“What indeed? Oughtn’t I to give a dinner-party or something—take ’em to the theatre—polish ’em all off in a lump? I thought it would be a good opportunity, while you’re here.” He looked at her out of the corner of his eye, teasingly.
“Right you are,” she said. “Only you must let me select the guests. I bar all local snobs and magnates. I bar all the matrons with marriageable daughters. I bar the daughters even more: all local young maidens absolutely barred; also all the cheery young men. Norah’s husband barred, for his own sake as well as mine. Who’s left? Norah. And I bar taking her to the theatre. She’d only fidget and wonder if the back door was locked or if the boys had gone to bed in their boots. She’s utterly hopeless now. She never opens a book. She’s so dull. When I think what she used to be like—such good company—terribly pretty too, in an ordinary way. I suppose he’s done for her. She never had any judgment about men.”
Clare thought of Jimmy, that spoilt imperious male, that handsome and faithless lover: thought how he had twisted her round his finger—simple, innocent Norah, staying at home always, just as if she were married to him, and waiting for him to come back when he felt like it.
He had treated her shockingly: everybody except herself knew that: but as she was too stupid to realize what was going on, it hardly seemed to matter; in fact it served her right, one could not help feeling. The odd thing was that he had come back to her, apparently, every time: perhaps really would have married her in the end.
All the women had lost their heads over Jimmy. He had had a way of making one reckless … so that one offered oneself to him unreservedly … for a night or so … or longer if he would.
But these old matters should be buried deep, out of sight even of oneself. At least he had been honourable enough, or discreet enough, to keep one secret.
She said:
“I suppose she enjoys being victimized.”
“I suppose so,” said her brother vaguely.
They walked over the grass, with the sun and the now dying wind upon their faces.
“Saturday to-morrow. We’ll motor out into the country,” said Hugh. “There are some marvellous places you really ought to see. I’ll take the morning off.”
“Yes,” she said. “I couldn’t stand this place another day.”
“I suppose I’d better ask the MacKays to come,” he said. “We’ll have lunch at an inn somewhere. It’ll be a way of paying back—easier than a theatre. And perhaps they won’t come—or, he won’t.”
They planned their expedition.
“What about asking that woman too?” he said suddenly.
“What woman?”
“The one in the Park just now. If the others come, we might just as well have her too. She’s always talking about the country. Do her good.”
There was, thought Clare, a streak of kindliness in the boy’s nature. She remembered with amusement his reputation for kindness during his dancing days in London, before he went abroad: how charming he was to the plain and neglected, how attentive to dowagers. He was like that; he indulged in little acts that made for popularity. To be liked was a need of his nature.
“Well, if you can bear it,” she said. “I don’t mind.”
“I rather like her,” he said. “She might be good value, given a chance.”
It was, she thought, the sort of noncommittal answer that he always made.
They were back now at the gate by which they had entered the Park.
“I suppose I must go back now,” she said.
“Oh, pooh to that,” he said. “You can’t go back. It’s after seven-thirty anyway.”
“Their domestic is so appalling,” murmured Clare. “She and Norah have painful asides all through the meal. And she blows on my head when she hands things.”
“Ghastly. Don’t go back. Come along with me.”
“But they expect me. Isn’t it too rude? After last night—and the night before …”
Last night he had driven her out to dine and play bridge with the parents of an Oxford friend rediscovered in the hunting-field. The night before, the evening of her arrival, she had pleaded fatigue and gone to bed before dinner, and Hugh had come in to chat with her, and Norah had brought up her tray.
“Come on,” he said. “You can ring them up from my digs, and then we’ll go out and get something to eat, and look in at a low music-hall or something. There are always one or two good turns, and the rest is so incredible I think you’d be amused.”
“I’m sure I would be,” she said. Her eyes lit up. “I love a low music-hall. Oh, Hugh!—you shall show me night-life in the provinces. We’ll go on to the dancing-hell.”
“Hurrah!” he said.
He whistled to Grock; she took his arm; gaily they went off together down the street towards his lodging.
“It is fun to be with you again,” she said, looking up at him out of her greenish-yellow eyes.
He squeezed her arm and his smile broadened. No one was such good value, no one looked so well. He felt proud and satisfied, going about with her. She never interfered with him. Her life was lived apart from and unknown to him eleven months out of every twelve; her pursuits, her thoughts were a mystery, had it ever occurred to him to call mystery what neither vexed his mind nor engaged his imagination. They never grew to know each other any better, he might have said, had the possibility of a progressive relationship ever struck him. He knew enough about her. She was all right: not sad, not poor, not bored, not aged or altered as he had vaguely, uncomfortably feared she might be by the abolition during his absence of a husband he had scarcely known. She had written to him: I have decided to leave George. Too complicated for a letter. I’ll explain when I see you. No divorce at present. By the time he got home the new order was established, she never spoke of him, all rumour of the affair had ceased in London. She had a delightful little house in a mews, and some sort of mild half-time occupation, decorating lamp-shades or selling old furniture or painted wastepaper baskets (he forgot precisely what) in one of those new smart little shops. She had a small fast car and went away for week-ends.
