Mrs. Viveash descended the steps into King Street, and standing there on
the pavement looked dubiously first to the right and then to the left.
Little and loud, the taxis rolled by on their white wheels, the
long-snouted limousines passed with a sigh. The air smelt of watered
dust, tempered in Mrs. Viveash’s immediate neighbourhood by those
memories of Italian jasmines which were her perfume. On the opposite
pavement, in the shade, two young men, looking very conscious of their
grey top-hats, marched gravely along.
Life, Mrs. Viveash thought, looked a little dim this morning, in spite
of the fine weather. She glanced at her watch; it was one o’clock. Soon
one would have to eat some lunch. But where, and with whom? Mrs. Viveash
had no engagements. All the world was before her, she was absolutely
free, all day long. Yesterday, when she declined all those pressing
invitations, the prospect had seemed delightful. Liberty, no
complications, no contacts; a pre-Adamite empty world to do what she
liked in.
But to-day, when it came to the point, she hated her liberty. To come
out like this at one o’clock into a vacuum—it was absurd, it was
appalling. The prospect of immeasurable boredom opened before her.
Steppes after steppes of ennui, horizon beyond horizon, for ever the
same. She looked again to the right and again to the left. Finally she
decided to go to the left. Slowly, walking along her private knife-edge
between her personal abysses, she walked towards the left. She
remembered suddenly one shining day like this in the summer of 1917,
when she had walked along this same street, slowly, like this, on the
sunny side, with Tony Lamb. All that day, that night, it had been one
long good-bye. He was going back the next morning. Less than a week
later he was dead. Never again, never again: there had been a time when
she could make herself cry, simply by saying those two words once or
twice, under her breath. Never again, never again. She repeated them
softly now. But she felt no tears behind her eyes. Grief doesn’t kill,
love doesn’t kill; but time kills everything, kills desire, kills
sorrow, kills in the end the mind that feels them; wrinkles and softens
the body while it still lives, rots it like a medlar, kills it too at
last. Never again, never again. Instead of crying, she laughed, laughed
aloud. The pigeon-breasted old gentleman who had just passed her,
twirling between his finger and thumb the ends of a white military
moustache, turned round startled. Could she be laughing at him?
“Never again,” murmured Mrs. Viveash.
“I beg your pardon?” queried the martial gentleman, in a rich,
port-winey, cigary voice.
Mrs. Viveash looked at him with such wide-eyed astonishment that the old
gentleman was quite taken aback. “A thousand apologies, dear lady.
Thought you were addressing ... H’m, ah’m.” He replaced his hat, squared
his shoulders and went off smartly, left, right, bearing preciously
before him his pigeon-breast. Poor thing, he thought, poor young thing.
Talking to herself. Must be cracked, must be off her head. Or perhaps
she took drugs. That was more likely: that was much more likely. Most of
them did nowadays. Vicious young women. Lesbians, drug-fiends,
nymphomaniacs, dipsos—thoroughly vicious, nowadays, thoroughly vicious.
He arrived at his club in an excellent temper.
Never again, never, never again. Mrs. Viveash would have liked to be
able to cry.
St. James’s Square opened before her. Romantically under its trees the
statue pranced. The trees gave her an idea: she might go down into the
country for the afternoon, take a cab and drive out, out, goodness only
knew where! To the top of a hill somewhere. Box Hill, Leith Hill,
Holmbury Hill, Ivinghoe Beacon—any hill where one could sit and look out
over plains. One might do worse than that with one’s liberty.
But not much worse, she reflected.
Mrs. Viveash had turned up towards the northern side of the square and
was almost at its north-western corner when, with a thrill of genuine
delight, with a sense of the most profound relief she saw a familiar
figure, running down the steps of the London Library.
“Theodore!” she hallooed faintly but penetratingly, from her inward
death-bed. “Gumbril!” She waved her parasol.
Gumbril halted, looked round, came smiling to meet her. “How
delightful,” he said, “but how unfortunate.”
“Why unfortunate?” asked Mrs. Viveash. “Am I of evil omen?”
