by E. F. Benson
There was something ludicrously pathetic about this, that brought from Violet a gasp that lay midway between laughter and tears. There was Celia with her baby and her adoring husband, her deep genuine unhappiness, her even deeper egoism, and yet that same Celia was still a child, whitely innocent, as any one who knew her at all must know, saying “Miaow.” She was like a girl still; her year of marriage had but presented fresh facts to her notice, without inoculating her with them.
Laughter and tears divided the honours with Violet: she laughed, with dim eyes.
“There’s one thing very clear,” she said; “if, as I know, your will is right, you mustn’t see Vincent any more. Never mind about reasons: never mind whether Bernard thinks it odd or Vincent thinks it odd. All those are absolute trifles.”
The child-aspect of Celia vanished as completely as when the light is turned off from a picture flashed on a screen.
“I can’t do that,” she said. “It would be an obvious thing to do, but it would be a stupid one. It would defeat its own ends.”
“It is the only way of compassing them,” said Violet.
Celia spoke in a quiet, concentrated voice: clearly she had no difficulty in keeping her mind steady on this point.
“But I’m right,” she said. “Vincent helps me through. There were days when I saw no one but Bernard, and I couldn’t go through them again. I should break down. I should be crushed. It isn’t that I want to see Vincent alone, but if he’s there every now and then, Bernard or no Bernard, I get fed. That, by the way, is the extent of my being in love with him, if you choose to put it so—”
Celia paused a moment.
“You think it is dangerous,” she said, “whereas in reality it’s what makes me secure. If he was in love with me, I should either take your advice or — or head for the rapids. As it is, it’s just he — oh, the irony of it — who gives me patience and sympathy with Bernard. To see him feeds me, as I said, and gives me happiness—”
There was a crash in the passage outside, followed by a bawling, angry voice.
“Oh, it’s Tommy,” cried Violet. “How rash of him to try to find his way up here alone. He’ll kill himself some day. Celia, I must go to him. But when may I come again to you? You mustn’t do this—”
Tommy had picked himself up, apparently, and got his bearings again, for next moment his groping fingers were on the door, feeling for the handle.
“It was a chair,” he said angrily, “which was not there when I came here last. That’s why I ran into it.... You shouldn’t alter your furniture, Celia, when you are expecting me. Edges of doors are difficult too: you don’t feel them coming, as you do flat, broad things. How are you?”
It struck Celia at that moment, with a reality that hadn’t reached her before, that if it was an effort on Tommy’s part to maintain this high sunny level of cheerfulness, it was an effort that was natural to him. If there was — even that did not seem likely — an expense of energy over it, it was an expense as purely instinctive as that of breathing or digestion. At Stonepitts it had appeared to her a splendid tour-de-force that had left her emotionally cold, though intellectually applauding.
“I feel discussion in the air,” said Tommy, “and I notice that tea hasn’t come yet. What have you and Vi been discussing?”
“We’ve been discussing how she would feel if you fell in love with me,” observed Celia.
Tommy advanced the hand which he had just given to Celia, and put his arm firmly round her waist.
“If I fell in love with you?” he asked. “Why, I’ve been in love with you for ages.”
“Thomas, before my very eyes!” cried Violet. “Better than behind your back, darling,” said Tommy. “You know the worst now. But Celia’s not in love with me: you’re perfectly safe. It takes two to make a dangerous situation.”
“I agree,” said Celia, looking at Violet.
“Well, make haste, and succumb to my charms. By the way, I saw Vincent just now. Oh — did you notice? I said ‘saw’ quite naturally. That marks a stage.”
“What about Vincent?” asked Celia.
“Well, the intrepid King’s Messenger — dear me, he’s a friend of yours, I forgot. Let’s leave it at that. And I talk of reading my Braille instead of feeling it—”
“And Vincent?” asked Celia.
“Oh, yes; I told him I was coming to see you, and he asked if he could dine with you this evening. I shall meet him at the club when I go away, and I’ll tell him.”
