Two People

by A. A. Milne

  ‘I don’t know. Ever heard of Byron?’

  Sylvia wrinkled her forehead and wondered if she had ever heard of Byron.

  ‘He was a poet. Lived about a hundred years ago.’

  ‘Oh! How funny!’ She was laughing.

  ‘Go on laughing, I like to hear it. Don’t care how often you laugh at me, if you laugh like that.’

  ‘I wasn’t laughing at you, only—— You see, I thought you meant somebody in London, some friend of yours. Of course I’ve heard of Byron.’

  ‘Ah! That’s the worst of being self-educated, Mrs. Wellard. You know what you know a dam sight better, sorry, than the other man, but you don’t know what he knows. See what I mean? All you educated people, you’ve all had the same governesses, and been to the same schools and colleges, and you all know the same things at the same time. Now I was talking to a woman about a hell of a feller, sorry, called Beckford, heard of him?’—Sylvia looked vague—‘no, neither had she, but how’s an outsider to know that Byron’s in the curriculum, and Beckford isn’t? See what I mean?’

  ‘I always expect that everybody knows everything that I know, and lots more,’ said Sylvia.

  ‘Don’t you believe it. And look here, I’ll tell you something. Education. Latin and Greek. I’m not saying anything against swells like Raglan. But why do we teach small damfool boys in Eton collars, sorry, Latin and Greek? To educate them? No. Just so’s small damfool boys who haven’t got Eton collars won’t know Latin and Greek. See what I mean? I’m not a Socialist, because you can’t run my sort of papers on Socialism, and anyway it’s bunk, and I wish to hell I knew Latin and Greek, sorry, like Raglan does. But don’t think I don’t see through it.’

  There had been a time when conversation with a woman other than one of his chosen had seriously cramped Ormsby’s style, for certain words would keep obtruding themselves if he were not on the watch for them; and it was not until he had fallen into this habit of slipping in a neutralizing ‘sorry’ as soon as convenient afterwards that he was at ease again. To-day it might be that even a nice woman like Mrs. Wellard wouldn’t feel the need of apology, but apology was now so automatic that the omission of it would have cramped him just as badly.

  Alice came up with the tea.

  ‘Sure you won’t have any?’

  ‘No, thanks. Now what were we talking about?’

  ‘Education.’

  ‘Yes. No. What the—— Oh, I know, I asked you if you knew Byron.’ He frowned, a little annoyed.

  Sylvia laughed happily.

  ‘Of course! And I thought you meant—— Well, the answer is Yes. Why?’

  ‘That’s it. Seems so dam silly to come back to it. Like capping a feller’s story in the club, and some dam feller, sorry, sorry, comes up just as you’re getting to the point and smacks the other feller on the back, and says, “Hallo, old man, haven’t seen you since God knows when, how’s the family?” and they swop their blasted—they swop families for five minutes by the blasted—by the clock, and then your feller turns back to you, and says, “Sorry, what were you going to say?” And the whole thing’s as cold as a—as a——’ He groped for a substitute for the ‘bloody ham-sandwich’ with which alone he could express its coldness, failed to find it, and ended with a shrug and a ‘See what I mean? Sorry’.

  ‘You’re making it worse,’ said Sylvia. ‘Because I feel I must know about Byron now, and the longer you put it off the colder he gets.’

  Ormsby laughed, his eyes kept on her with the unwinking absorption which had been his passport through the defences of women. Sylvia turned her head away, and made a lingering choice between indistinguishable pieces of bread-and-butter.

  ‘Byron couldn’t stand seeing women eat,’ said Ormsby slowly. ‘He thought they ought to do it in private—like—well, he thought they ought to do it in private.’

  ‘How funny of him,’ said Sylvia coolly.

  ‘That was just his romantic idea of women, Mrs. Wellard.’

  ‘And you’re not romantic, Lord Ormsby?’

  ‘Not in that way,’ he said with a chuckle. ‘The more I see of women, the more I like it.’ He chuckled again. ‘Whatever they’re doing,’ and his eyes were fixed on her, still, unwinking; suggesting, challenging.