“Unfortunate,” Gumbril explained, “because I’ve got to catch a train and
can’t profit by this meeting.”
“Ah no, Theodore,” said Mrs. Viveash, “you’re not going to catch a
train. You’re going to come and lunch with me. Providence has decreed
it. You can’t say no to Providence.”
“I must,” Gumbril shook his head. “I’ve said yes to somebody else.”
“To whom?”
“Ah!” said Gumbril, with a coy and saucy mysteriousness.
“And where are you going in your famous train?”
“Ah again,” Gumbril answered.
“How intolerably tiresome and silly you are!” Mrs. Viveash declared.
“One would think you were a sixteen-year-old schoolboy going out for his
first assignation with a shop girl. At your age, Gumbril!” She shook her
head, smiled agonizingly and with contempt. “Who is she? What sordid
pick-up?”
“Not sordid in the least,” protested Gumbril.
“But decidedly a pick-up. Eh?” A banana-skin was lying, like a
bedraggled starfish, in the gutter, just in front of where they were
standing. Mrs. Viveash stepped forward and with the point of her parasol
lifted it carefully up and offered it to her companion.
“_Merci_,” Gumbril bowed.
She tossed the skin back again into the gutter. “In any case,” she said,
“the young lady can wait while we have luncheon.”
Gumbril shook his head. “I’ve made the arrangement,” he said. Emily’s
letter was in his pocket. She had taken the loveliest cottage just out
of Robertsbridge, in Sussex. Ah, but the loveliest imaginable. For the
whole summer. He could come and see her there. He had telegraphed that
he would come to-day, this afternoon, by the two o’clock from Charing
Cross.
Mrs. Viveash took him by the elbow. “Come along,” she said. “There’s a
post office in that passage going from Jermyn Street to Piccadilly. You
can wire from there your infinite regrets. These things always improve
with a little keeping. There will be raptures when you _do_ go
to-morrow.”
Gumbril allowed himself to be led along. “What an insufferable woman you
are,” he said, laughing.
“Instead of being grateful to me for asking you to luncheon!”
“Oh, I am grateful,” said Gumbril. “And astonished.”
He looked at her. Mrs. Viveash smiled and fixed him for a moment with
her pale, untroubled eyes.... She said nothing.
“Still,” Gumbril went on, “I must be at Charing Cross by two, you know.”
“But we’re lunching at Verrey’s.”
Gumbril shook his head.
They were at the corner of Jermyn Street. Mrs. Viveash halted and
delivered her ultimatum, the more impressive for being spoken in that
expiring voice of one who says _in articulo_ the final and supremely
important things. “We lunch at Verrey’s, Theodore, or I shall never,
never speak to you again.”
“But be reasonable, Myra,” he implored. If only he’d told her that he
had a business appointment.... Imbecile, to have dropped those stupid
hints—in that tone!
“I prefer not to be,” said Mrs. Viveash.
Gumbril made a gesture of despair and was silent. He thought of Emily in
her native quiet among the flowers; in a cottage altogether too
cottagey, with honeysuckles and red ramblers and hollyhocks—though, on
second thoughts, none of them would be blooming yet, would
they?—happily, in white muslin, extracting from the cottage piano the
easier sections of the Arietta. A little absurd, perhaps, when you
considered her like that; but exquisite, but adorable, but pure of heart
and flawless in her bright pellucid integrity, complete as a crystal in
its faceted perfection. She would be waiting for him, expecting him; and
they would walk through the twiddly lanes—or perhaps there would be a
governess cart for hire, with a fat pony like a tub on legs to pull
it—they would look for flowers in the woods and perhaps he would still
remember what sort of noise a whitethroat makes; or even if he didn’t
remember, he could always magisterially say he did. “That’s a
whitethroat, Emily. Do you hear? The one that goes ‘Tweedly, weedly,
weedledy dee.’”
“I’m waiting,” said Mrs. Viveash. “Patiently, however.”
Gumbril looked at her and found her smiling like a tragic mask. After
all, he reflected, Emily would still be there if he went down to-morrow.
