There is a tale that is told in London about a nightingale, how it did
this and that and, finally, for no apparent reason, rested and sang in
Berkeley Square. A well-known poet, critic, and commentator heard it,
and it is further alleged that he was sober. Some men, of course, now
say that it was not a nightingale at all, but only the South wind
singing in the trees of the square, but it is a fact that some men will
say anything. And some men have formed a Saint James’s Square school of
thought, but it was in Berkeley Square that the poet, critic, and
commentator, who was sober, distinctly heard the song of the
nightingale, on a night in the heart of the drought of the year 1921.
In the drawing-room of a house midway on the entailed side of the square
sat a lady and a gentleman silently. Or rather, the lady lay, while the
gentleman sat, and the sofa on which she lay was far from the arm-chair
in which he sat. The room was spacious; four shaded candles in tall
candlesticks of ancient brass gave calm colour to its dimness; and four
open windows, from which the curtains were withdrawn in slack folds of
shining silver, gave out to the leaves of the trees, which murmured
among themselves just a little.
At last the gentleman roused himself from the gloom of his chair in the
recess of the room, and threw back his head and stretched his arms so
that little things cracked behind his shoulders. But the lady did not
stir nor look round at him, she lay still on the sofa by the windows,
her head deep in the hollow of a crimson cushion, her eyes thoughtfully
on the ceiling, which was high enough to refuse itself to exact scrutiny
in the affected light of four candles.
The gentleman drew a cigar-case from his breast pocket, and a cigar from
the case. He bit the cigar, and then he moved, to deposit what he had
bitten from the tip of his finger into an ash-tray. Then he lit his
cigar, thoughtfully, and he said: “Hell, it’s hot!”
“Perhaps, dear, it’s a rehearsal for same,” said the lady.
“I shouldn’t wonder,” he said, and stood with his back to the great Adam
fireplace, and smoked his cigar. He was of medium-height, weathered
looking, and broadly set: getting a little stout lately, and his fair
hair thinning at the top. A commonplace face, you might call it, but the
nose was good: straight, short and sensitive, very English. This was
Ralph Loyalty, whose aunt, the late “John Loyalty,” had delighted our
fathers with her books, which were of the sentimental-sophisticated sort
and have now dated a good deal. Ralph Loyalty was more than usually
happy in his aunt, for she had left him a fortune, a famous name, but,
people said, only the more solid side of her good sense. He was a man
who liked the company of men; his recreations were golf, joining clubs,
auction-bridge, and dining with his wife; he enjoyed George Robey, and
he admired other people’s brains. Some people thought him rather solid
and unimaginative--“estimable qualities,” they said, “but rather heavy
on the hand.” But, as “Ralph” in half a dozen clubs meant Ralph Loyalty,
other people said that popularity was his form of genius, and they were
probably right. He was said to be in love with his wife. He tolerated
rakes, cads, and co-respondents among his acquaintance, but he never
understood them. Effeminate men he laughed at rather shyly, and left it
at that. He had no enemies, but most of his wife’s friends disliked him.
They would have been surprised to see him at this moment, so miserable
he looked, but they would not have been surprised at his wife’s attitude
on the sofa, for naturally she was bored to death with the man. His
wife’s friends had long since despaired of Ralph Loyalty ever seeing
that his wife was bored to death with him, and that is why they would
have been surprised to see him now, for it was obviously because he had
realised that this evening, at last, that he looked so miserable.
“Well ...” began Ralph Loyalty suddenly, and then very deliberately
knocked the ash of his cigar into the fireplace, which was unlike him
with an ash-tray at hand, for he was an orderly man. And then he said a
wicked word and banged out of the room. The candles flickered madly in
the sudden draught.
But it was as though Mrs. Loyalty did not hear the crash of the door,
she did not stir. She did not sigh, nor did she instantly light a match
for the cigarette which had lain for many minutes forgotten near her
hand.
