Mrs. Belamy was not unnaturally annoyed. “I’m sure I’m not making a fuss,” she said ; “it’s you. Personally I have never been so much interested in all this as you seem to be.”
“Yes, I am interested,” said Celia. She got up and went out of the room, leaving the door open so as not to slam it.
“Where are you going?” her mother called out anxiously.
“To get some whisky.”
So she was going to take to drinking strong horrid-smelling spirits as well as everything else. “What girls will do in order to be modern! “sighed Mrs. Belamy, and did not even have the heart to find comfort in the mirror once again before she went upstairs, though she would have seen there a reflection far less worn and ravaged than that of her younger daughter.
The whisky tasted abominable, but its physical effect was good, its moral still better. Celia felt hard and reckless and even rather dashing. “God, what I’ve been through,” she said to herself as she put down the glass on the dining-room sideboard. She had used to her mother, clumsily and ineffectively but sincerely, all the arguments that Dicky had used so unavailingly against herself.
“How like life! “she thought. She felt she knew a lot about life now. Her mother, poor darling, knew nothing. This self-satisfaction did not last long. Her mother knew what she had had occasion to know. One had no right to ask more of anyone.
But she herself, for all her superior knowledge, had had no power to act. She was tepid, colourless, an echo, and what is worse, an echo of an echo, for she did not care what Lady Marshall thought. “And what is worse,” said Celia, “an echo of what other people don’t think—for what do they think? Nothing. It’s all negative. No morality, no religion, only what somebody might say.”
She thought she would have preferred Granny’s stronger views ; they would have been something to hold on to or to fight against. But she had been beating at the air.
She forgot that in her struggle with Dicky not one thought of what her mother would think had ever crossed her mind. It had been decided both for him and against him entirely on her own impulses towards him ; but it was soothing to forget that now, to blame her false environment for her perplexity, to look round on all that solemn glass and say to herself, “There’s another sham. Papa hates it now, yet he keeps on with it. I’m living in an empty house.”
She would be free and brave ; she would throw aside these thin, negative restrictions and go to Dicky to-morrow to live with him, with or without marriage, whichever he preferred. She sat down at the little inlaid French writing-table and wrote a long letter telling him so, telling him she had been a fool, that she understood everything now, telling him about her talk with Mamma and how that had enlightened her as to her own weakness, pusillanimity, and inability to know herself in time.
When she read it through it seemed incoherent, wordy, and as though she were always changing her mind. She thought of the effect of his reading a letter like that to-morrow morning just as he was waking with a splitting head after getting home at about five or six from the Tadpole or the Tipcat or the Garbage or whichever night clubs they had gone on to. It might not even be altogether reassuring to learn that she intended coming to settle at Rainbow Road that day. Besides, the last post had gone.
She tore it up and went upstairs on tip-toe, but her mother slipped out in her dressing-gown as she passed her landing.
“I thought you were never coming up,” she said. “I’ve been heating some milk for you ; it will make you sleep ever so much better than whisky.”
Celia felt herself beginning to cry, and that would only distress her mother. She hastily choked her tears into the formula, “Darling, how sweet of you,” and as she took the milk Mrs. Belamy kissed her and said, “Now go to sleep and don’t worry. Remember Dicky’s coming to dinner to-morrow and we’ll all be so nice to him, and I know Iris is dying to meet him again.”
It was the first time she had referred to him as other than” that young man.” Celia, at a loss to express her gratitude, began “Darling, how——” swallowed the repetition and turned it into “how sweet you look with your hair down.” But for once this particular formula did not seem to give Mrs. Belamy its customary satisfaction.
In bed Celia bravely tried to taste the milk, which made her feel sick after whisky. Neither helped her to sleep ; she had never felt so awake in her life ; she had never felt so alive. Her room was hot and unbearably still ; through the pale darkness all the objects in it seemed to be watching her—the round white jug on the washhand-stand, the heavy wardrobe, the dimly glimmering flowers in her vase, were all intent on her.
