“Is she a widow?”
“Oh yes. Very much so. That’s her strong suit. With an enormous family to support. She came to see me once and told me all about it. She was left with twenty pounds and a mortgaged house …”
“It is. That’s the same woman. But you really don’t know her, Adrian? It’s not true!”
“I used to know her, though I’ve managed to keep out of her way for some …” And then the whole relevancy of this episode dawned on him. “Usher! But you don’t mean to tell me that Ford …!”
“Of course. How slow you are! But we haven’t got to him yet. You must know that I went and saw Mrs. Usher at her club and thought her quite wonderful. I’d never met anybody in the least like her before. Of course I was aware, in a way, of her vulgarity, but I didn’t mind it. I’d had enough of being kept in cotton wool and I wanted to see the world. And she showed up very well at that first interview: I got the impression that she was a gallant old rattle, a bit coarse but rather impressive. And she had all the virtues that I most admired just then. She worked for her living and educated all her children and was thankful to say she’d never borrowed a penny. I thought she must have a wonderful character. She talked a great deal about money and I admired that too, never having been encouraged to mention it. I was taken in, but in the circumstances, it was inevitable, don’t you think?”
“Perhaps. But my poor child, you didn’t …”
“I did. I took the situation, and let the family think I was going to Ireland to stay with Ellen at Lough Ashe. Ellen was in the secret and promised to forward my letters. After a month I meant to surprise them all with the news that I was earning my own living. I thought that they would accept it as an accomplished fact. But unfortunately it didn’t last a month.”
“I should imagine not.”
His imagination was already overtasked. It was so strange that he should never have heard one word of all this before. He half believed that she must be making it up.
“I had no idea …” he began.
“I daresay not. Nobody has. I’ve never cared to talk about it.”
“And you went … you really went to the House of Usher?”
“I went. And you couldn’t ever begin to have an idea what it was like.”
He made a gesture of defeat, as if willing to believe anything she told him. As a matter of fact he had a very good idea of what the House of Usher was like. Probably it was like his own.
“It smelt,” said Laura.
“Ah yes. I suppose it did. Cooking in the hall.”
“Oh, that was nothing. The dining-room smelt of pickles and whisky. The drawing-room, which was called the studio because it had no furniture, smelt rather like a public call-box. Have you ever telephoned from one of those places, Adrian? Gold Flake and … and people. Mrs. Usher’s room smelt of alcohol and moth ball. Gertie’s room (she was the daughter at home) smelt of benzine and … and various cosmetics. Not counting a general smell of dust, you understand. My room smelt of the Mamselle who was Lady Help before me and used scent instead of soap. But the basement! The larder! The scullery! Have you ever poked out a stopped-up sink?”
“No, Laura. Please!”
He put up a horrified hand to stop her, as though begging her to spare him, and reflected that this story must have some foundation of truth. She could never have evolved these details from her inner consciousness. She had really been in the House of Usher.
But Laura ignored this gesture of a fastidious man revolted.
“But it didn’t discourage me, at first, as much as you might expect. On the contrary, it exalted me. I’d never been poor myself and it took me some time to realise how poor people despise each other. I was inclined to idealise anybody who worked, and I was profoundly shocked to see a noble person like Mrs. Usher living in such a smelly house. I was sorry for her. And I expect I showed it. For very soon, even on the day I got there, she began to say little things that were intended to take me down. I began to realise that I was incompetent, unable to hold my own at any respectable profession, and therefore at her mercy. But it was some time before I quite understood how low a Lady Help is rated. I didn’t feel my own insecurity or re-act to it. I didn’t get hurt feelings. I wasn’t suspicious of being put upon. I wasn’t grateful. I didn’t flatter or apologise or say ‘Yes, Mrs. Usher, I will do.’ In short, I didn’t know my place. And when I learnt it, the effect was bewildering. I want you to get hold of that bewildered element in it. I was stunned.”
