Cordelia
Page 21
‘You promise?’ said Stephen as Brook came across.
Brook was flushed and smiling, but angry underneath. ‘Did you ever know such an old fool? Sometimes I think he’s not all there. I don’t know what Father would have said.’
‘Pridey’s got the courage of his convictions,’ said Stephen. ‘ What so few of us have. When will you both be coming to spend an evening with me at the Variety? I’m sure Mrs Ferguson would find it a refined and respectable show.’
‘Thank you,’ said Brook. ‘ What do you say, Cordelia?’
‘I should like it,’ she said. ‘May we let you know, Mr Crossley?’
Everybody was settling rather gingerly back at the table. The tendency now was to treat the eruption as a joke. Even the manager began to smile again and brought the news that the first two mice had escaped into the street.
‘Don’t you like Stephen?’ Brook asked in an undertone as they sat down. ‘You always seem a bit stiff with him.’
‘No … I think he’s very nice.’
And then the fourth mouse, which had been lurking under a table-napkin against the wedding cake, decided that it was time to bolt, and streaked down the length of the table, saw a friend in Anne, jumped on to her lap, and ran down her skirts to the floor, making a bid for liberty like its two friends.
Chapter Eighteen
‘Good-bye, Brook, dear,’ she said, conscious of hypocrisy, conscious of guilt, of fear, of excitement.
One night, and on one night only, she tried in a panic to persuade him to take her, but he did not want to, and abruptly, her mood changing, taking a plunge, she agreed to stay behind.
Privately he had a selfish reason for wanting to go alone. He was taking a collection of his poems with him and wanted to arrange for them to be published at his own expense.
He was a little annoyed when Uncle Pridey came up to him just before he left and thrust Habits and Heredity in Mice into his hand.
‘See what you can do, boy. Dozens of publishers up there. One of ’ em ought to take it. It’s worth doing for the prestige, even if they make no money out of it.’
So Brook went off full of nervous excitement, unaware of what he was leaving behind and what he would bring back with him; and after supper that evening Mr Ferguson said:
‘I am going to Oldham late tomorrow. I shall come back here before I join Brook. I opposed your going with Brook because I wanted this to be your first big opportunity … It will mean your visiting the works at least once a day, and Mrs Meredith will have to manage. I’ll leave everything in your hands – deliberately – to see how you go on.’
She said: ‘I’ll do my best, Mr Ferguson.’
‘I know you will. And if anything goes wrong, don’t worry. This is just a trial, and I shall be back at the weekend to see to everything.
You can drive down with me in the morning and we’ll go over the details together.’
She drove down with him. They went over the details together. He left. She talked to John Simnel and some of the foremen. She stood in the counting-house of the great place, among the reek of the chemicals, slender and tall in her frock of fine brown wool with its brown velvet cape. She had been here so often these last months that they accepted her as a natural sight, but she wondered what they said among themselves: ‘Another of old Ferguson’s experiments’ or ‘She’ll soon muck things up.’
The mysteries of dyeing, which had seemed so extraordinary to her on that first visit, were mysteries no longer. All through the summer she had been reading books. She knew something now of the properties of alizarin and purpurin, logwood and cochineal, and the new coal-tar colours. She did not understand, as Mr Ferguson did, the chemical reason why one dye was fast to some light and another not, but she was quick to grasp the practical problems. She understood also the commercial traffic of die counting-house and the offices.
She didn’t of course quite believe anything yet. She couldn’t give credence to these reins of responsibility which had been put in her hands. She half suspected that Mr Ferguson was still hovering in the background, ready to pull the correct rein when she came to a corner. Any moment, she thought, he must change his mind and say, ‘ Well, after all, you’re only a slip of a woman. And your place is in the home. You couldn’t expect to be taken seriously, could you?’
Only her reason told her that this was happening just as it appeared to be, that the man who in her heart she disliked and distrusted had given her this evidence of his liking and trust.
And she in return was unfaithful to any trust that had ever been put in her at all. At this moment, while outwardly business-like and calm, she was in dreadful conflict.
When she left the works she directed Tomkins to drive her to Albert Square. There she got down and told him to wait. She walked off casually and made her way down one of the side streets, asking her way of a beggar until she came to Spring Gardens. Very soon she found the Variety Theatre. In the dull October daylight the place looked shabby.
Signor Palermo, the World Renowned Impressionist.
Bird Songs Imitated.
Will play violin concerto without strings
and FIVE musical instruments at one time.
Lottie Freeman. Lady Serio Comic
fresh from triumphs at all the Leading Music Halls.
The Brothers Rouse. Double Juggling.
Slack Wire Dancing and Chinese Postures.
Boston Minstrels.
Val Johnson, the Resident Buffoon.
Inside that building, with all its posters and its blue and gilt entrance lobby, Stephen was perhaps working at this moment. Should she walk in and ask for him? Wouldn’t he be surprised? Up to now, all these months, all the advances had come from him. Perhaps he didn’t think her capable of making a rash move on her own.
