‘That is a perfectly true observation, though perhaps not strikingly original.’
‘Truth seldom has the chance to be original. There is so little truth in the world that very little of it can have escaped comment in the three hundred thousand years of mankind. Happily, there are more pleasant subjects of contemplation than there are truths. It is a hundred to one that the thoughts which produced an expression so suitable to my Portrait of a New Bride were simple illusion. Nevertheless, they serve the purpose.’
‘I was thinking,’ said Harriet, ‘about a little matter of local sewage.’
‘Sewage? Ah! j’y suis – les égouts, that is what is sewers, n’est-ce pas? That is certainly not an illusion, at least, we will hope not, if we are not to be swept away by the cholera. Evidemment, it is only the English who can think rapturously on the subject of sewage. It’s all a matter of taste! Love, sewage, a new dress, a diamond necklace – it is all the same to me, provided it evokes the rapture.’
Harriet had no intention of enlightening Monsieur Chapparelle’s inquisitive mind on the fascination of sewage. She roamed the big studio, examining the finished and unfinished canvasses.
‘Isn’t this Mrs Laurence Harwell?’
‘Ah! She is difficult, that one. I mean, in your English sense of the word. She is not difficult to please. The husband, he is another matter. He thinks I am the big, bad wolf that will gobble up his beautiful red-haired Riding-Hood. So he is here all the time to watch what I do. Since I paint without stopping and he does not know the first thing about painting, he dies of boredom. Je m’en f – forgive my language! – if he wants to sit there in the corner, kicking his heels. I give him the paper. I say, sit down, amuse yourself. In five minutes he is up again, looking over my shoulder to see how the trick is worked. He looks at my picture, and he looks at his wife, and that puzzles him. He looks at her again a long time, and he does not know that what he sees is not there at all. But look! I will paint him what he sees, quand même. You notice, the sitter is holding something in her hands. No, it is not there yet. What I give her at present, it is the lid of a saucepan. Not inspiring, is it? The lid of a saucepan. Bon! Tomorrow she shall have what she will like better.’
‘A mirror?’
‘That is not a bad guess. It will please her like a mirror, and with the same kind of pleasure, because, you know, when she looks in the mirror, she too does not see at all what is there. But no, it could not be a mirror. And why? You that write books to detect the fact from the appearance, you will look again and tell me why it is not a mirror.’
Harriet examined the portrait, which was nearly completed, except for the background and accessories.
‘A mirror would throw up a reflected light on the lower part of the face, and there is no reflected light.’
‘Bien, très bien! I will buy one of your books and read it. Now I will show you. This has been made by a young man I know, who makes a little use of my studio, because he is poor and talented. I do not think he will always be poor, because he paints what other people like to see, and there is a good market for that. So, you see, Mrs Harwell will like this, better, perhaps, than my portrait.’
‘A mask!’
‘Be careful, it is papier-mâché. Yes, it is clever, hein?’
‘Very clever, and very beautiful.’
‘That is how she sees herself: “the beautiful woman with red-gold hair”, tout simplement. But in my painting she is “The Bewitched”, because, you see, the bad witch has shut her up close, close in a black tower without windows, and there is only one gate, and that is of ivory, and all her dreams come through that ivory gate. That is between her and the reality of things; which is just as well, because if she ever saw one glimpse, one smallest little glimpse of what is real, she would run away screaming and hide in the deepest dungeon beneath the castle moat. Avec ça, that in the Moyen-Age the dungeons were never beneath the moat but beneath the keep, but since that’s how the saying goes, let it pass.’
‘You see much too much, Monsieur Chapparelle.’
‘You do not believe me? Je suis psychologue: I have to be. But you need not be afraid. A lady who can be enraptured by sewage is not sheltered from the realities. Allons! Au travail. Return quickly to your subterranean meditations, and I will return to my paints. Des goûts, et des égouts; about matters of taste as about sewers, no discussion is possible.’
7
O, what can ail thee, knight-at-arms,
Alone and palely loitering?
The sedge has wither’d from the lake
And no birds sing.