“But Ford …”
“I’m coming to him. I want you first to understand, if you can, my state of mind at the time. Because I really did set out on this adventure with a certain amount of idealism. I was an idealist in those days … I had a real belief …”
She paused for a moment, confused. Because nobody had suggested that she was not an idealist still. But she felt a great desire to make Adrian believe in the genuineness of her young impulses, whatever doubts he might entertain of her sincerity now.
“I was incredibly innocent,” she assured him. “And of course I overdid it. That’s my fault. I always overdo everything. Not content with the fact that I was earning my own living, I persisted in thinking of myself as a girl who was obliged to do so, who had no home to fall back on. I have a very strong imagination, too strong, and it ran away with me. The idea of a friendless girl in that house so preyed on my mind, that I began to identify myself with her. I think Corny’s right in saying that I ought to have gone on the stage, you know. I do get right into the skin of the person I think I am. After a fortnight of it I was a friendless girl.”
“But, Laura, did they know who …”
“No. They didn’t. They thought my name was Rivers, and that I came from Ireland. I’d more sense than to let them know, or less sense, whichever way you like to put it. On the first night at supper they put me through a sort of Third Degree about my home and family and I thought I’d be found out, for I’ve never been asked so many impertinent questions in my life. But luckily they didn’t believe a word I said. I prevaricated as much as I could, of course, and that made it sound all the more unlikely. When they asked what school my brothers had been at I got into a terrible panic because I couldn’t lie exactly, so I told the truth and said they’d got scholarships, which was also true. But I saw them exchanging glances and Gertie got the giggles. And afterwards they used to ask me about my family for a joke, just to see what I would say, so I took to telling the truth, as I knew they wouldn’t believe it. Behind my back, more or less, I was called the Duchess.
“And yet, through it all, I was … how shall I say? … excited. In spite of the bewilderment, and disgust, there was that excitement all the time, and a queer sense of freedom. I hated it, but I still felt that it was an adventure. I was waiting, quite confidently, for something to happen.”
“And Ford happened?”
“Not at once. When I first saw him I thought him quite the most unprepossessing oaf I’d ever encountered. Such a hobbledehoy, and such loutish manners. Not that I saw much of him. He was a medical student and he only slept at home. And when we did meet he never spoke. He used to sit staring, while I staggered in and out with heavy trays. It seems that he loved me violently from the moment he set eyes on me, but I had no inkling of it.”
“Oh, Laura! Hadn’t you?”
“No, indeed I hadn’t. This is quite, quite true. How could I possibly have known? I’d had no experience. At least very little. And it never occurred to me that a lover can expect his flame to black his boots and empty his slops. I didn’t dislike him, but I just thought he was a lout. And I went on thinking that until … it happened.
“You must know that on Sunday evenings Mrs. Usher used to be at home for the literary and artistic circle. I used to shake up the studio cushions and put a few fresh flowers in a conspicuous place, and hide the less dead ones in a dark corner and throw the most dead away. And then, after supper, the circle arrived. Such people! I couldn’t ever tell you … they all knew a
n extraordinary amount about Aggie, by the way. Much more than we do. Why is that, do you suppose? And at ten o’clock Mrs. Usher used to make a face at me and I used to go and bring in coffee and lemonade. For two Sundays I brought up all the trays from the basement and handed them round, but on the third I suddenly grew reckless, and as I went out I suggested that Ford, who was sitting in a corner looking very glum, might come and help me. I thought he might really learn manners.
