by Hugh Walpole
Mrs. Lester thought that Alice Du Cane looked very calm and self-possessed, and wondered whether Lady Gale hadn’t made a mistake. However, Tony would come in soon and then she would see.
“You can imagine what it’s like at home,” she said as she settled herself in her chair and looked round the room. “Thick, please” (this to the waiter). “Fred never knows when a meal ought to begin, never. He must always finish a page or a sentence or something, and the rest of the world goes hang. Alice, my dear” (she smiled at her across the table), “never marry an author.”
Her blue dress was quite as beautiful as she thought it was, and it suited her extraordinarily well. Mrs. Lester’s dresses always seemed perfectly natural and indeed inevitable, as though there could never, by any possible chance, have been anything at that particular moment that would have suited her better. She did not spend very much money on dress and often made the same thing do for a great many different occasions, but she was one of the best-dressed women in London.
Little Mr. Bannister, the landlord, rolled round the room and spoke to his guests. This was a function that he performed quite beautifully, with an air and a grace that was masterly in its combination of landlord and host.
He flattered Sir Richard, listened to complaints, speculated about the weather, and passed on.
“Oh, dear! it’s so hot!” said Lady Gale, “let’s hurry through and get outside. I shall stifle in here.”
But Sir Richard was horrified at the idea of hurrying through. When your meals are the principal events of the day you don’t intend to hurry through them for anybody.
Then Tony came in. He stopped for a moment at the Maradicks’ table and said something to Maradick. As he came towards his people everyone noticed his expression. He always looked as though he found life a good thing, but to-night he seemed to be alive with happiness. They had seen Tony pleased before, but never anything like this.
“You look as if you’d found something,” said Rupert.
“Sorry I’m late,” said Tony. “No soup, thanks, much too hot for soup. What, father? Yes, I know, but I hurried like anything, only a stud burst and then I couldn’t find a sock, and then — Oh! yes, by the way, Fred says he’s awfully sorry, but he’ll be down in a minute. He never noticed how late it was.”
“He never does,” said Mrs. Lester, moving impatiently.
“You can forgive a man anything if he writes ‘To Paradise,’” said Tony. “Hullo, Alice, where on earth have you been all day? I looked for you this morning and you simply weren’t to be found; skulking in your tent, I suppose. But why women should always miss the best part of the day by sticking in their rooms till lunch — —”
“I overslept,” she said, laughing. “It was after the picnic and the thunder and everything.” She smiled across the table quite composedly at him, and Mrs. Lester wondered at her self-possession. She had watched her face when he came in, and she knew now beyond all possible doubt.
“Poor thing,” she said to herself, “she is in for a bad time!”
The Maradicks had left the room, the Gales were almost alone; the silver moon played with the branches of the birch trees, the lights from the room flung pools and rivers of gold across the paths, the flowers slept. Sir Richard finished his “poire Melba” and grunted.
“Let’s have our coffee outside,” said Lady Gale. Outside in the old spot by the wall Tony found Maradick.
“I say,” he whispered, “is it safe, do you suppose, to be so happy?”
“Take it while you can,” said Maradick. “But it won’t be all plain sailing, you mustn’t expect that. And look here, Tony, things are going on very fast. I am in a way responsible. I want to know exactly what you intend to do.”
“To do?” said Tony.
“Yes. I want it put down practically in so many words. I’m here to look after you. Lady Gale trusts me and is watching me. I must know!”
“Why! I’m going to marry her of course. You dear old thing, what on earth do you suppose? Of course I don’t exactly know that she cares — in that sort of way, I mean. She didn’t say anything in the garden this afternoon, in so many words. But I think that I understood, though of course a fellow may be wrong; but anyhow, if she doesn’t care now she will in a very little time. But I say, I haven’t told you the best of it all. I believe old Morelli’s awfully keen about it. Anyhow, to-day when we were talking to Miss Minns he spoke to me and said that he was awfully glad that I came, that it was so good for Janet having a young friend, and that he hoped that I would come and see her as often as I could. And then he actually said that I might take her out one afternoon for a row, that she would like it and it would be good for her.”
