Upwester first met Delia at that party of Aubrey’s with which Clough had refused to have anything to do. The party itself may be described in Upwester’s words, which if he repeated once he did so twenty times.
‘Now I like a party like that. Quiet, sensible talk, nobody one over the eight, no dressing up in pyjamas, no ragging, not to speak of, and everybody off home by half-past two! That’s the stuff; makes a break! Must have another. Fresh as paint this morning – thoroughly enjoyed! But look here, my old Ticklers’ jam; got a bone to pick with you! You didn’t tell me there was a real D.V.! I don’t want to butt in, but who in smoke is she? Costs a pretty penny to dress her, I guess! No business of mine, of course, but she’s as smart a thing as I’ve seen in a month of Sundays. Keeps a shop, you say? So does my sister. Lingerie? Nothing like it! Wish I’d a business head on me! Begin to think I’m no good at cards even – lost fourteen quid to Bertie Murray this afternoon. Time I went slow for a bit; it’s Cork Street if I don’t. But I did enjoy that party –’
Delia, too, had enjoyed the party, if one could judge from her manner the next afternoon. She snuggled up to Aubrey with a contented little sigh, playing with his buttons and tracing little patterns with her forefinger on the back of his hand.
‘It was lovely!’ she sighed. ‘I felt just a bit shy at first, but everybody was so nice! I love Bee! But I don’t think I care for Lord Upwester much. Isn’t he rather stupid? Anyway, he’s a lord, and I only keep a hat-shop. Is he very rich as well as being a lord?’
She played with his buttons and stroked his hand, but she still deferred her engagement to him. She had so much to think about, she said, and it wouldn’t look right, so soon after his breach with Helen. He might call it an understanding if he wished, and she didn’t mind wearing his ring, but it would have to be on another finger. It was a lovely ring, she said; and so it should have been, seeing it had cost him a hundred-and-eighty guineas. Yes, he might kiss her, too; she didn’t always want not to be kissed . . . So he kissed her, and she closed her eyes blissfully. Later he mused on the strangeness of it, that this atomy he had found in a hat-shop, unformed and ready to tremble at a look, should so have found her way to the very core of his heart.
But more and more he worried about the possible effect of all this on his fortunes. In the days of what his critics were presently to call his ‘earlier manner’ he had considered the public at large to be a very good judge of books, since it bought his own in large numbers – never yet had a man a stroke of good luck but his first endeavour was to persuade himself that he deserved it all and more. But the dropping of those scales from his eyes that had begun that afternoon in Pountney Place had shown him that hardly anybody knew the first single thing about books after all. He saw that famous public of his as a flock of sheep, ready to take any gate if somebody else took it first, refusing it unanimously if the leader jibbed. To buy or bribe or win over that leader was the whole business of authorship as it was practised. To that end literary journals were directed, tea-parties were held, and publishers bought newspaper-space ahead. All was a machine, in which one must either ride or be run over. And in Delia Vane Aubrey had challenged the machine. Some piece of grit had found its way into the wheels. That piece of grit was called Truth.
And now what was going to become of him? Any number of things were possible. His credit might be good enough to stand the strain for a time, but publishers work in figures, and the gradual letting-down of his saleability could not be long delayed. He might make a succès de scandale, which in the long run would not be good for his credit either, since the public does not like its slaves in two pigeon-holes at once. Or nothing at all might happen. That book of his, his first living book, might be condoned as an escapade, on the understanding that the offence did not happen again. But he could never go back to his former manner. His editions would be a story of diminishing prices – seven-and-six, three-and-six, a shilling, Tauchnitz, and the usual odds-and-ends. Already he was within sight of the bottom of his current account. It was not a good time to sell his securities. If an idea for another book did not occur to him he must set about writing stories or newspaper articles. Or a little reviewing. He felt just about capable of a little reviewing.
13
‘Dearest,’ she said to him one night, ‘I should so love to go on the stage!’