“To do him justice, he came at once. We went down to the kitchen where all the cakes and sandwiches were spread out and, without any warning, Ford flew into a towering passion. I was electrified. I’d known that he didn’t like being made to come to these parties, but I thought it was just bearishness, I’d never given him credit for any real taste or power to criticise. But then and there we had the whole of it: the dirt, the meanness, the pretentiousness, and his longing for something better. He seemed hardly to know what he was saying. He kept repeating that he hated it, and that he would never be able to get away from it because he was dependent on his mother, and how hopeless his ambitions were, and how lonely he was, and how he wanted to specialise on tropical diseases and would never have the money. And all this mixed up, dear Adrian, with the most touching appeals to me, and how desperately he loved me, and how my coming had made him feel that he couldn’t bear this existence any more. Of course he thought I had no money either, and he could see no way out of it. I was terribly moved, and at once I felt as if I must have known it always. As if I’d brought him down there because it was time. ‘I oughtn’t to say all this’ he kept saying. ‘You’re so lovely. You’re so beautiful. I oughtn’t to.’ Meaning that it was vulgar to make love to the maid. And he begged me to go away. He said that to live as he was living was more than any man could bear, that he couldn’t sleep and couldn’t work, and when he went up to his room at night it drove him mad to know that I had been there while he was away, making his bed and dusting. And all mixed up with this, the wildest diatribe about the cakes.
“She used to buy her cakes … now I’m slipping back into being a Lady Help! Did you notice how I said ‘she’? I found myself talking about ‘her’ just like that, to the charwoman. She used to buy her cakes in a bargain basement on Saturday, stale ones that hadn’t been sold during the week. They wouldn’t have been half so bad if she hadn’t always chosen cream ones. And there was a particular heart-shaped horror, quite rancid, of bright pink marzipan, which had gone on for three weeks because nobody could bring themselves to touch it. When Ford saw that it was put out to go up again he went Berserk. He snatched it up and hurled it into the scrap pail. So we went upstairs without it. And Mrs. Usher, who was already very much put out with me for taking Ford downstairs at all and keeping him so long, asked me where it was. Ford said baldly: ‘It’s gone bad.’ And somebody gave an audible snigger. I suspect that Mrs. Usher’s provisions were a standing joke with the circle. She looked for a moment as if she was going to suffocate and then she told me to go and bring it up in such a way … there was something in her tone … a sort of snarling insult. I’ve heard maids and people say they’ve been spoken to as if they were dirt, but I never knew what it meant before. I don’t know how I got out of the room.
“I ran into the hall and up to my room, Ford rushed out after me and called, but I took no notice. I flew up the stairs and he came after me, so white and furious that I was frightened. We were both shaking. We couldn’t speak. We looked at each other and there didn’t seem anything to do but fall into one another’s arms, so we did. We clung to each other as if we’d been drowning.
“We couldn’t stay there, up in my room, so we went out on to the Heath.
“Have you ever been on Hampstead Heath on a summer night, Adrian? A hot summer night? No, I don’t expect you have. Well, it’s like a … a Dionysian festival. In the moonlight, under the bushes, wherever you go, you seem to be climbing over prone couples, most of them apparently in flagrant delight, as Corny says. We seemed to be walking in a place where restraint didn’t exist. We were exalted enough already, and the atmosphere didn’t calm us down. In fact, it was catching. We found a fairly solitary place and sat down under a bush, but there were still faint rustlings and whisperings all round us. Perhaps it made no difference though. Perhaps the same thing would have happened wherever we had been. I think it was bound to happen from the moment that he touched me.
“I was out of myself. I’d lost all count of anything I’d ever known before. It didn’t seem to matter in the least that he was an oaf, and his family quite terrible, or that he was only interested in people with elephantiasis, or that I’d only been in love with him for twenty minutes. He was so immensely powerful, compared with anyone I’d ever met before. He was carried away, and he took me along with him. The things which I’d thought important, didn’t seem to matter in the least. And after all, people’s minds aren’t really the most …”
Laura broke off suddenly and the heresy upon the tip of her tongue was never uttered. For she had discoursed so often, and so earnestly, upon the opposite theme. She had been discoursing on it to Ford before Adrian interrupted them. A marriage of true minds, she had said, was all that ought to matter. And she had tried to dismiss with contempt that other point upon which Ford was so blindly importunate. Where was she?
