The Lonely Lady of Dulwich Read online

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  The Lonely Lady of Dulwich

  First published in 1934

  © Estate of Maurice Baring; House of Stratus 1934-2015

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

  The right of Maurice Baring to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted.

  This edition published in 2015 by House of Stratus, an imprint of

  Stratus Books Ltd., Lisandra House, Fore Street, Looe,

  Cornwall, PL13 1AD, UK.

  Typeset by House of Stratus.

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library and the Library of Congress.

  EAN ISBN Edition

  0755101014 9780755101016 Print

  0755150902 9780755150908 Kindle

  0755151003 9780755151004 Epub

  0755151100 9780755151103 Epdf

  This is a fictional work and all characters are drawn from the author’s imagination.

  Any resemblance or similarities to persons either living or dead are entirely coincidental.

  www.houseofstratus.com

  About the Author

  Born in London in 1874, Maurice Baring was a man of letters, and a scion of a family long prominent in the financial ventures of the British Empire. The son of the 1st Baron Revelstoke (a director of the Bank of England and a senior partner at Baring Bros.), Baring was educated at Eton and at Cambridge, and joined the diplomatic service in 1898.

  In 1904 he became a journalist and reported the Russo-Japanese War in Manchuria; later he was a correspondent in Russia and Constantinople.

  He is credited with having discovered Chekov’s work in Moscow and helping to introduce it to the West.

  Baring is remembered as a versatile, prolific and highly successful writer, who produced articles, plays, biographies, criticism, poetry, translations, stories and novels. He is regarded as a representative of the social culture that flourished in England before World War I, his work highly regarded to this day for the acute intimate portraits of the time.

  ‘He is brimful of talent of every kind, and there runs through everything he does a streak of real originality.’ – J B Priestley

  To

  B and C

  #xa0;

  #xa0;

  Post tempestatem magna serenitas.

  THOMAS À KEMPIS.

  CHAPTER I

  In the summer of 1919 I spent a fortnight at Haréville taking the waters. There I met an old lady whom I will call Mrs Legge. I was living at Dulwich at the time.

  Mrs Legge hearing this, asked me if I had met a Mrs Harmer who lived there. I had not. In the course of the fortnight I spent at Haréville, Mrs Legge told me Mrs Harmer’s story; this is the story, or rather what I have made of it.

  Oliver Mostyn, half Irish, with a dash of French blood, educated in Germany and Paris and widely travelled, hadbeen an adventurer in the best sense of the word. He had been adventurous, and adventures had come to him. In some ways he had been like Dryden’s famous portrait of Buckingham: everything by starts and nothing long, nearly successful in so many enterprises and undertakings but never quite: he made a discovery just too late, someone had just made it; he had nearly won the Grand National, riding the horse that had come in fourth; he had three times almost been elected to parliament; he had once practically made a fortune, but had lost it immediately. He wrote a play which was produced and was almost a success, but the same play was soon after written by someone else, and was a success. He was a handsome, gay, popular man, good-humoured, friendly and easy. The one thing in his life which was not a failure was his marriage. His wife was an American from the South, who had been brought up in a French convent: Dolores Foyle. He had met her in Paris. This all happened a long time ago, and he was married before the days of the Second Empire. In her youth she was beautiful: transparent, fair, blue-eyed, and ethereal; the dazzle of her looks and her complexion passed quickly; but the radiance of her good humour and of an inexhaustible vein of fun remained. She had three daughters, and her whole life was spent in an arduous and, in the end, successful effort to make both ends meet. That they did meet, in spite of her husband’s irrepressible and spontaneous extravagance, was due to her unobtrusive cleverness as a manager and to her unostentatious talent for housekeeping. She had been poor in her youth; she had done the housework and the cooking herself, and nobody could make a more appetising salad ora lighter omelette. Her daughters grew up extremely good-looking; and she hoped they might marry well. She took them out in London, where her husband would take a house for the season. He had to live in London sometimes – he explained – because of the racing; he was obliged to race, not for pleasure, of course; he didn’t care for racing, he would say, “unless you go for the day with a pal, and even then it’s a damned bore”; but he had to race from economy so as to meet his expenses. His wife never contradicted him when he said this, but merely hoped he would not lose quite as much money as at the last meeting. On the whole, he was lucky, and didn’t lose much; but he certainly made nothing; for what he did win on the racecourse he lost at the clubs, playing cards.

  Dolores pinned her hopes on her daughters.

  The eldest was rather too like a waxwork for real beauty, and exaggerated like a child’s picture of a beauty; she was born in the wrong age, and would have been perfect for the screen; nevertheless, she attracted everybody’s attention and arrested the devotion of an English nobleman, Lord St Alwyn, andall seemed well. He was wealthy and of good lineage, had possessed estates and a London house. Unfortunately, soon after the marriage he lost all his fortune on the Turf. Everything had to be sold; things went badly in every way; discord at home was the first result, and finally separation. His wife, Teresa, went abroad and settled in a pension at Florence; there wasno divorce, as the Mostyns were Catholics. There were no children. Teresa was given an allowance by her husband’s trustees, and he lived on cheerfully in debt, as before, and in grave sin with a respectable-looking widow. Everyone said he had behaved badly.

