THEY RETURN AT EVENING

by Herbert Russell Wakefield

  Ethel came down at the end of October, her waist heavy with social scalps. A title had the same effect on her as the sound of a hunting horn on a pack of hounds. It gave her a delicious sense of excitement and well-being. When on one occasion she was addressed by a Minor Royalty for one thrilling moment, I believed she was about to die of joy. And, bitterly as she learned to loathe me, I am certain the fact she was loathing the current number of one of the oldest baronetcies in England gave her a soothing sense of social pride.

  I had been working very hard on a delicate and highly contentious section of my book, and was inclined to be irritable and 'on edge'. Luckily at first Ethel was fairly amenable. For one thing, she had the Riviera to which to look forward, for another she was learning to ride, an art which she had been instructed was a necessary accomplishment for an English Gentlewoman. She learned quickly, and looked as nearly palatable as any Gentlewoman can when topped by a silk hat. The servants hated her, for her attitude towards them veered from touchy insolence to obviously insincere blandishments, and that they disliked both variants they showed most definitely though courteously.

  As a Local Notable it was my duty to introduce Ethel to those of my neighbours and friends she had not already met in London, and for this purpose I gave a series of weekend parties. The fact that I do not puncture or pursue the fauna of Wiltshire by any of the traditional methods has not prevented me from being on most excellent terms with my neighbours. I think I can say I have worked pretty hard at those often tiresome jobs which the occupation of a prominent local position entail. I am regarded as a bit of a freak — as was my father before me, but my idiosyncrasies give them something to talk about, and there is a 'Dear Oldness' about their references to me which mark the absence or passing of criticism. I was curious to observe how my good friends would regard my good lady. Well, the Elderly Ladies Who Knew, knew she was not quite a lady. The young women envied her clothes and looks, but I do not think they envied me. The men behaved in a robustly gallant manner towards her, partly out of consideration to me and partly because her beauty was within limits overwhelming. But I think they reserved judgment. A few fledglings fell in love with her and they did envy me. How I should have rejoiced to have settled some money on her and danced at her wedding to one of them!

  She played her part rather well, but that which has fundamental flaws betrays itself inevitably by superficial cracks. Her breaks were not shattering, but they were palpable, and not one of them went by the Elderly Ladies Who Knew. She was quite unconscious of them. I usually said nothing, but I had to protest against one. She had repeated with the eager placid certainty of the natural scandal-monger a scabrous little rumour about the morals of Lady Pount's niece in the presence of her Aunt. While undressing, I suggested that the study of Debrett should not be pursued too academically, and that the art of knowing Who is Who should be an applied art, in so much as it might prevent awkward pauses in the hour of anecdote. And I gave as an instance the choice little canard she had repeated that evening. At which she lost her temper uneasily.

  'I can't remember all those people! How was I to know they were related? It's true, anyway, and I think she ought to be shown up, it's disgusting.'

  'Nothing,' I said, 'is worth an awkward pause, not even the exposure of notorious evil-livers. Some people have a sixth sense for knowing how to avoid them. Of such is the Kingdom of Heaven.'

  A short but violent scene ensued.

  So we scrambled along the broad, well mile-stoned path to mutual hostility. I made occasional half-hearted attempts to persuade myself that Ethel was other than she was. She felt, when she inspected her wardrobe and my broad acres and stable, and all those joys which I had brought into her life, that there were sufficiently compensating 'Betters' for the 'Worse'.

  And then it was time for the Riviera, its boomed beauty, its bloody brood. What a region! I have cruised the Mediterranean fairly extensively, and it is no Sea for me. What merits the Southern Latins may once have possessed is a matter of opinion; that they retain any today seems to me untenable. A breed of pimps, parasites, and horse-torturers, the choicest surviving examples of that cretin civilisation which is Catholicism's legacy to the world. And it has always seemed to me that members of races vastly their intellectual and moral superiors become debased and degraded when brought into contact with them, though I know the region attracts the worst.

