‘My dear, patient Susan,’ Sarah began, writing on the 17th June, 1889, ‘How disgracefully I inflict you with my miseries, which are all of my own making! I have of course bored you hideously. You need not read these letters, I suppose, it will make little difference to me because I am so mad with unhappiness that I am incapable of reason – and yet I write because I know it is Reason you will give me. Am I not mad?
‘I must think, think, think. I think about the ten days between my night with him and his refusal of me. How happy I was! A happiness as false as the loveless happiness before he came. It was a queer, unthinking happiness and yet punctuated with spells of prayer, never tearful and hopeless, but heartfelt and necessary prayer, that he would come, that night of the twenty-eighth of January. Naturally I had the fancies one would expect a silly woman to have: Templecombe was to divorce me, and I was to retire with Gabriel Morrison – sometimes as wife, sometimes as mistress – into obscure country life. I was to bear his children and we were to be eminently well suited. Here the dream began to differ from a lovesick girl’s: for I was to be a miracle of complaisance, understanding that the husband whom I adored needed more than I could provide. He would have his mistresses but he would never wish to be married to anyone other than I. My advantages were to be prosaic, and thus real. No, I did not invest myself with new youth, beauty and charm. Gabriel Morrison, though so loving, is possessive and would fear no danger of my being unfaithful to him, for I am of course an acquired taste to gentlemen. And I would be acquiescent, quiet, welcoming, worshipful: a dream as realistic as could be, surely, dear Susan?! Of course, mixed up with it were pretty scenes of wild romance, and deep, conventional, domestic bliss. But seldom, and I always laughed at them, I promise you. I was truly quite happy with the thought of this probable future. Ah, well! I rather think that is enough for the time being, don’t you, gentle reader? Tomorrow I shall again be overcome by the urge to write at length of my folly.’
Sarah had told Susan that she suffered from all her moods at once, but in almost all her letters concentrated on one mood, leaving the others for other days. She thought Sarah wrote rather well now that she was unhappy, but she had only briefly suspected that her sister was not really miserable. She rather thought that to fall in love and then lose one’s lover when one did not expect to do either could be called a sweet pain. Sarah, she thought, would be sober when she went tomorrow to Bryanston Square, far more so than in the days of her happiness when her life and mind had had no contents. She would certainly, when facing Susan, be in her mood of careful, cynical resignation. Susan looked through another letter expressing this attitude, and then went up to see Sophia, who ought soon to be getting up, if she was feeling any better.
‘Oughtn’t you to be getting up now, if you’re feeling any better, which I trust you are?’ said Susan.
Sophia groaned, edged further up the bed, and pressed her cologne-soaked handkerchief to her forehead. ‘I am feeling better but I don’t really think I want to get up. Edwin will not admit that having two babies in such quick succession was very bad for me. There’s not much wrong with my constitution, as you will tell me, dear Susan, but childbirth really does take it out of one.’
‘My last confinement was very difficult,’ said Susan. ‘And so was the nine months.’
‘Oh, you are brave, Susan. Do you know, Edwin is no more sympathetic now I’m ailing because I’ve been bearing his children, than he was all those years and years ago when I was pining for Octavius, when we first met.’ She remembered that she had already pointed this out to Susan.
‘Don’t fret, Sophia, you’ve really nothing to fret about at all.’
‘I know. Not compared with poor old Sarah. No, I’m being self-indulgent.’ she said, looking a little wan. ‘I’ll be up in time for dinner, but don’t let’s either of us change.’
Sophia was rather discontented, Susan thought again, as she went downstairs and took out another couple of letters from the large reticule she always carried. She was not the Sophia Sacheverell of the past five years and one day she, Susan, would have to tell her so. Susan had thought of telling her younger sister that Sarah, when miserable, analysed her unhappiness, and each time she spoke of it said something rather different about it, unlike the majority who early chose certain words to describe their misfortune; but she knew that neither Sophia nor anyone else would find her idea even slightly amusing.
