He followed her, and in a moment found himself being introduced to Lucy Wendover. Finding that they were already acquainted, their hostess left them. “I thought it too bad that those two beautiful young creatures weren’t dancing together,” she whispered to a friend who stood near.
Ronny and Lucy agreed to sit out. “It’s funny, isn’t it, that we should meet by accident again,” he said. Lucy, for one of the rare occasions of her life, felt shy. Under the gaze of those lively, bright blue eyes of his, her usual self-possession deserted her and it was he, at first, who did most of the talking. He was in high spirits. In the presence of this beautiful girl, whose admiration he detected in her shyness, his charm of manner and appearance displayed itself at its brightest. He was amused, too, at this new defeat of Adrian’s secretiveness. It was another joke on the Little Man: he would rag him about it when he got home. But there was something more than amusement in it: there was also, though so deeply hidden that he himself did not consciously perceive it, a gratified sense of revenge taken on Adrian’s defection. Adrian had deserted him and had jealously guarded his supplanter from him, and now he and the supplanter were making friends on their own account.
They found a sofa in an anteroom. But if Lucy was here, it suddenly occurred to him, Adrian must be here too. It would be a better joke still if Adrian were to come into the anteroom now and find them talking. “I haven’t seen Adrian,” he said to Lucy, “but I suppose he’s here.”
Lucy looked quickly about the room. “Adrian? I didn’t know he was. I thought he didn’t care for dancing.”
“Oh, if you don’t know he’s here, he won’t be. I just took it for granted, because you are.”
Lucy laughed. “Then you imagine that …?” She hesitated over how to put it.
“Yes, that’ everywhere that Mary went the lamb was sure to go,’ “said Ronny.
Lucy resented the assumption. “Oh, dear me, no,” she said. “We have lunch or dinner together sometimes and go to concerts, but we’re not quite inseparable.” Then, ashamed of the impulse to disown her friendship with Adrian, she added: “But I do like him. He’s a charming child and we’re very good friends.”
Ronny laughed. “Yes, he is, isn’t he? I keep forgetting he isn’t still a little boy at school. At school, you see, he was very much younger than me. He used to be my fag.”
“Was he very fond of music at school?”
“Rather,” said Ronny. “Wrapped up in it, as he is now. Not that he wasn’t good at games too, especially footer. I suppose he is pretty good at music?”
“Oh, very good indeed,” said Lucy enthusiastically.
“And you’re keen on music too?”
“Yes,” she said. “And so, you see, Adrian and I forgather over music. But he knows much more about it than I do. I used to work at it when I was his age, but I wasn’t good enough. I gave up working at it seriously some years ago.”
Lucy had lost some of her shyness now, but she still avoided his eyes. Through the screen of their talk she was acutely aware of his presence, his body leaning towards her, his gaze enveloping her; and when occasionally she ventured a fleeting glance at him she saw that, sure enough, his gay, blue eyes were fixed upon her as he talked. She had never been so immediately, so overpoweringly aware of anyone before. It was not his words nor his personality that were impressing themselves upon her so violently. It was his vivid, dazzling bodily presence which, it seemed, reached out beyond its tangible confines and enclosed her, entangled her in a net. She felt she must get up and go away, outside his influence; or else lean back, close her eyes, and happily abandon herself to it.
“When are you meeting Adrian again?” he was saying to her.
“Next week,” she replied. “Tuesday or Wednesday, I think.”
“How funny that I should have thought you were always together.”
“What made you think so? Not Adrian, surely?”
“No, not Adrian. In fact, Adrian hardly mentioned you. That’s what started me guessing, I suppose. It only shows how easy it is to make a bloomer when you start the Sherlock Holmes stunt.”
Lucy was greatly relieved. When Ronny had assumed that they were inseparable, she in turn had been led to assume that Adrian had told him that he was in love with her. But that fear was gone now. Adrian had said nothing, and for the good reason that there was nothing to say. Ronny had misunderstood his silence: that was all. It was a weight off her mind. Whatever she was feeling now, as she sat there in Ronny’s exciting and disturbing presence, she was doing no harm to Adrian. He might of course be a little piqued if Ronny and she.… Her mind, as if venturing into deep water, suddenly shivered ecstatically and shrank back.… Yes, piqued, but nothing more; and he would soon get over that.