Adrian again offered her a cigarette. He was extremely anxious to make her go on, and to say nothing that should disturb this mood of candour, though he could hardly believe that it would sustain her quite to the end of the story. And even as he held the match for her she seemed to grow more cautious. When she went on her progress was not so headlong.
“After all,” she pointed out, “we had a certain amount in common. Music, for instance.”
“A great link,” agreed Adrian.
“Ford really knows a great deal about music. He reads scores. He likes reading scores better than going to concerts. Isn’t that odd? He says that he can hear them in his own head so much better than anyone can play them. He says that’s the only way to hear them perfectly. His attic was full of scores and he used to read them in bed. When I made his bed in the morning I always used to find symphonies or quartettes tucked away under the pillow. I’d once tried to talk to him about music, but he was abrupt and surly.”
A bleak way to enjoy music, thought Adrian, and not much akin to Laura’s enjoyment of the Opera. But she evidently thought that it was. The indiscretion upon Hampstead Heath, towards which she was so cautiously wending her way, might be explained and excused on the grounds of a musical understanding. And he could not help figuring to himself how Aggie would have told the same story. There would have been a good deal more rough stuff and nothing about scores under pillows.
“I was sorry for him,” continued Laura. “But it wasn’t that. And I was frightened and miserable. But it wasn’t that. It was … I don’t want to dwell on this rather shy-making part of it …”
Now they were really getting to the point and Adrian was on tenterhooks. But she seemed to draw back and reconnoitre again, like a person approaching a barbed-wire fence.
“I’m afraid I was curiously childish in some ways. I’d no experience of that sort … of course there had been one or two rather transcendental affairs with Julian’s friends … and I’d been rather taken with Gibbie … and I’d thought endlessly about the subject. What girl doesn’t? But I’d never really understood … Oh! Is that somebody in the pleached alley? Listen!”
“You ought to have a little grill put in the back of this hedge,” said Adrian irritably.
They listened and heard footsteps coming nearer.
“I’ll have to finish telling you another time,” murmured Laura with not unmixed regret. “Why, Hugo! How frightened you look!”
“I am,” said Hugo. “I thought this was a safe place to hide in. But I’m interrupting you. I’ll go.”
“Oh no.”
“Oh yes. You’re telling Sir Adrian all about it. Don’t say anything you might regret afterwards.”
/> Laura lifted her eyebrows and Hugo felt at once that this facetiousness would have gone down better with Joey. Adrian said rather crustily:
“I thought you were reading a play.”
“We haven’t begun yet. Aggie is still dressing and the rest of us are waiting about. She has to rehearse in costume because that helps her to remember the words. If she sends anyone to find me, say I’m waiting in the kitchen garden.”
He disappeared again and Laura called after him to try the white currants because they were marvellous. “Well?” demanded Adrian.
“Well … where had I got to?”
“Hampstead Heath.”
“Oh yes. Well, when we got back to the house …”
“You hadn’t begun to go back yet,” Adrian reminded her.
“Hadn’t I? Well, we did. We went back. And I thought we were engaged. So did Ford. But it hadn’t been explicitly discussed. It was quite late when we got back, so late that the party was over and everyone in bed. Only Mrs. Usher’s typewriter was tapping in her room. We crept past it and said good-night. And that was the last I ever saw of him. I lay awake all night, not able to think of anything, just spent and … and devastated. I felt as if I had to see him again before my life would begin to go on. But when I got up in the morning I found that my door had been locked from the outside. I’d been shut in. That frightened me. I couldn’t bring myself to rattle and call. I waited. I heard them all go down to breakfast. And I waited for Ford to come. I was sure he would. But of course he wasn’t given the chance. And presently I heard the front door bang. I knew he had gone to catch his train. And then, after a while she came up and let me out. The charwoman was on the landing and heard all she said. She told me to pack up and go or she’d send for the police and have me put out. She said that she’d had trouble of the sort with another of her sons, before, and she ought to have known better than to have a girl of my type in the house, and that young men weren’t saints and she didn’t expect them to be.
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