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In nineteen-thirteen Jimmy bought a motor-car.
He was more excited about his motor-car than he had been about his house—any of his houses. Even Viola was interested and came rushing down from her Belfry when it arrived.
He bought it at the end of January. A good, useful car that would shut or open and serve for town or country. But it was no good to them till April.
For all February and March Viola was ill. She had been running down gradually for about two years, getting a little whiter and a little slenderer every month, and in the first week of February she got influenza and ignored it, and went out for a drive in the motor-car with a temperature of a hundred and four.
Nineteen-thirteen stands out for me as the year of Viola's illness.
It turned to pneumonia and she was dangerously ill for three weeks, in fact, she nearly died of it; and for more weeks than I can remember she lay about on sofas to which Jimmy and the nurse or one of us carried her from her bed. And in all that time Jimmy nursed and waited on her and sat up with her at night. If he slept it was with one eye and both ears open. And I never saw anybody as gentle as he was and as skilful with his hands and quiet. He didn't even breathe hard. And when she was convalescent and a little fretful and troublesome there wasn't anybody else who could manage her. The nurses would call him to feed her and give her her medicine and lift her. She couldn't bear anybody else to touch her.
I remember one day when she had been moved from her bed to the couch for the first time and she was so weak, poor darling, that she cried. I remember her saying, "Jimmy, if you'll only put your hands on my forehead and keep them there."
I think he must have sat for hours with his hands on her forehead.
I doubt if he was ever away from her for more than a few minutes except when one of us came and dragged him out for a walk in the Park against his will. It was always for a walk in the Park—the same walk, through Stanhope Gate to the end of the Serpentine and back again, so that he could time it to a minute. He wouldn't look at his motor-car. I think he hated it. Anyhow, I know he lent it to us until she was well enough to go out in it again.
She wasn't well enough till April. She never would have been well enough, she never would have been with us at all, the doctors and the nurses said, if it hadn't been for Jimmy. He swore that they were fools when they gave her up and said she couldn't live. He said he'd make her live. And I believe he made her.
He gave her till April to get well in; and when April came she did get well. And he took her away to the South of France, and to Switzerland when the months grew warmer (the doctor told him it was a risk, but he said he'd take it); he took her in the motor-car, and he brought her back in June, still slender but recovered.
That illness of hers saved them for the time. It reinstated him. It improved him. He couldn't, you see, be devoted and vulgar at the same time. All lighter agitations and excitements might be dangerous to Jevons, but passion and great grief and grave anxiety ennobled him. He came back from Switzerland chastened and purified of all offence. Even Reggie couldn't have found a flaw in him.
That had always been Jevons's way. Just when you had made up your mind that you couldn't bear him he would go and do something so beautiful that it made your heart ache. From the very fact that he was intolerable to-day you might be sure he'd be adorable to-morrow.
And when we saw him the night he brought Viola home, moving quietly about the house, giving orders in that gentle voice that he had in reserve, we thought, Really, it will be all right now. Viola's passion for him had been near death so many times, and each time he had saved it.
We hadn't allowed for the reaction—he was bound to feel it after three months' unnatural repression; we hadn't allowed for the reaction that Viola was bound to feel after three years' unnatural detachment; we hadn't allowed for the state of her nerves after her illness; there were all sorts of things we hadn't allowed for, and they all came at once; they burst out from under their covers one evening in June when Norah and I were dining in Green Street.
It was one of Jimmy's gestures that began it. Viola had never been able to control his gestures; she had never been able to get used to them; and there were two in particular that made her wince still as she had winced in the beginning. She had contracted the habit of wincing in response to them. Whenever Jimmy jerked his thumb over his shoulder you saw her blink; and whenever he cracked his knuckles she shrank back. The blink followed the jerk, and the shrinking followed the cracking as the flash follows the snap of the trigger.
I have never known Jimmy jerk as he jerked that evening. When Norah had no salad, when my glass was empty, when Viola wanted more potatoes, when he wanted more potatoes himself, Jimmy jerked his thumb. The butler seemed to have made it a point of honour to acknowledge no other signal. And every time it happened I noticed the increasing violence of Viola's reaction. What had once been a gentle flicker of the eyelashes was now a succession of spasms that left her eyebrows twisted.
And at the fifth jerk she covered her eyes with her hands and cried out,
"Jimmy, if you do that once more I shall scream."
