The Constant Nymph

by Margaret Kennedy

  ‘Supposing you were right,’ he said, ‘what would you have done?’

  ‘I should never forgive you.’

  ‘Her, you mean. But you won’t forgive her now, when I swear she’s done you no wrong; you’re making a wicked mistake.’

  ‘There’s no question of forgiveness where she is concerned. I have no very strong feelings about her; I think she’s too … too contemptible. She’s no better than Tony. She’s wanton. This sort of thing was bound to occur sooner or later, I suppose. And it happened to be you, because you haven’t the decency to respect your wife’s house. I should have foreseen it. No, it’s you I shall never forgive.’

  ‘Oh, yes, you would, my dear! You’d forgive me anything.’

  He said this with as much insolence as he could muster, only desiring to punish her for speaking so ill of Tessa, He flung in her teeth the numberless occasions when she had allowed him to cajole her into submission and forgiveness. And when she would not turn round he crossed the room and seized her by the shoulders, wrenching her round and whispering:

  ‘Always ready to forgive me you’ve been! Always so generous! Tessa thinks you’re an angel. She doesn’t know how easy you are to manage.’

  ‘Never … after this … never again …’

  ‘Oh, yes! As often as I like. You would! You would!’

  ‘I hate you.’

  ‘Women like you are fond of saying that. It means nothing.’

  ‘I pray to God I may never see you again …’

  ‘I’ve heard that before too.’

  ‘Is this how you treat her? I hope it is. I hope you make her suffer as I do …’

  ‘Oh, no!’

  He flung her away from him and repeated:

  ‘Not at all. It would be impossible for her to suffer as you do. She has some pride. And then she’s not like any of the rest of you. If I tried my fascinating ways on her she’d give me a black eye!’

  And he took himself off.

  Florence stood where he had left her. She hardly moved until, a few minutes later, she heard the front door clap after him and the sound of his footsteps hurrying away down the river path. Then, with a kind of hasty, mechanical precision, she finished doing her hair and put on her dress. One clear thought remained in her mind. She must hold herself undefeated until the concert was over; for tonight she must pretend that nothing was amiss. And tomorrow she would go back to Cambridge, to her father, and never so much as think of Lewis again. And she would tell her father the truth about this betrayal, so that Teresa’s evil name might never be spoken to her.

  Nothing in her life, not even her love, had been so absorbing and powerful as was this hatred for her cousin. She was glad to be so angry. At last she had a justification for the gathering suspicion and resentment of months. Passion held her together under the shock which had snapped her life in two. It gave coherence to her thoughts and enabled her to master herself sufficiently for the business of the evening. Of Lewis and the atrocious things he had said she would not allow herself to think; it was enough to know that Teresa was responsible for it all.

  She was almost calm again when a knock at the door startled her. Sebastian stood there, remarkably respectable in a new Eton jacket, demanding smelling salts or sal volatile.

  ‘What for? Are you ill?’

  ‘Tessa is.’

  ‘What’s the matter with her?’

  ‘I don’t know. She’s lying on her bed. She looks very funny.’

  ‘Oh, indeed! Then she had better not come to the concert.’

  They went upstairs to Teresa’s room and found her sitting on her bed, wiping the sweat from her face, in a spasm of nervous sobbing. Her pain had been bad for a little time after she heard Lewis leave the house, but she was better now and declared that nothing was the matter. Florence became very stern and efficient, administered sal volatile, dismissed Sebastian, and said firmly:

  ‘You had better not come to the concert if you feel like this, Teresa. Did you have those palpitations?’

  ‘I’m quite well, really.’

  ‘Still, one can’t have these ways. If you stay quietly at home tonight you’ll know how to control yourself another time perhaps.’

  ‘There won’t be another time. I’m coming, Florence.’

  ‘I shall not take you.’

  ‘Then I shall go by myself. You can’t stop me. I have money. I shall go the minute you’ve left the house.’

  ‘Oh, very well. There won’t be, as you say, another time. You can’t disgrace yourself more than you’ve done already.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ asked Teresa mildly.

