by A. A. Milne
Mr. Hopkins, small and neat and grey-bearded, with his spectacles on the end of his nose as usual, bowed himself into an angle of a hundred and thirty-five degrees, said ‘Good afternoon, your ladyship,’ and ‘Good afternoon, sir,’ and ‘Very inclement weather we are having’, and waited disinterestedly. Reginald said that he wanted two lounge suits, one loud and the other almost completely silent. Mr. Hopkins smiled at her ladyship as if to say, ‘Mr. Wellard is always a little quaint,’ and went off for materials.
‘I suppose everybody in London knows you,’ said Reginald.
‘I’ve been here with Charley once or twice,’ explained Coral Bell, fingering cloth.
That’s the husband, I suppose, he thought. I’d almost forgotten about him.
‘His lordship is keeping well, I hope,’ said Mr. Hopkins, returning with a bale or two.
‘Very fit, thank you.’
‘We shall be getting another inch off the waist, perhaps, in the spring. I shall look forward to that. Now, Mr. Wellard, here is a material which will make up very well. Not too adventurous and yet at the same time cheerful. How do you feel about it, Lady Edgemoor? Mr. Wellard would look nice in that, I think?’
Lady Edgemoor was in no great hurry to decide. Mr. Hopkins, smiled upon by her ladyship, was in no great hurry for a decision. Reginald was in less hurry than either of them. They examined roll after roll. . . .
‘I suppose’, said Reginald when at last they came out, ‘it would be quite ridiculous to ask you to have tea with me somewhere.’
Coral Bell looked at him with a sudden smile.
‘You see the point,’ he said. ‘If it isn’t ridiculous, then you’ll come, which would be heavenly; and if it is, then you’ll burst, so I shall have that anyway. Any hope?’
She shook her head doubtfully.
‘It looks as though you lose both ways. I should like to come, but I’ve promised to go and see Lady Collingbourne. Do you know her?’
‘I told you I didn’t know anybody.’
‘Then we can’t run her down together. Or anybody else. So what could we possibly talk about if I did come to tea?’
‘You will?’ he cried eagerly. ‘Bless you.’
‘I don’t meet an old admirer every day.’
‘Nonsense, you’re always meeting them.’
They had tea at Stewarts, and never stopped talking.
‘You know everybody,’ he said. ‘D’you know Filby Nixon?’
‘Phil? Rather! What’s he been doing?’
‘He’s dramatizing a book of mine.’
‘Oh, have you written lots?’ she asked with an air of innocence.
‘You won’t believe it,’ he laughed, ‘but I was trying to be unassuming; and it’s terribly difficult. If I’d said “He’s dramatizing Bindweed”, it would have assumed that you’d read Bindweed, and knew I’d written it. If I’d said “He’s dramatizing my book”, it would have assumed that you know what the book was, or, if you didn’t, were interested enough to ask the obvious question. Besides “my this” and “my that” always sounds egotistic. So I said “a book of mine”, because, you see, I couldn’t very well say “the book of mine”, could I? And, anyhow, how did you know I hadn’t written lots?’
‘I know more than you think.’
‘Of course you do. So tell me about Nixon. Is he pretty good?’
‘Phil? Oh, he’s all right. Poor old Phil.’
‘Yes, I felt “Poor old Phil” myself. But why?’
‘Did you ever see Halves, Partner?’
‘No. Was it so bad?’
‘Bad? It was brilliant.’
‘Sort of Charley’s Aunt, wasn’t it?’
‘No, that’s just what it wasn’t. It probably set out to be, and got spiritualized somehow. The result was a sort of ethereal farce. It’s funny that it should have been so popular, I mean in the provinces and America and places like that. And London too, for that matter. There’s not much to choose between them, really. I dare say the ethereal quality has evaporated a bit by now—well, it must have. But you would have loved it as it was first played.’
‘And I suppose the collaborator really wrote it, and Nixon stole it, and remorse gnaws at him, and——’
‘Ah, there you are!’
‘Why? Did he?’
