Veronica was in despair. She slipped, after a doubtful tap, round
Sydney’s door, and professing an acute desire for sympathy and
consolation, sank without further explanation into the billows of plump
eiderdown on Sydney’s bed, kicked her white suède shoes across the room
and flung her hat after them.
“The floor hasn’t been swept,” said Sydney, looking up from her book.
Notwithstanding the slight sense of degeneracy induced by reading novels
before luncheon she had been enjoying “Jude the Obscure.” She did not
mind Veronica coming in but wished she did not have to talk to her.
“I don’t care if I don’t put any of them on again,” announced Veronica
in the toneless accents of sincerity. “They are abominable.”
“_I_ think the clothes you wear are nice,” said Sydney. “Have you got a
pain?”
“As a matter of fact, I hate all my clothes. And I don’t know what is to
become of me. Does it ever occur to you that being alive is a mistake?”
She swung a stockinged foot and sighed. “I do wish,” she said, “that I
had brought my knitting. I do think conversation when one hasn’t got
anything to do with one’s hands feels fearfully awkward, don’t you? And
I really should like to talk, if you don’t mind. You’re not doing
anything—I mean, only reading?”
“Why don’t you go out?”
Veronica explained that she was sick of other people’s faces and was
certain, comfortably, that Sydney would understand what she meant.
Sitting here in Sydney’s room, to which she had not yet been invited,
among Sydney’s possessions gave her a feeling of being listened to which
she would never have had on neutral ground. Ordinarily, this would not
have affected her one way or the other; she herself never listened very
attentively to what other people were saying. The gist of a remark was
enough for her. This was a north room, the morning’s glare was reflected
back to it faintly from the face of the hill. Veronica preferred her own
room, and thought that it was just like Sydney to be at the back of the
first floor instead of the front of the fourth with a balcony and
sunshine. She, Joan and Eileen shared a room with sloping ceilings that
resembled a rabbit-hutch. This, she thought, looking round her, was
rarefied but rather depressing.
“Does it seem to you,” she said weightily, “that this world is entirely
divided into rather stupid men and very silly women? And that the stupid
are all one will ever have to hope for and that the silly are all one
can ever become?”
Sydney, thoughtful over this, was certain that there must be other
variations.
“There aren’t,” said Veronica definitely. “I think you are usually
fairly lucid and at present I am; I have absolutely no illusions about
anyone. Look at the things people say to you and the things they expect
you to do and the ridiculous way people don’t know what they want and
the fuss they make when they can’t get it. Look at the sort of way
people go on if you ask them for any opinion about anything you’ve
done.”
“I never ask anybody else their opinion,” said Sydney (she felt
odiously).
“One must have something to go by.”
“Go by yourself.”
“As a matter of fact,” said Veronica, rolling sideways on to her elbow
to pluck a long white feather out of the eiderdown, “I suppose I’m
rather humble, really. By the way,” she added after a pause in which two
more feathers had been extracted, “what is your absolutely candid
opinion of the man Victor?”
“_How_ absolutely candid?—I mean, would anything hurt?”
“Nothing, thanks. Do I look it?”
“Well, candidly, I do think he’s rather a dreary young man.”
“I thought you did,” said Veronica briskly. “Everybody seems to. Of
course, I know him fairly well.”
“And isn’t he?”
“Oh, not more than others.” Veronica slipped off the bed and began to
walk round the room thoughtfully. Hands on hips she paused a moment to
look at herself in the wardrobe glass from every angle. “One might be
led to expect,” she said with obvious relevance, “something better than
all that, you know.” It did seem that for all she had been designed for
she was tragically more than adequate. She remained staring at Sydney
with a fated air while Sydney said: “He seems attached to you.”
“Of course,” said Veronica, matter-of-factly but without complacency.
“Do you want to get rid of him?”
“Yes—no. What would be the good? Everybody’s the same and I must have
somebody.”
“Oh, well,” said Sydney, withdrawing. A moment’s rather fine light had
played on Veronica, but now Sydney felt, in revulsion, a mild contempt.
Women, she thought, are all tentacles: this last remark had suggested a
wide but horribly purposeful groping about.
“And if you come to think of it,” said Veronica, “people who are fond of
one may be damned dull and absolutely monotonous but they are rather
touching. I hate pitying people, but I can’t help it. Fancy feeling like
that! I do think men are pathetic, don’t you? If only they were more
interesting.”
“I should have said they were interesting.”
“You wouldn’t if you’d had as many as I have,” said Veronica gloomily.
“I do envy you being so fearfully clever, Sydney, it’s kept you young
for your age. I daresay I thought men were interesting when I was about
seventeen. Now I can see they’re all exactly the same.”
“If that’s the effect you produce on them,” said Sydney, “I should let
them be. And it would be fairer. After all, as one was told when one
wouldn’t finish up one’s dinner, there are many poor girls——”
“Oh, I daresay. But what am _I_ to do? I don’t want to _be_ anything.
