Knock Four Times

by Margaret Irwin

  One of the “girls” came up to them and held out an ancient opera hat, almost unrecognizably battered, which he had snatched from the top of the piano ; his face was handsome but looked ill and horrible because of the paint ; there was a dilapidated effrontery about him that made Celia feel suddenly unhappy, and when Dicky, hurrying as he was, cursing at the delay, yet stopped and fumbled for pence, she knew that he was doing so because he was afraid, because he must propitiate luck, because if he did not succeed in entertaining the public as he hoped, he might one day find himself doing it like this.

  Now the band clanged its shrill music behind them while Dicky stood on the mended doorstep with his key.

  “But, Dicky, the soup. We never got it. Come along. Le Coche is open.”

  “Damn the soup! Never mind now.”

  “But you said——”

  “I said, I said—what did I say? What does it matter? Come along, Celia.”

  She stood woodenly by the little gate in the railings staring at him. His impatient tone changed to cajolery.

  “Are you so hungry, you poor darling? But I’ve got some upstairs, I know I have.”

  “You didn’t say so. You said——”

  “Celia darling, do be unreasonable. Can’t you see I don’t want now to go to the end of the road ; I’m afraid something might happen, something to prevent your coming up. Supposing we met your mother—oh, I know she doesn’t shop after 10 o’clock and at Le Coche, but supposing—— Anyway, do just come up and I’ll go and get the soup once you’re upstairs, I’ll swear to you I will. Celia, don’t you want to come up? You know you want to come up. Celia, Celia, Celia!”

  He was leaning over the little gate, he was holding her hands, her arms, her shoulders, his eyes were burning her up, but not all his magical incantations of her name, not even his plea to her to be unreasonable, could dispel a sneakingly intrusive doubt.

  “Oh, why do you look at me like that? You know I love you. Is it evil to love? Have you been so hideously brought up to fear it? Are you such a hypocrite as to pretend——”

  “One moment, Dicky.” She had collected that doubt now. She knew what it was. They were walking slowly on down the road together away from that deafening music and the gaunt dancers, for Dicky had recollected the Ground Floors, had guessed at the massed formation of watching faces behind the window curtains, and that girl opposite was on the balcony as usual; she had been calling out, “Do come and look at the dancers, Auntie.”

  “Well, go on.” He too was calmer, rather sulky.

  “Of course I know now why you want me to come up. But when did you know it? Wasn’t it in the park when you suggested the soup?”

  “I don’t know. What does it matter? If I knew it then, you did too.”

  “No, I didn’t. Not till just now when you wouldn’t go back for the soup.”

  “Well?” Coldly.

  “Oh, nothing.” Still more coldly.

  “Is this going to be another quarrel, and all about ’ nothing’?”

  Celia was silent.

  “For God’s sake get it out. Do you look on me as a seducer and yourself as an ignorant che-ild? How ugly you make it all! And I’d thought our love was equal ; I’d thought——”

  “Look here, Dicky, you know it isn’t that. It’s because—can’t you see? You were only pretending that about the soup. You weren’t playing fair.”

  “Why should I? I’m not an English gentleman; I’m not——”

  “You can’t go on with that line for ever,” she said impatiently. “It was all right as long as you really weren’t one, but now you’re doing everything in your power to become one. If you dress and talk like one you oughtn’t to be above behaving like one.”

  “How many more ’ ones ’?”

  “Well, I’m not an author.”

  It was another quarrel.

  They walked down the road to the trees and up the road to Le Coche whose lighted windows mocked them with their cheerful glare. The band had stopped and were going away, trundling their piano.

  Two or three of the caretaker’s children sat on the pavement and with shrill cries protected a doll’s complexion from the light of the lamp-post with a paper parasol.

  “If only we’d gone in for that damned soup,” groaned Dicky, “all this wouldn’t have happened. Let’s pretend it hasn’t happened, let’s go in now and get the soup and go and heat it and everything will be all right.”