They were, as it happened, in the stalls of the ‘Thalia’ at that moment, but Aubrey knew little of what passed across the footlights. He had had a fruitless day of brain-cudgelling, and felt all-in. His tie was carelessly tied, and he would have liked nothing so much as to be at home in bed. But she was full of life and joy
‘You see,’ she went on – this was during an entr’acte and her hand beneath her shawl was light and warm upon his knee – ‘you see, Bee’s been on the stage and knows all about it. They’ll make you a star straight away if you can put up five thousand pounds. Being a star’s as easy as falling out of bed if you’ve got money. I should so love to go on the stage, Aubrey!’
At any other time he would have fenced, delayed, laughed the occasion off. But it was now beyond his strength. Miserably he confessed that he neither had five thousand pounds nor knew where to lay his hands on any such sum. Her eyes were sidelong on a curtained doorway with the word ‘EXIT’ written over it in red electric lights.
‘Poor darling!’ she said; and then, with a sudden little pressure of her hand upon his knee, ‘Oh, look! Isn’t that Lord Upwester? I’m sure he’s not seen you! Do go and have a drink with him – I don’t mind being left alone –’
He left her, but he did not seek Upwester in the bar. Instead he stood alone in a dim crimson corridor, absently flicking the ash of his cigarette into a receptacle on the wall.
Five thousand pounds! By the sale of everything he had he could hardly now have spared her five hundred. He didn’t doubt that all she said of the stage was true. Furs ready to step into, a waiting brougham, an expensive flat in town and a country cottage, a horse to give lumps of sugar to with a camera standing by – somebody had to occupy this glittering sphere, and it might as well be she as anybody else. Not a doubt that five thousand pounds would do the trick. But as far as Aubrey Kneller was concerned five thousand pounds might just as well have been the moon.
And if he hadn’t the cash, had he anything else to take its place? A year or so before he might have raised money on his mere name; but not now – or at least not after the moment when his book should appear. Already he was conscious that he was going to let his publisher down; should he, while there was still time, add to his iniquity by grabbing a further sum on account, based on his former successes? He would almost have done it – for her. But wearily he turned his face to the crimson wall, burying it in his arms, careless of whether anybody saw him or not. He knew now what that book of his was. It was not a novel, but a bomb. If he had sought to challenge, not only the book-world, but the whole gravely comic convention of the world at large, Delia Vane could not have been more exquisitely devised for the purpose. He had betrayed, not only his publishers, but Society. The naked truth in a world that only exists by means of conventions – that was what his brain had been able to conceive and his hand rash enough to write. Delia Vane after Loved I Not Honour More – it was his death-warrant. They would be quite right in putting him to death. He had set himself on a high place, merely to cast himself down again. There would soon remain to him nothing but the memory of what he had been, and that witching little sweetheart of his sitting down there in the stalls.
That night he gave her a cigarette in his flat before driving her home, and wondered moodily how he was to break these things to her. He could hardly expect her to understand them, since a few months before he would not have understood them himself. He could only trust to her faithfulness and gratitude. Tears came into his eyes at the sight of her, curled up in his huge chair, with one small ankle pushed out towards him, and the gay lining of her cloa
k making a spread on the chairback behind her. Dear God, if he should lose her now! It was in his heart never to let her out of his flat again. And to think that she smiled, knowing nothing of the agony that surged in his breast! She was smiling at the orange-hued cylinders of his electric fire. She seemed to him to be already on the stage, bowing behind a forest of bouquets, courted, photographed, adored, her name on everybody’s lips. And had it been in his power she should have had it all for one of those kisses she knew how to give.
Then she moved. ‘I suppose it can’t be done,’ she sighed.
He did not even ask her what it was that could not be done.
