Chapter II
But Constance has not asked me yet. During these several days I have waited for her to do so, and yet she has not. The approaching departure of Mrs. Rundle hangs like a gloomy cloud over us. The subject is not mentioned between us, and the atmosphere at dinner-time is charged with a vague unpleasantness which I have never known before. There is a sort of shyness between us, a reluctance to meet the other’s eyes, which is simply damnable. It is steadily undermining my intimacy with Constance, of which I am so proud and which I labored so hard to build up.
After dinner things are even worse. I glance hungrily at my big chair by the fire, and I think of the new novel from the circulating library. My mind goes racing back to the times when I have shared that chair with Constance (and quite recently too, although it is four years since we were married) and then my misgivings overcome me. Were I to sit there, with Constance opposite me, the shadow of Mrs. Rundle, big, round, comfortable Mrs. Rundle, would come and sit between us, as did the ghost with his head upon his knees in the Ingoldsby Legends.
For two nights I was sulky. I will admit that even to myself and to my pen and paper. I said I had a new plot and had to work on it, and dived into my study, lighted the gas fire and hid myself from the reproach in Constance’s eyes.
My study is the second bedroom in the flat. In it there are my desk and my typewriter. And there is a bed in it too. That is only natural, for we have to be able to put up a friend occasionally, and when we were first married the idea was that if I were seized with an urgent need for work (it does happen occasionally; by straining a point it might be called inspiration) I could work late and get to bed without disturbing Constance.
I tried it a few times after we were married. In the morning Constance would be to all appearances her usual serene self, but after a time I noticed that her inquiries as to whether I had passed a good night were just a little bit stressed. Constance has a far higher opinion of my literary work than I have; because I have had a novel or two published, and because she has quite a fair collection of newspaper cuttings about me, she thinks I am exceptionally gifted in that way. In matters literary my opinion is gospel to her, and she would not dream of interfering in the least with my methods of work. If I saw fit to sleep by myself after working that was a fact that precluded any argument. Yet for all that she did not like it. What in the world she thinks I can get up to in my study in the early hours of the morning is more than I can possibly guess. I simply can not hold one-man orgies there or anything. Yet she is quite unhappy that I should elect to spend my nights away from her. So that after those few trials in the early months of married life I did so no longer. I creep in beside her when my work is done. She is usually awake; she is never more than three-quarters asleep. I am given a sleepy “good night” and a warm sleepy good night kiss before she turns her back (it is a very sympathetic back) to me once more.
Until this week. That first evening I dived in here with a muttered excuse about “work,” and I really made some pretense at work. Quite early, only a little after ten, there was a knock at the door and Constance’s voice said:
“Good night, old thing. I’m off to bed now.”
“Good night,” said I.
A very small pause, and then the voice went on—
“Don’t disturb me when you come in, will you? I’m just a tiny bit tired.”
“Of course not,” said I. And the demon of perversity moved me to continue: “I’ll sleep in here, if you like. Shall I? Perhaps I’d better.”
And the voice said:
“Perhaps you’d better.” And after a second’s hesitation—“There are clean sheets on the bed, and it’s just been aired. Good night.”
I heard Constance’s door close before I realized that there must have been something more than coincidence in her having had the sheets of that bed changed and aired on that day of all days. Yet when I had made that suggestion that I should sleep there I was only wanting Constance to suggest the opposite.
Very much the same thing happened the second night. I was still sulky—I have already admitted it.
This evening it was very different. I had nearly made up my mind to end all this silly misunderstanding. I was turning toward my chair after dinner, but Constance said something that recalled me. It was not what she said as much as the way she said it. Her voice was very clear and calm; she spoke with the intonation which she uses when she is speaking to other people. I have not heard it used toward me for years.
“What about that work of yours?” said Constance. “You mustn’t be lazy, you know.”
When we had been married for a short time and I had recommenced writing novels after a delirious period during which I was completely unable to control my thoughts sufficiently to write five consecutive words in good sense, Constance used to say much the same sort of thing. When I hankered after the fleshpots of the armchair (perhaps even with some sort of idea that Constance might be on my knee in that chair) Constance would tail on to me and heave me away, and laughingly consign me to the outer darkness of the study away from her presence until I had finished my allotted quota of three pages of typescript. It didn’t take very long. The police (aided, of course, by the brilliant deductions of the young private detective) would steadily track the criminal through the tangled web of misleading clues, or the hero would maunder and dither round the heroine, or, when I happened to stray into history, the horses would clatter down the street and the swords would flash and the plumes would toss and the steel would glitter for just a fleeting, infinitesimal part of the evening before I could return to where she was waiting for me with the smile I still dream about if I am lucky.