Sometimes when he was alone, and the surprising, the uneasy, the lonely fit came on him, he thought of her: thought that, if she were there, he would really talk to her and feel better; thought that she was his only sister, dreamed of some undefined, all-understanding relationship which should exist between them, supposed that he was very fond of her: suspected, indeed, that he dearly loved her.
“Of course, my dear,” said Norah on the telephone, “it’s quite all right. It doesn’t matter a bit. … No, we’ve hardly been waiting for you a minute…” (the fish, she thought rapidly, was the only thing quite spoiled). She listened, then said: “To-morrow? … Well, it would be lovely, but I don’t know if I could leave the … Well, all right, perhaps for once … I’ll tell Gerry, but he never goes out, you know. … He hates motoring. Still, I’ll ask him. … Terribly nice of Hugh to think if it. … Wouldn’t he rather just have you? … Who? What woman who said she knew me?… Oh, Grace Fairfax? … Oh, but how terribly nice of him. She’d love it. I’ll ring her up. … Thank you so much. Have a good time. No, we won’t. I’ll leave the key under the mat.”
She opened the door and called through to the kitchen:
“We’ll start now, Florrie. Mrs. Osborne won’t be back after all.”
In his study, Gerald heard her.
Of course, he thought, of course: it was that boy again—strolling in and out as if the house belonged to him, so sure of himself, with his damned grin; taking her off—their guest, his guest—without a word of apology, seeing to it that no one else had a chance to get to know her. …
Norah put her head in.
“Supper, Gerry. Clare’s not coming. She’s just rung up to say Hugh wanted her to go out with him.”
“Oh,” he said, “a remarkable display of good manners, I
must say.”
“She might have let us know a bit sooner,” conceded Norah equably. “However, she said they forgot the time. She was very apologetic.”
For the hundredth time it occurred to her that she never had known when to give herself the luxury of taking offence. She had no dignity—was only too willing to smooth things over. She added:
“She’s his sister after all, darling. She really came to see him, I suppose. I’m sure I don’t mind what she does so long as she isn’t bored.”
Yes, he would only bore her, he thought bitterly: she had not been able to face the thought of his company, and so had stayed away with a lame excuse. He shrivelled. He desired to turn on Norah.
“I fully realize,” he said icily, “how tedious my society must be. By all means let her use my house as a hotel.”
And a temperance hotel at that, she thought: but he would not think that funny. … A regular glass of port would be so mellowing; but if she were to urge it, the result would be a biting commentary on the cost of maintaining two boys whom she had (so the suggestion was) insisted on bringing into the world to plague him.
But she wanted to tell him how sorry she was for his disappointment. He had hoped, she knew, for a little success with Clare. She—and in a lesser and more distorted degree, the boy too—had awakened in him an almost unprecedented impulse to struggle towards a personal relationship. She longed for them to encourage him, grieved to see him dashed and defeated. She put a hand on his shoulder.
“And, darling,” she said, “they want us to motor into the country for the day to-morrow. I thought I’d ask Mrs. Thompson if she’d take the boys for the afternoon. I would so love to go. I told them you didn’t care about expeditions.”
Blundering, foolish creature, he thought with exasperation. … He said curtly:
“Did you refuse for me?”
“No, darling—not exactly.”
“Because I’m quite capable of answering for myself.”
“You’ll come, then?”
“I might.”
“But, darling, that’s splendid.” She was discomfited: he was more determined than she had thought. “Only I was thinking of ringing up Cousin Christopher Seddon to ask if I could bring them to tea. I thought we might play some tennis.”
For there, perhaps, was something they would appreciate, she had been thinking—something she was able to offer them that might not bore them. But for years Gerald had refused to accompany her there.
“Would you mind?”
He made no answer, but gave a kind of snort, expressive, she feared, of cynical amusement, and shrugged his shoulders. … “As if it was I,” she thought, “who’s the snob—not he, poor dear.” Inverted-snobbery complex, Clare would have called it.
“You could browse in the library,” she said hopefully, “if you wanted to escape.”
But perhaps, she bethought herself, Clare and Hugh were going to perform a double miracle: perhaps they were going to deliver him at one blow from the twin demons with whose disastrous manifestations she had wrestled for years in vain: from his particular form of snobbery; and from that inner voice which, crying to him under social stress “Escape!” was no sooner heard than, alas, obeyed.
They went in to dinner. Stertorously breathing, red-pawed Florrie moved about the room.
They ate in silence, brooding, dreaming.
The roast chicken, thought Norah, reproached her from its dish: specially ordered for Clare, an extravagance, wasted now.
She dreamed of to-morrow: saw the long avenue of beeches through which they would drive, the deep radiance of mossy grass, the daffodils blowing; saw them all at tea in the great hall. She anticipated the anxious responsibility she would feel in bringing them beneath that roof, the fear lest they seem incongruous, discordant (as she had often felt herself) in face of the something rare, eccentric, haunted with the frustration of age, with a sterile grace, in its inhabitants.