It would be stupid to quarrel with Myra about something that was really,
when he came to think of it, not of enormous importance. It was stupid
to quarrel with any one about anything; and with Myra and about this,
particularly so. In this white dress patterned with flowing arabesques
of black she looked, he thought, more than ever enchanting. There had
been times in the past.... The past leads on to the present.... No; but
in any case she was excellent company.
“Well,” he said, sighing decisively, “let’s go and send my wire.”
Mrs. Viveash made no comment, and traversing Jermyn Street they walked
up the narrow passage under the lee of Wren’s bald barn of St. James’s,
to the post office.
“I shall pretext a catastrophe,” said Gumbril, as they entered; and
going to the telegraph desk he wrote: “Slight accident on way to station
not serious at all but a little indisposed come same train to-morrow.”
He addressed the form and handed it in.
“A little what?” asked the young lady behind the bars, as she read it
through, prodding each successive word with the tip of her blunt pencil.
“A little indisposed,” said Gumbril, and he felt suddenly very much
ashamed of himself. “A little indisposed,”—no, really, that was too
much. He’d withdraw the telegram, he’d go after all.
“Ready?” asked Mrs. Viveash, coming up from the other end of the counter
where she had been buying stamps.
Gumbril pushed a florin under the bars.
“A little indisposed,” he said, hooting with laughter, and he walked
towards the door leaning heavily on his stick and limping. “Slight
accident,” he explained.
“What is the meaning of this clownery?” Mrs. Viveash inquired.
“What indeed?” Gumbril had limped up to the door and stood there,
holding it open for her. He was taking no responsibility for himself. It
was the clown’s doing, and the clown, poor creature, was _non compos_,
not entirely there, and couldn’t be called to account for his actions.
He limped after her towards Piccadilly.
“_Giudicato guarabile in cinque giorni_,” Mrs. Viveash laughed. “How
charming that always is in the Italian papers. The fickle lady, the
jealous lover, the stab, the _colpo di rivoltella_, the mere Anglo-Saxon
black eye—all judged by the house surgeon at the Misericordia curable in
five days. And you, my poor Gumbril, are you curable in five days?”
“That depends,” said Gumbril. “There may be complications.”
Mrs. Viveash waved her parasol; a taxi came swerving to the pavement’s
edge in front of them. “Meanwhile,” she said, “you can’t be expected to
walk.”
At Verrey’s they lunched off lobsters and white wine. “Fish suppers,”
Gumbril quoted jovially from the Restoration, “fish suppers will make a
man hop like a flea.” Through the whole meal he clowned away in the most
inimitable style. The ghost of a governess cart rolled along the twiddly
lanes of Robertsbridge. But one can refuse to accept responsibility; a
clown cannot be held accountable. And besides, when the future and the
past are abolished, when it is only the present instant, whether
enchanted or unenchanted, that counts, when there are no causes or
motives, no future consequences to be considered, how can there be
responsibility, even for those who are not clowns? He drank a great deal
of hock, and when the clock struck two and the train had begun to snort
out of Charing Cross, he could not refrain from proposing the health of
Viscount Lascelles. After that he began telling Mrs. Viveash about his
adventure as a Complete Man.
“You should have seen me,” he said, describing his beard.
“I should have been bowled over.”
“You shall see me, then,” said Gumbril. “Ah, what a Don Giovanni. _La ci
darem la mano, La mi dirai di si, Vieni, non e lontano, Partiam, ben
mio, da qui._ And they came, they came. Without hesitation. No ‘_vorrei
e non vorrei_,’ no ‘_mi trema un poco il cor_.’ Straight away.”
“_Felice, io so, sarei_,” Mrs. Viveash sang very faintly under her
breath, from a remote bed of agony.
Ah, happiness, happiness; a little dull, some one had wisely said, when
you looked at it from outside. An affair of duets at the cottage piano,
of collecting specimens, hand in hand, for the _hortus siccus_. A matter
of integrity and quietness.