  But for the first time there was a touch of something elaborate in his childishness.

  She ought to break away. What was the use of going on talking? It mattered so little what was said. But she wanted him to see, she told herself, she could not bear that he should think her unjust or not mind his being unfair. And suddenly she knew that she did not really mind it, that he was right, and if she loved him nothing of this would matter.

  “You’re making it up,” he said ; “you’re making obstacles because you don’t want to come to me. You’re afraid of love and of life and of anything real. Here’s this one impossibly perfect moment given to us out of the whole vast volume of time, and you will chuck it away ; you will wait to be respectable. Only when everything’s made quite safe, when I’m earning a steady income and your parents have given their consent and we can all go to church together for the only time in our lives except when our friends think it proper to do the same thing, only then, when it’s all stale and stereotyped and smeared over with sentiment and bridal lace and white sugar cake, then, then, then you’ll consent to come to me.

  “But now when I need you so desperately, now when I’m crying out to you, when I’m starving for want of you, terrified of losing you, now you’ll desert me, sneak safely home and leave me alone in the dark.”

  “Oh, Dicky, don’t. I can’t stand it. I’ll come with you, of course I’ll come ; only don’t be so angry ; don’t let’s spoil it first—please, please don’t let’s spoil it.”

  She put her arms round his neck, once again a couple clung together in the shadow of the trees down at the farther end of the road, so that the casual passer-by hurried past discreetly.

  Dicky, devouring her with kisses, heightened the joy of his triumph by describing what his solitary vigil would have been, his sense of frustration, his terror of failure and loss of her.

  “But no,” she remembered suddenly ; “you would be dancing with Damaris and her crowd at the Tadpole.”

  “As if I’d think of going now.”

  “You don’t want to?”

  It was her turn to feel drunk with triumph. But gazing into his face in that grove of dark trees she gave a sudden exclamation. He asked what had startled her.

  “I’ve just thought of something. It was at Leila’s party. Don’t you remember? Ages and ages ago. The very first, no, the second time I came to see you. That girl to-day with the anklet was there, or it may have been another one, it doesn’t matter ; anyway that was where I saw him. And the other day I saw him here among these trees and have been trying to think why I knew his face ever since.”

  “Good God, how can you go off on to some utterly unimportant point like that? The face of a man in the street! You must be quite shallow and heartless.”

  “I’m not, you know I’m not. But you know how a silly little thing like that can stick in your head and bother you. Do tell me who he is, Dicky. Don’t you remember, you spoke of him as the man with the eyes.”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know which man you mean. What does it matter anyway? Listen to me—no, I don’t know what I was going to say ; you put it all out of my head. Come along, Celia. Don’t stand staring at these trees. What is there to look at in a row of stubby trees? Don’t think of anyone or anything else. Celia, my loveliest, sweetest, what are you thinking of?”

  “Of Damaris,” she said softly, “and Roger O’Neill, the musical comedy composer, whom she said you would meet to-night and might get you to write his libretto.”

  There she was making up obstacles again, deliberately p
utting them in their way.

  “Damn O’Neill,” he said irritably ; “besides, if you really think it’s so important, I might look in there right at the end after I’ve taken you home.”

  He wished he hadn’t said that. She was thinking about it, seeing pictures of herself creeping into bed in the small hours, frightened and overwrought and needing comfort and reassurance while he went off to dance at the Tadpole. He was too sympathetic, that was what was wrong with him, he saw everybody’s point of view, but of course it helped him as a writer.

  “Oh, why did you put it into my head?” he cried, “it’s not fair. It was you made me think of it. I don’t want to go. If only you’ll be your sweetest and charmingest to me, Celia darling, you’ll make me forget it altogether, and I’ll never even think again of going.”

  Still she stood and stared at the dim row of trees and saw he did not know what.

