by Martin Boyd
“Well then, suppose we go to Europe. Our minds want to return to our bodies in Australia. Besides, it’s largely things we go to Europe for. Our people are in Australia. Perhaps you like things more than people.”
“That’s absolutely wrong. I came back to Australia because I like people more than things.”
“And now you want to get back to the things again.”
“I didn’t say I did. You say it.”
“You always talk of them. So do I. I want them too. But you keep showing me the moon, and saying, ‘Look, isn’t it wonderful? That is what you ought to have.’ It’s not within my reach.”
“I don’t see why we can’t have people and things too. One makes one’s love of things obvious. It’s not so easy with people.”
Baba looked into the room, saw them sitting there, gave no sign of recognition and went away again.
“Are we discontented with our lots?” asked Diana.
“Yes,” said Russell, and they laughed.
“What have we to be discontented about? We are sitting in a very grand room—a little ugly perhaps—we both have enough to eat, warm clean clothes, and a ball every now and then.”
“You don’t mention the real things.”
“What are they?”
“Human relationships.”
Diana could not think of anything to say. She had many human relationships, whereas Russell, in spite of his poise and air of success, had none as far as she could see. She loved Wolfie and her children and with them behind her it was easy to play about with ideas, but perhaps it all meant more to Russell. Certainly she found her human relationships trying at times, and the thought of an escape to a wider life was attractive, and from her secure position, amusing to play with. Russell was trying more urgently and seriously to relate himself to some environment.
Josie came into the room with John Wyckham and introduced him to her. He had already met Russell and said: “How d’you do, sir?” This was the first time that Russell had been called “sir” by a young man on his own social level, and it gave him a shock.
“Captain Wyckham’s taking me to see the house,” said Josie. “He was up at Macedon. I told you about him.”
“Did you, dear?” asked Diana.
“Didn’t she tell you about me, Mrs von Flugel?” asked John. “I told her to, and to say that you should bring her to more dances. I spend half my time looking for her.”
The two young people stood talking and laughing for a few minutes. Diana had a feeling how very pleasant it was to be there. She was proud of Josie, and both John and Russell were not only nice looking, but had an easy gentleness of manner, which made this brief conversation almost an illustration of that civilized life which at one time she would have thought a normal existence, but which living with Wolfie had made elusive.
“That is an exceptionally attractive young man,” she said, when they had gone on.
“Yes,” said Russell. “A little too self possessed, like all the aides, though very different from that other fellow.”
John showed Josie various rooms in the private part of the house, and then led her into a small sitting-room, and shut the door behind him, standing with his back against it.
“Now I’ve got you,” he said.
Josie laughed. “I’m not frightened of you,” she replied.
“Why not?”
“Well, because of your face.”
“What’s wrong with it?”
“Nothing serious. That’s why I’m not frightened.”
“Has it got minor faults, then?”
“A few, I expect. Everyone has.”
“You haven’t.”
“Yes, I have.”
“I can’t see them. May I look closer?”
“No. You’re dreadful.”
“D’you mean I look dreadful?”
“No, of course not.”
He left the door and came over to where she was standing by a sofa.
“Sit down here,” he said. “Now then, explain yourself.”
“What must I explain?”
“Why you keep out of my way.”
“But I don’t.”
“Yes, you do.” He counted on his fingers. “Mrs Radcliffe’s party, one; full of promise, no result. Two dances after that; full of promise, no result, that’s three. Tennis Macedon, four. More tennis Macedon, five. One impromptu dance Macedon, full of promise, no result, six; tonight, seven. Seven times between November and March. It’s ridiculous. I see some girls night after night. Why don’t you come to more parties?”
“Because I’m not asked, I suppose.”
“Who doesn’t ask you? They must be mad. Why don’t they ask you?”
“I don’t know. Perhaps because I’m not rich.”
“That’s a good thing. I hate rich people.”
“Then I’m glad I’m not rich.”
“You do mind whether I hate you or not?”
“Of course I do. I don’t want anyone to hate me.”
“But me, particularly?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know anything. Where d’you go when you don’t go to dances?”
“I stay at home, I suppose, or I go to Warrandyte.”
“What! the place with the sad saplings? Where is it? I don’t believe it exists. It’s magic. It’s something you disappear into. Perhaps you’re not real. Perhaps you’re a vision.”
“I am real and it’s on the river. I’m going there on Saturday for a fortnight.”
“Then I won’t see you at any dance for over a fortnight? Look,” he said. His confident provocative manner fell from him and he looked very humble. He touched her hand gently.
The door opened and a footman put his head into the room.
“Captain Wyckham, sir,” he said. “There’a drunk lady in the ballroom, and his Excellency says would you and Captain Thorpe put her out.”
“Where’s Captain Thorpe?” asked John, dazed.
“I can’t find ’e, sir,” said the footman.
“Good Heavens!” John thought a moment. “You’d better tell them to send a car round at once—to the house entrance, not the ballroom.”
“Yes, Captain Wyckham, sir,” said the footman, and he disappeared.
“Wait here,” John said to Josie. “I’ll be back in a few minutes.” He went off to cope with Mrs Montaubyn.
