Just then our hostess turned up—breezy and fussy and with her eyes skinned ready for the correct and interesting mingling of her accumulated lions.
“Oh, Mr. Bisgood,” said she, “do come this way. I want to introduce you to one of the leading people of your profession. I’m sure you’ll be glad to meet her. And you, too Mr. Trevor.”
Five seconds later she was saying in tones suitable to the solemnity of the occasion:
“Mr. Bisgood—Miss Dorothy Hardcastle. Of course, Mr. Bisgood, you have read Miss Hardcastle’s new book, Bright Love; everybody’s talking about it.”
And Dorothy looked down on Bisgood from her Olympian height and said:
“Haven’t I met you before, somewhere, Mr. Bisgood?”
If Constance ever takes it into her head to start writing a novel I will shoot her—although once upon a time I would have liked nothing better.
And that reminds me. I have a letter to write.
Chapter XII
This morning Constance received a letter. I am not ashamed to confess that I watched her very carefully and closely while she read it. I am not ashamed either to own that I had read that letter before she did. Read it with the utmost painstaking attention—to see that there was nothing in it which I could improve, for I had written it.
It ran rather in this way:
“DEAREST,
“The letter you received yesterday from another and less humble of your servants told you that it could convey all it desired by the mere use of the words ‘I love you.’ Perhaps this letter might do the same, save that, coming from the source it does, it is tainted with suspicion as soon as you read the signature. When a man who has been four years married tells his wife that he loves her she immediately suspects some ulterior motive; she thinks that he wants something extra special for dinner that evening, or else that he has been regarding with glamourous eyes the barmaid round the corner.
“And so, dearest, I must perforce write more to you than just ‘I love you.’ I want to write to you just for the sake of writing, for it is months now since I have been away from you long enough to necessitate correspondence, but at the same time there are things which I want to say to you which I am never able to say to you by word of mouth. Don’t you remember, dear, how I have never been able to say the things I want to?
“I want to tell you, dear, that I simply can not think of any reason for the existence of trouble between us, and that although it is perfectly possible that there is no trouble, I can not help thinking that there is. Possibly the source of trouble is just the fact that there is no reason for it. I am very much in the dark, dear.
“Perhaps this ignorance of mine will only annoy you more. You may think that I ought to know when you are displeased with me, and that at the same time I ought to know the reason for it. I can only agree with you in that case, but at the same time I can put timorously forward in my defense that it would puzzle a very much abler man than I am, even if he loved you as much as I do, to follow all your motives and conclusions.
“So that I want you to tell me what I have done wrong, so that if there is any way in which I can earn your forgiveness I can try to do so, and, if there is not, so that I can ask for it unashamedly out of your generosity. For you have always been very generous to me, dear.
“Now I could have got as far as that any day during the last ten days by word of mouth; the trouble was that I was afraid that I would not be able to get any farther. I was very much afraid, dear, lest in that case you might think that my impatience had got the better of me, and that it was only a sufficiently clumsy device to win my way back through your door, and that actually I was careless of what you really wanted and desired provided I had my will again.
“And I do not want to hasten you toward anything like that, dear. It is not a business about which I have any right to ask questions. I can not bear the possibility of forcing myself upon you, and I am always afraid in case it is only pity for your husband instead of love for me which moves you. So this is not a plea for admittance. It is only to ask you what is the matter.
“Dear, there have been times when I have been able to help you to find a way for you out of your difficulties. If you are in some difficulty now, is there no chance that I may be able to help you again? It would not matter if it were something in which you might think it unfair to me to ask me to give you advice. There is no question about fairness to me when you want help from me. Whatever it was, I think I would tell you what is the best thing for you to do, for I would try very hard not to allow my own desires to influence me.
“Just one thing more, dear. Whether you are worrying about anything or not, I do not want this letter of mine to cause you any more worry. There is no need for you to try to hasten things or to force yourself to a conclusion just because I have written this letter, or just because you feel that you ought to put me out of my misery. There is no question of misery involved. I have all faith in you and in your judgment. I know that you will always be fair to me as you always have been, and I think you know, dear, that anything necessary to your happiness I will do or give if it is in my power. That is another reason why I have written this letter. To tell you that I want you to take all the time you need to reach your conclusion, knowing I can wait as long as is necessary.
“This has been a horribly long and formal letter, and I am sorry, but I have tried to pick my words so that they would tell you all I want them to tell you, and at the same time I have been very much afraid of saying something that might hurt you. And as this is a love letter, and all true love letters should demand an assignation, I am going to suggest that on next Saturday I am coming to your bedroom door to see if it is locked, if it is not I am coming in. I have chosen next Saturday not because I follow the same practise as the late Mr. Shandy, Senior (I think you know already that I do not) but because it is far enough off to prove that it is not a momentary impatience that moves me, and far enough off, too, to allow you some time to decide on my reception. So that if by then the trouble has blown over, and you do not want to offer me any explanation (that is not a hint that I am asking for one—it is your business, as I said) we will be able to come together again without any awkwardness.
