“One would be glad to hear of anything that would make life simpler,” said Mrs. Temple, with some feeling.
“Yes, wouldn’t one?”
“I should like to hear some of the—the Blog principles, if you can remember them. I am not laughing, really and truly. It’s only the name that—just for the moment——”
“I know,” said Lady Kingsley-Browne forbearingly. “It has a quaint sound, I am bound to admit. But the principles seem very simple and beautiful. She enclosed a sheet, with some Rules of Life written on it, put together by Mr. Blog. Nothing dogmatic, you know. Just: It is Better to Speak the Truth than to tell Lies, and Kindness is Right, but Cruelty is Wrong. Things of that sort. I liked all that part of it.”
“Was there another part, as well?”
“Two other parts. One was about diet, which always seems to enter so tremendously into any new kind of religion. I always rather wonder why. His—Ernest Blog’s—idea is nothing cooked. Only things that have ripened in the sun—and, of course, in this country, that would limit one a good deal. But anything in the way of drink, and as much of it as one likes. Prohibition, you see.”
“Not in England.”
“I know. Perhaps he’ll modify that part of it over here.”
“And what else?” said Laura.
“Free Love,” said Lady Kingsley-Browne, as one accepting the inevitable. “Oh yes, my dear, there’s always a catch in these things, and though it’s wrapped up in Universal Brotherhood and Spiritual Planes, I know exactly what it all amounts to. But I’m past caring. All the morals that you and I were taught in the nursery have been turned upside down, and if people don’t do all the things they want to do, then they get complexes and repressions, and end by doing other, much worse things.”
Laura remained dumbfounded, staring at the exponent of her own theories, that somehow seemed so strangely perverted when preached in conjunction with the evangel of Mr. Ernest Blog.
“It’s all going to be terribly difficult to explain to people, I know, but Bébée has a wonderful way of carrying things off, and so few people see anything odd about anything nowadays. I thought I could go to her in London, but she is determined to come down here, and to bring him too, of course. One will just have to make the best of it, and after all, it isn’t so bad as her infatuation for A. B., who is so terribly well known. I hear he’s had a nervous breakdown, by the way, poor man, and his wife has taken him to the south of France.”
“Is he recovering?” asked Laura in a strangled voice.
“Quite, I believe.”
The library door opened, and Laura and her hostess stared at one another in a common dismay as “Major and Mrs. Bakewell” were announced.
“Oh dear, I never thought——” said Lady Kingsley-Browne as she rose to her feet. “Well, this is nice of you! How are you, Major Bakewell? I haven’t seen you for months.”
A short contest in unselfishness followed, won, as usual, by Mrs. Bakewell, and Laura sat down again in a chair so placed that on one side she was scorched by the fire, and on the other hampered by the tea-table.
She talked to Major Bakewell, about rope-making—a subject that had presented itself she knew not how—and heard with dismay fragments of the dialogue taking place upon the other side of the tea-table.
“America…home almost directly…Blog, but then American names are rather like that…It is a Happier Thing to have Friends than to make Enemies…But nothing cooked.”
Mrs. Bakewell’s voice perhaps from being employed in a better cause, was more resonant a great deal than that of Lady Kingsley-Browne.
“I always feel it so wrong to judge anybody,” she said, “even those who, to our poor finite perceptions, appear to have outraged every law of God and man.”
Major Bakewell stirred uneasily, but still flogged gallantly at the now nearly moribund topic of rope-making.
“Universal Brotherhood…” came more faintly from Lady Kingsley-Browne. “So very glad to have her home again…unconventional, and even imprudent, perhaps, but then with magnetism like hers…”
“And to think that I knew Bébée when she was in the nursery!” exclaimed Mrs. Bakewell, suddenly and strongly, as who should say: “To think that Messaline was once an innocent child!”
At this Laura and Major Bakewell simultaneously abandoned all pretence, and gave themselves up to an attentive silence.
“Even in the nursery,” said Lady Kingsley-Browne courageously, “Bébée was ridiculously attractive to men. I used to think it was her fairness. The man who came to wind the clocks, even, used to bring sweets for her.”
“Cynthia has a bright smile for everyone who comes to the house. But I have never allowed my children to eat sweets. The first time I took Theodore to the dentist, he said to me, ‘Mrs. Bakewell! This child has Perfect Teeth. I have never seen anything like it.’ And Theodore—such a regular boy—spoke up before I could say a word: ‘That’s because we have never been allowed to suck sweets between meals,’ he said. Dear little fellow, it was so like him. Always rational.”
“How very nice,” Laura murmured, already seeking for an anecdote about Johnnie wherewith to counter the precocity of the insufferable Theodore.
She felt it unfortunate that, just as she was in the middle of it, Alfred should arrive, and that the politeness of her listeners should compel her to finish it in his presence.
She was not surprised that, on the way home, he should inquire:
“Don’t women ever talk about anything but cooks and children, when they get together?”
“We hadn’t mentioned either until the Bakewells arrived. I had been hearing about Baybay.”
Even Alfred displayed comparative animation in begging to be furnished with a report of so sensational a conversation.
