Lady Poynter; encountering Lady Maitland at luncheon, she mentioned
Ivy’s name and returned home in time for tea with a collection of
opinions which crystallized in the vigorous statement that Mr. Justice
Maitland was a fool, Gaymer a cad and Ivy a child whom one had not seen
since she was a baby.
“What is it, exactly, that you want to find out?,” asked Amy when Eric
arrived.
“I hardly know... I’ve met this girl half a dozen times; she’s a nice
child, but rather impulsive and very easily led. She’s not happy at
home, and I fancy she’s allowing Gaymer to lead her... Let me put it
this way: if she were your sister, would you entrust her to him with an
easy mind?”
Amy shook her head emphatically:
“No! I daresay I’m old-fashioned... Mr. Lane, I’m waiting for a hideous
scandal—not with her, poor child, but with all these girls who’ve
broken away from home during the war, all the men too, who’ve been
allowed so much liberty with girls that they’ve lost the old reverence
that men like you or my brother Jim had. The parents are to blame—”
“But the children suffer,” Eric interrupted. “That’s an epitome of the
world’s history. And it’s equally true if you put it the other way
round... But what are we to do with this girl?”
A fleeting glance at Eric’s worried eyes told her that he was less
concerned for the world’s history of suffering than for Ivy’s immediate
welfare; his use of the plural shewed that they were to be joined in a
common rescue; and her mind, seizing the possibility that Eric might be
in love, bounded forward to consider whether he should be helped to
fall deeper in love with a girl who possessed superficially little more
than the daintiness and intoxicating lure of adolescence.
“Tell me about her,” she suggested. “I should like to help if I could.”
Eric described their fragmentary conversation in New York, on the
_Lithuania_, at Lady John Carstairs’ and in Ivy’s attic behind the
Adelphi, adding guesswork sketches of the establishment in the Cromwell
Road with an unsympathetic father and a helpless mother. Neither the
range of his information nor his manner of giving it betrayed any great
intimacy.
“Has she any other relations?,” asked Amy.
“Two brothers—demobilized and back at Cambridge—we can rely on them, I
suppose, to intervene with the usual horse-whip, if things go too far—;
and two sisters who’ve married and shed all responsibility... Perhaps
you wonder what _I’m_ doing—”
“It’s very natural. She’s an attractive child.”
“I’m not in love with her or anything of that kind. I don’t think she’s
in... _danger_, but I’d do anything to keep her from being vulgarized.”
Amy busied herself with the tea for a few moments.
“I think she’s a little bit in love with you...” she ventured, when she
had given his momentary warmth time to pass away. “Oh, tiny things that
only a woman sees. She admires you enormously; and she’s flattered that
you take an interest in her. That strengthens your position.”
“But I don’t want to mix myself up in it,” cried Eric impatiently. “One
can’t altogether stand aside... Everybody’s business is nobody’s
business, and that girl _needs_ some one to take an interest in her. As
she doesn’t get on well with her parents, I was wondering if her aunt
could be persuaded to take charge of her. All this revolt of the young
girl is rooted in boredom; it’s the descent of Nemesis on the Cromwell
Road. If Connie Maitland gave her a good time and introduced her and
let her see that people would simply cut her if she went off on her
own, she’d soon drop this aspect of provincialism. Can’t you play on
her vanity? A girl like that would much sooner be a success in society
than a rebel against society; she’d sooner marry the second cousin of a
baronet than live with the greatest poet or painter of all the age...
That’s the object of my call. Forgive me for boring you like this!”
“You haven’t bored me. I took quite a fancy to her. I’ll see what I can
do.”
Eric left the house with relief that he had transferred to other
shoulders the responsibility for Ivy’s welfare. From the library window
Amy watched his thin figure striding away, with what she chose to
construe as rapid purposelessness, until it disappeared round the
corner of Clarges Street; for Ivy’s sake it was worth her while to take
a little trouble, and, if Eric were truly in love with her, she would
take very great trouble indeed; but that, she decided, she would not
know until she saw how impatiently he came to enquire what was being
done. For all she knew, he was befriending Ivy from vague good
nature—as she was befriending him—; Eric was one of the men for whom
most women felt a mild and transitory tenderness because he was nearly
always too much preoccupied to be aware of it.