He discharged his taxi at her door in Pountney Place, and set out to walk to King Street, St James’s. He passed shelterless, outcast people, and felt himself more outcast than they. He began to count his steps. Left foot, right foot: with every step he took there ran a dual set of pictures in his brain. They ran, as it were, in harness, the actual facts of the world’s life, the no less actual facts of that other life that no man knows but himself. Left foot, right foot: the Annie Thompson who had crept into his book, the Delia Vane who had crept into his heart. Left foot, right foot: exit Rosamond, goodbye Helen. Left foot, right foot: Upwester and Pat –
Suddenly a cold sweat broke out on Aubrey Kneller’s brow. Upwester and Pat! He was passing the doors of the New Universities Club; he sat suddenly down on the Club’s steps. Upwester! No, impossible! Though Delia had married Pat in the book, that parallel at least could not be carried over into real life! Upwester would never come between Aubrey and this other Delia of his desire! He was a decent little fellow, played the game. Why, he had had drinks with Aubrey, introduced him to his club, invited him to his flat. Nobody did these things and then let a pal down. Upwester was, must be, all right!
Yes, but what about her? Could he trust her a yard? Utterly as he loved her he knew he could not. Between his first gift of a hat and this last demand for five thousand pounds there had been wile after wile, stratagem after stratagem. She had pouted and wept and flared up; she had promised and broken her promise; she would marry him and she would not marry him; a dog was not to be hanged on her word. Therefore, however loyal his intentions, what chance would Upwester have if she decided to set her cap at him? Why had she said when she had first met him that she didn’t think she liked him very much? Why had she said that she would go to him for money for her business? Why had her eyes spied him so quickly at the theatre? Because she was a liar, and he loved her. She was a selfish, heartless little schemer, and he loved her. And Upwester would not even have to furnish the five thousand pounds. His title was enough. Lady Upwester was already a star without lifting a finger. And Aubrey could do nothing, nothing, nothing. He could only sit on the steps of the New Universities Club and rock slowly from side to side with his head between his hands.
The next day but one the proofs of his book arrived. Except to correct a few trifling literal errors he barely glanced at them; why read a book that is as inalienably one’s own life as the blood that comes and goes from one’s heart? Let the proofs go. Half a morning sufficed to despatch them. He registered the packet at the Post Office near St James’s Church and put his receipt into his pocket.
But that perforated piece of paper was not a receipt for the parcel. It was a receipt for the body and brain and immortal soul of a man.
14
Not very long after that Aubrey found it necessary to run down to Rickmansworth on business connected with the house he no longer required. He asked Delia to go with him, but she said that she could not leave Pountney Place. He wondered a little at this, as she now had an assistant, but if she couldn’t she couldn’t, and there was an end of it. He went alone, telling her that he would be back in time to take her out to dinner.
His business was done more quickly than he expected. He was back in King Street again before five o’clock. As he waited on the ground floor for the descending lift, down it came, and Upwester and Delia stepped out of it.
She greeted him with an undisturbed smile, and, with her first words back came his own chickens to roost. For, just as he had formerly pretended to Helen that he had thought an appointment was for half-past four instead of four, so she now said that she had understood him to say he would be back at five. And, anyway, wasn’t he back at five? So she had called for him at his flat, and had found all locked up, and just as she had turned away again Lord Upwester had come out of his own door. He knew that it was a tissue of lies from beginning to end; he knew that she knew that he saw through it; but there was nothing to be said. Upwester looked guilty. The three of them walked together as far as the Carlton, and there Upwester left them. Aubrey and Delia descended to the tea-room.
He was silent, but she made up for his taciturnity. Never had her eyes been so active nor her spirits so high. She rallied him on his gloominess, and gave a delighted little laugh at his sudden start when she slyly placed a hot teaspoon on the back of his hand. She adored the Carlton, she said, and wasn’t that Gladys Cooper sitting with the good-looking man over there? He roused himself a little, but relapsed again. A great dread possessed him. He drank tea, but could not have swallowed a crumb. She had met Upwester by appointment, was turning him round her finger, and he was going to lose her.
‘It is Gladys Cooper!’ she rippled. ‘Aubrey, darling, if I do go on the stage will you write me a play?’
He said that he couldn’t write a play. He didn’t think he should ever write anything again.