Poor Jimmy asked innocently, "What did I do?"
"You jerked your thumb. You jerked it five times, and I simply cannot bear it."
"All right—all right," said Jimmy. "I needn't jerk it again. It's quite easy not to."
"I was afraid it wasn't," she sighed.
I was thinking, "Whatever will she do if he cracks his knuckles?" and that very minute he cracked them. The butler, demoralized by Jimmy's methods, had gone out of the room just when he was wanted. That annoyed Jimmy. I have never known him produce such a detonation.
Viola started as if he had hit her. But she said nothing this time.
Jimmy didn't see her. He was looking over his shoulder to see whether the butler was or was not answering his summons. And then—I think that at one period of his life he must have been a little proud of his accomplishment—he did it again. He did it crescendo, fortissimo, prestissimo, strabato and con molto expressione; he played on his knuckles with a virtuosity of which I have never seen the like.
The sheer technique of the performance ought to have disarmed her. (It enchanted Norah. But then Norah hadn't had an illness.) She flung a wild look round the room as if she called on treacherous heavenly powers to save her, then rose and very slowly, in silence and a matchless dignity, she walked out, past me, past Jimmy, past the returning butler, and down the passage and into the Tudor hall.
"Well—I am blowed," said Jevons.
Norah put her hand on his arm.
"You were wonderful, Jimmy dear," she said. "I could have listened to you for ever. So could Walter. But then, we haven't any nerves."
"After all," said Jimmy, "what did I do?"
I said, "You made a most infernal noise, old chap, you know."
"I say! Come—"
We had heard the andirons go down with a clatter.
That was how we knew she was in the Tudor hall.
He found her there when he trotted out and took her some wine and a peach. He came back almost instantly.
"It's all right," he said. "She's eating it."
But it was very far from all right.
All the prisoned storms and the secret agonies of years were loose that night, and they had their way with her.
We found her dreadfully calm when we got back to her. She had peeled her peach and eaten it, and she had drunk her wine, and she was sitting by the great hearth where she had kicked down the andirons; she was sitting, I remember, on one of the Tudor chairs with the carved backs and the tapestry—the lilies of France in gold on a crimson ground—sitting very upright, in her beautiful trailing gown that curled round her feet; and she was a little flushed (but that may have been the wine).
Jimmy went and stood next her in front of his hearth, with his hands in his trouser pockets—I mean with his thumbs in his waistcoat pockets, where he seemed to have put them to keep them out of mischief; and he twinkled as if he were still thinking of the andirons. And every now and then he glanced at his wife sideways out of his brilliant sapphire eyes, without moving his head a hair's-breadth.
And none of us said anything.
Then Jimmy rang for coffee, and that started her.
She said, "Are you going to do any work to-night?"
"No," said Jimmy, "I don't think so. Why?"
"Because, if you don't want your study I'll sit in it."
"All right." He said it vaguely. But he must have suspected something was up, for he turned his head round and looked at her straight; and again he said, "Why?"
"Because," she said, "it's the only tolerable room in the house."
He flushed faintly at this. "You mean," he said, "it's the only one I didn't bother about?"
"I said it was the only tolerable one."
"I see." His flush went deep, and his mouth closed over his teeth.
There was no doubt he saw.
She had hurt him badly. It was quite a minute before he spoke again, and when he did speak you felt that he had yielded, in spite of himself, to an overpowering curiosity. He must—he seemed to be saying to himself—sift this mystery to the bottom.
"D'you mean," he said, "that this room doesn't—er—appeal to you?
What's wrong with it?"
"There's nothing wrong with it," she said, "if you like it."
"Never mind whether I like it or not. It's detestable. And the drawing-room?"
She did not answer. I think she was ashamed of herself.
"Even more so, I suppose. And—your boudoir?"
(I've forgotten the boudoir. She hardly ever let any of us go into it. It was pretty awful.)
"I do wish," she said, "you'd leave me alone. What does it matter?"
"Your boudoir," he went on, as if she hadn't said anything, "is, if possible, more detestable than the drawing-room."
"I never said so."
"Precisely. That's my grievance. Why, in Heaven's name, didn't you say so? Why did you tell me that you liked all these abominations?"
"Because they didn't matter."
"Why lie about them if they didn't matter?"
"I mean they didn't matter to me. They don't."
"My dear child, what on earth do you suppose they matter to me? What made you think they mattered?"