  The second daughter, Agnes, a dark Juno-like figure, married a respectable but obscure Italian diplomat: one of those diplomats who seem to be sent only to the uninteresting places. She was, however, quite happy, whether at Berne, or Rio, or Cettinje.

  Then there was the third daughter, Zita. Her mother, who had been in her youth better-looking than all her three daughters put together, said with a sigh that Zita was not going to be so good-looking as her sisters. She would not, in fact, hold a candle to them.

  But Oliver Mostyn, who was a great connoisseur of female beauty, said that Zita would be first, and the rest nowhere, and that she would marry a millionaire. When Zita was eighteen, and just about to come out, after having spent five years at a convent, she was, in spite of her mother’s dismal prognostications, a lovely creature. There was a softness and a radiance about her that made you at once think of the dawn and doves, of apple blossom and lilac and lilies of the valley.

  But just as she was ready to be taken out in London, Oliver Mostyn died of a cold caught at a race meeting, much to the regret of a number of friends, especially those who played whist with him at his club, where he managed to lose everything except his temper.

  Oliver’s death altered the whole situation. He had left little; there was little to leave. Dolores sold what she could and migrated to the South of France, taking a cheap little apartment at Cannes, whence,
after a short time, she migrated to a cheaper pension at San Remo. The first year, being in deep mourning, they spent in comparative seclusion. The next year Dolores did the best she could for Zita, who was greatly admired, but in spite of her beauty – perhaps because of it – had no success. It seemed, in fact, to keep people aloof and at a distance, until Robert Harmer appeared on the scene. It was Eastertime, and Dolores and Zita were at Nice; it was the last gay winter season of the Second Empire.

  Robert Harmer was in business, a north country Englishman, a banker, successful and well-to-do. He fell in love with Zita at first sight, and determined to marry her. Before the end of a fortnight he had spoken to Dolores and had proposed to Zita. Dolores was, of course, enchanted. Did he mind Zita being a pauper? Not a bit. Did he mind the difference of religion? Not at all; not even if the children –? No, for in those days the sons of mixed marriages could still be brought up in the religion of their father, the daughters in their mother’s. Robert Harmer had no objection; he thought it did not matter what the religion of women was, and not very much what that of men might be, unless it made things inconvenient.

  Zita was not in the least in love with him. So far there had been only a fleeting shadow of a romance in her life. Shehad been attracted by a good-looking but unsatisfactory young man who was said to be undesirable, reckless, unscrupulous, and a spendthrift. He acted on the theory that every woman is at heart a rake, and that, if you make it quite clear at once that you are yourself a rake, heart, body and soul, you are certain to find favour. The more aloof, difficult and remote a woman might seem to be, the more ardent and persistent were the advances that he made. He was generally successful. People seemed shy of Zita, and said they could not get on with her. Not so Rupert Westrel, for such was his name; he treated Zita with familiarity and ease; disguising nothing, and paying her the most outrageous compliments. Dolores was a little bit uneasy, but Rupert attracted her, and she could never resist a sense of humour, which he had in an eminent degree. He proposed to Zita, and she accepted him at once; but, as neither of them had a penny, they agreed to wait. While they were waiting, Rupert made the acquaintance of a luscious and lively American heiress. Soon, with an air of resigned martyrdom, he broke off his engagement with Zita, deeply against his will, as he explained, and shortly afterwards he was engaged to the heiress and married her. They both, it may be said, lived to regret it. Zita was not heartbroken, but she was disappointed. Rupert had been charming to her, and nobody else spoke to her at all.

  Zita refused Robert Harmer’s first proposal, but six months later he renewed it.

  This time she consented, much to the delight of her mother. In accepting Robert, Zita had simply followed the dictates of common sense. “If I fall in love with anyone, he is sure to be undesirable, impossible, in fact,” she reasoned, “because those are the people one falls in love with; and if I don’t marry it means hanging round my mother’s neck like a millstone, while she drags me round from pension to pension and denies herself everything. She has done that all her life. She had hopes of her other daughters; they disappointed her, and now I have the chance of making all right by marrying a man who may not be a Romeo or a Prince Charming, but is desirable, honest, kind, and well off.”

  Marriage was a shock to Zita, a much greater shock than she had expected. She not only discovered when she had married someone that she had married someone else, but all the facts of marriage, major and minor, were a shock and a surprise to her. They lived in the country, in a house called Wallington. Robert was as kind as possible, and wanted her to have her way in everything. There was no mother-in-law; such relations as he had were either dead or at a distance. She had nothing to complain of. He made no difficulty about her religion, and she was driven to Mass every Sunday. Zita was not particularly religious, but fulfilled her duties as a matter of course. But it was chiefly the want of any interchange of ideas or interests that surprised her. She knew less about her husband and his doings than if he had been living at the South Pole. Every Monday morning, except at Christmas, Easter, Whitsuntide and in August, he went up to London and stayed there till Friday evening, sleeping at his club, where he had a permanent bedroom. He never mentioned his affairs. He was never cross or ill-tempered. He was anxious that Zita should enjoy herself and have everything she liked. He would beg her to invite her friends to the house. She had none. Her sisters were both abroad, so was her mother; and she did not wish for the searchlight of Mrs Mostyn’s all-seeing glance to be thrown on the situation.

