Ankle Deep

by Angela Thirkell

  And now there was Aurea, who was just different enough to make one feel less self-confident than usual. She had seemed at first to have no idea of self-defense. As far as an avowal of mutual attraction was concerned, she had met him halfway. They had crossed swords and thrown them down. But then, without withdrawing anything of her open love and devotion, she had set herself apart, a remote loving spirit. Valentine, not naturally diffident, had found himself suddenly paralyzed with shyness before her. When your most ardent avowals are met with blank terror, or quite genuinely misunderstood, it cramps your style considerably.

  But he couldn’t help being amused, in the middle of all this turmoil and stress, by her efforts to be fair-minded about it. She seemed to have covered the whole ground in her ill-considered statement, besides suddenly producing an unexpected kind of courage. A wild fluttering kind, like the thrush caught in the strawberry net who pecks your finger savagely. Her frank acceptance of the whole question of “living in sin” rather took his breath away. He imagined that she must get all her ideas from books, and was now desperately trying to bring common sense to bear upon them. Wherever she might have found her ideas, they were, for her case, extremely sound. “Living in sin” — the words had nothing to do with her at all. She had known at once what Valentine would have liked to ignore: that nothing of lovers’ passion would ever be possible between them. She was so entirely dominated by her mind that her senses would never be allowed to take their way. If she could once be carried off her feet, she would, he believed, have been capable of self-abandonment, and shown him a side of herself which, even in dreams he had hardly dared to suspect. But he was not capable — and without conceit he believed no other man was capable — of penetrating her defenses. Fear and unhappiness, of a kind which he could guess only too well, had forced her away into herself — in no other way was her horror of physical contact explainable. Here, looking out from her fortress with frightened eyes, she had built up a rule of conduct for herself, and by heaven she had kept to it. He had seen her so shaken, so drowned by love, that she could hardly stand or speak, yet able to resist. It had not been the easiest part of his task to watch her controlled suffering and do nothing, when one cruel-kind gesture from him might have set her free. Again and again he had been on the point of using his strength against her, but the risk was too great. He had seen apprehension so often in her eyes, that he dreaded doing anything that might frighten her from him irrevocably. If, on the other hand, she could forget herself in his arms and relax for a moment, what then? She had a husband, who appeared to be a perfectly decent sort of fellow, except that he made demands which he had every right to make: if she could not bear them it was hellish, but not his business at all. And she had children, and it was perfectly clear that she would do nothing which could in any way imperil her position with regard to them. So what would one gain by breaking down barriers? One had to look at things practically, whatever kind of groan it wrenched from one’s spirit. She was bound by circumstances more firmly than if she had been in a castle with moats and dungeons and boiling oil.

  As for what she had said about the embarrassment which any idea of living in sin would cause him, he had to confess to himself, while finding the phrase laughable and very Aurea-ish, that any more fervid response from his idol would have been excessively awkward. It was all very well for heroes of novels to ask ladies to come in a compromising way to their rooms: but when your rooms consisted of a bed-sitting room, even though large and airy, the whole affair was hedged around with difficulties. The question of ways and means and times, would bulk so large that love would simply have to slip in where it could, effectually quenching romance. Selleeney would have made light of these difficulties, but then Selleeney was a Great Lover, and Valentine had to face the fact that he wasn’t up to the Selleeney standard. The most he could hope was that he had behaved as much like a gentleman as was possible under the circumstances.

  The pressing need of the moment was to comfort Aurea, who had exhausted herself by her apologia, and looked like death. But all he could find to say was, “Don’t, darling, don’t, I can’t bear it.”

  As usual, so Aurea reflected, Valentine had failed her. It was perfectly true that if you tried to lean against a man, first he bended and then he broke, even without being necessarily false. One always had to take up the woman’s burden, and let him do the leaning. She gave Valentine a searching look which made him feel slightly guilty, and said:

  “No, I dare say you can’t. And, as usual, you will have to be spared. Oh, well, men have died before now and worms have eaten them, but not for love — Shakespeare,” she added parenthetically, seeing Valentine’s look of blank bewilderment. “I’m sorry I let loose.”

