For Love Alone (57 page)

Jonathan resignedly walked to the gate, put his hand on it. “Well, Tess, here we are. Night-night.”

She could not force a good night. He looked at her curiously, with a faint smile. She turned to go but after taking a step, came back just as he was pushing open the gate. She began speaking hurriedly, in a low tone: “Jonathan, let me come back for a while, inside for a while, only a few minutes.”

“What to do?” said Jonathan insultingly, throwing back his head.

“Not to do anything, to be there a moment.”

He turned stiffly and walked up to the door without saying a word. Afraid and ashamed, she stood at the gate watching him. He put the key in the lock, looked over his shoulder, opened the door, went inside and stood there, then he beckoned stiffly. After apparently wrestling with herself, she came up the path and stairs with uneven steps and stood outside the door. He pointed the way to his room without a word. She stood inside the door with a flushed face, then blustered: “Johnny, I'm going.”

“Why?”

“You don't want me.”

“I do,” he said in a hard tone. “I want you very much.” She looked frightened.

“Come in,” he said with rough good-humour. “After all, I didn't give you tea, that's what you need perhaps, it's been a long evening. Then I'll set you on your way.”

“I didn't come back for tea,” she said, slowly pulling off her gloves; but she was hungry.

He pushed her inside his door, took off his hat and muffler, pulled down the wall-bed and threw her things on it.

“I'm pretty sleepy,” he said, “so I might as well air it a bit before I go to bed. The maid used to do it but old Bagshawe started to make a row about her coming here in the evening, said damned suggestive things that no doubt she chews over in her lecherous old mind, and so now I do it myself.” She sat down by the fire in a low seat. He filled the kettle with fresh water, put it on, all the time casting glances at her, while she looked downwards, with shame, at the mat. He smiled wryly. “Well, feeling better?”

“I impose on you, you have troubles of your own.”

“Nothing that will break or bend me. I'm not like you, sufficient unto the day is my motto, but you look before and after and pine for what is not.” He knelt by her to light the gas. “Eh? Isn't that it?”

“I don't know why I'm like this,” she said, still looking down with shame. “I've practised self-control ever since I was a child,
never let on, never let them know what was the matter with me, that was my ideal. It just passed from me. It doesn't work any more.”

“You're a masochist,” he said. “Your whole history shows that, that girl on the boat, everything. You enjoy seeing yourself suffer, you see, you don't want others to share the spectacle with you, all the Christian martyrs under one hat—” he looked up, smiled, “one blond thatch. Isn't that it? Put it to yourself.”

“No, it isn't.”

He laughed. She went on thoughtfully: “I never meant anyone to get the better of me, get through my armour so to speak. I couldn't work it. You did.”

“What do I do?” he asked gently, still kneeling by her feet. “It isn't your doing. It's my fault. I don't know what's the matter with me.”

“Don't you?”

“Beg pardon?”

“Don't you know what's the matter with you?” He looked into her face with such a strange, hard, gay expression that she felt the painful fire corkscrew through her from her knees where he knelt to her head. She looked warily at him. He veiled his eyes, got up to get the things out of the cupboard and said thickly: “What's the matter with all of us? We haven't what we need, the sweets of the world go to property and privilege.”

“I don't want those things.”

“If you had them would you be in the hole you're in now?” She looked up with sudden pride. “What hole?”

“Where you are,” he said vaguely. “At Quick's beck and call, working all day for a man who can sack you at the end of the week. You'll be looking for work perhaps next week. But you,” he snarled, turning and looking hard at her, “now you see a lot of good in Quick. You're credulous, you believe in the boss. What's that but masochism? This masochism of yours is just a way of making spiritual capital out of your weakness. You're helpless, but you don't see it. So you go
on putting yourself at the mercy of one person after another. It all comes from your inability to move freely. You're pinned down. If you don't like your job you must stick to it.”

“But I do like it—”

“If you don't like London you must live here, if you don't like me, you must stick to me—”

“I've changed jobs and countries.”

“But not me,” he said, smiling.

“No,” she said very low.

“I'd rather you changed me too, I can give you nothing.”

“I know, Johnny.” Her voice broke. “Johnny, you have given me everything.”

He laughed slyly up at her from where he crouched holding the toasting fork. “Not everything, surely, Tess.”

“You gave me something to live for, a purpose; it was for you I came here, without you I might never have come. I would have failed.”

