Five Nights: A Novel

by Victoria Cross

Viola did not answer at all. I turned and walked towards the window and stood looking out for a few minutes. When I turned round the room was empty.

I went up to the studio, but again I could not paint. The pale, unhappy face of Viola came between me and the picture.

To Veronica I hardly spoke. Her beauty neither attracted nor even pleased me. She was the cause of all this vague cloud rising up in my life, which had hitherto been intensely happy and allowed me to do the very best in my art.

Her efforts to attract me and to draw me from my work only annoyed and irritated me, and when I went down to tea I told her to go, that I should not paint afterwards.

No one happened to be calling that afternoon, so Viola and I were alone. There was hardly any constraint between us even after what had passed at luncheon. We were so much one, so intimate, mentally as well as physically, that we could not quarrel with each other any more than one can quarrel with oneself. One can be cross with oneself occasionally, but not for long.

We neither of us referred to Veronica or anything disagreeable, but gave ourselves up to the joy of each other's society. When I told her I was not going back to paint she was delighted, and we planned to dine early and go to the Empire after.

The ballet seemed to amuse her, and when we returned and went up to our room she was in the lightest and gayest of spirits. This room was the only one in the house in the furnishing of which Viola had taken the slightest interest. In all the others she had allowed things to stand just as we found them, just as our landlord had thought good to leave them, but in this one much had been added to the contents written down in the inventory and so much altered that our landlord would indeed have been astonished if he had suddenly looked in. The bed was a triumph of artistic skill, designed and arranged under her own directions, the curtains enclosing it were delicate in colouring and so soft in fabric that the bed seemed enveloped in a mass of blue clouds, gold-lined, and all the sheets and clothing were filmy and lace-edged, and must have been the despair of the steam laundry; a blue silk covering, the colour of her own eyes, and embroidered with pale pink roses, gold-centred, reposed on it, matching the curtains, and an electric lamp shaded in rose colour depended from the French crown above the head; a lamp which flooded the bed with light when all the curtains were drawn and shut out the lights of the room. The carpet was blue also, and the heavy curtains over all the windows matched it, edged with, and embroidered in gold.

The toilet-table, though simple enough in its arrangements, for Viola needed no cosmetics, no lotions, no manicure nor other evil inventions, was always a lovely object. On its pale rose covering lay her gold-backed brushes and comb, her gold hand-mirror with cupids playing on it, her little gold boxes of pins, and always vases of fresh geraniums, white and rose-pink. Out of the room at one side opened a smaller one, it was not used as a chapel nor yet as a dressing-room. We dressed together and took pleasure in so doing, as we did in everything that threw us into intimate companionship. We had no need of dressing-rooms since there were no teeth to come in and out, no wigs to be taken off and put on, no secrets on either side to be jealously guarded from one another. No, the room opening out of ours was a supper-room, where, when we came back late from opera or theatre, we could always count on finding cold supper and champagne. I went in to-night and turned on all the lights, which were many, while Viola laid aside her dress and slipped into a dressing-gown, something as fragile and beautiful as a rose-leaf, suiting her delicate, elusive beauty. She followed me into the little supper-room, and as I turned and saw her on the threshold, the delicacy of the whole vision struck me. A pain shot into my heart suddenly. Supposing I ever lost her? Saw her fade from me?

Her eyes were wide-open and laughing, a faint colour glowed in the white transparent skin, the lips were a light scarlet, parted now from the milky teeth.

I made two steps forwards and caught her and crushed her up tightly to my breast and kissed her and made her sit on my knee while I poured out some champagne.