These Charming People
————
MICHAEL ARLEN
- By MICHAEL ARLEN
- These Charming People
- The Green Hat
- “Piracy”
- The Romantic Lady
- The London Venture
These
Charming People
BEING A TAPESTRY OF THE FORTUNES, FOLLIES,
ADVENTURES, GALLANTRIES AND
GENERAL ACTIVITIES OF SHELMERDENE
(THAT LOVELY LADY), LORD TARLYON,
MR. MICHAEL WAGSTAFFE, MR. RALPH
WYNDHAM TREVOR AND SOME OTHERS
OF THEIR FRIENDS OF THE
LIGHTER SORT: WRITTEN DOWN
BY MR. RALPH WYNDHAM
TREVOR AND ARRANGED BY
Michael Arlen
NEW YORK
GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY
Copyright, 1924,
By George H. Doran Company
THESE CHARMING PEOPLE
—B—
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
CONTENTS
THESE CHARMING PEOPLE
I: INTRODUCING A LADY OF NO IMPORTANCE AND A GENTLEMAN OF EVEN LESS
THERE was, and (by the grace of God) there still is, a lovely woman whom it once pleased a young man to call Shelmerdene, because, he said, though it is not her real name, it becomes her better than any real name could. And about Shelmerdene books have been written and for her men have died, which just shows you the sort of woman she was. Now it happened one day that Shelmerdene returned to England after a long absence abroad in Persia, but I can tell you nothing about that because I know nothing of Persia, except that it is rather inadequately governed by a Shah who is a pretty fat young man and wears a diamond in his hat.
Among other entertainments that we, her friends, contrived for Shelmerdene, as a welcome and a token of our enduring affection, a great house-party was arranged by Aubrey Carlyle; whereby, on a week-end in May, a great company of agreeable people was gathered together at Malmanor Park, a vast Elizabethan sort of place in ancient red that lies on a velvet plain between a brooding hill and the peculiar wood of Carmion; for it is said of Carmion Wood that only foreigners may hear the singing of the birds therein, whereas for Englishmen there is nothing but the sighing of the boughs and the rustling of the leaves. What truth there is in that legend I do not know, but I don’t suppose there is much.
Of all the company, only an intimate few stayed on at Malmanor after the Monday morning. Of the women, Mrs. Loyalty, the Lady Fay Paradise, Esther Carlyle (who kept house for her brother), Mrs. Avalon, and Shelmerdene. Of the men, Ralph Loyalty, George Tarlyon, John Avalon, myself, our host, and young Raymond Paris, the novelist, who spent his mornings in a secluded room writing.
One morning young Raymond Paris had sat long at the large table in his room—an upstairs room it was which Aubrey Carlyle had put at his disposal—but the paper before him was as white as a woman’s throat; nor is the likeness too unfair, as are most likenesses of this sort, for Raymond Paris had an extravagant taste in foolscap, being still young enough to enjoy the actual writing of his tales as much as the fame and fortune they might in due course bring him. Established writers used to ask him: “What, don’t you typewrite your stories straight away? Or don’t you dictate them? Well, you’ll soon get into the habit of it.” And that used to depress young Raymond Paris, for he did not want to get into the habit of it, he liked seeing his thoughts making patterns on the white paper.
But this morning the white paper before him remained far too white for his liking. The table at which he sat with a worried face was drawn across the bow of the wide windows; and through them the eyes were enticed by a long avenue of tall trees, which swept massively away from the gardens for many furlongs and was at last joined to the border of Carmion Wood; but, nearer, the eyes dropped from the windows to the upper garden, where—for the month was May—lay many beds of rare tulips, the whole drawn to an exquisite though, perhaps, intemperate design. Pink and purple, red and yellow, white and magenta, the carnival of gay tall tulips flamed in the sunlight and swayed to the lilt of the gentle wind, so that the young man’s brooding eyes likened them to glittering soldiers who every now and then stooped to the elegant distraction of a valse....
“So this is the way you work, Raymond Paris!” cried a soft, light voice behind him, and never was a young man with his way to make in the world more grateful for being disturbed.
“I am in great trouble, Shelmerdene. For here have I been offered an untold sum for a short-story, and I have not the glimmer of an idea! The editor wrote to me saying that he wanted something not only witty but serious, something earnest as well as gay, and with a point. Now isn’t that an unfair thing to ask of a man?” And the young writer looked up at Shelmerdene with a self-pitying smile, while she stood beside him, playing thoughtfully with the catch of an ancient pink shagreen cigarette-case, which had once been vanity-box in chief to Queen Marie Antoinette, so they said.
Now who shall describe Shelmerdene of the dark sleek hair, of the lips that smiled unaccountably, of the blue eyes that were gentle and witty and alight with understanding? She was lithe and dark-haired, and her face was white, and her eyes were as blue as night and as impersonal as the stars. She wore, this morning, a jumper of vermilion silk, and her skirt was thus and thus, and sweetly rakish on her head was a brown felt hat with a wide stiff brim, and on her feet were brown brogues of Russian leather, such as only men-servants can properly polish, women being what they are.
Shelmerdene smiled down at Raymond Paris, the young writer who could not write a story.