But Clare’s beauty would make a harmony: and Hugh had such charm. …
Grace would be dumb, of course, but silence never mattered in that house. … How extraordinarily nice of Hugh to think of her; but, also, how queer! … She must ring her up. She would probably get panic and refuse.
He would show them to-morrow, thought Gerald—he would show them. …
And he thought, rather extravagantly, of golden lads and girls coming with song to meet him: and everything renewed; and himself laughing—teasing Clare back, and throwing up his head, like Hugh, to laugh aloud.
The clocks of the town chimed ten o’clock. Tom answered the telephone and brought the message to Grace’s bedside.
“Asleep?” he said.
She did not move or open her eyes.
“Yes,” she said.
He repeated the message. There was a silence. It could not be true.
“I told her I didn’t suppose you were up to it,” he said.
“Oh, yes.”
“It means a long day. …”
“Say I’d love to come,” she said, lying quite still.
Folly, madness. … But one could think it over in the night, and send an excuse to-morrow morning. For the moment, it was such a pleasure to say yes.
“She asked us both,” he said at the door (at least, would have, she’d said, if only there’d been room in the car …), “but I told her I’d arranged to play golf as usual. Pity.”
“Yes. What a pity!”
“I was to tell you particularly that it was their invitation.” His voice was questioning, self-conscious.
“I met them this evening in the Park,” she said, buried in the pillow.
“Oh, did you?” he said quickly. “Have a talk?”
“Just a little one. …” Bulky and stolid he stood, waiting to be told more. “Mostly about the weather.”
And the weather, the blessing of the sun, had worked as a kind of charm perhaps; had made them like her—could it be?—like her and wish to see her again.
“Oh, go!” she whispered into the pillow.
He went down, repeated his wife’s message, exchanged a few pleasant remarks with Norah, and rang off.
Of course, it would do her a world of good, a day in the fresh air. She was so keen on the country.
Their invitation. … Young Miller, that meant, and his sister. Quite a surprise. Well. … Probably he’d have felt a bit uncomfortable with them himself, a whole day like that. Still, it was unfortunate he could not go. Grace might have shown a little more plainly that she thought so. He would have liked to meet the young chap in a friendly way, had often thought of throwing out a casual invitation to dinner; only Grace was always against any entertaining … and of course the circumstances were different—education, position, and all that—awkward to explain properly. Still, this invitation only proved there were no superior ’Varsity airs about him: after all, it was a compliment (though a suitable one) to be asked to meet his sister.
But as he stood by the telephone, a wave of doubt, of envy and unease, rose darkly in his breast.
The clock struck eleven as the audience at the Queen’s Theatre ceased to stream out into the streets.
Packed into the last seats in the circle, half-choked with the smell of people and of Virginia tobacco, Clare had been amused; had marvelled at the kind of jokes with which the low comedian (from Lancashire) brought down the house; clutched Hugh’s knee while the leading lady strained an unyouthful throat and the chorus waved nude mauve dimpled legs; applauded the acrobatic patter dancing with genuine delight; had indeed derived entertainment from the whole crude, threadbare, yet in a way vital production, fair sample of the kind which passed through the town and vanished, week after week.
“That was an eye-opener,” she said, as they came out into the crowded street. “Now on, Hugh, on!”
“Right,” he said. “We’ll do the thing pr
operly and take a tram.”
While they waited for one beneath a lamp-post, they practised a patter dance upon the pavement; and the passers-by stared … stared … with the bulging, extinct, uncompromising stare of the north.
The dancing place was a long, low-ceilinged, ill-ventilated room, lit with a sickly light from lamps enclosed in art shades of coloured silk—orange, red, and purple, elaborately painted with representations of fruit. There was diffused within it a kind of hypocritical decorum, a furtiveness suggesting the repressed and dismal lasciviousness of British Nonconformist imaginations. It was vulgar, said Clare, without being funny. She was bored.
“I told you it wouldn’t amuse you,” he said.
“Does it amuse you?”
“N-no,” he said. “Not much. Once in a way one can get some fun out of it—if one’s in good form.”
The term expressed an indefinite state, and was also capable in his vocabulary of a more exact interpretation; not that there was any fixed boundary between the one state and the other, or any appreciable difference. One didn’t always need alcohol in order to be at the top of one’s form. He added:
“Some of these girls are damned good dancers.”
“I never saw such an unamusing collection,” she said. “I don’t see how anybody could—”
He laughed with a trace of embarrassment. … After all, with a sister one did not refer to these matters in a really personal way.
“They’re not exactly my taste either.”
He thought of Pansy again. She was not here to-night. She was different, with her neatness and pallor, and her curious prettiness of a little animal: an animal at once tame and savage. Like a pretty little monkey she was, with a monkey’s pathos. One of these evenings he would find her again.
Clare peered at some length into her pocket mirror, used lipstick and powder-puff, and said:
“Well, let’s dance once, anyway.”
Gracefully, skilfully, they danced the blues. The sight of them gave a momentary spur to the band; but they left the floor at the first encore, without clapping; were seen to eat a ham sandwich apiece at the buffet; and went out.
A Note in Music Page 8