  Florence hesitated, but her feelings got the better of her. She must speak, even though she might be sorry afterwards. She would speak now, because prudence might stop her later on. She explained, in a dry, gentle voice:

  ‘Because I’ve never spoken of it, you don’t think I haven’t seen … what’s been going on all these months? I’ve seen it, and I’ve tried to ignore it, because it was so … so odious. I’ve tried to make excuses to myself; to tell myself that you are too young to know what you are doing. I’d meant to say nothing of it. I knew you’d learn to be ashamed when you are older. But …’

  ‘Ashamed?’

  Teresa was really astonished. If Florence knew all, it was natural that she should be annoyed, but nobody, surely, need be ashamed of themselves.

  ‘Yes! Ashamed! Because I’m ashamed for you. And now I feel that it’s only fair that you should know one or two things before you go away. So I’ll speak now, and then we’ll never mention this again. Teresa, you must know that among decent people a woman who openly pursues a man is considered to have lost all her dignity and self-respect. She’s despised and degraded and condemned by everybody. Especially when it is a man who doesn’t particularly care for her. I can’t … I can’t tell you how contemptible she makes herself. And to see quite a young girl doing it is horrible.’

  ‘Yes, but what has that to do with me? I haven’t been pursuing a man that doesn’t particularly care for me. It’s a mug’s game; I agree with you.’

  ‘You know perfectly well that you have. It’s been almost impossible for me to say anything, since the man has been my husband; but now that he has gone, now that you will not see him ever, ever again, I can say it. You’ve thrust yourself upon him. You’ve thrown yourself at his head in a perfectly uncontrolled way. It’s been quite obvious to everyone.’

  ‘I love him. I always have. And perhaps anybody could see it. But it’s not true, what you said.’

  ‘It’s quite true. He’s spoken of it to me himself.’

  ‘He? Oh, no! You must have made a mistake, Florence. He would never …’

  ‘It’s odious, as I’ve said before, to have to take you to task for your manner to my husband, but for your own sake …’

  ‘I’m afraid I must take you to task for your manner to me. I don’t think you mean it, really, Florence! But I will not have these things said to me. It’s not my fault that I love him. I did long ago, before you came to the Tyrol. It isn’t a happy thing at all; it’s brought nothing but sadness to me. Only it has been so much all of my life that I couldn’t want it to be different, any more than I could want to be changed into another person. And I’ve come to see, since I’ve been here, that we can’t all be together now that he is your husband. That’s why I agreed to go to school. I wouldn’t otherwise. You know I said at first that I wouldn’t. But ever since I saw that I ought to go, I’ve not said a word against it, now have I? All these weeks! I wanted to write to Uncle Charles, often, to get him to let me off. But I never did.’

  ‘You’d better not write to him. I shall have to tell him how difficult all this has been, and then he’ll see, as I do, that you are better at school.’

  ‘If you tell him untrue things about me, I shall tell him the truth myself.’

  ‘Which of us do you think he’ll believe?’

  Teresa was silent. She was becoming frightened of Florence. Yet she w
as accustomed to associate anger with hard words and violence, and she could hardly believe that deadly insults are sometimes spoken gently. Florence, so lovely and dignified, could not really hate her, could not really mean to deny her the right to love and to suffer. This controlled animosity was something quite new, and it alarmed her terribly. She said, backing away:

  ‘You are making a mistake. You don’t mean these things. Something funny must have happened … What’s the matter …’

  But Florence would not stop. She went on, low voiced and relentless:

  ‘You speak of love! What can you know of it? I wonder that you dare. When you are older perhaps you’ll be ashamed.

  ‘I know all about it,’ interrupted Teresa sombrely.

  ‘What do you mean by that?’

  The question was rapped out with a rising shrillness, and Teresa exclaimed in a panic:

  ‘What’s the matter with you? Florence! Don’t! Don’t look at me like that! Don’t speak like that! I’ve done you no harm. What did you think I’d done?’