‘Well, Mrs Ferguson, waiting for the early doors?’
Dan Massington. Danger. Any moment of relaxed caution was dangerous.
‘I was reading the posters. Do they really do all those things?’
‘They do. But it’s not quite the entertainment for Brook’s wife. The Fergusons of Grove Hall. Tut, tut!’
In the daylight his complexion was bad. A dandy going to seed.
‘How is Brook?’ He fell into step beside her as she moved away.
‘Very well, thank you.’
‘Very well? You must be doing him good, my dear.’
She did not reply.
‘I see he gave a reading of his poems the other week. I regretted I was not able to be there. What did they describe him as, a minor Shakespeare?’
‘I’m not very interested in this conversation.’
‘I know you’re not, but I think you’re a damned pretty woman. Have I told you that?’
‘Yes, you have, thank you.’
‘Too pretty for Brook! I wonder you stomach him, really I do. D’you ever feel in need of a change?’
‘Of company? Yes! At this moment.’ She quickened her step slightly.
‘If so,’ he said, ‘think of me. I’d give you a run for your money. Do you find me offensive?’
‘Very.’
‘I thought so. Well let’s change the subject. Come over and have a drink with me. There’s a decent little place on the corner.’
‘No, thank you.’
‘You’ve fallen for them, haven’t you,’ he said with a change in his voice, ‘hook, line, and sinker. You’ve accepted all their hypocrisies and subscribe to them yourself. When I met you that first time you were a pretty kid with a chance of leading a life of your own. Now you’re a willing pensioner.’
‘Why do you hate them so much?’
‘I don’t. I despise ’em. I’d give a good deal to take ’em down a peg.’
‘Because your sister wasn’t happy married to Brook?’
‘Because they as good as finished her off between them.’
She said: ‘For two years, every time we’ve met … Why don’t you say what you want to say publicly – and have done with it?’
‘If Dr Birch had any reasonable complaint he’d have called in the police, you know that.’
‘Birch is a special friend of the Fergusons, isn’t he? Went to school with Brook. He’s where he is because of the old man.’
‘Do you think he’d risk his whole career just to oblige them?’
‘Well’ – Massington stared down at her – ‘he happens to owe them a lot of money. Did you know that?’
She drove home without seeing Stephen.
During the whole two years of her married life these unpleasant suspicions had been in the air, only once or twice given shape by Dan Massington but never quite disposed of.
She spent the whole evening reading Margaret’s diary. There was very little in the later stages to support what Dan Massington had said. Yet the whole tone of the entries showed a progressive deterioration. They were the outpourings of an ill, a neurotic, and an unhappy woman. One day she was concerned only with the ultimate religious realities; the next she was worrying because she thought the maid had been at her chocolates and was going to hide them away where she could not find them. One day she had nothing to live for and had told Brook so; the next she was writing: ‘I feel as if the world is slipping away from me. Sometimes I want to scream and clutch at the bed to hold on to life and the few things left that I care about.’
When Cordelia had finished it she took it back to the attic and buried it deep among the books, where it belonged. Later she stared round her own bedroom, trying to visualize the scene these walls had looked upon. The face of the miniature, in a bed something like this, dark sleek hair centrally parted, ailing patrician face, a bedside table littered with the stuff of illness, the oversweet warmth of a sick-room, old malices and contempts … She had been bitterly unhappy here. If Dan Massington’s assertions were not true in one way, might they not be literally true in the other?
Twice before she got into bed she took up a pen to write to Stephen and twice she put it down. She needed him as confidant again. She needed his love still more. One reinforced the other and provided excuses to salve her conscience.
She woke next morning in a queer mood. For a time the mental turmoil was gone. In the night it had resolved itself. She picked up her pen a third time.
‘Mrs Ferguson thanks Mr Crossley for his kind invitation to the Variety Theatre for tomorrow, Wednesday evening, and will be pleased to accept. She will meet him at the Town Hall at seven.’
On Wednesday she was down at the dye works early, and stayed there all morning. At dinner she told Uncle Pridey and Aunt Tish that she was going to see her family that evening and that they need not wait up. Aunt Tish said it wasn’t quite nice to be driving about the streets after dark even in one’s own carriage.
Before dressing she fetched the diary down from the attic again and put it in her bag. She told herself she was going to consult Stephen about it. She walked a little way and then got a cab.
It was a fine night but windy. The cab took its time and she was early and in no hurry, peering out at the passing traffic and the wavering gas-lamps. They drew up in King Street and she told the cabbie to wait. There was little traffic here. She watched a blind old man in a silk hat and a tattered opera cloak being led across the cobbles by a patient dog. In the distance somewhere was a barrel-organ.
She thought: This is madness: this is over the brink. I don’t care.
She saw Stephen draw up in his own victoria opposite and get out and stand and stare about him. Then he came hesitantly across to her hansom.
‘Delia! Is anything wrong?’
She gave him her hand. ‘Didn’t you want me tonight?’
‘Want you!’ He paid her cabbie as she got out. ‘ Where’s old Mr Ferguson?’
