(To A. P. D.)
A wide, cushioned seat runs round three sides of the deep fireplace in
Torry Delorian’s library for the admitted reason that Lady Pamela March
likes to face the room when she is talking.
The room, of course, means the audience. Personally, I consider that
she could safely--I mean, without spoiling her picture of herself--make
use of the very word itself. It is so obviously the only one that
applies, when she sits there, smoking one cigarette after another, and
we sit there, smoking one cigarette after another, all listening to
Pamela, playing up to Pamela, and all more or less sexually attracted
by Pamela.
The subconscious mind of Pamela projects on these occasions, I think,
something of this kind:
=“_The girlish figure dominated the room. Magnetism vibrated in every
gesture of the slim hands, every glance from the brilliant eyes, every
modulation of the rather deep voice. She held them all, by sheer force
of personality. The peacock-blue folds of her dress, with its girdle of
barbaric, coloured stones...._”=
The bit about the dress, of course, varies. Sometimes the folds
may be saffron-yellow, and the girdle opalescent, or there is no
girdle at all; and anyhow, in those particulars, the same effect
is never repeated twice. But I imagine that, like all women, she
makes a point to herself of the accoutrements, not realising that
the audience--almost altogether composed of men--attribute the
entire effect to the sheer, smooth slope of her shoulders, the
alluring curves of her mouth, the rich swell of her breasts beneath
semi-transparencies.
The impression that inwardly she is projecting really does reflect
itself on to the minds of most people, I believe.
It is only slightly distorted, even in my own version of it, which runs
something like this:
=“_The girlish figure dominated the room. Animal magnetism vibrated
in every gesture_”= ... and so on--only leaving out the brilliancy of
the eyes and the deepness of the voice, both of them rather cheap
accessories to a pose that really is quite strong enough without
them--to the end:
=“_She held them all, by sheer will-to-dominate._”=
Pamela, being a brilliant talker, prefers always to talk personalities.
Two nights ago, sitting on that cushioned rail that runs round the
fireplace, she recounted an adventure.
“... Only it’s the spiritual adventure that I’m telling all of you.
Because you’ll understand. The other part was all obvious, the danger
and all that. You’ve probably seen it in the papers.”
She was right. It had been lavishly paragraphed, with photograph inset.
Her _flair_ for publicity is unerring.
“Darlings, how I loathe the Press--if I could only tell you! But the
other part of the affair was so utterly wonderful, that it’s swamped
everything else. It was like a revelation.
“You know how essentially super-civilised I am? A man once wrote a poem
about my being like a piece of jade--hard, and brilliant, and polished,
and yet with the unfathomable subtlety and agelessness of the East. My
civilisation is partly temperamental, I suppose, and of course to a
certain extent the result of elaborate education--and then hereditary
as well. Look at Anthony. Could anyone have a more utterly civilised
parent, I ask you? Elma is less poised, of course, but mercifully
for me I’ve managed to inherit my mother’s physique and my father’s
mentality. Like a sensitised plate, isn’t it? It does mean isolation
of soul, and those terrible nerve-storms of mine, but in my heart of
hearts I know it’s worth it.
“Only people are so ghastly. My friends have to rescue me.... You
remember what it was like, Torry, the night that woman assaulted me
at the Embassy, and talked, and talked, and talked. O Christ! it was
all about food, or flannel, or babies--something too utterly indecent,
I know. I sat there, helpless, martyred--and darling Torry came and
rescued me. I shall never forget it, Torry, you sweet, never.
“Now this is what happened the other day. (Why do you allow me to be
discursive, dear people?) You know my car was held up by Sinn Feiners?
I, who adore everything lawless! But it was simply for being Anthony’s
daughter, of course. They hate him so.
“You know how I drive for miles and miles, entirely alone, just so as
to feel the air in my face, and my hands--rather small, really, by
comparison--controlling that great swift machine. Well, I’d got to such
a lonely place that it was like finding God--when suddenly these men
appeared.
“I wasn’t a bit frightened--I never am frightened--but it was horrible,
all the same. And I kept thinking of the people who’d be so sorry if I
were killed, and wondering who’d be the sorriest, and who’d remember
longest.”
=(_She looked round the room, her dark brows raised in an expression
part whimsical, part pathetic._)=
“All this isn’t the adventure, you know, though they took my jewels,
and tied me up to a bench on a sort of heath place. They tied me here,
and here.”
She held out a slim ankle, and extended both wrists.