‘Nothing so romantic. I had it out with Phil once. We’d had a very good supper together, and I was feeling, and I expect looking, because of course I can’t help it now, extremely maternal, and he was a very small boy who had drunk too much. The original idea was his, and then they made additions and things between them, mostly Phil’s. The final writing was all his, and perhaps four-fifths of the original writing. The other man was always trying to turn it back into a knock-about farce. It went the rounds for three years, and the other man, who always blamed Phil for its lack of success, finally sold his rights in it for twenty pounds. And Phil’s never made less than three thousand a year out of it since.’
‘Then why poor Phil?’
‘Because he’s mad on the theatre, and mad to do it again, and, poor darling, he can’t. And he gets horrible fits of feeling that everybody thinks he’s a fraud—just as you did—and that the other man—Stenning, that was his name—wrote the first play. That’s why he’s so terribly keen on doing it again, so as to prove that he did it before. But he can’t and never will. It was an utter fluke, and he hasn’t got the ghost of an idea how it happened. Poor old Phil.’
‘But isn’t he pretty successful still?’
‘No. Never has been, except for that one play. But he’s so much part of the London theatre, that people never seem able to realize it. Luckily for Phil.’
‘And perhaps not so luckily for me.’
‘Oh, he may do that quite well. I do hope so, for both your sakes. Anybody else you want to know about?’
‘Yes. Coral Bell. Tell me, do you like knowing everybody?’
‘Love it. Do you like knowing nobody?’
‘Love it.’
‘Sure?’
‘I think that’s just how men and women are different, don’t you? A man instinctively dislikes new people, and then finds to his surprise that half of them are quite charming. A woman likes meeting new people, and then finds to her disgust that half of them are detestable.’
‘No, you’re wrong. People do divide up into those two classes, but not by sex. It’s the public-school type and the other. Most women are not the public-school type, which is why you get more of them in the second class.’
‘Coral Bell,’ said Reginald suddenly, ‘you keep sounding to me like a very wise woman. Did you—is it——’ He broke off and asked, ‘May I be horribly rude?’
‘You may try. I don’t suppose you’ll find it easy.’
‘Were you always as wise as this, or have you learnt a terrific lot since you married into the peerage?’
She laughed happily.
‘You forget that I was performing on the beach when I was eight. You forget how I was brought up. You’re thinking of the stupid, pretty girl from the stupid, middle or upper middle-class family, who goes on to the stage at seventeen, because she is too stupid and too pretty to do anything else. That’s where the silly, vain, nothing-in-the-head actresses come from. Thank Heaven, I was never pretty—or stupid. Lord, Lord, what fun I’ve had out of other people.’
‘I expect so. You’ve simply had to laugh,’ he quoted.
‘Ah, but now you’re making the usual mistake of the amateur. You’re confusing the part with the player. I’m a serious person, really. By “fun” I mean interest, excitement. I’ve had what I call fun listening to Einstein.’
‘You’ve met him? Yes, of course, you would have.’
‘Well, I don’t know about “of course”, but I have.’
‘You’re right, you know. I did think of you as just like the so
ng. Always gay and laughing and—and adorable. But then how else could anybody of my age think of you?’
‘That’s why it’s a mistake to marry actresses.’
Reginald was silent for a little, and then asked:
‘Which surprises you most—that so many marriages are happy, or that so many are unhappy? I can never make up my mind.’
‘That’s rather a good question,’ said Coral Bell, adding approvingly, ‘I’ve never thought of it like that. I think——’ She put her head on one side, and thought—‘I think that so many are happy. It’s terribly difficult, marriage, isn’t it?’
‘Why is it so difficult? That’s silly, of course. I mean—what do I mean?’
‘The really difficult thing is knowing when and how to fall out of love.’
‘Oh, come! There are people who stay in love with each other all their lives.’
‘Of course, and we all hope that that’s what our own marriage is going to be like. And it’s because people will go on hoping when there’s obviously no hope, that there are so many failures. You see, if you’re in love, every little difference has to be made up before you’re happy again; if you’re “out of” love, you can quarrel as often as you like, and still keep happy and friendly.’