  “At least, Aurea, give me credit for some kindness, some consideration. I could so easily have held you against your will so many times.”

  “No, you wouldn’t; you would have been afraid of compromising yourself,” snapped Aurea, annoyed by his nobility.

  “You couldn’t have stopped me,” continued the conquering male, disregarding this unkind cut.

  “No,” said Aurea slowly, “practically speaking, I couldn’t. But you see, my dear, there wasn’t any need. You just wouldn’t have done it. You see I do give you credit for some kindness — though it’s always possible that I might, madly, have preferred cruelty.”

  Valentine got up and walked about to help his feelings. She was right. He had behaved so much like a gentleman that there was nothing at all to show for it. Except that, and this comforted him a little, there would be nothing ugly to remember when she had gone; neither of them would have any cause for self-reproach. Though here he did not take into account Aurea’s conscience, which was apt to surge so inopportunely. His own did not surge.

  “Sit down, Valentine,” said Aurea, with sudden energy. “I’ve stopped ramping now, and you can just go on having a good opinion of yourself. Oh, I’m so tired.” But she didn’t make any room on the sofa, which she was somehow contriving to fill by herself.

  “Talking doesn’t help much, does it,” said he, ruefully. “Let me stay near you for a few moments, and then I must keep my promise to your mother and go. You look so worn out, and you will need all your strength for tomorrow.”

  “Always tactful. Do you think we might talk about something else?”

  “Like a lady and gentleman at a party?”

  “Rather like that,” she said, doing her best to smile. And then there was a pause.

  “You’ll write to me, Aurea, won’t you?” said he at last.

  “I promise you,” said she, “that I’ll answer every letter you write to me.”

  “Thank you, darling. But you won’t mind if I don’t write regularly? You know how bad I am about letters, and if I don’t write it won’t mean that I’m not thinking of you. You do understand, don’t you?”

  “Yes, my dear, I understand. I must take what I can get,” said she, not unkindly.

  And that, probably, is the last word about letters. To Aurea, as to many a fair and unexpressive she, letters are self-expression, and therefore almost life itself. All that she could never say she will pour out, quite unabashed, on paper. Everything that happens to her she will put into words mentally, as part of an eternal letter to Valentine, even if it is never written. To write to him often, and at great length, will in some measure satisfy her hunger to give. But that is the only satisfaction she will ever get.

  As for Valentine, he will always be glad to get a letter from Aurea, but he won’t trouble to read it very closely. Her outpourings may become a little wearing in time, and it is not his habit to include things that bore him in his plan of life. Whether he is conscious of it or not, he is in a very strong position. Aurea writes to him because she must — because it is the only kind of contact she can have with him, however illusory. If he does not write to her she will be too proud to beg for letters, and will pretend to herself that she never expected them, though this will not prevent her hopes from rising and f
alling with pitiful regularity. If a woman wrote the Odyssey (which one does not in the least believe), it would be just as easy to prove that a woman wrote the Book of Proverbs. “Hope deferred maketh the heart sick,” is text enough to go upon. It is astonishing how the human heart can be lifted to empyrean heights and dropped, to lie stunned and bleeding on earth, and all by so small a thing as an envelope with a piece of paper in it. One knew that it was silly to expect Valentine to write often, because he had his work and so many friends and charmers, and one would never wish to be a bore; but if only he understood. That, perhaps, is exactly what he doesn’t want to do. He is far from unkind at heart, but he has very little of that sensitive imagination which fills Aurea’s life with baseless dreams: and the happier he. From time to time he will write to Aurea, full of his own plans and interests, never answering her questions, nor making reference to anything she has written; hurriedly, without consideration. She, poor half-wit, will try to read into these letters all that is not there, and then, fatally bound to her obsessing idea, will comfort herself with imagining the letters that she would like to have had, that she would have written in Valentine’s place. A pretty literary exercise, but not helpful to happiness or a sane outlook. Sometimes she will shrink as from white-hot steel, wondering if she has made an impossible and abject fool of herself, an object of boredom and scorn to her lover. The one thing she will never know, the one thing that might have comforted her, is that, even against his will, she is part of Valentine’s being forever; whether he writes or not, whatever years and distances are between them, whatever charmers may sway his facile heart. Sometimes, when he is least thinking of her, there will come upon him a feeling of most bitter loss, and that is her hour, unknown to her. This ignorance, and her own reproaches, are punishment enough; and to her that punishment will be so heavy that we might almost be a little sorry for her.

