Which Way?, page 13
And “Picasso,” they said, “do you know that wonderful drawing of his of an elbow three times the natural size? The pores of the skin! The hairs! Superlative!”
They spoke of a one man exhibition here and a gallery there, and as they spoke of galleries, Lionel Byng, who had listened in silence, suddenly uttered his one art criticism.
“Madonnas!” he said. “My God!”
Claudia’s heart warmed at this touch of nature.
On Sunday afternoon Lionel Byng slept in the oak room until tea, and Claudia just sat and looked at him with much the same pleasure that you might feel in watching some great, beautiful animal at the Zoo. He was magnificent, like a tiger. In just the same way it was a little awe-inspiring to see him with his strength relaxed, unconscious of scrutiny, his senses all unaware. When at last he yawned and stretched and awoke, the illusion, instantly to be dispelled, was almost complete.
Later they danced together again alone. One new tune they encored and encored.
I like you very much, but not so much as I did before,
And I believe there was a time you used to love me more.
I wouldn’t hurt you for the world—but I’m feeling terribly sold!
What are we going to do now love’s grown cold?
Not very helpful words, but the tune was catchy and maddening. Suddenly he stopped in the middle of the floor, his arms still holding her to him, and said:
“It wouldn’t ever grow cold, would it?”
She stirred restlessly and said:
“What are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about us. I’ve never loved anyone quite like this before. Can’t we get married? I know I’m not much of a chap and all that. Not fearfully bright perhaps—”
“Oh, Lionel, you are!”
“But I generally get what I want and I want you frightfully. Do be nice to me.”
“Do you—generally get what you want, Lionel?”
“Always.”
“Then it’s no good my arguing, is it?”
“Gosh! Do you love me too?”
“I adore you, Lionel.”
“You are a good looker, Claudia.”
“Lionel—would you love me as much if I weren’t pretty?”
“No, of course I wouldn’t. Why?”
“Oh nothing. It’s jolly of you to own it.”
“Damn it all, you are pretty.”
“Yes, I am, aren’t I? Oh, Lionel.”
“Darling. We’re going to be awfully happy. I’ll give you every damn thing you want.”
“I don’t want anything. Just you.”
“Well, call that nothing!”
“Oh, Lionel.”
“Darling. I am happy. You’re beautiful, Clau. Are you happy too?”
“Yeh. I’m all right!”
They were settled by now, very much all right, in one of the armchairs. He held her tenderly, protectively. She was so slight and wonderful and young. And leaning against him with her eyes closed she yet saw his eyes, dark and romantic, deep with a secret sadness and surely some reserve of mystery hidden from the world. She felt almost faint with happiness and excitement.
“God, this is grand!” said Lionel.
2
Ah, the long road! And you so far away!
Oh, I’ll remember! But … each crawling day
Will pale a little your scarlet lips, each mile
Dull the dear pain of your remembered face.
Rupert Brooke.
From Miss Claudia Heseltine to Mr. Hugo Lester.
Hugo Dearest,—I hardly know how to tell you my news. It does seem so awful that a thing like this should happen to me without you and Eileen, my two most beloved friends in the world, knowing a thing about it. You will believe that I wouldn’t ever have had secrets from you, because you see I couldn’t have known myself. I can’t understand how anything so important could happen so quickly, so wonderfully, all out of the blue. Hugo, I’m going to marry Lionel Byng. I’m so happy and he is so sweet.
Here there followed a sentence which, on re-reading the letter, she thought better of. She had already re-written the thing once owing to blurring the first part with sudden, unaccountable tears. So this time she merely scrawled out the offending sentence by writing the word “apples” over and over again on top. This is usually an efficient method, but she blotted it immediately in her haste so that it was much lighter than the dried ink underneath.
