The Constant Nymph by Margaret Kennedy

Chapter 3

In spite of Sanger's contempt for England, the mothers of the children at the Karindehütte had all been British. Vera Brady, his first wife, had been the leading lady of a third-rate opera company of which he was chef d'orchestre. He was then quite a young man and remarkably unsuccessful. They had gone on tour in the Antipodes, were married at Honolulu, and knocked about the world together for a good many years. She was an excellent woman, with a fine voice and extreme powers of endurance; her devotion to Sanger kept her beside him through misfortune, hardship and neglect. Of her children none survived their precarious infancy save the two youngest. These were born during a period of comparative prosperity when Sanger, who had begun to attract attention, held for a short time a permanent post in a German town with a famous Conservatorium. Vera was able to quit the stage and set up the respectable household for which she had always craved. All her instincts were domestic and she was very happy for a time, bustling round her little flat and passing the time of day with congenial housewives at church and market. Caryl was born and she was able to rear him in peace and decency. She believed that her other children had died because she had been forced to work so hard in those nightmare years when she had nursed her babies hastily, in draughty dressing-rooms, awaiting her call. Caryl lived, and grew plump and strong, and was a comfort to her.

This interlude was brief; new troubles soon gathered round her. Sanger's infidelities had become almost a commonplace in their wandering life, but she had always been able to fly from gossip and at least she was sure that each episode must be brief. Once or twice he had run away from her, but he always came back. Now that she was planted in one town she could no longer ignore the scandalous legends which collected round his name. It was hinted to her that the place would soon be too hot to hold him, and though she persistently shut her eyes and ears she could not help knowing all about Miss Evelyn Churchill. The entire district was ringing with it.

This young lady was Sanger's pupil. She had come from England to study music and report had it that she was of very good family. She was talented, beautiful, and Sanger's junior by twenty years, but she had lost her head and her heart and she was advertising the fact in the high-handed way peculiar to women of breeding who are bent upon flying in the face of accepted convention. The affair became an open scandal and the Churchill family threatened to come to Germany and stop it. The young lady replied by going to Venice, taking Sanger with her.

Poor Vera, brooding in the little home where she had expected to be so happy, began to decide that life was altogether too hard for her. She was not proof against this last blow. Sanger's women were not, usually, of a calibre to occupy him for long, but Miss Churchill was a rival of a different order. She was exceptionally intelligent, her health and beauty were not impaired by long years of hardship, and she loved him to distraction. With such a mistress he had no further need for Vera, and the thought broke a heart which should by rights have cracked some fifteen years before.

Yet he did come back, upon the day that Kate was born. He had left a number of manuscripts in his wife's keeping and wanted to collect them from her. She told him, not unkindly, that she was dying, and it soon became clear that she spoke the truth. Her constitution had been undermined by past priva- tions; she had made up her mind, fatally, that she should not survive the birth of her baby. She spoke of Evelyn without rancour.

"That young lady," she said, "will you marry her when I'm gone?"

Sanger, looking rather foolish, said he did not know. "Well, then don't, Albert," whispered Vera. "Promise me that you won't now!"

"All right," he said agreeably. "I've never known you keep a promise yet," the tired voice toiled on, "but I'm glad to hear you say it. Not that she wouldn't be good to my babies; I feel somehow that she would, which is more than I'd say of many women. But she's no wife for you, Albert. She's been bred soft, poor thing! And I don't wish her harm. I forgive her. I'd be sorry to think she should come to any harm. Mind you're not to marry her, Albert."