  A little sigh came from Sylvia, and she turned her shining head, and let her lovely eyes rest on him, meeting first his eyes and then, unhurried, seeming to travel over him and through him and beyond him to some world out of Ormsby’s reach. Often with his greedy relentless eyes he had made intimacy with a woman, so that she felt naked and ashamed (or naked and unashamed), but never had he stripped her so of her defences as now he felt stripped. Every ugliness, every physical grossness, seemed to be laid bare by that look. He was naked, hideous, obscene, a shuddering offence against love, against the mystical beauties and intimacies of love. It was not, he felt, his soul which she had seen; it was his actual body; seen, rejected, left contemptuously lying for him to pick up. She turned lightly away, and he struggled back into it, red-faced.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ said Sylvia, coming back to him; ‘do smoke.’

  ‘No, thanks. I really came to give you these.’ He brought his hand out of his pocket, and held out an envelope to her. ‘The show to-night. I thought you and your husband might be amused. The Palace.’

  ‘But isn’t it the first-night?’

  ‘Well, of course. That’s why I thought it might amuse you. Ought to have sent ’em along before, I’m afraid, but only remembered about the dam thing, sorry, this morning.’

  ‘But I thought,’ stammered Sylvia, ‘I thought all the seats, I thought——’

  Ormsby laughed back a little of his self-respect, and explained how it was that to the Ormsbys of this world the ordinary suppositions did not apply.

  Oh, I wish we could, it is nice of you, but——’

  ‘Engaged?’

  ‘Yes. Reginald’s got to go to some play—he rang up from the theatre—to see somebody, some actress, I think. He said they wanted him to see her. What a pity! I’ve never been to a first-night.’

  ‘You haven’t missed much.’

  ‘But it must be thrilling, wondering what it’s all about, and everybody else wondering, and the dresses and everything.’ She looked thrilled as she said it.

  ‘Oh well, people seem to like all that.’

  ‘It was nice of you to think of us. Thank you so much.’ She had taken the envelope, and now she gave it back to him. ‘You must go and ring up some other lucky person. Quickly.’

  Ormsby took the tickets, looked at them a moment, and said humbly, his eyes still on the tickets, ‘I suppose you wouldn’t care to come with me. To let me take you. I’d call for you, we’d have dinner or—or not, as you wished. I could tell you who the people were, if that sort of thing interests you. If you think you’d like that sort of evening, it seems bad luck to miss it.’

  And not knowing how she knew, Sylvia knew that this was the invitation which he had intended when he came into her drawing-room; and, not knowing how it had happened, she knew that at some time he had abandoned that intention and had made way for her husband; so that now he only offered himself humbly in that husband’s default. And not knowing how she knew, nor how it had happened, she knew that she was utterly safe with Lord Ormsby from now onwards. And London was a heavenly place.

  ‘I should love it,’ said Sylvia, her face alight with happiness. ‘It is kind of you. But I think I’d better have dinner at home, it won’t be such a rush.’

  Ormsby got up.

  ‘I’ll call for you at a quarter to eight. Can you manage that?’

  ‘Easily. Thank you so much.’ She held out her hand.

  ‘Thank you, Mrs. Wellard. Quarter to eight, then.’

  And as he went downstairs he was thinking, Why in hell didn’t I have a daughter like that? If Maggie had known her job—— Damn it, n
obody can pretend it’s my fault. . . .

  And Sylvia was thinking, Perhaps the green . . . I suppose Lady Ormsby won’t be there . . . Lady Edgeworth’s seen it. . . . Of course she mightn’t be there, and anyhow we mightn’t see her. And I expect I shall keep my cloak on, and she hasn’t seen that. . . . ‘All right, Alice, I’ve finished.’

  ‘Mr. Wellard has just telephoned, madam,’ said Alice, as she took the tray. ‘He’s very sorry he won’t have time to get back to dinner, and he’ll get something out.’

  ‘Oh! Oh, well, that makes it easier. I want something at seven. Will you tell Mrs. Stoker? Just the fish, I think, and the sweet. I’m going to the first-night at the Palace, Alice.’ She laughed. ‘Palace, Alice. Doesn’t it sound silly?’

  ‘Fancy,’ said Alice.