  Before her eyes the woman was turning into a Medusa; she shut them, to escape from that stony, vindictive head, thrust close into her face. She felt her shoulder grasped and the hard, hoarse voice whispered again into her ear:

  ‘Tell me what you mean.’

  ‘Don’t! I won’t.’ She sobbed and struggled. ‘Let me go!’

  With a scream of terror she got herself free and ran from the room and downstairs and out of the house. Florence, left alone in the little bedroom, drew a long breath of relief. In five minutes the accumulated venom of many months had found a vent. She was glad now, though she was aware that she might repent later. She was triumphant. It was even satisfying to know that she had hurled a rank name after her flying enemy. Tomorrow she would probably blush to think that she could have screamed such a word out through the house, but filthy language was the only sort of speech which the Sangers understood.

  ‘Thank goodness! I’ve put the fear of God into her!’ she thought ‘She deserved every word of it. How frightened she looked and how shocked! One would think she’d never heard anybody swear before. But I suppose it must have been rather a shock to hear me swearing!’

  The first chill of doubt fell upon her exaltation, and she hurried off, back to her room, to put on her shawl.

  Teresa was, indeed, nearly shocked to death. Her fear was like a nightmare, she did not know where to turn or how to protect herself from this horrible woman who looked like an angel and talked like a devil. Uncle Charles might prate about the merit of a civilised life, but there was no safety in it. If Florence, who had seemed so beautiful and so good, was really like this, there was no safety in it. Only she could never get away; they had trapped her now. Lewis, the only friend she had in the world, was lost to her. He was gone beyond her reach. He would have taken her and shielded her, and though he might be a little rough sometimes she would always know where she was with him. Besides, she loved him. And yet she had made him go away. She had been mad.

  Still gasping with indignation and fright she ran a little way in the dusk along the river path and then, looking furtively around her, came to a standstill. There was nobody on the path and all the houses seemed quiet. A couple of swans paddled lazily over the dim water, up past the island, but otherwise the river too was deserted. She could hear the tide, which was almost high, gurgling against the barges moored to the island. She debated with herself the practical difficulties in the way of a quick escape and came to the conclusion that it would be no use to jump off the wooden embankment at the edge of the path. She would merely stick in the shallow mud. She must go farther down, where it was deeper at the edge. She started back towards the bridge and collided with a person hurrying along to the station.

  ‘Scusa!’ said the person.

  It was Roberto going to the concert, in his bowler hat, with his going-to-Mass umbrella under his arm. He always took his umbrella to concerts in the old days. She must get back there somehow. She must get to Lewis.

  ‘It’s you, is it?’ she said. ‘You’ll be the last person to speak to the deceased. I hope they won’t hang you for murdering me, Roberto. They might do anything in this country.’

  ‘Scusa!’

  ‘Remember me, but … ah, forget my fate!’ she said impressively.

  ‘Subito!’ said Roberto obligingly.

  He said this when injunctions were laid upon him which he did not understand; it testified to his willingness. Teresa laughed. She knew that she could not possibly jump into the river. There was still too much to laugh at. She would go to Lewis and they would get away from it all. She asked Roberto if he had pencil and paper. He had, and she scrawled a message to Lewis telling him that she would meet him by the early boat train tomorrow. This note was to be given into his very hands, as she impressed upon Roberto in two languages.

  ‘Take it into the artists’ room,’ she insisted. ‘You must get there somehow.’

  ‘Subito!’

  Roberto had spent most of his life in artists’ rooms and had no doubt of his capacity to get there. He trotted off down the river path. Teresa sauntered back to the house, kicking little pebbles sideways into the water as Lewis was apt to do. They had many identical gestures.

  22

  Their places were in the first circle, well at the side and almost above the orchestra so that they had a good view of the house. Sebastian and Teresa, having wrangled a little over the best seat, devoted themselves to a scrutiny of the packed masses in the gallery in order to discover Roberto. They waved excitedly when they found him. Florence looked down at the arena below her, and observed the sort of people who were coming in, and was confirmed in her estimation of the evening’s importance. Whatever Millicent might say, they were coming. She saw friends who never went to concerts unless they were important, people who were not even musical but whose opinions were universally respected; all the people who had gone to hear ‘Prester John’, and another choicer group which would not, apparently, listen to Sanger but which was curious about the Dodd Symphony. She had got them all, sitting below and around her – all that world which she desired to conquer. The applause and recognition of this audience would, in her eyes, justify to the world her belief that she had married a great man. It would be her defence against Churchill criticism, and now that her life had come so entirely to grief she badly needed a defence.