When she had put herself in communication with Lady Maitland, Amy
waited for another visit from Eric, but for several weeks he was too
busy with his play to think about Ivy; and, as she did not avail
herself of his general invitation to lunch with him, he could only
assume that her position was no more “desperate” than before. A month
after his call at Loring House, Amy took the initiative and wrote to
say that the judge had gone away on circuit and that his sister-in-law
was to take charge of Ivy until her father’s return, when the position
could be reconsidered.
“I think she’ll behave sensibly and go back home,” Amy added when they
met one night at Lady Poynter’s. “Ivy and I have become great friends;
and I’m sure that John Gaymer was at the bottom of the trouble. First
of all he flattered her and dared her to break loose; then he neglected
her, then he made a fuss of her, then he roused her jealousy. After
that he could do what he liked with her. But I’m thankful to say that
he’s sheered off now, and you can rely on Connie to give her other
things to think about.”
Eric looked thoughtfully across the room to the corner where Mrs.
O’Rane and Gaymer were talking in whispers. Throughout dinner Lady
Poynter, whose latest intellectual relaxation was in the works of Freud
and Jung, had been interpreting all human relationships in terms of
psycho-analysis; adopting her language, Eric found that all this
remote, whispered discussion of Gaymer had created a fantastic image of
a man sinister and dissolute, bearing on his face the stamp of evil
passions and the ravages of debauchery. False images, Lady Poynter
explained with annihilating sweeps of a massive arm, could only be
corrected or dispelled by contact with reality. It was a relief and a
disappointment to Eric that he could detect no change in form and
features which always seemed to have been cut by a machine; Gaymer was
powerfully built with sturdy limbs, broad shoulders and back, a
muscular neck and big-boned wrists and hands, the whole so well
proportioned and knit together that his true height and breadth were
unsuspected. In face, manner and dress he had set himself to be
conventional to the verge of commonplace. His hair, black and straight,
was cut, oiled and brushed back from the forehead, as though straight
black hair could be treated in no other way; his blue Air Force
uniform, vividly new and well-fitting, was built and worn unremarkably
but with a suggestion that it could not be worn otherwise. He moved,
smiled and spoke as if he were trying to suppress all personal
characteristics; and everything about him was ready-made except his
clothes.
Eric pretended to be judicial when he knew that he was on the look-out
for faults; but there was no fault to find, unless a man was to be
hanged for impatiently lighting a cigarette while waiting for
dinner—and Mrs. O’Rane began to smoke before the fish-plates had been
taken away—; these were war-manners. Eric watched and listened; but,
like the others of his set, Gaymer talked like a gramophone and thought
not at all. Failing to condemn, Eric tried to appreciate; but Gaymer’s
exasperating suppression of personality left nothing to admire. The set
had agreed to put on humorous Cockney records; Mrs. O’Rane and Gaymer
were improvising a duologue to represent one shop-girl bidding another
good-bye at a station, and fragments of their speech floated across the
room to mingle incongruously with Lady Poynter’s undefeated exposition
of psycho-analysis: “I _should_ ’a thought A Certain Person would ’a
come and seen you off, dearie...” “Ow, ’e knows, when I want ’im, I’ll
send for ’im; _and_ not before. You _will_ write, dearie? I love
letters. And you’ll send my washing on; I’m in me old lodgings”... “You
won’t be ’ungry, missing tea and all?”... “Thenks, I ’ad a nice bit of
cold fish before I started....”
“I _don’t_ see the fascination,” Eric murmured, turning away after a
last look at Gaymer. Any other healthy animal in good condition, well
washed and groomed, enjoying his food and drink, would be as attractive.
“Perhaps it’s—impersonal,” Amy suggested. “I’ve been trying to make out
why so many girls marry in such a hurry. Partly it’s instinct, of
course, and partly it’s just recklessness; when your husband might be
killed any moment, it didn’t much matter who you married. But far more
often, I’m sure, girls marry something symbolical in a man rather than
the man himself. They see a man in a top hat, and he’s nothing in
particular; they hear of him doing something wonderfully brave, and
he’s a very different person to them; he’s a hero, he’s been fighting,
while they—with perhaps just as much bravery—can’t use it.”
“They marry the sex and not the individual,” Eric suggested.
Amy nodded and looked across the room as though to contrast Ivy’s youth
with her own grave maturity.
“Yes, and in twelve or fifteen years’ time, when she’s my age, she’ll
know that it doesn’t matter what a man _represents_ symbolically or
what he _is_. But what he _will_ be, how he’ll wear....”
