Duke Ayland said nothing that directly recalled either.
He only gave Laura to understand, in that language of allusion so wholly alien to Applecourt, and so congenial to its mistress, that she was wonderful, magnetic, lonely, desirable, talented, adorable and the gallant victim of uncongenial surroundings.
Laura found herself seriously believing that this was the dispassionate, considered judgment of a man with a profound knowledge of women.
She wanted to ask him about his relations with women, and presently she did so, phrasing the question subtly, and not with directness.
“I’ve been in love, of course,” said Duke Ayland quickly. “I’ve never asked anyone to marry me, and I don’t think I’ve ever loved in earnest. It’s almost always been a physical affair.”
“The physical is bound to enter into it,” pointed out Laura, who had for years suspected herself of being gravely deficient in sex-magnetism, and was secretly afraid of being thought passionless.
“Of course it is. But the ideal is to combine the two—physical attraction, and mental affinity.”
“That’s the rarest thing in the whole world.”
“It is. When you’ve found it—well, you have the perfect union.”
Marmaduke Ayland and Laura Temple exchanged another look—one even longer, graver and more charged with mutual understanding than any of their previous looks. And something that resembled liquid fire rather than anything else raced afresh through Laura’s veins.
It was eleven o’clock before they moved from the corner table.
“Let me take you home in a taxi,” he urged.
Laura retaining memories sufficiently vivid, even if not recent, of the probable results of proximity and intimately personal conversation combined, replied that she would prefer to walk back to Bloomsbury.
Something in the look that he gave her—rueful, faintly humorous, and wholly tender—touched her sharply.
“Duke, I do like you,” she said, warmly and naturally.
“So do I like you—Laura.”
He had used her Christian name for the first time. Laura was able to realise clearly and with sincere disgust, how out-of-date was the emotion roused in her by this so simple phenomenon.
But it was of no use. Her brain might function with all the clarity of 1927 but her emotional reactions remained those of 1912.
They walked through comparatively empty streets, and across crowded roads, and then into the large, dark Victorian square that held Christine’s flat, at the top of one of its highest houses.
And all the way, they talked.
Laura was enthralled by the mutually incompatible convictions that in one evening she and Duke Ayland had revealed themselves almost wholly to one another, and that a million such evenings would hardly suffice them in which to learn more.
It was impossible not to surmise a similar attitude of mind in Ayland when he asked her urgently:
“How soon can we do this again? Couldn’t you dine with me to-morrow?”
“Christine has some people coming after dinner.”
“May I come too?”
“I’m sure you may. Ring up and ask her.”
“Yes, yes, of course I will,” said Ayland feverishly. “But it won’t be the same thing as having you to myself. You’re not engaged every evening while you’re in town, are you?”
“No, I’m not,” said Laura truthfully. “I’d love to do this again. We’ll settle a date to-morrow, if you come.”
“I shall come all right.”
Laura drew out the latch-key that she had assured Christine she would not come home late enough to require.
“Don’t come up—no, truly. I’ll ring down here, and the door will be open before I get upstairs. Good night.”
She gave him her hand.
“I have enjoyed it—” murmured Laura. And again they looked at one another.
“Good night,” said Duke Ayland. “It’s been the most wonderful evening.”
Laura—dazzled, radiant, insanely exhilarated—went upstairs conscious only of the pressure that his hand had given hers and of words and phrases that he had uttered—reiterating themselves again and again in her memory.
Christine was sitting up in bed writing, when Laura knocked gently at her door and came in glowing.
“You look about eighteen. That is such a becoming frock, Laura.”
On this agreeable assurance Laura, shortly afterwards, kissed her sister and went to bed.
It seemed a perversity of Fate that she should be entirely wakeful in her solitude, whereas on some three hundred odd nights of the year, Alfred invariably found her sleeping profoundly soon after eleven o’clock.
“Now, I’ve got to think this out quite steadily,” Laura said to herself as she lay down.
Steadiness of thought, however, eluded her. She sought to induce it, and succeeded only in involving herself with a number of metaphors. She felt that she must steer between the rocks, swim against the current, stand by her guns, stay the course, and even—towards the dawn—follow the gleam.
Interspersed with her hazy conviction of these strenuous obligations, came one ardent recollection after another, of the way in which Duke Ayland had looked at her and the things that he had said. Then she went to sleep at last, and dreamt vividly, waking to an intolerably lively, if scientifically inaccurate, recollection of the less pleasing of Herr Freud’s theories as to the nature of dreams.
“Good God!” said Mrs. Temple earnestly, and rose with unwonted vigour.
A letter from the children’s nurse at Applecourt awaited her.
Dear Madam,
This is to let you know that the children are as usual. It rained yesterday but otherwise has been fine. Johnnie had one of his fits over his lessons yesterday and Miss Lamb requested for him to go to bed early but he seems all right to-day up to the present.
Both boys are well and send you their love.
Will write again in a day or two.
Yours faithfully,
Nurse.
