“Crystal, my dear, how are you? Are you better? A most unpleasant winter it was up there, and you so used to the sun and the warmth.” Then more coldly to Mrs. Lance:
“I wonder, Mrs. Lance, it did not kill her.”
“I think but for my catching her in the nick of time,” said Mrs. Lance, “it would have done.”
Mr. Geelong sat down and surveyed the flat curiously, with an irony in his appraisal which Crystal noticed. He looked incredulously at the blue chairs and the gaudy lamp-shades. He put his thumbs in his waistcoat pockets and became aware of Crystal’s eager questions about the company. Mrs. Lance was sitting on the edge of a rather higher chair at his side watching him, but as he replied he had the air of a man who can afford not to care if he is watched.
“What happened to your company?” asked Mrs. Lance.
“It went to pieces after your daughter left, Mrs. Lance. To pieces, right to pieces.”
“What happened?”
Mr. Geelong stood up and examined the new black rug at his feet, pushing the toes of his patent shoes into it as if wishing to assure himself of its reality. The place was full of so many new things. Reminded that he had seen a new and unexpected prosperity in Mrs. Lance’s ménage which he must live up to, he gave an exceptionally scornful account of the company’s inevitable disintegration. Inevitable was his word.
“First you went, Crystal, my dear. Then when we got to Birmingham our guiding star and guardian angel … you know whom I mean? …”
“I am afraid I don’t,” said Mrs. Lance, caustically.
“Our guiding star,” he repeated, looking down his nose over imaginary spectacles, bracing his shoulders for a speech. “Our dear Miss O’Malley fell out with Mr. Spears. He came up to give us all a dressing down, and made no exception. To show her superiority to the common herd,” he said with delight, “she sent in her notice, and to her surprise he accepted it. Accepted it. Indeed he did. Accepted it. Then it began. I believe there was a—a physical encounter of some violence. I know Mrs. Hawkins found her very drunk and struggling in the arms of a policeman in Mr. Spears’ hotel. She was perhaps—you didn’t know her, Mrs. Lance?—a strange woman. Melford left, and a new man, called James, came up—distinctly not a gentleman, definitely not.”
Crystal gazed at Mr. Geelong, waiting for every word.
“And Mr. Dufaux?” said Mrs. Lance.
“I am coming to him,” said Mr. Geelong, taking his time. He seemed very easy, alive and prosperous in his new blue suit. “He was very lucky—a good actor, too. You remember, Crystal. Well, after Birmingham he realized it was no good, so he left. Cleared right out. I believe he came to London, and inside a fortnight he got booked for an Indian tour, Kitty Mabbis and Davenport O’Dwyer, one of Stulchen’s companies. You remember Kitty Mabbis in ‘Benzine’? marvellous part, wonderful part, suit you down to the ground, Crystal. Well, when he went, that was the end. Spears sold the rights to an Irishman, and the latest I hear is that Miss O’Malley is suing him for breach of contract. Breach of promise everyone calls it. Curious, Dufaux going on that Indian tour; I was able to give him one or two introductions.”
“He has actually gone to India?” asked Mrs. Lance, who had become very amiable.
“Yes. Haven’t you seen him, Crystal? He was in London, I think. He must have been.”
“You see,” said Crystal, “I have been so ill that I have done nothing.”
“Well, I must say,” said Mr. Geelong, merely noting the fact and sweeping it aside for his main point, “they were a pretty awful lot. It is always the same with these number two companies. But for the fact that I met Spears one evening, and he practically begged me to go, practically begged me to go, I shouldn’t have done so. I dislike the man, but I mean—when he practically went down on his hands and knees …”
“It was experience,” said Crystal dully.
Mr. Geelong stayed to tea. While he was waiting for a second cup he pulled out a bright blue and white spotted silk handkerchief and wiped his fingers.
“Oh, what a beautiful handkerchief, Mummy,” Crystal exclaimed.
