“NOT SATISFIED”
As Claudia was waiting for the lift in their block of flats half an hour
later Fritz Neeburg came running down the stairs.
“Ah! Mrs. Currey, you’re back early from your dinner-party.” Claudia was
a little impatient of Fritz Neeburg because of a certain German stolidity
and lack of imagination, but he was what she called “a learned beast,”
and a very loyal and kindly friend to both of them. He had lately given
up practising as a medical man and devoted himself to research work in
connection with nervous troubles affecting the brain.
“Dinner-parties have such a family resemblance, haven’t they? I was
bored.”
He nodded, noting the brilliancy of her eyes and wondering what had
caused the excitement in their depths. She looked more highly strung than
usual to-night, but it seemed a happy excitement. It might have been the
anticipative joy of a woman going to her lover.
“Gilbert and I had some dinner—rather late—and we’ve been yarning ever
since.”
Claudia raised her eyebrows. “I thought Gilbert was detained at his
chambers.”
Neeburg caught a glint in her eyes that made him apprehensive that he had
said the wrong thing. “Oh!” he added hastily, “it was nearly nine before
he rang me up. As it happened I was also late and hadn’t fed.”
Claudia’s lips curved into a smile, a smile that puzzled him. It _was_
a smile, the lips had even parted, showing her rather small white teeth,
but he felt that it was the wrong kind of smile. It seemed to have an
edge to it somehow. He wondered if he had put his foot in it as he
watched her ascend in the lift. Gilbert had told him that he had “got
out of a stupid dinner-party ... a woman likes those sort of things ...
her province, you know....” Fritz Neeburg was a bachelor and knew little
of women, either by experience or temperament, but he realized that it
was not a real smile of genuine amusement. He felt vaguely that it was
like the early bloom of a peach which masks the hidden acidity. Then he
recalled that Claudia lately had not been half so gay and spontaneously
happy as in the early months of her marriage.
Gilbert came out of the study at the sound of her entrance. She saw at
once that he was in a good temper and unusually genial. He was in the
humour to stay up a little longer and chat, for he had just worsted Fritz
in an argument over the Home Rule Bill, and Gilbert always liked to hold
his own, even on his own hearthrug.
“Hallo, Claudia! you’re back then. There’s a nice fire in here. Pretty
cold outside, isn’t it?”
She followed him into the library without any reply, but he did not
notice her silence, nor did he look at her, except casually. He was a man
who would buy a beautiful picture, look admiringly at it once, hang it on
his walls and then never notice it again.
A big leather chair invited her to sit down, but she stood by the oaken
mantelpiece. Gilbert had commenced to put away several reference books
that he had got out to convince Neeburg, for Gilbert was always great on
figures and statistics.
“Tough fighter, old Fritz, but of course you can’t expect a German, even
if he has lived over here all his life, to understand English politics.
Of course, he knows his own subjects and——”
“Gilbert, you and Neeburg dined together to-night?”
“Yes,” he said, faintly surprised. “Did you see him?” For the moment
he had forgotten his broken engagement with the Rivingtons. He had a
wonderful habit, which had helped to make him what he was, of settling
a point and then automatically forgetting all about it. Then his wife’s
toilette caught his eye and he remembered. Where had Claudia been? Oh,
yes! “It would have been an awful rush to have got back in time to dress
and go out to Hampstead, and I didn’t feel a bit like it. How is the old
General?”
His back was towards her, busy with the bookcase. She looked at it
coldly, critically.
“Couldn’t you have made a little effort in order that I shouldn’t have
had to go all that way alone?” She herself made a great one to speak
calmly and pleasantly. The echoes of _Ich liebe dich_ were still faintly
in her ears, and if he would only turn and take her in his arms, and say,
“Look, old girl, I’m sorry. I know I’m a social shirker, but I forgot
you would have to go alone,” she was ready to return the pressure of his
arms. Women can exist on very little love, very few caresses from the man
they care for, and Claudia was in the mood to make every allowance for
him.
He answered her rather mechanically, trying to find the correct place for
the volume.