“I believe Gaymer was incredibly brave until his smash,” said Eric.
“And never really sober from one week’s end to another. He must have a
wonderful physique... That’s another thing: I wonder how much of the
immorality and unhappiness of the present-day is caused by a sort of
shell-shock. It’s a great excuse; it may also be a reason... Have you
seen Ivy since our talk?”
“No, but I believe we’re to meet on the opening night of the opera.”
When Eric entered Lady Maitland’s box the following week, he found Ivy
recovered from her melancholy and pleasurably excited by the amusement
and occupation which her aunt was contriving as a means of shewing her
that, whatever changes the war had effected and whatever “those
freakish people in Chelsea and St. John’s Wood” might do, it was social
outlawry, self-imposed, for a girl of her age and position to live
alone; and it was a pity to be outlawed before she knew anything of the
life to which she was saying good-bye.
Eric participated in the conspiracy to the extent of conducting Ivy
round the house in the second _entr’acte_. Though most of the singers
were new to London, Covent Garden had regained very much of its old
appearance. War, indeed, and the passage of five years had expunged
some well-known names from the box doors; Bertrand Oakleigh’s place was
taken by a war contractor, the double box in which Sir Deryk Lancing
used to sit restless and alone, half-hidden by the curtains, had passed
to Lady Poynter. But, though new names were occasionally seen and
certain old names had taken on a British ring, the changes were
inconsiderable.
“Is there any one you’d like to call on?,” he asked Ivy.
“I haven’t seen any one I know.”
“You’re to be envied.” Eric bowed vaguely and found himself caught up
by three different women in as many minutes. “Let’s go back,” he
suggested, as he took off the last of them. “I’m tired of telling
people that I’m too busy to lunch out; and, though I hate work, I think
it’s preferable to the average luncheon-party.”
He picked up his opera-glasses and began identifying and describing to
her the occupants of the other boxes.
“If _I_ had genius—,” Ivy began diffidently.
“But I haven’t, Miss Maitland,” he interrupted. Adulation was at any
time a weariness, and he had not undermined her alliance with Gaymer in
order to attract her to himself. “You mistake fashion for fame. I’ve
written half a dozen successful plays... I’m glad to see you here
to-night. This is a better frame for you than a garret behind the
Adelphi.”
Ivy left the challenge where it lay.
“I’ve never been to the opera before,” she said. “I shall come as often
as Aunt Connie has room for me.”
“So shall I,” answered Eric, “whenever she or you invite me. That’s one
of the few things I’m _not_ tired of.”
It was only when he had found Lady Maitland’s car for her and sent Ivy
home in it that he recalled his own words and wondered whether she was
reading an unintended enthusiasm into them. Her big grey eyes seemed
startled when the lights were turned on at the end of the third act;
and, though she said nothing, he felt their light upon him. They were
still startled at the opera’s end and looked over her shoulder at him,
as he helped her into her cloak. When they said good-night, she drew
away her hand as though his touch sent a shock through her body, but
she was turning to see the last of him as the car glided away from the
door.
During the next fortnight Eric received three invitations by telephone
and two by letter; but he recalled Amy Loring’s hint and determined to
avoid that one box until Ivy had lived down any suspicion that she was
in love with him; he excused himself until he felt that Lady Maitland’s
friendship hung by a thread and then chose a night when _Louise_ was
being played and he could come late and leave early. As he walked
upstairs, the shrill laughter of the _atelier_ scene warned him that
the second act was not yet over, and he crept down again to finish his
cigar in the hall. He was reading the list of box-holders for the
night, when a voice behind him said:
“Hul-_lo_! When did _you_ get back from America?”
George Oakleigh was standing at his elbow, unembarrassed and cordial,
waiting to shake hands with him. Eric was conscious only of an immense,
sudden appeal to his own strength of heart and nerves; his eyes had
taken in George and his expression at a glance; Barbara was almost
certainly with him; and with another glance, not hurried enough to seem
apprehensive, he saw her three yards away, speaking to Mrs. Shelley. He
had taken in all that he needed, before George was ready for an answer.
Unchanged; tall and slender; in a silver sheath of a dress; with a
black head-band and a bouquet of the white carnations that she always
brought him when he was ill; a white Indian shawl, embroidered with
green and red parrakeets, which he had seen her wear a dozen times. All
the blood in his body seemed to rush to his eyes, and he felt himself
rocking.