“I will tell you a story,” she said. “I will tell it quite plainly, but afterwards you may decorate it with fine words and epigrams, and make it a story fit for an editor to read. No, I won’t sit down, but you may continue to. This story, my dear, begins with me. All my stories do, though they generally end with some one else; that is called making a mess of one’s life, Raymond. I was married very young, and an unhappy marriage it was, so that we parted rather grimly, that queer man and I. He would not divorce me and I could not divorce him, for he was a pure man. Somewhere in this world, Raymond, there is a stern man who is my husband, and you must always remember that in any conversation with me, for he is not at all the kind of man whom one can forget. I have tried to, and so I know. He was very good-looking in a naval sort of way—which was just as well, as he was in the navy—and his eyes had that bleary, bitten look which they tell you comes from being out on the high seas in all weathers, but you and I know that it comes from drinking gin-and-bitters at all hours, there being so little else to do on a battleship. Anyway, there he is and here am I; pride parted us once, and now the years part us, and God only knows what will happen, if indeed He’s at all interested in such silly people.
“I fell in love. ‘Fall’ is exactly the word in this context, and I did not rise quickly. That is called being a loose woman, Raymond, but you need not put this part into your story; I am just explaining myself to you out of affection and because it is a May morning.
“My story is about how I fell in love with a stone image; for women are sometimes like sea-birds, they sometimes worship stone images, men who are carved of the rocky stuff of life.... All men and women are in a conspiracy to hide a secret, and the secret that lies in the hearts of all men and women is that they want to be loved. It sounds almost too pathetic, Raymond, but it is true. I fell in love with this young man, and I wanted to be loved by him. But he would not—Raymond, do you understand, he would not love me! Those, of course, were not his exact words, but it came to that. Why is it always the wrong men who fall in love with one, Raymond? My lovely stone image told me that he didn’t deserve being loved by me, because, because—oh, how the poor boy hesitated!—he hadn’t it in him to love any one. He simply couldn’t love, he said—and he felt such a brute! And then he tried to weigh his words carefully. He liked me, he said, as much as he could like any one, but he didn’t think he loved me—mark that glorious, arrogant think, Raymond! And also tell me when I am boring you....
“As he spoke, over luncheon it was, I watched the blue eyes which tried to look straight into mine but couldn’t, because he was shy. He was trying to be honest with me, you see, and trying to be honest with women makes men shy. He felt such a brute, he kept on saying, he ... yes, he did love me in his way, he suddenly admitted. But his way wasn’t, simply couldn’t be, mine. He simply couldn’t give himself wholly to any one—and he so frightfully wanted to, he felt he was missing such lovely things!
“I was a fool, of course—I mean, to believe what he said about not loving me. Oh, what an utter fool I was to believe him! But, all the same, I clung to my pathetic love-affair with both hands, ever so tight. I did indeed, Raymond. It is extraordinary how unattainable a woman can make a man she isn’t sure of! Maybe you have been unattainable to some woman, Raymond, or maybe you will be. It will be fun for you.
“If it hadn’t been that my husband would not divorce me I would have dragged that lovely stone image to the altar. It would have been better so, our lives would have been quite different and perhaps quite beautiful; but what actually happened was also quite beautiful, in an irregular kind of way.
“I had set out, you see, to make myself essential to him, mentally, physically, every way. If he couldn’t love me as a man loves a woman then he must love me as a tree loves the creepers that cling round it. Oh, dear, how extraordinarily silly one gets! I was terribly serious, Raymond. I always am, which is perhaps what keeps me young—but do I look young, youngish? Quick, tell me! Oh, you are sweet, Raymond!
“But I hadn’t much time in which to make myself necessary to him—that young man who said he couldn’t give himself wholly to any woman, who sandwiched a woman between a dead salmon and a dead grouse! He was the eldest son of a great house, but in the meantime he was a soldier, and he had the frozen blue eyes which make a good soldier, as soldiers go—and he was going, Raymond! under special orders for East Africa, where he would have to stay several months. Just a few weeks I had, then, to make him feel that he couldn’t bear life, in Africa or anywhere else, without me. And, my dear, the world didn’t hold a more perfect dream than that in which he would come to me and offer to risk his career for me! That is what is called being a cad, Raymond, and women are rather good at it. I wanted him to offer me his ambition, and then I would consider whether or not I would give it back to him. But he didn’t. I lost.
“And I had seemed so like winning, too! For, ten days before he was to sail, he had insisted on taking me away from London, saying that London was getting between us and that we must go away into the country, just to breathe and to love. That is not, of course, how he put it, Raymond, but that was his meaning, and very, very happy it made me. Imagine! Seven days we spent together in a funny sweet little inn under the shadows of those toy hills which are called mountains in Wales; but I will not tell you about those days, for they are a very intimate memory, and even if I did you could not put them into your story, for your editor would wonder if you were mad, saying that the British public will put up with much but not with as much as that. But, all the same, they were a wonderful seven days, and as we sat silently facing each other in the train back to London, silent because there was too much to talk about, I knew I had won. There were three days left.
“In London he dropped me at my house, and he was to return in the evening to take me out to dinner. But he was back within an hour, and when I went downstairs I found him pacing impatiently up and down the drawing-room. He told me that his orders had been changed; he had to go to Paris first, and then take ship at Marseilles.
