by Hugh Walpole
“Lonely!” said Mr. Nix.
“Yes — lonely! You don’t know that you’ve been neglecting her all this time, do you? But you have! And it’s your own fault, all this. Nothing’s happened. She’d never deceive you. She’s too good for that. But it would be your own fault if she did.... Not that I’m not a cad. Of course I am, coming in and your being such a friend to me and then behaving like this. I’m a cad all right, but you’re to blame too. She’s the only one who hasn’t done any wrong.”
Where had Mr. Nix heard all this before? He’d seen it on the stage. Just like this. Exactly. Nevertheless, his anger mounted. He saw the room coloured crimson. He suddenly bounded from his chair and rushed at Harry. He tried to hit him in the face. There was a most ludicrous struggle. The two hot faces were suddenly close to one another. Then a chair fell with a crash, and, as though the noise made both men feel the absurdity of their situation, they withdrew from one another and stood there glaring....
Mr. Nix hated that he should be trembling as he was. Every part of him was shaking, and he was so conscious of this that he wanted to escape and return only when he was calmer.
“Very well...” he said. “Of course, I know what to do. I hope that I shall never see either of you again.”
“One moment.” It was his wife’s voice, and he turned round surprised that it should sound just as it had always sounded.
That was pathetic, and there was an impulse in him, that he instantly fiercely defeated, to go to her and take her hand.
“One moment,” she repeated. “I’ve got something to say to this.” She rose and stood, her hands moving nervously against her dress, her eyes staring straight into her husband’s face. “It’s quite right that I was kissing Harry, but it isn’t right that I love him. I don’t love him a bit I don’t love anybody. I’m just sick of men. I’ve been sick of them a long time. It was just because I didn’t feel Harry was a man at all that I let him kiss me. A dog or a baby would have done just as well.... I don’t care what you do. You can turn me out. I want to be turned out I want to be free, I want to be with women, and work on my own, and do sensible things, and have my own life with no men in it.... No men in it anywhere.
I’ve been wanting this for years; ever since the war started. The world’s just run for men and you think you’re so important that you’re everything. But you’re not. Not to a woman of my age who’s been through it all, and hasn’t children. What have I been sitting at home for, waiting for you, seeing after your food, keeping you in a good temper, looking after you? Why should I? I’m myself — not half of you. And Harry too. He was a nice boy at first. But suddenly he wants me to love him, to belong to him, to follow him. Why should I, a boy like that? I want to be with other women, women who understand me, women who know how I feel, women who have their own world and their own life, and are independent of men altogether.... I’ve wanted to go for months — and now I’m going.”
She moved towards the door. The absurdity of what she had said kept him standing there in front of her. She wanted only women! Oh, of course, that was only bluff, put up to carry off a difficult situation.
People did not want their own sex — a man for a woman, a woman for a man. That was the way the world went, and it was right that it should be so.
Nevertheless, her words had had behind them a strange ring of conviction. He stared at her in his round, puzzled, solid way. He did not move from where he was, and she could not reach the door without brushing against him, so she also stayed.
Another mood came to her. “Oh! I’m so sorry...” she said. “I’ve done very wrong to hurt you. You’ve always done your very best, but it was over — you and I — a long ago. Long, long before Lance was killed!”
“Over?” he repeated.
“Yes, over — men never know unless it’s worth scone woman’s while to tell them.”
Harry’s voice broke in.
“I’d better go.... I ought to... I mustn’t.. He murmured something more, but they neither of them noticed him. They were intent upon one another. He left the room.
Mr. Nix stared desolately around him. “I don’t know what to do,” he repeated to himself. “I don’t know what to do.”
She sighed as she might have done with a child who was trying her.
“We’ve both got to think it out,” she said. “I’m glad now that it’s happened. It ends all that falseness. I’ll talk it over with you as long as you like.”
She moved forward; he stood aside and she left the room. He sat down on the red sofa and stayed there, until late into the night, trying to puzzle out his position. Sometimes, in his distress, he spoke to himself aloud.
“That’s what it is... the world’s changed. Entirely changed. Women don’t want men any more. But that’s awful! They can’t get on alone. Nancy can’t get on alone. She thinks she can, but she can’t. She gets taken in by the first silly boy that comes along. I believe she cares for Harry more than she said.... She must.... She wouldn’t have let him kiss her....”
And that was the first thing that he found in the voyage of mental discovery that he was now making — namely, that he couldn’t he jealous of Harry if he tried. His anger had left him. There was nothing in that. He knew it absolutely. Nancy had spoken the truth when she had said that she didn’t care for that boy any more than for a dog or a baby. No, he felt no jealousy, and now, oddly enough, no anger.
But he did not know how he felt. He did not know what to do. Again he saw the golden balls tossing in the air above him, and there was she, alluring, glittering, tumbling, escaping.
He thought, with a smile of contempt, of his conquest of Hortons. That was no achievement. But this, this new woman, this new Nancy, here was something.
He slept that night on the sofa, taking off his coat and wrapping a rug around him. He slept the slumber of the dead.
Next day they had only one talk together, and that a very little one. Suddenly after breakfast she turned round upon him.