“I don’t understand him,” said Maradick, shaking his head. “I don’t know what he wants.”
“Oh, it’s obvious enough,” said Tony, “he thinks that it will be a good match. And I think he wants to get rid of her.”
“I don’t think it’s quite as simple as that,” said Maradick; “I wish I did. But to come back to the main question, what do you mean to do?”
“Well,” said Tony, feeling in his pocket, “look here, I’ve written a letter. I didn’t see why one should waste time. I’ll read it to you.” He stepped out of the shadow into the light from one of the windows and read it: —
Dear Miss Morelli,
Your father suggested this afternoon that you might come for a row one day. There’s no time like the present, so could you possibly come to-morrow afternoon (Thursday)? I should suggest rather late, say four, because it’s so frightfully hot earlier. I’ll bring tea. If Miss Minns and your father cared to come too it would be awfully jolly.
Yours sincerely
Anthony Gale.
PS. — Will you be on the beach by Morna Pool about four?
“There,” he said as he put it back, “I think that will do. Of course they won’t come. It would be perfectly dreadful if they did. But they won’t. I could see that in his face.”
“Well, and then?”
“Oh, then! Well, I suppose, one day or other, I shall ask her.”
“And after that?”
“Oh, then I shall ask Morelli.”
“And if he says no.”
“But he won’t.”
“I don’t know. I should think it more than likely. You won’t be able to say that your parents have consented.”
“No. I shouldn’t think he’d mind about that.”
“Well, it’s his only daughter.” Maradick laid his hand on Tony’s shoulder. “Look here, Tony, we’ve got to go straight. Let’s look at the thing fair and square. If your people and her people consented there’d be no question about it. But they won’t. Your people never will and Morelli’s not likely to. Then you must either give the whole thing up or do it secretly. I say, give it up.”
“Give it up?” said Tony.
“Yes, there’ll be lots of trouble otherwise. Go away, leave for somewhere or other to-morrow. You can think of plenty of explanations. I believe it’s this place as much as anything else that’s responsible for the whole business. Once you’re clear of this you’ll see the whole thing quite plainly and thank God for your escape. But if, after knowing a girl a week, you marry her in defiance of everyone wiser and better than yourself, you’ll rue the day, and be tied to some one for life, some one of whom you really know nothing.”
“Poor old Maradick!” Tony laughed. “You’ve got to talk like that, I know; it’s your duty so to do. But I never knew anyone say it so reluctantly; you’re really as keen about it as I am, and you’d be most frightfully sick if I went off to-morrow. Besides, it’s simply not to be thought of. I’d much rather marry her and find it was a ghastly mistake than go through life feeling that I’d missed something, missed the best thing there was to have. It’s missing things, not doing them wrong, that matters in life.”
“Then you’ll go on anyhow?” said Maradick.
“Anyhow,” said Tony, “I’m of age. I’ve got means of my own,
and if she loves me then nothing shall stop me. If necessary, we’ll elope.”
“Dear me,” said Maradick, shaking his head, “I really oughtn’t to be in it at all. I told you so from the beginning. But as you’ll go on whether I’m there or no, I suppose I must stay.”
The night had influenced Mrs. Lester. She sat under the birches in the shadow with her blue dress like a cloud about her. She felt very romantic. The light in Tony’s eyes at dinner had been very beautiful. Oh, dear! How lovely it would be to get some of that romance back again! During most of the year she was an exceedingly sane and level-headed person. The Lesters were spoken of in London as an ideal couple, as fond of each other as ever, but with none of that silly sentiment. And so for the larger part of the year it was; and then there came suddenly a moment when she hated the jog-trot monotony of it all, when she would give anything to regain that fire, that excitement, that fine beating of the heart. To do her justice, she didn’t in the least mind about the man, indeed she would have greatly preferred that it should have been her husband; she was much more in love with Romance, Sentiment, Passion, fine abstract things with big capital letters, than any one person; only, whilst the mood was upon her, she must discover somebody. It was no use being romantic to the wind or the stars or the trees.
