The Beautiful Visit (32 page)

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

I spent a long dreadful morning, evading my family, struggling with my share, and more than my share (for I had a guilty conscience) of the family chores, watching the time,
and finally attempting to eat lunch under the watchful family eyes. At ten minutes to two I escaped to my room, at two left the house, and then was so afraid of being late that I took a cab. In
consequence of this I arrived early; but once more he was there.

‘I am very glad that you are early, because we are going to a theatre,’ he said almost at once. ‘I have a cab waiting.’ He took my arm and led me down the steps
again.

‘I am sorry to be peremptory, but I have thought this out very carefully,’ he said as we drove away. ‘I thought we should have tea, and then dine in my house. Is that all
right?’

I nodded. The slight disappointment I had felt about the theatre dissolved as he continued the plans. I surrendered myself to the third day in his company so completely that the morning
vanished; there was nothing beyond going to his house, and I was able utterly to concentrate upon the hours between.

Curiously, I can remember almost nothing about the theatre we visited. It must have been a comedy, as I remember us both laughing; on one occasion turning to each other, ceasing to laugh, and
turning back to the stage again, with the play knocked out of our minds.

Afterwards we had tea. Ian had again bought me dark red roses, which smelled of more roses than could possibly be contained in the paper. ‘Do not unwrap them,’ he said. ‘I want
you to wear them in your hair at dinner.’

‘In these clothes?’

‘I assure you they will be perfectly suitable. You have very good hair for the purpose. Like the Empress Elisabeth. She preferred diamonds, but you will have to make do with roses for the
present.’

‘Did she always wear diamonds in her hair?’

‘Invariably. But she wore a top hat when riding in order to conceal the diamonds.’

He proceeded to tell me about the Empress Elisabeth: of her beauty; her passion for adventure; her terror of growing old; and her incredible hair. ‘Of course, being an Empress she was able
to make the most of it,’ he concluded as we rose to go. ‘Shall we walk a little? We have now to collect our dinner.’

I agreed. We proceeded to St James’s Street.

‘Do you arrange about food?’

‘Yes. I wake very early, and that is how I employ the time. We are going to my club first, where I am afraid you will have to wait for me.’

As I waited, I reflected that this was, after all, not so difficult as I had previously imagined it would be. We were not tense or strained, either of us; we were simply two friends spending the
day – spending it perhaps in a slightly less usual manner than many friends who spent time together (I was thinking of the empty house and the private meal we were collecting); but that was
all. That really seemed to be all, I repeated to myself.

It began to rain a little. We collected the rest of the food in a cab, and then drove to his house. Here the same ceremony took place as before. Ian lighted the fire, uncovered the white sofa
(everything in the room had been restored to the state in which I had first seen it), and then announced that he was going to prepare the meal. I offered to help him; but he declined, and I felt
certain that he did not want me to see the rest of the house. When he had left me I wandered round the room.

Hung on the wall there was a large portrait of an extremely fascinating woman. She was wearing a riding habit: her beautiful hands palely clutched the heavy folds of her skirt, as she gazed out
upon the room above the severe gloss of her high stiff collar, with an expression at once imperious and immature; smiling a little curling smile, which conveyed nothing of the humour in which she
was painted. Possibly she was Ian’s sister, although he had never mentioned a sister. But then, I really knew very little about him. I replenished the fire; then, without thinking very much,
wandered to the piano and played.

I found myself totally unable to remember any piece of music completely. This was not customary with me, and I found it unreasonably frightening. For what seemed hours of panic and futility, I
struggled; always breaking down at the same place or within a few bars of it; until I was eventually interrupted by Ian.

I did not hear him come into the room, which increased my alarm and mortification. I rose from the piano, wordless and shivering, and moved to the sofa avoiding him.

‘You have not used your roses,’ he said.

‘No.’