I’m not modern. I’d be perfectly happy the way I am if only other people
weren’t exactly like they are. Sydney, you give me the creeps sitting
there like an idol. Do say something. Tell me what you think will become
of me.”
“Why do you ask me? I’m the last person in the world to be able to
understand you. It would be better, even, to ask Victor.”
“I never talk to him. But you’re so _lucid_.”
“Who said that?” asked Sydney at once, pouncing on an adjective which
did not seem to have its place in Veronica’s vocabulary.
“Mr. Milton,” said Veronica unabashed. “We think ‘lucid’ is a good word;
we’ve taken it up. You should hear Eileen! _He’s_ got a tremendous
vocabulary, he said you were ‘clear-cut.’”
“Oh! How amusing. Does he talk about me?”
“Of course he does; he’s fearfully keen on you.”
“Oh! How amusing....”
Veronica laughed tolerantly. “‘In love,’ if you prefer it,” she
continued. “I suppose as he’s middle-aged that that is rather more
expressive.”
Sydney, feeling as though she had caught Milton unawares, felt rather
ashamed of herself. The picture that came as those awkward sounding
words left Veronica’s lips was as sudden as though that scene on the
plateau (which had disconnected itself from the rest of her memories)
had not occurred. She had so entirely divested that all-staged proposal
of all the traditional trappings that she had come to account for it
merely as one of the more blatant of his occasional solecisms. They had
frequently met since then without awkwardness, without the ghost of an
echo.
Sydney could never hear any mention of love without an envious pang for
its object and now, as though feeling came quicker than thought, she had
felt this pang sharply before she had had time to say to herself “He is
in love with _me_.”
“I daresay he may propose, you know,” said Veronica maternally, with an
air of having their situation well in hand. “That will be awful for you;
he’s a darling old thing—not so very old, either,” she amended
politely—so politely that Sydney realized she herself must have
transgressed an etiquette in depreciating Victor. “He is one of the few
men,” said Veronica with a sigh, “who can talk intellectually to me and
make me talk intellectually without feeling a fool.”
Sydney longed to overhear them. “He and I,” she said, “can’t talk to one
another. He keeps tripping up and tripping me up like a bad dancer.”
“Oh, _well_,” said Veronica, “under the circumstances what can you
expect?” and Sydney shrugged her impatience at this conception. Veronica
sitting down before the dressing-table leant on her elbows, curling her
feet round the rungs of the chair. She amused herself for some moments
by squinting horribly at her own reflection, then she took up Sydney’s
puff and began thoughtfully to powder her face. “Talking of types,” said
she, “none of us seem to be making much impression on young Ronald, do
we? Did you ever see such a mummy’s-boy! Oh, I beg your pardon, Sydney,
I was forgetting Mrs. Kerr was a friend of yours.”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“I must say, I do think she’s odd about Ronald. She doesn’t seem to have
taken any notice of him for years and now they go about all over the
place like Romeo and Juliet. Of course I daresay he makes a fearful fuss
over her. These selfish mothers get the best of it all the way. I shall
be a selfish mother.”
“As a matter of fact, you won’t,” Sydney said with a flash of insight.
“Well, I should never have the nerve to be as blatantly selfish as she
is. I think she’s treated you very badly, too: that makes me furious—I
say, Sydney, your powder doesn’t suit my face! Look, it makes me pale
blue. You have got a skin, you lucky devil! _I_ always use basanée.”
“Why do you think she has treated me badly?” asked Sydney
dispassionately. She waited for Veronica to continue and her
expectations of what was coming raced ahead.
“Well, she has so absolutely given you the go-by, hasn’t she?” said
Veronica, replacing the alabaster lid of the powder-bowl then looking
down to blow some powder off her dress. “It was ‘Sydney this’ and
‘Sydney darling that’ and ‘Where’s Sydney?’ and ‘Sydney and I are going
together,’ and now he’s come she simply doesn’t see you.”
Sydney, after an interval, leant sideways to push the window further
open. She seemed to have forgotten Veronica, who energetically
continued, “Of course I’m sorry for you. Everybody’s sorry for you.”
“Oh,” said Sydney.
“Do you _mind_ the way she’s going on?” asked Veronica curiously.
“It hadn’t occurred to me that there was anything to mind,” said Sydney
with a high-pitched little laugh and a sensation of pushing off
something that was coming down on her like the ceiling in one of her
dreams. It seemed incredible that the words Veronica had just made use
of should ever have been spoken.
“Well, it has occurred to everybody else, you know,” said Veronica and
picking up a string of amber she held it against her dress and leant
back to admire the reflection. “Take a word of advice from one who
knows, my dear,” said Veronica sagely, “and never trust any woman an
inch. They’re all alike, cats every one of them.”
—“I thought there was something special you wanted to talk about,”
Sydney broke in eagerly, making a dart for this way of escape from
herself. For very nervousness she could not stop talking, and Veronica’s
affairs now offered themselves gratefully as a kind of jungle in which
her own values could be obscured and forgotten. “You were in despair,
Veronica,” she insisted more eagerly, “you said just now you were in
despair.”