That is how it used to be. But tonight it was different. “What about that work of yours?” and “Good night, don’t disturb me,” and the noise of the bedroom door closing. So here I am, although I am vastly conscious of the pricking desire to go round to that door, and tap on it with a quiet, “May I come in,” feeling my way through the darkness to the bedside, where two warm arms would be held out to me and two hot lips would kiss me and whisper feverishly, “I have waited so long, darling.” I should like it to be like that; it will be like that one of these days. But I dare not risk a rebuff. Constance and I are passing over very thin ice just at present, and any violent mistake on my part might mean disaster. It would be disaster for me; perhaps it would be disaster for Constance. If it were so, it would be my fault. I am certain of it without trying to avoid disloyalty to Constance. I am haunted every moment by the smug remark I read in some fiend of a statistician’s analysis of the divorce returns—“It is the fifth year of married life that is the most dangerous, especially to childless couples.” I wonder if that statistician will ever find himself a childless man in the fifth year of his married life? I hope so.
And so here I am, in this outer darkness of the study, and I must work. There are lots of reasons why I must work; I must have something to do instead of brooding over this trouble, and it would be as well if Constance were to hear me working. Then perhaps she may think that my offhandedness with her had only been due to the fact that my mind has been busy with plots and things—it is, sometimes.
Constance is very sympathetic about plots. She finds it very difficult to realize that plots come as the result of hard mental work after the very slightest piece of inspiration. When I am worrying and bothering trying to work out how to arrange matters so that the heroine and the hero are in a certain spot at a certain time, without putting too great a strain on the reader’s credulity, she can not get out of her head the idea that really the plot is coming only by unconscious effort on my part; the birth of a child and the birth of an idea are in much the same category, she thinks. That in itself would make Constance sympathetic.
Plots are troublesome things, and in themselves might make trouble between man and wife—although they have never yet made trouble between Constance and me.
The occasion I can remember most clearly was when I had finished The Last Vict
ory and was supremely satisfied with it. It is a fine thing to be satisfied with a book just finished, but there are distinct disadvantages. It seems such a hopeless business starting another one. The bits of plots that come to mind do not seem worthy of elaboration—and you experience a haunting fear of perpetrating the worst crime possible to an author, that of “disappointing one’s public.”
The Last Victory had been begun after our honeymoon, and doubtless that was why it is my best book. After it was finished, I could think of nothing more to write about. The four weeks I allow myself between books flashed by, and in my mind there was yet no trace of any plot worthy to be the successor of that of The Last Victory. Another four weeks passed, and still I was incapable of devising a new plot. As time passed, I grew incapable of thinking even of motives, let alone full plots. I had not the vaguest idea even as to the sort of book I wanted to write about.
The more I thought, the less I was able to think. The less I was able to think, the more anxious I became. The high hopes with which I had entered into marriage were shattered. Constance would not starve—my earnings at the office are a little above starvation rate—but all the comforts and luxuries I wanted for her, and which I hoped to pay for out of my sixmonthly checks from the publishers, would never be forthcoming. I began to despair a little, and try as I would, I could not keep all my anxiety from Constance.
The success which attended The Last Victory—only a modest success, but one superior to my modest ambition—only made matters worse, for it emphasized the fact that I really had a public to disappoint.
Little by little Constance drew the reason for my trouble out of me, and heard how if this state of affairs went on much longer we should have to start cutting expenses as a precautionary measure, and that the babies we were both looking forward to would have to remain unborn, poor little devils; but even this last she bore with apparent equanimity. She actually laughed when I tried to say how sorry I was for having married her under false pretenses.
One day I happened across an old friend of mine—Thompson, the man with more books to his name than I have years to my age. Over lunch I let him know a little about what was worrying me. He didn’t seem to find it at all surprising.
“Dried up for a bit?” he said. “What do you expect? Didn’t you put all you knew into The Last Victory? Any one can see that—and it’s not a bad piece of work, young man, either. But it will come back all right, don’t you worry. Have you ever known plots to come for the asking? You ought to know by now that they come when you don’t want them. Chuck all idea of novels for a bit. Write short stories or snappy articles for the papers, and that sort of thing. Then you’ll find—”
It was very good advice in its way. I realized that while he was talking to me. But it did not go anyway near far enough. For short stories and snappy articles for the papers were just as much beyond me as were novels. He wasn’t telling me anything I didn’t know. I was thoroughly aware that it would be as well for me to drop novels for a time, but I couldn’t think of short story plots either, and try though I would, I couldn’t find in the papers any matter of topical interest that seemed to call for a snappy article. I was more worried than ever.
And then one evening I was sitting in my study, trying as usual to evolve some material for my work. Constance was preparing to go to bed, I knew, and inwardly I had the sickening feeling that soon I would have to give up the struggle for the time and follow her, with another wasted day behind me. Then I heard a sound in the bedroom.
As a matter of fact, I thought Constance was crying; that seemed the only explanation of that pitiful little noise. I tiptoed across to the bedroom door, which was standing a little ajar.
Constance was kneeling by the bed, with her head bowed and her chin resting on her clasped hands.
“Dear God,” she was saying, “send him a plot. I know it’s a rotten thing to do, coming asking You for things when I want them like this, and never paying You any attention when I don’t; but I’m not asking You for anything for myself, really I’m not. I don’t mind having to do the housekeeping on two pounds a week. I don’t mind”—Constance gulped a little here, but continued bravely—“I don’t mind not having any babies at all, if only You will send him a plot so that he won’t be so miserable. It doesn’t matter if it’s a good plot or a bad plot; if only he thinks it’s all right and it keeps him happy, I don’t mind if he doesn’t make any money out of it.”