Mrs. Lance was surprised into spilling a little tea in his saucer; but he coloured with pleasure, and Crystal noticed a faint chain of perspiration on his forehead. He was charmed.
“Isn’t it beautiful, Mummy?”
“Oh, a little splash of colour, you know. Must have a little splash you know,” he said, very pleased with his success. “We who have travelled,” he added, “like to recall the Mediterranean! Eh?”
When Mr. Geelong had gone, Mrs. Lance’s spirit was softened and at peace, and she felt a desire to bestow tenderness and mercy. She was silent, and though she felt an unreasonable impulse to steal up behind Crystal, and press her dry lips to her daughter’s neck, she refrained. Crystal lay on the sofa. Her eyes were half closed, and her chin was set firmly. She did not even long to weep, but she did wish with all her will that she might sail on a sea as blue as Mr. Geelong’s handkerchief, and dream a way to hot India; but there was no love in her heart. There was nothing. In the old days, when she had walked in the streets or the country, she had wished to sing, and stamp her feet and cry; everything, the houses, the windows, the displayed trees, the silver webs of people, had seemed vibrant with living, as though they were all growing by tingling roots from the earth. Sometimes it had seemed that everything she saw was burning like a flame, that every sight was lit with significance from her own body. This was no longer so. The world had lost its flame, had extinguished and become unreal and meaningless, because she had no meaning to give it.
It was not long before Mr. Geelong telephoned. One morning Mrs. Lance called Crystal, who went down to the landing to speak. He insisted that she must come to the agents with him. Thus she began the usual rounds.
“Now, Crystal,” Mrs. Lance said. “Play the game! Don’t accept anything. Don’t commit yourself. Don’t sign anything without telling me. I don’t altogether trust Mr. Geelong. On your honour, Crystal.”
Mrs. Lance had a way of showing her clenched teeth and then slyly smiling when she said the word ‘honour’.
“He doesn’t trust you,” Crystal thought.
Mr. Geelong guided her by the arm from office to office. He praised her extravagantly to everyone.
“She has something in her,” he said. “Here’s the little girl I told you about.”
She could nearly have wept with gratitude. They lunched together. But the visits to the agent were fruitless.
“Oh dear,” Crystal sighed. “It is beginning all over again. Why do you think it is always like this? Now you are fortunate.”
“Well,” he said judiciously, “I don’t take everything I’m offered. I wait. Sooner or later it comes.”
“That is all right for you. But for me … no.”
“But your affairs … at home …” he was thinking of the flat. “are better now, are they not? Are they not?”
She saw his curiosity, and became suddenly curious herself.
“I suppose,” she said in surprise, “they are. But it isn’t that.”
“What is it?” he asked.
She sighed and drew herself up like a preening bird, and looked among the strange face in the restaurant. He was not there.
“What is it?” he asked with interest. “What do you want?”
“Oh,” she exclaimed, crossing her hands on her breast and looking almost secretively at him. “All I want now is a little peace. Have you any peace in your life?”
“I have a little freehold property.”
She broke into laughter; then she coloured and said half sweetly, half comically:
“I am sorry. You are quite right. That must be very peaceful. And you have no wife nor children?”
“No,” he said, recovering his precision. “An actor, at least when he is a young man …”
“Dear me,” thought Crystal, “I wonder how old he is? How awful if I have been thinking him an old man!”
“… cannot afford that.
Hostages of fortune, as Shakespeare says.”
“Oh, marvellous Shakespeare! Oh, I’m so glad!” exclaimed Crystal without thinking
“How nice of you,” he said, with enthusiasm, dropping his obstinate critical air, and wetting his lips. “Why?”
Crystal was confused. She tried to improve the situation.
“Because it is so much better,” she said; “then there are no complications.”
“How do you mean?”
“Well, now,” said Crystal, determined to get out of the muddle as well as she could. “They are more difficult when they are married. They become … naughtier? Don’t you think?”
