AN UNEMOTIONAL FISH
Claudia had been giving a little luncheon-party, and she had kept Mr.
Littleton, the American publisher, in order to have a talk with him on a
new volume of poetry she had been reading. The other guests had all gone,
and she always enjoyed talking to him. It was left to him to give her the
news of Paton’s book.
“By and by,” he said casually, “Mr. Colin Paton is a friend of yours, is
he not? I think I have heard you mention his name?”
“Oh, yes!” returned Claudia easily, “I have known him for years. He has
always been a guide, philosopher and friend, and especially in your
department.”
“Don’t! It sounds as if I sold ribbons at the stores.... Then, of course,
you know about this book of his on Sociology that is bound to make a stir
this autumn?”
Claudia sat up abruptly in her chair.
“What book? Has Colin Paton written a book on Sociology?”
“One of the finest, if not the finest, that has yet been written. Such
a lot of twaddle and froth is usually poured forth on that subject, but
this book is the real thing, and exceedingly well written too. I’ve
secured it for America, where we’ve got a good many books on that
subject. But I reckon this will put all the others out of court. Where
has he got all his knowledge, Mrs. Currey?”
Claudia was some little time before she replied to his question. Colin
had not told her! He had been writing this book for a long time, and
he had never confided in her! She had thought they were such intimate
friends, she had always taken it for granted that he told her—well, most
things that were not other people’s secrets, and she was left to learn of
his book from a new friend. Why, surely she might have expected that he
would have told her long ago of his intention to write it. She had always
thought their friendship meant that.
She was very hurt and also a little astounded. It was as though a
favourite and well-known view had suddenly taken on an entirely new
aspect. Another landmark that she thought was firmly planted in almost
eternal solidity seemed to have shifted. She wondered wildly if the
whole world were not built on a quicksand, if there were any stability
or permanence in any of the human emotions or relations. Their vaunted
friendship, what was it worth, if it did not mean that she had his
confidence and he had hers?
Littleton wondered at the blank look on her face as she replied rather
mechanically:
“Oh, I think he has been studying such questions for years, ever since he
was up at Oxford. He’s not a man to talk much or make any show.... Yes, I
can quite imagine the book is good.”
She could not turn and accuse herself of living in a fool’s paradise, for
she was too unhappy to dwell in such a favoured, sunny clime; but did she
know the world she lived in, the people by whom she was surrounded? Why,
her younger sister Pat had been accusing her only the other day of bad
judgment where men were concerned. Pat had laughed at her on this very
subject, and said she did not really know Colin Paton. Was it true? Can
one see a man constantly for years and not really know the inner man?
But she had always credited herself with unusual powers of divination.
She despised other people for taking the world and its creatures at
face-value.
“The amount of reading he must have done for this book is enormous,”
went on Littleton. “Because, unlike most wildly enthusiastic reformers,
who fling adjectives about and scream at the top of their voices, he
has marshalled an amazing array of facts and figures. That, and his own
discrimination and judgment, make the book so fine. And there are one or
two passages, where he lets himself go, that are absolutely stirring. As
you know”—with a laugh—“I’m in the trade, and I don’t often enthuse over
a book, but I was greatly struck with this.”
“I am glad,” said Claudia dully, “very glad.”
This book had been in his mind for years, perhaps ever since he left
Oxford, and he had never talked of it to her. She would never forgive
him! He had not thought her worthy of his confidence. He was not her
friend. Then a vision of him at Fay’s flat that awful night, quietly
directing everyone and watching over her, came across her mental vision,
but this only confused her the more. Did he, like most men, look upon her
as a graceful, pretty plaything—just a woman? Was his idea of a woman
just like her husband’s, only different in kind? Apparently she was of no
real use to anyone, except—yes, except to the little music-hall artiste
whom the family had rejected.
Then she looked at the man in the chair beside hers, and as her
preoccupation had made him drop his guard, she read clearly the very
personal admiration in his eyes. For a moment they remained looking
at one another, love in the man’s eyes, a hopeless bewilderment and
weariness in Claudia’s.
“Your life does not satisfy you,” said the man abruptly. “I have known
that for some time.”
“Is anyone satisfied with his life?”
She was a little startled, but a beautiful, much-sought-after woman is
seldom nonplussed by such a situation. She had seen that look in too many
men’s eyes. It was only startling with Littleton because she had not
noticed that he was falling in love with her. Was that because she had
been thinking of Frank to the exclusion of other men? For though love
itself may not be blind, it makes a woman insensible to the feelings of
other men and her very preoccupation often piques them into desiring her.
