“You might also consider other people,” said Celia.
“What! Your sister! To you! But you don’t like her,” he cried. “You cannot like her. As a friend, yes, you might do so. But not as a sister, an elder sister.”
She stared bewildered at this stranger who knew so much, who knew more than her, who of course knew nothing at all.
“Nonsense,” she said. “I am jealous of her ; that is why you think I don’t like her, but you are wrong.”
“Jealous—you, of—— Oh, but this is indeed wrong. Sit down again and let us resume the examination. Now, why do you think you are jealous of your sister? She is bigger than you, she makes more noise in the world. Is that it?”
“Of course. It’s all quite obvious.” She was laughing now. “Only I’ll tell you the absurd thing I was jealous of in her just now. Her name.”
“Her name! That is absurd indeed.”
“Yes, but you see I liked the name Rainbow Road. And it ought to be Iris to come to Rainbow Road.”
“But Iris was mistress of the rainbow, therefore this is not her home but the Rainbow itself, which is the pub at the bottom of Rainbow Gardens. No, don’t flinch again. I am not making your sister a barmaid, but merely working out the details of this classical-cum-cockney mythology. For Iris——”
“Iris is a jolly good sort,” said Celia faintly.
“Now what sad echo said that? Tell me, why are you sad? Is it because you wear a valuable emerald on the third finger of your left hand, and was it put there by a young man who prefers whisky to champagne as all sound young men do? Celia, are you in league with a whisky brain?”
“What is a whisky brain?”
“‘ The Navy’s all right.’ ‘ Iris is a jolly good sort.’”
“Give me my gloves.”
“Certainly not. I hold your gloves hostage for as long as you are in my territory. They are the loveliest things in my room, so small and slender and limp and white. I shall put them next my rose on that otherwise bare table, for they only are worthy of the position.”
“No. Give them to me. You make too many mistakes. And the worst is to make up things about other people.”
“Especially if they happen to be correct. I grant that. What a lot you could teach me about my mistakes. Doesn’t it attract you, the education of a low young man? But philanthropy is clean out of fashion. Celia, say you will come again. If you come again I will call you Miss Belamy—no, I will call you Mrs.——” He paused, considering, risking everything on one random shot, then pronounced, “Haversham.” Her face told him he was right, and his triumph filled the silent air as with a crackling explosion of fireworks.
“You are very clever,” she said resentfully.
“That means ‘ you are very impertinent.’ Being so, I can tell you two more things. One. You are not in love with Haversham. Two. I am not in love with you, nor likely to be, for my tastes, as you observe, are bad. Believe me, it is not merely respect for your wishes that confines my adoration to your gloves and prevents my holding your hand. I should be afraid lest I might break it.”
“Do you put me on a pedestal?”
“No, on the mantelpiece. That is your proper place. At any moment you might crystallize into porcelain.”
“No, oh no!”
It was so genuine a cry of distress, almost terror, that he was startled into tenderness. Replacing her on her seat as gently as though she were indeed a china figure, he knelt beside her and begged her to tell him what had made her so much afraid.
She stammered, “My mother collects them. She cares for them more than anything now. It would be horrible to be one, all cold and alone. I expect everyone feels afraid of that sometimes.”
He said, slowly piecing it together, “Your mother turned into one long ago. That was because of Colonel Belamy. And you are afraid you may do so because of Haversham.”
“Yes. No. Oh, what nonsense we are talking!”
“No, what sense! That is our mistake.”
He sprang up. “Celia, you are going, else you will be late for dinner and there will be a row and they will find out where you have been and you will repent on Haversham’s shoulder and never come again. Here are your gloves. My rose has dropped a petal on them. It is the same rose as I wore at the dance ; that is why its eyelids are a little weary. Yes, of course I believe that you will tell them all about it, especially Haversham. That is what you came for, was it not? But are you quite sure that, now you’ve been, you will tell him all about it? Even though our only caress has been a butterfly kiss on your glove from an eyelid of my rose?”
Chapter V
The barbarian was right. Celia neglected the main purpose of her visit and did not tell Ronny about it. Instead she was more agreeable to him than she had yet been and her behaviour had such excellent results, he was so anxious to ask questions but so fearful of her displeasure, that she smiled at her qualms concerning his single-hearted devotion. All that was needed to keep it was to be sensible, not to show too much, expect too much, nor give too much.
This she found easier than she had thought. She had gained much knowledge and experience since tea-time ; she suspected that men preferred women to deceive them, and checked the childish impulse to ask him if this were not so. After all, she could wait and ask the strange young man and he would be much more illuminating than Ronny on the subject. She began also to suspect that a woman’s deceit, say rather, her discretion and reserve, can only come easily with one man if there be another to whom she can say what she likes.
The discovery slightly alarmed her, but she remembered her mother’s injunction not to be introspective, for there are moments when to a sensitive conscience even parental advice can come in handy.