It must be a very light night. She went to the window and by leaning out she saw that the moon had risen—a dying moon, lying on her back with an upturned, vacant face. The church spire rose to meet it; the surrounding well-ordered gardens were a mysterious forest, from it came the scent of lime and privet. It was a thick white heavy scent—the words made her think of Damaris. She would not think of Damaris ; there was no need to.
If she had stayed with Dicky they would have gone out on to his leads and seen the moon and the great lime tree below, its top branches beneath their feet all silvery and shimmering and the scent stealing up from them. They would have taken cushions out on the leads and stayed there up above the roofs. Why had they never thought of doing it before?
And suddenly in a gasping, inarticulate cry she told herself, “It is the moment. The moment is now.”
It was the perfect moment she had been waiting for all her life, that should give meaning to everything that had gone before, and it had come and gone and she had lost it ; she had flung it away, and now she was looking at the moon alone while Dicky danced with Damaris, perhaps he was looking at the moon with Damaris, perhaps he was in her arms, her lover ; perhaps she had lost him for ever.
For Damaris, old, with her heavy indifference and her blind face, hadn’t started the evening yet, only came alive at night, and in this magic light which transformed even The Borehams to an enchanted forest, might become the Lady Helen of Troy in her golden shawl.
But had Celia stayed she would have been the Lady Helen of Troy ; she would have been loved as no other woman had ever been loved, for Dicky had said so ; and now, as she thought of his agonized whisper in saying it, a tremor ran through her, she clutched at the window-sill, she seemed suddenly to have come alive for the first time this evening, when all these hours she had been deaf and blind, a clod of dough, an unfeeling dolt, making him hate her.
She had slid on to the floor, her head against the window-sill, and “I’ve lost the moment,” she sobbed ; “I’ve lost, I’ve lost the moment.”
The moonlight slipped from the roof to her window-sill, on to her head, on to her face, when at last she raised it to see, as so many thousand baffled lovers have seen in that chill and barren light, a frozen world of frustration singling her out for its especial curse.
She would not look at it ; she walked up and down the room, which was now lighter than ever. She lit a candle, which made it seem darker, more human, but moths came and circled about the light, and one got singed and fell fluttering, and she had to put it out.
She wished she had run out and posted her letter and Dicky would have got it by the second post. She wished she had taken it to Rainbow Road and dropped it through the letterbox, it would not have been so very far to go.
And at that she stopped and stared at her clothes that she had thrown in a huddled heap on the chair, as though they shared with her some guilty secret.
Dicky might not have gone to-night ; he said he wouldn’t go when she was persuading him to do so. He might be awake as she was, alone as she was, despairing, heart-broken as she was, and perhaps even looking at the moon from the leads as she wanted to be. She had decided to go to him to-morrow. But the moment was now. What should prevent her going, now that she knew it?
She began to dress. She pulled on her stockings and then she pulled them off again. She stared at them as they lay li
mp on the floor, but they would not tell her what to do. She must decide, but it was too late to decide ; she had decided without knowing it and had thrown Dicky away for ever. She might go to Rainbow Road and stand on the doorstep and her four knocks would go echoing through the house in the stillness of the night, and all the time Dicky would be dancing with Damaris, and however long and loud she knocked he would not hear ; but perhaps Leila would come down and open the door with the light of a candle glinting on her hair and laugh shrilly and say, “Yes, Dicky’s out, but do come up. I’m so glad you’ve come. We’ve been having a party, and there are still some people left.”
She dared not go. She got into bed instead. When she dozed it was worse than being awake, for all the time she stood on the doorstep and knocked and knocked but could make no sound at all, and all the time she knew she was knocking at an empty house. Until suddenly she heard four knocks and knew that she was awake and hearing them, and sprang up in terror and only slowly realized that she was hearing a clock strike four.