Littleton got up and leaned against the mantelpiece, looking down upon
her. His straight, spare figure, in his unmistakable American clothing,
bespoke energy and endurance. The shape of his head, on the forehead
of which the fair hair was thinning a little, told of great mental
activity and powers of organization. Some woman might be proud of such
a man. In some ways he was not unlike Colin Paton, save that he had the
American restlessness and nerviness, and that he lacked the fine polish
and self-possession which a man may possibly acquire, but is usually
associated with families that can count back many centuries, and that
have always tried to uphold the best traditions of English manhood.
Paton’s ancestors had mainly been divided into two classes, fighters and
scholars. Admiral Worral Paton had fought many a fight with Francis Drake
on the high seas, and another Paton in the reign of Elizabeth had been
accounted a great and learned savant at court. Before that time, in the
reign of Henry the Seventh, there had been a namesake of Colin’s who had
fought bravely for the crown, and helped to subdue Lord Lovel’s rising
in Yorkshire. Claudia knew of these and of several more worthy and later
ancestors, for she had once visited his Elizabethan country home, where
his mother still lived, and he had, with laughing comments, conducted
her through the gallery of family portraits, which showed, he said, that
there had never been any fatal beauty in the family. But she had been
struck even then, as a girl—she had only been seventeen at the time—with
the indefinable air of breeding and intellectual distinction which they
all bore. There was an unmistakable stamp on the faces of all the Patons,
which said as plainly as words, “Death before dishonour.” Colin had told
her the story of one youth, a gay Royalist with laughing eyes, who had
fallen from honour by parting, under pressure from the woman he loved,
with one of the King’s secrets. “But, like Judas,” said Colin, “he went
out and hanged, or rather shot, himself almost directly afterwards. You,
who feel so intensely the joy of life—look at his laughing eyes!—will
believe that he expiated his sin.”
At Gilbert’s home, too, there was a small picture-gallery—not very
large, for the Curreys had never had any artistic leanings, and had
only had their portraits painted to feed their own vanity and pomp—but
the Curreys were a different race. Worthy—yes, probably—but heavy
and coarse-featured, with none of the fineness and delicacy that
distinguished the Patons, and some of them obviously too full-blooded,
with the limited vision which embraces only the material things of life.
The man who stood looking down upon her now was of different type from
either. He belonged to the virile new world; he had its good qualities
and its defects. Like Colin, he was a good companion to be with, but he
was so virile and so mettlesome that he occasionally left her rather
exhausted.
“Well?” he queried smilingly, not attempting to answer her question.
“I was thinking.”
“I know you were. One can always see the thoughts flitting through your
eyes. I have often longed to know what you were thinking about. I
believe your thoughts are worth hearing. Won’t you tell me this time?”
She found herself liking his voice, which had a slight American
inflection without being nasal.
“I was thinking how different the American man is from the average
Englishman, both in mind, temperament and physique.”
“We’re certainly beaten under the last head,” he replied, with a frank
laugh. “I am always admiring your Englishmen from the point of view of
good looks, though you know our men can be pretty fit, as we’ve shown
in your sports’ contests. But we’re not such good lookers, sure. As for
temperament”—he looked at her with a little challenge in his grey-blue
eyes—“that isn’t racial, you know; it’s individual. I guess one of my
countrymen may possess it as well as an Englishman. And what do you mean
by a temperament, anyway?”
Claudia shook her head. She refused to be drawn. “Impossible to define.
Those who have it do not need a definition, and those who have it
not—will never find one. Didn’t someone once say: ‘Art is life seen
through a temperament’?”
“But I’m not an artist,” he replied quickly, “only a merchant, who
purveys works of art through the medium of a printing-press. Do you think
that only professed artists may possess a temperament?”
“Of course not. That would be too ridiculous. I daresay some of the
greatest artists are inarticulate.”
“I am glad to hear you say that, because I should have hated to have you
put me right out of court. Because,” he spoke slowly, “lately I have
begun to realize that a certain resurrection is going on within me; that
what I tried deliberately to kill is still alive, painfully alive.”
She was aware that he was on the verge of a confidence, and she only
looked her interest. She liked him, and she felt she wanted to know more
about him; for never had they discussed their private lives with one
another. He was introducing a new element into their friendship.
“I married before I was twenty-two, and last fall I became a widower.
