There was, and (by the grace of God) there still is, a lovely woman whom
it once pleased a young man to call Shelmerdene, because, he said,
though it is not her real name, it becomes her better than any real name
could. And about Shelmerdene books have been written and for her men
have died, which just shows you the sort of woman she was. Now it
happened one day that Shelmerdene returned to England after a long
absence abroad in Persia, but I can tell you nothing about that because
I know nothing of Persia, except that it is rather inadequately governed
by a Shah who is a pretty fat young man and wears a diamond in his hat.
Among other entertainments that we, her friends, contrived for
Shelmerdene, as a welcome and a token of our enduring affection, a great
house-party was arranged by Aubrey Carlyle; whereby, on a week-end in
May, a great company of agreeable people was gathered together at
Malmanor Park, a vast Elizabethan sort of place in ancient red that lies
on a velvet plain between a brooding hill and the peculiar wood of
Carmion; for it is said of Carmion Wood that only foreigners may hear
the singing of the birds therein, whereas for Englishmen there is
nothing but the sighing of the boughs and the rustling of the leaves.
What truth there is in that legend I do not know, but I don’t suppose
there is much.
Of all the company, only an intimate few stayed on at Malmanor after the
Monday morning. Of the women, Mrs. Loyalty, the Lady Fay Paradise,
Esther Carlyle (who kept house for her brother), Mrs. Avalon, and
Shelmerdene. Of the men, Ralph Loyalty, George Tarlyon, John Avalon,
myself, our host, and young Raymond Paris, the novelist, who spent his
mornings in a secluded room writing.
One morning young Raymond Paris had sat long at the large table in his
room--an upstairs room it was which Aubrey Carlyle had put at his
disposal--but the paper before him was as white as a woman’s throat;
nor is the likeness too unfair, as are most likenesses of this sort, for
Raymond Paris had an extravagant taste in foolscap, being still young
enough to enjoy the actual writing of his tales as much as the fame and
fortune they might in due course bring him. Established writers used to
ask him: “What, don’t you typewrite your stories straight away? Or don’t
you dictate them? Well, you’ll soon get into the habit of it.” And that
used to depress young Raymond Paris, for he did not want to get into the
habit of it, he liked seeing his thoughts making patterns on the white
paper.
But this morning the white paper before him remained far too white for
his liking. The table at which he sat with a worried face was drawn
across the bow of the wide windows; and through them the eyes were
enticed by a long avenue of tall trees, which swept massively away from
the gardens for many furlongs and was at last joined to the border of
Carmion Wood; but, nearer, the eyes dropped from the windows to the
upper garden, where--for the month was May--lay many beds of rare
tulips, the whole drawn to an exquisite though, perhaps, intemperate
design. Pink and purple, red and yellow, white and magenta, the
carnival of gay tall tulips flamed in the sunlight and swayed to the
lilt of the gentle wind, so that the young man’s brooding eyes likened
them to glittering soldiers who every now and then stooped to the
elegant distraction of a valse....
“So this is the way you work, Raymond Paris!” cried a soft, light voice
behind him, and never was a young man with his way to make in the world
more grateful for being disturbed.
“I am in great trouble, Shelmerdene. For here have I been offered an
untold sum for a short-story, and I have not the glimmer of an idea! The
editor wrote to me saying that he wanted something not only witty but
serious, something earnest as well as gay, and with a point. Now isn’t
that an unfair thing to ask of a man?” And the young writer looked up at
Shelmerdene with a self-pitying smile, while she stood beside him,
playing thoughtfully with the catch of an ancient pink shagreen
cigarette-case, which had once been vanity-box in chief to Queen Marie
Antoinette, so they said.
Now who shall describe Shelmerdene of the dark sleek hair, of the lips
that smiled unaccountably, of the blue eyes that were gentle and witty
and alight with understanding? She was lithe and dark-haired, and her
face was white, and her eyes were as blue as night and as impersonal as
the stars. She wore, this morning, a jumper of vermilion silk, and her
skirt was thus and thus, and sweetly rakish on her head was a brown felt
hat with a wide stiff brim, and on her feet were brown brogues of
Russian leather, such as only men-servants can properly polish, women
being what they are.
