‘He has evidently never met my father.’
‘Your father is not a parent. He is a growth. I was about to say that I had a great affection for American Puritanism. Occasionally I send large and secret cheques to those numerous societies in the Middle West which aim at making bridge on Sundays a penal offence, and would permit the matrimonial act only to be accomplished on the first and third Thursdays in the month. I regard such societies as a terrific artistic blessing. No real genius, while he is working, has a sense of humour, and once one loses one’s sense of humour such things as one finds quoted in Mr. H. L. Mencken’s magazines are as red rags to a bull. If the artist is the bull, the larger and redder the rag the better. Unfortunately the modern artist is not a bull. He is a mild and amiable cow, who, if offered a red rag, would merely wipe his nose on it, or possibly caper round the field, purring like a kitten.’
‘I believe,’ said Maurice, ‘that I am getting tight. And when I am tight, I am divine.’
‘When you are tight you are merely expensive,’ said Lord William, continuing in a slightly intoned voice. ‘We have been rebelling so long against Victorianism that there is absolutely nothing left to rebel against. Consider our houses. If I were Prime Minister I should issue an order that everybody possessing Victorian drawing-rooms should be forced to preserve them intact, because of the inroads which good taste is making upon them. Nothing is so shattering as to live in an age of really good taste. It stultifies the soul.’
‘There is always,’ remarked Maurice dutifully, ‘the Royal Academy.’
Lord William sipped some more champagne. ‘I think you are mistaken. There is no real Royal Academy. Or rather, there are no real Royal Academicians. A few remain perhaps. Yes. I remember, on my last visit, recognizing the same six sheep which Mr. Joseph Farquharson has been painting for the last forty years, standing in the same snow. They had smiles on their faces and far too much Chinese White on their backs. They were perhaps a little woollier than when he first charmed us with them, but that only shows his close observance of Nature. The snow, however, had not melted, which shows his serene independence of it.’
‘Don, you’re insane. John Collier is still alive. Or ought I to say the Honourable John Collier? I think I ought. It makes him even more grotesque.’
‘Yes. I had forgotten him too.’ A look of painful regret came over Lord William’s face. ‘Those were great times, Maurice. Think of his problem pictures! Think of his men and women gazing at each other with expressions of such blatant stupidity that nobody could possibly tell which had done what! But, do you remember? they always had done something. That was the delicious part about it. ‘She’ really had dined at the Trocadero, or he really had cheated at whist, or loo, or whatever games they played in those days. But then – this marvellous designer of puzzles has practically ceased to function nowadays. And, anyway, what is one among so many? No. We live in a dreadful age, when everybody imagines themselves to be artistic and everybody is tolerant.’
‘You’re depressing me terribly,’ said Maurice. ‘I should feel hideously lonely if everybody agreed with me. But you’re entirely wrong. Next season we will go to the opera together, and I will point out to you the exact moments when nobody but ourselves realize why Chaliapin is a great artist but would have been a greater politician.’
Lord William frowned. He did not like disagreement. He therefore ignored Maurice’s remark about Chaliapin. ‘Of course, the opera has always been more syndicate than singing,’ he said, ‘but until lately it was never more than a dress parade. As such it was quite amusing. But I am afraid that it is about to be taken seriously. We are breeding a public that is beginning to suspect that Wagner really did write music, and not merely an accompaniment to tiaras, and a painful silence descends on the house during the more obvious moments of Boheme. I never go to the opera now.’
‘Well then – architecture. Look at Regent Street.’
‘What hideous things you are suggesting. Still – it is possible to look at Regent Street, provided one is slightly drunk, and recover from doing so in a remarkably short space. And I glory in Regent Street. It is a perpetual provocation to anybody with the remotest sense of decency. By its revolting complexity and pomposity it is calculated to make an anarchist of everybody who walks down it. But we cannot all live in Regent Street.’