“Well,” she said, “what are you going to do?”
“I don’t know,” he answered, and then because he felt that she would despise him for being so indeterminate, he went on, “It doesn’t matter about Harry. I was only angry for a moment seeing you together like that. I know that you don’t care for him. It was what you said afterwards — about not caring for me any more. Did you mean that?”
“Why no,” she answered, “I never said that. Of course I care for you. How could it be otherwise after all these years? But I don’t want to give up my whole life to you any more. I don’t love you. I haven’t loved you for years. I think Lance took all the love I had after he was born. And so I don’t want to be always with you. Why should I be? Men when they are friends aren’t always together. I want to be free, to do some of the things independent women are doing. There are so many things women can do now. I see no reason for our staying always together. I don’t want to stay with anyone always.”
“Then you don’t love me any more?”
“No, of course I don’t — and you don’t love me. You know that. For ever so long now you haven’t felt anything about me at all. You’ve pretended to because you thought it was right, but I’ve been a shadow to you.”
She was so right that he could only stare dumbly at her wisdom.
“You’re not a shadow any longer,” he said.
She laughed.
“That’s only because we’ve just had a scene. I shall be a shadow again in a day or two.”
They waited. At last he said, “Well, you won’t go at once, will you? Please, promise me that Stay until we’ve straightened everything out Promise me.”
She shook her head.
“No, I’ll promise nothing any more. I should only break my promises. But I’ll tell you before I’m going.”
There began then for him the strangest time.
Slowly an entirely new woman stole into his life, a woman whom he did not know at all, a creation as strange and novel as though he had but now met
her for the first time. Every evening, when he returned to the flat, it was with the expectation of finding her gone. He questioned her about nothing. She continued as she had done before to look after the flat and his clothes and his food. He did not touch her; he did not kiss her. They sat in the evening in their little sitting-room reading. They discussed the events of the day.
Soon he realised that it was beginning to be a passionate determination with him that he must keep her. He did not know how to set about it He found that he was beginning to woo her again, to woo her as he had never wooed anybody before. He did not let her see it. He fancied that he was the last word in tact One evening he brought her some roses. He tried to speak casually about it. His voice trembled. One night he kissed her, but very indifferently as though he were thinking of other things.
And how mysterious she was becoming to him! Not in the old way. He could not believe that there had ever been a time when he had known her so well that he could not see her. He saw her continually now, through all his work, through every moment of the day. His heart beat when he thought of her. He would wait for a moment outside the door in the evening, his hands trembling with the thought that he might look inside and find her gone.
He never questioned her now as to where she went, bat he was forced to admit that she did not go out any more than she had done in the old days. It was strange when you came to think of it, that she had not followed up more completely her fine declaration of independence.
They went one evening to a theatre, together. They sat close to one another in the dark, and he longed to take her hand, but did not dare. He felt like a boy again, and she was surely young too — younger than he had ever known her.
There were times when he fancied that after all she was quite contented with her domesticity. But he did not dare to believe that. If he once caught the golden ball and held it, what would happen?
There came at last an evening when imprudence overcame him. He caught her in his arms and kissed her — kissed her as he had not done for years. The first wonderful thing that he knew was that she responded, responded with all the passion of their first days of courtship.
He heard her murmur:
“Poor old Sam — you poor, blind, silly old Sam.”
A moment later she was out of his arms and across the floor.
“But don’t imagine,” she cried, “that I’m sure that I’m going to stay. I may he off at any minute. This very night perhaps!”
He was alone staring at the closed door. The golden halls were still dancing. He wanted to follow her. He got up. He stopped. He had a moment of intense disappointment.
Then— “By Jove, I believe I’m glad. I don’t want to be sure of her. I hope I’ll never be sure of her again!”
And on that flash of self-realisation he began his new life.
LIZZIE RAND
LIZZIE RAND was just forty-six years of age when old Mrs. Roughton McKenzie died leaving her all her money. Months later she had not thoroughly realised what had happened to her.
Until that day of Mrs. McKenzie’s death she had never had any money. She had spent her life, her energies, her pluck and her humour in the service of one human being after another, and generally in the service of women. It seemed to her to be really funny that the one who had during her life begrudged her most should in the end be the one who had given her everything; but no one had ever understood old Mrs. McKenzie, and as likely as not she had left her money to Lizzie Rand just to spite her numerous relations. Lizzie had expected nothing. She never did expect anything, which was as well perhaps, because no one ever gave her anything. She was not a person to whom one naturally gave things; she had a pride, a reserve, an assertion of her own private liberty that kept people away and forbade intimacy. That had not always been so. In the long ago days when she had been Adela Beaminster’s secretary she had given herself. She had loved a man who had not loved her, and out of the shock of that she had won a friendship with another woman, which was still perhaps the most precious thing that she had. But that same shock had been enough for her. She guarded, with an almost hitter ferocity, the purity and liberty of her soul.
