In the coming months Peter met many of the friends of Vivette. He at
once became enthusiastic, and insisted to Atterbury that they were much
maligned by superior people. Atterbury agreed.
"They're the best-hearted people in the world," he said--"quite perfect
if you don't have to do business with them."
"So genuine," Peter exclaimed.
"Very genuine," Atterbury echoed. "They always mean what they say. Of
course they never mean the same thing for two days. But that only makes
them more interesting."
He looked, as he said this, hard at Peter, and Peter flushed, knowing
how justly he himself might be classed with enthusiastic people who
change and range with the time. Why had he suddenly lost interest in the
friends of Haversham and Lady Mary? He simply did not want to go on with
them. He was caught up in this other set, and at heart he knew that his
pleasure in these strangers was a dereliction. Their charm was
superficial, their posturing was frequently half-bred. He realised that
he was declining, through weariness, to a less excellent carriage of
himself. He was unhappy and restless--tired enough to take and enjoy the
second best.
Atterbury's play lived through the summer and the autumn season. It
outlived many great events--among them a general election which put in
the Tories, and the marriage of Lady Mary with Lord Wenderby, then First
Lord of the Admiralty.
As Peter stood in St. Margaret's watching the ceremony he could hardly
believe that he had ever had a part in this great affair. It seemed that
lately he had gradually come down to a pleasant valley. It was
incredible that he had ever breathed high air with the radiant woman who
now was the wife of the most powerful man in England.
Lady Mary's marriage made Peter think. Already Vivette was an obsession,
serious enough to be noticed by his friends, and to interfere with his
work. Peter began to be frightened, and secretly ashamed. His last years
seemed all to be bound up with women. Was he never to be free of his
foolish sensibility? Was he to fall helplessly from figure to figure as
opportunity called him? There was work to do, but his fancy was
perpetually caught and held in one monotonous lure.
Lady Mary had shown him there were other ends to follow than a personal
and perfect mating. He was beginning to feel haunted. There was a murk
in his brain--into which thoughts sometimes intruded which he found, in
clear moments, to be shabby. They prompted him intimately towards
Vivette. Perhaps it would give him peace if once for all he pricked the
bubble of his expectation. Why should he not test this vision; pierce
rudely in, and pass on? Sex was not all, and if here he fell short of
perfection, it was no great matter. He could leave that dream behind, no
longer urged about it in a weary circle.
He felt at first that this impulse towards weak submission was treason
to a secret part of himself that seemed to be waiting, seemed also to
know that perfection would come and must find him virginal. But this
feeling was less strong with the passing time. He came more and more to
cherish the idea of Vivette. Her changing eyes became his only mirror
wherein to look for an answer to his question, and when he did not find
the answer he began stormily to wonder whether their cryptic shallows
might not surrender the secret he desired if adventurously he dived deep
enough.
This mood always found and left him deeply out of heart. It was part of
a general feeling that he was gradually breaking down. Sometimes, in
defence, it flung him to an extreme of carefully induced exaltation.
When temptation whispered that Vivette was a pleasant creature, and
would allow his love, he insisted, to justify his impulse to take her,
that surely she must perfectly be his mate. His unconquerable idealism,
weakened and gradually beaten down, required that he should thus deceive
himself.
Through the winter--Atterbury's play still lingered--they frequently
spent Sunday evening together in her Soho flat. Vivette alternated
between fits of extreme physical energy--when she took exercise in
every discovered way--and complete inertia. Midwinter found her at the
close of her hibernating--"lying fallow for the spring," she described
it. She passed her Sundays curled up in a deep settee by the fire. Peter
spent long, drowsy afternoons and evenings reading with her, dropping
occasional words, eating light food prepared by a cook who understood
that her mistress must on no account be served with anything which
required her to sit upright. Peter, who earlier in the year had ridden,
rowed, and played tennis with Vivette, did not in the least like her
present habits.
Upon a Sunday evening in February he discontentedly began to wait on her
at supper.
"Dormouse," he called from the table, "what are you going to drink?"