As the night wore on this lady’s control of the itching in her toes weakened in inverse ratio to her consumption of alcohol, but her contempt for the stuck-up sods grew stronger, so that partly to relieve the itching and partly as a gesture of independence, she joined the dance in an unsteady pas seul. By now there were few of the five hundred or so guests at the ball who were unaware of her presence, and it was at this point that Sir Roland sent for the aides-de-camp to lead her away.
I had managed to secure another dance with Cynthia, but again I was a substitute for Lord Saltash. This young man had been introduced to her by her father, and he had booked a dance, but when it came round he was sitting on the servants’ staircase with Clara Bumpus. Like the other dancers we kept clear of Mrs Montaubyn, whose steering was uncertain, so that all the time there was an open space of floor round her, and when the music ended, she was standing in the centre of it with Cynthia and myself at the fringe.
Diana, after Josie and John left them, remembered Baba’s glance into the drawing-room. She would ignore malicious gossip but she did not think it sensible to provoke it.
“I suppose we really ought to go back,” she said. “I wonder where Wolfie is. I’ve hardly seen him all the evening. He must be in the supper room.”
When they came into the ballroom, Russell left her and she joined Lady Pringle, who was standing near the wall watching the dancing. When the music stopped Mrs Montaubyn pulled herself up only a few yards from them. She took the open space around her as further evidence that she was being avoided, which was now true. As a boy may be mercurial and a woman Junoesque, Mrs Montaubyn was a kin
d of Ceres. It was this which made Wolfie find in her the peace and beauty of his native vineyards, and which had drawn me when I was rejected by the artificial, to the soothing mother-comfort of the natural world, which she shed in a soft glow. But she was, as Russell would have said, a Ceres unredeemed, and she was now nature in an angry mood. Her necklace of gold leaves had gone back-to-front and the ruby clasp gleamed like a warning light at her throat. She stared about her like some baited animal, and scanning the circle of her tormentors, as she regarded them, she saw first of all Diana, and then her eye fell on me. She beckoned me with a peremptory movement of her head, very different from the fond glances of a few hours earlier.
I hesitated, but Cynthia, either obeying the impulse of the twins to put me in any ludicrous situation, or else still preserving her attitude of detached curiosity about human behaviour, or else from the sheer impulse of un crime gratuit gave me a slight push towards her and said: “Go on.”
Mrs Montaubyn, fuddled as she was, had recognized Diana and Lady Pringle as the women who had come into the room with Wolfie, and whom I had left her to greet. She fixed me with an eye from which all maternal concupiscence had fled, and nodding towards them, demanded:
“Who are those two?”
“They are my aunt and the wife of one of the professors,” I said, an instinct warning me that it would be wiser not to give their names, but there was no escape. If alcohol had blunted some of her perceptions, it had sharpened others.
“What are their names?” she asked more threateningly, and I had to say:
“Mrs von Flugel and Lady Pringle.”
“Which is which?”
“Lady Pringle is the one with the pince-nez and the green beads,” I said.
She took a few unsteady steps towards them.
“Where’s Dingo?” she asked Diana.
Although at times it was hard to realize that Diana and Mildy were sisters, they had one point of resemblance, which was that when they became aware that someone was impertinent they became clothed with an unconscious and sometimes annihilating dignity. With Mildy this seemed like a gift, suddenly bestowed from on high as she showed no trace of it in her ordinary demeanour, and it made people say that she was treacherous.
Diana gave a glance at Mrs Montaubyn, said “I’m afraid I don’t know anyone of that name,” and went on talking to Lady Pringle. This aloofness further angered Mrs Montaubyn.
“You’re Mrs von Flugel, aren’t you?” she said.
“Yes,” said Diana, looking at her more attentively.
Lady Pringle, seeing Mrs Montaubyn’s inflamed and truculent face, with the moral cowardice of the respectable slipped away, and did not hear the rest of the conversation, if it could be called that. No one else could hear, as fortunately Mrs Montaubyn did not shout in her cups, but became quiet, foul and malevolent.
“So you think you’re too good to know me.”
“I’ve never given the matter any thought,” said Diana coolly. “I have no idea who you are.”
“You ask Dingo who I am. He knows all right—the dirty yellow-livered little love-child.”
It flashed into Diana’s mind that by Dingo she meant Wolfie, but even then she did not imagine that there could be any close connection between them. She did not move as she thought it better not to appear to be running away, possibly with this woman following her down the room.
“I think you are making a mistake,” she said.
Her cool manner, her poise, the perfection of her appearance infuriated Mrs Montaubyn. She let out a stream of sibilant back-street abuse. Then she turned to go, but as she turned she swayed round on her heel to add another insult. She did this a second time, and found the rhythm of the movement agreeable. A faint smug smile appeared on her face as she swayed to and fro, with each backward turn giving a vituperative after-thought, the last of these being: “And tell Dingo not to come to bed in his socks.”
At that moment John appeared. He was horrified to see this tipsy trollop obviously, if quietly, abusing Josie’s mother. He went up to her and said: “May I take you to your car?”