Susan read Sarah’s letter of the 4th January, 1890. She had scored the passage which was atypical, in order to comfort Sarah later.
‘I am, I think, dear Susan, inclining towards “Women’s Rights”, and I do not mean the dreary right to admission to the professions, but something altogether more elemental, more true: sex, Susan. Consider my case. Suppose that a woman, known to be a trifle loose, going home from some gathering where she has been flirting quite outrageously with a man, asks to be put up for the night in his lodging. His conclusion is obvious and pardonable; he is not considered to be in the least abandoned – it is the woman who is considered so. He then acquiesces. When, however, the lady declares that she is virtuous and prefers not to avail herself of the opportunity to share his bed, he is outraged. I suppose that either he violates her or he throws her out into the night. Either form of behaviour would be considered pardonable in the circumstances. But with the positions reversed, oh! gentle reader, what a difference there is! Will you not say, dear Susan, that I was lucky to find a young man amiable enough to attempt to make love to me at my very gentle insistence? How I hate Gabriel Morrison, how I despise him! The vain selfish coward, the contemptible flirt. Having been in the world, dear clerical sister, I have thought of a very disgusting expression which describes him exactly, but I will not sully your ears with it.
‘Sometimes I wish I were as innocent of passion as yourself.’
Susan put the letter down and unfolded another. It described how she, Sarah, had seduced Gabriel Morrison, who was an innocent, kindly, gentle boy as well as a strong man. Susan had kept this letter because it was one of the few which described Gabriel, devoting two paragraphs to his appearance and character. In the margin Susan had noted, ‘half a grain of truth?’
There was a fourth letter, expressing hope, to which Susan had written a reply echoing that sentiment carefully. This was the most recent letter among those which she had with her, dated 12th March, 1890.
‘My dearest Susan, how silly I have been lately. I have at last entered a more reasonable frame of mind. There is no good reason why he should not come back to me some time in the future. Only consider, Susan, the following points. Point A: he was, when with me, excessively affectionate. Point B: it was he, not I, who proposed that night that we meet again. Point C: at the time he had another mistress, whom he has now discarded. Point D: when I invited him to dine last June, he sent a message to say that he would be on the Continent, and Edwin appeared to confirm this. Point E: when he sent me the Christmas roses on the 28th January, he wrote, ‘With love from Gabriel’, and said that he and I would always be great friends. Susan, don’t these signs point to his seeing me again at some point? I do not of course mean to imply that we should be lovers, but we may be friends as we used to be, for that is what he meant and hoped for, and what could one wish for more than that?’ The letter went on to describe how she had been quite cold to Gabriel, both dignified and businesslike, quite unemotional throughout. Susan did not like reading this passage because she did not know how she was going to approach Sarah about it tomorrow.
There was a pier glass above the mantelpiece in Sophia’s drawing room and Susan, rising, caught a glimpse of herself in it. She did not study her reflection: she had not done so since she was first married, although she knew that she was growing stouter because her frocks had to be let out quite frequently for comfort, and sometimes Octavius told her she was tubby, or robust, or portly, like Augusta. He did not use the word fat. Susan knew that neither Sarah nor Sophia would ever be anything but slender, even girlish.
Her
cheeks were a clear red now, but the effect was not unpleasant because the rest of her skin was not marred by broken veins, and she had not begun to be wrinkled. She already had ten or twelve visible white hairs. Her light brown eyes were still very fine, but her little pretty mouth was beginning to look pinched in her full, highly coloured face. Sophia said that there was a certain resemblance between her and Edwin; she called them plump, cheerful little people.
*
The next day, Susan went to call at Bryanston Square. In her letters of the last fourteen months, Sarah had often said that she deeply regretted Susan’s being unable to come to London because of her difficult pregnancy and confinement, and the doctor’s insistence that she keep quiet after the birth. Sarah had not gone to Lynmore Rectory because she did not wish to meet Nicholas and Augusta; and she had not been invited because Octavius, who had twice met her, disliked her excessively.
