He stopped by her side and bent over her and kissed her tenderly. The particular scent used by Elise Angel still hung about his clothes and she drew away from him with a quick start.
‘You’ve been making love to someone!’ she cried. ‘Oh Richard, how could you do it?’
That refrain ‘how could you do it?’ – hadn’t he heard it, just an hour or so ago, on the lips of the other?
‘My actress reeked with every kind of scent,’ protested Richard. ‘They all do, you know. Why, you yourself were buying something of the sort the other day. I expect we shall have you using rouge soon!’
His air of bullying levity did not conceal from Nelly the fact that something quite serious had occurred to him. He was a different person from the Richard who had left her that morning.
‘You’ve been making love to someone,’ she repeated. ‘But it doesn’t matter. I’m too tired to talk about it now. So don’t tell me any more. I think I shall go to bed if you don’t mind. It upset me a bit waiting so long. It isn’t nice to have to wait so long.’
She raised herself up with a weary effort as she spoke. ‘No, no, my dear,’ she repeated, ‘you can’t fool me like that. You’ve been making love to someone while I was waiting and waiting for you. You had quite forgotten my existence.’
‘I don’t see,’ said Richard, beginning to assume an irritated and scolding tone, ‘why I shouldn’t have my friends just as you have yours. How do I know what people you see up there in Canyot’s studio? I don’t ask you inquisitorial questions when you come back to me.’
‘You have no need,’ she answered with a sad little smile, sitting on the edge of the sofa and propping her chin upon the palms of her hands. ‘But it’s no matter. I don’t care what you do. I don’t want you to tell me anything. All that came to an end long ago when I found you were writing to someone. I ought to have known something of this kind would happen. I suppose I couldn’t expect anything else. I did think, though, just a little, that since I am as I am you wouldn’t have done anything like this – yet.’
He was just about to pour forth a torrent of false asseverations when there came a ring at the street door. ‘What’s that?’ he whispered looking at her in a frightened nervous way. He vaguely expected some drastic agitating message from Elise Angel.
She got up quickly and walked with steady steps to the mirror. ‘Open the door, Richard, will you please, and bring him in.’
‘Who is he? Is it Canyot?’
She smiled at him out of the mirror, as she arranged her hair – her old mocking elf-smile. ‘Bring him up and you’ll see, my dear. No – it’s not Robert.’
Greatly puzzled but at the same time a little relieved Richard ran down and opened the door. He came up escorting a tall slender girl, quite unknown to him, who was at once greeted by Nelly as ‘Catharine dear’. ‘Where is Ivan then?’ she asked. ‘I thought it was his ring.’ Catharine Gordon looked round the room with an expression of amused suspicion. ‘You’re not hiding him up somewhere are you?’ she said. ‘This is Mr Storm, I suppose?’ And she gave Richard a firm boyish grip and fixed on him a pair of laughing grey eyes.
‘Oh, I suppose Ivan’s gone off somewhere else,’ she said; and without further invitation proceeded to take off her hat and fling herself down in the only available armchair. She seemed to exercise a kind of fascination upon Nelly, who promptly seated herself on the arm of her chair and began toying with her silver bracelets, the weight and number of which gave to her long brown wrists an almost oriental appearance.
‘What will you do if you don’t see him tonight?’ inquired Nelly.
‘What shall I do?’ repeated Catharine Gordon. ‘What would you advise me to do?’ And she turned round suddenly upon Richard whom Nelly had just now a tendency to treat as if he were thin air, rather than a tired, excited, agitated, uneasy man of forty-five.
Richard who was standing at the window drew near to her and surveyed her curiously. She had the longest legs of any girl he had ever seen and she stretched them out now in front of her as if they had been the legs of some young athlete.
‘You must tell me more details,’ he said, indicating by the way he looked at her and by the interest in his voice that she had made an impression upon him.
‘Don’t tell him anything,’ threw in Nelly. ‘Why should you? It’ll do him good to get a little bewilderment. Just go on talking to me.’
‘But I should like to tell him,’ said Catharine, crossing one leg over the other and clasping her long brown fingers behind her head. ‘I should like to hear what he’d say.’