Nurse, evidently, had dutifully covered two sides of a sheet of notepaper, and felt that no employer could reasonably require more. It mattered nothing to her—it had probably escaped her notice altogether—that her undecorated reference to Johnnie’s “fit” over his lesson only served to awaken a never very-deeply dormant anxiety in the breast of his mother.
Laura visualised Johnnie in disgrace, punished, saddened, lonely, perhaps needing her. She knew herself to be absurd. Whatever the details of the “fit” it was now past and over, and Johnnie had very likely been the person in all his little world to be least disturbed by it.
There was also a letter from Alfred.
My dearest Laura,
I was very glad to hear that you arrived safely and found Christine flourishing. I hope she is making you comfortable and that you are having no difficulty in finding a suitable nurse.
It rained yesterday between three and five, but not enough to do any real good in the garden. Very close again to-day and I hope you are not finding London too hot. The boys are quite well, and send their love. Be sure to go to see the A. B. Onslows, or anyone else amusing. I hear Lady Kingsley-Browne is in London.
Your devoted husband,
A.T.
Laura reflected. “Very few men are really good letter-writers. Men do not like writing letters, nor even reading them. It’s really an extraordinary proof of how much Alfred does care, that he should write to me at all.”
It had long ago become instinctive with her to translate the inarticulateness of Alfred into terms of “caring.”
“Are the children all right?” said Christine.
“Quite, thank you. Johnnie seems—but I daresay it wasn’t anything. Alfred says that I must go and see the A. B. Onslows. They did ask me, in a way.”
“How in a way? Surely they either asked you or they didn’t ask you.”
“They did ask me,” Laura explained, “but I don’t suppose they really meant it.”
“No. But I might write a line to Mrs. Onslow. It would be interesting to go there.”
“Of course it would. I’d love to go myself. Laura, what shall you wear for the party to-night?”
The conversation became animated to the point of feverishness, although exactly the same topic had been discussed between them twice already.
At ten o’clock Duke Ayland rang up and Laura heard Christine’s assurances that he might certainly come to the party at nine o’clock that evening.
“Or any time you like, after dinner,” said Christine. “What? Yes. Did you want to speak to her? Wait a minute, I’m not sure whether she’s in.”
Laura shook her head violently.
“No, I’m so sorry. She’s just this moment gone out. Any message? All right, we’ll expect you to-night. Goodbye, Duke.” Christine replaced the receiver.
She made no comment whatever on Laura’s unaccountable shake of the head, and looked neither more nor less detached than she always did.
Laura secretly admired Christine’s poise. She looked at her younger sister with impartial admiration.
Christine’s short, stiff frock of broderie anglaise suited her fair hair, and the warm sunburn of her face and neck and arms. Her square-cut bob with its short fringe, was exactly right. So were her silk stockings and flat-heeled Charleston shoes.
She combined individuality, and conformity to prevailing fashion, in her appearance.
“What are you going to do to-day?”
“My literary agent is taking me out to lunch. If you want to have yours here, we can lay this table before we go out. Only don’t touch any of the party food,” said Christine earnestly.
“Of course not. I’ll lunch at my club. I’m going to spend the morning at the Army and Navy Stores.”
“You get much more exciting things at Selfridge’s.”
“I know,” said Laura. “But they wouldn’t do, in the same way.”
As she put on her hat, she thought:
“I am like a curate’s wife, doing a day’s shopping in the market town, and going to the principal grocer’s shop because she always has gone to it.”
At the back of her mind, however, glowed the consciousness that no curate’s wife had ever been taken out to dinner in exactly the way that she had been taken out to dinner on the preceding evening. The remembrance of it coloured her day, aided by anticipations of seeing Duke Ayland again that evening.
“But,” thought Laura, with a recrudescence of her nocturnal frenzy, “I can’t go on like this. I must face the whole thing steadily, and not just let myself drift. Whatever happens, I’ve got to play the game, by the children and Alfred and—and everybody.” The feebleness of this conclusion dismayed her. It was a great relief to find herself amongst bath-mats, rubber sponges, and nursery toilette appliances. Laura gave them her whole attention.
Her day, on the whole, was agreeable, although she went to tea with an aunt who lived in Wilton Crescent, and the aunt, as is the custom of so many relatives, gave her to understand that she was making many mistakes in regard to the upbringing of her children, the solution of her domestic problems, and the selection of her clothes.
Laura could scarcely believe that she had once lived with Aunt Isabel, during the war, and had endured her with equanimity.
“After all—a home of one’s own—” thought Laura.
It was a wordless recognition of what Alfred had done for her in marrying her.
For Christine’s party, Laura put on a flowered chiffon frock that she had bought that afternoon. It was mauve-and-blue—a combination of colours that suited her. She found herself prettier than she had been for some time, and the conviction lent an additional animation to her face and voice. She felt radiantly alive.
Christine’s friends were people, mostly young, who wrote, or painted, or did secretarial work for celebrated authors.
The conversation, at first, was spasmodic. They drank coffee and smoked.
Duke Ayland arrived, and seemed to know everybody in the room. He sat down beside Laura, and on his other side was a medical student, whom everyone called Losh, who immediately began to talk to him.
Laura, in momentary isolation, studied the faces round her.