“I got back a fortnight after the armistice.”
His voice was detached from him, but, though it came from an unguessed
distance, he could hear that it was steady.
And then it was time for his own question:
“You’ve been on the Riviera, haven’t you?” It was a triumph to meet and
overcome “Riviera” without a stammer. “Lucky man! We had the wettest
winter on record here... George, I hope it’s not too late to offer you
all good wishes. I was in Japan, when I heard about it; I meant to
write, but I was suddenly called home to my father and I thought I
should arrive before the letter... I crossed with Raney, by the way...
Like me, I see you only come for the third act of _Louise_.”
“Yes, I’m rather tired of the rest. I suppose this means that the
second act’s just over.”
Two sluggish streams were trickling out of the stalls and down the
stairs, converging by the open doors. Dr. Gaisford, heading the first,
looked round, nodded to George and walked over to a sofa, where he
perched like a fat, blond idol; it was a perfect opportunity for Eric
to break away and join him, but he knew that this first meeting with
Barbara must be faced and endured.
She brought her conversation to an end at last and looked round for her
husband.
“Oh, how do you do?” she said to Eric.
Even through a glove the touch of her hand was unmistakable. If he did
not meet her for twenty years, he could never forget it; if he were
blind, he would still know it from any other woman’s. He had kissed it
a thousand times, kissed every finger of it; when he was ill and she
came to sit with him, it had lain coolly over his eyes, charming him to
sleep; at the first night of the “Bomb-Shell”, when the success of the
play hung in the balance, he had gripped it until a ring cut into her
finger. He wondered how much she remembered, could not help
remembering....
“How do you do?”
She smiled as she had smiled in saying good-bye to Mrs. Shelley, with a
regrouping of lips and cheeks. It was a smile in which her eyes played
no part; they told him nothing. She was as much collected as he knew
she would be, equal to every social demand and blankly without emotion.
She was neither tender nor hard, neither ashamed nor defiant; and,
though she too must have rehearsed this meeting, her eyes looked at him
without even curiosity.
He was already trembling in reaction before she passed out of sight. He
could not trust himself to light a cigarette; and he was thankful for
the press of people who gave him time for recovery as he threaded his
way to Gaisford’s sofa.
“What d’you think of it?,” he asked, carelessly enough. “I’ve only just
come.”
“Oh, it’s good. Ansseau’s marvellous, and Edvina’s singing very well,
though I’d always sooner hear her in Tosca than in anything. She’s
worked that up wonderfully since the first time it was put on. I
haven’t seen you here before.”
“I came to _Bohème_ the first night. Not since... But I intend to be
here as often as I can spare the time.”
Dr. Gaisford offered him a cigarette, wondering idly why a man whose
trade was in words allowed himself to say “intend” when he could have
used “hope” or “expect” without betraying himself.
“Well, you’re wise... if you feel equal to it,” he said bluntly. “Was
that the first time you’d seen her since her marriage?”
“The first time to speak to,” said Eric, trying to control his voice.
“It will get easier by degrees,” said the doctor.
“We’ll hope so.”
“Bad as that, old man?”
“It was hell!” Eric whispered. “Either she never _had_ a soul, or she’s
lost it.”
“Well, my dear boy—”
Eric interrupted him with a mirthless laugh.
“Oh, I’m sure you’re right!,” he cried. “But I wonder if you ever
appreciate how little good it sometimes does to be right... I must go,
or Lady Maitland will be fuming.”
He jumped up and hurried through the hall and up the stairs. The first
name to meet his eyes was “George Oakleigh, Esq.” but the door was
mercifully shut and he strode past it and worked his way through an
argumentative circle into Lady Maitland’s box. She was sitting with her
husband and Ivy, and he was almost glad to be distracted by her
reproaches for arriving so late.
“I’ll make up by leaving early,” he suggested. “Age cannot wither the
infinite tedium of the fourth act.”
“Oh, you must stay till the end. Maurice and I have to go on to the
Poynter’s musical-party; I was depending on you to take Ivy home or at
least to find her a taxi.”
“Oh, I’ll stay for that with pleasure,” Eric answered.
The drowsy mutter of slip-shod conversation accelerated and became
excitedly clear as the conductor climbed to his place. Eric drew his
glasses lazily from their case and swept the boxes on either side of
him. George and Barbara must be almost at right-angles; she could see
him, if he sat forward; she might be looking at him then, but he dared
not focus the glasses on her. Some one in the stalls underneath him
drawled: “Hullo! D’you see Babs and George? I wonder when they got
back?” Then the lights were lowered, one after another.