It really amounted to playing a game, and if Fred would consent to play it with her it would be the greatest fun; but then he wouldn’t. He had the greatest horror of emotional scenes, and was always sternly practical with advice about hot-water bottles and not sitting in a draught. He did not, she told herself a hundred times a day, understand her moods in the least. He had never let her help him the least little bit in his work, he shut her out; she tossed her head at the stars, gathered her blue dress about her, and went up to bed.
The bedroom seemed enormous, and the shaded electric light left caverns and spaces of darkness; the enormous bed in the middle of the room seemed without end or boundary. She heard her husband in the dressing-room, and she sat down in front of her glass with a sigh.
“You can go, Ferris,” she said to her maid, “I’ll manage for myself to-night.”
She began to brush her hair; she was angry with the things in the room, everything was so civilised and respectable. The silver on the dressing-table, a blue pincushion, the looking-glass; the blue dress, hanging over the back of a chair, seemed in its reflexion to trail endlessly along the floor. She brushed her hair furiously; it was very beautiful hair, and she wondered whether Fred had ever noticed how beautiful it was. Oh, yes! he’d noticed it in the early days; she remembered how he had stroked it and what nice things he had said. Ah! those early days had been worth having! How exciting they had been! Her heart beat now at the remembrance of them.
She heard the door of the dressing-room close, and Fred came in. He yawned; she glanced up. He was a little shrimp of a man certainly, but he looked rather nice in his blue pyjamas. He was brown, and his grey eyes were very attractive. Although she did not know it, she loved every inch of him from the top of his head to the sole of his foot, but, just now, she wanted something that he had decided, long ago, was bad for her. He had made what he would have called a complete study of her nervous system, treating her psychology as he would have treated the heroine of one of his own novels. He was quite used to her fits of sentiment and he knew that if he indulged her in the least the complaint was aggravated and she was, at once, highly strung and aggressively emotional. His own love for her was so profound and deep that this “billing and cooing” seemed a very unimportant and trivial affair, and he always put it down with a firm hand. They mustn’t be children any longer; they’d got past that kind of thing. There were scenes, of course, but it only lasted for a very short time, and then she was quite all right again. He never imagined her flinging herself into anyone else because he would not give her what she wanted. He was too sure of her affection for him.
He had noticed that these attacks of “nerves,” as he called them, were apt to come at Treliss, and he had therefore rather avoided the place, but he found that it did, in some curious way, affect him also, and especially his work. The chapters that he wrote at Treliss had a rich, decorated colour that he could not capture in any other part of the world. Perhaps it was the medieval “feeling” of the place, the gold and brown of the roofs and rocks, the purple and blue of the sea and sky; but it went, as he knew, deeper than that. That spirit that influenced and disturbed his wife influenced also his work.
They had been quarrelling for two days, and he saw with relief her smile as he came into the room. Their quarrels disturbed his work.
“Come here, Fred. Don’t yawn; it’s rude. I’ve forgiven you, although you have been perfectly hateful these last few days. I think it’s ripping of me to have anything to do with you. But, as a matter of fact, you’re not a bad old thing and you look rather sweet in blue pyjamas.”
She laid her hand on his arm for a moment and then took his hand. He looked at her rather apprehensively; it might mean simply that it was the end of the quarrel, but it might mean that she had one of her moods again.
“I say, old girl,” he said, smiling down at her, “I’m most awfully sleepy. I don’t know what there is about this place, but I simply can’t keep awake. It’s partly the weather, I suppose. But anyhow, if you don’t awfully mind I think I’ll go off to sleep. I’m jolly glad you aren’t angry any more. I know I was rather silly, but the book’s a bit of a bother just now. . . .”