“Oh, well! you like dinner-parties, and it’s not so far in the motor.
It’s not the day of the horse-brougham.... You are my social shop-window,
and”—with blunt humour—“it’s very nicely dressed. I wonder where that
book of Burke’s has got to? Besides I wanted to get hold of Fritz, I
wanted his opinion on a case.”
“You particularly asked me to accept this invitation as the General is an
old friend of _your_ family.”
“Well, it does just as well if you go,” he said imperturbably, mixing
himself a whiskey and soda. “They understand how busy I am.”
“Suppose—I don’t understand.” Her lips were compressed until the soft
curves had disappeared, and the determination and independence of the
chin were emphasized. He looked up from the syphon in surprise at her
tone.
“Were they awfully annoyed at my not turning up? I suppose Mrs. Rivington
scratched a little.”
“I am not concerned with the Rivingtons. I am talking of myself, of
my feelings on the subject.” She was beginning to speak a little more
quickly now. The cold, abstracted look in his eyes stung her. He could
not even realize that she was hurt and angry. “I am not here merely as
your social shop-window, as you call it. I am not here merely as your
_hausfrau_, to order your food and entertain and visit your friends. That
is the way in which you have lately been regarding me.... Do you realize
how often I have to go out in the evening alone?”
“I’m sorry, but my work——”
“You could have got away quite easily to-night. I’m not a fool, Gilbert,
don’t underrate my intelligence. If you had said to me in the first
place, ‘Tell the Rivingtons we are engaged for that day,’ and then
spent the evening quietly at home with me, I should have been perfectly
content. But I will not be used.”
“My dear girl——”
Perhaps there is nothing an angry woman dislikes more at certain stages
of an argument than that preface.
“Couldn’t you even have come out to fetch me?” she went on. “You see
hardly anything of me, and we might have had a good talk on the way home.
Don’t you want to see anything of me?”
“Why of course. Come, Claudia, do be reasonable. We are having a talk
now, and it might be a pleasant one, if you are not so fiery. You are
always getting so excited over things.”
“I came home early because——” She remembered the impulse that had
made her leave the company, and she laughed. Love? Was love this
cold, indifferent, methodical thing? Was she to be content with this
tantalizing imitation? Her eyes flashed defiantly and she flung back
her head. Picking up a cigarette out of the box, she sat down and
lighted it. Her excitement had suddenly evaporated in that laugh like
an exhaust-valve relieving steam pressure. It was the rather critical
repressed woman of the world who next spoke to him.
“We don’t see much of one another nowadays, do we?” she said, looking at
him through the smoke.
“Later on I shall have more time, I hope,” he replied, placidly accepting
her cessation of unreasonableness. He never worried over women’s moods.
If you left them alone, he argued, they evaporated.
“Later on, we shall both be middle-aged,” said Claudia calmly. “Later on
the gods will jeer at us and ask us what we have done with our youth.
They always ask that question sooner or later of everyone. They always
bring you to account, and sometimes the balance is on one side and
sometimes on the other. I wonder how you and I will be able to answer
that question?”
“Oh! I’m not going to get old yet,” he smiled. “Anyone would think we
were on the verge of decrepitude.”
“I am not sure you have ever been young.” She leaned her chin on her
hand and looked at him. Somehow the face of Frank Hamilton ranged itself
beside it to-night. A weaker face, yes, but it seemed to her that there
was real youth in the passionate eyes, real sentiment in his deep voice,
a _joie de vivre_ in his whole being which called to her like the gleam
of snow to the Arctic explorer. Was it the strong men of the world who
made women happy? Was not the strong man always self-centered, egoistic,
taking all and giving nothing? Should a woman ask for too much strength
in the man she loved?
Gilbert listened to her indulgently. It was just one of Claudia’s odd
moods. His marriage had been quite successful, and therefore so had
hers. He knew that she was very popular and that invitations to their
house were eagerly coveted. After what his mother said, he would have
hated that the marriage should have been a failure, and he had accepted
as fuel to his pride his mother’s remark after a dinner-party which
they had given and at which Claudia had entertained the Prime Minister,
the Lord Chief Justice and other well-known people. “Claudia makes an
excellent hostess. After all, there is something to be said for your
marriage. The Iversons have always had plenty of _savoir faire_.” It was
said a little grudgingly, for Lady Currey still did not like Claudia.