Ronny, too, as he went home, assured himself that he was not harming the Little Man. Hadn’t Lucy made it quite clear that there was nothing between them? But the position was a little awkward, and when he got home he didn’t, after all, rag Adrian about having met Lucy again. In fact, he did not mention the meeting at all. And Lucy, when she met Adrian for a concert a few days later, also refrained from mentioning it.
But Adrian, his senses sharpened by his bitter misgiving, divined a change in her, a lack of her old, free warmth of manner, a pre-occupation in which he had no share; and, showing her nothing of what he was suffering, he withdrew into himself like a wounded bird and took his new and deeper draught of bitterness in silence.
When next they met it seemed, to his profound relief, that Lucy had come back to him. The tragic gulf which had so mysteriously and tacitly opened between them had as mysteriously and tacitly closed. The respite came to him as a delicious breath of springtime after a shattering storm. But the old triumphant security did not return. He lived in dread of the desolating loss of which he had had that brief but terrible foretaste. He dared not think of it for fear his thinking should in some unknown way conjure it up; but though he drove it from his thoughts, it lurked in some dark corner of his mind, a dull pain numbed but never quite healed.
Meanwhile chance worked against him. Ronny and Lucy had, it turned out, more than one acquaintance in common. They met again at a dance, and their unexpected meeting there betrayed them to each other. For the rest of that evening they were lost to all but themselves. The other guests glided past them like vague shadows, and far behind those shadows, even vaguer than they, the lonely ghost of Adrian shrank away unheeded into the outer darkness.
XXVI
Lucy had promised to meet Adrian for dinner and a Promenade Concert at the Queen’s Hall on the evening after that second dance. Why was it, she wondered, that she felt so reluctant to do so? It was not, she assured herself, that she felt guilty or that her friendship for him had changed. No; the reason was—she had it now—that she was embarrassed at the prospect of speaking of Ronny. And yet she was determined to do so, to tell Adrian that she had met him at the dance last night. Her conscience had been troubling her because she had refrained from telling him that she had met Ronny at the previous dance. That, she felt, was unfair to him. If, as she had believed, she had nothing to hide, why had she felt compelled to hide that? Simply because she was shy of betraying her feelings for Ronny. That was natural enough. It was not that she wished to hide them only from Adrian: she wished to hide them from everybody. But in the particular case of Adrian that was, she felt, unfair; and now if she were to suppress the fact of their second meeting it would be unfairer still. It would almost seem like conspiring against Adrian with his friend. She hated the thought of doing again that which would wound him; and if he were to hear that she had twice met Ronny he would have every right to be wounded by the strange fact that she had concealed it. She would tell him, she resolved, to-night at dinner. But how difficult it would be to mention Ronny’s name without betraying herself. No wonder she felt reluctant to keep her appointment.
Her preoccupation must have been apparent to Adrian, because she became aware, as they sat opposite each other in a corner of t
he little restaurant, that he too was troubled. They talked of the coming concert and of other things, but their talk was lifeless and strained. Long silences fell between them, and once, as she awoke from her own trouble and raised her eyes to his, she saw there such a depth of dumb suffering that for a moment she was appalled. Did he know, then? Had he somehow instinctively guessed, and was the discovery so terrible to him? Her heart smote her. What could she do for him? She felt suddenly helpless. But at least there must be no more disguise: there had been too much of that already. As if to abolish disguise at once she forced herself now to carry out her resolve.
“I met Ronald Dakyn at a dance last night,” she said, as she spoke she felt the blood rush to her face. “I expect he told you.”
But Adrian did not reply. His face was pale and drawn, he seemed to be perplexed by some alien matter, to be unaware of her presence. She glanced round the restaurant. It had been quite empty when they arrived, for, they were dining early; and it was empty still.
Adrian began to speak. “Tell me, honestly,” he said in a flat, emotionless voice, “are you in love with him?”