“Between then and now, might I ask if you would be so good as to allow me to accompany you to the dance to which another of your enamored swains was going to escort you, had he not displayed the appalling bad taste to affiance himself to another girl in the meantime?
“Your servant as well as
“YOUR HUSBAND.”
I don’t think there is anything surprising in the fact that I watched Constance very anxiously while she read this letter—nor, for that matter, is there anything surprising in the fact that she had hardly started it when she suddenly turned away from the table and read it in such a position that her face was invisible to me. And the bacon and the haddock grew colder and colder while she toiled through the interminable paragraphs, and I grew more and more sorry that I had written them; they seemed to my distorted imagination, burrowing back after them into the past, to be the essence of clumsiness and bad taste. Perhaps they are.
When Constance had finished reading the letter, she folded it carefully and replaced it in its envelope, and then glanced round the room for her handbag or some equally safe receptacle in which to put it. Finding none, she thrust it into her bosom inside her jumper, and a little thrill ran through me as I thought of the white warm cradle she had so carelessly bestowed upon an undeserving letter. Then, and not till then, did she turn back to the table.
And by then, of course, it was no use. Constance knows me pretty thoroughly, and she is fully cognizant of my irritating ability to discover the meaning of her expression, and as a counter-measure she has evolved an expressionless expression which tells me nothing—its only advantage, in fact, being that it takes some time to assume.
I could learn nothing from the look on her face, nothing even from the little smile she gave me.
“Oh,” said Constan
ce, “you’ve let your bacon get cold.”
“Have I?” That was the first I had thought about bacon that morning.
“I can do you some more if you’ve got time,” said Constance.
“Oh, please don’t bother.”
“Fill up with toast and marmalade, then.”
“Er—yes. Er—fact is, I don’t want much break-fast today. Bit off my oats, somehow.”
Constance slipped off her chair and came round to me. She took my face in her hands and she stooped suddenly and kissed my lips.
“There” said Constance, “will you eat some now?”
“I think I could manage a little now,” I said.
Constance kissed me once more. “And now?” she said.
“A little more still.”
And then that infernal Mrs. Black would come butting in clamoring for instructions. She made obvious her disapproval of kissing at breakfast time.
Constance packed me off to the office without further discussion of our difficulty, and this evening again she seems just as tantalizingly unapproachable as ever. What it is that has possessed her is beyond my power to discover. And however the matter ends I doubt if I will ever be any the wiser. Constance is like that.
But I am sure, now, and glad to be sure, that it is no serious crime or omission on my part which is the reason. For at dinner this evening I said to Constance:
“And what about the dance you are invited to? Are you going to accept?”
Constance smiled at me bewitchingly.
“Do you think my husband would approve?”
“I’m sure he would. He’s a reasonable enough sort of bloke if you treat him properly.”
“Well,” said Constance, “at that rate I think I shall ask him to buy me a new frock to go in. Do you think he will?”
“I knew there was a catch in it somewhere,” I said.
But Constance would never own up to having spent all her month’s allowance, and ask me to contribute in this fashion (although it happens one month in two, on the average) if she had the least ill-will in the world toward me. Constance is not of the sort who will barter smiles for frocks with men they do not approve of. So that I am very relieved this evening. And Constance is debating with herself as to where she will go for the frock.
Chapter XIII
This evening on my arrival home Constance was very busy sewing. She even sewed at dinner time—a deed which we had long ago agreed to condemn as the unforgivable sin. It irked me to see her lay aside knife and fork for thimble and scissors, and it was not very long before I demanded what it was she was doing. Constance was perfectly apologetic.
“I know I oughtn’t, dear,” she said, “but there’s not much time. I only got in from buying my frock half an hour before you did, and it’s such a duck of a frock, but it’s so low at the back I’ve got to alter my underclothes to suit it. You wouldn’t like me to go to a dance with you with things showing at the back, would you, dear? So I’m taking a bit out of the back of my vest.”
“God bless my soul,” said I. “As far as I can remember, my good woman, when you bought your last evening frock you had to buy special underclothes for it without shoulder straps or anything. In fact, were I given just slightly to exaggeration, I might have described you as naked from the waist up. Surely those underclothes will suit the new frock? I don’t see how you can possibly get any lower without being locked up.”
“That’s all you know,” sniffed Constance. “If you have a string round you instead of shoulder straps you’ve got to have your things pretty high up. It stands to reason. Otherwise they’ve got nothing to hang on to. So if you want a frock low at the back you’ve got to have shoulder straps to your vest—or else not wear a vest at all. And the V of the new frock comes below the top of all the vests I’ve got.”
“Tell me the worst,” I said, mopping my brow. “Show me this vest of yours, and let’s see how low you want it to be.”
Constance dangled the garment before me by its shoulder straps. The V that had been removed certainly seemed designed to plumb the depths of decorum.
“Holy smoke! It isn’t fancy dress, by any chance?”
“No, stupid,” said Constance.
“But hop along and change now. I’ve got your things out for you. And don’t be all night, because I want the bathroom after you.”