Bernard, as Celia knew, had refused an invitation for that night, for she was dining downstairs for the first time since the birth of her baby, and she was well aware that he was looking forward to this. She had seen that he cast about in his mind for an excuse, and, thereby enhancing the value of a solitary evening with her by initiating it herself, had forestalled him, saying, “Oh, Bernard, you’re engaged to me!” That had been amply sufficient.
His face had glowed at the thought that it was she who prompted him to be at home.
“Oh, you must tell Vincent that I’m very sorry,” she said, “but that Bernard and I are having a Darby and Joan. It’s my first evening downstairs. He will understand.”
She let her eyes rest for a moment on Violet, beaming approval, as she said this.
“Bernard will love that,” said she.
‘Vincent won’t,” remarked Tommy.
Celia’s mind was extremely busy as they had tea. Vincent had only just come back from an intrepid journey; she had not expected him until to-morrow. The thought of the Darby and Joan festivity became intolerable, yet she must move no traceable finger in averting it. For the last week she had had undiluted Bernard in the evening. He had dined with her in her room when she was back in bed again, with excursions to the nursery (a word that filled him with a sort of ecstasy), coming back with news that all was well, and to-day was the festa of her reappearance, reserved, on her own initiative, for him and her alone. It had been an impulse of amends to him, for often through these dismal evenings she had put down the shutter on his joy. She had seen him puzzled and bewildered at her, exonerating her the next moment for her petulant ennui, blaming himself for tiring her, leaving her now on tiptoe, and looking in again to see if she was asleep. Often had she feigned sleep at the whisper of the opening door on the carpet, in order to spare herself another good-night, another bulletin... It could so easily be recompensed to him by her desire, already expressed, to have this further evening alone with him. But now Vincent was proposing himself....
The two others set movement on foot.
“We must go,” said Tommy. “Vincent’s waiting for me at the Bachelors’ to get your answer. Then I shall have a cocktail, and some pleasant conversation. Lor! What nice things! So it’s no use asking you to dine, Celia?”
“Not a bit. Aren’t we all domestic? Are you people going to walk?”
“Certainly. Violet’s losing her figure. That’s her waist, that’s yours. Pity. She isn’t much older than you.”
Long before they could have got to the Bachelors’, Celia had Vincent on the telephone.
“Tommy will tell you that you can’t dine,” she said. “You might look in, casually, about halfpast nine. Can you?”
“Certainly, but is it quite convenient?” he asked.
“Yes; do come. I’m only going to have a quiet dinner alone with Bernard. Just happen to drop in afterwards.”
It needed no effort on Celia’s part that evening to give full value to this tête-à-tête, for soon after dinner it would resolve itself into a trio. She remembered Bernard’s admiration for a particular tea-gown, and wore it; she gave news to him of well-being in the nursery, and as they passed the Greek head on the staircase, she pressed his arm, saying, “Oh, Bernard, does she know what she has done?” Her policy to-night was a little more deliberate, a little more emphasized than usual, for she had the shortcomings of these evenings lately to repair; she must sponge and comfort any little bruise that he might have sustained. That was easy now, fo
r, taking the evening as a whole, it would yield enjoyment to her as well as to him. Indeed, it would have required an effort on her part not to bubble with geniality again, for there was a reaction in her from the tragic mood in which she had told Violet that things could not be worse with her. There was sweet as well as bitter in the mixing-cup: just now the sweet rose to the surface in creamy froth. It was meeting trouble half-way to take that ominous attitude: if trouble was coming, trouble should do all the walking, she would not stir a step in that direction. To-night, anyhow, with her returning strength, with the period of withdrawal over and the world opening out again, there was sufficient surface-stimulus to give her a trend of irresponsibility with regard to the future. Prey of her moods at all times, she readily yielded herself up to this.
There was just one check, as they sat on, after finishing dinner without moving from the table. Celia had been giving her animated appreciation of Tommy, and unconsciously had glanced more than once at the clock. When she paused with a question for Bernard, she found his eyes fixed on her, and got no reply.