  Ethel was so happy. She changed her clothes at intervals during the day, and made the acquaintance of a Grand-Duke, who was accompanied by a selection from his harem. Her delight in this encounter was so unconcealed that the nobleman for some time believed that she was anxious to be enrolled in his service! She 'adored' the Casino. I took one look at those tables. A vice is known by the company it collects. There must be something to be said for opium. It makes glad the heart of Chinks, it induced 'The Ancient Mariner', and made De Quincey immortal. Booze has many excellent songs, Boris Goudonov, and missed partridges to its credit. Even murder can point to detective stories — the favourite literature of our Great Ones, and the support of hangmen's families. But gambling has nothing to justify its existence unless it be Revolver Smith's dividends and A New Use for Old Piano Cases. My absence from this Rouge et Noir midden didn't matter, for Ethel had many friends who considered it a Green Baize Paradise.

  I mooned about aimlessly, did a little work, pretended at dropsical meals that I was having a good time, and then one day decided I could stick no more of it. So I informed Ethel and quelled the inevitable typhoon by reminding her she was there at my expense and that she could stay there alone at my expense if she chose, otherwise we'd both return to England at my expense. This syllogistic presentation of the case impressed her, and I returned alone.

  On the journey home I had an opportunity for coolly regarding things in themselves, with particular reference to my marriage. By then I knew for certain that Ethel would never leave me of her own accord. She had everything she wanted, a title, money to burn, a circle of sycophants, a husband she could dominate. Could she? I supposed so, for the dread of scenes is the beginning and end of feminine domination in the case of men of my type, weak, introspective, with sensitive ears and a tantalising tolerance. I say tantalising because, were I asked to prescribe for the matrimonial troubles of others, I should be cool, hard, a rationalist, a regarder of facts in the face. I should prescribe for those in my state a drastic, cauteristic remedy, and feel confident of its efficacy. 'No sentimentalist need apply' I should inscribe on my brass plate.

  'Physician heal thyself', the hardest of all hard sayings! But this is how I should prescribe in a case such as mine. 'Force a divorce, you will never be happy. You know her chief concern is money, settle some on her. Living with her seems the Devil, well, take him by the horns.'

  Perfectly sound, common sense itself, but I couldn't do it.

  A week after getting back I received a cable, 'Returning immediately. Ethel.'

  This unexpected announcement filled me with a vague excitement. What had she been up to? Something which might lead to a solution — a dissolution? I enjoyed twenty-four hours of such straw-clutching, and then she arrived, and, as was her wont, went straight and viciously to the point. 'I'm going to have a baby, and I won't have a baby. You've got to help me. It'll spoil everything. I don't care how much you want it. Tell me someone to go to.'

  'I shall do nothing of the kind,' I replied. 'Certainly I want you to have a child, and you'll be much happier. Now, Ethel, be unselfish about this!'

  'Happier! Unselfish! I like that. You don't have to spend nine foul months, be cut out of everything, and probably have your figure ruined. I refuse to argue about it. Will you help me?'

  'No, I won't,' I said.

  She said no more, but in ten minutes she was on her way to London.

  I heard nothing more from her for a fortnight, and then one evening she came back. She went straight to her room, refused to see me, and dined in bed.

  However, I went up to her after dinner.
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br />   She was shaking with anger, and her eyes were those of a trapped lynx.

  'I told you I didn't want to see you, but now you're here let me tell you this, I will never bear your child.'

  I think it was then, when I saw her hatred for me, that I first knew I hated her, and I suppose the murderer in me first woke to life.

  She was as good as her word. She had a miscarriage two weeks later, and became quite light-hearted again. One day she came into my dressing-room when I was shaving to tell me that, as she was not quite fit enough to hunt, she was going up to London, and had taken a suite at Claridge's. And then I received the worst shock of my life. She bent down for a moment to smell a bowl of roses on the dressing table. I had my razor in my hand, and for a moment I believed I could not restrain myself from cutting that lovely throat. With an agonising effort of self-control, I flung the razor on the floor. Ethel glanced up quickly, and, I suppose, partially understood the look in my face, for she put her hands to her eyes and ran from the room. She went up to London after breakfast, leaving me to my thoughts.