‘On a lower plane.’
‘Yes. But it’s in the descent from the higher plane to the lower that most marriages crash. If only they can get safely on to the lower plane, they’re all right. And of course to stay happily on the higher must be heaven. But how few manage it.’
‘But once you let yourself down on to the lower plane, what’s to prevent you falling in love with somebody else?’
‘Falling in love? Or being what they call unfaithful?’
‘I suppose I meant that.’
‘Well, what’s to prevent you doing anything disloyal or hurtful if you want to do it very much? What’s to prevent you promising to do a thing and not doing it? I don’t know.’
‘Nor I. In fact, here’s another good question for you. Which surprises you most: that people are so good, or that people are so bad?’
‘I’m sorry, Mr. Wellard, but I’m dining early to-night. When I’ve got a year to spare, we’ll go into it. All I say now is, that you can’t go to Brighton for the week-end with somebody else’s wife without knowing that you’re doing it. And you don’t do anything without working out, subconsciously perhaps, one of those balance-sheets of yours. I must be going. I’ve enjoyed my afternoon tremendously. Thank you so much.’ She opened her bag and looked at herself.
Large eyes, large mouth, a face wise, generous and friendly.
III
Reginald went home on the top of an omnibus; and for a little while he was thinking with pleasure of his pleasant afternoon; all the things he had said to her, all the things she had said to him. He felt that he had been successful; almost like somebody in a book, talking to a Countess, talking to a stage favourite, interesting, interested, easy-mannered, carrying off an adventure with an air. I can’t have looked too bad either, he thought, putting up an automatic hand to his tie; Sylvia always says I look nice in this suit. . . .
He remembered suddenly how Sylvia and he had chosen ‘this suit’ in that September heatwave. She had come up from Westaways with him; he had driven to the station—she by his side, saying ‘Well done, darling, it was much better’, as he changed gear. She was lunching with Margaret, he was lunching at the club, they were to meet afterwards at Hatchards. She was there first, looking so cool, so still, so fresh and lovely, her eyes turned down at some new-found book, on which the tips of her fingers gently lay. There were other women there, hot, unrestful, turning over untidy pages, chattering, bustling, blown by some hot gust into this oasis from the burning pavements outside; but she was part of it.
As he came in she was aware of it instantly and turned her face to him and, as always at any meeting with him, there came that sudden faint accession of colour up to her eyes, giving her eyes that shy, eager, welcoming look which he loved so. They had made a pile of books with that careless grandeur which came over him in bookshops sometimes, and then, leaving the address behind them, had crossed Piccadilly, for safety hand in hand. And from time to time as Mr. Hopkins was stroking amicably this or that roll of cloth, his hand was finding hers under the counter, and secret smiles would pass between them, smiles for the innocence of Mr. Hopkins, who supposed that they were a staid old married couple, long past the apprenticeship of holding hands.
And now—what had happened to him? He had let another woman take Sylvia’s place; he had robbed himself for ever, he had robbed her for ever, of that half-hour’s remembrance. No longer would either of them be able to think, ‘We always go together. One of the things we always do together.’ I’ve spoilt all that, thought Reginald. . . .
How childish, he thought. It’s just as Coral Bell said. As long as we are in love, the silliest little things hurt. Would Coral Bell mind if her Charlie went to his tailors without her? Of course not. They have got safely and happily on to that lower plane. But I shall be fighting always not to get there. That’s the way marriages crash, she said. I don’t care. If Sylvia and I are not in love with each other, we are nothing to each other.
It’s funny, he thought, as he walked the last few yards to his house, I feel as if I’d let Sylvia down in the most horrible way, and it’s all too childish for words really. I shall go and tell her all about it and ask her to forgive me.
Laughing at the idea, he let himself in. Alice appeared in the hall from nowhere, just as he had noticed a hat which wasn’t his.
‘Lord Ormsby is upstairs, sir,’ she explained.