“I know,” said Veronica willingly. “I did feel like nothing on earth.
But you’ve cheered me up immensely. It’s queer how the most ridiculous
little worry of somebody else’s will often take one’s mind off one’s
own. But there really was something I wanted to ask you about. I’m
engaged to Victor—would you advise me to be?”
Sydney could not help feeling that any matron in the Hotel could have
done as much for Veronica while she pronounced wisely: “Not if you’re
not happy, of course.”
“Well, I feel in a kind of way happy,” said Veronica, wriggling her
shoulders. “You see, I do like Victor, and we do seem to be rather
involved—which comes, of course, from having nothing else to do here.
Oh, don’t look so grim, Sydney, you look fearfully grim. I mean, you
might say the usual sort of thing, even if you don’t mean them; you give
me the creeps.”
“My dear,” said Sydney more warmly, “you must marry him if you care to.
And I hope you’ll be fearfully happy.”
“You know I really don’t see why one shouldn’t be,” said Veronica
brightening, as though the possibility had only now presented itself.
“Of course he’s got no money and no work and nothing _you’d_ call
ability; but that makes me feel less of a mean pig.”
“‘Pig,’ Veronica?”
“For not feeling more thrilled. And he and I’ve got rather the same
sense of humour. Of course there are people at home I could marry, but
there’s not really much to choose between any of them. You see, I’ve got
absolutely no illusions. I do feel I might have been terribly fond of
somebody; I don’t think I’m really hard or anything, do you? Do you
think perhaps men aren’t what they used to be?... It’s all very well to
say ‘Don’t marry!’” cried Veronica, throwing both her hands up to forbid
interruption and raising her voice, “but I must marry somebody. You see,
I must have some children.”
“Well, you needn’t necessarily marry——”
“My _dear_ Sydney!” exclaimed Veronica, horrified and scarlet. Her
changes of mood, definite as the slipping-along of lantern slides,
expressed themselves in changes of attitude, so that unconsciously she
was dramatic. Dejection once again drew out each line as she recalled:
“But I’ve _kicked_ Victor: what is the use of a man one can kick?”
The problem seemed likely to be one which she would be called upon to
consider in its length and breadth repeatedly; she at once accepted the
likelihood and turned away from it with a nod of admirable philosophy.
“God knows!” sighed she, not irreverently. The problem would be
dismissed at its every reappearance with this undefeated gracefulness.
Sydney had a return of her earlier admiration. Veronica had taken up a
sound position midway between defiance and resignation and seemed likely
to achieve serenity.
“And what shall _you_ do?” asked Veronica, as though they had been
talking over their plans for the day. “I mean, when you get back to
England?”
Sydney was blank for a moment—back to _where_? “Oh, go on where I left
off,” said she, “try and pass my next exam!”
“Oh. Why?”
“Well, I really——”
“—I don’t suppose I should understand, should I? Funny how well we know
each other—I’ve never given myself away like this before—and yet how
little we _know_.... In an ordinary way, in London, we should run miles
I daresay, rather than meet. Of course, I should have met Victor
anywhere. I say, I hope I haven’t made your bed uncomfy, rolling about?
I really can’t sit on foreign armchairs; they’re so steep.” She picked
her hat up from the floor, brushed the dust off it tenderly and put it
on. “As you say, this is not such a bad hat.” She heaved a deep sigh. “I
feel ever so much happier; you are wonderful. Have you got a shoe-horn?
These shoes are so tight, really that’s why I dislike them. I say, will
you come to tea with me and Victor at the Patisserie and look at him
again? He’s sensitive really; if you were nice to him he’d buck up
tremendously, you’d be surprised. We eat a tremendous amount of
patisserie, we adore it and it doesn’t seem worth while beginning to
economize until there is some remote prospect of our getting married.
And if we don’t get married—I mean, to each other—there will always be
this to look back on. That’s what we feel.”
Sighing and talking, vaguely she drifted towards the door. There she
turned back and brilliantly nodded.
A suspicion that this mood of lucidity had after all been induced by an
over-indulgence in pastry cast a slight shadow on Sydney’s farewell. “I
should be careful,” said she, “or you’ll both get most fearfully spotty.
Look at those little Italians! Can’t you try some other narcotic?”
“You should be thankful we don’t drink,” said Veronica and shut the door
after her; not satisfactorily for it clicked open again and began to
creak on its hinges in the manner of hotel doors all over the world.
Sydney heard her quickening footsteps retreat; she listened forlornly,
straining her ears for the last of them. Then she got up and tidied the
bed; smoothed out the eiderdown, picked up the amber beads and hanging
them round her neck stood telling them off like a rosary. Some
premonition, such as that with which a recurring physical pain announces
itself, made her snatch up “Jude the Obscure” quickly and stare at the
pages, but there she found nothing but print. She looked up for a moment
and—“She has so absolutely given you the go-by,” the room repeated,
catching her unawares. The shapes of the furniture, everything that she
looked at, said it again.