There was nothing to disapprove of so far, but she was always waiting for
something.
“I am not sure that you ever were young,” repeated Claudia. “I don’t
believe you ever had a freakish, irresponsible mood. I remember Pat
saying once, on a beautiful spring morning, that it made her feel as if
she’d like to turn somersaults on the grass and yell like a wild Indian
every time she came right side up! You never felt like that, did you?”
“But I’m neither a wild Indian nor a dog,” said Gilbert, trying to stifle
a yawn. He had felt stimulated while arguing with Neeburg, and had
forgotten he was tired. Now the yawns were threatening to descend upon
him and he began to feel drowsy. But a glance at Claudia showed him that
she was wide awake. She had what her brother called “her brainy look.”
He had resolutely tried to ignore Claudia’s changing and complex moods
from the very beginning of their married life. On their honeymoon he had
stopped her speculations and questions with kisses. His treatment was
clearly right. Claudia had been far less imaginative and introspective
in her talk lately. This idea of trying to understand women was all
nonsense. He had unconsciously shaped his treatment of women on some
words of his father’s _à propos_ of some news he once brought him about
a neighbour’s wife who had eloped with another man on the plea that
her husband did not “understand her.” “He’s well rid of her,” said his
father contemptuously. “There’s nothing to understand in women. Don’t
be misled by any of this modern novelist’s jargon, my boy. Women always
have suffered from the megrims, and they always will. In one century
they are called the ‘vapours,’ in another ‘moods,’ but they are megrims
all the same, caused by physical weakness and disabilities and lack of
self-control. More harm has been done by humouring women and taking their
megrims seriously than will ever be known. It’s responsible for this
‘Votes for Women’ movement, and, mark my words, if women are not kept in
their proper place, megrims may ruin the nation!”
“After all,” said Gilbert, “it depends on what you mean by youth. I
suppose the dictionary would define it as the state of being young, but
it is conceivable that one might improve on that. I was once in the state
of being young, you know, because my mother has some of my first teeth!”
Claudia pondered a minute, twisting an old French marquise ring round and
round her little finger. “I should think,” she said slowly, “it’s the
ability to notice and enjoy all the pleasures of the wayside. Yes, that’s
somewhere near it. The man who enjoys life is the one who saunters along,
admiring the flowers in the hedgerows, sniffing the different perfumes,
watching the insects and the birds, filling his lungs with the good fresh
air. The man who doesn’t know how to enjoy life is the one who rushes
across country in the fastest touring car he can buy.”
Gilbert rose and looked at the clock. “Lots of weeds and undesirable
tramps by the wayside,” he responded dryly.
“Weeds and tramps are part of life. To enjoy every minute of life you
must waste a few.”
“Well, I wish I had a chance to waste some.... Bed, Claudia. I am sure no
one would ever think you missed your beauty-sleep, but I fear you often
do.” He turned towards the door, but she recalled him.
“Gilbert!”
“Yes?”
“Are we always going to live like this? This is the first opportunity we
have had for a talk for—oh! weeks! When we have people here, you always
fall into bed the moment the last guest goes; when we do go out together
we just have a few minutes in the car on the way home. Gilbert, I——”
Having got so far she hesitated and cast a quick, appealing look at him.
He came a little nearer.
“Is there anything you particularly want to say to me?” he said,
uncomprehending, but noticing the convulsive rise and fall of her white
bosom under its laces and pearls. What had upset her?
“Gilbert, other men find me attractive ... other men like my company ...
you realize that, don’t you?” she said, with unexpected directness.
He raised his eyebrows, and then they met in a frown. He found her words
in bad taste, which was not usual with Claudia.