A strange servant opened the door to Susan, and she suddenly thought it best to begin a trifle formally, and send up her card so that Sarah could prepare herself, as she would want to do. Susan waited in the hall, her hat in one hand and a small hamper, such as she sent to Thomas at Eton, in the other. She knew that Sarah, who had once enjoyed her food, would not be eating properly.
The maid put the card on a silver tray, and walked slowly upstairs and into the drawing room.
‘Mrs Octavius Potter,’ said Sarah. ‘No, Millington, I cannot bear to see Mrs Octavius Potter – my sister Susan, you understand.’ She smiled, and looked into the maid’s face. ‘Tell Mrs Potter that, although I shall continue to write to her, the sight of her so sensible face would fill me with – with too deep a shame at my own insane folly.’
‘Yes, m’lady, I’ll tell her you’re not at home,’ said the maid gently.
‘You will please say what I said!’ Sarah replied, colour coming into her face. ‘It is or great importance that she knows precisely what I mean,’ she added.
‘Her ladyship is not at home to visitors, madam,’ said the maid when she came back downstairs.
Susan flushed and looked up at the drawing-room door, which stood ajar. She turned down the corner of her card and placed it carefully on the hall table. She had none of Octavius’s cards on her and so could not leave a couple with her own, and she thought that although Sarah might enjoy it, to be quite so formal would be a little bit much. The parlourmaid had not gone away. ‘This must be rather a difficult place,’ said Susan, still flushed.
‘Not in the ordinary way, madam.’
‘You may take this up to my sister with my compliments.’ Susan put the hamper on the floor between them and left the house.
Sarah sat down. She was wearing one of the half-mourning dresses which she had had as a young wife, but she had not taken trouble in choosing it this morning. Except on the days when she was hopeful or grateful about something, and wore the prettiest and best-kept frocks she had had made in the years before she slept with Gabriel Morrison, she did not dress with care, and she often wore the dresses she had worn when she was happy. She had grown very thin again, and her skin was as sallow as it had been years before, and the bags under her eyes had come back. Almost all the time, she tried to conceal this, painting her face skilfully as she used to do. She knew that the whole effect was very slightly grotesque, but there was no one to see it.
Sarah rang the bell and asked for tea, with plenty of hot water and some slices of lemon, to be brought to her. She did not touch the tea, but went to her bureau where there was a bottle of gin, and mixed the gin and water and lemon in the little egg-shell china teacup, smiling, because she thought she ought to have an earthenware bowl, or dish, and she could only have it with great difficulty. She had heard of people drinking gin and hot water, and bowls of punch (which she had an idea was much the same thing, but with lemon) in the previous century. She thought about how she had a lady’s maid who did not care particularly for her clothes, but who could be trusted to obtain gin for her mistress and tell no one. Sarah thought that if Edwin Sacheverell found out about her drinking he would make her come to live in Tavistock Square, and give her nothing to drink, and a great deal of wholesome food to eat, and affection and common sense, because he had believed ever since she left Templecombe that she was within reach of redemption. Sarah felt almost angry.
A tear dropped down her cheek and she thought about Gabriel Morrison. To herself and to Susan she usually used both his Christian name and his surname, because it would be too much to say ‘Mr Morrison’, as she never had then: only when she was being very intimate did she say ‘Gabriel’.
Sarah had met Gabriel a week before, in the street, when it was dark, under a lantern. She had seen him coming swiftly, loping, towards her, and she had thought first that it was him, then that it was not. Then she had been able to see him clearly. She had stopped, not quite in his path, and he had carried on walking towards her. Just as he had set a foot down past her own she had said, ‘Hello’.
‘Hello,’ he had said, lifting his hat and looking down for a moment into her ugly white face.
‘Are you well?’ she had said as he moved.
‘Capital. Capital. Everything all right?’ he had added as he walked on, holding the hat to his head.
‘Quite all right,’ she had said, standing still with her face turned towards him and her hands in her pockets.