‘Oh, just gone off for a day or two.’
‘My dear …’ They crossed the road but he said: ‘Let’s walk, shall we? It’s no more than a few yards. We’ve rime for a snack …’ He took her arm. ‘I couldn’t make head or tail of your note. I’ve been on the edge of my chair all the day, not knowing what to expect.’
‘I thought it nice to be formal for a change,’ she said gravely.
‘Absolutely monstrous! You’ve no heart at all.’
‘Oh, yes, I have,’ she said, ‘or I shouldn’t be here.’
He looked at her. ‘You’re different. What is it? Lift your veil and let me see your eyes.’
‘Are you surprised because I invited myself? Did it upset your arrangements? Had you to put some other lady off?’
He threw back his head and laughed. ‘Well now, I mustn’t ask why, for I love you like this!’
They reached the theatre. People were going in, and a crowd of ragged children – bare-footed, loud-mouthed, and half-starved – waited round the entrance to see the people get out of their cabs and to take a peep inside when the glass doors were pushed open.
The place looked very different with all the gases brilliantly flaring. Above the door two enormous ornate lamps cast a warm orange glow over the arriving patrons, to put you in the right mood, the convivial mood, and as you pushed open the doors a glare of light came out, like a paid hostess rushing to meet you. Cordelia was dazzled. Several men of good appearance, heavy swells, tall and moustached and white-gloved, turned to stare at her as Stephen led her in. She was glad of her veil. Somewhere to the right a voice was saying, ‘Take your tickets, ladies and gentlemen. Sixpence the body of the ’all, ninepence the gallery, which is more select. No hadmission except by ticket obtainable ’ere. Sixpence the body of the ’all, ninepence the gallery, which is more select.’
Up the stairs; long crystal columns on the walls lit from inside; other women here, some quite smartly dressed. At the top an attendant with a lot of brass burtons touched his eyebrow to Stephen, glanced at Cordelia with a flicker of interest as if to say, ‘I like the looks of ’ er’; then they passed a bar at which a few people were already drinking and through a small door beside it into a private office.
There was another attendant in here, a boy not more than thirteen or fourteen.
‘Tell them we’ll have supper right away, Maurice. And we’re not to be disturbed. Understand? I’m in to no one at all.’
‘Yes, sir.’
They went into another room beyond. It was a small sitting-room with a little table set for two. Stephen dosed the door.
‘This is wonderful. I can’t believe it’s happening. Tell me how it has come about … We’ve time enough for a meal. I’ve told them to hold up the start until we’re ready.’
She looked around. ‘ How very important you are, Stephen. To be able to hold up a performance just when you please …’
‘It’s you that’s important,’ he said. ‘May I?’ He wanted to lift her veil.
She lifted it for him. They met each other’s eyes.
‘You see,’ she said, ‘ there’s no difference. I’m just the same.’
His eyes travelled over her face with intense interest.
‘You’re never for a second the same. I don’t begin to know you yet. Even this’ – he touched her cheek – ‘even this changes its shape and colour so that I think I remember what you’re like, and then … Lord, you’re all different and new the next time, as if you’ve come straight from the mint and I’ve not set eyes on you before.’
Chapter Nineteen
They had supper, laughing and chatting together. Her mood had lasted. She was reckless, high-spirited, the old doubts put away. The enormity of it all was lost in the excitement of it all.
Stephen was enchanted – and something of his enchantment showed in the gentleness of his own mood. Afterwards he led her along one of th
e passages and into a box which looked down closely upon the stage and had a thin trellis in front of it. It was furnished with gilt armchairs and crimson plush hangings.
‘At one time no ladies were allowed on the floor of the house,’ he explained, ‘ and these were built so that a few distinguished guests could watch the show without being seen.’
She looked down. The first number had just begun. A man dressed like a workman, with a clay pipe in his hand and a brimless silk hat, was singing a comic song. But for the moment she was more interested in the theatre. A long table was set parallel with the stage, and round it a group of men were smoking and drinking. Other tables ran down the auditorium, rather like a college dining-hall, and all these were full. Nine-tenths of the audience was male. Overshadowing the back of the hall was the balcony, in which were more tables and chairs, and at the back of that was the saloon bar.
Her attention was half taken by the show, half by his presence so close to her; his was wholly on her, watching her, noticing her response to the different turns, full of the excitement of having her within the circle of his arm. Sometimes she would turn and smile at him, her face close to his; sometimes they whispered together, he in explanation, she in query or comment.
After each turn a refined, powerful, military-looking man with a waxed moustache would get up at the table nearest the stage and would lead the applause; and then when the last drop of appreciation had been wrung out of the audience by constant curtains he would take the enormous cigar out of his mouth and announce the next turn in a refined, powerful, military voice.
The ceiling of the theatre was blue with gold stars in unheard-of constellations. The arch of the proscenium was framed with white-enamelled scrolls and gold and silver flowers. The circle was lined with rosebud chintz. She was impressed; she knew exactly what Mr Ferguson would say about it; nevertheless she was impressed.