Mrs Montaubyn, interrupted in the pleasant swaying that had kept her on her feet, stood unsteadily, and as before, when she had curtsied, John put his arm under her elbow. She stared at him, and seeing the blue lapels and the gold buttons on his tail coat, she thought he was a policeman.
“That’s right, ducks,” she said. “Take me to my carriage and pair, take me to my fairy coach, take me to my bloody Black Maria.”
Without much difficulty John led her out through the private part of the house, to the car he had ordered. So Mrs Montaubyn, attended by an aide-de-camp, drove home in state, a height of grandeur she had not contemplated when she set out for the ball, though it is possible that as the car was very large, and had a crown instead of a number, she thought that it was a Black Maria. Her evening cloak was sent in by a footman the next morning, which made the manager of the block of flats where she lived, who had begun to question her desirability as a tenant, treat her thenceforth with particular deference. At breakfast Sir Roland, with that inaccurate justice of which Lady Eileen had complained, bullied Lord Francis for having sent a card to Mrs Montaubyn.
To return to the ballroom. The scene had happened at the beginning of an interval, but Sir Roland sent a message to the band to play another dance immediately, as he did not want people standing about gaping and discussing what had happened. Diana was bewildered at Mrs Montaubyn’s assault until her last remark, when, like a violent wave breaking over her, she was struck by the knowledge that this woman was Wolfie’s mistress. When John had led Mrs Montaubyn away, she found that she was trembling and she felt an urgent need to sit down. She walked along by the wall, avoiding the dancers, some of whom glanced at her with interest, back to the drawing-room.
At first she was too emotionally upset to reason about what had happened, but she was aware that it meant the disruption of her life. She had known that Wolfie was not a highly moral character, and there had been the unfortunate incidents when he had petted his pupils. She had overlooked these as she believed that they were largely paternal. He said the society of young people was necessary to his music. He liked young girls but she had believed that he treated them more or less with respect. She had been a young girl when he had married her. She was one no longer, and if they were necessary to him, she had supposed she would have to put up with it, as long as it did not become too serious.
But Mrs Montaubyn was a woman of her own age, and one of unspeakable vulgarity. That Wolfie should prefer her to herself was not only a hideous insult, but argued some depravity in his character, which she had not suspected in all the twenty years of their marriage. She had only seen Mrs Montaubyn drunk and muttering filthy language, and had no idea that she could awaken poetic images of the happy autumn fields.
She sat trying to compose herself, and wondering what she could do, when Russell came into the room. He had seen the incident and Diana, looking white and shaken, escape back here, and as soon as he could, he followed her.
“What a horrible thing to happen!” he exclaimed. “Whatever made that frightful creature fix on you?”
“I don’t know,” said Diana, trying to smile. Then she suddenly thought that she could tell him. He was the only person she could tell. She could not tell the children. She could not tell her relatives as they were always against Wolfie and she still had that loyalty to him. She could not even tell Elsie for the same reason. But Russell was new on the scene. He was detached from it all, and yet because of their childhood’s association he was not a stranger, but had an intimate knowledge of the family from the beginning.
“At least, I do know,” she said. “That woman is Wolfie’s mistress.”
He stared at her incredulously. “She can’t be.”
“But she is,” said Diana.
“How long have you known?”
“Five minutes.”
“What! Did she tell you?”
“Practi
cally.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I don’t know. I’m knocked a little flat.” She gave a nervous laugh.
Russell sat down beside her.
“Good God!” he exclaimed. “It’s insanity. I can’t believe it. You—and then a woman like that. Isn’t there any reason in life?”
“I don’t think there’s been much reason in my life,” said Diana bleakly. “Or what there was has gone.”
They sat in silence for a minute, then Russell turned to her abruptly and said:
“Diana, come with me.”
“Where?”
“Anywhere. Away from here—from this idiotic society. We’ll go back to Europe. You want to go. Come with me. We’d be happy together. Every time we meet is better than the last. The first time I saw you coming down Collins Street, before I realized who you were, I saw you were different from all the rest.”
“I’m not as different as all that.”
“You are to me. When I’m with you I feel quite differently alive. The crab’s shell I live in falls off. I say what I like and what I feel. That was lovely getting our supper together the other evening. We could do that always.”
“It would be heaven,” said Diana.
“It would. You see you know it would.”
“But you might become tired of getting supper with me.”
“Then we’ll go and dine in the Bois.”
“Ah, Russell, it’s too much. It’s too late.”
“It isn’t too late.”
“I’ve become a provincial mouse. I don’t think I could lead that sort of life now.”
“You’re not a mouse. You’re a lioness, or a panther with golden spots.” He touched one of the flowers on her dress.
Diana laughed wretchedly. “I don’t feel like a lioness. I feel like a mouse in a trap.”
“I’m opening it for you. I’m taking the pressure from your bruised paws.” He lifted her hands.
Diana laughed again. “You are kind. You are funny,” she said.
“Say you’ll come.”
“It would be heaven.”
“Then take heaven. You’ve had enough of the other thing—all your grace and all your gifts wasted. All the things you do taken as a matter of course—making the elementals elegant. Always giving wonderful gifts to people who take it for granted. I’ve seen enough myself, and I’ve heard.”