Nelly at this got up from the arm of the chair. ‘Oh well,’ she said, ‘if you’re going to start confessing your sins to Richard I’d better make the coffee.’ She retreated into their little kitchen.
Catharine did not seem the least perturbed by this outburst. On the contrary, she turned to Richard with quite an intimate gesture. ‘Come and sit down,’ she said; ‘there’s plenty of room for two thin people like us.’ Then she added in a low quick whisper, ‘You must be very kind to Nelly these days; the poor darling looks worried.’
Richard had a taste that evening of what real Bohemian life in New York is like, and it amused him that it should have come to him through Nelly. If these are the sort of people she meets in Canyot’s studio, he thought, I certainly needn’t agitate myself about Elise.
‘… And so I said I’d be down here tonight and he said he’d look in too, though he had to be some place else for dinner; the French Pastry Shop I think it was, or the Five Steps Up, and I knew he might change his mind if Lucretia dragged him round to her rooms, but the chances are she’d hardly dare to do that, as it would be breaking up the party and leaving Tassie Edstein, and even Lucretia would scarcely go quite so far, so I fancy he’ll turn up all right; it’s absurd if he doesn’t, because he knows he’ll have to make it up sooner or later and the sooner he does it the less I’ll punish him; have you a cigarette? Oh, imported English ones! That’s lovely.’
Richard’s mental confusion was not greatly cleared up by this breathless discourse. A certain Lucretia was evidently no prude and a certain Tassie was evidently a maiden who couldn’t be left unprotected in the streets of New York.
He hazarded a leading question to this long-legged damsel whose athletic person was giving him at that moment what children call pins and needles, as she leaned against him as if he were a convenient piece of furniture, completely devoid of normal sensibility.
‘Who is this you are speaking of, this man you are expecting here?’
‘Who is it?’ She jumped up from his side and ran, or rather bounded, into the kitchen. ‘You’ve never told him about Ivan!’ she cried indignantly. ‘Here have I been chattering on for the last half hour and I find he doesn’t know who Ivan is! Do you and he go round with different crowds?’
Nelly’s answer was interrupted by such a burst of laughter that Richard could not catch its purport. The two women then launched into a whispered colloquy punctuated by little smothered shrieks of amusement.
What children they are, he thought, stretching himself out in his big chair and lighting another cigarette. If it were Canyot and I making that coffee, we should be either propitiating one another’s vanity with the most pompous earnestness, or we should be quarrelling like the devil!
They came back into the room at last, with the coffee not quite spoilt by so elaborate a preparation. At that very moment the doorbell rang again. Richard ran down to open it, full of curiosity to see this much talked-of Ivan. As he descended the stairs he could not help thinking with what completely different an eye he regarded everything in the world, now that he had seen Elise.
He opened the door to the stranger; who walked in with hardly a gesture of thanks. When the door was shut he turned upon Richard and showed himself under the electric light of the little hallway to be a man of about thirty with a pointed black beard and a head of small stiff black curls. His eyes were at once dreamy and alert; dreamy on the surface of th
em and profoundly alive beneath the surface. ‘Is she up there?’ he inquired.
Richard lifted his eyebrows. The man’s manner irritated him. ‘Is it our place you’re looking for? Please come up, will you? We’re on the next floor’ – and he proceeded to lead the way.
Halfway up the stairs the man caught Richard by the arm. ‘Is she angry with me?’ he whispered. ‘Has she told you about me?’
The long rambling discourse he had just submitted to, squeezed so very close to the young person in question, rose confusedly in his memory.
‘I really don’t know,’ he answered drily. ‘But please come in. I’m sure my wife will be delighted to see you.’
They entered together and Nelly greeted the newcomer enthusiastically. He was introduced to Richard as Ivan Karmakoff. Catharine, who had once more taken possession of the armchair, extended to him a long languid brown arm without making any attempt to rise.
They all sat down and began drinking coffee.