I married early after deliberation and sober reflection. Isn’t it
curious that one can so often reflect more soberly when one is twenty
than when one is approaching forty, as I am now? I married, my friends
said, most suitably. I was not what you would call in love with her. I
had known her for years, and I was fond of her in a quiet, unemotional
way, which you people of temperament despise. I married young to have
my mind and energies free for my work of restoring an old firm to its
original activity and greatness. I realized that if youth wants to toe
the straight line, it must keep clear of emotional complications. I saw
other men taken off their work, their senses flaying them into madness
and folly, by the women they met. I determined that I would marry and
keep clear of attractive women. I would settle down early into a family
man, and if there were joys that I knew not—well, the man who has been
born blind doesn’t know the glory of the sunshine. My wife was placid
and quite content with the small amount of leisure and attention I could
give her. All my best energies I gave to my work. Every American is born
ambitious; it’s in the very air he breathes, and with his first little
squalling breath he draws it in. I had rather a tough fight, but I won
out all right.... Now I am nearly forty I begin to wonder if I have done
the best with my life; I begin to see that perhaps those other fellows
who never got on are not to be pitied after all. I begin to feel a hiatus
in my life; I begin to see what life _might_ be.”
As he looked at the beautiful vivid woman among the cushions of the
armchair, he recalled the quiet, orderly life he had led with the one
who had borne his name, the lack of anything approaching exaltation or
beauty in their relationship, the prosaic monotony of their days, and
he wondered if he had not been the greatest of God’s fools. What would
life be with such a woman as the one Who now sat plaiting her fingers in
her lap, her very finger-tips pulsating with life? The magnetism of her
womanhood reached him as he stood, and made his breath come more quickly.
They had so much in common already, was it too wild and venturesome to
hope that they might have more?
“In short,” she said slowly, “you have sacrificed the best years of your
life to what you men call ‘the game.’ But you have succeeded. Many men
sacrifice everything and—fail. You may feel at odd moments that you have
missed something, but I expect you are really quite satisfied. You know
the proverb about the cake?”
“Yes, but did I choose the best kind of cake?”
She broke the spell by laughing. It sounded so odd. It reminded her of
the days when, as a child, she used to hover over the plate of cakes
anxiously seeking to make a good choice.
“That’s life,” she laughed. “If you take the chocolate one, you always
wish you had taken the jam-puff. And, after all,” a little wearily, “what
does it matter—chocolate or jam? Equally sweet, perhaps, and equally
unwholesome.”
He joined in her laugh and held out his hand. “I must go now. Let me come
again soon, will you? I enjoyed your charming luncheon-party, but much
more have I enjoyed this talk with you. Somehow I always want to talk to
you, and I have the reputation for being rather a silent man. I wonder
why you inspire me?”
Her hand was in his and she smiled mischievously and mockingly as she
said: “I suppose it’s because I talk so much. It makes you feel that
you must uphold the superior ability of your sex in all things, even
conversation.”
But he did not smile. His eyes were searching her face, noting the soft,
velvety texture of the skin—how he longed to press his lips on her
full, creamy throat even more than on her lips—the satiny gloss of her
luxurious hair, the long eyelashes which, as he stood above her, swept
her cheeks, the small, straight nose and delicate ears.
“You are a very sweet and fascinating woman,” he said suddenly, “and I am
sorry that we ever did anything so vulgar as to use your portrait for a
book cover.... Good-bye.”
For a few minutes after he had taken his departure Claudia sat thinking
about him. Unlike Frank Hamilton, he did not set her pulses singing, and
leave her inwardly shaken when he released her hand; but, on the other
hand, she found herself considering him more seriously. She conjectured
more about him; she found herself wanting his opinion, just as she
did Colin Paton’s. Colin! That reminded her of the beginning of their
conversation. Colin had clearly shown that their friendship was to him
but a small thing. She found herself clenching her fingers into the
palm of her hand as she reflected on the secret he had kept from her.
This man Littleton was not in any way the equal of Colin Paton, either
in brain or in character; but he was evidently trying to tell her how
much he appreciated their acquaintanceship, trying to let her know that
he realized now what a big part a woman might play in his life. Pat was
quite, _quite_ wrong. Colin was an unemotional fish; he even took their
friendship coldly.
“And I want love, life, warmth!” she cried to her empty drawing-room. “I
am tired of leading this deadly existence. I want someone to love me, to
tell me so, to make me feel that he loves me.”
She looked at the room through a blinding mist, so that the delicate
walls and the Louis Quinze furniture all swum in a haze, and nothing
stood out save the fact that the room, like her heart, was empty, and
there was no one to hold out two arms ready to enfold her.
Then she strangled a sob in her throat, and the room became once more the
charming, orderly room it always was, filled with sweet scented flowers
and majestic palms.
“You’re a fool, Claudia, a fool! a fool! a fool!” she said through
her half-closed teeth. “You want things that you will never get, that
probably don’t exist except in your stupid imagination.”
Then she went quickly out of the room to her bedroom, where her outdoor
clothes were lying on the bed. She rang the bell for her maid.
“Order the car for me, please. I am going to see Mrs. Iverson. Give me
that box of picture-puzzles I got for her.”
Fay always wanted her. She would go where she was wanted.