“‘To Paris!’” I said, not understanding.
“‘Yes, to-night, in two hours,’” he said quickly, shyly. He was embarrassed at the idea of a possible scene. And, oh, those frozen blue eyes, those frozen blue eyes of pro-consular men! He must go at once, he said. He shook both my hands; and he held them a little while in that pathetic attempt at tenderness which sometimes overtakes Englishmen when they are eager to go and do something else. He would write to me, he said. He mumbled something about my being a darling, but I simply hadn’t a word. It was all just as though nothing had ever happened to us, as though we had never been to the little Welsh inn, or played and laughed and loved, as though he had never begged me to run my fingers through his hair because I had said his hair was a garden where golden flowers grew. Englishmen are very odd, Raymond. He was going away! But he would write to me, he said, and would be back in twelve months or so ... and he almost forgot to kiss me. But what are kisses?
“Now this is where, Raymond, in writing this story, your craftsmanship must come in. You must be very clever just here, Raymond. You must manage to convey that, though I was not a bad loser by nature, I was terribly wretched for a time: that I simply didn’t exist. You must fill in the gap with some fine prose and acute observation—the horrible gap between the time he went away and the time when I again began to take notice of life. You can’t both be loyal to me and true to life, Raymond, so you had better be romantic about it. You will find it quite easy to be romantic about other people’s troubles.
“I didn’t forget him. I have never forgotten him, that stone image which stood in my heart and then broke itself to pieces because of some law I did not, do not, understand. But there is a law I do understand, a cruel kind of law, and that is the law of reaction. He wrote me letters at long intervals; cold, honest bits of writing, strong-and-silent-backbone-of-Empire stuff, and rather pompous with their appreciations of me tacked on to descriptions of the desert and the natives. But I wrote to him only once, explaining myself, explaining him. Oh, it was a wonderful letter, the one wonderful letter of my life! I gave all I had to give in that letter, but it didn’t seem to warm him at all, and I hadn’t the heart or the energy to write again.
“He became a tender memory ... and I fell in love again, Raymond. But not as with my stone image, oh, no! This was the sort of man who didn’t count except in that I loved him, or thought I did. He was really no more than the servant of my reaction against the stone image, and to serve me well he had to help me demolish all the castles of sentiment I had built around him. And the stoutest and most beautiful castle of all I had built around that funny little Welsh inn! The memory of our days there haunted me: it made everything else seem not worth while, and so I told myself that something must be done about that, else it looked to be spoiling my whole life with regrets. Nothing in the world repeats itself except regret—and, of course, sardines. And so, Raymond, I set my horse to that last castle, to crash into it recklessly, gallantly, and to stride and laugh about its halls with another man, who was not a stone image, not so beautiful.
“We went, my reaction and I. In an exceedingly fast car we went, going ever so fast, so that when I tumbled out of it at that inn I had had no time to think. Now the sweetest thing in that little inn was its miniature dining-room, which was entirely composed of a large bow window and three little tables; and the largest thing about it was the view of the hills all round, and a brown stream which tumbled about at the bottom of the garden and made more noise than you could believe possible for so little a thing. My stone image and I had sat at the table by the bow window, and now my reaction and I sat there again. I dreamed, he ate. My back was to the door, and I sat facing a large mirror, the stream and the hills on my right; he sat facing the window, adoring me, the adventure, the hills, the food. I wasn’t unhappy; perhaps I was a little absent-minded, but I am sure I wasn’t unhappy—until, in the mirror in front of me, I saw the great figure, the fair hair, the frozen blue eyes, at the open door. Our eyes met in the mirror, the eyes of statues, wondering, waiting....
“Shall I tell you I was afraid, or ashamed, or intolerably miserable? I don’t know what I felt, it is a dead moment. I don’t know how long he stood there, filling the doorway with his great figure, filling my life with his stern eyes. But it couldn’t have been for long, perhaps a few seconds; and once he took his eyes off mine and looked at the man beside me, who hadn’t seen him. I thought his lips twitched, but then something happened to my sight, and the mirror clouded over. When I could see again, the door was closed, the magic mirror was empty of all but my unbelieving eyes and the profile of the man beside me, who didn’t know and was never to know that I had lived a century while he ate a potato.
“All that he did know was that the next morning I begged him to observe but not, please, to comment on my movements, which were in the direction of a London train. I treated that man abominably, abominably. But he never had a chance.... When I got home I found a wire. I had given orders for nothing, not even wires, to be sent on to me. This one had come an hour after I had left for Wales. It was from Southampton. ‘Just arrived. Am going straight up to the little place in Wales. Will arrive there dinner-time. Shall we dine together by the window?’”
Shelmerdene was rather absent-minded as she finished her story; she forgot to smile. It was very careless of Shelmerdene to forget to smile, for it made Raymond Paris feel shy; he fiddled with his pen; he coughed.
“Well,” said Shelmerdene, at last, “won’t that story do for you, Raymond? Or is it not interesting enough? Not enough action?”
“Of course, it’s frightfully interesting,” Raymond Paris protested. “But—well, you see, editors are rather odd. It isn’t a story at all, really, don’t you see....”
“An episode, perhaps?”