I made no move towards them, sat with my hands stretched out to the fire, as though they were cold and I must do nothing but warm them. I felt him regarding me; my unaccountable tumult of
feeling rose to the pitch of anger. I discovered that my hands were freezing. He indicated a stool where I might sit nearer the fire, and I moved to it with my back to him. ‘If he imagines
that I will unpin my hair and play the piano, he is wrong,’ I thought viciously, longing for him to give me the chance of denying him either of these things. ‘I will do nothing of the
kind.’ I wanted to sit there until he was as angry with me as I was with him; there was nothing else that I
could
do now, I realized quickly. It is very easy to reach a point where
one’s next action is so dependent on pride and so confined by emotion that one is driven on to ungraciousness and everything fast becomes intolerable. It was intolerable to sit on the stool,
unable to speak, refusing the roses, and waiting for him to be hurt, but it was all I was able to do. And a few minutes ago everything had seemed simple; until he had come into the room when I was
trying to remember the music.’

All this while I heard him arranging things on the table. Eventually he said: ‘Would you like to eat where you are?’

I felt that he was trying to accommodate me, and knew that if I were to continue hating him at all, I must comply. I turned round, and he offered me a steaming bowl as he had done the previous
evening. For some minutes we sat in silence, while I attempted to drink the soup, but long before it was finished I knew that I should be quite incapable of sustaining the meal. I put the bowl on
the table in order better to struggle with myself. Then I heard him set down his bowl, looked at him, and suddenly, covering my face in my hands, was shaken with sobs. He got up after a moment and
led me to the sofa. I think he knelt before me, holding my hands, asking me why I was sobbing. I shook my head. I was so ashamed and so unhappy that I did not know or care why.

‘Did I frighten you? Was it because you dislike anyone hearing you practise? Or because you do not want to unpin your hair?’ I heard him trying all these possibilities with patient
credulity, prepared to believe anything I told him. So I told him the truth; that I did not want him to go away, most passionately I did not want it. It was the only thing I knew.

‘I think I had better hold you in my arms,’ he said.

‘No. I am dreadfully sorry.’

‘Why are you sorry?’

‘I cannot manage any of my feelings at all. I simply weep. I wept yesterday.’

‘That was different,’ he said reassuringly.

‘Yes. But this is much worse. I will try to explain. I do not love you, at least, surely if I did love you I should not be so utterly unhappy. Even if you were going away, surely I should
not be so much in despair?’

‘I do not know,’ he said after considering this. ‘Perhaps not. Perhaps you wish you did love me.’

‘I wish I knew you more. I do not want you to go and never to see you. I know nothing about this. I cannot compare myself, or you, with anyone or anything else. I simply want to choose
more: and not be forced into your going away. Must you go?’

‘Yes, I must go.’

‘Well, do you really believe that you love me?’

‘Yes, I know that.’

‘If you stayed, I might know that I loved you. Wouldn’t that be what you would want?’

‘If I were staying, I should do everything in my power to induce your love,’ he replied.

‘But you cannot possibly stay? Even a little time?’

I saw that he began to suffer but he reiterated steadily, ‘No, I must go.’

We stared silently at each other; and then, with a tremendous effort, my heart devoured my imagination of him, and my half-conscious dream of our gentle slow-moving love. I believe I only
touched his hand; but it was as though our hearts touched, lay quietly together and returned to us. If he had stayed many months I think there might not have been such another moment. They are the
only moments when more than one person is beautiful: when each mind is unfolded to the other like some marvellous map of a Paradise: when each also loves the self equally because it is the lover of
the beloved. They are the moments of life which continue it: the vindication of all the desolate hours and days and years that each one spends searching.

He was holding my hand again now; and still we watched the glow from the first exquisite shock die in our eyes; and the lovely amiable ease which followed.

‘Who is the portrait at the end of the room?’

‘My mother. It was very like her, I believe.’ She was killed, he continued, in a riding accident when he was a child. He barely remembered her.

We talked very quietly for a time, hardly aware of what we said, and then he rose to his feet.

‘Don’t leave me.’

‘I was proposing to sit on the sofa with you,’ he said.

I remembered the roses.

‘May I have your comb?’

‘Yes, of course.’

