Read Online The Fountain Overflows by Rebecca West - Free Book Online
Authors: Rebecca West
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his hair that was fair above and dark below, and his air of tranquil amusement. An old lady came up and gave him a banana, which was then a very rare fruit, and he accepted it with a lovely coquetry. I could not see why Mamma worried so much about Papa when she had him.
At last Mamma sighed and said we must be going, and we started on the second and more dolorous part of the journey. We went in a stuffy cab to another station across the Thames, which we thought looked dirty, and took a train that was very slow and ran between horrid little houses, and we got out at a small wooden station high above the ground and went down shabby steps and had to wait till a cab was fetched, and then went a long drive and stopped at the newspaper office, which was in a horrid yellow-green brick Victorian house at a crossroads. It had the name of the newspaper in pale yellow letters on black horsehair screens across the bottoms of the windows, and we thought that ugly and vulgar. Mamma went into the office because she had arranged that the key should be left for her there, and she came out looking very tired.
“Had they heard anything about Papa?” I said.
“How could I ask?” Mamma sighed, and Cordelia frowned and shushed me. I think none of us felt brave any more.
But then the cab took us into a different sort of district, where there were trees along the roads and in the gardens, many trees, which astonished us, because we had believed that London was nothing but houses. The trees were just touched with gold, and the gardens were full of Japanese anemones and Michaelmas daisies and chrysanthemums, growing out of wet earth dark as plum cake. This was not like Scotland. It was a rich, moist, easy place. But then the cab took us into another horrid street of little red brick houses with front doors arched with yellow plasterwork and lace curtains hanging at mean little sharp-angled bow windows. We all grumbled, we had hoped we were going to live where the trees were. But it was all right. We had always known it was going to be all right. The houses came to an end and the road widened, and there were trees and flowers again, and the cab slowed down before a white villa which instantly pleased us. It never ceased to please me. I cannot so adjust my mind that I cancel my intention of living there someday, though it was destroyed by a bomb in the Second World War.
I cannot remember what I saw that afternoon, because I saw it too often afterwards. But here the road came to an end, running to a wrought-iron gateway, flanked by pillars on which two gryphons supported coats-of-arms, and set in a high brick wall. The gates were blind, backed with tarred boards, and this might have been frightening, but reassured, it proclaimed that everybody had gone, the place was private. On the right was a neat terrace of a dozen houses. Just before the gateway, on our left, was our new house. A neat plaque on its first floor gave the figures “1810” and it had the graces of its time. It had a portico to its front door and a veranda screening its lower windows of copper weathered to a wistful, smoke-soft blue-green, and twisted into exotic shapes to satisfy the Chinese taste. Above, the bedroom windows had a little pediment carved above each of them which gave them a certain distinction, and above them the attic windows were disguised by a balustrade adorned at each end with sentimental urns. But it had been newly painted, so my Mamma muttered, “That paint, what does it mean, who can have paid for that? Will that be the first bill?” And she flung out a tragic finger at a wide gate beside the house, ghost-coloured for lack of paint, and the red-purple tiles of the roofs that showed above it, the turret with a broken weathervane and a clock that was telling a shocking lie about the time. “What, are we to keep a carriage?” she said ironically. “Oh, this is far too big. What shall we do? What shall we do?”
“It will be all right,” said
At last Mamma sighed and said we must be going, and we started on the second and more dolorous part of the journey. We went in a stuffy cab to another station across the Thames, which we thought looked dirty, and took a train that was very slow and ran between horrid little houses, and we got out at a small wooden station high above the ground and went down shabby steps and had to wait till a cab was fetched, and then went a long drive and stopped at the newspaper office, which was in a horrid yellow-green brick Victorian house at a crossroads. It had the name of the newspaper in pale yellow letters on black horsehair screens across the bottoms of the windows, and we thought that ugly and vulgar. Mamma went into the office because she had arranged that the key should be left for her there, and she came out looking very tired.
“Had they heard anything about Papa?” I said.
“How could I ask?” Mamma sighed, and Cordelia frowned and shushed me. I think none of us felt brave any more.
But then the cab took us into a different sort of district, where there were trees along the roads and in the gardens, many trees, which astonished us, because we had believed that London was nothing but houses. The trees were just touched with gold, and the gardens were full of Japanese anemones and Michaelmas daisies and chrysanthemums, growing out of wet earth dark as plum cake. This was not like Scotland. It was a rich, moist, easy place. But then the cab took us into another horrid street of little red brick houses with front doors arched with yellow plasterwork and lace curtains hanging at mean little sharp-angled bow windows. We all grumbled, we had hoped we were going to live where the trees were. But it was all right. We had always known it was going to be all right. The houses came to an end and the road widened, and there were trees and flowers again, and the cab slowed down before a white villa which instantly pleased us. It never ceased to please me. I cannot so adjust my mind that I cancel my intention of living there someday, though it was destroyed by a bomb in the Second World War.
I cannot remember what I saw that afternoon, because I saw it too often afterwards. But here the road came to an end, running to a wrought-iron gateway, flanked by pillars on which two gryphons supported coats-of-arms, and set in a high brick wall. The gates were blind, backed with tarred boards, and this might have been frightening, but reassured, it proclaimed that everybody had gone, the place was private. On the right was a neat terrace of a dozen houses. Just before the gateway, on our left, was our new house. A neat plaque on its first floor gave the figures “1810” and it had the graces of its time. It had a portico to its front door and a veranda screening its lower windows of copper weathered to a wistful, smoke-soft blue-green, and twisted into exotic shapes to satisfy the Chinese taste. Above, the bedroom windows had a little pediment carved above each of them which gave them a certain distinction, and above them the attic windows were disguised by a balustrade adorned at each end with sentimental urns. But it had been newly painted, so my Mamma muttered, “That paint, what does it mean, who can have paid for that? Will that be the first bill?” And she flung out a tragic finger at a wide gate beside the house, ghost-coloured for lack of paint, and the red-purple tiles of the roofs that showed above it, the turret with a broken weathervane and a clock that was telling a shocking lie about the time. “What, are we to keep a carriage?” she said ironically. “Oh, this is far too big. What shall we do? What shall we do?”
“It will be all right,” said
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