"The way you went on about them."
"Oh—the way I go on—Well, if that matters—"
She rose. I think she had heard the tinkle of the coffee-cups in the corridor and wanted to put an end to what in any hands but Jimmy's would have been an unseemly altercation.
"Will it matter if we go upstairs?"
"No. Not a bit." He snapped and twinkled at the same time.
She went, and Norah followed her.
Jevons settled himself in an armchair. I saw how unperturbed and deliberate he was as he took his coffee from the tray, and with what an incorrigible air he jerked his thumb towards the staircase. I can still hear him call up the staircase in a magisterial voice, "The ladies are in the study, Parker." When we were alone he fell into meditation.
It was apparently as the result of meditation that he said, "I suppose it is a bit crude, if you come to think of it. Only why couldn't she say so at the time?"
I said I supposed she was afraid of hurting his feelings.
"My feelings? How could I have any feelings about a blanketty drawing-room suite? Does she really think I'm such a fool that I can't live without lions on my staircase? I stuck the beastly things there because I thought she'd like 'em. If I thought she'd like a tame rhinoceros in her boudoir I'd have got her one, if I'd 'ad to go out and catch 'im and train 'im myself. If I thought now that the only way to preserve her affection was to wear that suit of armour every night at dinner I'd wear it and glory in wearing it. There isn't any damned silly thing I wouldn't do and glory in."
And then—"Her nerves must be in an awful state."
He meditated again.
"Tell you what—I'll get rid of this place. I'll let it go furnished for what it'll fetch. I'll only keep the things we had before—the things she liked. They are prettier."
He looked round him with his disenchanted eyes.
"I can see it's all wrong, this sort of thing. It's in bad taste. Rotten bad taste. I suppose I must have been a bit excited about it at the time—I must have thought it was all right or I couldn't have stood it.
"It's a phase I've gone through.
"I can understand perfectly well how she feels about it.
"Fact is, I hate the place myself—the whole beastly house I hate. I've hated it ever since she was ill in it. I can't get away from her illness. I shall always see her ill. She'll be ill again if we go on living in it.
"I'm tired of the whole business—I'll let it to-morrow and take a house in the country.
"You might go upstairs, old man, and see what she's doing."
I went upstairs.
She was sitting in one corner of the study with a book in her hand pretending to read. Norah was sitting in another corner with a book in her hand, pretending to read. I gathered that Norah had been talking to her sister. I took up a book and pretended to read too.
Presently, when she thought we were absorbed, Viola got up and left us.
Norah waited till the door had closed on her. Then she spoke.
"Wally—it's more awful than we've ever imagined. I don't think she'll be able to stand it much longer."
"Well," I said, "she won't have to stand it much longer. He's going to chuck the place. It's got on his nerves, too. He understands exactly how she feels about it."
"Let's hope he doesn't understand how she feels about—It isn't the place, Wally."
"What is it, then?"
"I'm most awfully afraid it's Jimmy."
"Jimmy? You don't mean she doesn't care about him?"
"Oh, no, she cares about him, and it's because she cares so that she can't stand him."
"Well," I said, "whether she cares or not, it's rough on Jimmy."
"It's rough on her. It's rough on both of them. It's getting rougher and rougher, and it's wearing her out."
"Won't it wear him out too?"
"N-no. Nothing will wear Jimmy out. He's indestructible. He'll wear her out."
"He says he's going to take a house in the country. How do you think that'll answer?"
She shook her head.
"I don't know, Walter. I don't really know. It sounds risky."
"The whole thing," I said, "was risky from the start."
"There are two things," she said, "that would save them—if Reggie were to come round. Or if Jimmy were to have an illness; and neither of them is in the least likely to happen."
"There's a third thing," I said—"if Viola were to have a baby."
"That isn't likely either. He'd never let her. He says it would kill her. It's pitiful, it's pitiful. Can't you see," she said, "that he adores her?"
I said I didn't see what we were there for, and that it was time for us to go.
As I followed her down the stairs that led to the Tudor hall she paused suddenly on the landing where a second lion marked the turn. She had her finger to her lip. We drew back. But not before I had looked down over the balustrade into the hall and seen Jimmy sitting on one of the thrones with the lilies of France, and Viola crouching beside him on the rug with her head hidden on his knee.
He had his hands on her forehead and was saying, "It's all right. Do you suppose I don't understand?"