“Ah, but the history of the young woman who was married four years ago,”
exclaimed Gumbril with clownish rapture, “and remains to this day a
virgin—what an episode in my memoirs!” In the enchanted darkness he had
learned her young body. He looked at his fingers; her beauty was a part
of their knowledge. On the tablecloth he drummed out the first bars of
the Twelfth Sonata of Mozart. “And even after singing her duet with the
Don,” he continued, “she is still virgin. There are chaste pleasures,
sublimated sensualities. More thrillingly voluptuous,” with the gesture
of a restaurant-keeper who praises the speciality of the house, he blew
a treacly kiss, “than any of the grosser deliriums.”
“What is all this about?” asked Mrs. Viveash.
Gumbril finished off his glass. “I am talking esoterically,” he said,
“for my own pleasure, not yours.”
“But tell me more about the beard,” Mrs. Viveash insisted. “I liked the
beard so much.”
“All right,” said Gumbril, “let us try to be unworthy with coherence.”
They sat for a long time over their cigarettes; it was half past three
before Mrs. Viveash suggested they should go.
“Almost time,” she said, looking at her watch, “to have tea. One damned
meal after another. And never anything new to eat. And every year one
gets bored with another of the old things. Lobster, for instance, how I
used to adore lobster once! But to-day—well, really, it was only your
conversation, Theodore, that made it tolerable.”
Gumbril put his hand to his heart and bowed. He felt suddenly extremely
depressed.
“And wine: I used to think Orvieto so heavenly. But this spring, when I
went to Italy, it was just a bad muddy sort of Vouvray. And those soft
caramels they call Fiats; I used to eat those till I was sick. I was at
the sick stage before I’d finished one of them, this time in Rome.” Mrs.
Viveash shook her head. “Disillusion after disillusion.”
They walked down the dark passage into the street.
“We’ll go home,” said Mrs. Viveash. “I really haven’t the spirit to do
anything else this afternoon.” To the commissionaire who opened the door
of the cab she gave the address of her house in St. James’s.
“Will one ever recapture the old thrills?” she asked rather fatiguedly
as they drove slowly through the traffic of Regent Street.
“Not by chasing after them,” said Gumbril, in whom the clown had quite
evaporated. “If one sat still enough they might perhaps come back of
their own accord....” There would be the faint sound as it were of feet
approaching through the quiet.
“It isn’t only food,” said Mrs. Viveash, who had closed her eyes and was
leaning back in her corner.
“So I can well believe.”
“It’s everything. Nothing’s the same now. I feel it never will be.”
“Never more,” croaked Gumbril.
“Never again,” Mrs. Viveash echoed. “Never again.” There were still no
tears behind her eyes. “Did you ever know Tony Lamb?” she asked.
“No,” Gumbril answered from his corner. “What about him?”
Mrs. Viveash did not answer. What, indeed, about him? She thought of his
very clear blue eyes and the fair, bright hair that had been lighter
than his brown face. Brown face and neck, red-brown hands; and all the
rest of his skin was as white as milk. “I was very fond of him,” she
said at last. “That’s all. He was killed in 1917, just about this time
of the year. It seems a very long time ago, don’t you think?”
“Does it?” Gumbril shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t know. The past is
abolished. _Vivamus, mea Lesbia._ If I weren’t so horribly depressed,
I’d embrace you. That would be some slight compensation for my”—he
tapped his foot with the end of his walking-stick—“my accident.”
“You’re depressed too?”
“One should never drink at luncheon,” said Gumbril. “It wrecks the
afternoon. One should also never think of the past and never for one
moment consider the future. These are treasures of ancient wisdom. But
perhaps after a little tea——” He leaned forward to look at the figures
on the taximeter, for the cab had come to a standstill—“after a nip of
the tannin stimulant”—he threw open the door—“we may feel rather
better.”
Mrs. Viveash smiled excruciatingly. “For me,” she said, as she stepped
out on to the pavement, “even tannin has lost its virtues now.”
Mrs. Viveash’s drawing-room was tastefully in the movement. The
furniture was upholstered in fabrics designed by Dufy—racehorses and
roses, little tennis players clustering in the midst of enormous
flowers, printed in grey and ochre on a white ground. There were a
couple of lamp-shades by Balla. On the pale rose-stippled walls hung
three portraits of herself by three different and entirely incongruous
painters, a selection of the usual oranges and lemons, and a rather
forbidding contemporary nude painted in two tones of green.