  For the rest of the day I could not control my nerves nor stay still for a moment, for my brain continually forced that hideous picture before my eyes. I could see her writhing on the carpet, the blood gushing from her throat. And that night, each time I fell into an uneasy doze, it came as a fleeting dream vision more vivid and more vile. I knew I was receiving a most urgent warning, that my subconsciousness was telling me that inevitably, if I continued to see her, one day I should kill her.

  The next morning I met Margaret Pascal. It was the only time I have figured in one of those coy sexual situations beloved by the authors of scenarios, for I found her embraced by barbed wire in Far Wood. After I had disentangled her and noticed the lovely junction of her legs and feet, we began a vague little talk. I told her my name. 'This is all yours then,' she said. 'Was I trespassing?'

  'Technically, yes,' I replied. 'But please commit the offence as often as you like.'

  'I am staying with the Franks,' she said, 'and was just wandering about. As a matter of fact, I adore birds, and there's a shrike's larder in that thorn just there, and I wanted to examine the grisly little feast.'

  She had a curiously deep and individual voice, and one can fall in love with a voice at first hearing, as I did. While we inspected the sorry and dismembered collation, each drawn, quartered, and impaled remnant fluttering in the breeze, I appraised her. I had learned bitterly to distrust women's looks, so I paid little attention to her physical attributes. It was a certain combination of sweetness and intelligence, of gentleness and determination, and her all-pervading rightness, which lulled and soothed and stirred and excited me. She told me afterwards that I had the same immediate effect on her. A certain tension established itself, a happy unease.

  When we parted I asked her if she would like me to show her over a part of the estate which was specially famous for its birds and beasts, for I had forbidden my keepers to shoot or trap there. She said she would love it, and I arranged to fetch her in the car early next day.

  I found my mood had completely changed. I could even examine Ethel's photograph with a whistling ease, for everything else I had a bounding pulse and a flattering eye. And I knew why — it was because I was falling in love with Miss Pascal, and that it would make me exquisitely happy so to do. I could hardly realise Ethel existed, and felt quite care-free whether she did or not. I knew the reaction must come, but for the moment I was anaesthetised and thinking only of the morrow.

  I called for Margaret early. The Franks are pleasant hunting, shooting, and horticultural nonentities, and I think they were a little astonished at my precipitance; for my reputation is not exactly that of one who chooses to spend a whole day alone with a strange female. But it was the happiest day I had ever spent. I found in Margaret just that congruent complement of myself — association with which makes life worth living — and nothing else does. She was twenty-nine, very straight and strong. Her features I never have bothered about, though I gathered that a good many other men had. She has an admirable instinct for pictures, music, and the written word, and her critical sense is quick and certain. I gathered she had practised at all three for a time, but had gallantly renounced each in turn, realising she could never transcend mediocrity. 'I prefer,' she said, 'to criticise the successes of others happily, than to face my own failures with angry tears in my eyes. In many a second-rate painter and writer is buried a first-rate critic. A little talent is a cruel thing.'

  In the afternoon I took her for a fifty-mile run. Driving a car is one of my few accomplishments, and a lust for speed one of the very few unexpected traits in my character (a capacity for flinging my wife down a row of steps is the only other one I can recall).

  My Ponitz has done 110 miles an hour at Brooklands and is the fastest car on the road I have ever known. Motor shop is the most boring of all, for fooling about with a car is for most people merely a substitute for thought. It is not so with me. Timid by nature, I resolved to conquer this timidity. Driving was an agony to me at first; I imagined a crash at every corner, and a corpse in every adjacent pedestrian, but slowly I gained confidence, and then my curious, restless mania for speed asserted itself.

  I asked Margaret if she minded fast driving. 'Go ahead,' she replied, 'and I'll tell you afterwards.' There was a perfect three-mile straight on the way home, and we touched eighty. She was in her element. 'Take me again,' she cried. 'It was simply glorious, and I've never seen such perfect control. I don't mean to be personal, but it seemed to me you became a different person as soon as we reached sixty, somehow defiant and austere.'