Shelmerdene smiled down at Raymond Paris, the young writer who could not
write a story.
“I will tell you a story,” she said. “I will tell it quite plainly, but
afterwards you may decorate it with fine words and epigrams, and make it
a story fit for an editor to read. No, I won’t sit down, but you may
continue to. This story, my dear, begins with me. All my stories do,
though they generally end with some one else; that is called making a
mess of one’s life, Raymond. I was married very young, and an unhappy
marriage it was, so that we parted rather grimly, that queer man and I.
He would not divorce me and I could not divorce him, for he was a pure
man. Somewhere in this world, Raymond, there is a stern man who is my
husband, and you must always remember that in any conversation with me,
for he is not at all the kind of man whom one can forget. I have tried
to, and so I know. He was very good-looking in a naval sort of
way--which was just as well, as he was in the navy--and his eyes had
that bleary, bitten look which they tell you comes from being out on the
high seas in all weathers, but you and I know that it comes from
drinking gin-and-bitters at all hours, there being so little else to do
on a battleship. Anyway, there he is and here am I; pride parted us
once, and now the years part us, and God only knows what will happen, if
indeed He’s at all interested in such silly people.
“I fell in love. ‘Fall’ is exactly the word in this context, and I did
not rise quickly. That is called being a loose woman, Raymond, but you
need not put this part into your story; I am just explaining myself to
you out of affection and because it is a May morning.
“My story is about how I fell in love with a stone image; for women are
sometimes like sea-birds, they sometimes worship stone images, men who
are carved of the rocky stuff of life.... All men and women are in a
conspiracy to hide a secret, and the secret that lies in the hearts of
all men and women is that they want to be loved. It sounds almost too
pathetic, Raymond, but it is true. I fell in love with this young man,
and I wanted to be loved by him. But he would not--Raymond, do you
understand, he would not love me! Those, of course, were not his exact
words, but it came to that. Why is it always the wrong men who fall in
love with one, Raymond? My lovely stone image told me that he didn’t
deserve being loved by me, because, because--oh, how the poor boy
hesitated!--he hadn’t it in him to love any one. He simply couldn’t
love, he said--and he felt such a brute! And then he tried to weigh his
words carefully. He liked me, he said, as much as he could like any one,
but he didn’t _think_ he loved me--mark that glorious, arrogant _think_,
Raymond! And also tell me when I am boring you....
“As he spoke, over luncheon it was, I watched the blue eyes which tried
to look straight into mine but couldn’t, because he was shy. He was
trying to be honest with me, you see, and trying to be honest with women
makes men shy. He felt such a brute, he kept on saying, he ... yes, he
did love me in his way, he suddenly admitted. But his way wasn’t, simply
couldn’t be, mine. He simply couldn’t give himself wholly to any
one--and he so frightfully wanted to, he felt he was missing such
lovely things!
“I was a fool, of course--I mean, to believe what he said about not
loving me. Oh, what an utter fool I was to believe him! But, all the
same, I clung to my pathetic love-affair with both hands, ever so tight.
I did indeed, Raymond. It is extraordinary how unattainable a woman can
make a man she isn’t sure of! Maybe you have been unattainable to some
woman, Raymond, or maybe you will be. It will be fun for you.
“If it hadn’t been that my husband would not divorce me I would have
dragged that lovely stone image to the altar. It would have been better
so, our lives would have been quite different and perhaps quite
beautiful; but what actually happened was also quite beautiful, in an
irregular kind of way.
“I had set out, you see, to make myself essential to him, mentally,
physically, every way. If he couldn’t love me as a man loves a woman
then he must love me as a tree loves the creepers that cling round it.
Oh, dear, how extraordinarily silly one gets! I was terribly serious,
Raymond. I always am, which is perhaps what keeps me young--but do I
look young, youngish? Quick, tell me! Oh, you are sweet, Raymond!