  She saw quite a number of people; there were neighbours. Robert often asked them to luncheon on Sundays, and for visits during the shooting season, in the autumn, or at Christmas. Five miles off there were Lord and Lady St Eustace, who lived childless in their historic house, where Queen Elizabeth had slept and Charles II had hidden, which was, nevertheless, often full of people, young and old, and where luncheon was laid for fourteen every day, whether there were guests or not. Then a little nearer there were Colonel Gallop and his wife, Lady Emily. He was a great deal younger than she was; they had sons and daughters. Emily Gallop was full of energy, and flattered herself she knew about almost everything on earth – the sports of men, the traditions of the army and the navy, as well as the feminine accomplishments of women; the arts as well as the crafts. She would inspect Zita’s needlework and criticize it, and make her play duets with her on the pianoforte or accompany her while she herself sang. She had a robust contralto voice, and sang a little out of tune when tired; at other times she would insist on inspecting the bedrooms and the stables at Wallington, or spend an evening going through Zita’s household books with her, seeing what might be reduced with advantage. She would come with her husband, whose high spirits were almost excessive, and one felt that in spite of all her energy, Emily Gallop was a little fatigued by her husband’s youth. Sometimes Robert and Zita would go and stay with the Gallops. Visits in those days seldom lasted less than a week, and sometimes ten days, and even when Robert was too busy to go himself, Zita used to go by herself to long shooting parties, or in the summer to cricket weeks.

  But on the whole, she did not mind these visits, for both the Gallops and the St Eustaces were friendly. Then there were many other neighbours who did not entertain, but who came for the day or for a meal: the Anglican Bishop of Easthampton, a cultivated, charming, and paradoxical divine, suspected of having leanings towards the Greek Church; and his wife, who was a mass of erudition and militant philanthropy. They never appeared on Sundays; they were too busy, but they sometimes came to dine. Then there was the local parson who lived in the village, rubicund and old-fashioned, fond of partridge-shooting and port; and his nextdoor neighbour, Charles Baxter, who was in the city, in Baxter and Coles’ firm, and a great friend of Robert’s. He was a bachelor, and used to come to Easthampton at Easter and Christmas, and sometimes for a week or two in September and October. He was middle-aged, but he liked the young. He was fond of racing, coursing, and Homer and Horace. His first two hobbies he was able to share with Robert Harmer; not the third; indeed, the only books at Wallington were a whole series of bound volumes of Ruff’s Guide to the Turf ; and the only instrument of culture, and indeed the only outstanding ornament in the encircling leather and rep, was a barrel-organ that imitated an orchestra and made a deafening noise.

  In the autumn of the first year of her marriage Zita gave birth to a little girl, but, after a long confinement, during which her sufferings were great, the baby was stillborn. The doctors said Zita could never have another baby. Robert took the news calmly, as if he had always expected it. Another year passed in the way which has been described. Zita never went to London; neither her mother nor her sisters came to see her. Mrs Mostyn had settled down to live with her eldest daughter, Teresa, at Florence. Business then made it necessary for Robert to go to Buenos Aires; Zita went with him. She enjoyed the journey and the new sights and sounds, and the colour; but life was not different. The only people they saw were business friends of Robert, who smok
ed large cigars, and occasionally the British Minister or one of the secretaries from the Legation. Zita made no friends, and the climate did not agree with her. They lived there two years.

  And then one day Robert told her suddenly they were going to Paris for good, at least for some years.

  They settled in Paris. Robert Harmer took the apartment and engaged the servants. He did all that. It was taken for granted Zita was incapable of any practical action. Zita thought that a new life was about to begin for her. She had not enjoyed living in the country in England; she had liked South America still less. Altogether marriage had been a shattering disillusion to her, little as she had expected. Now she was looking forwardto Paris. She had never lived there, but she had been through it and heard a great deal about it from her father.

  “I expect we shall get to know a lot of French people,” she said to Robert the day they arrived there.

  “French people keep to themselves,” said Robert.

  “My father used to say he knew a lot of people,” she said, “such interesting people – writers.”

  “I don’t care for Bohemians,” he said, “frowsty sort of sportsmen.”

  “But he knew all sorts of people – doctors, lawyers, and soldiers.”

  “They would be too clever for me,” said Robert.

  “But Papa used to go racing a great deal.”

  “Yes, he did,” said Robert, rather grimly.

  After this conversation, Zita suspected the worst.

  CHAPTER II

  Zita’s fears were realized. Their life in Paris was just the same as it had been in England and in Buenos Aires. Robert invited either his partner or a business friend to luncheon or to dinner; they talked business and smoked large cigars. Robert went to the races when he could. They knew no French people; they left cards at the Embassy, and went to one garden-party at the end of the summer. The theatres were shut. Once or twice they dined at a café chantant out of doors. Robert took Zita to the Opera once, but slept through the performance. Zita spent much time by herself. She drove in the Bois in the afternoon, and sometimes went to picture galleries with her maid.