“But I’m glad I went,” said Laura in conclusion. “We couldn’t have let her see the announcement in The Times, just like everybody else. Though as a matter of fact, she didn’t mind nearly as much as I should have expected. We hardly talked about the wedding at all, and I never even told her that we’d been to stay at Castle Gate.”
“Why should you?” said Alfred, who—as Laura reminded herself—never did see any reason why anybody should ever be told anything.
She herself derived a certain amount of satisfaction from the interest aroused in the neighbourhood by the news of Christine’s engagement—struck though she was by a tendency on the part of nearly everybody to speak as though Christine were her eldest daughter rather than her younger sister.
Christine, who had sold her flat to great advantage at exactly the moment when it best suited her to sell it, engaged rooms at the hotel from which she had decided to be married, and Laura joined her there a week before the wedding.
It was not until Duke Ayland actually met her at the terminus, that Laura suddenly realised afresh what this relationship meant to her. At Applecourt, it had lost poignancy from the sheer weight and force of other preoccupations. Then, she saw him amongst the crowd making his way straight to her, his dark, eager face illuminated.
“Thank heaven you’ve come! I’ve been here two mortal hours, though I knew perfectly well what time your train was due. Here—give me your case——”
He was masterful in the approved masculine way.
“I could go by Underground,” suggested Laura, who did not, however, really intend to do such a thing.
“You’re not going to,” returned Duke.
It was the answer that her sense of the appropriate had already instinctively framed for him.
He opened the door of a taxi for her, tipped the porter who brought her luggage, and got in beside her.
“Right!”
The door banged.
“Laura!” said Duke Ayland, gazing earnestly at her.
He retained sufficient presence of mind to take off his hat immediately and throw it upon the floor, and Laura retained sufficient powers of observation to notice that he did so, and to make her own deduction as to his motive for
the action—nevertheless, both of them were nearly suffocating with excitement.
The atmosphere was charged.
“Laura, I must kiss you!”
“No,” said Laura.
Duke Ayland took her into his arms, tilted her face gently up to his, and kissed her repeatedly. Then he asked her to forgive him.
“I couldn’t help it, sweetest. It’s such an age since I’ve seen you, and I’ve wanted you so dreadfully.”
“So have I——”
“Laura, we can’t go on like this. We need one another. …”
Laura, equally convinced of the impossibility of what was implied by “going on like this,” had nevertheless no solution to offer. She gave herself up to the extraordinary rapture of being made violent love to by a man with whom she was violently in love.
In an incredibly short flash of time, the hotel was reached, and the taxi stopped.
“Can I come in with you?”
“No, I don’t think so. But ring me up to-night, at seven o’clock.”
When Christine met her sister she exclaimed:
“How well you look, Laura! That is a becoming hat. How are the children?”
“Quite all right. Edward only coughs occasionally at night, and Johnnie really had it very lightly. You wouldn’t know that there’d ever been anything the matter with them.”
“How splendid! I hope they’ll like the little girl bridesmaids.”
“The white Cromwell shoes for Johnnie are half a size too small. I’ve brought them up to get them changed at the shop.”
Wedding preparations engulfed them both. Laura, whose shopping activities had for years been limited by a slender income to the resources of the shops in Quinner-ton, and a very occasional order by post to the Army and Navy Stores, enjoyed herself very much.
She met numbers of Jeremy’s relations, was assured by Christine that she had made a favourable impression upon them all, and saw again the pale and distinguished Mrs. Vulliamy and the serious Mr. Vulliamy. (It disconcerted her a little to find that she and Mr. Vulliamy instantly began to talk about hotels in Normandy, with words, phrases and sentiments identical with those employed at their last meeting—but then, as Mrs. Vulliamy might have said, some people are like that.)
She dined with Duke Ayland on the night after her arrival, and in the extraordinary relief and satisfaction of being with him again, and of finding him as much in love with her as ever—for Laura’s inferiority complex had not allowed her to take this in any way for granted—she allowed the evening to pass without any very definite reference to the future.
“When can I see you again?” he asked her. “You come to London so seldom. Can’t we go somewhere to-morrow ?”
“I’m here on purpose to help Christine—and Alfred and the boys are joining me in a day or two. We could do one thing more, perhaps, before they come. But meals are most difficult of all, because there are all sorts of Vulliamy relations, and if we’re not lunching with them, then they seem to be dining with us.”
“Keep your last free evening for me, won’t you, Laura?”
“I’ll try,” she promised, and wondered why nobody had ever asked her so fervently for the privilege of an evening’s tête-á-tête in the days when she could have acquiesced with no underlying sensation of guilt.
They made one other appointment, to look at a collection of pictures in a public gallery.
The suggestion was Laura’s.
“I don’t in the least want to talk to you in a place like that,” protested Ayland.
“If you don’t want to talk, we can look at the pictures,” Laura replied flippantly. She felt very happy.
But, as usual, after they had separated and after she had talked to Christine about the trousseau, and the bridesmaids’ bouquets, and her own new frock and hat for the wedding, and after she had gone to her bedroom—as usual, Laura fell a victim to reaction.