He paused and leant back, surveying the dancers with wearied eyes. The jazz band blared and screamed, the air was thick with smoke, the faces of the women were universally contorted. He had a feeling that he was witnessing a ridiculous parade of the wooden soldiers, in which the music had run to riot and the performers were all in thrall to the discipline of ennui. How unpleasant it all was! And yet one came here. One came because one didn’t wish to think. Nobody could think in such a noise.
The band stopped.
‘Of course, you are really a throwback to the nineties,’ said Maurice. ‘Your conversation to-night . . .’
‘You are entirely wrong.’ He raised himself on his elbow and lit a cigarette. ‘If this were the nineties, I should be telling the whole restaurant that I had secret, scarlet sins, and that my sins were much more scarlet and much less secret than anybody’s else’s. Am I doing that?’
‘No. But you will.’
‘I shall not, because I find that there is something a little depressing about sinning en masse. It is like mixed bathing. Sin should be solitary, just as virtue should be companionable. There is the difference between worshipping a God and blaspheming one. The worshipper is at his best in a great crowd, lifting his voice in common praise. But the blasphemer is an egotist. He wants his little curses to himself. He has patented his own perversity. He must be silhouetted against a lonely sky, with a single fist clenched towards the sunset.’
‘You would have fitted superbly with the nineties,’ replied Maurice doggedly. Motley glanced at him. He was getting tight. How too tiresome.
‘On the contrary, I should have been a gross misfit. I was a young man in the nineties, but I was not of them. I ignored them. If I had found green carnations growing in Hyde Park I should have suspected them to be lettuces. Besides, I have no use for an age in which one could gain a bad reputation merely by wearing a flower. A bad reputation was as abominably easy for people in those days as it is difficult to-day.’
‘I don’t agree.’
‘Listen. When a girl in the nineties was bored, she could always electrify the family by announcing that she was going to be a New woman, or that she had read a novel by Mr. Grant Allen and had understood it, or that a pair of bicycling bloomers were concealed in her wardrobe. She could be sure that the confession would lead to violent opposition, and opposition was exactly what she wanted. It made her feel a martyr. It brought a sparkle to her unassisted cheeks.’
‘But nowadays nobody ever opposes anything.’
‘I have been endeavouring to point that out for the last quarter of an hour. As a result we are universally vicious, and therefore universally tiresome. To be forced to break all the ten commandments is much more wearing than to be forced to respect them. It is also infinitely less amusing.’
He sighed. ‘That, to return to the subject of our agreeable young friend of this evening, is the fascination of Mr. Brian Elme. He is a good young man, and the breed is almost extinct. Because he is so palpably honest – (by the way, you have my gold match-box, haven’t you? Thank you so much) – because he is so palpably honest, one longs to see his first descent. Because he is so palpably virtuous, one longs for him to have affairs.’
‘This is rather vieux jeu, isn’t it?’ said Maurice spitefully. ‘To show the innocent young man the wickedness of London life?’
‘Of course it is an old game. In other words, it has stood the test of time, as being eternally amusing. I intend to play it.’
He glanced slyly at Maurice, who, however, held his peace. ‘What Master Elme wants,’ he added, ‘is a little course of a woman like Anne Hardcastle.’
&nb
sp; ‘She would hardly corrupt him in a week.’
‘Your ignorance of Anne’s methods scarcely reflects credit on you, Maurice. Still, I believe she likes manly men, and nobody has ever accused you of that. Correct me if I am wrong.’
Maurice sulked.
‘Anne can do wonders in less than a week. When the Italian cricket team stayed at Hardcastle, she made love to all of them, even the umpire. I wrote her a poem about it, called “The Decline and Fall of the Roman Umpire.” ’
‘Yes. I remember,’ said Maurice. ‘It was a very bad poem.’
Lord William saw that he had succeeded in his task of upsetting Maurice and was therefore content to let the matter drop.
‘I think we can safely leave his corruption to Julia,’ he said. ‘And here is Mrs. Grindhaven. My ankle is giving me great pain.’