Joan Loyalty was dark, or rather her hair was dark, and darker than ever
against the crimson cushion. But her face was fair, English fair; and
many generations had gone to the establishing of her complexion and the
exact shaping of her delicate aquiline nose. But it was her eyes that
were important, to the student of such things. Joan Loyalty belonged to
the society of the day, and of that society her face, the oval sort,
was, her friends said in their loose way, in the best way “typical.” She
was of the type early twentieth century, but her gestures, and lack of
them, were ancient enough, for they were fully expressive of that which
really differentiates men from beasts, the social quality of being
tired. But beneath that manner, that classical insolence which is
inadequately called affectation, lay a Joan who was as sudden and as
simple as the first woman. And that is why her eyes were important, to
the student of such things, for in them was that thing which defies the
analysing of novelists and demagogues, the thoughtful look which may
only be thinking of a walk in a field with a dog and a stick, the
curious, absent look which can smell the sea from a long way off.
At last Mrs. Loyalty lit her cigarette, and she rose from the sofa, and
for a few minutes she listened to the murmuring of the leaves in the
square; and then she crossed the dimness of the room to a bell-button,
and pressed it.
Smith came, and she said:
“Downstairs in the study you will find a book, probably on the small
table by the window. A slim, blue book, by a Mr. Beerbohm. Please bring
it to me.”
The shadow of Smith hovered doubtfully among the shadows by the door.
“Mr. Loyalty is in the study, madam, and told me he was not to be
disturbed.”
“Ah,” said Mrs. Loyalty softly. And she smiled, and when she smiled you
understood why dogs liked her at once.
“All right, Smith,” she said. “I will fetch it myself.”
The shadow of Smith vanished in a flickering of candles, but Mrs.
Loyalty did not follow him at once. She stood where Ralph Loyalty had
stood, with her back to the great Adam fireplace; in a gesture of tired
thought she clasped her hands behind her head, and from the motionless
cigarette between her lips the smoke floated upwards without a curve
until it faded, for she was forgetting to draw it. Then, suddenly, she
dropped the half-smoked cigarette into the empty grate, an untidy habit
of hers which her husband could not ever quite overlook, and left the
room.
The quality of silence was very noticeable about the figure of Mrs.
Loyalty: it had been favourably commented on by distinguished
foreigners, who say that though foreign women are noisy talkers,
Englishwomen are noisy walkers; which, however, sounds like a
generalisation, and should be mistrusted as such.
But silence was, in a particular way, a quality of Mrs. Loyalty’s
figure, just like its slimness. And when, a few minutes later, she
re-entered the room with her book in her hand, it was almost as though
she had not re-entered the room or had never left it; perhaps a shadow
faintly stirred among the shadows by the door, but the draught of her
coming in did not seem to disturb the sensitive light of the candles.
She moved one of them to the little table at the head of the sofa, she
sat against the crimson cushion, and she read her book. But minutes
passed and she did not turn over the page, so perhaps she was just
pretending to read. Minutes passed, and then the light of the candles
writhed across her page, and she looked up to see a great disturbance
among the shadows by the door. She stared with very wide eyes at the
dark apparition there, and her hand went to her heart in a still way she
had, and she sighed curiously. The apparition came forward, and she
stared at it with almost unbelieving eyes.
“Joan,” the apparition said, “I never thought I should live to see you
look frightened!” A gay voice, rather shy.
He stood before her, a tall, very thin man, stooping a little, with
feverish dark eyes set in a notably ascetic face, which had gained for
him the comical name of “The Metaphysician.” His face was as though a
fever lay behind it, a kind of sombre restlessness, but every now and
then it would twitch into a shy smile; his face looked as though it had
suffered much pain, but had never got used to pain. He smiled down at
her intimately, but also shyly, which made the smile very attractive.
“Well,” she said up to him softly, “you did come in rather like a ghost,
didn’t you?” She seemed to examine him.
“Didn’t Ralph tell you I was coming?”
That seemed to surprise her, but she only shook her head slightly.
“I saw Ralph at the club this evening and told him I might look in,” he
added.
“He didn’t tell me,” she said. “But why didn’t you let _me_ know?”
“You see, Joan,” said Hugo Carr, “I’ve had as much as I can bear of this
hole-and-corner business.” A shy way Mr. Carr had; he would say firm
things in a very shy voice, with the fever always behind his face.
That’s what makes him attractive to women, people said. “Hugo lays down
the law,” once said George Tarlyon, “as though he were laying eggs and
was afraid they might break.”
