These charming people

by Michael Arlen

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!