‘Don darling.’ A woman with Chinese eyes and a flat figure leant over them.
‘Laura. Come and sit down. What was that heavenly tango you were dancing just then?’
‘It was a perfectly simple waltz,’ she said hoarsely. ‘And I have come to dance it with you.’
‘But, my dearest Laura, I’ve hurt my ankle.’
‘Don’t lie. I saw you come in.’
‘It has all happened since then. Maurice has kicked me under the table. I didn’t utter a sound. I have been bearing it in silence like the Spartan boy and the fox. I always think,’ he added, ‘that boy should have been psycho-analysed. ’
‘Nothing but lies.’
‘I will lend you Maurice,’ said Lord William.
‘He will kick me on the ankle, too,’ she croaked.
‘Not if you dance your tango, my precious. He would only be able to kick you on the elbow then.’
With a sigh Maurice rose to his feet. Mrs. Grindhaven grimly assumed charge of him. When they were safely at the other end of the room Lord William stretched out his hand for Maurice’s glass of champagne, which was all that was left of the bottle. The last glass, he thought, was always the sweetest. And he knew that Maurice thought so too.
CHAPTER SIX
What did Julia mean when she had pressed his hand in the box? That was, for Brian, the question on which his life depended.
Did people press hands without meaning it? Could there be some sort of involuntary action of the muscles which contracted the fingers, causing the same to squeeze any object with which they came in contact?
No. That was rot.
But – could people press a hand merely because it was there, and because they were labouring under the influence of some external emotion not connected with the person to whom the hand belonged?
He recalled the circumstances. The precise moment at which his hand had been pressed was when Heloise had been informing Abelard, in curiously blunt phraseology, that ‘a little stranger’ was expected. A striking announcement, no doubt, but hardly one to arouse in the audience any overwhelmingly sentimental feelings, considering the way in which it had been phrased.
A third alternative. Were exalted people like Julia – exalted in rank as well as beauty, virtue, wit, learning (and all the other qualities with which he was mentally endowing her) – were they in the habit of pressing hands as a sort of social custom? He meant, supposing an earl’s daughter, and an ambassador, and a duchess, and a – well – a film star – supposing, that is to say, they all found themselves sitting together in a box in the dark, would they press each other’s hands?
He pondered the question. He envisaged the ambassador and the duchess together – hand stealing towards hand. No. It didn’t seem at all probable. However tightly he screwed up his eyes he couldn’t make his ambassador place his hand on his duchess’s knee. As soon as he tried to do so it became like something out of Alice in Wonderland. And the scene which had taken place at the Imperial Theatre the night before had been in no way legendary. It had been tremendously real. He could still feel the electric thrill in his fingers where she had touched them.
He held out his hand to the light. It seemed a very wonderful hand now. It belonged to her. So did his arms and his legs and his heart and his head.
‘Catching flies?’
Brian turned round guiltily. ‘Hallo, Walter!’
‘What are you doing?’
‘Nothing. Why?’
Walter looked at him and laughed. He knew better than to pursue the subject. Instead he said: ‘It’s jolly good of you to speak to me this morning at all.’
‘Ass.’
‘Still, you’d better give me a report. And you can begin with the soup.’
While Brian was explaining, Walter thought hard. He was worried and afraid. This woman – what did she want with his friend? He had never met Julia, but already, from Brian’s halting references to her, he felt that he knew a great deal more about her than did Brian himself. Brian was such an infant where women were concerned. Still . . . if she made him happy. . . . But how could she? How could there be anything real, or . . . (he had to use the word) . . . ‘decent’ . . . with a woman like this?
Sooner or later, of course, one of them, or both of them, had to fall. That was inevitable. But how different was this from the romances which together they had imagined! He remembered a long summer evening on the Cotswold Hills when Brian had opened his heart on the subject of the girl he might one day love. It had been a curiously rambling confession, starred with moments of boyish passion which had surprised even Walter by its intensity. Lying back among a healthy crop of clover, he had painted his ideal upon the fading skies – an ideal such as only a boy could hold, of a virginity too rare for human flesh. Walter had never tried to destroy this ideal – that was one of the blows which Life must administer. But never had he dreamt that he would go so childishly astray as this.