The young man started at a certain quality in her voice; something seemed to have suddenly broken in Shelmerdene’s voice. Wondering, he stared at the lady who stood above him by the table, her fingers playing thoughtfully with the ancient pink shagreen cigarette-case, which had once been vanity-box in chief to Marie Antoinette, so they said. And he followed her eyes out of the window into the garden below, the garden brave with the gay tall tulips of many colours. A man was walking in the garden, not heeding the tulips, not heeding anything, the back of a great figure of a man with a golf-bag swung across it, a lounging man with hands stuck very deep into plus-fours and a pipe screwed into the corner of his mouth; and the tall man’s hair was extraordinarily fair in the sunlight. George Tarlyon was walking through the garden of tulips on his way to a morning round of golf.
“Yes, an episode, that’s all it is,” said Shelmerdene queerly, and still her face forgot to smile. “That’s how he would think of it now. He has had his lesson, you see—and many episodes! And so all the childishness has gone out of him.... He can’t be hurt by a face in a mirror now, Raymond! He would just laugh, and he has an eighteenth-century kind of laugh. Poor lamb, all the childishness has been spilled out of him.”
And Shelmerdene’s eyes softly followed the figure among the tall tulips, while young Raymond Paris murmured: “You see, what editors want is a story with some sort of point....”
II: WHEN THE NIGHTINGALE SANG IN BERKELEY SQUARE
THERE is a tale that is told in London about a nightingale, how it did this and that and, finally, for no apparent reason, rested and sang in Berkeley Square. A well-known poet, critic, and commentator heard it, and it is further alleged that he was sober. Some men, of course, now say that it was not a nightingale at all, but only the South wind singing in the trees of the square, but it is a fact that some men will say anything. And some men have formed a Saint James’s Square school of thought, but it was in Berkeley Square that the poet, critic, and commentator, who was sober, distinctly heard the song of the nightingale, on a night in the heart of the drought of the year 1921.
In the drawing-room of a house midway on the entailed side of the square sat a lady and a gentleman silently. Or rather, the lady lay, while the gentleman sat, and the sofa on which she lay was far from the arm-chair in which he sat. The room was spacious; four shaded candles in tall candlesticks of ancient brass gave calm colour to its dimness; and four open windows, from which the curtains were withdrawn in slack folds of shining silver, gave out to the leaves of the trees, which murmured among themselves just a little.
At last the gentleman roused himself from the gloom of his chair in the recess of the room, and threw back his head and stretched his arms so that little things cracked behind his shoulders. But the lady did not stir nor look round at him, she lay still on the sofa by the windows, her head deep in the hollow of a crimson cushion, her eyes thoughtfully on the ceiling, which was high enough to refuse itself to exact scrutiny in the affected light of four candles.
The gentleman drew a cigar-case from his breast pocket, and a cigar from the case. He bit the cigar, and then he moved, to deposit what he had bitten from the tip of his finger into an ash-tray. Then he lit his cigar, thoughtfully, and he said: “Hell, it’s hot!”
“Perhaps, dear, it’s a rehearsal for same,” said the lady.
“I shouldn’t wonder,” he said, and stood with his back to the great Adam fireplace, and smoked his cigar. He was of medium-height, weathered looking, and broadly set: getting a little stout lately, and his fair hair thinning at the top. A commonplace face, you might call it, but the nose was good: straight, short and sensitive, very English. This was Ralph Loyalty, whose aunt, the late “John Loyalty,” had delighted our fathers with her books, which were of the sentimental-sophisticated sort and have now dated a good deal. Ralph Loyalty was more than usually happy in his aunt, for she had left him a fortune, a famous name, but, people said, only the more solid side of her good sense. He was a man who liked the company of men; his recreations were golf, joining clubs, auction-bridge, and dining with his wife; he enjoyed George Robey, and he admired other people’s brains. Some people thought him rather solid and unimaginative—“estimable qualities,” they said, “but rather heavy on the hand.” But, as “Ralph” in half a dozen clubs meant Ralph Loyalty, other people said that popularity was his form of genius, and they were probably right. He was said to be in love with his wife. He tolerated rakes, cads, and co-respondents among his acquaintance, but he never understood them. Effeminate men he laughed at rather shyly, and left it at that. He had no enemies, but most of his wife’s friends disliked him. They would have been surprised to see him at this moment, so miserable he looked, but they would not have been surprised at his wife’s attitude on the sofa, for naturally she was bored to death with the man. His wife’s friends had long since despaired of Ralph Loyalty ever seeing that his wife was bored to death with him, and that is why they would have been surprised to see him now, for it was obviously because he had realised that this evening, at last, that he looked so miserable.
“Well ...” began Ralph Loyalty suddenly, and then very deliberately knocked the ash of his cigar into the fireplace, which was unlike him with an ash-tray at hand, for he was an orderly man. And then he said a wicked word and banged out of the room. The candles flickered madly in the sudden draught.
But it was as though Mrs. Loyalty did not hear the crash of the door, she did not stir. She did not sigh, nor did she instantly light a match for the cigarette which had lain for many minutes forgotten near her hand.
