“She sank into a chair, her knees trembling beneath her. She raised her heavy-lidded hazel eyes to his, and he saw that she must have wept all night.”
“And how is Sacha?” His voice held the inflexions that belonged to it when he was ill at ease.
He had begun the balancing movement again, shifting his weight from heels to toes, his hands in his pockets.
“You got my letter?”
“Yes, I got your letter.”
After the pause, he laughed uneasily.
“Of course I got it, or I shouldn’t have known you were coming up to-day, should I? Besides, I answered it.”
“Of course you did. How stupid of me!”
Inanities, to try and lighten the all but unendurable tension between them.
“She was a brave woman — the bravest that he had ever known. He realized that she was in hell, and giving no sign of it.”
It was difficult to speak, but to bear the silence was more difficult still.
“Ian, you must tell me. Is there somebody else?”
She could see that he was instantly relieved. The balancing movement stopped, and he looked her straight in the face at last. “No. I swear to you that there isn’t, Sacha.”
“You aren’t going to marry — some girl?”
“Good Lord, no!”
“It’s only that — you’re tired of it. The thing has just naturally come to an end?”
“I expect — d’you mind if I smoke? — I expect that—”
“Of course — please do.”
“A cigarette?”
He held out his case.
“I’m sorry — I’ve none of the kind you like.” Did he remember, as she did, that there had been a time when his case had always been supplied, for her, with the Russian cigarette that she liked?
“No, thank you, I won’t smoke. I’ve got some of my own, somewhere.”
“Sure you won’t?”
“Quite sure, thanks.”
He struck a match, shielding the flame very carefully with strong, blunt finger-tips from some imaginary draught.
She moistened her dry lips with the tip of her tongue.
“What were you going to say, Ian?”
“Only that — that I expect, if we’re to be honest, Sacha — we’re both in the same boat. We’ve both got to the stage of realizing that it — it was wonderful while it lasted, but it isn’t really the thing we took it for. Not, I mean, something that’s going to last a lifetime. Perhaps nothing ever is.”
The forlorn sound that came from his lips might have passed for a laugh. His eyes implored her to help him. If he could feel that she believed in his belief that their satiety was mutual, he wouldn’t feel like a cad. That was what he meant.
“She had always understood him, and she did not fail him now. With heartbreak in her eyes, her mouth lied gallantly. She was the bravest woman that he had ever known.”
No. It was too hard.
“She had always been honest with him, and not even for pride’s sake would she lie to him now. She was the most honest woman that he had ever known — and the bravest.”
“There’s something about me you’ve not understood yet, Ian. I’m faithful. You’re the only man that’s ever counted for anything in my life. You’ll be the only one, always. No one, except Charlie, has ever even kissed me, except you. You know it’s true.”
“Yes.”
He had marvelled over it, in the past, and told her that she had come to him almost like a young girl to her first lover.
“Ian, with me it’s for always. I don’t mind saying it to you, because after this we shan’t ever see one another again. I’ve known that it was going to end, of course — that you were — getting over it. I — I’m glad you’ve told me the truth.”
“‘I — I’m glad you’ve told me the truth.’ There was the slightest possible break in her voice, but her steady gaze never faltered... the bravest woman that he had ever known.”
“It was the compact, that we should tell one another the truth, Sacha.”
“I know.”
“God knows I’ve felt a hound. I could shoot myself.”
How unconvincing! He felt wretched, and angry, and uncomfortable. Not really unhappy, with the unhappiness that tears and rends the spirit as torture tears and rends the body; that returns again and again in the night, to turn darkness, and quiet, and solitude into things of unspeakable dread.
“A clean break is the only possible way to end it. That’s why I came up to-day — for the last time. So that we could say good-bye.”
Once before they’d said good-bye. At the very beginning, when she had told him that it was their duty to part, and after long argument he had given in, and agreed that they should meet as friends, but never as lovers.
“But we shall always know that we care,” he’d said then, holding her in his arms.
And the poignancy of their farewell, of their last despairing kisses, had reached the point at which pain is merged into a veritable refinement of bliss.
She had gone away that time, her eyes aching and smarting from the tears that she had shed, but upheld by the glory of their shared renunciation, and with the ever-present consciousness of Ian’s awareness of her, and of her courage and pain, like a song in her heart.
Now, again, she would have to go away, and this time with the bleak, stark knowledge that her suffering was unshared, and unrecognized. It was impossible, because intolerable, that he should not recognize it.
“It’s over. We won’t go on writing, or anything. Only, tell me what’s made you change? I shall understand.”
“Looking up at him, she even achieved the supreme gallantry of a smile. But he saw that the slim hands were gripped together until the knuckles showed white.”
“That’s — that’s very sporting of you, Sacha.” His voice held great embarrassment. Perhaps he was wondering whether she remembered that once he had said he should eschew slang because she hated it so.
“I always have understood, Ian, haven’t I?” He made no reply.
Suddenly anger flared up in her.