  Valentine appeared to think that the subject had been exhausted.

  “And I’ll see you again before too long,” he said. “You are sure to be back again to see your people.”

  “I hope I will. But it won’t be the same for us, Valentine. Never again the same.”

  Silence fell once more. Valentine knew that he must break the circling charm and make an end.

  “Aurea dear, I must go.”

  “I suppose you must,” said she wearily. They both got up. Aurea was far past pretending, past any staging of imaginary scenes. Her one present preoccupation was to get Valentine out of the house without any further explanations or delays; but there he was, between her and the door. His attempt at taking leave had not altered his position.

  Valentine was almost as much at his wits’ end as Aurea. It was unbearable to leave her, and even more to leave her looking so worn out and broken, but go he must; when to his astonishment Aurea came up to him, and said in a perfectly flat, uninterested voice:

  “You can put your arms around me if you like, Valentine, for a moment.”

  The ardent swain was too much taken aback to respond with immediate fervor, so his idol added, with a hint of impatience:

  “I suppose it’s got to come sooner or later, so we might as well get it over. I’m here.”

  This sacrificial attitude seemed to Valentine, in his present state of mind, more touching than foolish. He was just going to carry out the idol’s instructions, when she looked up, and said anxiously:

  “Don’t frighten me — it would be cruelty to children — and I can’t stand much more.”

  Very obediently Valentine took his silly romantic love in his arms. She was quite unhelpful, and might have been a lay figure except that, as her head at last came into its proper position on Valentine’s shoulder, she quickly turned it away. Valentine guessed, quite correctly, that this was a sop to conscience, because, though it is wrong to let a gentleman put his arms around you, it mitigates the guilt to avert your face so that he shall not kiss you. It was hard work to hold the beloved half-wit so close and appear to remain unmoved, but if she wanted it, it should be done. It was only for a moment of perfume, of warmth, of forgetfulness; a moment while the whispering of the fire was the only sound that broke the night’s stillness. Then, Aurea making a movement to release herself, there was nothing for it but to let her go, and watch her anxiously, as she moved clumsily, unseeingly, towards the door. So clumsily, that Valentine just had time to get her into a large chair, where she lay quite still.

  What does one do after midnight, in a practically unknown house, with an unconscious female on one’s hands? Her parents had long since gone to bed, and he didn’t particularly want to disturb them. Looking around, he saw whisky and soda on a table at the far end of the room, so he filled a glass with lavish splashings, and knelt down by Aurea.

  “Could you hold this, darling, and drink a little?” he said.

  Obediently Aurea lifted her hand, but it fell again. She was trying to speak, but all Valentine could hear was the sighing of his own name. It was all disturbing and embarrassing to the last degree, and Valentine felt the whole responsibility upon him.

  “Aurea, darling, can you hear me?” he said again. “Could you drink some whisky if I helped you?”

  He was about to hold the glass to her lips, which might have proved a restorative in the sense that cold water trickling down one’s front restores one; for no one can drink tidily when another person is holding the glass. But she shook her head, and pushing him gently away, managed to get up.

  “I’m sorry, Valentine,” she said in her own voice. “I couldn’t help it. And you must admit it wouldn’t have looked well at a night club.” And she laughed.