Joan Loyalty was dark, or rather her hair was dark, and darker than ever against the crimson cushion. But her face was fair, English fair; and many generations had gone to the establishing of her complexion and the exact shaping of her delicate aquiline nose. But it was her eyes that were important, to the student of such things. Joan Loyalty belonged to the society of the day, and of that society her face, the oval sort, was, her friends said in their loose way, in the best way “typical.” She was of the type early twentieth century, but her gestures, and lack of them, were ancient enough, for they were fully expressive of that which really differentiates men from beasts, the social quality of being tired. But beneath that manner, that classical insolence which is inadequately called affectation, lay a Joan who was as sudden and as simple as the first woman. And that is why her eyes were important, to the student of such things, for in them was that thing which defies the analysing of novelists and demagogues, the thoughtful look which may only be thinking of a walk in a field with a dog and a stick, the curious, absent look which can smell the sea from a long way off.
At last Mrs. Loyalty lit her cigarette, and she rose from the sofa, and for a few minutes she listened to the murmuring of the leaves in the square; and then she crossed the dimness of the room to a bell-button, and pressed it.
“Downstairs in the study you will find a book, probably on the small table by the window. A slim, blue book, by a Mr. Beerbohm. Please bring it to me.”
The shadow of Smith hovered doubtfully among the shadows by the door.
“Mr. Loyalty is in the study, madam, and told me he was not to be disturbed.”
“Ah,” said Mrs. Loyalty softly. And she smiled, and when she smiled you understood why dogs liked her at once.
“All right, Smith,” she said. “I will fetch it myself.”
The shadow of Smith vanished in a flickering of candles, but Mrs. Loyalty did not follow him at once. She stood where Ralph Loyalty had stood, with her back to the great Adam fireplace; in a gesture of tired thought she clasped her hands behind her head, and from the motionless cigarette between her lips the smoke floated upwards without a curve until it faded, for she was forgetting to draw it. Then, suddenly, she dropped the half-smoked cigarette into the empty grate, an untidy habit of hers which her husband could not ever quite overlook, and left the room.
The quality of silence was very noticeable about the figure of Mrs. Loyalty: it had been favourably commented on by distinguished foreigners, who say that though foreign women are noisy talkers, Englishwomen are noisy walkers; which, however, sounds like a generalisation, and should be mistrusted as such.
But silence was, in a particular way, a quality of Mrs. Loyalty’s figure, just like its slimness. And when, a few minutes later, she re-entered the room with her book in her hand, it was almost as though she had not re-entered the room or had never left it; perhaps a shadow faintly stirred among the shadows by the door, but the draught of her coming in did not seem to disturb the sensitive light of the candles.
She moved one of them to the little table at the head of the sofa, she sat against the crimson cushion, and she read her book. But minutes passed and she did not turn over the page, so perhaps she was just pretending to read. Minutes passed, and then the light of the candles writhed across her page, and she looked up to see a great disturbance among the shadows by the door. She stared with very wide eyes at the dark apparition there, and her hand went to her heart in a still way she had, and she sighed curiously. The apparition came forward, and she stared at it with almost unbelieving eyes.
“Joan,” the apparition said, “I never thought I should live to see you look frightened!” A gay voice, rather shy.
He stood before her, a tall, very thin man, stooping a little, with feverish dark eyes set in a notably ascetic face, which had gained for him the comical name of “The Metaphysician.” His face was as though a fever lay behind it, a kind of sombre restlessness, but every now and then it would twitch into a shy smile; his face looked as though it had suffered much pain, but had never got used to pain. He smiled down at her intimately, but also shyly, which made the smile very attractive.
“Well,” she said up to him softly, “you did come in rather like a ghost, didn’t you?” She seemed to examine him.
“Didn’t Ralph tell you I was coming?”
That seemed to surprise her, but she only shook her head slightly.
“I saw Ralph at the club this evening and told him I might look in,” he added.
“He didn’t tell me,” she said. “But why didn’t you let me know?”
“You see, Joan,” said Hugo Carr, “I’ve had as much as I can bear of this hole-and-corner business.” A shy way Mr. Carr had; he would say firm things in a very shy voice, with the fever always behind his face. That’s what makes him attractive to women, people said. “Hugo lays down the law,” once said George Tarlyon, “as though he were laying eggs and was afraid they might break.”
He sat down on the sofa beside her, very close; on the edge of the sofa, sideways to her, with one knee almost on the ground. She lit a cigarette: and, seeing the appeal on his face, she smiled a little, her lips smiled, and she said softly:
“Forgive me, dear, but I feel very silent. The heat, perhaps. But go on with your speech—please do! And I’m hoping, too, that it will contain some inside information as to why you have not been to see me or even rung me up for a week. It’s such bad luck for a woman,” she said softly, “when a man of honour remembers his honour. Don’t you think so, Hugo?”
Her eyes looked as though she had left them on guard somewhere, watching something for her. But he didn’t notice that. He was one of those feverish men who never notice anything but other people’s feverishness, at which they feel aggrieved.
“See, Joan,” he began nervously. “You and I have been living a lie for two years. There’s no getting out of it—for two whole years! We’ve drugged ourselves and each other with saying we couldn’t help it——”
“You have,” she murmured. “I don’t need drugs.”