All the women whose secretaries she had afterwards been had felt this in her, and most of them had resented it. Old Mrs. McKenzie had resented it more than any of them. She was a selfish, painted, over-decorated old creature, a widow with no children and only nephews and nieces to sigh after her wealth. One of Lizzie’s chief duties had been to keep these nephews and nieces from the door, and this she had done with a certain grim austerity, finding that none of them, cared for the aunt and all for the money. The outraged relations decided, of course, at once that she was a plotting, despicable creature; it is doing her less than justice to say that the idea that the money would be left to her never for a single instant entered her head. Mrs. McKenzie taunted her once for expecting it.
“Of course you’re waiting,” she said, “like all of them, to pick the bones of the corpse.”
Lizzie Rand laughed.
“Now is that like me?” she asked. “And, more important, is it like you?”
Mrs. McKenzie sniggered her tinkling, wheezy snigger. There was a certain honesty between them. They had certain things in common.
“I don’t like you,” she said. “I don’t see how anyone could. You’re too self-sufficient — but you certainly have a sense of humour.”
There had been a time once when many people liked Lizzie, and she reflected now, with a little shudder, that perhaps only one person in the world, Rachel Seddon, the woman friend before-mentioned, liked and understood her. Why had she shut herself off? Why presented so stiff, so immaculate, so cold a personality to the world? She was not stiff, not cold, not immaculate. It was, perhaps, simply that she felt that it was in that way only that she could get her work done, and to do her work thoroughly seemed to her now to be the job best worth while in life.
During the war she had almost broken from her secretaryship and gone forth to do Red Cross work or anything that would help. A kind of timidity that had grown upon her with the years, a sense of her age and of her loneliness, held her back. Twenty years ago she would have gone with the first. Now she stayed with Mrs. McKenzie.
Mrs. McKenzie died on the day of the Armistice, November 11, 1918. Her illness had not been severe. Lizzie had had, at the most, only a week’s nursing; it had been obvious from the first that nothing could save the old lady. Mrs. McKenzie had not looked as though she were especially anxious that anything should save her. She had lain there in scornful silence, asking for nothing, complaining of nothing, despising everything. Lizzie admitted that the old woman died game.
There had followed then that hard, bewildering period that Lizzie knew by now so well where she must pull herself, so reluctantly, so heavily towards the business of finding a new engagement. She did not, of course, expect Mrs. McKenzie to leave her a single penny. She stayed for a week or two with her friend Rachel Seddon. But Rachel, a widow with an only son, was so tumultuously glad at the return of her boy, safe and whole, from the war, that it was difficult for her just then to take any other human being into her heart. She loved Lizzie, and would do anything in the world for her; she was indeed for ever urging her to give up these sterile companionships and secretaryships and come and make her home with her. But Lizzie, this time, felt her isolation as she had never done before.
“I’m getting old,” she thought “And I’m drifting off... soon I shall be utterly alone.” The thought sent little shivering ghosts climbing about her body. She saw in the gay, happy, careless, kindly eyes of young Tom Seddon how old she was to the new generation.
He called her “Aunt Liz,” took her to the theatre, and was an angel... nevertheless an angel happily, almost boastfully, secure in another, warmer planet than hers.
Then came the shock. Mrs. McKenzie had left her everything — the equivalent of about eight thousand pounds a year.
At first her sense was one of an urgent need of rest. She sank back a
mongst the cushions and pillows of Rachel’s house and refused to think... refused to think at all.... She considered for a moment the infuriated faces of the McKenzie relations. Then they, too, passed from her consciousness.
When she faced the world again, she faced it with the old common sense that had always been her most prominent characteristic. She had eight thousand a year. Well, she would do the very best with it that she could. Rachel, who had appeared to be more deeply excited than she over the event, had various suggestions to offer, but Lizzie had her own ideas. She could not remember the time when she had not planned what she would do when somebody left her money.
She took one of the most charming flats in Hortons, bought beautiful things for it, etchings by D. T. Cameron, one Nevinson, and a John drawing, some Japanese prints; she had books and soft carpets and flowers and a piano; and had the prettiest spare room for a friend. Then she stopped and looked about her. There were certain charities in which she had been always deeply interested, especially one for Poor Gentlewomen. There was a home, too, for illegitimate babies. She remembered, with a happy irony, the occasion when she had tried to persuade Mrs. McKenzie to give something to these charities and had failed.... Well, Mrs. McKenzie was giving now all right. Lizzie hoped that she knew it.
There accumulated around her all the business that clusters about an independent woman with means. She was on committees; many people who would not have looked twice at her before liked her now and asked her to their houses.
Again she stopped and looked about her.
Still there was something that she needed. What was it? Companionship? More than that Affection, a centre to her life; someone who needed her, someone to whom she was of more importance than anyone else in the world. Even a dog....
She was forty-six. Without being plain she was too slight, too hard-drawn, too masculine, above all too old to be attractive to men. An old maid of forty-six. She faced the truth. She gave little dinner-parties, and felt more lonely than ever. Even it seemed there was nobody who wanted to make her a confidante. People wanted her money, but herself not at all. She was not good conversationally. She said sharp sarcastic things that frightened people. People did not want the truth; they wanted things to be wrapped up first, as her mother and sister had wanted them years ago.
