Not wiser, but sadder

It is characteristic of Frances that, having decided she is unable to find happiness with David Porteous herself, she should be anxious to do or say nothing that might spoil his chances of finding his own elsewhere. She can even find it in her heart to be glad that he has been taken up by Lady Macauley, whom she believes capable of doing a great deal more for him than she could herself. I confess that this is not the reaction I had hoped to see in her. I had hoped to see her rail against him a little. If she had come right out and told me that he was a cold-hearted egotist who had been interested only in spending her money and enjoying the comforts of her house, I’d have been well pleased. But this alas, is not her way, and she will say only that in the end nothing she could give him was quite enough.

“I was too old for him you see” she confided yesterday. “Oh, I don’t mean that I’m older than he is – in years of course, we are precisely the same. But the difference is that he had this chance to become young again – to shine, and grow great, and somehow live out all the dreams of his youth, that life had seemed to have taken away from him, probably forever. I had thought that I could give him that. I thought we could grow young again together, and that I could be of help to him in the realisation of his dream. But I see now that I was never young, not really - not in the sense that other girls were young. I was never given the chance to be, and now it’s too late to try. I have no greatness of soul either, you see. I could give him every kind of material comfort, but I couldn’t inspire him.... Nor could I even give him the kind of physical joy he craved. It seemed at first we could be happy together as lovers at least - but I watched him every day grow more disappointed in me, so that after a while he could scarcely bring himself to touch me, or even look at me any more, and I had to let him go...”

This was so very far from her initial glad shedding of the shoes that pinched, that I had to restrain myself from shouting aloud that she had been used and abused – that she had put all her faith in an unworthy cause, and that if anyone had let anyone down here, it was David Porteous, and not she herself! I have never wished so much that Bill was there to help me out, and I asked myself what Bill might have said to her to try to breach the gap between her generous intentions and her hopelessly exploited good faith. I’m not sure however that even Bill would have known how to show her the extent to which she has been, and remains mistaken; and I was obliged to leave her with her disappointment directed inwards, as always, upon herself - and her bright dream of the potential greatness of David Porteous more or less intact.

If there was any comfort to be derived anywhere in all this, I could find it only in the fact that she has not abandoned quite every one of her own dreams, but means at least to go ahead with the restoration plans that she and David had drawn up for the manor house. The scaffolding was going up even as I sat with her yesterday, and I believe she will find sufficient interest in the immediate future, just in watching the transformation as it unfolds. First, the roof is to be repaired; and then there are to be several additional bathrooms installed; a new bedroom suite for herself, which was to have involved a dressing room and study for David, though she seems to have relinquished that, and tells me that she will have the luxury of a walk-in wardrobe instead; and a complete modernisation of the kitchen.

The original plan had also been to create an extension of the existing conservatory to make a garden studio for Frances herself. It had been her idea that she would develop her interest in painting, so as to have something of her own to occupy her while David was busy in the library with his great book. And although I have no more faith in the idea of the book than I ever had – believing as I do that he is one of those who talks about his writing a great deal more than he ever actually sits down to accomplish it – I do hope that Frances will go ahead with the studio idea. I believe she will enjoy having a studio of her own, and that she will perhaps be able to create some kind of a little future life for herself around it.

I left her yesterday quite happily involved with settling in her little team of builders; who have arrived only lately from Poland, whose tenuous grasp of English will no doubt tax her ingenuity in the weeks to come, but who are to be provided with every possible convenience while they work, and whom I saw yesterday enjoying their first cups of tea in the spacious recreation room that she has provided for them in one of the larger out-buildings.

For the moment then, I think she will be all right. And I shall find some interest myself, it has to be said, in watching to see how David Porteous comports himself as the spurned and disappointed lover. I daresay he will find some entirely new and original way of demonstrating the part - though he seems to have been very quiet about it to date. Rose talked of his going constantly to the Macauley house, but I believe she has been exaggerating wildly as is her wont; and that as a matter of fact he has been lying rather low in his own house, with only his daughters for company. The girls have given up the idea of the shop in Baker Street, apparently: the lease was too high, or the likely profit margin too slim, something of that general sort – and they are presently staying with their father while they look about for something else to do. Frances takes a great interest in them, and tells me they are very talented; especially Imogen, whose painting shows much promise, and whose quick little line drawings of people she encounters on the street are worthy of publication in a book of caricatures.

I believe that Frances will be perfectly capable of making her new studio freely available to the Porteous girls in the future; it would not surprise me in the least to hear that she had made their artistic development a new and ardent cause. Nothing much can come of that at the present moment however - and in the meantime, though I bear the girls themselves no personal ill-will, I do hope most sincerely that their father is experiencing every kind of inconvenience and difficulty in being obliged to share his house with them.