There was one other disconcerting discovery that evening. She could not be sure as to the exact sum of money in her purse when she had gone out, but she did not believe the young man could have repaid himself for the taxi, and on going through the money yet more carefully she found a small and battered coin which she had at first taken for a sixpence but found to be an ancient coin stamped with a youthful head, the rather flat profile of a boy or young man crowned with laurels. He must have put it in her purse when he was pretending to extract the taxi fare from it. She wondered if he had intended it as a gift or as a hostage to ensure her visiting him again.
On the second morning after her visit her doubts were settled by a big blue crackling letter on her breakfast plate. She at once recognized the facile, dashing and mockingly grotesque handwriting she now saw for the first time ; it was like him, too, to use a much more expensive note-paper than he could afford. The ignoble address was scrawled across the top, disposed of in a hurry. Her name on the contrary was written across the centre of the sheet of paper in delicate characters as if in tender pride.
“To Celia, Belle amie.
“When will you come again? I shall not stir from my crow’s nest till you come. Every evening from four o’clock onward I shall be utterly idle, unable to write, to read, to see my friends, to do anything but rage in furious impatience until your second advent. Be merciful and either come at once or tell me at once when you will come. This is not because I am in love with you ; I have been in love a hundred times and it was never in the least like this. Therefore do not misunderstand me for giving the original form of your surname. Etymology has been a passion with me since boyhood.
“If you do not come I shall of course understand that you have misunderstood. But ‘ Do not, O do not prize thy beauty at too high a rate.’
“It is such a mistake.
“Yours till life do us part,
“DICKY THE DAGO.”
So she went. Of course she did not write. Why interrupt the delicious flattery of his impatience?
She went three days after she had had his letter, and she walked, for it was not far and it was a lovely evening now the rain had stopped, and there were stars above the trees and the church spire in the middle of their railed enclosure that was kno
wn neither as square nor gardens but with simple exclusiveness as The Borehams. She went along quiet roads, past large houses and diminutive gardens whose sanctity was guarded by gateways and stone dogs as proudly as if they graced the entrance to some ancestral park.
In avoiding the glare and clutter of the Palace Road she had to go by many circuitous twists and turnings and lost her way several times before she approached Rainbow Road from its other end, along a very dark street rendered the more mysterious by a row of trees and a high wall, and behind the wall a space with branches against the sky. Under the trees a silent and immobile couple clung together, impervious to the damp wintry air. The road ended abruptly in face of a large and tolerably elegant house, the first and only detached house in Rainbow Road, which ran at right angles to the wall and row of trees.
She walked more and more slowly up it, meeting a lean and anxious cat and a man with a yellow face on top of a black dressing-gown. Afterwards it occurred to her that he was Japanese. It was very difficult to see the numbers on the doors ; she went backwards and forwards several times before she could be certain that Number 39 was the house where the first-floor windows, open on to the balcony, disclosed such a babel of voices talking and laughing and calling to each other in short high shrieks.
She walked softly up the steps and took up the knocker. At the first knock there was a thud on the balcony above her and a piece of plaster fell on her hat. She looked up to see the top part of a head thrust over the edge of the balcony. “My God, my God,” said the head and disappeared.
Two thunderbolts struck the stairs, and then as before the door was opened quietly, rather slowly, and she was confronted by a young man of almost weary calm.
“I won’t come in. Aren’t you——” began Celia, but he spoke disregarding her.
“This is all wrong. You’ve seen me over the balcony. Leila’s quite right; it’s never safe to peep over the balcony.”
“No, it isn’t. You dislodged a piece of plaster on my hat which has probably broken the feather.”
“Not at all. Delighted, I’m sure. Or do I say Thank you so much? It’s no good. You’ve put me out, no, found me out. There have I been doing nothing but the correct procedure ever since you left, pacing up and down my lonely room like a tiger in a cage, only pausing to start at a passing taxi or to say at frequent intervals, ‘ Will she never come? ’ And you must needs turn up without any warning taxi at the single and only moment when the Girls Below have dragged me from my desolate lair to their beastly tea-party so as to satisfy their morbid taste for a death’s head at the feast.”
“Go on, Dicky, that’s splendid,” called a voice from the stairs.
Celia saw a white face framed in the Oriental curtain.
“Isn’t he wonderful?” said that same rather strained and high-pitched voice. “Do come up and look in on us on the way if you’re going to see Dicky. We’ve only just hauled him down, so don’t drag him off just yet, will you?”
“Damn her!” said Dicky softly.
“It’s awfully nice of you, but I don’t think, I mean if it’s a party——”
“That’s right. Go out into the night and say, ‘ All is over,’ ‘ I might have known,’ ‘ Never again.’”
“Oh, but I say, she is coming up, isn’t she?”
There came a high-heeled clatter down the stairs.
“Go to hell, Leila,” said Dicky.
“I’m damned if I do. Please come in. We’ve heard so much about you. It’s only a tiny party and we won’t keep you a minute.”
“No, you’ll come straight upstairs,” said Dicky.
Their two anxious faces, one so white and the other so dark, swam in the ghastly glare of the gas-jet, divorced by its downward shadow from their bodies. Leila’s hair was smooth to her head and of a glossy purple as though she had risen dripping from the sea, her eyes were jade green, it was the head of a mermaid floating in mid-air.