“Dear hearts, don’t, don’t touch me! I’m so dreadfully on edge
to-night. Nothing to do with the adventure, though. That was altogether
beautiful.
“You see there was another woman on the bench, to whom they’d done
exactly the same thing--only she’d been walking, not driving. They left
us together, and said they’d come back later and shoot us. Terrorism,
of course, but it would be such an ugly way of going out, wouldn’t it?
“She and I looked at one another, tied to either end of that bench,
and in some way that I simply can’t describe, our spirits leapt
together. She, it turned out afterwards, recognised me at once--that’s
the worst of being too weak to refuse sittings when one’s pestered
by every photographer in London--but I hadn’t the least idea who she
was, and don’t care. Bright red hair, quite distinguished-looking, and
altogether rather lovely in a pallid, blanc-de-Ninon way, though no
actual physical charm. But I felt it wouldn’t have mattered if she’d
been a _déclassée_. By the way, what is a _déclassée_?
“This still isn’t the adventure--besides, you know this part already,
all of you--but some of those ruffians came back again, and untied us,
and said we could find our own way home. They’d taken my car, needless
to say. I gave them one of my looks--the sort that means I’m really,
really angry, like when someone kisses me in a clumsy way, or spills
something on my frock--and the men melted, literally melted, away. Then
she and I began to walk, and this is really when the part that matters
started to happen.
“Having come through this shattering episode, and found ourselves
unshot, and alive, it was almost like two disembodied spirits communing
together. We got into the realities straight away. It was far more
wonderful than if one of us had been a man, because then sex must have
come into it, but as it was, each of us laid her whole soul perfectly
bare, in the way one can never do to a man, if he loves one, for fear
it should kill his love, or if he doesn’t love one, for fear it should
make him think he does.
“But as it was, each of us was perfectly fearless, and in a way
perfectly shameless. It was partly violent emotional reaction. You see,
we’d both thought we were facing death.
“She told me that she was utterly miserable. Her husband was a brute,
and her lover had let her down. He’d fallen in love with a girl, a sort
of pure-eyed-baby person, and had just told this woman--who’d been
giving him everything, of course, for years--that he wanted to _se
ranger_ and get married.
“She was nearly out of her mind, that woman. You see, she wasn’t young,
and then some skin treatment she’d been having hadn’t succeeded, and
was helping to break her up. She told me about that, too. Oh, there
was nothing she didn’t say, but she simply didn’t care, we were so
utterly intimate for that fleeting moment. Nobody else in the world
knew, she told me. She’d always tried to avoid scandal, and no one
had ever really known about her _liaison_ with this man. (Women _are_
clever about love.)
“And then I told her every single thing about myself--things that I’d
never dream of breathing in this room, nor you of believing, most
likely. Foul, filthy, hateful things about myself.... I know now why
Catholics go to confession. It releases so much.
“Darlings, words can’t ever describe what it was like. I shall never
forget it, as long as I live, and neither will she.
“We parted, of course, but we both knew that there was a link between
us that nothing could ever break, even though we never met again. It
was too utterly perfect and complete as it was.”
There was a silence, and then someone said, suitably: “Wonderful
Pamela!”
She smiled vaguely, shook her head, and then tragically clasped both
hands to her breast. “Please, a cocktail. I’m so tired. Oh, and what’s
the time? I’m dining with a man at eight, and he’s thrown over a most
important engagement to take me, and he’d be quite capable of getting
angry if I failed him. Sweet, no! Not a quarter past nine! Oh, please,
someone, a car, and take me to the little tiny, tiny French restaurant
in Wardour Street.”
Lady Pamela waved away the cocktail, spilling it, prayed for another
one and drank it, and then wafted away on the wings of little
distressed exclamations and futile, effective gestures of farewell.
That was two nights ago.
This morning I was in Bond Street, and I saw Pamela March in her
father’s car, held up by a block in the traffic.
On the other side of the narrow street another car with a solitary
woman in it passed slowly. I recognised the woman instantly from
Pamela’s description, for she had bright red hair, was quite
distinguished-looking, and altogether rather lovely in a pallid,
blanc-de-Ninon way, and radiated a marked degree of physical charm.
The eyes of the two women who had been as disembodied spirits communing
together met in a long look.
And the expression in each pair of eyes was momentarily identical,
and it was with the same effect of immutable determination that each
simultaneously administered and received the cut direct.
_They knew...._