The Lonely Lady of Dulwich

by Maurice Baring

  That was the first of many meetings, and the more Amelia saw of her cousin and her cousin-in-law, the more she wondered, and the more she wondered the more impossible she found it to come to any conclusion.

  Mrs Rylands was not at Haréville, but after the Harmers had been there for some days it turned out that the doctor at the watering-place where she was staying, which was ten miles off – a long distance in those days – told her that the waters were not strong enough for her, and that she had better try those of Haréville, which he was sure would suit her better. She obeyed her doctor, and almost at the same time Cyril Legge arrived from Paris, and with him Jean de Bosis, without his wife. Jean de Bosis had been ordered a course of the waters, but his wife said she could not endure the monotony and the dullness of Haréville, and he was to meet her at Venice, where they had taken the first floor of a palace, for later on, as soon as he should have finished his cure.

  Jean de Bosis met and talked with the Harmers with the utmost ease and friendliness. Zita thought he was altered; Amelia thought not. It was not that he looked much older – he was thirty-nine and looked younger – but his expression was, Zita thought, different. It had hardened. She wondered what had happened to him, and what he felt. He was a new man to her, as if she had never known him. But to Jean de Bosis, Zita seemed no different. There was no doubt about that. She seemed to him just as beautiful, perhaps more beautiful than she had been ten years ago. Amelia noticed this, and commented on it.

  “He admires you just as much as ever,” she said one morning to Zita, while they were sitting in the park listening to the band.

  “Oh! I don’t think so,” said Zita.

  “It is perfectly obvious, and if you’re not careful he’ll be in love with you. I used to think he was in love, or going to be in love, with you in Paris in old days.”

  Zita laughed.

  “Did you think that?”

  “Yes, I did. I think he was at one time, for a moment, only you were so…well, I suppose you didn’t care for him and gave him no encouragement.”

  “His wife is beautiful, isn’t she?”

  “Not exactly beautiful, but handsome. And a remarkable woman, and her singing is wonderful. You’ve never heard her?”

  “No, she’s never been to England. Is he very fond of her?”

  “He certainly was at first, they say, but I think they both have bad tempers. She’s obviously the woman he described in his book, well, in all his books, but chiefly in Le Philtre.”

  “I must read it. He isn’t musical, is he?” asked Zita.

  “Oh no! He hates music, and she hates literature. That was one reason, I suppose, they were attracted to one another.”

  “Is she much younger than he is?”

  “No, older, she was a widow when she married him.”

  “And are there no children?”

  “There was one; it died.”

  But soon Zita was able to get firsthand impressions of Jean de Bosis. Robert got up early in the morning, and drank his first glass of water at half past six. Owing to this he felt tired in the afternoon, and he took a long siesta. Jean did not begin his cure until much later, and it was of a much milder nature. The day after his arrival, at two o’clock in the afternoon, he found Zita sitting by herself under the shade of a tree in the park. She always sat in the same chair under the same tree doing needlework. The Legges had gone out driving, so Jean took a chair and sat down next to Zita. It was the first time in his life he had been able to talk to her completely by himself, that is to say without the presence of witnesses or of observant friends, who, although they might not be listening, were there.

  “Why did you do it?” were his first words.

  “Do what?”

  “Say you would come with me and not come?”

  “Robert knew,” she said.

  “What did he do?”

  “He did nothing, and said nothing; that was just it.”

  “How did he know?”

  “I don’t know, but he knew, and he was making things easy for me. He was helping me out; helping me not to lie; it was terrible.”

  “Did he read my book?”

  “Which book?”

  “The book of poems I sent you.”

  “Yes, he did, some of it, with some trouble.”

  “Then of course he knew.”

  “Why?”

  “Because there was a poem about you in it.”

  “Robert would never have thought that. He liked something about wild ducks; but that would never have occurred to him; that poem might have been about anyone. It never occurred to anyone that it was meant for me – nor to Amelia or Madeleine Laurent – they would have told me at once.”