The question took her breath away, for it told her all that he had never told her yet. But she must give him an answer, and she felt that, cost what it might, she must tell him the truth. His eyes, full of that abysmal pain that she had seen there before, were on her face. She nodded her head.
“I knew,” he said.
“How? Nobody could have told you.” Her voice was as toneless as his.
“I could tell, from you.”
When they had left the restaurant they turned, by mutual consent, down an unfrequented side street. There he paused.
“If you don’t mind,” he said, “I think I’ll go home.”
That simple phrase cut her to the heart.
“Adrian!” There was a sharp note of distress in her voice. “You see, I didn’t know. I looked on you as a friend. I … I wasn’t in love with you, and you never … showed any sign.”
He stood there silent and listless as a ghost, in his despair. He looked, under the street-lamp, to have grown years older. Lucy could no longer check her tears. In a hopeless attempt to comfort him she held out her hand. “I wouldn’t have hurt you for the world,” she sobbed.
He took her hand and put his face down to it. She felt his lips pressed to it and the hot fall of tears. “I know you wouldn’t,” he said, as if trying to console her. His throat was dry. He paused and then added: “Don’t think I blame you.”
He made a faint sign with his hand, turned, and walked quickly away from her.
It was still quite early when he reached Lennox Street. Pausing outside the house, he glanced up at the sitting-room windows. Light showed behind the drawn blinds. At the thought of Ronny hatred boiled up in him. To cope with Ronny now would demand more energy than he possessed. His whole being was involved in Lucy. His emotions had no strength and no room for the added complication of Ronny, which was no more than a side issue in his disaster. But he must get into the house for a minute or two, time enough to collect and pack a few necessary things. He rang the front-door bell as he let himself in. The maid, coming to answer the bell, met him in the passage. He told her that he would not be there for the night, that he had unexpectedly to go away for a few days. Then he went upstairs, passed the sittingroom door with a wildly pulsing heart, and reached his bedroom on the floor above.
He switched on the light and shut the door. What had he come for? He stood for a moment helpless, his mind paralysed. Then, recollecting himself, he stooped down, pulled a small suitcase from under the bed. He must pack quickly. He opened the wardrobe, went to the chest of drawers and began to open them, vaguely searching in each and taking out things which next moment he realised he would not want. He felt suddenly angry with himself for his inability to concentrate, and paused in the middle of the room, pulling himself together. Sponge, toothbrush, hairbrush and comb, a shirt or two, a few pairs of socks, some slippers, pyjamas. He got the things together and packed them hurriedly into the suitcase. Then with a last look round the room he opened the door, switched out the light, and began cautiously to go downstairs.
As he approached the landing his eye fell on the crack of light under the sitting-room door. Yes, he was in there. There was no murmur of voices. He must be alone. A board wheezed as he rounded the bend in the stairs and turned his back on the door. He heard a sound in the room, and then the door behind him opened, flooding the stairs with light.
“Is that you, Adrian?” said Ronny’s voice.
He went straight on, neither looking back nor replying. The stairs behind him creaked, quick steps were following him, and as he reached the front door Ronny had caught him up.
“What is it, Little Man?” said the piercingly familiar voice almost in a whisper.
Adrian neither looked at him nor answered his question. He was tired, horribly tired; he could not be bothered with Ronny, and he stretched out his hand and took hold of the knob of the latch. But before he could open the door Ronny had grasped his arm. “Adrian, what is it? What’s up? I thought you were spending the evening with … with Lucy.”
To hear him say “Lucy “maddened Adrian. A spasm of despair almost choked him. He tore at his captive arm, but Ronny held on. He had kept his eyes averted, shutting Ronny out, but now he turned them full on him. The face he saw was transformed, the lips drawn, the cheeks blotched as if the blood had suddenly left them, the blue eyes were anxiously scrutinising him, and for the first time in all their long friendship they flinched and dropped before Adrian’s piercing stare.
“I was,” said Adrian, and there was an agony of meaning in his voice.
He wrenched at his arm, but still Ronny held it. “Listen, Adrian! Do listen! Come upstairs.”