  “It’s not true,” he cried. “Whatever you’re thinking, it’s not true. Do you imagine you are just one of a list of engagements? Then it’s not fair, it’s not reasonable. Oh, Celia, do come along ; we shall never get things right out here.”

  She walked slowly beside him, dragging her steps in obedience to a voice which told her to be brave and go on being pretty, being her sweetest and charmingest so that Dicky should forget everything for that one night but herself.

  “It’s too much for me,” she murmured, and stopped once again before the mended doorstep. “Dicky, I can’t. Not to-night. Some other time when you’re not busy.” The conventional formula tripped her up into hysterical laughter. “I can’t help it. I’m not laughing, no, indeed I’m not ; if I am it’s because I’m crying. No, I can’t. I can’t say why. Oh, don’t say that. It’s not true, you know it’s not. I just can’t explain. It’s not the right moment, that’s all. I know it’s not.

  “Dicky, do try to be fair.”

  “Shut up.”

  “Please try not to be a cad.”

  She had turned and was hurrying down to the farther end of the road again with him beside her. With each fresh outbreak from him and entreaty from her, she went still faster and now broke into a run. He ran too, his hand tight on her arm, expostulating, pleading, cursing. She had grown deaf, and blind with tears, scurrying through the dark streets as through a nightmare, with Dicky beside her, Dicky holding her, hating her, not caring what she felt, saying, yes and doing, all that he could to hurt her.

  They reached The Borehams. There was the policeman at the corner. Now she could break away from him and go indoors, but she did not. She went on round the railed enclosure with him, round the gardens and the church, and now it was she who held on to him and would not let him break away in a storm of rage and disappointment and reproach, but begged him to remember their love, to have some trust in it and her.

  “For, Dicky, I do love you and I’m so terrified of our spoiling it, and I think we just might to-night after all these quarrels and agonies, and whatever we say it seems to go wrong to-night and hurt the other. Do let’s leave to-night and start fresh when we meet again, and I’ll go to bed and you go to the Tadpole. You know you’ll never get over it if you miss seeing Roger O’Neill ; it might just be the chance on which your whole life is hanging.”

  Round The Borehams they went again, round the railings and the gardens and the church inside, round and round. And the policeman at the corner thought——

  While the girl opposite in Rainbow Road just popped out on the balcony again to see what the weather was going to be like and said, “Yes, Auntie. In a minute. It’s so lovely and hot. There’s that violin playing again in the house down near the end of the road,” and she looked up at the blue darkness of the sky, and opposite at the grey darkness of the houses spangled with squares of golden or rosy light, and along the balcony ledges at the scarlet geraniums glowing in the lamplight, and thought the hushed street was waiting for something, waiting for what?

  Anyone and anything might come round the corner at that dark end by the trees, a huge, softly gliding car, a man on horseback, a tall figure wrapped in a cloak, in any case someone for her, magnificent, commanding yet perfectly understanding. The street was like a story, she thought, but which of all the people in it was its hero or heroine, and “will it ever be me if I wait long enough?” asked the girl opposite as she turned back into her aunt’s room and shut the window behind her.

  Chapter XXII

  Mrs. Belamy turned from the drawing-room mantelpiece. She always looked at herself in that mirror before she went to bed. She saw in it so little to mark the passage of the years, or even of the last few tiring hours, that it was apt to prove the most complete and perfect moment of her day. No one would think she was the mother of grown-up children. She turned with a gently satisfied sigh to meet Celia.

  There she stood staring at her ; she really looked most extraordinary, with her hat pushed back from her head and her forehead all damp and glistening and her mouth gaping open as though she were astonished to see her own mother.

  “Oh, you haven’t gone to bed,” said Celia.

  “No, I haven’t. Did you think it even later than it is? I really can’t see why you should always be so late when you go out with that young man, Celia. Of course I know to-night you’re quite early for once——”

  “Am I?”

  Celia seemed astonished. She stared at the clock and said “Only 11.30!” in dull amazement.