He sat down on the sofa beside her, very close; on the edge of the sofa,
sideways to her, with one knee almost on the ground. She lit a
cigarette: and, seeing the appeal on his face, she smiled a little, her
lips smiled, and she said softly:
“Forgive me, dear, but I feel very silent. The heat, perhaps. But go on
with your speech--please do! And I’m hoping, too, that it will contain
some inside information as to why you have not been to see me or even
rung me up for a week. It’s such bad luck for a woman,” she said softly,
“when a man of honour remembers his honour. Don’t you think so, Hugo?”
Her eyes looked as though she had left them on guard somewhere, watching
something for her. But he didn’t notice that. He was one of those
feverish men who never notice anything but other people’s feverishness,
at which they feel aggrieved.
“See, Joan,” he began nervously. “You and I have been living a lie for
two years. There’s no getting out of it--for two whole years! We’ve
drugged ourselves and each other with saying we couldn’t help it----”
“_You_ have,” she murmured. “I don’t need drugs.”
“Yes, _I_ have,” he agreed quickly. “And you have let me. Because there
was nothing we could do--so we said.” And suddenly he broke off, and put
his hand on her knee. “Do you love me, Joan?”
“Yes,” she said, no more, for Joan’s love was never expressed in words,
she was not like that. But it was his particular effeminacy, to be
intensely pleased to hear her say she loved him. He would glow, _de
profundis_. One of two people in love must be effeminate, after all.
“That’s been my one excuse,” he said shyly. “And it’s my justification
now for what I must do--that we’ve loved each other for two years and
still love each other. I’m going to ask Ralph to-night to give you your
freedom....”
“So that’s why you haven’t been to see me for a week!”
“Yes. I wanted to be free to think. You influence me frightfully, Joan,
you’re stronger than I am, and so if I was to think our way out of this
muddle I had to do it alone. Ralph was my best friend. And for two years
you and I have been meeting each other secretly for lunch and for the
afternoons, and at home you’ve been living this lie with Ralph. You’ve
sort of crucified yourself, Joan, because you didn’t want to hurt Ralph.
And I’ve let you! It’s ghastly. And Ralph has always trusted us
together, he’s made it easy for us. It’s ghastly, Joan.”
“Yes, it’s ghastly,” she murmured from her heart.
“Joan,” her lover whispered, “in the secret book in which our lives are
being written, you will appear as an angel and I as a cad. For that is
how it has been for two years....” And Hugo Carr of the sombre eyes and
the thin face that looked as though a fever lay behind it passed a hand
across his eyes; and her arm crept up round his shoulder, and she held
his face very near.
“Poor darling!” she whispered. “You’ve suffered frightfully, haven’t
you?” And she did little things to comfort him.
“But you’ve suffered much more,” he whispered into her hair. He kissed
her hair. “And I’ve let you--go on not _hurting_ Ralph! And what good
has it done? Ralph suspects me. I know he does. It’s difficult to
explain....”
“But it will be all right now,” Joan soothed his wretchedness.
He turned her face to him and looked into her eyes, the grave eyes that
looked as though she had left them on guard somewhere, watching
something for her.
“So you do agree with me now, Joan?” he whispered gladly.
But she seemed to answer irrelevantly, with a peculiar little laugh she
had, which stabbed his heart with a pleasure that was almost pain.
“To agree or to disagree--what does it matter to me, Hugo! Only you
matter, sitting here. And I only matter because I am beside you. So
let’s be silent a little while, thinking of each other....”
And she turned very wretched eyes on him.
“Do you realise, Hugo, that you and I have scarcely had a minute of
silence together for two years--you and I, whose lives are spent in
chattering, have had to go on chattering even when we were alone, we
could never forget ourselves or Ralph, we had always to be discussing
what we would do and how we would do it and when we would do it.
Discussing and discussing and discussing! Oh, dear, our love has been
one endless discussion! And we are not very young any more, my sweet!
But now we will be just silent, thinking of nothing but each other--for
the first time in two years, we won’t think of Ralph, my dear, we just
won’t! To please me, Hugo....”
It was an unusual pleasure for him to see her so soft, she who was so
essentially _fine_ that her natural softness had been merged into a
great calmness: a delicious thing in a woman, calmness, but rather
frightening.
But this was a matter of honour to-night. He had betrayed his best
friend for two years, and would not betray him any longer. It had come
to a point of honour that he must tell Ralph Loyalty that he loved Joan.