I held out my hand. He gave it me. I walked to the mirror over the fireplace, and he watched me let down my hair.

‘Don’t cut it, will you? At least, not yet.’

‘Why do you ask that?’

‘Many women have cut their hair. I am not sure that it would become you. I should have to know you better.’

‘I will ask your opinion before I cut it, but it is very heavy.’

‘It is very romantic and beautiful,’ he answered seriously. ‘Shall I comb it for you?’

‘Yes.’

‘Sit on this cushion and give me the comb.’

He was very good at it and I said so, with some surprise. ‘Have you combed many women’s hair?’

‘Would it not be better for you if I had?’

I reflected. ‘Yes, I suppose it would.’

‘Well then, I am an extremely experienced hair comber.’

‘Of course you might be instinctively good at it.’

I felt that he smiled as he said: ‘Perhaps that is what I am. Now, where are the roses. I presume you intend wearing the roses.’

‘As I am without a single diamond, I have no choice.’

‘I should have bought diamonds as well. It is dreadful to have no choice.’

‘You are not meant to give me diamonds! I didn’t mean that.’

‘I think I should enormously enjoy giving you diamonds. It simply had not occurred to me.’

‘Give me the roses. I want to unwrap them myself.’

‘Now,’ he said, when the roses were finally arranged. ‘Come and recline on the sofa. I think it will entail taking you in my arms. For our mutual comfort,’ he added when
I came.

For a long while I lay on the sofa with his arms round me. There seemed to be so very much to say, and conversation of any kind was delightful to us both. We talked, we reassured one another (I
did not at first perceive his need of this), we discovered, or bred, a crowd of new perfections in one another: and all the while, time, the hours, raced, galloped, fell headlong into the night.
Then, when he suggested that we eat the rest of our meal, I did ask him the time. We found that it was well past eleven. I was so appalled that I did not notice him, as the relentless situation
closed in on me again with frightful force. I should have to go, in less than an hour I should have to go. I turned from any hopeless attempt to eat; determining this time thoroughly to control
myself, unconsciously clinging to him until he said: ‘My poor darling. We are neither of us very good at this.’ I saw his eyes filled with tears, and was overwhelmed with an agony of
tenderness for him, with a passionate desire that he should not feel so much or so painfully as I. I put my arms round him and kissed him; held him in my arms as though I were the lover; and for a
moment the imminence of our parting ebbed away. I remember thinking quite quietly to myself when I had kissed him: ‘No, I cannot bear this, really I cannot bear it. Something must happen to
stop, or at least defer my going, because this is more than I can bear.’

Then, almost immediately, he said: ‘I have to go very early in the morning. Would you stay here with me until I go?’

‘I will stay with you.’

‘What about your family? Will they not become anxious?’ He was very still, watching me steadily.

‘I told them I should be late, and I have a key. I don’t think they will know until tomorrow morning.’ I wondered why he continued to watch me, as though he were trying to
understand me. I repeated almost angrily, ‘They won’t know until the morning, and then I shall be back.’

‘You want to stay?’

‘I don’t want to leave you. I think I must love you very much indeed. I want to lie on this sofa all night, talking with your arms round me.’

‘That is what you want?’

‘Yes. Is that wrong?’

He touched my hair and then dropped his hand. ‘No,’ he said, ‘of course it is not wrong. That is what you shall have. But first you must eat.’

We ate: the morning seemed very far away. We even discussed the plans for his departure, and they none of them seemed in the least real to me. He must leave at seven, he said, in search of a
cab, but he would make tea before he left; therefore we must, if we slept at all, wake at six-thirty.

‘Shall we sleep?’

‘I expect not,’ he said, ‘but we might.’

Fetching a small clock, a kettle and two large cups; he set them on the table, which he moved away from the sofa whereon I lay.

‘Should I do anything?’

‘No, I will make up the fire and join you.’

He knelt before the fire, began to replenish it, and then suddenly exclaimed: ‘Oh my darling!’

‘What is it?’ He was sitting back on his heels regarding me.