by E. F. Benson
He wandered away, remembering his promise to do some conjuring tricks, and leaving a polite absence from comment at the bridge-table.
“There was that trick I was speaking to you about, Princess,” he said to Olga Lutloff. “There! There’s my handkerchief; nothing out of the way about it, is there?”
Florence came to the rescue.
“Too marvellous,” she said precipitately. “How did you do it, Philip? Practice, I suppose. And your wonderful hands. So clever. Nobody saw. And you had a good talk to Bernard. Dear Bernard! A good talk! What a gift to be able to talk well.”
“My dear, I haven’t done the trick yet,” said he. “Ah! That half-crown’s slipped out of my hand. Butter-fingers!”
“But now you must dance, Philip,” said she. “We were only waiting for you and Bernard.”
Philip spread his hands out.
“Pas seul?” said he. “I am at your command, madame.”
“No, my dear. We’re all going to dance, all we old folk, while the young ones play bridge. So like the world. All upside down.”
Philip had already pointed a toe, and raised an arm as a foretaste of his pas seul.
“Let us all dance then,” he said. “Ha! Quite like Merriby. But you should make those boys and girls dance too, Florence.”
For once Florence’s evening was not going very well. A couple of middle-aged women had surged into chairs next the two boys at the bridge-table, and were entreating them to come to dances or luncheons or dinners, or anything they chose at any time.
“No, I go back to France on Tuesday, thanks awfully,” said Jimmie to one of these mature sirens. “Wish I could, Mrs. Gordon. Is it diamonds?” Mrs. Gordon was a thin, agitated shadow of a woman, with large pearls and front teeth.
“Or Monday?” she said. “Do tell me about the Zeppelin.”
Jimmie turned his whole attention to the game. “I trump your foul ace then,” he said to Violet. “After which... God, I’ve revoked.”
“Oh, let’s chuck it,” said Celia. “It’s no use playing bridge if we’re so popular.”
Philip hurried up as they threw their cards on the table.
“I cut in then,” he said. “Let me see, auction bridge; what do ‘no trumps’ count?”
Celia slipped her arm into his.
“Come and dance with me, Daddy,” she said. “I’ll teach you auction some other time.”
Tommy was adding up a score.
“I want twenty-nine shillings,” he said. “And Jimmie wants thirty-two. That tallies. Twenty-nine and thirty-two is sixty-one.”
“Daddy, give me three pounds,” said Celia. Daddy appeared to feel in his pockets; while he was doing this, Bernard produced the sixty-one shillings required.
“Ha! Put it down,” said Philip, greatly relieved. “Run up a bill against Celia. It’ll keep her steady. I am witness You have had three-pounds-one from Matcham, Celia. I must say Bernard. Make an! O U for three pounds, Bernard. If Celia doesn’t honour it, I will. My half-crown now; I stupidly let it slip; I was doing a conjuring-trick for the Princess. Perhaps you would give me another half-crown, and put it down to Celia’s account. What’s that I hear?”
There was no doubt that he had heard something; there was whistling outside, and voices calling.
“It’s a raid, I believe,” he said. “I take command. Let there be no panic. Now, straight down to the basement, all of you. One, two; one, two: I will lead the way. There’s nothing to be afraid of. Only follow me. The ladies first: fall in line, please, ladies!”
He took two or three brisk steps across the room, twirling his moustaches. He had rehearsed to himself this possible contingency, and had seen himself intrepidly leading a party to safety. There would be no shrill cries, no panic rushes, his calmness and his common sense would make themselves irresistibly felt.
“One, two,” he repeated. “On we go. No danger at all.”
The immobility of sheer astonishment took possession of all beholders, as Philip, with a face of chalky whiteness, but with head very much erect, proceeded to march down the centre of the room. Celia had just pushed the money she had lost across the table, but Jimmie, with eyes and mouth equally widely open, let it lie there, while he watched Philip with a sort of holy awe. Olga Lutloff had put up her lorgnette for a more detailed view, and for once fear, the most rightly pitiable emotion that disfigures the soul of men, aroused no pity at all, for here was fear masquerading under a tinsel make-believe of calmness and courage, and deceiving nobody.
