Giant's Bread (25 page)

He said:

‘I feel ashamed of myself, Nell. But you're so lovely – everyone must want you …'

She broke down suddenly – began to cry. He was startled. She cried on, sobbed on his shoulder.

‘I don't know what to do – I don't know what to do. I'm so unhappy. If I could only talk to you.'

‘But you can talk to me, darling. I'm here listening.'

‘No, no, no … I can never talk to you. You don't understand. It's all no use …'

She cried on. He kissed her, soothed her, poured out all his love …

When he had gone, her mother came into the room, an open letter in her hand.

She did not appear to notice Nell's tear-stained face.

‘George Chetwynd sails for America on the 30th of May,' she remarked, as she went across to her desk.

‘I don't care when he sails,' said Nell rebelliously.

Mrs Vereker did not answer.

That night Nell knelt longer than usual by her narrow white bed.

‘Oh, God, please let me marry Vernon. I want to so much. I do love him so. Please let things come right and let us be married. Make something happen … Please God …'

At the end of April Abbots Puissants was let. Vernon came to Nell in some excitement.

‘Nell, will you marry me now? We could just manage. It's a bad let – an awfully bad one, but I simply had to take it. You see, there's been the mortgage interest to pay and all the expenses of the upkeep while it's been unlet. I've had to borrow for all that and now, of course, it's got to be paid back. We'll be pretty short for a year or two, but then it won't be so bad …'

He talked on, explaining the financial details.

‘I've been into it all, Nell. I have really. Sensibly, I mean. We could afford a tiny flat and one maid and have a little left over to play with. Oh, Nell, you wouldn't mind being poor with me, would you? You said once I didn't know what it was to be poor, but you can't say that now. I've lived on frightfully little since I came to London, and I haven't minded a bit.'

No, Nell knew he hadn't. The fact was in some way a vague reproach to her. And yet, though she couldn't quite express it to herself, she felt that the two cases were not on a par. It made much more difference to women – to be gay and pretty and admired and have a good time – none of those things affected men. They hadn't that everlasting problem of clothes – nobody minded if they were shabby.

But how explain these things to Vernon? One couldn't. He wasn't like George Chetwynd. George understood things like that.

‘Nell.'

She sat there, irresolute, his arm round her. She had got to decide. Visions floated before her eyes. Amelie … the hot little house, the wailing children … George Chetwynd and his car … a stuffy little flat – a dirty incompetent maid … dances … clothes … the money they owed dressmakers … the rent of the London house – unpaid … Herself at Ascot, smiling, chattering in a lovely model gown … then, with a sudden revulsion she was back at Ranelagh on the bridge over the water with Vernon …

In almost the same voice as she had used that evening she said:

‘I don't know. Oh, Vernon, I don't know.'

‘Oh, Nell, darling, do … do …'

She disengaged herself from him, got up.

‘Please, Vernon – I must think … yes, think. I – I can't when I'm with you.'

She wrote to him later that night:

‘Dearest Vernon, – Let us wait a little longer – say six months. I don't feel I want to be married now. Besides, something might have happened about your opera then. You think I'm afraid of being poor, but it's not quite that. I've seen people – people who loved each other, and they didn't any more because of all the bothers and worries. I feel that if we wait and are patient everything will come right. Oh! Vernon, I know it will – and then everything will be so lovely. If only we wait and have patience …'

Vernon was angry when he got this letter. He did not show the letter to Jane, but he broke out into sufficiently unguarded speech to let her see how the land lay. She said at once in her disconcerting fashion:

‘You do think you're sufficient prize for any girl, don't you, Vernon?'

‘What do you mean?'

‘Well, do you think it will be awfully jolly for a girl who has danced and been to parties and had lots of fun and people admiring her to be stuck down in a poky hole with no more fun?'

‘We'd have each other.'

‘You can't make love to her for twenty-four hours on end. Whilst you're working what is she to do?'

‘Don't you think a woman can be poor and happy?'

‘Certainly, given the necessary qualifications.'