I thought that was the end, but Constance went on again after collecting her thoughts.
“Dear God,” she said, “I don’t know whether You have heard this or not. I have done the best I can. I have said this out loud kneeling down in my nightie, when as far as I can see, it ought to do just as well if I said it to myself lying down in bed where it’s warm, but I am trying to do the things You like so long as You will only give him a plot. Or, if You’d rather it were articles he wrote, give him an idea or two for articles. But send him something, dear God, and—and—I promise faithfully I’ll say my prayers every night after this, even if I don’t want anything. I will really.”
I was able to get away without Constance seeing me; my intrusion and eavesdropping were, of course, unwarrantable. But it seems as though it were the eavesdropping that brought the answer to Constance’s prayer. Before I went to bed that night I had written a fine snappy article on Anthropomorphism and the Younger Generation for a Church paper, which I sold that same week, and next day another on Do We Say Our Prayers? for the leader page of a daily (the highest rate of payment in the world, as they proudly boast). After that I turned out a magazine story about a rich man with some more than usually illegal swindle in mind being turned from his project by hearing his little daughter say her prayers—I sold that, too, at the first time of asking—and the rush of work which was thus started carried me half-way through my next novel—The Hope of Happiness—almost before I realized I had started it.
I don’t know what Constance thought about it. Constance sometimes is a little too deep for me. Considering what the main motive of all that work of mine was, I think she must have put two and two together, and made four. She generally does, when she gets as far as putting them together. But she never let on—she never by word or deed accused me of having listened to her private affairs. And she has kept to her promise. Constance would, of course. Every night before she gets into bed she kneels down and says her prayers—in her nightie, in the cold, instead of to herself in bed where it is warm. If I am getting ready for bed at the same time that is always the moment I choose for retiring into the bathroom to clean my teeth. I think Constance would rather I did so.
Chapter III
Perhaps Constance is saying her prayers now. I know that she is in the bedroom getting ready for bed, while I am in here worrying about a quarrel with my wife—our first quarrel, and so far unadmitted, and in which the deadliest words by far uttered up to the present have been “Good night.”
For Constance has already said “Good night” to me, through the door, without the least hint of wanting her good night kiss, and apparently with neither the desire nor the expectation that I should join her on the other side of the bedroom door. Indeed, she has closed the latter with a firmness and decision that says the worst.
I have been listening for that closing with so much anxiety. Had there been the least hint either of hesitation or of petulance I would not be here now; instead, I should be in there trying to make my peace, trying to climb once more those heights which I have so rashly descended, but evidently the time for that is not yet come.
And the longer this continues, the more carefully will I have to pick my steps. There is a likelihood of my doing irretrievable harm either by precipitation or by delay. I must choose my moment with exactitude.
If it were possible to bully Constance, the matter would be simple, but in this case there is no such easy solution. I can picture her sitting up in bed as I make my way in there; I can picture the little frown between her brows (there have been time
s when I have ached to be able to draw it as she has sat puzzling over housekeeping accounts) as she asks me what I want. It could not be done. I know Constance too well. Not by word nor by action would she ever consciously admit that there had been a shadow between us; but that shadow would be deepened indelibly. And Constance would be hurt very sorely indeed. Sooner than hurt Constance I would wait a lifetime. The hope to which I cling is that Constance remembers and believes this. I think she does. Subconsciously her knowledge may help her to realize that I can not plead until there is a hope that she will yield to my pleadings—until there is no need to plead.
And all this trouble because we have got rid of Mrs. Rundle! The poor old thing would be heart-broken if she knew.
So I sit mooning and dreaming, thinking and remembering. Occasionally, very occasionally, the memories hurt. They are the memories of the time when I did not know Constance as well as I do now (I am fully prepared to admit that what I do not know about Constance, even now, vastly outweighs what I do know) and I did or said some tactless thing which called up to her eyes the hurt look which crucifies me.
Those early months after Dewey had gone, for instance. Dewey was the man to whom Constance was once betrothed; I do not know what happened—of course I never sought to know—but I think he must have treated poor little Constance (she was only a child then) very badly. During those months, after he had gone, and while Constance was gradually changing from a sorrowful little child who held the key to my happiness in her ignorant, delicate fingers to a different being altogether, one who was prepared gladly to face side by side with me what lay the other side of the threshold, I knew what it meant for a jest to call up tears. And there was no relief in the fact that those tears were thrust back for my sake.
We both pretended a little, I think. Constance tried to pretend that Dewey was nothing, and had never been more. And I tried to pretend that Dewey was nothing, as far as I was concerned at least, and that it did not matter to me at all that the kisses which meant so much to me had once been tenderly bestowed on, and lightly received by, some one else before me. I do not think that either of us were very successful in our pretense.
Love Lies Dreaming Page 2