“You must have had an empty life,” he said with contempt.

“Empty? No, full! A burning full life, I had, while I was saving—”

“Hold on,” he said easily, “hold on, there's your imagination again. You see, you're different from me, you still expect to get something from men.” She recoiled and he went on steadily, with a grim smile: “But I don't expect to get anything from man or woman. I know better now. There's no rainbow for me. I want love as much as the next fellow, but it's out, and so I'm beginning to give up worrying about it. You won't face it as I do. That's why you are upset like you said just now.”

“Face what?” said Teresa with horror.

“Face doing without love, face doing without a man, you won't do that.”

“Of course not.”

“Why not?” he asked in an impudent, boyish voice. “It's been done. Women haven't the courage to face it, they've got to fill their lives with an emotion as a house with knick-knacks. There are old
maids, plenty of 'em—but it isn't from choice.” He laughed bitterly. “Take a leaf out of my book, tell yourself there's no such thing as love and forget it.”

“Never,” said Teresa.

He grinned and turned round to her. “So, you've made up your mind not to be different. You want to be a cave woman, slave of the bedroom and kitchen, just like the rest. I'm surprised at you, I thought you were a modern woman.”

“Are you a modern man?”

“Modern is as modern does. I do modern.”

“What do you do that's so modern?”

“This!”

“This?”
She pointed at the room, at the bookcase.

He pointed to the bed, laughing recklessly.

“You sleep your life away?”

He burst out laughing again. “If you like.” He filled a plate with toast, and handed her some. “Drink your tea now and then trot off, so that I can get my forty winks. Besides, I'm expecting someone.”

“So late?”

“Only Lucy. She's coming in to see that things are fixed for the night. She likes to when the old Bagshawe won't see her. She even said she wanted to read some of my books, to pull herself up by her boot-straps. Touching, isn't it? She might be jealous.”

Teresa laughed: “But does she still live with you?”

“Eh?”

“In the house.”

“Oh, I thought you meant she lived
with
me.”

“Don't be ridiculous!”

He said belligerently: “Why would it be—is that snobbery?”

“Of course not.”

He relaxed. “A good thing—in every way.” He told anecdotes, the gossip he had heard. She yawned. “Bagshawe told someone,” he said, “I don't know why, one of my friends, the old devil, that she listened at the door and heard us in bed together, the maid and me.”

“Oh, Jonathan! Why don't you leave?”

“Why? It amuses me. It gave me a clue. She stays in there next door and her lecherous old imagination weaves fantasies round me. Comic, isn't it—me! But that landladies always hanker after their student lodgers, that's an old story. She's a vicious old body. She told me that women are all alike where men are concerned and she never knew what games her maids would be up to. She tried to indicate, I half imagine, that Lucy was no better than she should be.”

Teresa opened her eyes wide, petrified with astonishment. Then she gave a shriek of laughter. “Oh, that's killing! Do you think she's quite sane?” she asked.

“Quite sane,” said Jonathan dryly. “She just hankers after my bed, that's all.”

Teresa wrung her hands. “You have to put up with dreadful things, why don't you leave?”

“Gossip can't touch me,” he said coldly, “and in the meantime she pays for her fantasies—I mean, she lets me have the room cheap. I suppose there's a touch of senility in it, senile decay. I don't give a darn, I never think of it,” he shrugged his shoulders. “But don't make too much of it, it doesn't touch me. But I've got one thing to say for them—they give free rein to their fantasies.” He smiled askance at her, grimly.

“You must be glad to get away from here, down to the country, twice a week.”

“Oh, those country girls are just clean pals.” He put the cups and saucers together in a basket at the end of the room, and meditated aloud. “I'm not serious in all I say, but I suppose in a way I ought to live with one of them, it would keep me out of jams. But, you can bring a horse to the brink but cannot make him drink.” He flung back his head and laughed. She saw the double whorls of hair on his head, the ducks' tails.

He came back towards her, dropping his tone. “As for that, you know, I'm getting afraid of Lucy, I think she likes me too much. That's the trouble of the near-cohabitation of a house like this. She
comes in at all hours and she is free to do so, of course,” he looked away, “and old Bagshawe knows my habits. If I have a girl to my room, even you,” he smiled, “though they know it's not serious—I've told them so, to keep them quiet—there's a cold wave for a day afterwards. Then I have to be sweet to them, butter them up, you know. I even kissed Lucy, once, after you had been here, just to keep the house running on its tracks, you know, nothing to it!”