‘Which are – what? Love and trust?'

‘No, you idiotic child. A sense of humour, a tough hide and the valuable quality of being sufficient unto oneself. You will insist on love in a cottage being a sentimental problem dependent on the amount of love concerned. It's far more a problem of mental outlook. You'd be all right stuck down anywhere – Buckingham Palace or the Sahara – because you've got your mental preoccupation – music. But Nell's dependent on extraneous circumstances. Marrying you will cut her off from all her friends.'

‘Why should it?'

‘Because it's the hardest thing in the world for people with different incomes to continue friends. They're not all doing the same thing naturally.'

‘You always put me in the wrong,' said Vernon savagely. ‘Or at anyrate you try to.'

‘Well, it annoys me to see you put yourself on a pedestal and stand admiring yourself for nothing at all,' said Jane calmly. ‘You expect Nell to sacrifice her friends and life to you, but you wouldn't make your sacrifice for her.'

‘What sacrifice? I'd do anything.'

‘Except sell Abbots Puissants!'

‘You don't understand …'

Jane looked at him gently.

‘Perhaps I do. Oh, yes, my dear, I do very well. But don't be noble. It always annoys me to see people being noble! Let's talk about the
Princess in the Tower
. I want you to show it to Radmaager.'

‘Oh, it's so rotten. I couldn't. You know, I didn't realize myself, Jane, how rotten it was until I had finished it.'

‘No,' said Jane. ‘Nobody ever does. Fortunately – or nothing ever would be finished. Show it to Radmaager. What he says will be interesting at all events.'

Vernon yielded rather grudgingly.

‘He'll think it such awful cheek.'

‘No, he won't. He's a very high opinion of what Sebastian says, and Sebastian has always believed in you. Radmaager says that for so young a man, Sebastian's judgment is amazing.'

‘Good old Sebastian. He's wonderful,' said Vernon warmly. ‘Nearly everything he's done has been a success. Shekels are rolling in. God, how I envy him sometimes.'

‘You needn't. He's not such a very happy person really.'

‘You mean Joe? Oh! that will all come right.'

‘I wonder. Vernon, do you see much of Joe?'

‘A fair amount. Not as much as I used to. I can't stand that queer artistic set she's drifted into – their hair's all wrong and they look unwashed and they talk what seems to me the most arrant drivel. They're not a bit like your crowd – the people who really do things.'

‘We're what Sebastian would call the successful commercial propositions. All the same, I'm worried about Joe. I'm afraid she's going to do something foolish.'

‘That bounder La Marre, you mean?'

‘Yes, I mean that bounder, La Marre. He's clever with women, you know, Vernon. Some men are.'

‘You think she'd go off with him or something? Of course Joe is a damned fool in some ways.' He looked curiously at Jane: ‘But I should have thought you –'

He stopped, suddenly crimson. Jane looked very faintly amused.

‘You really needn't be embarrassed by my morals.'

‘I wasn't. I mean – I've always wondered … Oh! I've wondered such an awful lot …'

His voice died away. There was silence. Jane sat very upright. She did not look at Vernon. She looked straight ahead of her. Presently in a quiet even voice, she began to speak. She spoke quite unemotionally and evenly, as though recounting something that had happened to someone else. It was a cold, concise recital of horror, and to Vernon the most dreadful thing about it was her own detached calm. She spoke as a scientist might speak, impersonally.

He buried his face in his hands.

Jane brought her recital to an end. Her quiet voice ceased.

Vernon said in a low shuddering voice:

‘And you lived through
that
? I – didn't know that such things were.'

Jane said calmly:

‘He was a Russian and a degenerate. It's hard for an Anglo-Saxon to understand that peculiar refined lust of cruelty. You understand brutality. You don't understand anything else.'

Vernon said, feeling childish and awkward as he put the question:

‘You – you loved him very much?'

She shook her head slowly – began to speak, and then stopped.

‘Why dissect the past?' she said, after a minute or two. ‘He did some fine work. There's a thing of his in the South Kensington. It's macabre, but it's good.'

