth had asked many questions in her melodious, but very
deciding, voice. Was Nathalie happy at school? What was her favourite
subject in lessons? Did she like games? and, at the last, was she a good
little girl, because she would have to earn her living when she grew up?

There were certain things in Aunt Ruth that reminded Nathalie very oddly
of her mother, who had been Aunt Ruth’s sister. Oddly, because the same
things that were adorable in Nathalie’s mother were in some strange way
terrifying in Aunt Ruth–a note in her voice, a smile, a gesture with
her hand. These things brought back her mother to Nathalie so
desperately, because in a way they seemed to attempt to betray her, as
though now that she was gone and had no one to defend her they were
attacking her, that Nathalie to her own surprise and chagrin burst into
tears.

Here would have been an occasion for aunt and niece to come together,
and had they done so the lives of many people might have been changed,
but it happened that the motor-car was just re-entering Polchester, and
Mrs. Frost had a keen sense of public absurdity and a wise consciousness
of the necessity for self-control. And Nathalie hated herself for crying
and hated her aunt for seeing her cry. So Mrs. Frost left Polchester
thinking her niece ‘a silly little girl,’ and Nathalie thought her aunt
‘simply terrifying.’

How astonishing then, all these years afterwards, to discover that Aunt
Ruth wanted her to live with her ‘for a time’ in London. There could be
no question about Nathalie’s acceptance. The Proudies were keeping her
only out of kindness; she was nearly grown up and must soon be ‘looking
after herself’–and her aunt’s house in London would be a splendid place
to jump off from!

And then there would be the famous, wonderful Uncle Hans, who must
surely sometimes be visible when you were living under the same roof
with him! If only she were not so terribly frightened of Aunt Ruth! But
perhaps now she wouldn’t be! It was, however, as Mrs. Proudie had so
often told her, her worst fault to be frightened. She had never,
possibly, recovered from that awful morning when, only eight years of
age, she had been with her father and mother in a pony-cart in the lanes
above Rafiel and the pony had run away, turning over the pony-cart,
throwing them all out, killing her father at once. Her mother had died
six months later.

She had never, possibly, recovered from that, but nevertheless she had a
brave spirit. When she was frightened of something she strung herself
up, summoning all her forces like the Princess about to meet the dragon.
She had her aids on these occasions, superstitions for the most part,
like counting fifty and allowing nothing to stop her, saying the Lord’s
Prayer, praying to her father and thinking of Uncle Hans.

And now, how odd, it was as though she were praying to Uncle Hans to
defend her against Aunt Ruth! Odd and shocking too. How she wished that
she was not trembling, how she detested and despised her own cowardice.
Nineteen years of age and near to tears, because she was going to stay
with her aunt.

She could not think of London, through whose grimy and sordid side
streets she was now entering. She did not see the rows of windows with
flower-pots and undergarments and occasional human heads painted on to
the swaying background of chequered brick. She did not look down on to
the strips of long snaky street let into the sombre walls. She saw
nothing. Only she longed for Mrs. Proudie with her large heaving bosom,
her capacity for gasping amazement at quite ordinary things, her
conviction that food and drink would solve every problem; for Canon
Proudie, Precentor of the Cathedral in public and the husband of Mrs.
Proudie in private, that meek mild man with the beautiful voice and
passion for cricket; and for Edgar Proudie, eldest Proudie child, soon
to take Holy Orders, vowed to celibacy and the Higher Anglicanism; the
very thought of them made the tears hot behind her eyes. The train drew
into a Paddington Station blurred and wobbly with smoke and noise and
clatter, trying vainly to cover an inexhaustible loneliness.