With a violent effort which sent Ronny reeling against the wall of the passage Adrian wrenched his arm free and rushed out, leaving the door open behind him.
His instinct was to go at once to Abbot’s Randale, and he boarded a bus for Liverpool Street. The top of the bus was empty and he sank into the back seat. There he crouched, motionless and thoughtless, given up, body and soul, to his misery. The bus ride seemed interminable, and after a while, sluggishly and vaguely, his thoughts began to stir. His heart fought desperately against the fact that he had lost Lucy. It was a fact too agonising to face, and when at last he faced it his heart turned wildly in search of a substitute in which it might find refuge and consolation. It turned, by instinct, to Ronny. Then the irony of that impulse flashed upon him. Ronny was lost to him too—worse than lost: he had become hateful to him, stabbed him in the back. Yes, he had lost them both, and with a pang of maddening jealousy he imagined them together. She would go to Lennox Street to see him. They would sit and talk there in the evening where he and Ronny had so often sat and talked. Suddenly he remembered how Esmé and Ronny had talked there, how he had listened to the murmur of their voices far into the night and had wondered in misery whether … He clapped his hand to his cheek, overwhelmed by a sudden, appalling conjecture. Oh, God! Would Ronny persuade her to spend the night with him? A groan burst from him. He felt it vibrate in the cords of his throat. He laid his arm along the back of the seat in front of him and leaned his forehead on it. How was it possible to suffer so much and not go crazy? He flung the unbearable nightmare from him, sat up, and looked about him. The bus was nearing Liverpool Street. It was not till it had reached the station that he remembered that the last train for Abbot’s Randale would have gone nearly an hour ago.
What could he do? How was he to get through the ghastly hours between now and the early train tomorrow morning? To take a room for the night, to be alone, unoccupied, undistracted, face to face with his despair, would be beyond endurance. He went into the station, left his bag in the cloak-room, and then walked aimlessly out into Bishopsgate. The only thing to do was to walk. The business of walking, the traffic, the crowd would protect him against himself. He set off, back along Bishopsgate, then turned right
and lost himself in a succession of narrow alleys and passages. In half an hour he found himself back in Bishopsgate. There were few people about now in this business quarter: the gaunt, coldly shining, empty street added to his desolation, and he walked further southwards.
After a while he found himself on London Bridge. The cool breath of the river rose from below. His head ached: he took off his hat and leaned over the parapet. Below him, a grey blurr scarred with gilt and ruby, lay the long, encumbered deck of a ship. If only he could go on board, sail away down the river, out to sea, away to some remote country, far from all the familiar scenes which tortured him with the stings of a thousand tender and lovely associations, away to some blessed place beyond the reach of memory. He sighed, to lift for a moment the leaden weight that burdened his heart. The weight heaved slowly up and sank back upon him. He put on his hat and moved on.
Beyond the bridge he turned up the slope to London Bridge Station, went in and idled there for a while, then left it and walked westwards. When the clocks struck midnight he found himself crossing Trafalgar Square. His torture had slackened a little, but he was too tired to walk any further. In the black water of a fountain-basin a light breeze stirred little threads of silver which idly wove and unwove themselves. He sat down in a dark corner near some steps and slowly drooped into unconsciousness.
He awoke with a start. A hand was on his shoulder. Was it Ronny? He opened his eyes. A policeman was bending over him, asking him if anything was wrong. He got stiffly on to his feet. “Quite all right, thanks,” he said, and his voice sounded quite cheerful. “I’m going by an early train from Liverpool Street. I fell asleep by accident.”
The policeman seemed to be convinced, wished him good night, and moved on. He realised that he was very cold and stiff and began to walk slowly towards Pall Mall. Saint Martin’s in the Fields struck three. The sound relieved and encouraged him. Time was getting on. There were only four and a half hours till train time. The strangeness of these hours of nocturnal prowling had lifted him out of his normal existence. It was as if he had crossed into another life from which he surveyed his tragedy as a thing detached from him. He felt nothing now but a numbness at his heart.
Adrian Glynde Page 24