“You know I have. You can’t say I’m not making it easy for you. You can’t say that I haven’t always understood you, from the very beginning. When have I failed you, ever.”
“It’s not that — you haven’t, I know. But no man can live on the heights always, Sacha. Oh, it’s my inadequacy, I know. Put it down to that, if you want a reason. I couldn’t — live on the heights.”
“The face that looked up at him was white to the lips.”
“Have I been exacting, Ian?”
“Yes. You’re forcing me to say it. God knows I didn’t want to.”
“And if I — I were to be less exacting?”
The words wrenched at her pride all but unendurably. Stronger than her pride was the insane hope that by the sacrifice of it she might regain his love.
“Sacha, don’t! What’s the use? Nothing can bring dead things to life again. Forget me as fast as you can. It shouldn’t be difficult. You’ll find someone else — less unworthy.... Don’t think I don’t despise myself. I know what you must think of me — you’ve been as generous as a woman could be — and I’m letting you down.”
“Ian, Ian, don’t you understand that whatever you do to me I’m yours, always and absolutely?”
“It was a cry of selfless, passionate love. He caught his breath at the wonder of it. Something broke within him, and the next moment he was on his knees beside her, his arms round her, his face against her breast. They were together again.”
“For Heaven’s sake, Sacha, don’t let’s have a scene. Look here, I can’t stand this—”
“You want me to go?”
“I want to make an end of this. (Good God, what a brute I am!) I’ll go, if you like, and you stay here and — and rest till it’s time for your train. Look here, shall I tell the woman to bring you up a cup of tea or something?”
She shook her head, speechless.
“
She shook her head, speechless. It had come. Instinctively, she rose to her feet, and faced him without flinching. She was the bravest woman he had ever known.”
“You aren’t going to faint, are you?”
“No, I’m not going to faint, Ian.”
“Is there anything I can do for you?”
The impatience in his voice was like the rasp of a file.
“Nothing. You’d better go. I can’t bear any, more.”
“Sacha, I’m sorry — you must believe that I’m sorry. I shouldn’t ever have told you, only I knew you’d find out for yourself.”
All the time, he was edging towards the door. His hand was grasping eagerly at the handle.
“If ever you want me again, Ian—”
Had she said that?
“Sacha — I — O good Lord!”
He had opened the door, and in an instant it had shut behind him, with a hard, defiant sound.
At one moment she had seen his dark, tormented face, beneath its black plume of hair, his thick, hirsute hands, his broad shoulders, and at the next moment he was gone, and she could not visualize him clearly any more than she had ever been able to visualize him clearly in his absence.
Impossible to suffer like this and live. There must somewhere be a breaking-point, a limit to endurance....
“She found that she was tearing her lace handkerchief to strips between her fingers. Her arms were outflung across the table, her head pressed against them, whilst sobs shook her from head to foot. She never heard the door open, nor Ian Berringer’s step across the room. His arms were round her in the old, protective clasp, and his lips had found hers before she saw him....”
Silence, heavy and deathly, hung over the room. It was broken by her own sobs and stifled halfscreams.
There was no step upon the stairs.
Berringer did not come back.
Sacha Michaelson, after a long while, got up and gazed at her disfigured face in the mirror over the mantelpiece. Her nose and mouth were hideously swollen, her eyes sunken in discoloured sockets. A patch of crimson under each lower lid stood out upon the livid pallor of her face. With exactly the same mechanical gesture that she had used in the taxi, she touched the hair beneath her hat-brim, and passed the little powder-puff across her face.
She dragged herself down the stairs and into the street.
A taxi crawled past her and she signed to the driver.
“Waterloo Station.”
“She raised eyelids, that felt curiously stiff with crying, to the man’s face, and he thought he had never seen so sad a look before. She stepped into the taxi — the heavy fur border of her velvet coat...”
The wheels of the taxi bore her away to the noise and the restless, incessant movement of Waterloo Station.
She glanced round the vast booking-hall, pretending to herself, and to the ever-present recorder of her days and nights, that she was not actuated by a faint, shadowy hope of seeing Berringer.
THE OBSTACLE
“The little less, and what worlds away!” — BROWNING.
THERE are very few women, indeed, who do not believe themselves to be capable of a grande passion, since very few women, indeed, are put to the test. Grandes passions belong to the realms of fancy, rather than to that of fact, as a rule. Irma Stevenson had had about fifteen years in which to await the smashing, crashing love-affair that was to prove to herself, for ever, that she was amongst the great lovers of this world.
She was now thirty-five, and unmarried.
She knew a number of men, and many of them admired her, and some had made love to her, although others had been alarmed by her air of searching for eternity within the confines of a flirtation.
They knew, these unfortunate men who were attracted by Irma’s dark, slender beauty, that they were inadequate.
Quite early in the affair, she always made them feel that.
She put hypothetical cases to them.
“If you loved a woman, and she did something that you thought utterly wrong — the worst, deepest, sort of wrong — could you feel exactly the same towards her, in spite of it?”
