‘You can. If you only would. I’m sure you’re clever. You look clever. I’m not clever. I do wish I was. I think I should have been happier if I’d been clever. It must be nice to do things. I’ve so often thought that if I could have painted pictures or ridden a motor-cycle or something, I should have got more out of life.’
Harriet agreed, gravely, that it was perhaps a good thing; to have an occupation of some sort.,
‘But of course,’ said Mrs Weldon, ‘I was never brought up to that. I have lived for my emotions. I can’t help it. I suppose I am made that way. Of course, my married life was a tragedy. But that’s all over now. And my son — you might not think I was old enough to have a grown-up son,
my dear, but I was married scandalously young — my son has been a sad disappointment to me. He has no heart — and that does seem strange, seeing that I am really all heart myself. I am devoted to my son, dear Miss Vane, but young people are so unsympathetic. If only he had been kinder to me, I could have lived in and for him. Everybody always said what a wonderful mother I was, But it’s terribly lonely when one’s own child deserts one, and one can’t be blamed for snatching a little happiness, can one?’
‘I know that,’ said Harriet. ‘I’ve tried snatching, It didn’t work, though.’
‘Didn’t it?’
‘No. We quarrelled, and then — well, he died and they thought I’d murdered him. I didn’t, as a matter of fact. Somebody else did; but it was all very disagreeable..’
‘You poor thing. But, of course, you are clever. You do things. That must make it easier. But what am I to do? I don’t even know how to set about clearing up all this terrible business about Paul. But you are clever and you will help me — won’t you?’
‘Suppose you tell me just exactly what you want done.’
‘Yes, of course. I’m so stupid I can’t even explain things properly. But you see, Miss Vane, I know, I know absolutely, that poor Paul couldn’t have — done anything rash. He couldn’t. He was so utterly happy with me, and looking forward to it all.’
‘To what?’ asked Harriet.
‘Why, to our marriage,’ said Mrs Weldon, as, though the matter was self-evident.
‘Oh, I see. I’m so sorry. I didn’t realise you were going to be married. When?’
‘In a fortnight’s time. As soon as I could be ready for it. We were so happy — like children—’
Tears gathered again in Mrs Weldon’s eyes.
‘I will tell you all about it. I came here last January. I had been very ill and the doctor said I needed a mild climate, and I was so tired of the Riviera. I thought I’d try Wilvercombe just for a change. I came here. It really is a very nice’ hotel, you know, and I’d been here once before with Lady Hartlepool — but she died last year, you know. The very first night T was here, Paul came over and asked me to dance. We seemed to be drawn together. From the moment our eyes met, we knew we had found one another. He was lonely, too. We danced together every night. We went for long drives together and he told me all about’ his sad life. We were both exiles in our own way.’
‘Oh yes — he came from Russia.’
‘Yes, as a tiny boy. Poor little soul. He was really a prince, you know but he never liked to say too much about that Just a hint here and there. He felt it very much, being reduced to being a professional dancer. I told him — when we got to know one another better — that he was a prince in my heart now, and he said that that was better to him than an Imperial crown, poor boy. He loved me terribly. He quite frightened me sometimes. Russians are so passionate, you know.’
‘Of course, of course,’ said Harriet. ‘You didn’t, have any misunderstanding or anything that might have led him—?’
‘Oh, no!’ We were too marvellously at one together. We danced together that last night, and he whispered to me that there was a great’ and wonderful change coming into his life. He was all eagerness and excitement. He used to get terribly excited over the least little thing, of course but this was a real, big excitement and happiness. He danced so wonderfully that night. He told me it was because his heart was so full of joy that he felt as if he was, dancing on air. He said: “I may have to go away tomorrow — but ‘I can’t tell you yet where or why.” I didn’t ask him anything more, because that would have spoilt it, but naturally I knew what he meant. He had been getting the licence, and we should be married in a fortnight after that’
‘Where were you going to be married?’
‘In London. In church, of course, because I think a registrar’s office is, so depressing. Don’t you? Of course he’d have to go and stay in the parish — that was what he meant by going away. We didn’t want anybody here to know,our secret beforehand, because there might have been unkind talk. You see, I’m a little bit older than he was, and people say such horrid things. I was a little worried about it myself, but Paul always said, “It is the heart that counts, Little Flower”—he called me that, because my name is Flora — such a dreadful name, I can’t think how, my poor dear parents came to choose it—“It is the heart that counts, and your heart is just seventeen.” It was beautiful of him, but quite, true. I felt seventeen when I was with him
Harriet murmured something: inaudible. This conversation was dreadful to her. It was nauseating, pitiful, artificial yet horribly real; grotesquely comic and worse than tragic. She wanted to stop it at all costs, and she wanted at all costs to go on and disentangle the few threads of fact from the gaudy tangle of absurdity.
‘He had never loved anybody till he met me,’ went on Mrs Weldon. ‘There is something so fresh and scared in a young man’s first love. One feels — well, almost reverent. He was jealous of my former marriage, but I told him he need not be. I was such a child when I married John Weldon, far too young to realise what love meant. I was utterly unawakened — till I met Paul. There had been other men, I don’t say there hadn’t, who wanted to marry me (I was left a widow very early), but they meant nothing to me — nothing at all. “The heart of a girl with the experience of a woman” that was Paul’s lovely way of putting it.. And it was true, my dear, indeed it was.’
‘I’m sure it was,’ said Harriet, trying to put conviction into her tone.
‘Paul — he was so handsome and so graceful — if you could have seen him as he was! And he was very modest and not the least bit spoilt, though all the women ran after him. He was afraid, to speak to me for a long time — to tell me how he felt about me, I mean. As a matter of fact, I had to take the first step, or he never would have dared to speak, though it was quite obvious how he felt. In fact, though we got engaged in February, he suggested putting the wedding off till June. He felt — so sweet and thoughtful of him — that
we ought to wait and try to overcome my son’s opposition. Of course, Paul’s position made him very sensitive. You see, I’m rather well off, and of course, he hadn’t a penny, poor boy, and he always refused to take any presents from me before we were married. He’d had to make his own way all alone, because those horrible Bolsheviks didn’t leave him anything.’
‘Who looked after him when he first came to England?’
‘The woman who brought him over. He ‘called’ her “old Natasha”, and said she was a peasant-woman and absolutely devoted to him. But she died very soon, and then a Jewish tailor and his family were kind to him. They adopted him and made him a British subject, and, gave him their own name of Goldschmidt. After that, their business failed somehow, and they were terribly poor. Paul had to run errands and sell newspapers. Then they tried emigrating to New York, but that was still worse. Then they died, and Paul had to look after himself. Paul didn’t like to say very much about that part of his life. It was all so terrible to him — like a bad dream.’