Catharine concentrated herself upon Richard, and in order to face him more directly she swung her legs over the arm of the chair, displaying a greater length of openwork silk stocking than he had ever associated in his life before with any respectable conversation.
‘You’ve seen Fancy Goring in The Way of all Souls, I suppose?’ she asked. ‘She’s a good actress, but her personality is terrible. Oh, and have you seen Keenie Trench? She does that innocent-little-girl business adorably – a regular young Greuze, don’t you think so? But what you must see, if you haven’t yet, is Jack Candid in The Blue Mirror. He’s a bit wobbly in the serious parts but he does that harlequin stunt to absolute perfection. What a pity Charlie Guelph didn’t do the set for that thing! Don’t you think so? He’s the only one of that Broadway bunch who’s got any gumption. It was real creative stuff that he did for Ralph’s Banbury Cross – those conventional trees, you remember? and that market place? They say he’s never got another job since his affair with Lena Hastings. Kind of pulled him to pieces, so they say at Aunt Flouncy’s. Disintegrated him. Broke his spirit. Lena’s mad about Jack Candid now, who’ll hardly speak to her. Serve her right, I say. But she’s very unhappy. Jack Candid’s the last person a girl ought to get involved with. I like him myself. We have splendid times together. But he knows he can’t be at all personal with me. And so he treats me quite decently. She’s a little fool I think. And I’d tell her so, for a cent! Oh, and have you seen Elise Angel yet?’
This unexpected question coming bolt out, at the end of a rigmarole that Richard had quite lost the thread of, made him give a palpable start.
Like one greater than himself and on a very different occasion, he lied bluntly and deeply.
‘Elise Angel? No I’ve never seen her work. What is she? an imitator of Clarice Darling?’
Catharine Gordon clasped the arm of the chair and bounded to her feet. She forgot all about her difficulty with Ivan and turned to him with something like a shriek of excitement.
‘He’s never seen Elise Angel! Is it possible? He says he’s never heard of her!’
There was a general movement of aesthetic consternation. Richard felt that he had damned himself for ever with the initiated of Manhattan.
Even Nelly attacked him – ‘But surely, Richard, surely—’
‘Why,’ cried Catharine. ‘Nelly told me you’d spent years in Paris. It’s only Paris that really understands Elise. She gets outrageously wretched houses over here. She hates this place and I don’t blame her. But her time will come. They’ll be sorry for it. Why, my good man, she’s the greatest artist in the world. She and the Duse. Tell him about her, Ivan. It’s incredible he shouldn’t know!’
‘I can only tell him,’ said Ivan, speaking very slowly and deliberately, ‘that her genius has revolutionized the whole modern theatre. Her influence is behind everything – not only dancing, but everything. The Russian Ballet of course – they’ve admitted that themselves. And everything that’s been done since! It’s her ideas, they say, that started Charlie Guelph with his best sets.’
Richard began to curse himself for his treachery to his goddess. Never had his diplomacy blundered so abominably. He felt instinctively that Nelly was watching him very closely in his discomfiture. He felt that his power of self-control was on the point of abandoning him. He felt that just because it was all so impossible he might at any moment blurt out the truth.
In desperation he got up from his seat. ‘Well, some of you people must take me to see her,’ he muttered. ‘Yes, I think I do remember hearing of her in Paris. But this office work today has put everything charming out of my head. And I had too good a dinner tonight – that’s another thing – a dinner uptown, you know? I scared Nelly when I came in. I really wasn’t quite myself. They gave me champagne.’
‘Who’s they?’ cried Catharine Gordon, flinging out her long arms and seizing Richard by the shoulders. ‘Shall I make him confess, Nelly?’
Richard looked helplessly at the arms that held him. They were bare except for the loose short sleeves of the smock she was wearing, and their skin looked brown and soft above the elbows like the skin of a young gipsy.
He threw them off almost roughly. ‘I think I must go out for a bit of air,’ he said. ‘I seem to have been indoors all day. You people will look after Nelly till I come back, won’t you?’
Ivan Karmakoff walked to the side of the room where he had left his hat. ‘I think I’ll come with you, if you don’t mind,’ he said.
