Ambrose Matthews was, in fact, a very welcome distraction. He came that
afternoon, and he was so nicely entertained that he returned again and
again, nearly every day. Enid said she didn’t mind as long as he waited
until five o’clock, because then the light wasn’t any good. Miss Mell
was not disturbed by talking, or by walking, or by singing or by dancing
while she worked, and Rosaleen, it must be confessed, cared very little
whether she worked at all, or not.
Ambrose was a young man with an obsession. Two generations ago it would
have been called Love; one generation past would have called it Women;
but he, of course, called it Sex. He was a writer, he said. His father
supported him, so that he didn’t need to be “commercial.” He was indeed
so uncommercial that his creations never got beyond his own brain.
However, he was only twenty-two, and still regarding his world.
The talk, during his visits, was supposed to be stimulating, and it
resolved itself into a sort of duel between Ambrose and Rosaleen, in
which Enid was the young man’s perverse second and Miss Mell assisted
Rosaleen in her defense.
He used to bring lurid little magazines of strange shapes and colours,
things that never lasted more than a few months.
“Why do they publish the things?” asked Miss Mell. “They certainly can’t
pay. And nobody could possibly enjoy them.”
“Listen to this!” said Ambrose. “It’s _good_!”
And then would follow the expression of some individual’s point of view,
which was called an “article,” always about fallen women, race suicide,
and so on. It appeared from these little publications that it was not
only necessary but “sincere” and altogether praiseworthy to repeat all
the well-known facts and statistics on these subjects over and over,
endlessly. No matter how trite, or how biased, so long as the author was
“sincere” and stuck to more or less forbidden topics, his “article”
_must_ be published, and his opinion _must_ be respected. It was a crime
against society not to be eternally interested in these things.
Rosaleen was well aware that Ambrose had no intentions toward her of a
personal nature; he was simply mildly attracted by her. But as a matter
of principle he was forever urging on her his point of view. He couldn’t
endure her inviolable reserve; it made him furious that she would not
discuss these things. He was always saying how incomplete was the life
of a woman without an “affair.” And he was not content with
dissertations upon the influence of love on the soul; he became medical
and pathological and sociological. According to him, the life of a
spinster was not only anti-social and morbid; it was a sort of suicide;
it led inevitably to madness and death. Facts did not disturb him; the
numbers of self-respecting celibate women he was naturally obliged to
meet, who were neither ill nor mad, and who were quite as happy as the
married women, convinced him not at all. All these women, he insisted,
were either absorbed in secret love-affairs, or--or they could not and
did not exist. He denied them.
“I’ll tell you what’s the matter with you and your professors and your
doctors and your writers,” said Enid, one day. “It makes you all frantic
to think that women can get along without you. Well, they can and they
do, plenty of them.”
Ambrose said, no, they didn’t. Or if they did, they were dreadfully
unhappy.
“No more unhappy than _with_ them,” said Enid.
As for Rosaleen, she said nothing. She didn’t agree with either Ambrose
or Enid. She felt that she should have liked very much to have a
husband and children, but that, if they never came to her, she should
nevertheless manage to live a fairly pleasant and happy life. She knew,
however, that this was not a “view,” and that no one would have been
interested in hearing it.
In spite of his fixed idea, they not only tolerated Ambrose, but they
were rather fond of him. He filled a gap. He was, in a way, their pet.
They liked to see his curly head leaning against the back of their big
wing chair; they liked to hear his voice, and to smell the smoke of his
pipe. He was another young thing in their young world; and what in later
life was to be highly unpleasant, was now, at twenty-three, harmless and
laughable.
Lawrence never came. Dodo and Enid saw that there was a mystery here,
and they spoke of it to each other more than once. Sometimes they
laughed and sometimes they were angry. The way in which he had invited
everyone to supper and then run off and left the others to pay! But they
didn’t mention it to Rosaleen, and she, in despair of ever being able to
explain that extraordinary evening, never brought up the subject. But
they all missed him. Once in a while Miss Mell would say, “There goes
Lawrence!” and they would run to the window, to see him, in his great
fur-lined coat and silk hat, getting into a taxi, off to one of those
teas where he so shone. He was inordinately fond of “society”: they
read his name in the papers in connection with all sorts of pageants,
charity balls, amateur theatricals, costume dances. He said he did it to
get business, but that wasn’t quite true. He did it because he liked it;
because he liked the idle and seductive women who flattered him. He had
sitters, too, women who came in elegant limousines and had tea with him.
He never raised his eyes to the windows above.