“I quite appreciate that my wife is admired by other——”
“Yes, but I _am_ your wife. Somehow—to-night—I feel I must speak plainly
and tell you—that I am not satisfied with the crumbs that fall from the
legislative table. Once, before we were married, I warned you that such
scraps would not satisfy me. I want more. Any woman, unless she were as
cold as a stone and had only married you for her own ends, would want
more. Why, we are hardly friends even! Oh, I don’t want to know the
details of your work, but you never discuss anything with me. I am as
lonely as I was before I married you.... I thought I was entering a land
of plenty. You made me think so. I knew I should never be content with
a conventional marriage.” She caught her breath for a moment. “Yes, I
remember my very words to you—‘Love is the only convention that I own.’
Have you forgotten?... If you value me and my love, think over what I
have said and look where we have drifted, Gilbert. I daresay you haven’t
noticed—that is the worst part of it all—that we have drifted at all.
Perhaps you think that we stand where we did eighteen months ago.... We
none of us ever stand still even for a single day and there’s a pretty
strong current that catches restless, unsatisfied women nowadays. And—I
am not satisfied, _I am not satisfied_.”
With a sudden abrupt movement, so foreign to her that it showed how much
she had been keeping herself in leash, she went out and closed the door
behind her.
He stood where she had left him, a look of annoyed surprise upon his
face. It was a real shock to him, and a disagreeable one. He preferred
to think that Claudia was quite satisfied with their marriage. She had
never before complained of any specific thing. She did not now. He told
himself irritably that he wished she would, it would make it so much
easier to give her what she wanted. The worst of women was that they
were so vague in their demands and their complaints. Men can usually put
down in black and white what they want; women never. He loved her, she
was his wife, she shared his honor and the brilliant prospects for the
future. What more did she want? Why did women talk in such an exaggerated
way nowadays? Surely it was her fault if she were not satisfied? He
had never pretended to any Paolo or Romeo-like passion; he had given
her instead a much more useful commodity in the twentieth century—the
good, honest heart of a real man, instead of the mawkish sentiment of an
unbusiness-like poet. He had never run after other women as did so many
of the men he knew. Of course, Claudia might say he had not had the time
to do so, which was true. But probably he could have made some time if
he had wanted to amuse himself. It was true that he had not wanted to
make love to any woman. After he had indulged his natural passions in
marrying Claudia, women had dropped into the background again. Even the
desultory emotions which used to stir within him had not agitated him. He
could have lived a virtuous bachelor life with the greatest of ease.
Claudia had dropped her gloves on the hearthrug and left a soft, cloudy
chiffon scarf on the leathern armchair. With the sense of tidiness and
order that characterized him, he picked them up.
Did women know what they wanted nowadays? Was it not the signs of the
mental inflammation of the times?
Perhaps it was the scent from the scarf—Claudia used some delicate,
haunting perfume—that caused an idea to strike him, a very mundane
masculine idea, but still it had the grace of at least a faint touch of
imagination. The perfume revived memories.... There was that night at
Fyvie Castle on their honeymoon, when they had watched the moon shining
on the loch from her window, he remembered the sweetness of her body
nestling against him on the old window-seat ... once he had awakened
with that perfume in his nostrils and found her arms around his neck....
It had been playtime then, but women were only children masquerading
as grown-ups. Had he found the key to her queer speech? Was that what
she had meant? Yes, in that way he had been very neglectful the last
few months and married women had a right.... He recalled that she had
sometimes looked rather wistfully at him when he kissed her good-night
outside her door.... Oh, yes! that was the trouble. How stupid of him!
He stopped to put away a few papers and then, ten minutes later, he
knocked at the door which divided their rooms.
He waited, but there was no answer. He gently tried the handle. The door
was locked.
He listened intently and he thought he heard a sound like a sob strangled
in a pillow.
“Claudia, Claudia, may I come in?”
Now there was no sound at all.
“Claudia, I want to talk to you. Open the door.”
But still no movement in the room or any sign that she had heard him,
though he felt sure she must have done so.
Then, with a shrug of his shoulders and a compression of his lips that
made him very like his father, he turned away.
Two minutes later he was fast asleep. His father was right, was his last
reflection. There was no good trying to understand women.