“Don’t you think-so?” she repeated.
He recalled himself.
“I really beg your pardon,” he said. “I haven’t the slightest idea what it was that you asked me.” He moved his chair a little nearer hers.
“I was thinking so much of you, that I really forgot to listen to what you were saying,” he said. “Do you know how amazing you are to-night? Your hands, for instance, have been alive again: all these last days they have been dozing. And your eyes have been awake instead of being only open. But don’t keep on looking at the clock. The envious minutes keep passing: I know that.”
Then came the check for Celia. She knew that her brain had been saying: “He will be here in half an hour: he will be here in twenty-five minutes.” But when Bernard reminded her of her glances, she remembered that she had not told Vincent not to say that she had asked him to come round....
“Darling, how you watch me!” she said. “Haven’t you finished your study of me yet? And all the valuable things I have been saying have blown past you like dead leaves on the wind! You must take them as said.”
“I will. I lost myself over one sentence of yours when you spoke of my getting some sort of holiday at Christmas. Since then I have been thinking of nothing but you and me down at Stonepitts.”
The clock burred a signal that it was within striking distance of quarter-past nine, and Celia rose.
“Just ourselves, like to-night!” she said. “How many days can you get, Bernard?”
“A full fortnight, anyhow, away from the office.
I shall have a report to make out which will take me ten days. I shall sit immured in a tower of blue books with one little postern. Shall we settle on that, darling? I shall put it away in my mind and want it. Then it will come.”
“Black magic,” said Celia. “Two hundred years ago you would have been burned.”
“White magic,” said he. “Now what would you like to do? Rook me at picquet again?”
They sat in a small sitting-room close to the front door, which, in this dearth of coal, was easy to heat, and were not half-way through their first game of picquet when, close at hand, came a tingle from an electric bell and a touch of the knocker on the door. Celia heard, and without further admonition she felt the leap of her pulse, but she appeared unconscious of it, and bent forward over the weeding of the hand just dealt to her. Bernard heard, too, and laying his cards down rose and spoke in a whisper.
“That’s the front door,” he said. “I’ll slip out and tell Braid to say we are not at home.”
Celia dipped into herself for a moment’s intense debate. She did not want to tell Bernard that she had asked Vincent to look in, but if she did not do that she risked Vincent’s volunteering the information to her butler, which would be worse. She decided to take the off-chance about that, and meantime she had to stop her husband from having him turned away.
“My dear, it’s probably only a telegram,” she said, hearing Braid’s step across the hall.
“Best to take precautions,” he whispered, and tiptoed to the hall. But he was too late: already the front door was open, and Vincent stepped in. From inside the room Celia heard Bernard’s rather iced “Hullo!” and next moment the two men entered.
“Haven’t seen you for ages, Celia,” said the guest. “It was good of you to let me look in.”
Nothing could have been more unfortunate, but nothing irretrievable was ever worth a moment’s lamentation. For herself, she was incapable of any sort of lamentation, for Vincent’s presence encapsuled the whole situation. In the background certainly was Bernard.... Her second thought flashed to Bernard.
“And you got back to-day?” she asked. “How nice of you to propose yourself, if compliments are on the wing.”
She paused a moment, illuminated by an audacious idea that would make everything comfortable. If only it came off. Surely Vincent was clever enough to see the flight of this arrow....
“But though compliments are flying,” she said, “I must succumb to an instinct of honesty. I never received your message that you proposed to look in. Whoever answered the telephone must have known you were always welcome. Probably it was the parlourmaid. She was quite right, wasn’t she, Bernard? You must say she was quite right, darling. Vincent’s coming here saved you from a Rubicon.”
She need have had no fear of Vincent’s cleverness to grasp this. He saw exactly where the crooked road tended, and could map it all out without effort. Celia had put him off as regards the complete evening, on the score of Darby and Joan; she now, on the same old score, disclaimed having asked him at all, which she certainly had done in a voice of which the telephone did not rob its timbre. The upshot was perfectly clear: she had asked him to come and had not told Bernard.