  “Don’t let’s go to bed just yet,” she said. “I shan’t go to sleep ; I’m not a bit sleepy. I’ve got lots to tell you. I saw Ronny to-day——”

  She dropped into a chair and began to laugh. It was just the wrong thing to have said, and she had forgotten all about Ronny till that moment ; it must have been her mother who made her think of him, for she had always liked Ronny, and now she would begin to regret him, but to hear her talk about anything was better than going upstairs to her empty room to think all by herself.

  But Mrs. Belamy only said, “Oh, did you? “rather coolly, and then, “Really, Celia, you do look peculiar. Haven’t you powdered your face all the evening? and your lips are quite blue ; and what’s that mark——”

  “Oh, haven’t I? Yes, don’t I look horrible? “and she dabbed her face ferociously with her powder-puff before her mother should make any further inquiries. But Mrs. Belamy, having just guessed at the possibility of some emotional scene, showed her tact by refraining to look at her daughter and remarking on the heat of the night.

  Then she thought she ought perhaps to say something. Maternal duties were not much in her line and she had always been more like a sister than a mother to her daughters. Iris told her everything, especially now she was married, but Celia was so different ; still, she ought to try, so she said, “Celia darling, don’t you think it’s all rather a mistake going about so much together and at any hour? After all, foreigners are different about these things and——”

  “I don’t think foreigners are so very different,” said Celia. Presently she added, “Perhaps the mistake is for two people to be in love and only engaged or not even that.”

  “My dear, you can’t expect to marry straight off?”

  “Why not? Why should it all depend on his keeping me? I cost a lot here ; I shouldn’t cost any more by living in Rainbow Road.”

  “You’d go and live in two rooms at the top of a house?

  Is that what he suggests? Well, I shouldn’t have believed——”

  “You needn’t. He didn’t. It was all my own idea.”

  “Really, Celia! What has come to you?”

  “Well, I needn’t go and live there. I could live here and look in occasionally if you like it better.”

  “Married! And live at home!”

  “Well, we needn’t marry if you think it looks funny.”

  “I suppose you think that sort of thing sounds very smart and modern.”

  “Do I look smart and modern? “asked Celia deplorably. She did not.

  “Well, don’t try and talk like it. You’
re utterly unlike yourself.”

  “How do you know I am? I don’t know what I am. I wish I did. Oh, I’m a fool to talk like this. What’s the use? But what am I to do? You don’t help a bit.”

  “Darling, I know it’s supposed to be a trying time, but do have some self-control and patience. Girls don’t seem to have any decency now. I was engaged four years and it was the happiest time of my life.”

  “I know. That just shows. But supposing it wasn’t? Supposing it made you both miserable? Suppose you found it was spoiling everything? And what is there against it anyway? Why do you mind so? You don’t mind about the Church ; you never go to church.”

  “One has to have some standards,” said Mrs. Belamy piteously, but Celia was too relentlessly hunted herself to notice her mother’s driven look.

  “Yes, but what standards? Whose standards?”she pursued ; and Mrs. Belamy, unfortunately side-tracked, found a refuge in, “All decent people’s. Just think what they would say, what Fanny Marshall would say. And it isn’t only women. Men don’t like that sort of girl, they are amused by them, of course, but you should hear how they talk about them in the clubs.”

  “So it comes to this,” said Celia slowly, “that we’ve got to regulate our lives according to what Lady Marshall thinks and men in clubs.”

  “Oh, Celia, don’t be so obstinate and conceited. Other people do know best. I’m sure you’re very lucky to have me to talk to about it. Granny would have been horrified ; she would have preached death and damnation to you, at least she would certainly have talked about chastity. But I’m not a bit old-fashioned, you know that. I don’t suppose it’s wrong exactly—it isn’t that; but it’s a matter of taste, of what’s done, of not making oneself conspicuous.”

  “Is that all? “asked Celia wearily. “Then why do we make such a fuss?”