“And how bored I am with this room and all these beastly pictures!”
exclaimed Mrs. Viveash as she entered. She took off her hat and,
standing in front of the mirror above the mantelpiece, smoothed her
coppery hair.
“You should take a cottage in the country,” said Gumbril, “buy a pony
and a governess cart and drive along the twiddly lanes looking for
flowers. After tea you open the cottage piano,” and suiting his action
to the words, Gumbril sat down at the long-tailed Blüthner, “and you
play, you play.” Very slowly and with parodied expressiveness he played
the opening theme of the Arietta. “You wouldn’t be bored then,” he said,
turning round to her, when he had finished.
“Ah, wouldn’t I!” said Mrs. Viveash. “And with whom do you propose that
I should share my cottage?”
“Any one you like,” said Gumbril. His fingers hung, as though meditating
over the keys.
“But I don’t like any one,” cried Mrs. Viveash with a terrible vehemence
from her death-bed.... Ah, now it had been said, the truth. It sounded
like a joke. Tony had been dead five years now. Those bright blue
eyes—ah, never again. All rotted away to nothing.
“Then you should try,” said Gumbril, whose hands had begun to creep
softly forward into the Twelfth Sonata. “You should try.”
“But I do try,” said Mrs. Viveash. Her elbows propped on the
mantelpiece, her chin resting on her clasped hands, she was looking
fixedly at her own image in the glass. Pale eyes looked unwaveringly
into pale eyes. The red mouth and its reflection exchanged their smiles
of pain. She had tried; it revolted her now to think how often she had
tried; she had tried to like some one, any one, as much as Tony. She had
tried to recapture, to re-evoke, to revivify. And there had never been
anything, really, but a disgust. “I haven’t succeeded,” she added, after
a pause.
The music had shifted from F major to D minor; it mounted in leaping
anapæsts to a suspended chord, ran down again, mounted once more,
modulating to C minor, then, through a passage of trembling notes to A
flat major, to the dominant of D flat, to the dominant of C, to C minor,
and at last, to a new clear theme in the major.
“Then I’m sorry for you,” said Gumbril, allowing his fingers to play on
by themselves. He felt sorry, too, for the subjects of Mrs. Viveash’s
desperate experiments. She mightn’t have succeeded in liking them—for
their part, poor devils, they in general only too agonizingly liked
her.... Only too.... He remembered the cold, damp spots on his pillow,
in the darkness. Those hopeless, angry tears. “You nearly killed me
once,” he said.
“Only time kills,” said Mrs. Viveash, still looking into her own pale
eyes. “I have never made any one happy,” she added, after a pause.
“Never any one,” she thought, except Tony, and Tony they had killed,
shot him through the head. Even the bright eyes had rotted, like any
other carrion. She too had been happy then. Never again.
A maid came in with the tea-things.
“Ah, the tannin!” exclaimed Gumbril with enthusiasm, and broke off his
playing. “The one hope of salvation.” He poured out two cups, and
picking up one of them he came over to the fireplace and stood behind
her, sipping slowly at the pale brewage and looking over her shoulder at
their two reflections in the mirror.
“_La ci darem_,” he hummed. “If only I had my beard!” He stroked his
chin and with the tip of his forefinger brushed up the drooping ends of
his moustache. “You’d come trembling like Zerlina, in under its golden
shadow.”
Mrs. Viveash smiled. “I don’t ask for anything better,” she said. “What
more delightful part! _Felice, io so, sarei: Batti, batti, o bel
Mazetto._ Enviable Zerlina!”
The servant made another silent entry.
“A gentleman,” she said, “called Mr. Shearwater would like——”
“Tell him I’m not at home,” said Mrs. Viveash, without looking round.
There was a silence. With raised eyebrows Gumbril looked over Mrs.
Viveash’s shoulder at her reflection. Her eyes were calm and without
expression, she did not smile or frown. Gumbril still questioningly
looked. In the end he began to laugh.