Scared and annoyed, Celia felt that flight would look foolish, that she would do nothing Dicky told her, that she must therefore follow the third course and the queer girl upstairs. Was her hair black or copper or henna? It was nice of her to be so friendly, but had Dicky really told her all about herself? She thanked her and ignored Dicky, who tried to speak to her under cover of Leila’s chatter as she preceded and he followed her up the stairs.
“So sweet of you,” said Leila, leaning back. “I thought you wouldn’t mind. You see, it would break up the party if he went just this moment. And the Woottons would so love to meet you.”
“Lies, lies, all lies,” whispered Dicky, leaning forward. “I have never mentioned you to her. I look on you as altogether unmentionable. I mean that when I’m with her I never even think of you. No, no, I mean——”
“You’re breathing down the back of my neck,” said Celia coldly.
Leila threw open the door into a multitudinous din.
“Here they are,” she cried gaily. “This is—only I haven’t the least idea who this is. Do tell us your name.”
But she did not, for Leila had already ceased to pay attention and her own was distracted by Dicky muttering “Curse you” in her ear.
“Have a sandwich,” said Leila.
“May they choke the lot of you,” said Dicky.
“So glad you came in,” said a girl who was advancing on them with languid grace. “I’m Leila’s sister, Mab. Those are the Woottons, who wanted to get Dicky for a Pierrot show. That’s why. Don’t step on them if you can help it. Get her something to drink, Harry. Have a sandwich, won’t you?”
Celia threaded her way through the Woottons, who were strewn extensively across the floor, and took a seat on a cushion half-way under a table. Dicky, ignoring the Woottons’ entreaties to name a day for the show, seated himself behind her and completely under the table. Again and again the soft persistent whisper wooed her ear.
“This is hell.”
“God, how I hate women!”
“May we all die to-night!”
“Thank you so much,” she said again and again in answer not to it but to the repeated offers of food and drinks. “No, really, no thanks.”
The room was larger than Dicky’s and much higher. The bare grey walls rose austerely from behind clusters of people who sat mostly on the floor, and one wall was entirely covered by magenta window-curtains burning dully in the purple-shaded light of oil lamps. Tulips the colour of corpses writhed against the walls, casting shadows like snakes. There were few chairs, many bright cushions, and no ornaments. There was one large bookcase filled for the most part with surprisingly dry-looking books. The only picture was a prettily painted portrait of a lady with sloping shoulders, swimming eyes, and a sentimental turn to her head. Celia thought her like one of Byron’s heroines and that she had probably spent her time saying,
“Man’s love is of his life a thing apart,
’Tis woman’s whole existence.”
On second thoughts she was like Leila herself, less agonized, more resigned, Leila in Regency ringlets instead of an Eton shingle.
Mab was cool and quiet, perhaps intentionally so as to smooth over her sister’s exaggerated manner. Leila talked nonsense, was silly on purpose, putting in the wrong word wherever it would raise a laugh ; and yet she was clever, she brought everyone in and made them talk on the things they liked talking about, flattering them with an anxious air of endeavour to understand their profound remarks. She increased her resemblance to a mermaid by the frequency with which she produced a pocket-mirror and combed her hair, stroking and smoothing it to a billiard-ball perfection. She sprawled and struck attitudes, her cigarette dropped at a raffish angle from the corner of her lips, her ultra high heels gave an impression of her tottering precipitously forward, and yet she was graceful, she was floating, lost in space, like a Japanese lady painted on a plate in thin bright lines with no background.
Leila came and talked to her under the table and Dicky crawled so far back that he banged his head against one of the legs. It ser
ved him right, Leila said, and she asked Celia if she worked very hard, it must be so interesting to write and it was her greatest ambition to be either a novelist or an eyebrow specialist, for she had taken on this job in Lady Scorhill’s beauty shop, she was a sweet woman to work with, perfectly sweet, only she had no idea of business and Leila always had to do the accounts over again and she was frightfully lazy, so that Leila always had to be there first thing in the morning and last thing at night, and she was so rude to her customers that Leila spent all her time pacifying them afterwards.
“But how are you and Dicky getting on with it?” continued Leila on top of this catalogue of sweetnesses. “Do you think he’s any good? I always tell him he will be when he’s had more practice.”
Dicky mercifully spoke from the recesses of the table, but his words showed that he was as mad as she.
“Oh, we’re getting on splendidly,” he said. “The population of Kensington won’t know itself by the time we’ve done, will it, Celia?”
“I suppose not,” said Celia.
Mab gave her cool little laugh. A quiet man who was lounging against the wall behind her asked what they were doing about the population of Kensington.
“Writing a book about it,” said Dicky, and Celia supposed that was why Leila went on to tell her scandals about literary people she hadn’t heard of, and to ask her if she had read Such and Such by So and So. One simply hadn’t lived until one had read it. From what she told of it Celia thought that she herself would continue not to live.
The quiet man came to her rescue, but only with further dangers, for he asked what she had written—was it novels or plays or short stories?
“Nothing,” she said firmly, disregarding Dicky’s jogging.
Knock Four Times Page 6