And so now, even as he thrilled at her sweetness, he would have liked to
say to her that his business to-night was with a point of honour, but he
was much too self-conscious to be dramatic. He smiled self-consciously,
and only said:
“But I must see Ralph to-night, dear. When I came in I told Smith----”
“Oh!” she cut impatiently in. “Be silent, Hugo, be silent--let’s enjoy
ourselves while we may!” Nerves, of course. As she herself admitted
immediately by asking, quite differently: “What did you say you told
Smith? Didn’t he just tell you I was up here alone?”
“Yes. But I asked where Ralph was, and he said in the study, and so I
told him to tell Ralph in an hour’s time that I was here. He said Ralph
had given orders not to be disturbed, but I told him he expected
me--and so I suppose he’ll be here soon.”
“Ah,” sighed Joan.
“God, it will be difficult!” Hugo muttered. “Dear old Ralph--the
simplest man there ever was! What an unholy mess life is, Joan--that you
and I have to fight our way to happiness over Ralph’s body, just because
you met him before you met me!”
“Don’t say that!” she cried sharply.
“Nerves,” she smiled away his bewilderment. “What I really meant was,
don’t say anything. For if you told Smith to tell him in an hour’s time
we’ve still half an hour or so together”--she held up her wrist to the
candlelight--“yes, just about that, and then there will be quite enough
talking and discussing. And I’ve got something important to tell you,
too, before he comes in--but, dear, I must enjoy just a little peace
before the storm that will set me free, my first bit of peace in two
years.” She pleaded with him, and it was delicious to hear Joan
pleading, she who was usually so calm and sensible. And so they sat very
close, hand in hand, like children.
But Smith’s idea of an hour was influenced by a not unnatural desire to
go to bed; and they had not enjoyed their peace for more than five
minutes when it was tremendously shattered by footfalls on the stairs.
“Oh, Lord!” muttered Hugo Carr. But rather comically, for, after all, it
had to be got over some time.
Joan went queerly taut, and began to say something, very swiftly, but
the door opened just then and he did not catch what it was.
Entered Smith--only Smith! And Hugo Carr breathed relief that his point
of honour had not yet grown a point. Joan made no sign.
Smith came forward quickly. The candles flickered uneasily across his
face. He addressed Hugo Carr.
“Sir,” he said quickly, “I went in to announce you to Mr. Loyalty----”
He broke off, and his eyes hovered over Joan.
“Yes, Smith?” she encouraged him softly.
Smith’s eyes still hovered about her, he seemed very perturbed. He
addressed the air between them.
“Mr. Loyalty’s dead,” said Smith.
Smith was not a heartless man. He was moved, and plunged again into the
startled silence: “I went in and found him with his head laid across the
writing-table and a little bottle empty by his hand. I shook ’im....”
“My God!” muttered Hugo Carr. But still his eyes were fixed on Smith,
he could not look at Joan.
An analysis of suicide was not among Smith’s duties. He only added: “I
have telephoned to Dr. Gay, madam, and as he was out playing bridge I
asked Mrs. Gay to ring him up to come here, as it was very urgent.” Wise
Smith! What could be more noncommittal than “very urgent” for suicide?
“My God!” muttered Hugo Carr--and jumped up and strode away to the
fireplace. He had not yet looked at Joan.
But Smith looked at her, and she back at him. Smith was a nice man, and
he respected his mistress immensely, her _kind_.
“I am very sorry indeed, madam,” said Smith.
Joan’s lips scarcely moved.
“Thank you, Smith.”
Smith went out softly.
“I never dreamt----” Hugo Carr burst out, then choked. It was as though
he had swept his arm round to ward off an intolerable thing and had
found the thing too intolerable.
Joan went to him.
“Hugo,” she awoke him softly. And he looked at her for the first time
since Smith’s entrance, his eyes clung to her. A very fond gesture took
her hand to his shoulder--the tall, thin, stooping man whose white face
took a word as visibly as it suffered a headache. Hugo Carr found many
things quite unbearable.
His eyes seemed to cling to her for a support against his thoughts.
“It’s ghastly,” he whispered. “Joan, don’t you see--it’s ghastly! Poor
old Ralph--down there, all alone! While we up here----” He passed a hand
over his mouth to stop its twitching; and it was as though his hand had
put on it a bitterness which was not there before. “While we up here
were making love--his best friend and his wife!”