  Valentine was taking himself far too seriously to join in this ill-timed mirth. “I can’t leave you like this,” he said. “It’s not safe. You might hurt yourself. What can I do? I can’t take you to your own room for obvious reasons. May I find Mrs. Howard? Where is her room?”

  “No — please,” cried Aurea, laying a detaining hand on his arm. “I’ll be all right as soon as you are gone. Truth and honor I will,” she added, seeing his worried expression. “It’s only loving you so much. I don’t seem quite equal to it.”

  “Then I had better go.”

  “Yes, better go. I have nothing more to give you.”

  “My dear, I wouldn’t ask it.”

  Aurea lifted his hand and bent her head over it, murmuring, “I’m not good enough, not worthy.” And though she meant it, it is to be feared that she was enjoying herself in a way, as she said it.

  “You? Good God, child,” said Valentine with some vigor, “don’t be a fool.”

  “That sounds more normal,” said Aurea, loosening his hand. “Oh, please go. But, oh, please, please don’t forget me.”

  “Darling, I couldn’t. I’ll never, never forget.”

  “I love you to say that,” said Aurea meditatively, “even if it’s what you say to all the charmers.”

  “Must you always laugh at me?”

  “Always. It’s the only way. Be happy and be good. Goodbye.”

  She had opened the drawing room door, and standing by it, gave Valentine her hand.

  “I’m afraid you’ll faint again,” said he. “Can’t I find your mother?”

  Aurea was leaning against the wall, quite still, hardly able to speak. “No, no. Only go. I’ll be all right when you are gone. Oh, Valentine, Valentine.”

  Valentine kissed her averted face and left the room quickly and quietly, shutting the door behind him. And so he too goes out of the story. He will do very well with Fanny, who does not require courage or unselfishness in her friends, and can well look after herself. It is just a pity that anyone so foolish as Aurea ever had the ill-luck to meet him.

  Chapter 10

  Mrs. Howard had been lying awake for what seemed to her hours and hours. She wondered what was going on in the drawing room behind the closed door, directly beneath her room, but no sound came to enlighten her. Once or twice, overcome by anxiety, she got up and opened her door to listen, but beyond an occa
sional murmur there was nothing to hear. Wild visions floated through her mind of Aurea clasped in Valentine’s arms; Aurea deciding to elope, packing a bag, and stealing downstairs to her lover. So strong did this last obsession become; that she rather shamefacedly went to Aurea’s room and knocked at the door. No one answered, for no one was there; the light turned on showed only a room strewn with the drift of final packing, which made Mrs. Howard’s heart sink. What if Aurea had eloped already, without even a bag? How could she bear it? What would Will say? Would Aurea come back to them? Would Mr. Ensor’s bank let him keep his job? Quite irrelevantly she remembered how Aurea had once discussed mothers with Fanny. Fanny had boasted that her mother, dead some years ago, would have sheltered her and believed in her, even if she had, with her own eyes, seen her kill Arthur and all the children. Aurea, not to be outdone, had countered with the statement that her mother would receive her with open arms if she suddenly came home in rags, with illegitimate triplets. Mrs. Howard laughed at the thought of it and felt comforted. Just then she heard the drawing-room door open, and the sound of two voices. Conscience-stricken she fled back to bed and lay there till the front door closed, waiting for Aurea to look in on her. As Aurea delayed her coming, Mrs. Howard’s fear of elopement began to surge again, unreasonably she knew, but at that hour of the morning no fear is too unreasonable to seem perfectly probable. At last she could bear it no longer. She put on a dressing gown and went downstairs. The drawing-room door was open, and her daughter was wandering about, putting the glasses back on the tray and the chairs into their usual places. She looked quite normal, and Mrs. Howard felt a pang of relief.

  “Aurea,” she said softly, because Will must not be disturbed.

  “Yes, mother,” answered Aurea, continuing her task.

  “Has Mr. Ensor gone?”