He yawned again.
“No, you shan’t go to bed just yet, you sleepy old thing. I really don’t feel as though I’d seen anything of you at all this week. And I want to hear all about everything, all about the book. You haven’t told me a thing.”
He moved his hand. “I say, my dear, you’ll be getting the most frightful cold sitting in a draught like that. You’d much better come to bed and we’ll talk to-morrow.”
But she smiled at him. “No, Fred, I’m going to talk to you. I’m going to give you a sermon. You haven’t been a bit nice to me all this time here. I know I’ve been horrid, but then that’s woman’s privilege; and you know a woman’s only horrid because she wants a man to be nice, and I wanted you to be nice. This summer weather and everything makes it seem like those first days, the honeymoon at that sweet little place in Switzerland, you remember. That night . . .” She sighed and pressed his hand.
He patted her hand. “Yes, dear, of course I remember. Do you suppose I shall ever forget it? We’ll go out to-morrow somewhere and have an afternoon together alone. Without these people hanging round. I ought to get the chapter finished to-morrow morning.”
He moved back from the chair.
“What chapter, dear?” She leaned back over the chair, looking up in his face. “You know, I wish you’d let me share your work a little. I don’t know how many years we haven’t been married now, and you’ve always kept me outside it. A wife ought to know about it. Just at first you did tell me things a little and I was so frightfully interested. And I’m sure I could help you, dear. There are things a woman knows.”
He smiled at the thought of the way that she would help him. He would never be able to show her the necessity of doing it all alone, both for him and for her. That part of his life he must keep to himself. He remembered that he had thought before their marriage that she would be able to help. She had seemed so ready to sympathise and understand. But he had speedily discovered the hopelessness of it. Not only was she of no assistance, but she even hindered him.
She took the feeble, the bad parts of the book and praised; she handled his beautiful delicacy, the so admirably balanced sentences, the little perfect expressions that had flown to him from some rich Paradise where they had waited during an eternity of years for some one to use them — she had taken these rare treasures of his and trampled on them, flung them to the winds, demanded their rejection.
She had never for a moment seen his work at all; the things that she had seen had not been there, the things that she had not seen wer
e the only jewels that he possessed. The discovery had not pained him; he had not loved her for that, the grasping and sharing of his writing, but for the other things that were there for him, just as charmingly as before. But he could not bear to have his work touched by the fingers of those who did not understand. When people came and asked him about it and praised it just because it was the thing to do, he felt as though some one had flung some curtain aside and exposed his body, naked, to a grinning world.
And it was this, in a lesser degree, that she did. She was only asking, like the rest, because it was the thing to do, because she would be able to say to the world that she helped him; she did not care for the thing, its beauty and solemnity and grace, she did not even see that it was beautiful, solemn, or graceful.
“Never mind my work, dear,” he said. “One wants to fling it off when one’s out of it. You don’t want to know about the book. Why, I don’t believe you’ve ever read ‘To Paradise’ right through; now, have you?”
“Why, of course, I loved it, although there were, as a matter of fact, things that I could have told you about women. Your heroine, for instance — —”
He interrupted hurriedly. “Well, dear, let’s go to bed now. We’ll talk to-morrow about anything you like.” He moved across the room.
She looked angrily into the glass. She could feel that little choke in her throat and her eyes were burning. She tapped the table impatiently.
“I think it’s a little hard,” she said, “that one’s husband should behave as if one were a complete stranger, or, worse still, an ordinary acquaintance. You might perhaps take more interest in a stranger. I don’t think I want very much, a little sympathy and some sign of affection.”
He was sitting on the bed. “That’s all right, dear, only you must admit that you’re a little hard to understand. Here during the last two days you’ve been as cross as it’s possible for anyone to be about nothing at all, and then suddenly you want one to slobber. You go up and down so fast that it’s simply impossible for an ordinary mortal to follow you.”