Or:
“If, after years and years, you met your affinity — your absolute other half — would you be prepared to let everything else go and simply take her?”
The more intelligent amongst Irma’s lovers only replied to these questions by an exclamation of passionate endearment. They did not commit hemselves in words. It was only the very simplest amongst them who floundered into unconvincing assurances, heavily hedged about with qualifications.
Had she been less pretty and magnetic, she would have had no proposals of marriage at all, after the age of twenty-five.
Even terribly serious young women get proposals of marriage up to that age, from terribly serious contemporary young men.
Irma, until she was nearly thirty, really did not want to marry. She had liked one or two men very much, and had been definitely in love with one or two others. But none of them had roused the depths that she felt certain existed in herself.
Of course, after her very early twenties, she no longer expected to marry her affinity, and settle down with him for ever after. The contingency was not only a highly improbable one, but even held in it a certain element of bathos. One didn’t “settle down” to the ideal. One waited for it, unconsciously searching the world, and one found it — too late.
Too late, at twenty, are beautiful words. At twenty-five, they are poignant, and at thirty they can no longer be mentioned aloud, having acquired a new and entirely practical significance.
And Irma was thirty-five.
For some few years now, she had hoped and wished to get married.
This did not mean that she abandoned all hope of ever becoming the grande amoureuse that she knew Nature had intended her to be. To meet one’s affinity after marriage merely brought one back to the Too Late motif once more. Irma, prudently, forbore to define the exact limitations that such a retarded encounter would impose upon a grande passion.
She was still very pretty indeed, and so slim and straight that she looked a great deal younger than she was.
All the same, she no longer attracted men. The men with whom she had danced and talked in her early youth had gone down in the Great War, or else had married, and a new type of girl had come into fashion. A cheerful, soulless, efficient type, to which Irma did not, and never could, conform.
She did not even like wearing small, brimless hats instead of floppy picture ones, or straight jumpers and short skirts in place of the fluffy, lacey frocks that best suited her style. And nothing would have induced her to shingle her hair.
Dressed in an un-modern shade of blue, with a becoming fur coat, and a velour hat that was a compromise between the newest fashion and one less new, Irma Stevenson sat in an empty third-class railway carriage.
She was going to stay with an old school friend who, like almost all her school friends, had now been married for some years.
Carol Mathieson lived in Oxford, in a most enchanting old house, and her husband was rich enough for them to make a hobby of collecting “period” furniture for their home. Mathieson was intelligent, and charming, too, and his position at Magdalen College was a very high one.
Their atmosphere of well-bred intellectuality, in fact, was exactly the one that most appealed to Irma.
She felt a wistful gladness in going to them now. Her own home was in London, and she liked London, and the people she met there, less and less as the years went on. Like all day-dreamers, Irma was always convinced that she was upon the verge of a romantic adventure, and it was no real surprise to her when, just as the train was starting, an extraordinarily good-looking man got into the carriage.
He was very big, and of the age known to Irma, in her own mind, as the right age, and he had brown hair, serious brown eyes, and a brown moustache. His hands — Irma was very particular indeed about hands — were well formed, with long, straight fingers, and a very little, agreeably masculine, hair on th
e backs of them.
Irma, whose romantic tendencies were in part temperamental and in part reaction from parental conventionality, had in 1925 a point of view which remained the point of view that in 1910 had been daring. Her inelastic mind had failed to perceive that it was daring no longer, but merely conventional. Therefore it was with a pang of half-acknowledged regret that she told herself what a pity it was that she and the stranger — and there were so few men of that age left — could scarcely hope ever to make acquaintance.
From the way in which he glanced at her from time to time, Irma knew that he admired her. Years ago, she had been accustomed to glances of that kind, but nowadays they came very seldom, and almost always from the same type of man. Her appeal was no longer of a very striking kind.
Suppose he were going to Oxford, too....
“Oh, Irma, we’ve got a friend coming to dinner to-night, a — a — a very brilliant writer. You’ll like him... Irma, let me introduce ——
‘Miss Stevenson and I travelled down together yesterday—’” Oh, did we?
The new apricot-coloured frock, with a long, slender, amber necklace, swinging as she moved lightly forward —
Carol’s oval dinner-table, laid for four — no, six. “Irma, will you sit there, next to—”
The rose-shaded lights turned her brown hair into a web of gold —
“Would you think it impertinent of me if I told you that ever since yesterday I’ve been wondering how I could meet you again?”
Not impertinence — absolute sincerity. Or would anybody say that who was absolutely, entirely quite — f She was fastidious, about absolute, entire, quiteness.
A scud of rain blew in from the lowered window Involuntarily, she looked at him.
“May I shut that window for you?”
It was the most attractive voice possible, deep, and slow, and with more inflexions than the majority of English voices.
“Thank you so much.”
“Shall I put down the other one instead? It’s not blowing in from that side.”
“Oh yes, please do.”
Collected Works of E M Delafield Page 545