“But I hadn’t much time in which to make myself necessary to him--that
young man who said he couldn’t give himself wholly to any woman, who
sandwiched a woman between a dead salmon and a dead grouse! He was the
eldest son of a great house, but in the meantime he was a soldier, and
he had the frozen blue eyes which make a good soldier, as soldiers
go--and he _was_ going, Raymond! under special orders for East Africa,
where he would have to stay several months. Just a few weeks I had,
then, to make him feel that he couldn’t bear life, in Africa or anywhere
else, without me. And, my dear, the world didn’t hold a more perfect
dream than that in which he would come to me and offer to risk his
career for me! That is what is called being a cad, Raymond, and women
are rather good at it. I wanted him to offer me his ambition, and then I
would consider whether or not I would give it back to him. But he
didn’t. I lost.
“And I had seemed so like winning, too! For, ten days before he was to
sail, he had insisted on taking me away from London, saying that London
was getting between us and that we must go away into the country, just
to breathe and to love. That is not, of course, how he put it, Raymond,
but that was his meaning, and very, very happy it made me. Imagine!
Seven days we spent together in a funny sweet little inn under the
shadows of those toy hills which are called mountains in Wales; but I
will not tell you about those days, for they are a very intimate memory,
and even if I did you could not put them into your story, for your
editor would wonder if you were mad, saying that the British public will
put up with much but not with as much as that. But, all the same, they
were a wonderful seven days, and as we sat silently facing each other in
the train back to London, silent because there was too much to talk
about, I knew I had won. There were three days left.
“In London he dropped me at my house, and he was to return in the
evening to take me out to dinner. But he was back within an hour, and
when I went downstairs I found him pacing impatiently up and down the
drawing-room. He told me that his orders had been changed; he had to go
to Paris first, and then take ship at Marseilles.
“‘To Paris!’” I said, not understanding.
“‘Yes, to-night, in two hours,’” he said quickly, shyly. He was
embarrassed at the idea of a possible scene. And, oh, those frozen blue
eyes, those frozen blue eyes of pro-consular men! He must go at once,
he said. He shook both my hands; and he held them a little while in
that pathetic attempt at tenderness which sometimes overtakes Englishmen
when they are eager to go and do something else. He would write to me,
he said. He mumbled something about my being a darling, but I simply
hadn’t a word. It was all just as though nothing had ever happened to
us, as though we had never been to the little Welsh inn, or played and
laughed and loved, as though he had never begged me to run my fingers
through his hair because I had said his hair was a garden where golden
flowers grew. Englishmen are very odd, Raymond. He was going away! But
he would write to me, he said, and would be back in twelve months or so
... and he almost forgot to kiss me. But what are kisses?
“Now this is where, Raymond, in writing this story, your craftsmanship
must come in. You must be very clever just here, Raymond. You must
manage to convey that, though I was not a bad loser by nature, I was
terribly wretched for a time: that I simply didn’t exist. You must fill
in the gap with some fine prose and acute observation--the horrible gap
between the time he went away and the time when I again began to take
notice of life. You can’t both be loyal to me and true to life,
Raymond, so you had better be romantic about it. You will find it quite
easy to be romantic about other people’s troubles.
“I didn’t forget him. I have never forgotten him, that stone image which
stood in my heart and then broke itself to pieces because of some law I
did not, do not, understand. But there is a law I do understand, a cruel
kind of law, and that is the law of reaction. He wrote me
letters at long intervals; cold, honest bits of writing,
strong-and-silent-backbone-of-Empire stuff, and rather pompous with
their appreciations of me tacked on to descriptions of the desert and
the natives. But I wrote to him only once, explaining myself, explaining
him. Oh, it was a wonderful letter, the one wonderful letter of my life!
I gave all I had to give in that letter, but it didn’t seem to warm him
at all, and I hadn’t the heart or the energy to write again.
“He became a tender memory ... and I fell in love again, Raymond. But
not as with my stone image, oh, no! This was the sort of man who didn’t
count except in that I loved him, or thought I did. He was really no
more than the servant of my reaction against the stone image, and to
serve me well he had to help me demolish all the castles of sentiment I
had built around him. And the stoutest and most beautiful castle of all
I had built around that funny little Welsh inn! The memory of our days
there haunted me: it made everything else seem not worth while, and so I
told myself that something must be done about that, else it looked to be
spoiling my whole life with regrets. Nothing in the world repeats itself
except regret--and, of course, sardines. And so, Raymond, I set my horse
to that last castle, to crash into it recklessly, gallantly, and to
stride and laugh about its halls with another man, who was not a stone
image, not so beautiful.