It was morning light now, damp and fresh, and the room no longer looked strange nor the things in it unfriendly. Her head no longer throbbed as though it would burst, she did not believe Dicky hated her. Birds were singing in the gardens ; she remembered something she had read at school of Sir Launcelot who all one night wept and sorrowed sore, but in the early morning “he heard the birds sing, then somewhat he was comforted.” She was grateful for all the lovely words that said once hundreds of years ago yet go on echoing through the world in continual percussion against the hearts of men and women, who may never remember to have heard them and then, just when their thoughts are dead and empty and arid, there they are.
Yet after this interlude bad dreams again troubled her, this time of Damaris in Dicky’s arms and her eyes snapping at the back of her head, so that Celia could hear them close beside her. But it was only the clanking of the cup and saucer when Gladys brought her her early tea. There she was bending over the little table, starched and ironed, armoured in crackling linen against life and against love, so that for all Cook had hinted to Mrs. Belamy of followers, Celia could not believe it and envied her immunity.
Beside the tea-cup was a letter from Dicky. She had never thought of that. She opened it shivering, her mouth dry. It would say all was over ; he would not come to-night; he hated her. Out it sprang, crackling, just like him. It was very short and appeared to have been written in an earthquake. “My darling darling darling,” it ran, “I am a brute, a beast, a cad, to have bullied you like that just now. Do please forgive me if you can, and remember that it was because I am mad for you. I’m dressing now for the Tadpole and writing this while shaving to catch the last post. I’m going because you wished it. Of course I oughtn’t to miss Roger O’Neill. You were quite right and I was howlingly, damnably wrong as usual. I hope I shan’t feel such an utter worm as I do now for long. Anyway it’s your worm for ever and ever amen. Dicky.”
Celia laid her head on the letter on the pillow and cried with the tears pouring down her face, “Oh, what a fool I’ve been! What an utter, utter fool!”
Chapter XXIII
“Darling, how sweet of you.” It was Iris speaking. Celia did not notice who was sweet and why ; she had lost the thread of the conversation ; she was watching the clock. Moment after moment till Dicky should come, and then again moment after moment after moment before she could tell him what a fool she had been, how she had longed all day to answer his letter, what fools they both were to have minded about any particular moment since in their lives ahead there would be plenty of others just as perfect, since they loved each other and nothing could alter that, at any rate not in so short a time.
It was sweet of Iris and Guffy to have come early in order to talk to her first, but she wished they hadn’t, for it seemed as though they had all been waiting for Dicky for hours and hours, though of course they hadn’t, for Iris and Guffy had come particularly early, they kept on saying that and that the clock on the drawing-room chimney-piece was fast, “ridiculously fast,” Iris said, and Celia noticed that she had said three times that her new flowered georgette was perfectly sweet. She had given up saying how excited she was at the thought of meeting Dicky again and how she did hope he would go on flirting exactly where he left off.
Guffy always stood with his back to the chimney-piece even when there wasn’t any fire, and Celia was thankful, for it hid the clock, which she did not believe was quite as fast as they said. Guffy said nothing, but he looked large and benevolent, he made her feel safe and placid, that life was not a matter of moments, unutterably sweet or unbearably wretched, but a steady stream in which she and Dicky could lose themselves together as he had lost himself in Iris. For he paid small attention to her ; he smiled at her beauty and not her chatter ; he never noticed what she had on, and he was quite obviously and happily absorbed in her.
She had never been so grateful for Iris’s chatter. She went on telling her mother about the maids and teasing her father about his tie, and if she paused for a moment, Celia thought, someone was certain to say that Dicky was late. Why should he be late? How could he be, after all that had happened?
But what had happened? She did not know. Anything might have happened. He might have got that option or even that cable from New York, anything might have happened to make him late. It was so silly to worry and she had sworn to herself after that last madly miserable night, miserable all for nothing, that she would never be such a weak distrustful fool as to worry ever again.