‘Oh!’ said Reginald. ‘Thanks.’
He did not go upstairs. He went into his own room, the morning room, and tried to read The Times again. He felt extremely ill-used.
Chapter Fourteen
I
SO nothing was said about Coral Bell for the moment. At times during the next few days Reginald would think, Rubbish. I’m always doing things and not telling her about them. One can’t tell another person everything, and if it comes to that, she’s always going out to lunch and tea, or having people to lunch and tea, and not saying anything about it. Then he would wonder if that was quite fair. Nothing is ever really the same, he thought. There are no absolute parallels in life. It was easy, then, for his mind to wander back to Coral Bell, by way of Einstein, who agreed with him about absolute parallels. She’s delightful, he thought, and it isn’t reasonable to suppose that a man can cut all delightful women out of his life just because he’s married and in love with his wife. . . .
All the same, if Ormsby had spent the afternoon with Sylvia, helping her to choose clothes, and had then taken her out to tea—oh, but that’s different. There are no parallels.
It was Mrs. Stoker’s evening out. Every Wednesday, wet or fine, foggy or clear, she took an extraordinarily unattractive combination of busses, trains and trams to some remote corner of Willesden and had supper with a widowed sister-in-law. She did this more as an assertion of her right to an evening out than from the pleasure she got from it. A long-standing feud between the Stoker brothers, into whose intricacies, never fully explained to the wives, she and Jane had married, had caught up the Stoker widows in the emotional period of their mourning and held them as deeply involved as ever their husbands had been, but with presumably less knowledge of what it was about. Wednesday’s supper, which began with cold mutton, tomatoes and a re-statement of the case for the younger Stoker, in as far as Jane could remember whether it all started with his falling off a bicycle on to his head at the age of eight, or with his being expected to be a girl eight years earlier, and ended with cold sago pudding and a statement by Mrs. Stoker that if Rights were Rights some people wouldn’t be talking to their neighbours about Reel Meogany Wardrobes, had long since ceased to be an improvisation, and had attained the dignity of a stage performance in which
the protagonists were word-perfect. So, too, with the exit lines. ‘Likely I’ll see you next Wednesday,’ says Jane without enthusiasm, and with an equal lack of enthusiasm Mrs. Stoker replies, ‘Likely you will.’
On Wednesdays, then, the Wellards dine out, and on this particular evening they were at the Ivy; not dressed for dinner or the play, but wondering if they would drop in at some cinema on the way home. Over the top of Reginald’s head as he bent over the menu Sylvia’s lovely smile flashed across the room, leaving some faint note of its passing in his consciousness. He looked up at her, saw the smile still lingering there, and said, ‘Who?’
‘Mr. Fondeveril, he’s just gone past. No, he went on inside, darling.’
‘Fondeveril? That’s Lady Ormsby’s father, isn’t it? He was at the supper. I didn’t know you’d met him. What about oysters? That gives us time to think about something else.’ How many oysters, he thought, die in this cause?
‘All right, darling.’
‘Two half-dozens, and you might bring me the wine-list.’
The waiter speeds off.
‘I didn’t meet him at the party, but he was at lunch the other day.’
‘Where? . . . Oh, thanks. What shall we drink, Sylvia?’
‘I don’t want anything, darling. Couldn’t we have that—what was it?—we had in Italy?’
‘Chianti?’
‘It had rather a lovely name.’
‘Oh, you mean Lacrima Cristi?’
‘That was it. But just as you like, darling. At Lady Ormsby’s it was.’
‘I suppose they’ve got it,’ he said doubtfully. He looked, and ordered a bottle.
‘Lord Ormsby was there, and him, that was all.’
‘I didn’t know you’d lunched there. You never told me,’ he said, a little surprised, a little hurt.
‘I expect you were thinking of something else. I did tell you, darling.’
This seemed to be Coral Bell’s cue.
‘Did you see Lady Edgemoor at the supper? No, of course you didn’t. I told you about her, didn’t I?’
