THE HOUSE AT MAADI
PART THE FIRST
An Afternoon in April
‘UGLINESS, squalor, is only a nuisance,’ he told himself. ‘It is beauty that hurts.’ Even in the house at Maadi, the house that held Rosemary Fairfield, he could lose himself in musing; and he remained lost until he became aware that a tall elderly woman with fine eyes and silvering hair moved across the room to greet him.
‘You’re Mr. Redshawe, of course. I’m Rosemary’s mother. It was so good of you to come.’ The young man’s evident shyness moved her to add, ‘You have met Rosemary, haven’t you?’
‘Thank you.’ He found his voice at last. ‘Yes, I had that pleasure three days ago in Cairo. She was in the company of Mr. Bunnard, my chief.’
‘My brother-in-law,’ said Mrs. Fairfield. ‘You like your work?’
‘Well,’ began Redshawe, ‘an Irrigation Company....’
His hostess smiled. At ease now, and reposing in the charm of her Irish voice and the kindliness of her speaking eyes, he smiled in return. As he looked into her lined face he felt that by holding himself very still he could almost hear the silken rustle of beauty’s vanishing skirts.
‘Tell me,’ Mrs. Fairfield said, leaning forward a little, ‘does my brother-in-law do any work, or do you and the rest do it all?’
He stared a moment at the dubious crease in his trousers. When he looked up, with a slight smile, ‘I’ve a tremendous respect for Mr. Bunnard,’ he assured her. ‘More than respect, if it’s not presumptuous to say so. But of course he’s a very big wig indeed, don’t you see? It’s only natural that he shouldn’t do very much.’
Mrs. Fairfield glowed maternally at the sight of his blushes.
‘How very nice you are,’ she surprised herself by saying, with the shadow of a tremor in her voice. ‘I’m so glad you came.’
He blushed again as he answered: ‘I’m most amazingly glad. I was terrified at first.’
Her smile was friendlier than ever.
‘Not of me, I’m sure. Of Mrs. Bunnard, perhaps. She is a very positive person—always has been.’
He wanted to blurt out: ‘No, it was your daughter that I was afraid of’; but he could not shake off the grip of his reticence.
‘So are all of that cult,’ he said. ‘They teach one their entertaining guesswork as though it were an exact science.... And Miss Fairfield—is she too a believer?’
‘Rosemary is rather a baffling girl,’ replied Rosemary’s mother. ‘She spends a lot of time with her aunt, and listens, listens. Yes, that is almost all there is to be said about Rosemary: she listens. At this moment she is no doubt at the Cairo Lodge, hearing about Yoga and Prana and Kamaloka.’
‘And other patent breakfast foods,’ said Redshawe, with a cadence so bitter as to bring wonder into his new friend’s eyes.
‘It would be a pity, don’t you think,’ he answered the question in her glance, ‘if she took all that stuff seriously?’
‘Aren’t you a little positive?’ she quizzed him.... ‘Ah, here is Mr. Bunnard.’
Almost boyishly diffident, the spare familiar figure of Redshawe’s chief sidled towards them. Mr. Bunnard was rather above medium height, but his earnest concentration on the pattern of the carpet made him seem smaller. When he raised his head a pair of ingenuous wondering eyes peered, through the circular lenses of his gold-rimmed spectacles, upon a new world.
‘Ah, Redshawe,’ said Mr. Bunnard, focussing his mild radiance upon the young man as they shook hands, ‘you’ve come then. How very nice.’
‘You’re just in time to tell us about the Atlantians, Dick,’ Mrs. Fairfield greeted him, with the air of having been discussing the Atlantians all the afternoon.
‘Very nice,’ repeated Mr. Bunnard, peering from one to the other.
‘Yes, I’ve come, sir,’ said Redshawe, ‘and I’ve brought every one of my seven bodies with me.’
Mr. Bunnard considered this remark with a smile that revealed for the fraction of a second an excellent set of artificial teeth.
‘Ah, you haven’t forgotten our little talk then.... But you’ve got a lot to learn yet. Seven planes and all interpenetrating. Is Hypatia at home, Sheila?’
‘My dear Dick! She is at the Lodge, of course, and Rosemary is with her. I expect we had better not wait tea for them. They’ll probably have something in Cairo.’