“Of course not,” she said. “I never thought for a moment—” He picked up one of her gloves, fingering it. “Pretty, what colour do you call that?” he asked, teasing.

“What colour? Wine. What other colour would you call it?”

He flung it down. “Wine, women, but no song. Oh, by the way, Tamar is coming this way, I've just had a letter from her, she expects to get here by September. I had a note from Elaine too, but”, he smiled wryly, “I'm afraid Elaine has given me up as a bad job. A nice girl, too!”

“Are you going to marry Tamar, Johnny, is that it?” she asked. He crumpled down on the rug, close to her, half-reclining and looking at her with half-closed eyes. All she could see were his long black lashes. He glanced at her legs. A laugh blurted out. “Marry Tamar! No fear! I stick, my dear, to the pure intellectual life. Tamar has been engaged for two years, so I suppose I don't even count in her young life. At any rate, with her, life is physical.” He saw the tears in her eyes. He said gently: “Physical love, to a girl like you, is impossible, isn't it?”

She was tired of answering him. She looked at him thoughtfully.

“Well,” he continued, plucking at the mat, “I suppose I'm a freak! I must be, but I'll stick to it. If it be so, let it be so. Amen, says Jonathan Crow.” He laughed thoughtfully. “I see voluptuous females on the street, with the requisite superfluous adipose tissue, the sort nature made to seduce men, who are always taken by profit, a bonus, you know—” He laughed and shot her a brilliant glance. “I'm a man like the rest, it would take no effort to seduce me, I'm no monster of chastity, quite the opposite. There's a girl down the country, in
one of my classes, who, funny kid, said she'd teach me about life, introduce me to it, just as if she had a shake-hand acquaintance with it, initiate me—” He laughed heartily. “Would you like to see her photo?” He got up, pulled out a drawer and brought across a bundle of photographs, out of which he took three. He showed himself, lying down under a tree, his head in a girl's lap. “Not bad of me really, eh?”

“No, very good.”

“She's just a youngster.” He pointed to a girl in whose lap he was lying. “There's another kid, she's engaged, a bonza little blonde, she came up to London two or three times and I had her here and I thought my number was up—I'm not totally insensible, you see—but she would have none of me, she was wearing some fellow's ring, labelled for life, there's the eternal harem for you, like all the ones you really want,” he said with bitter regret. He raised his eyes. “I assure you, Tess, I'm a man like the others, if you like.” He ground his teeth, his curious habit. “I'm not as I try to make out. That's just self-preservation. But the two or three women I've wanted, the sweet kernel of the carnal—” he laughed, a soft, troubling tone—“those two or three darlings fashioned by insensately prolific nature, with more than usual relish, to receive man's heat and give heat and carry man's seed and make more for the next generation of men to desire—they were already some other fellows', and as for the seed—that crazy yearning you have to perpetuate yourself in some woman, purely instinctive, against all common sense, but so real, I'm mad I know, but they give it to you. There never was one of them that wasn't burning with love, I felt it myself. Your plain-faced, skinny girls, without the profit of nature, as I call it,” he grinned at her, “they're stand-offish, and it's a dispensation of nature as I see it. The French say instinct is never wrong, so I was told by a French girl.” He smiled a wolfish smile as he plucked at the mat. “I felt the radiant attraction, but—it wasn't to be. Our system was made for the misfits, the ugly women, who get one man and hold on to him like grim death,” he said viciously. After a silence, he resumed, with
a quiet laugh. “No, really, I have had hard luck, and after the dear little blonde I determined to pay nature in her own coin, bad coin. Very well, says I, Dame Nature, if I can't have what I want, I'll have none, I won't beget myself on a hangdog woman that
will
have me. That's my motto, let ‘em shrivel. I won't have one of my sort. Youth at the prow and pleasure at the helm or no boat ride at all! And, provided that kind of girl does not turn up again, I'm sticking to it. I suffer like the deuce, I'm on the rack, at least sometimes.” He turned over on his belly, looked up at her through his lashes and went back to scratching at the carpet. “But I'll get over it. What's wrong with that, eh? Don't you do the same? Why should I put up with a misfit, one of those?” he flashed a plaintive glance at her and lowered his eyes again. “When I've been cheated, I cheat back. Eh? What do you say?”