To his surprise Vivette suddenly sat up:
"Champagne to-night. I'm going to be full of beans. I shall do Swedish
drill in the morning."
"Not a day too soon," grumbled Peter. "I wonder you can stand it, eating
butter and cream all day and lying on your back. You must have the liver
of a horse."
"You are right," she retorted. "People pretend to despise me for being
lazy. It's envy, Peter. Everybody would be lazy in the winter if their
health would stand it."
She pushed away a plate of delicate soufflé.
"Not to-night, Peter. I'm going to eat some meat."
"I often wonder about you," said Peter.
"Really?"
"Do you do nothing with your whole heart, or everything?"
"Everything," said Vivette, with her mouth full.
"I don't believe anything really touches you."
Peter was trying to be serious.
"You are forgetting the champagne," she interrupted.
Peter went to the cupboard, brought out a bottle and exploded it.
"Thank you, Peter. There's nothing in the world like the pop of a
champagne cork. It makes me think."
"Think?" said Peter, with his nose in the air.
"Yes," she insisted. "It makes me think how nothing matters at all, or
how everything matters tremendously. I don't know which."
"I hate champagne," said Peter viciously.
"Of course."
"Why 'of course'?"
"There's something which doesn't fit in your popping a champagne cork.
It's like laughing in church."
"Champagne is vulgar. It's only good for a bean-feast."
"You're going to have some, I suppose?" She looked at him in a way that
spoke between the lines of her question.
Peter hated the challenge of her light inquiry. He wanted to deepen it.
In many small ways Vivette had held herself out to Peter, but she did
not seem to care what he would do.
He poured himself some wine and drank to her.
"This is excellent champagne," he said brightly. Then he drooped. "It
isn't my stuff," he added.
"I love it. Pop--and it's all over."
"It goes flat in the glass."
"Just for a moment it's perfect."
"The present, I suppose, is all that matters?" said Peter, heavily
censorious.
"Why not?" she slanted her amusement at Peter, and delicately crushed
the bubbles of her wine.
"Have you ever taken anything seriously in your life?" asked Peter.
"I have never inquired."
Her eyes flickered. Their wavering light exasperated his desire to move
her deeply, to hold for a moment her nimble spirit that ran at a touch
like quicksilver. She felt his rising passion, and her mimic soul
responded under the surface of her laughter. She did not stir when Peter
came near and took her by the shoulders. Her eyes were still the
familiar changing shallows. They raised in Peter an ambition to see them
deepen and burn.
"I would like to see you really _meaning_ something," he said,
tightening his grip upon her. "You are only a reflection. I want to see
your own light shining."
"Is this a poem, Peter? Or are you trying to save my soul?"
Would she never be serious? Peter was angry and miserable. His late
brooding came to a point. He wanted to touch Vivette, and he wanted an
excuse. He could not play her light game of pleasure without insisting
that it was something more.
Vivette saw the pain in his eyes. More gravely than she had yet spoken
she said to him:
"I might be very real, if only you believed it."
He bent eagerly towards her:
"I am going to kiss you, Vivette."
Her eyes did not change. They were evasive still. Peter held her small
face between his palms--the face of a happy child, with pleasure visibly
in store. He had agreeably stirred her light senses. He turned abruptly
away.
"There is no feeling in you," he said.
"Do you expect me to faint away?"
"I want you to care."
"Perhaps I do."
"You really care?"
"I care in my own way."
They sat together by the fire, and Peter held her lightly beside him.
This was no conquest, or rapture of intimacy. He could not believe that
he had really moved her. The more he grew alive to her physical presence
and the implication of her surrender, the more he desired a guarantee
that their love should be permanent and true. He wanted an assurance
that this adventure was not ignoble. He wanted again to be justified.
He grew every instant more sensible of their intimacy. He tried to
persuade himself that this was the real and perfect thing; that the stir
of his senses, under which he weakly drooped, was the call of two
passionate hearts. He wavered absurdly. Once he suffered an impulse to
take Vivette brutally, without disguise, as an offered pastime. Then he
shrank from so immediate a declension from his vanishing idealism, and
inwardly clamoured that he loved her. There he ultimately fixed his
mind. He looked at Vivette and found in her an increasing gravity. She
was becoming aware of Peter's trouble. She was beginning to understand
it, and to be seriously concerned. But Peter mistook her dawning
compassion. He caught eagerly at the sober spirit which now possessed
her. He suddenly heard himself propose to her.