But after I had changed, and was sitting reading, in all my glory of tails and shirt and white waistcoat, I heard Constance calling to me from the bathroom.
“What’s the matter, old thing?” I asked from the door.
“I’ve forgotten my towels. Get them for me from the bedroom, there’s a dear,” said Constance, splashing.
When I brought them to the door I expected to see a white arm thrust round it to take them in, but there was nothing of the sort.
“Don’t drop ’em inside,” said Constance. “You’ve made all the floor wet when you had your bath. Bring them in, dear.”
Constance was sitting up in her bath, and on my entrance she gratefully reached out for the towels, buried her face in one, and draped it round her shoulders.
“That’s better,” said she. “I wouldn’t get out till I’d got ’em.”
And with that she turned on the waste tap so that the pipe began its usual wild beast bellowings.
Now I had not moved from where I stood. I had made no motion to do so. Truth to tell, I was not too willing to move. A pink sleek Constance in her bath is not a sight granted to mortal eyes every day. Constance turned her attention to me.
“And what, young man,’ she asked, “and what the devil do you want?”
“I want nothing,’ said I. “I seem to be in Paradise already.”
My attention was suddenly called to the large, wet, dripping sponge in Constance’s right hand.
“If you stay and annoy me any more,” said she, “I shall chuck this sponge at you, and hit you right on that nice pique waistcoat. Then you’ll have to change your shirt and your waistcoat and your collar and your tie. Buck up. There’s not much water left in the bath, and I’m getting cold.”
I went. I did not want to go—and Constance knew it. And Constance knew I knew she knew.
Little pink and white, sleek little Constance! At that moment, as at all others during the evening, I was hungrily, vilely anxious to take her in my arms again. The thought of her wet body, incredibly slender and lissom, set the pulses beating in my throat with a dull urgency. I wanted Constance very badly; but infinitely more did I want a hint of some friendliness other than the kind she offered me. Constance is adorable when she is sisterly, or motherly, or cousinly, or when, as at the present moment, she is platonically wifely. But I wanted her otherwise. If I could only be sure that Constance still loved me, she could be as platonic as she wished to be—at least, so I think at present. I suppose I would change my mind fast enough if put to the test.
And more than once in my books have I condemned my hero to a life where his aching heart is concealed behind a smiling countenance. It is a very popular situation—the brave, strong man, who lets no one guess (until the last few pages) the wound from which he suffers, and goes through life with a jest and a kind word for every one. I am neither brave nor strong (no one ever could be as brave and as strong as a novel hero), and Constance is perfectly well aware of what is the wound from which I am suffering. But all the same I have got to conceal it for the time being. I said Saturday in my letter, and Saturday it must be—Constance would never forgive me now if I let my impatience overmaster me. Besides, she might not be ready—ready for whatever course of action she ma’ take next Saturday. But Constance and I must talk together till then. We must talk, and so we talk with a laugh on our lips and apprehension in our eyes. I am afraid that Constance has ceased to love me.
Constance came into the room more beautiful than ever.
“Well,” said she, “do you like the new frock?”
I did. I said so. I devoured her with my eyes—dear, radiant Constance.
Constance for the moment did not answer me.
“Turn your back,” said Constance. “Now tell me what color the frock is—no, don’t try to look—tell me without looking.”
Of course I could not. I confessed as much, miserably. No one except a Boy Scout or costumier or an anchorite could possibly note the color of a frock when Constance was inside it—partly inside it.
“Now do you think,” said Constance, when I had turned back again, “now do you think that you have any right whatever to ask the price of a frock whose color you didn’t even notice?”
Constance is an adept at the counter-offensive. For once I could find nothing to say in reply—and Constance took advantage of the fact to go on to say:
“Just maintain your soul in patience, then, and when the bill comes—write your check in patience.”
So to the dance. Once more I was reminded of my pre-married days—so much so that no sooner were we outside the door than I found myself stopping a taxicab and helping Constance in. For years now Constance and I have relied upon ’buses to take us to dances and theaters; tonight it was a taxicab. And Constance made no remark upon it—for which I loved her more dearly than ever. But there was a look in her eyes—as far as I could see; for her lids drooped demurely—which told me that the phenomenon had not passed unnoticed.
It was in the cloakroom that I first had notice that the evening was to be utterly spoiled for me. Some one slapped me on the shoulder. A musical voice said:
“Hullo, Trevor, old man. Haven’t seen you for years. How’s things—how’s Connie?”
It was Dewey. It took me some time to answer him. For the moment I could only look at him—could only notice the splendid, close-cut curling hair waving back from the broad forehead, and the sparkle in the dark eyes, and the flush on the dark cheeks. Dewey is easily the handsomest man I know, and there had been a time when Constance loved him. They had even been betrothed. But since our marriage, and for some period, length unknown, before then, she had not seen him. We had heard about him, though—at least, I had. I do not know whether Constance had; we do not mention Dewey to each other. And what I had heard about Dewey was not to his advantage—although the rumors showed definitely enough that he had not lost his old attractiveness for women.
Love Lies Dreaming Page 14