  'How far would you like to go next time?' I asked. 'Past the Plunge of Plummet?' and felt a fool for asking. She looked at me sharply and flushed slightly.

  'Your wife might have something to say to that. By the way, when is she coming back?'

  'Not yet awhile,' I answered irritably. 'Would you like to come tomorrow?'

  'I'd love it,' said Margaret, 'but till I know you better you mustn't take me too far.' She said that lightly, but with a certain emphasis.

  My recent social experiences had taught me that the average young woman of her class was at best a demi-vierge, and such a remark from such an one would merely have implied encouragement for a casual intrigue, but I knew Margaret hadn't a trace of the promiscuous rip in her make-up, and I knew she knew I loved her, and that she mistrusted her powers of resistance. This went to my heart.

  So it began, and it moved swiftly. A few days later we decided that it was impossible for her to stay on with the Franks and continue to see me each day. So I took a flat in Paris, and there we lived together. 'In sin,' you suggest, number two. If you like to, call it so. When one has lost and found oneself in a woman, what the respectable sensualist focuses his smutty spectacles upon and the Law deliciously terms 'misconduct' becomes of the most petty importance. It is not quite negligible, for in that hopeless, tantalising longing for complete fusion, when four eyes almost become two, and two minds just not one, when in fleeting seconds of ecstasy the illusion of this complete unison is attained, that mechanical conjunction is inevitable. But to those who love imaginatively and therefore hunger and thirst and lust and strive to isolate themselves from the rest of mankind, this physically compelled commonplace loses its significance. It was only Margaret who could make me dread to die.

  I told Ethel I should be abroad for a while, but she showed no interest in the information. By the time a month was up Margaret and I were just not one person, and I the unhappiest man in the world, for even if the view Prometheus enjoyed from his eyrie was the loveliest in the world, he must for ever have turned his eyes away from it to search for that speck in the sky. And often when I was alone with Margaret and for the moment utterly happy and at peace, it seemed that Ethel's face crept in between us, and once again I felt that foul longing to get my hands to her throat. She would never divorce me. I knew it, and I could not force permanently on Margaret the uneasy, furtive altern
ative. She would have accepted it gladly and made the best of it, but I could not do it. 'You preferred to murder your wife,' I hear you murmur with some irony, number two. Yes, number two, I preferred to murder my wife.

  We travelled back together, and I drove Margaret back to her flat in Gloucester Place. On the way we were held up by a traffic block at the Marble Arch. A car halted beside us, and as I glanced casually at it it seemed familiar. And then I saw Ethel, smoking a cigarette and talking to an elderly man with jackal's eyes. She saw me a second later. The cigarette dropped from her hand, and she craned forward to see who was with me, and then the dam broke and we went on down Great Cumberland Place.

  'That was my wife in that car,' I said to Margaret.

  I saw her hand tremble. 'Did she see us? Does it matter?'

  'She certainly saw me,' I replied, 'and it matters not at all. But if I know her, she's the most frightened woman in London.'

  We parted miserably and uncertainly, comforting each other with vague hopes of some solution.

  When I got back to Paradown, Ethel was waiting for me. She was shaking with the rage of terror as she rushed at me.

  'Who was that woman you were with? Someone you picked up in Paris, I suppose. That's what you call working at your rotten book! Who is she?'

  'A Miss Pascal,' I said.

  'Have you been living in Paris together?'

  'Yes.'

  'Are you in love with her?'

  'Yes,' I said wearily.

  'Oh, you are, are you? and planning to get rid of me. Well, I'm afraid you won't find it so easy. Remember this: I'll never divorce you or give you a chance to divorce me. You beast and hypocrite! Pretending to be so cold and pious, and then sneaking off to Paris with the first low woman you can find!'

  I said nothing. The only chance to bring her scenes to a close was to keep silence. Replying merely fed them.

  'Can't you speak, you beastly fool? Are you trying to get rid of me?'