‘Good,’ Gabriel had said, and loped away. Between her first speaking to him and that moment he had been looking in her direction. Then Sarah had turned, and walked along the street, and thought slowly about her encounter.
She had felt sick when she first saw him in the distance and then, when he came within bowing distance and had not succeeded in passing her, she had been perfectly calm. The lantern had cast a clear light upon half his face and it was foolishly young. She had felt mildly curious, and she rather thought that her face had shown this to him. She hurried on.
‘Poor dear Gabriel,’ she had said as she reached Bryanston Square, and smiled, and repeated it. She had laughed when she suddenly considered that he might quite well have been shocked to see her out, unchaperoned in the dark. He was a conventional young man and she had mocked him.
As she drank now, Sarah remembered clearly that she had called him a foolish nervous pretty boy, and had described herself as full of an elder sister’s affectionate contempt. She had written it down in a letter to Susan which she had posted yesterday, when she was feeling lightly hopeful, to Lynmore Rectory.
Sarah carried blurred pictures of everyone in her head, but if she concentrated, and sometimes spontaneously, she could produce sharp images of Gabriel’s face and neck and shoulders in various positions, all of which gave her a happy pain. With difficulty she could see him under the lamp-post, less large, less strong, less delicate, less gentle. She summoned up the picture now and swigged at her gin and hot water and twisted her mouth, and then, without her calling, there came into her mind the image of herself in the crook of his large strong arm, looking up at his delicate nose and half-closed, gentle eyes. She did not cry, because she found it difficult to release tears except when she lay in bed in the morning.
*
When Susan returned to Tavistock Square she found Edwin at home. He came out of his study when he heard the doorbell ring, expecting Sophia, and looked her up and down.
‘My dear Susan, what a face of thunder! I take it that our Sarah was not at home to visitors? And she granted you an appointment, did she not?’
Susan did laugh a little. ‘I must say I find it quite intolerable but I don’t doubt you find her behaviour most reasonable, Edwin.’ She took off her hat, set it down, and jabbed the hatpins into the crown. He patted her hand and smiled at her.
‘Let us have some tea. No, Susan, I do see it must have been very difficult for you but of course the explanation is obvious.’
‘Yes, I had thought of the obvious explanation, but it won’t wash, Edwin.’
‘No? But Susan, I thought we all except Sarah agreed that life is q
uite drearily obvious. You once said to me that there’s nothing wrong with clichés, because they’re always true.’
‘Edwin, I warn you that I can’t stand any nonsense from you today.’ She turned round on the stairs to face him as she spoke and looked down at him. His charming face reminded her of Gabriel Morrison’s.
‘Dear Susan, do slap my face if it would give you any pleasure.’ They went on. ‘Now come, what can it be except that poor old Sarah has regaled you with too much in her notorious letters, and so can’t face you in the flesh? I bet she has a pretty good idea of all the sensible things you would say, and don’t you think it’s very natural that she doesn’t want to hear them? Of course Sarah wouldn’t think it out.’
‘The trouble with Sarah, Edwin, is that she spends far too much time thinking everything out in the most intimate detail. I’ll get a letter from her, saying just that and more, you mark my words.’
‘I mark them. May I see the letter?’
‘Pray don’t be facetious, Edwin. I must say, I don’t see how her letters can be notorious, considering they’re addressed only to me.’
‘I stand corrected but we do know the type, you know.’
‘These are different.’
‘Well, of course, you know that. I think you have thought of an explanation, Susan.’ Her mouth was pursed and she was looking sharply at him.
‘Yes,’ said Susan, sitting down, ‘I think that Sarah did want to see me, but not socially. She would have liked to see me in the confessional, and talked through a grille.’ Edwin said nothing at all. Susan did not really believe this, but the idea for the explanation had come from Sarah’s shouting, with the drawing-room door open and the concealing door left ajar when the parlourmaid came down to say, ‘not at home’. Edwin had not seen this and she could not tell him, discuss it with him, or question him. ‘The way she conducted herself when I called makes me quite sure of it,’ said Susan.
Gentlemen and Players Page 18