  “It would not have occurred to them, but it would to your husband. There are some things that only men understand; just as there are some things that only women understand. That is one of them – one of men’s things.”

  “But Robert doesn’t know what poetry is about.”

  “He knew what that poem was about – that one and the one about the wild ducks.”

  “You think so?”

  “I know. You know I was ill.”

  “When I went away?”

  “Yes, when you went away. So ill – I nearly died. You knew what my illness was?”

  “Yes, I knew. I could do nothing. I could have run away with you, and I couldn’t do that, so I could do nothing.”

  There was a long pause.

  “But now are you happy?” Zita asked, not looking at him.

  “Happy?” he said, with a slightly harsh laugh.

  “At any rate, you are famous.”

  “Oh yes.” His laughter was harsher and more bitter. “That’s just it.”

  “You are not pleased with your books? I have not read one of them.”

  “Thank God! But it’s your fault.”

  “What?”

  “That my books are what they are. If you had come with me they would have been different; they would have been like my first book; like what I wrote for you. Perhaps you saved your soul, but you lost mine.”

  “Don’t say that. Whatever I did wrong I have paid for, I assure you. After all, life is like that. Who is happy?”

  “You may well ask. I believe my wife is. She is happy in her art, in her success, and, most of all, in the society of the band of cabotins who surround her wherever she goes.”

  “I believe,” said Zita, “that work is the secret of happiness. I have got no work, but I have an occupation; I have made a garden.”

  “How lovely it must be,” said Jean, with dreamy eyes.

  They talked of the Bertrands; they talked of Madeleine Laurent; they talked of the Legges; of Jean’s travels, and as they talked the time rushed by. The band in the kiosk began to play a selection from La Mascotte, and Zita got up abruptly and said she must fetch her husband; it was time for her to wake him.

  That night they all dined together at the same table. Robert was friendly with Jean. The next day exactly the same thing happened. The routine continued to be the same every day. Robert took his long siesta and the Legges went for a drive, because Amelia liked sketching. Zita sat in her chair. Jean joined her. They talked of everything under the sun, easily and without sense of effort or of time. Like Krylov’s two pigeons, they never heeded how the time flew by. Sadness they knew; they were never anything but sad, but they never tasted the weariness of satiety – what Shelley calls ‘love’s sad satiety’.

  For Jean did not make love to Zita. They seemed to be living in a dream. They lived, as it were, in the past, and not in the present. Every night they sat at the same table. A fortnight passed like this before they noticed it. Robert’s cure was to last three weeks.

  There is a fragment of a Greek poem which tells of the pause that occurs midmost in the winter month, when, the poet says, Zeus brings fourteen days of calm, and mortals call it the sacred windless breeding time of the many-coloured halcyon. So in the lives of Zita and Jean came a brief interval of ha
lcyon days.

  Never had life seemed more peaceful and uneventful to Zita, Robert and Jean; and yet never had fate been more busy weaving the irreparable for all three of them.

  It was at the end of their fortnight that Amelia said at dinner that she had written to Madeleine and told her all the news. Madeleine was at the time at Versailles – and going backwards and forwards between Versailles and Paris. She had told her in her letter, among other things, that Jean de Bosis was at Haréville, and seemed to admire Zita more than ever. The day Madeleine received this letter she met Madame Jean de Bosis at a déjeuner. She talked of Jean, said she knew that he was at Haréville, and added, “He will have met some old friends – an Englishman and his wife whom he used to know ten years ago in Paris.”

  “Oh,” said Madame de Bosis, “that will be nice for him.” She was not interested.

  “Yes,” said Madeleine, slightly nettled at her want of interest. “Harmer and Mrs Harmer. She is beautiful – Bertrand painted her twice.”

  That was enough for Emilia de Bosis. She left for Haréville the next day. She arrived in the evening. She had announced her arrival by a telegram, and she made no objection when her husband told her that they would dine at the same table with the Legges and the Harmers – that is to say, with the Leggesand Mrs Harmer, because those who drank stronger waters – Mr Harmer and Mrs Rylands – dined at the table d’hôte at six, where a special diet was served them.