Still, it was a pity. Papa was so obviously getting fidgety. He was so unreasonable, and it was the first time, such a very special occasion. She pretended to move one of the china figures on the chimney-piece and peeped behind Guffy’s broad shoulders at the gilded face of the clock. It was just past eight o’clock. It was too bad, but it was absurd to worry, and it was all Papa’s fault for sticking so obstinately to dinner at a quarter to eight. Nobody could be expected to remember it ; she had reminded Dicky of it a hundred times, but of course he must have forgotten.
She walked away, but kept herself from going to the window. She said, “How lovely, Iris! “in answer to an anecdote, and presently, “No, did you? Not really? How lovely!”
She thought of a picture in a superlative French fashion paper called “Le Bon Ton” she had seen as a child. All the dress designs were pictures, and this one, which illustrated a black dinner-gown by Lanvin, showed a charming, anxious little hostess watching the clock for the moment that would bring an expected guest. It was called “S’il ne viendra pas nous serons treize.” That was all she had to worry her! Celia felt absurdly, bitterly envious of the charming hostess in the dinner-gown by Lanvin.
Papa pulled out his watch. Dicky was now just half an hour late. She said, “Don’t let’s wait. One can’t tell about Dicky, you know. Anything may have happened.”
They all went down. They reminded her that anything might have happened. They remembered that he wasn’t on the ’phone. Yes, it was such a pity. He was being put on of course, had applied for it weeks ago, but the brutes took such ages, and anyway it was hardly worth while as he was moving out so soon. Oh, yes, didn’t they know? He was moving to Birdcage Lane. Guffy actually did not know where that was, but Celia could not bring herself to tell him that the telephone exchange would be Mayfair.
They had had the caviare and the iced soup. Mamma had ordered the most wonderful dinner for him. “Oh, it’s all too bad, it’s too, too bad,” thought Celia, and she went on chaffing Guffy about his third new car in the last year, for Guffy liked being chaffed about his new cars. Stable in all else, he expressed his fluttering aspirations, his uncertainties, all the artist and woman in his temperament, by the frequency with which he changed his car.
There was a staggering, clamouring, battering knock on the front door. To Celia’s violent imagination there were in it four distinct blows. Dicky had come. Breathless, rushing along the street, unable to get a taxi, he had not waited even to ring the bell, but hurled
himself up the steps and on to the knocker.
“There he is?” she exclaimed.
“But would he knock like that?” asked Guffy.
“Oh yes, he’s used to knocking, I mean you have to knock for him, I mean——” She gave it up as she heard Gladys go along the hall and open the door. Now he would rush in all bursting with explanations and some wonderful news.
But Gladys came in alone and up to her. “A telegram for you, miss,” she said in her voice of starched indifference. As soon as she saw the red envelope she knew that she had been waiting all these breathless weeks and age-long minutes for a moment that would never come.
She opened it slowly, she looked at it, she said, “Wait a bit, it’s so long, I can’t make it out” ; and then, “No, he can’t come. He’s been prevented. There’s no answer, thank you.”
“Nothing’s wrong, is there, darling?”
“No, there’s nothing wrong.”
She was trying hard to think what was wrong. He hadn’t got her letter yet, that was it. But then she had never sent it, she had torn it up ; if she had only sent it, it might have made all the difference.
Colonel Belamy began to snort and question and exclaim. Iris told him to shut up and not be a nuisance, Dicky couldn’t come, and that was all that mattered. “He can’t help it, of course, can he, Celia?”
“No, he can’t help it.”
Iris was a jolly good sort ; she had never known it till now, though she seemed to have said it once years and years ago, she did not know why nor to whom.
“It’s rather a muddle,” she said. “I’ll tell you later. Go on, Guffy. What’s the matter with the Vauxhall?”
Under the table she crumpled up the telegram into a tight ball and put it in her vanity bag. On it was written, “Unable to come to-night owing to subsequent engagement to dine in Berkeley Square. Leaving for New York to-morrow. I cannot wait to conquer Kensington. Alexander.”
Knock Four Times Page 28