Involuntarily he put the best friend first, for Hugo Carr loved his
friends; and, for him, friendship was one of the first principles of the
civilised state. That is how he saw the civilised state.
“Poor, poor Ralph!” she said ever so softly.
His eyes tore away from her face. As though they hadn’t been able to
find there the support they needed.
“There are some things ...” he began feverishly.
“Oh, my dear!” Joan protested miserably, as though against the
unbearable philosophy of it. But it is a mistake to protest against the
unbearable philosophy of a man of honour.
“There are some things,” Mr. Carr insisted with feverish violence, “that
are unpardonable and unmendable. And there’s no excuse big enough for
them....”
He looked like a priest, a priest in the temple of friendship, burning
incense to the ideal idea.... And Joan nodded, her eyes on him who saw
nothing but the ruin of the ideal idea.
“God simply has not put enough excuses into the world to meet the crimes
of the world.” The words burst out of him. “And this is even worse,
because it is a crime so big that there’s simply no punishment been made
to meet it. It’s just betrayal....” And the force of that mediæval word,
its ultimate meaning, broke him down. Hugo Carr sobbed.
“O my God, it’s beastly, beastly! Poor old Ralph, down in that room,
alone. Betrayed--by his best friend and his wife--and suspecting at last
that he had been betrayed, only suspecting it--and not able to bear the
suspicion. That’s the horrible part of it--don’t you see, Joan, don’t
you see? How could he bear it--dear old Ralph, who has never suspected
any one in his life? He simply wasn’t made that way. And so.... Oh, my
God, while we were making love up here, we who’ve quibbled for two years
whether we would hurt his feelings or not--his _feelings_! We’ve killed
old Ralph....”
Her eyes were on him, but he saw nothing but the ruin of the ideal idea,
and an odd little curve crept about her mouth. Perhaps it was from an
odd little curve like that about the lips of a young princess of olden
time that there sprang the many tales of young princesses who loved yet
lashed their lovers. It was not contemptuous, it was much too little a
curve for that. It was supremely dignified. Mona Lisa has it, though
some say that Mona Lisa smiles. If Mary Stuart had seen the portrait of
Mona Lisa she would have whispered: “She is thinking that men are but
minutes in a woman’s life, and she is right.”
“Hugo!”
But when he looked at her it was as though he was still looking at
ruins.
“It is not fair to us to say we’ve killed him. And it’s childish. Life
killed him, Hugo! And you are not more sorry than I--who have tried so
hard for eight years to make life sweet for him. Oh, my God, how I’ve
tried!”
He thought out aloud, softly: “You are a marvellous woman, Joan!”
“It’s only,” she said gently, “that I know what is worth while to me and
you don’t. That must make life very difficult for you....” That is all
she said, and Hugo Carr stared at her, bewilderment joining the fever in
his eyes.
“What do you mean, Joan?” he asked, miserably bewildered. Hugo Carr
couldn’t bear not understanding things.
A few yards separated them; and Joan crossed swiftly to him, and she
took his arm and held it very tight. Some people said that Joan’s hands
were almost too thin, but what they held they held very tightly.
“Listen to me, Hugo--for if this mood of yours isn’t met now, in this
horrible moment, it may ruin our lives----”
“_May_ ruin!” But she held his arm tight.
“Yes, dear, this is ruin--but why won’t you face facts, why won’t you
face the bogey that life has shaped to frighten us, why won’t you see
that this is the culminating point of three ruined lives and that on the
ruins of three lives we must now build a city for two? It won’t be a
very fair city, Hugo, but it’s ours by right, by the only real right in
this wrong world--the right of misery....”
Now the eyes of a man who sees a wraith are more frightening than the
wraith that he sees. That is why Joan Loyalty left her sentence in the
air, for it had been snapped by his stare.
“But aren’t you--sorry?” he whispered dryly.
And she laughed--her nerves laughed through her mouth.
“Sorry! _You_ dare to ask me if I am sorry! Oh, Hugo, is it absolutely
necessary for the love of a man for a woman to be expressed in fatuous
questions? Oh, God, what kind of thing is this love that it tricks a
mind into loving a man!”
“I don’t know what you mean ...” he muttered sulkily. Hugo Carr couldn’t
bear not understanding things.