JOHN KEATS
‘Mr Amery, isn’t it? Lady Peter Wimsey – Harriet Vane.’
Harriet had walked past the despondent-looking young man, sitting with his head in his hands on the park bench, before she recognised him, and now he was looking at her blankly as though he did not recognise her.
‘Oh, oh, yes of course,’ he said, belatedly getting to his feet and taking the hand she held out to him. ‘I’m sorry; I . . .’
‘Are you all right?’ she asked him. He was wearing a somewhat threadbare overcoat, not buttoned up, the hand he had offered her was stiff and blue with cold, and he was looking distraught. Perhaps he was even trembling slightly.
‘I don’t think I shall ever be all right again!’ he said.
‘Oh, come,’ said Harriet. ‘You have just let yourself get extremely cold. How long have you been sitting on this bench?’
‘Ages,’ he said. ‘I don’t remember.’
‘Come with me,’ said Harriet firmly. ‘Let’s get you some hot soup, or coffee and a brandy.’
‘I can’t afford anything,’ he said. ‘I’m flat broke.’
‘I can . . .’ Harriet began, and then seeing at once that it would be better if the question of payment were not to arise, said, ‘I can get you something at home. It isn’t at all far. And, look, don’t argue. You really had better have something warm. You don’t want to fall fainting in the street.’
He shambled along beside her. She permitted herself a moment or two of rueful regret for the loss of the afternoon’s work. It was a habit of hers when a chapter was stuck to take a brisk walk round the park, and she often found that on her return to her study a mysterious change had occurred and she could see exactly how to proceed. This time the walk had put paid to the chapter till tomorrow; but then she could hardly have left a fellow-author freezing to death on a bitterly cold January afternoon, even if he was behaving like a byword for stupidity – what was it? – having not enough sense to come in from the cold.
A bright fire was burning in the empty drawing-room at Audley Square, and Harriet settled her guest in an armchair, and rang for Meredith.
‘Would there be soup, Meredith, do you think? Something warm, as quickly as possible, anyway.’
Meredith regarded the shivering guest impassively. ‘May I recommend, your ladyship, that the gentleman does not sit too near the fire, for fear of chilblains, your ladyship, and that I should bring a tot of brandy immediately?’
‘Thank you, Meredith. Quite right,’ said Harriet.
She watched Claude while warmth, food and brandy stilled the quaking of his limbs, and turned his hands and face gradually from bluish pallor to rosy pink. He was still looking remarkably dejected.
‘Are you feeling better?’ she asked him, when Meredith had removed the tray.
‘You shouldn’t bother yourself about me,’ said Amery ungraciously. ‘Nobody else does.’
‘Isn’t Laurence Harwell getting your play put on?’ she asked.
‘Yes, he is,’ said Amery, shortly, and colouring slightly. ‘I should be grateful to the enemy. I am, of course, I am. But . . .’
‘Mr Amery—’
‘Do call me Claude. You’re not an enemy. You gave me a very favourable review, and I haven’t thanked you for it.’
‘You shouldn’t say thank you for a good review,’ said Harriet. ‘That would imply that one had done a favour to the author, wher
eas one has simply done justice to the book. And, Claude, do have a care. I don’t know what you can mean by calling Laurence Harwell your enemy, but I am very sure you should not be calling him one to me.’
‘Why not? If I can’t tell you, who can I tell? At least you have lived a bit, not like all these monsters with boiled shirts and whalebone corsets and pursed lips, pretending to be totally respectable. Laurence Harwell is my enemy because I am horribly in love with his wife. What do you say to that?’
Harriet was silent. Then she said, ‘I am sorry for you.’
‘But why?’ he said, suddenly getting up and pacing up and down the room. ‘Why should you be sorry for me? Do you assume that I cannot succeed?’
Help! thought Harriet. She had, she realised, stepped straight into that lethal gap that separates people’s view of themselves and their situation from the view taken by other people. And the poor young man was clearly in deep water.
‘It must be a misfortune to fall in love with a married woman,’ she said quietly. ‘And the Harwells are famous all over London for being incandescently in love with each other. So yes, Claude, I am sorry for you, and I do assume you cannot succeed.’