  Chapter Sixteen

  I

  WHEN Coral Bell was in her hey-day, adored by all the curly young opera-hats which supped nightly at the Savoy, she received one afternoon two proposals from the same man. She sat in her dressing-room after the matinée, a colourless wrapper pulled round her body, a white shiny face looking back at herself from the glass. Ned Lattimer, hands on top of his stick, chin on hands, gravely watched the face in the mirror.

  ‘Now you know just how beautiful I am,’ said Coral Bell.

  ‘You’ve got such good bones,’ said Lattimer, ‘you’ll always be all right.’

  ‘Gracious, you can’t see them, can you?’ She threw down the rag with which she was busy, and gave the wrapper another pull.

  ‘I meant the bones of your face.’

  ‘Oh! You’re welcome to those,’ she said, and went back to them. He watched her silently.

  ‘I’m having a season at the Circle,’ he said suddenly.

  ‘How do you mean you’re having a season at the Circle? What as?’

  ‘Producer. Part Manager. Hoffman and I.’

  ‘Really? I say, you are getting on, aren’t you? Why, you can’t be a day more than sixty-seven.’

  ‘I’m twenty-eight this year.’

  ‘I thought you were sixty-seven. When were you nine?’

  ‘Eighteen years ago, I should think.’

  ‘Don’t tell me that eighteen years ago you were running about and shouting and singing——’

  ‘I was.’

  ‘And laughing and bowling a hoop?’

  ‘Probably.’

  ‘And then your white mouse died, and you never smiled again?’

  He smiled now, and said, ‘Life hasn’t been too easy, you know.’

  ‘Good Heavens, why should it be?’

  ‘True. . . . Coral, there are two things I want you to do for me.’

  ‘If I can.’

  ‘I think you can. One is, Marry me. And the other is, Play Rosalind for me.’

  She turned round on him with a jerk, clutching her wrapper round her with both hands.

  ‘Are you serious?’

  ‘You say I always am.’

  ‘What do you expect me to answer?’

  ‘“No. No.” But then I’m a pessimist. What I hope you’ll say is “Yes. Yes”.’

  ‘Must the two go together?’

  ‘Not necessarily.’

  She stared at him for a little longer, and then turned back to her mirror.

  ‘Why do you want to marry me?’ she asked quietly.

  ‘Because I love you more than I thought it was possible to love anybody or anything.’

  ‘Oh, Ned, Ned, I’m so awfully sorry.’

  ‘I suppose they all say that.’ He meant ‘all the people who propose to you’.

  She shook her head.

  ‘They may use those words, but they don’t make them sound like that. Oh, Ned, do forgive me.’

  ‘What for? Come and play Rosalind, and I’ll bless you for ever.’ She sighed and said nothing. ‘Well?’

  ‘My dear man, I’m what they call a musical-comedy soubrette. Why not get an actress?’

  ‘You can act all their heads off.’

  She turned back to him with a wide, happy smile.

  ‘You really are a genius! How did you know that?’

  ‘Oh, don’t let’s ask each other how we know our jobs. You’ll come?’

  She shook her head slowly; a little sadly.

  ‘It’s too late.’

  ‘Contracts? I can——’

  ‘No, no. This is quite, quite private for the moment. You’re the first to know.’ She hesitated, as if even now she oughtn’t to give away the secret, and said, ‘I’m leaving the stage and getting married.’

  ‘Ah!’ He got up. ‘Well, that does settle it, doesn’t it!’

  ‘Ned!’

  ‘If ever you come back——’

  ‘Ned!’

  He went to the door, turned, a little as if in a play, said with a laugh, ‘Another white mouse dead,’ and went out. And if, later on, Coral Bell married Lord Edgemoor, and Joan Hedley made a great success of Rosalind, and Lattimer, from time to time, married some other woman, yet there had been that scene between the two of them, which one of them could never quite forget.

  She remembered it now as she held out her hand to him.

  ‘Thank you for letting me come,’ he said. ‘Is this where the aristocracy live?’

  ‘You’ve had plenty of chances of finding out, if you had really wanted to know.’

  ‘I never go to parties.’

  ‘You certainly never come to mine.’

  He looked, round the room appraisingly.

  ‘It would make rather a good stage set.’

  ‘Copy it if you like.’

  ‘Is that your bedroom in there?’

