The Unbearable Bassington | Page 2

very tranquil married life. Wherever her eyes might turn she saw
the embodied results of her successes, economies, good luck, good
management or good taste. The battle had more than once gone against
her, but she had somehow always contrived to save her baggage train,
and her complacent gaze could roam over object after object that
represented the spoils of victory or the salvage of honourable defeat.
The delicious bronze Fremiet on the mantelpiece had been the outcome
of a Grand Prix sweepstake of many years ago; a group of Dresden

figures of some considerable value had been bequeathed to her by a
discreet admirer, who had added death to his other kindnesses; another
group had been a self-bestowed present, purchased in blessed and
unfading memory of a wonderful nine-days' bridge winnings at a
country-house party. There were old Persian and Bokharan rugs and
Worcester tea- services of glowing colour, and little treasures of
antique silver that each enshrined a history or a memory in addition to
its own intrinsic value. It amused her at times to think of the bygone
craftsmen and artificers who had hammered and wrought and woven in
far distant countries and ages, to produce the wonderful and beautiful
things that had come, one way and another, into her possession.
Workers in the studios of medieval Italian towns and of later Paris, in
the bazaars of Baghdad and of Central Asia, in old-time English
workshops and German factories, in all manner of queer hidden corners
where craft secrets were jealously guarded, nameless unremembered
men and men whose names were world-renowned and deathless.
And above all her other treasures, dominating in her estimation every
other object that the room contained, was the great Van der Meulen that
had come from her father's home as part of her wedding dowry. It fitted
exactly into the central wall panel above the narrow buhl cabinet, and
filled exactly its right space in the composition and balance of the room.
From wherever you sat it seemed to confront you as the dominating
feature of its surroundings. There was a pleasing serenity about the
great pompous battle scene with its solemn courtly warriors bestriding
their heavily prancing steeds, grey or skewbald or dun, all gravely in
earnest, and yet somehow conveying the impression that their
campaigns were but vast serious picnics arranged in the grand manner.
Francesca could not imagine the drawing-room without the crowning
complement of the stately well-hung picture, just as she could not
imagine herself in any other setting than this house in Blue Street with
its crowded Pantheon of cherished household gods.
And herein sprouted one of the thorns that obtruded through the
rose-leaf damask of what might otherwise have been Francesca's peace
of mind. One's happiness always lies in the future rather than in the past.
With due deference to an esteemed lyrical authority one may safely say
that a sorrow's crown of sorrow is anticipating unhappier things. The
house in Blue Street had been left to her by her old friend Sophie

Chetrof, but only until such time as her niece Emmeline Chetrof should
marry, when it was to pass to her as a wedding present. Emmeline was
now seventeen and passably good-looking, and four or five years were
all that could be safely allotted to the span of her continued
spinsterhood. Beyond that period lay chaos, the wrenching asunder of
Francesca from the sheltering habitation that had grown to be her soul.
It is true that in imagination she had built herself a bridge across the
chasm, a bridge of a single span. The bridge in question was her
schoolboy son Comus, now being educated somewhere in the southern
counties, or rather one should say the bridge consisted of the possibility
of his eventual marriage with Emmeline, in which case Francesca saw
herself still reigning, a trifle squeezed and incommoded perhaps, but
still reigning in the house in Blue Street. The Van der Meulen would
still catch its requisite afternoon light in its place of honour, the Fremiet
and the Dresden and Old Worcester would continue undisturbed in
their accustomed niches. Emmeline could have the Japanese snuggery,
where Francesca sometimes drank her after-dinner coffee, as a separate
drawing- room, where she could put her own things. The details of the
bridge structure had all been carefully thought out. Only--it was an
unfortunate circumstance that Comus should have been the span on
which everything balanced.
Francesca's husband had insisted on giving the boy that strange Pagan
name, and had not lived long enough to judge as to the appropriateness,
or otherwise, of its significance. In seventeen years and some odd
months Francesca had had ample opportunity for forming an opinion
concerning her son's characteristics. The spirit of mirthfulness which
one associates with the name certainly ran riot in