I’m longing to see you as soon as possible. It seems too bad that neither you nor Eileen can be a bridesmaid! Lionel and I are going to give lots of parties after, and some of them are to be the sort you and Rosemary will like. He’s not a bit intellectual, but he’s interested in art, though he doesn’t know anything about it, and he often reads, and one person’s as likely as another to be right about a book. I mean it’s a matter of taste in a way. Of course really he’s just the sweetest, most divine, complete nitwit! But he is wonderful and I’m so thrilled. Rosemary’s a sort of friend of his too, so we can all have heaps of fun together. I can’t get on with this letter a bit, it’s all turning out rubbish, but Hugo dear, I wanted you to be the first to know, and I’m telling you before even Eileen and the parents, so I suppose you must be my best friend of all!
With ever so much love,
Claudia.
From Mr. Hugo Lester to Miss Claudia Heseltine.
Claudia my dear,—Your letter was certainly unexpected, but then to be unexpected is one of the canonised charms of your sex. By the way, the super-inscribed apples over the sentence you wished to delete were too quickly blotted, so I need hardly tell you that I took your letter to a good light and made the sentence out. Well! No wonder you blushed for shame and repented on re-reading so masculine a sentiment as “I do hope you and Lionel will like each other and be the greatest friends”! Here in exchange is a feminine sentiment for you. Of course it’s only your point of view, your life I think of; that’s all that matters; I hope you’re going to be very, very happy—but by God if you are …!
I do congratulate you with all my heart. Everyone tells me he’s a Prince of Good Fellows in the best British Tradition and I fervently hope you’ll be very happy always. I think this necessitates his being happy too, though it would have been jolly if you could have seen your way to leading him a dog’s life! I am going round the world and am very much thrilled about it. Will you forgive me if I don’t come and say good-bye to you? You know, I don’t believe we can go on “being friends.” I’m sorry and you’re not to feel hurt about it. We Lesters were ever a peevish family and I don’t fancy standing god-parent to any of your little sportsmen and sportswomen. God bless you, darling.
All my love,
Hugo.
P.S. It will be fun, you know, to be my own man again.
3
I would have sworn, indeed I swore it:
The hills may shift, the waters may decline,
Winter may twist the stem from the twig that bore it,
But never your love from me, your hand from mine.
Edna St. Vincent Millay.
Ye take too much upon ye, ye sons of Levi.
Moses.
Lionel Byng was immensely eligible, and immensely popular too through his polo prowess and being rich, handsome, good-natured and sociable. The Heseltine parents found him very genuinely likeable. They were much surprised and puzzled by the engagement, but they were pleased as the two seemed so happy. All her friends poured congratulations upon Claudia on this very triumphant occasion. All except Eileen. She was bitterly indignant and upset. Lionel and Tommy liked each other mildly, could have played an occasional round of golf. Lionel liked Eileen, putting down all her rudeness imperviously as chaff. But she could not control her irritation at and scorn of him. She could not hold her tongue on the subject to Claudia. Claudia bore criticism of his intellect very well, merely laughing and protesting that she didn’t care, that he was altogether lovable and a perfect dear. But she could not stand her friend’s anxiety to snub him, and most of all she resented the violent, shocked accusation that what she felt for Lionel was not fit to be called love, that she was selling her soul for so many pounds of meat. And on this point they had their first and final serious quarrel. Each unjustifiable thing that was said hurt each equally. And though the longing to comfort her soon drove Claudia round to Eileen with words of warmth and love and peace, and a reconciliation was effected, though they forgave each other the actual quarrel, they could not quite forgive the causes of it. Thereafter their ways lay more and more apart.
The engagement was an unhappy time for Claudia, on account of the estrangement from her two best friends. With Lionel she was generally thrilled and happy, but she was tired and therefore nervy throughout this period, with the rush and bustle of arrangements and work and the approaching upheaval of all the life she knew. The evening before her wedding day her mother seemed to be preparing to tell her facts unknown to her of sinister import. But she felt she could stand no more, and anyway it was too late now. So she staved off the information by pretending she already knew.