Celia sat down on the sofa, markedly drawing her skirt towards herself, making room by her side for somebody.
“Isn’t the world upside down?” she said. “The parlourmaid — or Braid perhaps; do you think it was Braid, Bernard? I always said that Braid ran the house — the parlourmaid told Vincent that we should be delighted to see him after dinner, without consulting us, or telling us even what she had done. I’m sure it was the austere one who reads the papers. Let us tell her that we shall give a dinner-party next Thursday (if that suits her) for twelve, and see whom she will ask. I’m sure she will ask Vincent.”
“Vincent will come,” said he. “But he feels he ought to go away now, or go downstairs and spend the evening with this paragon. She asked me: not you, Celia. Where is she? Or was it Braid? I don’t feel so much interested if it was Braid.”
Bernard had experienced an ugly minute. When he saw Vincent standing by the opened door he had felt he knew that Celia had asked him. Like the flash that scribbles its way across the sky, the same illumination had told him that this — Vincent’s coming — accounted for Celia’s radiant content, for her glances at the clock, for her dissuasion of his own desire to stop any intrusion on their perfect evening. He had, internally, accused Celia of a deceit, of a petty little concealment, small on the surface but with branching roots. If she had asked Vincent to look in, why should she not have told him so, unless the petty concealment cloaked a larger? She could scarcely have forgotten she had done so: less possibly could it have escaped her that he himself was spending a lover’s evening with her. But now, unless there was a conspiracy of concealment, his conjecture was plucked from the earth like some insignificant weed. How had it ever found root in his garden? And yet... and yet?
Vincent allowed no pause for further excursion.
“I particularly wanted to see you, Bernard,” he said.
“Ah, it was Bernard who asked you in, and he didn’t tell me,” said Celia. “Bernard got tired of his Darby and Joan. And to think that just now he was pretending to plan a fortnight at Christmas alone with me! I shall find, when Christmas comes, that he has asked you to spare him the solitude. I think I shall ask you myself, now
. I am sure I am only forestalling Bernard’s invitation.”
“Do you ask me or don’t you?” said he.
Celia looked across at Bernard with an admonitory nod.
“Bernard, confess!” she said. “You asked Vincent here this evening. It is being dragged out of you. Have you already asked him for Christmas?”
Celia experienced a disgusted wonder at herself, at her delight in the embellishments of her deception. Slipping from the leash of her original concealment, she bounded and frisked about. Bernard now must believe that she had never initiated this intrusion on their solitary evening, and the more she decorated the reason for his recantation the better. The one thing she had not recollected was that she was dealing with ornament only, and these spires and tendrils were already beginning to obscure Bernard’s acceptance of the accident of Vincent’s presence here.... “Methinks the lady doth protest too much....”
Vincent, knowing only that he had not been expected by Bernard, comprehended this. The particular manner of it was still out of his ken, but he realized that, as in a conjuring trick, the ordinary character of the top-hat out of which a rabbit would presently be produced had been sufficiently insisted on. It was just a top-hat, rather napless.
“I acquit Bernard of further treachery,” he said, “and my Christmas will certainly be passed in some poisonous place. I’m just back from Salonica and Athens, Bernard, and the sea was thick with submarines, like trout when the mayfly is in the water. The four boats to Brindisi and Taranto, just before mine, were all torpedoed: the mayfly had a bad time of it. But I picked up some bits of news in Athens that might be useful to you. I want to have a talk with you. Let me come to the F.O. to-morrow morning, and let us forget all these beastly businesses for to-night. Celia, give me news: proper news.”
Celia had taken his cue.
“But I’m the one person in the world who hasn’t had any news,” she said. “This is my first evening downstairs. I love it. Bernard’s reputation has been tottering, so he tells me, since I haven’t been able to entertain for him. I’m making a great man of Bernard: nobody appreciates that but he. I must bring grist to the mill. Cigarette? Oh, Bernard, you’ve left them in the dining-room. Do get them!”