  ‘Yes. Do you want to see it? You could hide any amount of people there in the Second Act.’

  He ignored that, and walked over to a table in the window.

  ‘These are good,’ he said, fingering one of a pair of candlesticks. ‘I was looking for something like this in Lady in Blue. Where did you get them?’

  ‘Italy.’

  ‘They’re not Italian.’

  ‘They don’t speak it, if that’s what you mean. But the man who made them was an Italian. I’m sorry. He was. And we met him in Italy, and he works in Italy, and he made them in Italy, and we bought them in Italy. That’s why I said “Italy”—like that.’

  He came back to her, a smile trying to lose itself in the corners of his disillusioned mouth, and said, ‘I offered you a job once.’

  He had offered her two, thought Coral Bell. Rosalind and Mrs. Lattimer. She said, ‘I’ve always been grateful for that.’

  ‘Now I’ve come to see you about another. You’ll say no, of course, but I’ve told that fat cocoon Venture that I thought you might if I asked you nicely. Nixon’s keen. So’s Venture, if that doesn’t put you off. Well?’

  ‘What are we all talking about?’ asked Lady Edgemoor plaintively.

  So he told her . . . and three-quarters of an hour later Coral Bell was saying, ‘All the same, it would be rather fun, you know. Shall I? Shan’t I? Well, I must cable to Charley.’

  Charles, Lord Edgemoor, was on his way to Thibet, looking for Monterey’s Ibex. Some weeks earlier the last survivor of this noble and otherwise extinct species had wandered into a hill village, looking as if it were looking for Lord Edgemoor. As soon as the news came through to him, his lordship took up the challenge and hurried out. The cable caught him at Darjeeling. He cabled back, slightly under the influence of the East, ‘Your pigeon, old girl.’

  So that was that.

  II

  To hear her saying the words which he had written, that was wonderful. To hear her, as happened more often, saying the words which Nixon had written, that, though not quite so wonderful, was still wonderful. Even, thought Reginald, to hear her, as happened most often of all, paraphra
sing a speech which she had forgotten in words which no self-respecting writer could possibly have written, even that filled him with content.

  But, he had to admit, he was also very well content to listen to Lattimer’s Young Girl (whose nose was not nearly so long as had been feared) playing her love-scene with the young cousin, what time Coral Bell sat among the ruins of the current attraction (Act I, Scene 2, The Castle Terrace, Midnight) chattering gaily—(‘Coral, please! How can we get on if——’ ‘Terribly sorry, Ned. I’m sorry, Miss Masters’)—talking, then, in hushed whispers to the Defaulting Solicitor. At least he would have been content if Coral Bell had joined him in the stalls, or, alternatively, if he had had the nerve to join her on the terrace. It was her conversation, her intelligence, which he admired so much, which he grudged so much to others. In looks she could not compare even with Miss Masters.

  Quite early on, Reginald had had to come to an agreement with himself as to what he was doing there at all. Obviously nobody wanted him. Equally obviously, if he didn’t interfere, nobody minded him. Mr. Venture had bought a play; Lattimer was producing that play; Nixon (undoubtedly) had written that play. Mr. Venture knew nothing about a book called Bindweed. With the air of one conferring distinction on the non-reading public, he emphasized that he never read books. He was a Theatre Man. But of course if Mr. Wellard was a friend of Phil’s, that was all right.

  So, for a few days, Reginald came to the theatre as a friend of Phil’s. ‘Do you mind, old man, if I bring a friend in?’ Some would, some wouldn’t. Mr. Venture didn’t. But it seems a little odd never to be able to attend rehearsals of your play without the support of a friend, the same friend, and hardly an intimate friend at that. So Mr. Nixon’s friend came no longer, and, instead, there entered a gentleman, Reginald Wellard, who was ‘studying the theatre’.

  ‘Do you mind,’ he said to Lattimer, and he almost added ‘old man’ to show what an apt pupil of the theatre he was becoming, ‘do you mind if I sit about at the back somewhere and watch you do this? It seems rather a chance to get to know something about——’ Could he say it? He could—‘er—technique and—er—stage-craft and—and so forth. I mean if I ever tried to write a play—— You see, it’s all so new to me.’