‘I don’t know where I am with her,’ he said, returning to his chair and sitting down again facing Harriet. ‘She’s so wonderful with me sometimes, so kind, and so determined to help me get my work put on. And then another time she just brushes me aside. I look forward for days to seeing her, and then she puts me off to go shopping or to have her hair done, or she has a headache and can’t come out. She was supposed to be meeting me in the park this morning to take a walk,’ he added woefully.
‘Good heavens,’ said Harriet. ‘Had you been waiting in the cold since morning? But it was almost dark . . .’
‘Since ten o’clock,’ he said. ‘But I couldn’t go until I was sure she wasn’t coming. I don’t know what to do, Lady . . .’
‘Do call me Harriet,’ said Harriet quickly. She was still having a certain amount of difficulty in taking absolutely seriously a conversation in which she figured as Lady Peter Wimsey.
‘Harriet. I can’t work, I can’t sleep, I don’t go out in case she telephones . . . I think I am going mad. If this goes on I can’t be responsible for my actions. I might do anything.’
‘You mustn’t let it go on. You should be working hard on your next play. If the present one does as well as we all hope it will, there will be an immediate demand for another one, and it would be as well to have something ready.’
‘Would it?’ he said, looking slightly less miserable.
‘I’m sure it would. You owe it to yourself to work hard, Claude. Indeed you owe it to everyone; you have it in you to write something really magnificent. And, I found myself, you know, that in times of trouble there is nothing like work to get you through the days. I think you should keep warm, and keep working, and stop seeing Mrs Harwell.’
‘Oh, but I couldn’t do that!’ he cried, leaping out of his chair again, and standing over her, actually, she noticed with interest, wringing his hands. So that was the gesture referred to in that famous phrase . . .
‘Ask me anything but don’t ask me to give up hope!’
‘But what can you hope for?’ she asked him. Her patience with him was wearing rather thin. ‘You can hardly hope to entice Mrs Harwell into leaving her husband and living with you. It would ruin her.’
‘You ought to know,’ he said, bitterly.
‘Mr Amery, I shall pretend that I did not hear that,’ said Harriet coldly.
‘I’m sorry!’ he said. ‘I’m dreadfully sorry. How awful of me, when you are being so kind to me! But you see what I mean when I say she is driving me crazy! Can you ever forgive me?’
‘I will forgive you if you go home and take my advice.’
‘Just the same, you do know what I am hoping for.’
‘And I do think you have no hope of it. She is in love with her husband, and, I think, enjoying her standing as Laurence Harwell’s wife.’
‘But it must be very boring having to be grateful all the time,’ he said. ‘She might like a turn at being the one who gives favours.’
Flinching, and enraged, Harriet was wondering desperately how to get rid of him before he perpetrated any more terrible indiscretions, when Meredith appeared to announce the Dowager Duchess. This welcome visitor bustled into the room, embraced her daughter-in-law, and on being introduced to Claude Amery deluged him with effusive praise for his poems, and looked forward eagerly to his play.
Thus cheered up he pulled himself together, and took his leave.
As the door closed behind him, Honoria said, ‘I do believe that young man is devoted to you, Harriet.’
‘Sorry, Mother-in-law, but those tearful romantic eyes and all that quivering angst are not for me. I am merely a suitable wailing wall to resound to his distress. And I am very glad to see you; you appear like the relief of Mafeking. I seem to have been listening to him for hours.’
‘May one know who is the lucky object of all that adoration?’
‘Mrs Harwell. I don’t see why I shouldn’t tell you since the burden of the song is that he has got nowhere with her.’
‘She is very lovely, isn’t she?’ said the Duchess. ‘I suppose men see the world differently. Not all men, of course.’
‘You mean, not Peter, no doubt,’ said Harriet, smiling. ‘But what difference of view do you mean?’
‘In the rating they give to beauty. As though it had an entertainment value in itself. But beautiful people are often rather boring, don’t you think?’
‘Less beautiful people might rather like to think so,’ said Harriet.