Then she began once more to talk of the
Princess in the Tower
.

Vernon went to the South Kensington two days later. He found the solitary representation of Boris Androv's work easily enough. A drowned woman – the face was horrible, puffed, bloated, decomposed, but the body was beautiful … a lovely body. Vernon knew instinctively that it was Jane's body.

He stood looking down on the bronze nude figure, with arms spread wide and long lank hair reaching out mournfully …

Such a beautiful body … Jane's body. Androv had modelled that nude body from her.

For the first time for years a queer remembrance of The Beast came over him. He felt afraid.

He turned quickly away from the beautiful bronze figure and left the building hurriedly, almost running.

It was the first night of Radmaager's new opera,
Peer Gynt
. Vernon was going to it and had been asked by Radmaager to attend a supper party afterwards. He was dining first with Nell at her mother's house. She was not coming to the opera.

Much to Nell's surprise, Vernon did not turn up to dinner. They waited some time, and then began without him. He arrived just as dessert was being put on the table.

‘I'm most awfully sorry, Mrs Vereker. I can't tell you how sorry I am. Something very – very unexpected occurred. I'll tell you later.'

His face was so white and he was so obviously upset that Mrs Vereker forgot her annoyance. She was always a tactful woman of the world and she treated the present situation with her usual discretion.

‘Well,' she said, rising, ‘now you are here, Vernon, you can talk to Nell. If you're going to the opera you won't have much time.'

She left the room. Nell looked inquiringly at Vernon. He answered her look.

‘Joe's gone off with La Marre.'

‘Oh, Vernon, she hasn't!'

‘She has.'

‘Do you mean that she has eloped? That she's married him? That they've run away to get married?'

Vernon said grimly:

‘He can't marry her. He's got a wife already.'

‘Oh, Vernon, how awful! How could she?'

‘Joe was always wrong-headed. She'll regret this – I know she will. I don't believe she really cares for him.'

‘What about Sebastian? Won't he feel this terribly?'

‘Yes, poor devil. I've been with him now. He's absolutely broken up over it. I'd no idea how much he cared for Joe.'

‘I know he did.'

‘You see, there were the three of us – always. Joe and I and Sebastian. We belonged together.'

A faint pang of jealousy shot through Nell. Vernon repeated:

‘The three of us. It's – oh! I don't know – I feel as though I'd been to blame in some way. I've let myself get out of touch with Joe. Dear old Joe, she was so staunch always – better than any sister could be. It hurts me to think of the things she used to say when she was a kid – how she'd never have anything to do with men. And now she's come a mucker like this.'

Nell said in a shocked voice:

‘A married man. That's what makes it so awful. Had he any children?'

‘How should I know anything about his beastly children?'

‘Vernon – don't be so cross.'

‘Sorry, Nell. I'm upset, that's all.'

‘How could she do such a thing,' said Nell. She had always rather resented Joe's unspoken contempt of which she had been subconsciously aware. She would not have been human had she not felt a faint sense of superiority. ‘To run away with anyone married! It's dreadful!'

‘Well, she had courage, anyway,' said Vernon.

He felt a sudden passionate desire to defend Joe – Joe who belonged to Abbots Puissants and the old days.

‘Courage?' said Nell.

‘Yes, courage!' said Vernon. ‘At anyrate she wasn't prudent. She didn't count the cost. She's chucked away everything in the world for love. That's more than some people will do.'

‘Vernon!'

She got up, breathing hard.

‘Well, it's true.' All his smouldering resentment came bursting out. ‘You won't even face a little discomfort for me, Nell. You're always saying “Wait” and “Let's be careful.” You aren't capable of chucking everything to the winds for love of anyone.'

‘Oh, Vernon, how cruel you are … how cruel …'

He saw the tears come into her eyes and was immediately all compunction.

‘Oh, Nell, I didn't mean it – I didn't mean it, sweetheart.'

His arms went round her, held her to him. Her sobs lessened. He glanced at his watch.