It was a vast, very fashionable London wedding. Claudia glowed with excitement and pride, people stared and chattered and some prayed. While the register was being signed, boys’ voices sang in exquisite indifference: “Love one another with a pure heart fervently, see that ye love one another.” Eileen bowed her golden head upon her hands too dully, coldly unhappy to pray or cry. She had meant to be even more unhappy than she was, but the thought of Tommy kept flitting officiously, comfortingly across her mind.
Claudia cried quite stupendously, torrentially upon her honeymoon. But she cried for the most part on Lionel’s shoulder, so neither of them found it too bad.
4
I launched into an apostrophe. “Oh Divine House Opposite!” I cried, “Charming House Opposite! What is a man’s own dull, uneventful home compared with that Glorious House Opposite! If I might dwell for ever in the House Opposite!”
…
I went downstairs, and in absence of mind, bade my cabman drive me to the House Opposite. But I have never got there.
The Dolly Dialogues, Anthony Hope.
Lionel and Claudia returned from their honeymoon via Paris to Mayfair, where they installed themselves in a commodious house, and life was very good. It did not occur to Claudia as strange that so splendid a specimen of manhood as her husband should do nothing whatever for his country beyond playing polo. She had a slight prejudice in favour of regular work for men, but still if you had so much money it was perhaps more logical to spend it than to make more.
How proud she was of him! Of his looks, of his fame, of his popularity. Nothing was pleasanter than to bask in the sun at Ranelagh watching him play. Well, of course, many things were pleasanter. It was pleasanter still to sit on his knee of an evening and lisp to him, calling him Toto and being called Puss-pussy. She thought sometimes with shame of how Eileen would despise this, not knowing that alas! there were moments when even Tommy was Mr. Borstal Boy, even Eileen Mrs. Umperty-Pooh. It was pleasant too to be envied and to burst continually into all the papers as the beautiful Mrs. Byng. Lionel was such a solid, satisfactory achievement, and when she was not in the mood for solid satisfaction she could gaze into the depths of his dark, unfathomable, foreign eyes, and dream that there was really a mystery there for her to unravel.
They were extremely hospitable, as well they might be. It was jolly to find that the light-hearted Alan Vane was a great friend of Lionel’s, and he knew many others of the Carstairs set, including the Verneys. Claudia met Guy’s lovely actress wife at last, saw her slouching about all beautiful and rounded, flashing her jewels, heard her wake up after supper and many drinks and become risqué and shrill. Lionel rather liked Carol but would not join Claudia in being sorry for her. He said he supposed that she suited herself. Alas, how many of us with no other aim in view, with no conflicting currents, ever achieve that! But they saw more of Guy than Carol. Claudia wondered why he should be considered attractive. He was nothing very special, she thought. Not magnificent like Lionel, not intellectual like Hugo, not sparkling like Alan. But there was sometimes between them an odd, vague flicker of pleasure and warmth as though, if they had spent more time and more trouble, they might have been real friends.
Claudia enjoyed herself thoroughly in Lionel’s circle. But though they were for the most part a good deal cleverer than he, she did sometimes thirst for the refreshment of intellectual society. They sometimes saw something of Rosemary Crane, but he was rather once-bitten-twice-shy about her in spite of the good turn she had done him, and several times they struck it unlucky, finding her pick-ups undeniably ticks. Both enjoyed their occasional visits to Chesnor, though even there Lionel sometimes found himself out of his depth. On the other hand his rare incursions into deep arguments were rather lovable. There was a great discussion of religion and the Church one week-end into which he suddenly broke with the surprising statement that all parsons were mischievous, meddling, snobbish, narrow-minded, hidebound hypocrites.
“But darling,” protested Claudia, “they’re the most hard-working, underpaid, unselfish people. How many parsons have you known?”
“None, thank God!” said Lionel.