Florence, in all probability, was just as terrified as Philip, but she veiled her fear under no tinsel make-believe, but under the strong refusal of her will to acknowledge or exhibit fear. Thus she, the bravest of them all by virtue of the fact that she was terrified, alone comprehended the abjectness of his attitude. She interposed herself in the track of his intrepid march and spoke to him in a low voice.
“But, my dear,” she said, “we’re not going to take any notice. We’re always having raids. Dancing, you know, you dance so beautifully. Just don’t think about the raid. Besides, there’s a cat in the basement. I couldn’t face a cat. Nobody faces cats. Too terrified, not meant to. My dear, you must be calm. Dance: do your conjuring tricks.”
“But, bon Dieu, Madame,” cried he. “Am I not calm? Am I not making arrangements for you all, so that you shall all be in safety? Is that the work of a terrified man, I ask you? There was a house the other day knocked to atoms, but no one was hurt, for they had been sensible, as I am trying to persuade you to be, and had gone into the basement. It is your house, my dear, I know, but I order you and Celia at the least to come with me. And let me tell you it is your duty as a hostess to look after the safety of your guests. Now then, ‘One, two: left, right.’ Those are my orders.”
He positively marched from the room: already several valuable minutes had been lost in getting to safety, and after all, a great general in command of serious operations delegates the execution of his orders to others. His business is to give them.
The warning, to Florence’s great relief, did not mature into a raid, and Philip could hardly have had time to make himself comfortable downstairs when the “All Clear” whistles sounded, and, this information having been conveyed to him, he bounded upstairs again. There was a smudge of coal-dust on one cheek, of which he was happily unconscious. As he appeared in the doorway of the room where dancing was going on, the first dance came to an end, and with absolutely undiminished self-confidence, he mounted a chair.
“Messieurs et mesdames,” he said in his gobbling voice, “I am happy to be able to tell you that all danger is over. The ‘All Clear’ has sounded: you can all dance without any further apprehension.”
He jumped down again with great agility.
“Ha! Celia!” he said. “You must make Bernard spare me the next dance. It is a long time since we have danced together; I hope you have not forgotten my lessons.”
Celia looked at him with an accentuated smile.
“You must wash your face first, Daddy,” she said. “I will dance the next but one with you.”
“Why, what’s the matter?”
“Only a great smudge of coal,” said Celia.
Florence, enthusiastically agreeable, confirmed this.
“Be very quick, Philip,” she said. “Just a sponge. Not a large smudge at all, quite a small smudge, my dear, but better without it. How nicely you told everybody that there was no more danger. See how pleased they are. And how wonderful of you to come back.”
Philip hurried off, and Mrs. Courthope turned to Celia.
“Much better not to spoil his pleasure by telling him he was such a coward!” she said genially. “Why spoil anybody’s pleasure? Let us all enjoy ourselves!”
CHAPTER VII
CELIA’S engagement was news to Vincent Douglas when he returned some four days later from Rome, and it gave him the sort of annoyance that a sore heel gives a pedestrian who has a long walk before him. It did not in the least prevent his walk
ing, but he would certainly be enjoying his walk more without it. All the first day of his return to London the knowledge of it was an annoyance to him....
He knew himself far too well to suppose that he was in love with her: he would have been very much surprised to find himself in love with anybody. But he had long been conscious of a “relation” between himself and Celia, that interested him much as some intricate puzzle might, which he believed himself capable of putting together, while a further sauce was added to the piquancy of it by the fact that she had a strong physical attraction for him. Had the two combined, coalesced, he would have called himself in love with her: while they existed separately in his mind, he was no more than attracted by her and interested in her. He would have betted, had he been obliged to make a wager on the subject, that she rather disliked him, but he would have felt certain of not losing his money if coupled with that bet there had been another, namely, that the repulsion intrigued her. As far as he knew, he had never had any prolonged talk with her alone, but he was aware that when conversation was general, she talked at him. It seemed likely, in fact, that he was puzzling her, much as she puzzled him. Perhaps even they each of them held, tightly clutched, a piece of the puzzle on which the other was working.