Eric tried to lose himself in the music. When that failed, he analyzed
the orchestration and concentrated his attention on the conducting.
Barbara’s presence made itself felt, and he knew that, for all
preoccupation, he was waiting until the stage was dark enough for him
to lean forward and steal a glance at her between Lady Maitland’s
square grey head and Ivy’s dancing black curls. When he turned slowly
and looked at her with all the artificial calm that he could put forth,
she was sitting with one arm on the sill of the box, fingering a big
fan and watching the stage with rapt enjoyment. He leaned back and
closed his eyes.
At the end of the act Sir Maurice and Lady Maitland hurried away, and
he moved into the empty chair at the front of the box. Barbara was
evidently holding a court; her back was turned to the house, and he
could see a phalanx of men breaking rank, shaking hands, exchanging a
word and squeezing their way out again. George was supporting her
adequately, easily, as though it were natural and as though he were her
husband as of right, never seeing that he was a grotesque usurper....
“Are you going to smoke?,” Ivy asked him, as he laid the glasses down.
“I don’t think so,—unless you’d like to.”
“I prefer just to watch the people. I love the opera! I love the music
and the acting, I love the house and the people and the dresses and the
jewellery. I’ve been here every night since the beginning.”
Eric forced himself to take an interest in her though her enthusiasm
jarred on him.
“You’re living with Lady Maitland, aren’t you?,” he asked.
“Yes. She wanted a sort of secretary to arrange her parties and answer
her letters and deal with the telephone... I’m quite enjoying it.”
“I knew you would.”
“Did you suggest it to her?”
“Well, I had a hand in it. I was so shocked—I don’t mean morally, but
you seemed so utterly forlorn and miserable that night when I came to
see you... Are you happy now?”
She looked away without answering for some moments:
“If I thought about it, I should be very unhappy. So I try not to think
about it. I try to enjoy myself and keep so busy... I miss the freedom.
It’s great fun being with Aunt Connie; she’s giving me an awfully good
time, and I’ve all the money and clothes I need; and I’m meeting the
most wonderfully interesting people—_You_ know what her parties are
like.”
“Then what earthly excuse have you for being unhappy?”
“It isn’t everything,” she sighed.
There was no taxi to be found in the neighbourhood of Covent Garden,
and after a fruitless walk down the Strand they struck across the Park.
At the corner of Buckingham Palace an officer in an open car, with a
girl beside him, leaning on his shoulder, passed them and turned with a
jerk of the head to look a second time and to wave his hand.
“Was that intended for me, do you suppose?” Eric asked. “My eyes aren’t
good enough—”
“It was Johnnie Gaymer,” she answered.
Though her voice was dispassionate enough, Eric fancied that he had
felt her hand dragging against his arm.
“I haven’t seen him for a long time,” he murmured.
“Nor have I... He lives in Buckingham Gate... Rather a nice flat,” she
explained jerkily.
Eric was vaguely disquieted at seeing Gaymer, as though not to see him
were to bring his existence to an end. The moment’s glimpse had
disturbed Ivy as much as his own meeting with Barbara. She spoke
hurriedly, with unconcern too elaborate to be convincing; unconsciously
she quickened her pace. And Eric would have wagered a year’s income
that Ivy’s unhappiness was linked with Gaymer’s treatment of her.
“I wonder whether we shall get a taxi at Victoria,” she murmured as
though she knew and wanted to interrupt his thoughts.
“I certainly don’t want to walk home from Eaton Place.”
It was distasteful to suspect a man, when there was no basis for
suspicion, but Eric felt that Gaymer was not to be trusted. That
conceded, it was plausible to imagine that Ivy had fallen in love with
him and that he had tried to exploit her devotion for his own
amusement. Either he had misjudged the character of his quarry or else
he was waiting for her to come to her senses. Eric remembered his
glimpse of the girl in the car, lolling back with her head on Gaymer’s
shoulder: it was a reasonable guess that Ivy had drifted without seeing
where he was leading her and had pulled herself up in time to
administer an unexpected rebuff....
Eric was startled out of his reverie when she drew her arm out of his
and waved to a taxi.
“Don’t come any farther with me!,” she begged. “It was simply sweet of
you to toil right out of your way like this.”