“Oh, do they?” said Mr. Geelong coldly. Then suddenly he found himself leaning back in his chair and astounding the restaurant with the bursting pinkness of his face, the tears in his eyes, and the loudness of his laughter. But it ended quickly, for he remembered where he was, and wiped his lips extravagantly with his napkin and glanced cautiously about him. Crystal began to wriggle with warm mirth as she watched him.
“So you see,” she said, “why it is so necessary for me to have peace. But here I am always in trouble. Mummy is doing some work for some one who has two children and his wife has gone away, and he has a lot of money.…”
“Oh,” said Geelong, freezing into the attorney. “Are you thinking of marrying him?”
“Well, what can I do? Isn’t it perhaps better to have money and peace? No more storms, which are so bad for me.”
“But you can’t marry him. He already has a wife,” said Mr. Geelong, going hot across the forehead. “Does your mother want you to marry him?”
“Well, perhaps if I can’t marry him …”
“Is your mother wanting you to live with him?” exclaimed Geelong sternly.
“Well, Mummy says after all what does it matter in these days?” Crystal enjoyed the vicarious recklessness, in watching the effect of her mother’s opinions.
Mr. Geelong ran a hand through his hair wearily, and then, clenching his fist, said severely:
“There won’t be any peace in your life until you leave her.”
Crystal was moved by the vehemence of his concern for her. “Life has always been so difficult for poor Mummy.”
She returned to the flat singing with rebellion. Her mother, who had been changing, was sitting in her dressing-gown. Crystal had been surprised lately that her mother, who had always dressed very privately, had become strangely immodest. She left her clothes about the bedroom, and walked up and down in her underclothes smoking innumerable cigarettes. In the spare time which she had usually reserved for sewing she now read novels and magazines, and there were always five or six scattered about the bedroom, for she read very quickly.
“Oh nonsense,” she would exclaim, in the middle of a book, slapping the pages and laughing. “People don’t behave like this.” Her smiling mind would wander. “One only wishes they would!”
Crystal went out to the agents very frequently now and always arranged to meet Mr. Geelong. She went out to see him rather than the agents, for he had a faculty for creating the illusion of work. She sought him superstitiously, went with him slavishly, and did not dare to refuse when he said:
“Well, Crystal, to-morrow at eleven.”
She knew that if she refused he would lecture her. He would ask her questions about her mother and her life, and she found herself eager to reply. She laughed at him, but she was afraid of him.
“I know you’re right,” she said.
“Well, you don’t behave as if you thought so,” he would reply. “You merely think it because I tell you you ought. You merely think it.”
“But no, really,” she was obliged to insist.
He accompanied her to agencies, theatres, shops, waited for her so that she was afraid to be late. He refused to call at the flat again, and she knew why. One day she saw an advertisement for a young woman to go on tour in Central Europe. She was required for an act in which she would be bound with a rope, put in a coffin, and then made to disappear before the eyes of the audience. Crystal thought it would be very funny to do this. But Mr. Geelong opposed the job in a very deep voice.
“But, after all. there is no harm in going to see?” she said. “I should probably be too long for the coffin.”
“If you take my advice,” he said, “you will not even go to the place. That is, if you take my advice.”
“But if you come with me?”
“It is useless. Throwing yourself away,” he said dourly.
“But think, Vienna, Berlin, all those adorable places—and all you have to do … is to lie in a box and disappear.” She tried to snap her fingers.
He piloted her across the street. His grip on her arm was very bony.
“You are dreaming. You don’t know whether you are in the world or where you are.”
She was so pleased by this that she did not press her whim any further.
“Oh I wish everybody else were dreaming,” she said, “then it would be wonderful for me.” They were going up the stairs to Fingest’s Agency when Crystal exclaimed, “Oh, there’s Mr. Melford!” But Mr. Geelong firmly edged her up the stairs.
“Didn’t you see him?”
“Yes. Go along up. I did.”