“You ask me if I am sorry--I, who have lived through a hell of boredom
for eight years so as not to hurt Ralph’s feelings, not to break his
heart! And now at last it’s broken. Yes, I am sorry. Frightfully sorry.
And I am also glad--I feel as though I myself had died and that my soul
had been freed from a long imprisonment. That is what I felt, as though
it was I who was dead, when I saw him----”
He gaped at her idiotically.
“For Heaven’s sake, don’t stare in that idiotic way, Hugo! I’ve already
had more than I can bear to-night, sitting here and thinking and
thinking of poor Ralph downstairs and wondering what final thought it
must have been that made him do it----”
Hugo Carr couldn’t understand. “But when--how?”
Had not she warned him that she had already had more than she could
bear? And now her nerves rose up to meet his gaping stare.
“That is why I looked so frightened when you came in--I didn’t expect
you, I didn’t know who it could be, and I was afraid. And that is why I
was relieved when you said you had told Smith to go into the study in an
hour’s time--because that would give me time to think, to realise the
thing, and to tell you. Didn’t I say that I had something important to
tell you before--before Ralph came in? I was going to tell you that
Ralph would never come in, for I had seen him when I went downstairs to
fetch a book----”
“You were reading when I came in!” he accused her queerly.
“Oh, dear, you are like a man out of every book that was ever written by
men about women! I was pretending to read. And then you told me you had
come to see Ralph on a point of honour! At last you had summoned up your
courage to see Ralph--on a point of honour. And that’s why I wanted you
to be silent for a while, for speech sometimes makes a tragedy
unbearably idiotic. I wanted peace, Hugo! I wanted just to taste the
peace between the old life and the new, the old life in which there was
no honour and the new life in which there will anyway be happiness....”
And she touched him, but with a blind gesture of his arm he swept her
aside, and strode out of the room. She stared, wide-eyed, unrealising,
at the panels of the door; she took two quick steps towards the door,
she stopped, and then she ran madly to it and opened it and called,
“Hugo, Hugo!” But, even as she cried his name, the door below slammed
massively, like a knell from the bowels of the earth; and through the
windows of the room behind her came the noise of swift footsteps
striding away....
She went back into the room. Still she could not realise. She paced
about the room, here, there, trying to think, trying not to think,
wishing to give way to the intolerable moment, unable to give way. The
candles danced furiously in the gentle draught, for she had left the
door wide open. She was but a shadow among a furious company of
shadows--when, as she was by the windows, she saw one more in the open
doorway. She screamed behind her teeth.
“I heard you call his name,” said Ralph Loyalty hoarsely from the door.
“Have you quarrelled? D’you mean to say he’s gone for good?”
He came towards her as he spoke. But this was not the Ralph she knew,
this was not the Ralph who had lived and died, this was a man with a
furious face. He advanced on her. Her knees trembled, and she would have
fallen but for a hand on the back of the sofa.
“D’you mean to say he’s gone for good?” he repeated again furiously. She
nodded dumbly. She was going to faint.
Then Ralph Loyalty said a wicked word. “D’you mean to say that I’ve been
shamming dead in a damned uncomfortable position for the last two hours
for nothing?” he bawled at her. “Here have I been for months and months
throwing you at each other’s heads and neither of you with the pluck to
show your hand!” And he cursed the name of Hugo Carr for the name of a
fool and a coward. She was going to faint. He controlled himself a
little. He appealed to her. “I didn’t want to hurt your feelings, you
see, Joan. I knew how you’d loved me for years, and I couldn’t bear to
hurt you, but I’d have given anything to let you see I wanted my freedom
to marry someone else. And when I saw that you liked being with Hugo I
thought there might be a chance of your liking him instead of me, and so
I did my best to throw you together. But Hugo always was a coward--and
as I couldn’t bear going on as we were for another night I arranged this
thing to-night, thinking that if anything would make Hugo show his hand
or would throw you into Hugo’s arms, this would.” And again he said a
wicked word. “I didn’t want to hurt you, you see, Joan, and so I thought
this would be the best way--and now the silly ass has gone and left us
stranded....”
That was the night the nightingale sang in Berkeley Square. A
nightingale has never sung in Berkeley Square before, and may never sing
there again, but if it does it will probably _mean_ something.