“Heart failure. She was weakened by a lot of ’flu, and aspirin, and operations, and nursing other people. I ought to have known the difference. But she was always wildly emotional, and almost as often in pain, and then that evening’s excitement——” Deb broke off. It was four months now since the night when Cora had lowered her flame in sympathy with the break-up of the Chorus. Four months—and Jenny dead was so very dead.... Her memory did not abide as lingeringly as in the case of a more spiritual or more intellectual personality. A warm quick reality of everyday little touches and eager practical services ... these things die with the flesh. Deb just knew that neither Cora nor the room nor the soldier nor her own family had stood for home-always-on-the-tap on the second floor landing, as Jenny did. And the little group of people surrounding Jenny seemed mechanically to flop away in different directions, after that evening. Dolph took Bobby away to his people. La llorraine and Manon left Montagu Hall in a whirlwind of rage, because Mr Gryce had complained of Madame’s breakfast costume; the Turkish slippers seemed particularly to offend him. Of the Soldier no more had been heard. And even Deb’s room in which it had all happened, was abandoned. “D’you mind if we share a double-room, Deb?” Aunt Stella had asked rather anxiously, about a month later. “Now that Richard is coming back for the Easter holidays and will want a den of his own, I suggested it might be a saving for your father if we don’t scatter quite so much. But he says you must be asked first if you’ll consent to sleep with a soured old maid,” with that tinkling laugh that never sounded quite as mirthful as the spirit it accompanied.
Deb was quite glad of the change. The associations of her old bed were rather poignant. Stella could not bear the smell of Cora, who was henceforth packed away in a boxroom. And Deb began to wonder if all her life would be a succession of disjointed episodes, each with its full complement of cast and scenery, and each when it was over to be slipped as easily as a bead off a string. Daisybanks, in the careless life before the war: what was known as the “Portman Rooms set” of wealthy semi-artistic young Israelites—dances—the river—frequent companionship of Hedvig and Lenchen Rothenburg. That bead slipped. Dorzheim, and its marionette figures: Felix and Marianna Koch, Sigismund who looked like Jesus Christ, Ralph and Huldah van Sittart, Elly Ladenberg from Manchester, clearest of all, perhaps, the upturned face of Lothar von Relling.... They existed now and performed their parts, hidden away behind a thick black curtain ... what matter if it were never raised again. Then the Chorus....
What next?
After a pause, Antonia Verity answered that question. Antonia, following up a whim, came to Montagu Hall to see Jenny. Not finding Jenny, she knocked at the door of Deb’s former bedroom. Deb was just moving—that is to say she was sitting dreamily on an overturned drawer, in the midst of a scrum of her possessions, reading a mid-Victorian novel entitled “Anna Lee, Maiden, Wife and Mother.”
“Come and listen to this,” she bade Antonia without further greeting.
They became intimate over “Anna Lee.”
In Antonia Verity, Deb recognized with mixed feelings the temperament she had always most coveted, most desired to find in herself. The natural Artemis, Artemis from no simpering prudery nor actual coldness of disposition—but that Artemis who instinctively runs from the pursuer; Artemis in love with her own chastity. Her eyes, changing from hazel to green, deepset in shadow and drooping at the corners, were at perpetual war with the pure scissored curves of her mouth. Deb was aware that Antonia could never deal in fragments where her love-affairs were concerned; and that she rather wondered at those who did. It seemed therefore a foregone conclusion to Deb, whose mind was prone to run on lines of fairy-tale justice, that life must hold for Antonia the eventual big thing; bank in which this guarded stored-up treasure would ultimately find safe deposit. It remained a miracle to her how Antonia managed not to fritter the treasure. She never saw that trifles simply did not happen to the other girl. Men ... knew. They liked her peacefully, but some fundamental quality in her gave them their cue for decent behaviour as a matter of course. As a same matter of course, they embarked on amorous experiment with Deb; could not leave her alone. And this, though Deb longed for Antonia’s secret to attract the better treatment; more than ever admired her ideal of a girl clad in a sort of symbolic moonwhite armour, now that it had become incarnate. Though she had been often to Antonia’s studio, she had never yet succeeded in probing a certain aloofness in her friend....
Jenny—and then Antonia. Jenny whom one touched ... a fervent cosiness of friendship punctuated throughout by touch—it was impossible to conceive of friendship with Antonia thus emphasized. Antonia was good to look at—delicate, clean lines—no mess; her mind clearly braced to all encounter, whether of laughter or argument. But it was unthinkable that one should touch Antonia, nor seek touch from her; Antonia guarded something ... as yet inviolable.
“Who was the man in the room?” Antonia enquired suddenly, at work upon her portrait of Deb.