Well – there was nothing to do. And so, when the recital of the dinner was finished, he said, ‘Yes. But can’t you tell me a bit more about Julia? What’s she like? What tastes has she got?’
Brian flushed slightly.
‘She said she liked men with fair hair.’
‘Well – you score there, don’t you?’
‘Yes, thank God. I’d stand on my head all day in a bucket of peroxide if I thought it’d please her.’
‘Anything else?’
‘Well. She seemed to like birds.’
‘What. To eat?’
‘No. Flying about, you fool.’
‘Well. I’ve got a parrot down at Portsmouth. That flies like hell. Only it’s not very dainty in its habits.’
Brian looked at him in scorn. ‘I wasn’t talking about parrots. I was talking about thrushes and nightingales and larks and . . .’ He paused ecstatically.
‘And emus and wagtails and owls,’ added Walter. ‘You’d better take her to the Zoo.’
Brian ignored him. ‘I think it’s very wonderful to have tastes like that. I’m going to read all about birds. I’m going to learn when they mate and what their songs mean, and where they go to in the spring. . . .’
‘And where the flies go in the winter.’
‘You’re damned funny, aren’t you?’
He put his hands in his pockets and rattled a few coins together.
‘I’d like to send her something,’ he said casually. ‘I’m passing Cartier’s this morning.’
‘Walter. That’s not awfully kind.’
A shadow crossed Walter’s face. ‘Sorry, old thing.’
‘If you knew how I longed to be rich,’ said Brian, a little piteously. ‘Because she loves green, I’d give her all the emeralds in the world. Because she loves the birds, I’d buy a place in the country, and there’d be nightingales in every tree, and a regular fusillade of larks to greet her when she got up in the morning. And because she likes fair hair, I’d have a bodyguard of blondes, even if they did make me jealous.’
‘That’s love all right.’
‘Of course it’s love. Of course it’s love. Love!’
He threw up his arms and laughed. Life, which had seemed so meaningl
ess, had become a tremendous palpitating adventure. So thrilled was he that, against his intention, he found himself confessing the episode of the hand, which he had meant to keep to himself.
‘There’s something else,’ he said with a catch in his voice.
‘Lord! You seem to have studied her closely.’
‘No. It’s something we did together.’
‘Keep it clean, old man.’
He ignored the cheerful coarseness of Walter’s remark. He was bubbling with a strange, halting pride.
‘Well, we were sitting there in the box, watching the play, and – I don’t know how it happened, but, you see, our hands . . .’
‘Go on.’
‘They sort of got mixed.’
‘It’s a way hands have.’
Brian looked at him suspiciously. ‘And afterwards – she pressed mine – pretty hard – she did really.’
‘Well, I never said she didn’t.’
‘D’you mean that’s the only thing you can think of to say?’
‘What d’you want me to say? I don’t call that anything to boast about.’
Brian looked at him with bitter disappointment. ‘Oh, I did think you’d understand.’
He walked to the fireplace, biting his lip with vexation. How could he explain to Walter all that he meant? How could he conjure up before him the crowded darkness of the theatre, the significant perfume of his worshipped one, the faint crescent of light on her shoulders, the sudden singing of his heart which that timid contact had impelled?
‘B.’
‘Oh. Get out.’
‘Sorry.’
There was silence. He looked round. Walter was still there.
‘B. I’m only chaffing because . . .’
‘Why?’
‘Oh – I don’t know. P’raps because I don’t want to take it too seriously.’
‘But it is serious, I tell you.’
‘Is it?’ He put his hand on his shoulder and looked him straight in the face. There was a frightened expression in Brian’s eyes, like a child standing lonely in the dark.
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