“Yes, I have,” he agreed quickly. “And you have let me. Because there was nothing we could do—so we said.” And suddenly he broke off, and put his hand on her knee. “Do you love me, Joan?”
“Yes,” she said, no more, for Joan’s love was never expressed in words, she was not like that. But it was his particular effeminacy, to be intensely pleased to hear her say she loved him. He would glow, de profundis. One of two people in love must be effeminate, after all.
“That’s been my one excuse,” he said shyly. “And it’s my justification now for what I must do—that we’ve loved each other for two years and still love each other. I’m going to ask Ralph to-night to give you your freedom....”
“So that’s why you haven’t been to see me for a week!”
“Yes. I wanted to be free to think. You influence me frightfully, Joan, you’re stronger than I am, and so if I was to think our way out of this muddle I had to do it alone. Ralph was my best friend. And for two years you and I have been meeting each other secretly for lunch and for the afternoons, and at home you’ve been living this lie with Ralph. You’ve sort of crucified yourself, Joan, because you didn’t want to hurt Ralph. And I’ve let you! It’s ghastly. And Ralph has always trusted us together, he’s made it easy for us. It’s ghastly, Joan.”
“Yes, it’s ghastly,” she murmured from her heart.
“Joan,” her lover whispered, “in the secret book in which our lives are being written, you will appear as an angel and I as a cad. For that is how it has been for two years....” And Hugo Carr of the sombre eyes and the thin face that looked as though a fever lay behind it passed a hand across his eyes; and her arm crept up round his shoulder, and she held his face very near.
“Poor darling!” she whispered. “You’ve suffered frightfully, haven’t you?” And she did little things to comfort him.
“But you’ve suffered much more,” he whispered into her hair. He kissed her hair. “And I’ve let you—go on not hurting Ralph! And what good has it done? Ralph suspects me. I know he does. It’s difficult to explain....”
“But it will be all right now,” Joan soothed his wretchedness.
He turned her face to him and looked into her eyes, the grave eyes that looked as though she had left them on guard somewhere, watching something for her.
“So you do agree with me now, Joan?” he whispered gladly.
But she seemed to answer irrelevantly, with a peculiar little laugh she had, which stabbed his heart with a pleasure that was almost pain.
“To agree or to disagree—what does it matter to me, Hugo! Only you matter, sitting here. And I only matter because I am beside you. So let’s be silent a little while, thinking of each other....”
And she turned very wretched eyes on him.
“Do you realise, Hugo, that you and I have scarcely had a minute of silence together for two years—you and I, whose lives are spent in chattering, have had to go on chattering even when we were alone, we could never forget ourselves or Ralph, we had always to be discussing what we would do and how we would do it and when we would do it. Discussing and discussing and discussing! Oh, dear, our love has been one endless discussion! And we are not very young any more, my sweet! But now we will be just silent, thinking of nothing but each other—for the first time in two years, we won’t think of Ralph, my dear, we just won’t! To please me, Hugo....”
It was an unusual pleasure for him to see her so soft, she who was so essentially fine that her natural softness had been merged into a great calmness: a delicious thing in a woman, calmness, but rather frightening.
But this was a matter of honour to-night. He had betrayed his best friend for two years, and would not betray him any longer. It had come to a point of honour that he must tell Ralph Loyalty that he loved Joan. And so now, even as he thrilled at her sweetness, he would have liked to say to her that his business to-night was with a point of honour, but he was much too self-conscious to be dramatic. He smiled self-consciously, and only said:
“But I must see Ralph to-night, dear. When I came in I told Smith——”
“Oh!” she cut impatiently in. “Be silent, Hugo, be silent—let’s enjoy ourselves while we may!” Nerves, of course. As she herself admitted immediately by asking, quite differently: “What did you say you told Smith? Didn’t he just tell you I was up here alone?”
“Yes. But I asked where Ralph was, and he said in the study, and so I told him to tell Ralph in an hour’s time that I was here. He said Ralph had given orders not to be disturbed, but I told him he expected me—and so I suppose he’ll be here soon.”
“Ah,” sighed Joan.
“God, it will be difficult!” Hugo muttered. “Dear old Ralph—the simplest man there ever was! What an unholy mess life is, Joan—that you and I have to fight our way to happiness over Ralph’s body, just because you met him before you met me!”
“Don’t say that!” she cried sharply.
“Nerves,” she smiled away his bewilderment. “What I really meant was, don’t say anything. For if you told Smith to tell him in an hour’s time we’ve still half an hour or so together”—she held up her wrist to the candlelight—“yes, just about that, and then there will be quite enough talking and discussing. And I’ve got something important to tell you, too, before he comes in—but, dear, I must enjoy just a little peace before the storm that will set me free, my first bit of peace in two years.” She pleaded with him, and it was delicious to hear Joan pleading, she who was usually so calm and sensible. And so they sat very close, hand in hand, like children.
But Smith’s idea of an hour was influenced by a not unnatural desire to go to bed; and they had not enjoyed their peace for more than five minutes when it was tremendously shattered by footfalls on the stairs.
“Oh, Lord!” muttered Hugo Carr. But rather comically, for, after all, it had to be got over some time.
Joan went queerly taut, and began to say something, very swiftly, but the door opened just then and he did not catch what it was.