‘But you know what I mean, my dear. All those wealthy men choosing a wife like a piece of furniture or a fine picture, to furnish the house, and then having to listen to her at breakfast twenty years later.’
‘Well, at least,’ said Harriet, ‘you needn’t fear that Peter chose me as house furnishing. He’ll be back very soon; will you have a drink and wait for him?’
As well as black dresses, of course, one needed black hats. Every woman in London needed black hats, and the hat shops were crowded, even the little very exclusive milliner in Mayfair, to which Alcibiade had directed Harriet. She had to wait for a chair at the wall of looking-glass to be free, and as she sat down the woman sitting next to her pulled off a thick, folded velvet cloche, and tossed her head, releasing a heavy braid of copper-coloured hair.
Harriet recognised Rosamund Harwell.
‘Good morning, Mrs Harwell.’
‘Good morning,’ Rosamund said. ‘See if this suits you – it looks dreadful on me.’
Harriet put on the cloche, and they both considered it, and said ‘no!’ in the same breath.
The milliner bustled about, and brought Rosamund a little close-fitting cap, and Harriet a rather trilby-shaped item with a black feather in the hatband.
‘That’s better,’ said Rosamund, considering the cap. ‘But how I hate wearing black!’
‘It doesn’t suit me, either,’ said Harriet.
‘Oh, it’s not that it doesn’t suit me,’ said Rosamund quickly. ‘Laurence says I look ravishing in black, but I promised myself I would never wear it again; and now I can’t help it.’
‘I rather agree that you look good in it,’ said Harriet. ‘But it doesn’t suit a dark complexion.’
‘Oh, but that clever little collar thing makes all the difference,’ said Rosamund, studying Harriet with an expert eye.
‘The pleated collar would suit you too, Mrs Harwell,’ offered the milliner, ‘especially with that little skull cap and the dress you are wearing now.’
Rosamund’s dress was patterned in silk and velvet lozenges, lightening the effect of the black.
‘Would you like to try?’ said Harriet helpfully. ‘I’m sure we could get some made for you if you like them.’ She unhooked the little confection, and passed it to Rosamund.
The effect of it on the diamond-patterned dress and the
little cap was electrifying. Rosamund looked like some exquisite Columbine.
‘Ah!’ cried the milliner with deep satisfaction.
‘It’s lovely,’ said Rosamund, fretfully. ‘But it would take too long to have some made. Haven’t you anything I could wear tonight?’
Harriet was struggling with herself. The sight of a beautiful and rich woman staring at herself discontentedly in some of the most expensive looking-glass in London, and declaring that she hated wearing what her husband liked to see her in, was bound to irritate her. Rosamund was behaving so exactly as Harriet thought women ought not to behave. But something about her, some atmosphere of pathos, brought on no doubt mostly by the Columbine effect, pulled her the other way.
‘I could lend you a couple of the collars, if you would like,’ she said. ‘My dressmaker had a dozen made, and I don’t need nearly so many.’
She expected the offer to be brushed aside, but Rosamund eagerly accepted. ‘I will take the little cap, in that case,’ she said. ‘And now we must find something for you, Lady Peter. Something very plain and understated,’ she added, turning to the milliner, ‘and elegant rather than mannish. Something like the one on the model in the window.’
Rosamund turned out to be right; the hat on the model in the window looked rather good on Harriet, and was duly bought.
‘Will you come and have some coffee with me, Lady Peter? I know a very amusing little place just off Sloane Square. Do say yes; Laurence is out all day today and I have nobody to talk to.’
‘Just for an hour, then,’ said Harriet. It was borne in on her that the ‘Old Tabbies’, whom Gerald had told her to ignore, and who had audibly doubted if Peter’s wife could have time to write, had been thinking in part of social duties such as this. Harriet Vane would not have dreamed of spending time with Rosamund Harwell, with whom she had nothing in common; but the awful truth was that as Lady Peter she did have something in common with Mrs Laurence Harwell; rather too much for comfort, in fact. Certainly it would be better not to mention a need to work, since having needed to work had been found to be a sore point with her companion.
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