  Emilia explained her arrival by saying that her husband’s presence at Haréville had been noised abroad, and she had been asked to sing for charity at the concert which was to take place at Haréville on the following Sunday. On Monday, she said, she and Jean were going to Venice. Jean had told Zita he was staying another week, as long, in fact, as she and Robert were staying; but that was all changed now.

  Emilia de Bosis made herself the centre of the group, as she was in the habit of doing in any group anywhere. She ate heartily; she drank sparingly; she talked a great deal; she sometimes smiled, but she never laughed. When dinner was over and they were drinking coffee outside, she said they must all go to the theatre; she wished, she said, to feel the atmosphere of the house, as she was to sing in it on Sunday. Zita and the Legges consented, but Mrs Rylands and Robert said they would go to the Casino.

  At the table next to them sat a young man by himself, who watched their whole party with absorbed interest. He was a journalist, Walter Price by name, a British subject, although he had lived and worked for some years in America, and still wrote for American newspapers as well as for an English one. He was strikingly good-looking; big, well-made, and hard to place at first sight. He did not look like an Englishman, but neither did he look particularly like anything else; his face was square, with straight features and a low forehead, and he reminded Zita, who noticed him directly, of a bust, Classic or Renaissance, she had seen somewhere, either one of the Roman emperors or an Italian Condottiere, she thought.

  Just as the Harmers and their friends were leaving the little table where they had drunk coffee outside on the veranda and were preparing to go into the Casino, Price, who had a great deal of quiet assurance, and did not know what shyness meant, walked up to Jean and talked to him. Jean did not for the moment recall him or place him…as I have said, he was hard to place…but in a moment he recollected having met him several times at first nights, or on other artistic or maybe sporting occasions in Paris.

  “I want Madame to give me an interview for the Planet,” he began.

  “I don’t think she …” Jean said, so as to be on the safe side, but his wife overheard the conversation, and interrupted him:

  “Good evening, Mr Price,” she said, giving him her hand. “We are old friends,” she explained to Jean. “Come to my salon tomorrow at eleven. I have things I want to ask you about this concert.”

  Price was delighted; all the more so because Madame de Bosis, although he had twice been presented to her before, had never recognised him when they had met on subsequent occasions; but this wasn’t what he wanted now. He wanted to be introduced to Mrs Harmer, and as they walked towards the theatre he asked Jean to introduce him.

  “With pleasure,” Jean said, and he introduced Walter Price to the Legges and to Zita.

  CHAPTER X

  The concert came off on Sunday night, but Emilia de Bosis did not sing at it because she received, so she said, an urgent summons to go to Venice at once from an impresario who had come all the way from Vienna to meet her. Jean and she left the morning after her arrival, and Jean had no conversation alone with Zita from the moment his wife arrived.

  The Harmers and the Legges and Mrs Rylands stayed on another week. Walter Price stayed, too, and he saw a great deal of them. By degrees he attached himself to them, and ended before the week was over by becoming an integral part of their little group.

  At the end of the week the Harmers went to Gérardmer on the advice of Robert’s doctor, who wished him to have an after-cure. The Legges went with them, and Walter Price. Mrs Rylands said she felt as comfortable with Walter Price asshe did with a real American. Robert Harmer said he thought he was not a bad fellow, but it was a pity he spoke with an American accent. Cyril Legge said it was catching. Amelia liked him, and so did Zita. She got on with him without any trouble. She felt as if she had always known him. They went together on the lake: they all went together for expeditions near and far. They spent an enjoyable week, at the end of which the Harmers and Mrs Rylands went back to England and the others to Paris. Walter Price announced his intention of visiting London later on. He came to England in the winter. The Harmers followed their regular routine; in August they had spent a month in Scotland shooting with Wilfrid Sutton and his wife, and one or two others as guests; later on they paid a few visits in the north of England, and by November they settled down once more at Wimbledon.