‘Perhaps Hassan will get us some tea,’ ventured Mr. Bunnard, ‘if we ask him.’
As though to his cue, the white-smocked, red-tarbooshed Hassan, the Berber servant, appeared at this moment in the doorway bringing tea on a large tray. In response to Mrs. Fairfield’s nod he shuffled noiselessly into the room, bowing and smirking in his expansive Oriental fashion, and set out the tea-things on an occasional table.
‘Seven planes and all interpenetrating,’ said Mr. Bunnard, appearing to extract a peculiar comfort from the idea. ‘We generally take tea in the French manner—or is it the Russian?—with lemon juice instead of milk. By the by, I’ve got some Thought Forms up in my den, Redshawe, that might interest you. Angry, affectionate, ambitious, pure, envious, sensual, and so on: all accurately coloured, you know. I’ve spent a lot of time on them. You’re not eating anything. I can recommend the shortbread: it came all the way from Scotland.’
Mrs. Fairfield, roused by a sound outside, turned in the act of filling Redshawe’s cup for the fifth time, to look out of the window.
‘Here are the truants,’ she said, ‘and we’ve nearly finished.’ And Redshawe, following her glance, saw the miraculous Rosemary standing on the gravel path outside. To his excited imagination it seemed that she was but for an instant poised lightly upon this globe before flying back to the paradise from which she had descended.
Then indeed came the whirlwind followed by the still small voice. Mrs. Bunnard, tall, angular, and, though quiet, masterful, with conscious power invaded the room: power which, however, broke like a spent wave on the adamant rock of Redshawe’s absorption in Rosemary Fairfield.
‘Mr. Redshawe, how are you?’ said Mrs. Bunnard, grasping his hand. ‘We have never been introduced, but I know you perfectly. This is my niece.’
‘We have met already,’ fell like a benediction from the lips of Rosemary, as she gave him her hand.
‘Now let us take our things off,’ said Mrs. Bunnard with ferocious good humour. ‘Come, Rosemary!’
A moment later Redshawe was conscious of having stared at the departing vision. The exodus completed by Mr. Bunnard, he turned to find the thoughtful eyes of Rosemary’s mother upon him. Divining that she had read some of his mind he became confused.
Mrs. Fairfield rose to ring the bell: an action so startling to the disordered nerves of Redshawe that he breathed deep relief when, a moment later, he heard her ask Hassan to make some fresh tea for the ladies. His hostess came back into the bay of the room and stared out at the clustering purple masses of bougainvillea that hung from the white house, her hands playing listlessly with a fly-whisk.
‘This is the coolest part of the house till the sun goes down,’ she said, in a tone so void of expression as to fix his instant attention. ‘Afterwards we will sit out on the piazza, and perhaps Rosemary will play to us.’
‘That will be delightful,’ he answered, politely acquiescent; but his mind was asking: ‘What is the matter? What is she going to say?’
He became agitated with the expectation of hearing something momentous about Rosemary. But, after a pause, Mrs. Fairfield did but add the commonplace remark that his was an uncommon name.
‘Yes.’ Disappointment and relief strove together in his tone.
‘Are you the son of a certain Stephen Redshawe, I wonder?’
‘Yes,’ he said again, with quickening interest.
‘You have his eyes,’ she assured him with a smile, and turned quickly to the window.
‘By Jove, you knew my father?’ He got out of his chair in his astonishment, and found himself, with a sense of shock, face to face with an old woman who smiled at him wanly.
‘Yes, many years ago.’
‘He never mentioned——’ he began; and stopped, blushing for his gaucherie. As if in atonement, ‘Please talk to me about my father, if it won’t distress you,’ he pleaded.
After a long silence, ‘Not now,’ she said. ‘There’s a story I can never tell you. But we’re going to be good friends, you and I, and some day we’ll have a long talk about your father.’
Embarrassed, he murmured lame thanks.
‘There’s forty years between us,’ she added, half to herself. ‘So we shall be good friends.’
The door was slightly ajar and in the contracted doorway flashed the smile of Mr. Bunnard.
‘Come along, Redshawe,’ chirped Mr. Bunnard. ‘The ladies are coming down to their tea. Slip away while you can and have a look at my Thought Forms.’
Redshawe, obeying this unwelcome summons, mused deeply on the story that he was never to hear.