Entered Smith—only Smith! And Hugo Carr breathed relief that his point of honour had not yet grown a point. Joan made no sign.
Smith came forward quickly. The candles flickered uneasily across his face. He addressed Hugo Carr.
“Sir,” he said quickly, “I went in to announce you to Mr. Loyalty——” He broke off, and his eyes hovered over Joan.
“Yes, Smith?” she encouraged him softly.
Smith’s eyes still hovered about her, he seemed very perturbed. He addressed the air between them.
“Mr. Loyalty’s dead,” said Smith.
Smith was not a heartless man. He was moved, and plunged again into the startled silence: “I went in and found him with his head laid across the writing-table and a little bottle empty by his hand. I shook ’im....”
“My God!” muttered Hugo Carr. But still his eyes were fixed on Smith, he could not look at Joan.
An analysis of suicide was not among Smith’s duties. He only added: “I have telephoned to Dr. Gay, madam, and as he was out playing bridge I asked Mrs. Gay to ring him up to come here, as it was very urgent.” Wise Smith! What could be more noncommittal than “very urgent” for suicide?
“My God!” muttered Hugo Carr—and jumped up and strode away to the fireplace. He had not yet looked at Joan.
But Smith looked at her, and she back at him. Smith was a nice man, and he respected his mistress immensely, her kind.
“I am very sorry indeed, madam,” said Smith.
Joan’s lips scarcely moved.
“Thank you, Smith.”
Smith went out softly.
“I never dreamt——” Hugo Carr burst out, then choked. It was as though he had swept his arm round to ward off an intolerable thing and had found the thing too intolerable.
Joan went to him.
“Hugo,” she awoke him softly. And he looked at her for the first time since Smith’s entrance, his eyes clung to her. A very fond gesture took her hand to his shoulder—the tall, thin, stooping man whose white face took a word as visibly as it suffered a headache. Hugo Carr found many things quite unbearable.
His eyes seemed to cling to her for a support against his thoughts.
“It’s ghastly,” he whispered. “Joan, don’t you see—it’s ghastly! Poor old Ralph—down there, all alone! While we up here——” He passed a hand over his mouth to stop its twitching; and it was as though his hand had put on it a bitterness which was not there before. “While we up here were making love—his best friend and his wife!”
Involuntarily he put the best friend first, for Hugo Carr loved his friends; and, for him, friendship was one of the first principles of the civilised state. That is how he saw the civilised state.
“Poor, poor Ralph!” she said ever so softly.
His eyes tore away from her face. As though they hadn’t been able to find there the support they needed.
“There are some things ...” he began feverishly.
“Oh, my dear!” Joan protested miserably, as though against the unbearable philosophy of it. But it is a mistake to protest against the unbearable philosophy of a man of honour.
“There are some things,” Mr. Carr insisted with feverish violence, “that are unpardonable and unmendable. And there’s no excuse big enough for them....”
He looked like a priest, a priest in the temple of friendship, burning incense to the ideal idea.... And Joan nodded, her eyes on him who saw nothing but the ruin of the ideal idea.
“God simply has not put enough excuses into the world to meet the crimes of the world.” The words burst out of him. “And this is even worse, because it is a crime so big that there’s simply no punishment been made to meet it. It’s just betrayal....” And the force of that mediæval word, its ultimate meaning, broke him down. Hugo Carr sobbed.
“O my God, it’s beastly, beastly! Poor old Ralph, down in that room, alone. Betrayed—by his best friend and his wife—and suspecting at last that he had been betrayed, only suspecting it—and not able to bear the suspicion. That’s the horrible part of it—don’t you see, Joan, don’t you see? How could he bear it—dear old Ralph, who has never suspected any one in his life? He simply wasn’t made that way. And so.... Oh, my God, while we were making love up here, we who’ve quibbled for two years whether we would hurt his feelings or not—his feelings! We’ve killed old Ralph....”
Her eyes were on him, but he saw nothing but the ruin of the ideal idea, and an odd little curve crept about her mouth. Perhaps it was from an odd little curve like that about the lips of a young princess of olden time that there sprang the many tales of young princesses who loved yet lashed their lovers. It was not contemptuous, it was much too little a curve for that. It was supremely dignified. Mona Lisa has it, though some say that Mona Lisa smiles. If Mary Stuart had seen the portrait of Mona Lisa she would have whispered: “She is thinking that men are but minutes in a woman’s life, and she is right.”
“Hugo!”
But when he looked at her it was as though he was still looking at ruins.
“It is not fair to us to say we’ve killed him. And it’s childish. Life killed him, Hugo! And you are not more sorry than I—who have tried so hard for eight years to make life sweet for him. Oh, my God, how I’ve tried!”
He thought out aloud, softly: “You are a marvellous woman, Joan!”
“It’s only,” she said gently, “that I know what is worth while to me and you don’t. That must make life very difficult for you....” That is all she said, and Hugo Carr stared at her, bewilderment joining the fever in his eyes.
“What do you mean, Joan?” he asked, miserably bewildered. Hugo Carr couldn’t bear not understanding things.
A few yards separated them; and Joan crossed swiftly to him, and she took his arm and held it very tight. Some people said that Joan’s hands were almost too thin, but what they held they held very tightly.