  Walter Price came to London soon after this. He hadgot himself permanently transferred to London, and he was making a name for himself in journalism as a writer of clever impressionistic articles and interviews – he was an all-round journalist, and seemed to be able to turn his hand to anything: sport, the stage, books, nature, social events, political meetings, occasions and personages; he was smart and superficial as a writer, and unhampered by distinction or refinement. He came to Wimbledon as often as he could, but that was not often, as he was a hard-worked man, and his work took him all over the country; one day he would be attendinga football match in the north of England and the next at a political meeting in South Devon, or interviewing someone in Dublin or Glasgow. Notwithstanding the comparative rarity of his visits, he came to know Zita well. He admired her, looked up to her, and was happy in her society. He poured out toher haphazard and without choice or discrimination his adventures, thoughts, troubles, joys, cares, hopes, ambitions… everything, in fact. He talked exclusively about himself, and she liked it. Never had she felt so much at her ease, so comfortable with any human being. So matters went on until the spring, when Walter Price was sent by his newspaper to America. He was away the whole summer, and Zita missed him, seldom as she had seen him while he had been in England. Without knowing it she had become used to him, and he had brought something into her life that hitherto had been absent, something she had never known before – namely, companionship and gaiety: because Walter was gay; he had an un-English buoyancy and quickness he had caught in America; he was appreciative, and had an infectious laugh, and he thought Zita funny, and roared with laughter at some of her remarks. This was the first time anything of this kind had happened to her.

  When July came again, Robert Harmer was advised by his doctors to repeat his cure at Haréville. He arranged to go there at the same time as the Legges. The day before the Harmers were to start, Walter Price came back from America and went straight down to Wimbledon. When he heard their plans he told them by an odd coincidence he had also been ordered to Haréville. His decision to go there was taken on the spur of the moment. He had on his arrival applied for and been granted three w
eeks holiday, but until he saw the Harmers he had no intention of going to Haréville.

  Both the Harmers were delighted. Walter Price amused Robert.

  Mrs Rylands was to join them in a few days. They would find the Legges at the hotel. All was the same as it had been last year, but Zita was aware that everything was different. Life to her was now a different thing, different from anything it had ever been. It was lined and shot with a curious excitement. She was anxious as she had never been before as soon as one day was over for the next day to begin.

  It was when Walter arrived at Haréville that she first faced the situation, and said to herself: ‘What has happened to me?’ She thought of any answer except the true one, which she refused to give herself. ‘I am forty; he is not thirty. I am almost old enough to be his mother…and yet there is no doubt that since he has come back from America life has been different; but quite different.’ She knew she had, when she was with him, the feeling of timelessness; that she felt she could go on talking and listening to him for ever. She never wanted their intercourse to stop.

  As for Walter Price, he seemed to enjoy it, too; but he never appeared to wish to be alone with Zita; he was just as happy if Robert or the Legges were there, nor did he ever resent a têteà-tête with Zita being interrupted. He seemed to be happy with all of them, as if he were a part of their family or group, something essential and integral which belonged to them and could not live without them.

  He paid just as much attention to Mrs Legge, and to Mrs Rylands when she arrived, as he did to Zita.

  One or two mornings after Zita had arrived at Haréville she was sitting in the park talking to Amelia Legge when Amelia said to her:

  “Do you ever hear anything of Jean de Bosis?”

  Zita said he had sometimes written to her, but she had heard nothing of or from him for some months.

  “Well, I can tell you a little about him,” said Amelia. “He’s written another book, as you probably know, a fearfully interesting book, but rather shocking, only, as usual, it don’t shock me! I suppose I’m hardened. And his wife has been singing all over the world, just as usual. They went to Russia in the winter. I saw them sometimes in Paris this spring, but not often. I don’t think he’s at all happy. He told me the last time I saw him some months ago that he would come here in the summer.”