It was with this in his mind that he telephoned to her the day after his arrival, asking if he might convey his congratulations in person. You couldn’t, he rather ingeniously said, convey anything emotional down a telephone, the bouquet of it was lost in the buzzings. There had been a perceptible pause before her answer to this came, but when it did, it proposed that he should come at once, as she had half an hour to spare. He rather liked her hesitating acceptance of his proposal: had she been quite indifferent to him, she would certainly have given him a welcome or a refusal without reflection, for the pause did not strike him as one entailed by a mere inspection of an engagement book.
Celia was more than ever conscious, when he entered, of the effect he always had of filling the room with his own rather brutal vitality. It was as obvious to the psychical sense as a sudden blaze of light would have been to the physical sense. It made you blink a little till you got accustomed to it. You might like it or you might not — Violet, for instance, detested it — but it was impossible not to be conscious of it.
“I had to come round and convey my felicitations,” he said, still holding the hand she had given him. “I wanted also to hear all about it from yourself.”
Celia found herself resenting the intimacy which this implied. But another part of herself, no less distinctly, told her that she would equally have resented his being satisfied with the conveyance of his wishes by telephone, without making a personal expression of them. Meantime his hand held hers, and it was with an effort (not because there was any force in his retention of it, but because she had to summon her will) that she withdrew it. She had also to make an effort to appear perfectly at ease and natural.
“That was nice of you,” she said. “And what have I to tell you? I am very happy.”
“Quite. We all know what a delightful fellow Bernard is. I haven’t seen him yet I don’t think I shall, for I suppose he’s drivelling. And how do all the broken-hearted take their disappointment?”
“I’m not aware of any broken hearts,” said Celia. “Let me introduce you to mine, then.”
They were both busily engaged at the puzzle now, each studying the other, each saying things which from their extravagance could not be taken seriously, but which all the time meant something and were essential pieces in the puzzle.
“Ah, then, it isn’t for me to tell you about that broken heart,” she said with an air of mocking seriousness, which did not really mock at all. “It’s for you to tell me about it. But what nonsense we’re talking, especially you.”
“Am I? How can you tell? I wonder, that is to say, whether you know as little about me as I know about you.”
She laughed.
“Are we both such enigmas?” she asked.
“I believe we are to each other. But do make yourself clearer.”
Celia suddenly found herself plunged up to the neck in him, so to speak. She resented and disliked it, but it seemed not to be of her doing at all. In any case she fought against it, though still with that dangerous instrument of light mockery.
“For you to laugh at?” she asked. “Shall I begin to drivel about Bernard? Won’t that be trampling on your poor broken heart?”
He looked at her with an eye that kindled as he looked. Never before had her face seemed so mysteriously fascinating. If he was not in love with her, he could at least be jealous of Bernard, and be clever enough to conceal that entirely.
“I wonder why you dislike me,” he said. “It’s rather odd that you should. I wish you would tell me why.”
That glow of admiration for her leaping out unmistakably, gave some quality of appeal to his speech. But simultaneously with that there came to her some instinct of self-defence. She was not any longer at liberty to be indefinitely interested in others. Her engagement to Bernard had put him in a class by himself. She had no desire to comprise her loyalty to him, and she wanted, keenly wanted, to put a barrier up between herself and Vincent.
So she stopped her ears to the quality of appeal in his speech, and gave him the answer he had asked for.
“You are a pure materialist,” she said. “You know of no motive in life beyond the attainment of your own enjoyment or advantage. What is worse, you believe that everybody is in the same rut as yourself. There! You asked for it, you know.”