“Listen to me, Hugo—for if this mood of yours isn’t met now, in this horrible moment, it may ruin our lives——”
“May ruin!” But she held his arm tight.
“Yes, dear, this is ruin—but why won’t you face facts, why won’t you face the bogey that life has shaped to frighten us, why won’t you see that this is the culminating point of three ruined lives and that on the ruins of three lives we must now build a city for two? It won’t be a very fair city, Hugo, but it’s ours by right, by the only real right in this wrong world—the right of misery....”
Now the eyes of a man who sees a wraith are more frightening than the wraith that he sees. That is why Joan Loyalty left her sentence in the air, for it had been snapped by his stare.
“But aren’t you—sorry?” he whispered dryly.
And she laughed—her nerves laughed through her mouth.
“Sorry! You dare to ask me if I am sorry! Oh, Hugo, is it absolutely necessary for the love of a man for a woman to be expressed in fatuous questions? Oh, God, what kind of thing is this love that it tricks a mind into loving a man!”
“I don’t know what you mean ...” he muttered sulkily. Hugo Carr couldn’t bear not understanding things.
“You ask me if I am sorry—I, who have lived through a hell of boredom for eight years so as not to hurt Ralph’s feelings, not to break his heart! And now at last it’s broken. Yes, I am sorry. Frightfully sorry. And I am also glad—I feel as though I myself had died and that my soul had been freed from a long imprisonment. That is what I felt, as though it was I who was dead, when I saw him——”
He gaped at her idiotically.
“For Heaven’s sake, don’t stare in that idiotic way, Hugo! I’ve already had more than I can bear to-night, sitting here and thinking and thinking of poor Ralph downstairs and wondering what final thought it must have been that made him do it——”
Hugo Carr couldn’t understand. “But when—how?”
Had not she warned him that she had already had more than she could bear? And now her nerves rose up to meet his gaping stare.
“That is why I looked so frightened when you came in—I didn’t expect you, I didn’t know who it could be, and I was afraid. And that is why I was relieved when you said you had told Smith to go into the study in an hour’s time—because that would give me time to think, to realise the thing, and to tell you. Didn’t I say that I had something important to tell you before—before Ralph came in? I was going to tell you that Ralph would never come in, for I had seen him when I went downstairs to fetch a book——”
“You were reading when I came in!” he accused her queerly.
“Oh, dear, you are like a man out of every book that was ever written by men about women! I was pretending to read. And then you told me you had come to see Ralph on a point of honour! At last you had summoned up your courage to see Ralph—on a point of honour. And that’s why I wanted you to be silent for a while, for speech sometimes makes a tragedy unbearably idiotic. I wanted peace, Hugo! I wanted just to taste the peace between the old life and the new, the old life in which there was no honour and the new life in which there will anyway be happiness....” And she touched him, but with a blind gesture of his arm he swept her aside, and strode out of the room. She stared, wide-eyed, unrealising, at the panels of the door; she took two quick steps towards the door, she stopped, and then she ran madly to it and opened it and called, “Hugo, Hugo!” But, even as she cried his name, the door below slammed massively, like a knell from the bowels of the earth; and through the windows of the room behind her came the noise of swift footsteps striding away....
She went back into the room. Still she could not realise. She paced about the room, here, there, trying to think, trying not to think, wishing to give way to the intolerable moment, unable to give way. The candles danced furiously in the gentle draught, for she had left the door wide open. She was but a shadow among a furious company of shadows—when, as she was by the windows, she saw one more in the open doorway. She screamed behind her teeth.
“I heard you call his name,” said Ralph Loyalty hoarsely from the door. “Have you quarrelled? D’you mean to say he’s gone for good?”
He came towards her as he spoke. But this was not the Ralph she knew, this was not the Ralph who had lived and died, this was a man with a furious face. He advanced on her. Her knees trembled, and she would have fallen but for a hand on the back of the sofa.
“D’you mean to say he’s gone for good?” he repeated again furiously. She nodded dumbly. She was going to faint.
Then Ralph Loyalty said a wicked word. “D’you mean to say that I’ve been shamming dead in a damned uncomfortable position for the last two hours for nothing?” he bawled at her. “Here have I been for months and months throwing you at each other’s heads and neither of you with the pluck to show your hand!” And he cursed the name of Hugo Carr for the name of a fool and a coward. She was going to faint. He controlled himself a little. He appealed to her. “I didn’t want to hurt your feelings, you see, Joan. I knew how you’d loved me for years, and I couldn’t bear to hurt you, but I’d have given anything to let you see I wanted my freedom to marry someone else. And when I saw that you liked being with Hugo I thought there might be a chance of your liking him instead of me, and so I did my best to throw you together. But Hugo always was a coward—and as I couldn’t bear going on as we were for another night I arranged this thing to-night, thinking that if anything would make Hugo show his hand or would throw you into Hugo’s arms, this would.” And again he said a wicked word. “I didn’t want to hurt you, you see, Joan, and so I thought this would be the best way—and now the silly ass has gone and left us stranded....”
That was the night the nightingale sang in Berkeley Square. A nightingale has never sung in Berkeley Square before, and may never sing there again, but if it does it will probably mean something.