‘That’s lovely!’ cried Catharine putting her arm round Nelly’s waist. ‘Then I shall have this sweet thing to myself. But don’t forget, Ivan, that you’ve got to take me home. Be sure you bring him back, Mr Storm. Don’t let him run off.’
The men went down the stairs together and out of the house. ‘Do you mind if we go to the river?’ asked Karmakoff.
Richard assented passively; crossing Varick Street and Hudson Street they made their way to the waterside.
There was a heavy wooden jetty, used for transferring garbage from the rubbish carts to the barges, that stretched out into the river just at the point where they struck the wharf.
Karmakoff led Richard out along the edge of this, in placid disregard of the evil odours that emerged from the cavernous recesses.
When they reached the end they sat down on some wooden crates and contemplated the lights of the river and the lights of Jersey City on its opposite bank.
At their feet the tide was rolling in from the Atlantic, dark and swift and stormy; an evil-looking volume of formidable water, out of whose blackness arose gurglings and whisperings, capricious splashings and strange indrawn sucking gasps, like the swallowings of an indescribable monster.
Karmakoff lit a pipe, and Richard got a truer glimpse into the secret of his personality, here by the water’s edge, than he had obtained in his wife’s apartment.
A lamp suspended from the mast of a small coal steamer adjoining the jetty where they sat threw a flickering light upon them both. Ivan’s black beard, sulkily sensual lips, and heavily lidded beautiful eyes fixed themselves upon Richard’s mind as objects with which he was destined, whether he liked it or not, to become more closely acquainted.
Karmakoff began talking quietly and bitterly about America. He described its ways, its weaknesses, its inmost pathology, like a surgeon dissecting a corpse.
As Richard listened to him he began to wonder what his relations could possibly be with that brown-armed Indian-looking girl who called herself Catharine. Was all that fuss, as to what temper she was in and so forth a mere social convenance, proper to that particular circle, but meaning nothing at all to the man’s real identity?
The fellow attracted him and repelled him simultaneously. He deliberately lit a cigarette for no other reason than that, by the light of the match, he might get a clearer glimpse of those extraordinarily beautiful eyes.
There was something a little equivocal and menacing about the kind of sensuality betrayed in the man’s mouth. But his eyes were, without any doubt
, the most beautiful eyes that Richard had ever seen in the head of any human being, whether man or woman. They actually seemed to be a woman’s eyes, as he looked at them under that steamer lamp. Had not the black beard on his chin decided the matter Richard could have sworn that he was a girl in disguise. Even as it was, he caught himself hazarding a fantastic speculation as to whether it was possible that the beard was a false one and that he was on the track of a wild romance. But no! Ivan’s voice was not a woman’s voice. It was deep and low and purring. It was a seductive voice but the voice of an eminently masculine mind. It had a caress in it but it also held out danger signals. It was curious to Richard how he felt about this man. It was as if he had seen him before. But he certainly had never seen him before. What was the attraction he exercised? By degrees it occurred to him that the explanation was that Karmakoff was his direct psychological antipodes – his fatal opposite – with vices, virtues, nobilities, ignobilities, made up of some chemical compound that was the extreme antithesis of all that he was himself.
Karmakoff soon drifted into political and economic problems; and Richard, before he quite realized what was occurring, found himself listening to a most subtle and convincing argument in support of the dictatorship of the proletariat.
As the writer listened to one clear-cut argument after another, lucidly and modestly suggested, hinted at, made way for, rather than flung dogmatically down, he became conscious that he himself had hitherto barely touched the fringe of these drastic issues.
Karmakoff’s purring, caressing voice, between long puffs at his pipe, the stem of which acted as a sort of pointer to his argument, flowed rhythmically on, above the flow of the dark water at their feet.
There was certainly nothing personal in his argument. It was almost inhuman in its impersonality. It might have been addressed by an inhabitant of Mars to an inhabitant of Uranus; for all the appeal it made to ordinary human prejudices. It seemed to use all human passions, all human pieties, as if they were pawns upon a gigantic chessboard.
After My Fashion Page 23