The girls, for the most part, looked overworked and over-strained, although three out of the four were pretty.
None of the men were in evening clothes, and the appearance of most of them was dusty. It would be difficult, Laura felt, to visualise any of them in the drawing-room at Applecourt, talking to Alfred about sugar-beet—or even about modern poetry.
Duke Ayland, alone, was different. She knew it, although she could not look at him.
In a sudden pause, the voice of the medical student rang out:
“…and I said, ‘My dear girl, there’s nothing to be ashamed of! You’re abnormal, that’s all—simply and naturally, abnormal.’”
In an instant, the conversation had not so much turned upon, as rushed upon, the subject of abnormality. It seemed to be taken for granted that the only abnormalities worth discussing were those concerned with sex, and that these could not be discussed exhaustively enough.
Laura was thoroughly interested, quite determined that she was not shocked, and extraordinarily anxious to prove to Duke Ayland that she, also, could talk about sex with impersonal candour.
Words, hitherto met with by Laura only in the works of Havelock Ellis, hurtled enthusiastically through the room.
The atmosphere of Applecourt, and the nursery, and Alfred sleeping over The Times, seemed indeed remote.
Chapter X
Mrs. A. B. Onslow replied to Laura’s note by an invitation to lunch.
“Remember that you’re a writer yourself, and may be quite as celebrated as he is, one of these days,” said Christine firmly.
Laura went to Highgate.
The house stood on the top of a hill, with the famous garden surrounding it. Pergolas and lead statuary met the eye. A fountain splashed. Laura reflected: “It’s lovely—but it must look very cold in winter. Probably, however, they’re never here to see it in winter.”
She followed a rather austere butler through a square hall, a room that looked like a library, and into another, larger room, with French windows opening on to stone pavements and rock plants and a sundial and a plethora of roses.
Thus did the scene present itself to Laura, as she received the greetings of her host and hostess, and acknowledged introductions to people whose names she did not hear.
It was without enthusiasm that she saw detach itself from the background of confused first impressions a familiar maypole figure of slim and silk-clad arrogance, and heard the nonchalant recognition vouchsafed her by Miss Kingsley-Browne.
“Hallo, Bébée,” said Laura coldly. “I travelled up with your mother the other day.”
“Mummie always goes by train. I don’t know how she can bear it.”
Laura’s host came up to her.
It seemed more natural to see him in a black coat and grey trousers than in tweeds.
Laura perceived in his eye a gleam of that interest which any man, however celebrated, is apt to bestow on a woman of attractive appearance, and to withhold from one who merely has a literary reputation.
With a skill that she felt was habitual, he contrived to let her know with his first sentence that he remembered the circumstances of their previous meeting, and retained a vivid an ineradicable recollection of invaluable contributions made by Laura to the conversation on that occasion.
Against all reason, she felt dimly flattered and encouraged. They talked about books.
Then lunch was announced.
Mrs. Onslow, at the foot of a black oak table with twisted legs, upon which amber-coloured glass stood on cobweb lace, begged Mrs. Temple to take the chair next to A.B.’s.
Bébée was on his other
side.
(“Her face is painted like a savage,” reflected Laura, with her usual injustice, and employing a totally unjustifiable simile for Miss Kingsley-Browne’s exquisite rose and vermilion.)
Laura’s other neighbour was a small, quiet American gentleman, who asked, with sense and firmness, to be told her name, and in return informed her with a grave smile that his own was Jenkins.
“Montague Edward Jenkins.”
“I have a boy called Edward,” said Laura.
“Indeed! And is he in the Army?”
“He is in the nursery,” said Laura, dashed. Mr. Jenkins looked disconcerted.
“Oh, of course, of course,” he agreed. “That would be so. And does he come with you to London?”
“No. I left my two little boys in the country with their father.”
In vain did Laura wish that she had not entered upon this familiar domestic vein. She found it impossible to abandon it.
Mr. Jenkins seemed anxious to make amends for his former tactlessness, and made minute enquiries into all the characteristics of Laura’s children.
“I’m sure,” said Mrs. Onslow with a kind smile, at a lull in the conversation, “that you’re talking about the children. I hear you’re such a wonderful mother.”
“It sounds like an earwig,” dejectedly replied Mrs. Temple.
She was considerably relieved by the laughter that ensued; and Edward and Johnnie were allowed to give place to a discussion on the latest volume of autobiography.
“You’ve read it, of course?”
“As a matter of fact, I saw it in manuscript,” returned Onslow. “It’s a stupendous piece of work. He had to go to Albania for six months to get the last half written.”
“Why Albania?” Bébée enquired, voicing Laura’s own curiosity.
“To get the right atmosphere. He can’t Write at all in England. He tried London, and Yorkshire, and Cornwall, and they were all hopeless.”
“He came to us for a little while,” said Mrs. Onslow, shaking her head. “I thought perhaps that if he had perfect quiet, and a room overlooking the river—and his meals, of course, whenever he could manage them—he doesn’t touch anything except black coffee and stewed figs—he might be able to work. But he couldn’t. He used to come down in the evenings looking ghastly, and say that he’d been in hell.”
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