‘Oh, that’s only because you’re a little tired, darling! Do write me a play, Aubrey, with a large fat part all to myself!’
‘Oh, marry me, marry me!’ broke in a low groan from him.
‘Silly boy, what’s the matter with you?’ she asked, innocently. ‘I can’t marry you this minute, can I?’
‘Do you love me, do you love me?’
‘Of course I do. I think you’re a perfect duck. You aren’t cross with me about anything, are you?’
‘Oh, I feel like water!’
‘I know,’ she sympathised. ‘I always used to feel like that. I felt like that when you came into the shop that time. It’s a horrid feeling.’
‘Marry me tomorrow – the next day – say you will –’
‘But there won’t be time, darling! I shall have all my things to get! I should hate to get married in a poky sort of way!’
‘I’d marry you if you hadn’t a penny.’
‘Aubrey,’ she said slowly, ‘don’t you trust me?’
He dared go no further on that dangerous ground.
That night he met Upwester at the club. The peer’s hang-dog look completely gave him away. Returning home, he tossed all that night in a rage of jealousy. In his thoughts he alternately took Upwester by the throat, threatened him, implored him, laid machiavellian traps for him. He would have them both watched, would watch them himself, until he could account for every moment of their day. He tortured himself with images of their clandestine meeting that afternoon. And from loving Delia he turned to hate of her. He called her vile names. She was a treacherous, cold-blooded, unscrupulous little harpy. She had no intention of marrying him. She was holding out for the highest bid. He had clothed her, fed her, taken her about, loaded her with gifts, financed her business. All was not enough, but she must have five thousand pounds more and a play all about her heartless little self. Let her not try him too far! There was a limit! Flesh and blood could only stand a certain amount –
So he tossed, turning his dreadful new gift of vision into a fiendish instrument with which to torture himself. Sinister gift, that will not let us look on love but we must gaze on hate too! He had better have married Helen. Infinitely happier had he never adventured beyond the easy falsities of life. That was the grief to which he came. He had come, just for once, into contact with knowledge, and saw his ruinous end rushing to meet him. The publication of Delia
Vane overshadowed him like an imminent doom. For a year or two he would scrape along somehow. Oddments of money would still trickle in. He could compound on his life-insurance policy. His past services to literature might bring him within the terms of the Royal Literary Funds. He supposed he would always have the clothes he stood up in. But for the rest, all the profit of his life would be the peace and bitterness of truth.
15
His book appeared in September. Bold pronouncements in the book-columns of the newspapers heralded its appearance, the framed posters in the tube lifts proclaimed it. He had his cheque in advance and on account, and it rather more than sufficed to set him straight again at the bank. His first reviews came to hand. They were brief and colourless. A large edition had been subscribed; all was in readiness for an immediate reprinting. And then, suddenly, nothing whatever happened. Quietly, undramatically, nothing at all happened. It was as if Delia Vane was being secretly and silently burked. Openly assassinated it could not be. People could not be prevented from asking for the latest work of the author of Loved I Not Honour More. And no doubt they did ask. But Aubrey never heard of it.
A week passed, and a fortnight. Papers that might have been expected to review him still delayed to do so. One paper indeed, highbrow and obscure, did attack him violently. It rated the book as a grotesque travesty of life, and said that Mr Kneller’s acquaintance among the baronetage could be but small if he thought that such a figure as Sir Patrick Archdale existed outside his own delirious imagination. It strongly recommended him to return to the manner of those spotless ones, Sir Vernon and Sir Hugh.
And that was all. Delia Vane simply did not catch on. Nobody understood it or cared a hang about it. Its announcements disappeared from the booksellers’ windows, other posters replaced it in the tubes. The trade gave it a perfunctory display, and then relegated it to the back parts of the shops. His publishers wrote to him complaining that they could not conceive what had happened. Then apparently it occurred to somebody in the office to read the book itself. Aubrey received a peremptory telephone-message telling him he must call at once. He did so, and there was the devil of a row.
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