"Will you marry me, Vivette?"
He saw the laughter leap into her eyes; but, even as he shrank, it
passed, and they lit with affectionate pity.
"Peter," she said very gently, "do you know what you are talking about?"
"I have asked you to marry me."
"Of course not."
"You do not care enough?" he suggested.
"I care enough to-night. But there is next year and the year after
that."
"I want to be sure that this is serious," said Peter, with clenched
hands.
"Of course it is. It is more serious than I thought anything could be."
Clearly she was now in earnest. Even Peter might have found her
adequate. But he had now committed himself deeply to the proof he
required. He knew it was at bottom indefensible--that he was merely
trying to build a refuge for his self-respect.
"If you really cared for me," he persisted, "you would not refuse to
marry me."
"Marriage is not my way," she protested.
"I ask you with my whole soul."
"Your whole soul?" She smiled a little, but added gravely:
"You make things very difficult. This shows how badly you want to be
looked after."
"What do you mean?"
"Don't you see how easily I might play up to you? Do you think it would
be very difficult for an actress like me to love you 'with my whole
soul' and win you altogether on my own terms?"
"You mean," Peter flashed at her, "that you might easily pretend."
"It would not be difficult," she said, a little sadly.
Vivette was feeling unlike herself. She was now unselfishly solicitous
for Peter. She saw how helpless he was, restless and curious of life,
ever more firmly held by one idea. She pictured him falling to some
woman, hot and unscrupulous, who would coarsely tear the veil he
fastidiously desired to lift, and for ever destroy for him the nobility
of passion.
But Peter cut into her thoughts.
"Are you changing your mind?" he asked abruptly.
"No, Peter. I am only thinking."
"Then it is good-bye."
He moved towards the door. Vivette saw him passing out of her keeping.
She saw him stumbling forward to disillusion and possible disgust. She
could not let him go like that. She was zealous that his adventure
should not end wholly in disaster.
Out of sudden pity she called to him.
"Peter!"
He paused at the door but did not turn.
She collected her courage. Surely it would be better for Peter, then and
there, to end. Her spirit was alive to him. It would be an episode, but
it would not be sordid. She saw a hundred ways in which Peter might fare
so immeasurably worse. For an instant she shrank from the ordeal. She
would have to sink her pride and solicit him. It was a bitter part for
Vivette. The words dropped from her low and quiet.
"You may stay with me to-night."
Peter turned uncertainly. She saw his face like a beaten flame. He had
yet to realise what she was saying.
"We are alone, Peter. You may stay with me here. I ask you to stay."
Now the flame spread in his face unchecked. She had dropped the veil,
and he was driven towards her.
"You can do this, Vivette, and yet you will not marry me."
"To-night."
"For ever."
"For ever a memory--with nothing to regret."
Peter desperately kissed her, but with his climbing luxury his will
climbed also, and his spirit cried out again for a justification. Like a
refrain he repeated:
"This means you will marry me."
"No."
He returned wearily to his point.
"You do not care enough," he persisted.
"You tell me that," she cried, "after what I have said to you!"
She broke from him, and Peter knew he was far astray. But he shut
himself from this better knowledge. He gave himself up to his fixed
idea.
"I do not understand you. Prove to me that you care."
"I have proved it."
"An easy proof."
Peter hated himself for this angry stab at her. She went pale.
"I did not mean it," he cried at once.
"A light woman lightly offered," she said, interpreting his reproach.
"No."
He sank beside her in an agony of penitence. But she drew away from him,
and he accepted her decision. There could be no more love to-night. The
pallor had not left her face, and it struck into Peter a sense of
enormous guilt. Again she pitied him.
"Come to me here to-morrow," she said. "I want to talk to you."
She held out her hand to him. He clasped it good night and left her.