“We went, my reaction and I. In an exceedingly fast car we went, going
ever so fast, so that when I tumbled out of it at that inn I had had no
time to think. Now the sweetest thing in that little inn was its
miniature dining-room, which was entirely composed of a large bow window
and three little tables; and the largest thing about it was the view of
the hills all round, and a brown stream which tumbled about at the
bottom of the garden and made more noise than you could believe possible
for so little a thing. My stone image and I had sat at the table by the
bow window, and now my reaction and I sat there again. I dreamed, he
ate. My back was to the door, and I sat facing a large mirror, the
stream and the hills on my right; he sat facing the window, adoring me,
the adventure, the hills, the food. I wasn’t unhappy; perhaps I was a
little absent-minded, but I am sure I wasn’t unhappy--until, in the
mirror in front of me, I saw the great figure, the fair hair, the frozen
blue eyes, at the open door. Our eyes met in the mirror, the eyes of
statues, wondering, waiting....
“Shall I tell you I was afraid, or ashamed, or intolerably miserable? I
don’t know what I felt, it is a dead moment. I don’t know how long he
stood there, filling the doorway with his great figure, filling my life
with his stern eyes. But it couldn’t have been for long, perhaps a few
seconds; and once he took his eyes off mine and looked at the man beside
me, who hadn’t seen him. I thought his lips twitched, but then something
happened to my sight, and the mirror clouded over. When I could see
again, the door was closed, the magic mirror was empty of all but my
unbelieving eyes and the profile of the man beside me, who didn’t know
and was never to know that I had lived a century while he ate a potato.
“All that he did know was that the next morning I begged him to observe
but not, please, to comment on my movements, which were in the
direction of a London train. I treated that man abominably, abominably.
But he never had a chance.... When I got home I found a wire. I had
given orders for nothing, not even wires, to be sent on to me. This one
had come an hour after I had left for Wales. It was from Southampton.
‘Just arrived. Am going straight up to the little place in Wales. Will
arrive there dinner-time. Shall we dine together by the window?’”
Shelmerdene was rather absent-minded as she finished her story; she
forgot to smile. It was very careless of Shelmerdene to forget to smile,
for it made Raymond Paris feel shy; he fiddled with his pen; he coughed.
“Well,” said Shelmerdene, at last, “won’t that story do for you,
Raymond? Or is it not interesting enough? Not enough action?”
“Of course, it’s frightfully interesting,” Raymond Paris protested.
“But--well, you see, editors are rather odd. It isn’t a story at all,
really, don’t you see....”
“An episode, perhaps?”
The young man started at a certain quality in her voice; something
seemed to have suddenly broken in Shelmerdene’s voice. Wondering, he
stared at the lady who stood above him by the table, her fingers playing
thoughtfully with the ancient pink shagreen cigarette-case, which had
once been vanity-box in chief to Marie Antoinette, so they said. And he
followed her eyes out of the window into the garden below, the garden
brave with the gay tall tulips of many colours. A man was walking in the
garden, not heeding the tulips, not heeding anything, the back of a
great figure of a man with a golf-bag swung across it, a lounging man
with hands stuck very deep into plus-fours and a pipe screwed into the
corner of his mouth; and the tall man’s hair was extraordinarily fair in
the sunlight. George Tarlyon was walking through the garden of tulips on
his way to a morning round of golf.
“Yes, an episode, that’s all it is,” said Shelmerdene queerly, and still
her face forgot to smile. “That’s how he would think of it now. He has
had his lesson, you see--and many episodes! And so all the childishness
has gone out of him.... He can’t be hurt by a face in a mirror now,
Raymond! He would just laugh, and he has an eighteenth-century kind of
laugh. Poor lamb, all the childishness has been spilled out of him.”
And Shelmerdene’s eyes softly followed the figure among the tall tulips,
while young Raymond Paris murmured: “You see, what editors want is a
story with some sort of point....”