“But—”
“I do not know Mr. Melford,” said Mr. Geelong with a gesture of dismissal, his eyes freezing, and his lips disappearing into two short straight grey lines. “He insulted a lady. He insulted a lady the honour of whose friendship I think I can say I enjoy.”
“Oh—yes?”
“Insulted a lady,” he said, standing at attention, yet evidently moved like some undemonstrative conductor who works upon his orchestra with subtle jerks of the body, from waist to shoulder, from neck to head. “A lady in the company in which I was playing. In fact a lady in the company in which you also were playing. He associated that lady’s name with the name of one of the gentlemen of the company in a manner which I could not tolerate. In fact with the name of Mr. Dufaux.”
“With Fonty!”
“With Mr. Dufaux.” He moved towards the office but paused for his final effect.
Crystal reddened and began to tremble.
“What did you say to him?”
“Nothing,” said Mr. Geelong opening the office door for Crystal. And added in a high nasal voice, pretending he was unaware of the presence of other people waiting at the Enquiry desk, who turned to stare at him, “I merely looked worlds. He had my answer.”
To Crystal his eyes appeared to grow rounder and larger until they would burst from his head and sail up amongst the cigar smoke of the office, like two cold blue bubbles.
Her alarm was beating like the tongue of a great bell inside her, and when they left the office she hurried after Mr. Geelong, trying to keep up with his sharp pace and afraid of losing sight of him. Had he a secret of hers? She was pursuing him, wondering how much he knew. Then she was walking in the depth of her memory seeking back to the intention of her love. But when she emerged on the surface of life again she felt refreshed, devious and powerful.
“It was kind of you,” she said.
“No living man,” he said dramatically, “has insulted a lady in my presence.”
Still she did not know.
When she left Mr. Geelong at lunch time and, leaving the bus, came within sight of her house, she was brooding on the intricate veins of deceit that were hidden inside herself. She climbed the four flights of stairs to the flat, and as she put the key in the door a flame of suspicion was suddenly lit in her. She thought she saw the truth about the comparative prosperity she and her mother had enjoyed since the flight from Mineanchor. The story about the trustee was false. Her mother was borrowing money, again, and this time from Mr. Trellis.… Who else could it be?
Her mother was out and this confirmed the suspicion, though for no logical reason. In each hour that passed the suspicion grew, and when the daylight vanished and the dark greenish evening sky blackened, the evil was certain. Mr
s. Lance returned at eleven o’clock in a very gay temper and Crystal, whose spirit was sodden with bitterness, was repulsed. She could not resist her mother’s gaiety.
“What are you so quiet about?” Mrs. Lance said. “You are absolutely transparent, Crystal. What is the mystery?”
“Nothing.”
“It is useless to tell me lies, Crystal.”
But Mrs. Lance was gay and Crystal quickly changed her mood to a gay one to avoid more questions.
“Poor Mummy, working so hard. Are the new pupils very stupid?”
“Stupid,” said Mrs. Lance blankly.
“Yes, the two new ones. Are they nice?”
Mrs. Lance seemed lost for a moment, then she hurriedly said:
“Oh, fairly. You have seen them, so you know.”
“But, Mummy, I’ve never seen them. I don’t believe you’ve any pupils at all!” she laughed innocently, still intent on driving her mother’s probings from herself.
Mrs. Lance stopped in surprise and suspicion.
“What do you mean, Crystal?”
Crystal laughed, clapping her hands. “Mummy! You! How dreadful! You, giving yourself away like that. You must be more careful, with all your children!”
Mrs. Lance became angry, and hurried Crystal off to bed.
Though in these days the lines of Mrs. Lance’s face were softer, her voice more indolent, her walk less decided as though she were burdened with thoughts, the sockets of her eyes were stamped with triangles of shadow. Her anger and her affection were quicker and less certain. The smallest things would rouse most unreasonable temper. She alternated days in which she could not be separated from Crystal for a moment with others in which she scarcely looked at her, unless to wish her away with a glance.
The Spanish Virgin Page 10