  She nodded to her friends, here and there, in a leisurely way. Her concert room demeanour was in full force. She held her round, dark head very high over the glowing, lavish folds of her shawl, and she was sparing of any gesture with her hands. She was determined not to be agitated and voluble; she would not twitter as so many women will when their men are on trial before the world. To be serene, assured, beautiful, that was her part of the business, and if she had not always managed it in the past it was because she had been forced to appear in public with a train of strident young Sangers. In future … but there would be no future. Lewis had passed all permissible bounds, and they were to part. But she must forget that until after the concert. The orchestra was trickling in.

  The children, hanging over the edge of the balcony, were exchanging salutations with a few odd-looking acquaintances.

  Old Sir Bartlemy Pugh, having seen them from the opposite side of the house, came round to speak to her. She was glad, for she had caught sight of Millicent coming in with Lewis’s father, who was looking more than ever like a civic portrait. Both he and his daughter were staring up at her companion with interest, nor were they the only people in the Regent’s Hall who would notice that the old gentleman had hobbled all the way round the first circle to make himself agreeable to young Mrs Dodd. She talked calmly and without undue animation, but a little flush of pleasure glowed in her cheeks.

  ‘All the world and his wife seem to be here,’ said Sir Bartlemy. ‘It’s a long time since I dragged my gouty limbs to an affair like this. And I hear that they’ve put the Symphony after Jansen’s horrid little bit of work. I needn’t
have hurried over my dinner. I’ve a good mind to go home and finish my coffee!’

  ‘But I’m most anxious to hear the Turkish Suite,’ declared Florence, who was secretly delighted at the intimacy of these remarks.

  Very seldom did Sir Bartlemy permit himself to speak slightingly of a contemporary, and then only in the company of close friends. She had never heard him call anything horrid before; she felt that she had graduated in his friendship.

  ‘Mawkish! Mawkish!’ he complained, shaking his head. ‘Turkish Delight, we call it, down at Greenwich. How are you, Dawson? Do you realise we are in for the Turkish Suite?’

  Dr Dawson was making his way to a seat behind Florence. He was accompanied by a group of pale young women, members of his celebrated choir, who escorted him everywhere. One of them carried a railway rug to wrap round his knees if he found the Regent’s Hall draughty. He grinned at Sir Bartlemy and scowled sideways at Florence with a hasty:

  ‘How are you? I’ve just been round back there, and Lewis is here all right. I congratulate you, Ma’am, on producing him at the right hall on the right evening. It takes a clever wife to do that. It was a good idea sending him here in charge of the butler.’

  ‘The butler?’ said Florence, a little puzzled.

  ‘Your Italian fellow … He seemed to be chaperoning Lewis when first I went in down there. I don’t know where he disappeared to.’

  ‘Roberto?’ Florence gaped. ‘I didn’t send him. Are you sure? He’s up in the gallery …’

  ‘Quite sure. Have you met Baines?’

  And he introduced her to a little old man who had come in with him, an almost legendary person who had trained more great singers than any three men of his generation. He was now so ancient that most people thought he must be dead. He lived at Wimbledon, took a few pupils to amuse himself, and turned up once a year at the opera in order to remind the world that he was still alive. Hardly ever did he attend a concert and his appearance for the Dodd Symphony was unexpected and sensational.

  He twinkled at Florence a rheumy eye which had ogled four generations of pretty women and talked away to her, in a high cackle, above the confused din of the tuning orchestra, the booms of double basses beneath, and the short, sudden brays of clarinets. He told her that he had met Lewis in Vienna, ten years ago, at a supper given by Sanger.