It was a relief to her that the two or three remaining days before the wedding were crowded ones, and gave her no time for thought, and very little for conversation. Christine was very nice to her, and so radiantly cheerful that it was impossible not to be infected, and she and Laura found themselves giggling like schoolgirls together in a fashion that neither ever achieved with anybody else.
“We ought to be more sentimental than this,” Laura protested. “We never seem to do anything but laugh.”
“A very good thing too. I think you ought to laugh a lot more than you do, Laura.”
“Who with and who at?” inelegantly retorted Mrs. Temple. “Apart from Alfred and the children, nobody at Quinnerton is particularly likely to do or say anything very funny.”
“Except Baybay. She is capable of almost unlimited funniness, isn’t she? For heaven’s sake, Laura, write and tell me at the first possible moment what she says and does when she gets home with her Yankee Tub-Thumper.”
“They are going to spread the Blog creed in England.”
“Beginning with unfortunate Lady Kingsley-Browne, I suppose,” declared Christine. “And very likely ending with her, for that matter. Can you see Mrs. Bakewell, for instance, allowing herself to be converted by Bébée?”
“Neither Mrs. Bakewell nor anybody else in the neighbourhood, after the scandal she’s caused. Everybody knows about A. B. Onslow.”
“At least Blog hasn’t got a wife, has he?”
“I believe not.”
“Then whatever she does, can’t be any worse than what she has done already.”
“Do you think—seriously, I mean—that the A. B. Onslow business was—was very bad?” said Laura, looking with very great attentiveness at the fastening of a bracelet.
“Bad?” said Christine vigorously. “I don’t so much mind the badness of playing the fool with somebody who is already married to another person, as the general futility, and senselessness, and utter vulgarity of it!”
Chapter XVII
“I’m Not going on like this.”
“But, Duke——”
“Darling, you can see for yourself that it’s impossible. I’m madly in love with you, and I can neither marry you, nor take you away with me. And to meet as we do at present is more than I can stand.”
“You don’t mean that you’d rather we didn’t see one another any more?”
“Honestly, Laura dear, there are times when I feel that might almost be easier than—this sort of thing.”
Ayland glanced round the semi-deserted picture-gallery, in the middle of which, on a long red plush seat, he sat with Laura.
“You’ve told me that there’s no hope whatever of my having you altogether, because of your children.”
“And because of my husband, too,” Laura pointed out, with ill-judged honesty. “I’m fond of Alfred.”
Duke winced slightly.
“I know. You’ve said so before. I cannot imagine why you tell me so often.”
“Because,” said Laura, with spirit, “you might very reasonably suppose, from the way I’ve behaved, that I didn’t care two straws about him. And I do. I may not be in love with Alfred, but I’m very fond of him, and even if the children didn’t exist at all I couldn’t ever do anything that would hurt him.”
“Then, my dear, you are not really in love with me.”
“Duke!”
“How can you be! If you were, you’d want me as much as I want you.”
“It isn’t that——”
The things that they were saying were not new. Almost identical words and phrases had already passed between them, and every fresh impetus given to the discussion made Laura rather more unhappy.
She sat now and looked, almost without seeing it, at a large painting of five wolves devouring three dogs in the snow.
She felt that Ayland was on the brink of saying something that she earnestly wished him not to say.
The next minute he had said it.
“Laura, darling—there’s only one thing to do, if you can’t come to me openly. Aren’t you brave enough, or do you not l
ove me enough?”
“You know I love you.”
“Then be kind to me,” he whispered.
“I can’t. Deceiving Alfred …and after all I did make a promise when I married him.”
“Which you’ve already broken, involuntarily, when you fell in love with another man.”
“That was something I couldn’t help. But what you’re asking me to do would really be treachery. If I wasn’t married, Duke, or if I was a widow, I shouldn’t hesitate for one instant. Won’t you believe me ?”
“Believing you doesn’t make things any better,” he returned. “How do you intend this affair to end, my dear? Am I to go on writing you letters once or twice a week in which I can’t say a single one of the things I really want to say, and meeting you once or twice a year when you come to London, in restaurants, and public places, and getting perhaps five minutes alone with you in a taxi to kiss you good-night? I don’t think you know what you’re asking, if you expect any man to be content with that.”
“At the very beginning, Duke, I told you that I was very fond of Al——”
“Don’t say it again, for heaven’s sake!” He looked both angry and unhappy.
Laura also felt unhappy, but she was not angry. She was not angry with Ayland because she was still very much in love with him, and because she recognised that there was justification for his impatience, and she was not angry with herself because it seemed to her—as to so many—that acts and omissions that appear definitely wrong in theory, become, in practice, only unforeseen, almost unavoidable, results of the pressure of circumstances.
“Laura, will you give me one week? Come away with me somewhere?”
“How could I?”
“Of course you could. It’s always possible to arrange things. You could go abroad, surely, to Paris or somewhere?”
“I’ve never done such a thing in my life. If I said I wanted to, I’ve no doubt that Alfred would let me, but I should have to tell any number of lies, and I can’t do it, Duke.”
He gazed at her almost with despair.
“Don’t answer now. Think it over. I shall see you again—besides seeing you at the wedding, I mean?”
The Way Things Are Page 21