He laughed with an enjoyment that must be genuine.
“I certainly got it,” he said. “But I’ll add another reason. You’re afraid that my faults, my characteristics, are exactly those that you share yourself. I don’t say you do share them, but you’re afraid of doing so. And that’s certainly part of your reason for disliking me. You dislike qualities in me which you would like to get rid of in yourself.”
She flushed a little, feeling that her lash had recoiled on herself.
“That is a mere tu quoque” she said.
“Incidentally it happens to be. But it isn’t a random tu quoque — that’s not the reason for which I made it. It happens to be true.”
Celia paused a moment.
“It contains a shallow truth,” she said. “But it’s untrue in this sense, that even if I have some such tendencies, I don’t make a gospel of them. I should like, as you said just now, to get rid of them myself. I believe, too, that they are not the motives which inspire, well, other people whom I respect and admire.”
He shook his head.
“There’s no such thing as a shallow truth,” he said. “All truth in its own degree is equal. A truth may concern shallow things or deep things, but the truth itself is neither shallow nor deep.”
“What then?” she asked.
“There just remains its practical application. Shall I go on?”
Was he talking about himself or her?... It suddenly seemed to Celia that he was doing both: he was showing himself to her, and that very exhibition revealed her, as in a mirror, to herself. She lay back in her chair, so that her face was in shadow.
“Certainly: go on,” she said.
“It’s this. In your engagement to Bernard you are refusing to recognize what you know is true about yourself, and you are accepting from him the devotion you only wish was possible for you. He has idealized you, and you know it perfectly well, and you are allowing him to believe that you are as he thinks you.”
Once again Celia reminded herself that she had no business to allow such a discussion to continue, but she seemed incapable of breaking it off. Without doubt he had some domination over her mind, which, though she resented it, she had to acknowledge. It was not only in his presentment of herself that she was interested: far more pregnant than that was the fact that it was not just herself who was being shown her, but his — Vincent’s — view of herself. Though she knew she would have been more than justified in telling him that it was an ou
trageous impertinence on his part to talk about her relation to Bernard, the impulse to do so did not even exist in her. She knew she was engaged in some sort of struggle with Vincent in which she ought to take no part, but so far from breaking it off, she accepted battle and that which lay below battle.
“You know nothing about my relations with Bernard,” she said, “and you are displaying your ignorance with every word you say. Though it has nothing to do with you, it gives me satisfaction to tell you that you are completely astray. I told him, for instance, that he idealized me, and that I accepted what I did not give.”
Vincent looked round for a match, and not finding one, took a coal from the hearth in the tongs and lit his cigarette. He singed his moustache in so doing, but did not seem to notice it. He was intensely enjoying this tussle with Celia, body and mind alike revelled in it.
“And did you tell him that in such a way as to convince him?” he asked.
“He knew I was telling him the truth.”
“It does not follow that he believed it,” said he. “That’s a very different matter. There are heaps of truths we don’t accept.”
“Are you sure you meant him to believe it?” he asked.
The memory of all the base-metal tokens that she had given Bernard to gild rose up in Celia’s mind, and to her the real insult in this question lay in the fact that Vincent had divined her truly. She rose, with a face as blank with astonishment as she could make it. She was purely on the defensive now, defending herself against the fascination of this jovial clear-sightedness. More than once during their talk his admiration of her had leaped into his face, and there was a keenness of reality about it, which penetrated more intimately into her than the blindness of Bernard’s adoration. Already she felt she knew the quality of that, and if she was not a little weary of it, it was because it gave her that sense of security which she coveted. There was nothing secure about this man: perhaps that was precisely the reason why his admiration and his impertinent interest in her affairs excited her. The whole tenor of their interview had been antagonistic: any one listening to it would have said it verged on quarrel, but below the antagonism, as below ice, ran some stream of turbulent attraction.... Against that she had to arm herself.