Much as Claudia wished that he had a greater range of ideas, a wider variety of interests and more knowledge of feminine psychology, his conversation as well as his beautifully proportioned bulk had great charm for her. And he was so generous, so sweet, so anxious to be kind. Turning to him for sympathy she would get, not perhaps what she wanted, but always something. Towards the end of the first year of marriage she read of the sudden death of an old flowerwoman she had dealt with slightly, and who the newspapers now told her had once been a famous singer and dancer named Lou Delane. It was hurting to think of the old hag with her bleared eyes, her roughened voice and the somewhat coarse raillery that flowed from her mouth in the odour of alcohol, and then to see these ancient, resurrected photographs of a lithe, radiant creature with a tantalising smile and a halo of curls. She was dead in her rags and dirt, knocked down drunk in the street, she who had swayed packed houses night after night in the days of her triumph, who had delighted so many men, loving them neither wisely nor well to the tune of their emeralds and pearls. Claudia was all overcome and upset because she had actually known her, spoken to her lately, and she poured it out, all that was glamorous, all that was sordid, in an incoherent wail to Lionel.
“Solemn thing, death,” said Lionel.
“I saw her only the other day,” she told him shakily.
He nodded thoughtfully. “Life hangs by a thread!” announced Lionel. She kissed the top of his head and cheered up completely, sitting on his knee with her arms round his neck to tell him that she loved him better than anyone in the world.
It was very pleasant, that first year of marriage. Claudia blossomed out a good deal and wore beautiful clothes. She entertained all his old flames constantly, and automatically liked them all. There was polo in the summer and hunting in the winter, a bit of racing, a bit of yachting, a bit of shooting, trips abroad to fashionable pleasure resorts, and parties, heavens! how many parties! She saw herself in a sort of panic twenty years later still bound to the same wheel, still rather enjoying it, with Lionel grown a little bored and heavy but unable to contemplate any other sort of life. It was all so stereotyped, so eternally the same, and yet she genuinely did love dancing and clothes and smart society. Sometimes she felt lonely with Lionel and horribly missed Eileen. He hadn’t got Hugo’s intellect or high-mindedness, nor Guy Verney’s soothing intelligence, nor Alan Vane’s entertaining flow of charming high spirits tempered with pleasant, shallow sentimentality. How could you really exchange ideas with Lionel? Was the mystery of his wonderful, deep, dark eyes purely a physical trait? Left to his own resources he didn’t know how to amuse himself, and if he didn’t get enough exercise he was depressed and bored. When all went well he was a magnificent specimen and rather a dear.
Lionel was very sweet to Claudia when she was expecting her child. He took to reading aloud to her, badly but not unintelligibly, simple, rousing classics of schoolroom days, and the Book Society’s novels. They seemed to get closer together, and when the child was born, eighteen months after their marriage, she was surprised and delighted to find that she did, contrary to all her expectations, dearly and immediately love her tiny son. They named him Alan and made Alan Vane godfather because he would be so easy to get things out of. They put the baby down for Eton, or, as they jocularly stated, Narkover.
“I want him to do a job of work, darling,” said Claudia, cuddling the small, infinitely soft bundle, “and not be a parasite like us.”
“Oh, he’ll have to work when he grows up,” said Lionel. “The Government will have snaffled all our money by then. I think I should bring him up to be a gigolo and then he’ll be certain to be able to support us in comfort.”
Darling little Alan! It was all true, the incredible stuff you heard talked about babies and motherhood. He was fascinating and wholly individual. No other baby in the world would do. After nursing him three months it was delightful to get back to the gay round she had been despising, and she was no longer wholly dependent on the gay round for interest and occupation. She no longer worried much about having no one to go to concerts and galleries with her, needing support, for she was not intellectual enough to go alone. With Lionel and young Alan and health and wealth it is not surprising that she was very well contented with life. And yet there seemed a waste space in it; something that had never woken or had fallen asleep.
