The Edwardians (20 page)

The tea-drinking at any rate stemmed the flow of Mrs. Tolputt's volubility for the moment, but the consolation to Teresa was small, for she knew that Maud would be off again, no sooner than she had taken her nose out of the cup. She writhed as she thought that Sebastian might have come on any other day, when Maud was not there. And now he would certainly never come again. She kept glancing at him as he sat there, so sleek in his black London clothes—“his hair is like patent leather,” she thought—his ebony stick laid on the ground beside him, his manner interested and deferential as he listened to Maud's outpourings. How beautifully grave he was! yet he must be bored, horrified, thought the agonised Teresa as she looked at her sister-in-law, so stout and homely and voluble, buttoned into her plum velvet bodice like the wife of any British tradesman. She noticed Maud's string bag, which, stuffed with bulky parcels, was reposing on the floor beside her, and contrasted its ungainliness with the elegance of Sebastian's stick. This contrast in the adjuncts they carried seemed to epitomise the difference between them. Oh, she thought, if only she could cover her eyes and stuff her fingers into her ears, that the misery of this scene might be excluded! No, he would certainly never come again.

But he did come again. When he took his leave, helping himself up by the back of his chair, leaning on his stick, he asked Teresa for permission to return. True, he made the excuse of wanting to thank the doctor. “I am so sorry to have missed your husband . . .” but Teresa knew very well that the doctor had nothing to do with it. It was she herself whom Sebastian wanted to see; she knew that by the way he looked at her, an unsmiling look, but intent, searching; the look, in fact, which Sebastian was apt to bend on all woman, whether he meant anything by it or not. This time he did mean something by it. No one ever knew where the wind of Sebastian's caprice would blow next, though it was certainly very odd that it should have veered in the direction of Mrs. John Spedding. But he was bored; he had known too many different kinds of women and could appraise them all—women of fashion, prostitutes, dubious aspirants to social heights, fortune hunters, sharks, toadies, and the light-mannered ladies of the stage—none of them held any more interest for him than the A.B.C.; but this pretty, silly little Teresa, who gazed at him with such puzzled admiring eyes, and who was evidently so much ashamed of her nice vulgar sister-in-law, might amuse him for a week, and at all events she would be a new experience, a type he had never learned before. It was perhaps a somewhat languid impulse, and not very complimentary to Teresa; but Sebastian was not in the humour for anything more creditable. Nor did he intend to do Teresa any harm. Sebastian was one of those charming but dangerous people who never do harm except by accident; such discontent as internally ate him away, remained his private knowledge; he never gave anything of himself beyond the things he could not help giving—his looks, his gravity, his slow smile, his caressing manner which, in conjunction with his aloofness, made him especially attractive and exasperating to women. In some complicated way, this sense of his own detachment persuaded him of their immunity. He was playing a game with a soft ball; a game in which nobody had any business to get hurt. The fact that they returned the ball at all, after his first preliminary throw, convinced him that they knew the game and its rules; after that, he settled down to play in earnest.

If Teresa was a new experience to Sebastian, Sebastian was no less of a new experience to Teresa. She was completely dazzled by him. His irruption into her life seemed not only fantastic, but unbelievable. All her standards were revolutionised; instead of the petty economies and ‘managings' of her life, she contemplated his thoughtless extravagance; instead of her envious interest in the great, the notorious, or the socially eminent, she beheld his bored and casual familiarity; instead of the careful restrictions of middle class codes and manners, she breathed the larger air of a laxer ease; instead of any rare little departure from the monotony of every day being regarded as an event, she came now into contact with one to whom such diversions were no more exciting than a bit of bread. She never succeeded in adjusting herself to his standards. The question of what Sebastian could or could not afford was always uppermost in her mind; she was horrified when he filled her rooms with orchids; she scolded him when he took her and John to the play in a box, and neglected to fill the fourth seat. “Such a waste!” she exclaimed in real distress. She was disconcerted when he failed to be impressed by the things that aroused her easy enthusiasm, whether it was the beauty of a fashionable actress, or the turn-out of a carriage passing down the street; she thought him disrespectful, critical, and spoilt. Yet she adored him for it, and resolved endlessly that next time she also would be fastidious; would turn up her nose; would not give him the chance to laugh over her naïveté, Fortunately for herself, these resolutions broke down directly any strain was put upon them. Teresa could not pretend. She clapped her hands, she exclaimed with delight, she invited Sebastian's support, as soon as she saw something which pleased her, and only when it was too late did she remember that she had intended to play the fine lady. Then, having remembered, she would turn haughty, and haughty she would remain for perhaps a quarter of an hour. Sebastian, to his great delight, observed all these processes, and was enchanted by each one in turn. It amused him to watch her sparkling eyes, to feel the excited tug of her fingers on his sleeve; it amused him to answer in a light and derogatory tone; to see the quick jerk of reminder pass across her face; and then to note how her manner changed; how from “Oh, look! look! how lovely!” she would put on a little air of the woman of the world and would pretend to be unmoved. He really had quite an affection for her, as one might have for a confiding, playful little animal, whom one alternately trained to do tricks and then summoned to jump snuggling upon one's knee. He deplored only that some of her tricks needed a great deal of coaxing. Thus he would have liked to listen to stories of Mrs. Tolputt, whose arrangements fascinated him, but Teresa naturally was incapable of reproducing Mrs. Tolputt—and indeed was extremely unwilling to do so, finding Sebastian's interest quite incomprehensible; the most that he could get was an occasional anecdote, given as an example of the indignities she was made to suffer. “But why do you want to know?” she would say, when Sebastian asked whether Mr. Tolputt was a churchwarden; “as a matter of fact, he
is,
and they often dine with the Bishop. Well, not often, perhaps,” said Teresa, who was strictly truthful, “but anyway once a year. John and I were asked once,” she added, “when the Bishop heard that we were in Dorking.”

“Well?” said Sebastian, watching her. “Did you enjoy it?”

“It was terrible—terrible!” said Teresa, suddenly hiding her face in her hands.

“Tell me,” said Sebastian.

“Maud lost a curl,” said Teresa, looking at him with round eyes.

“Lost a curl?”

“It fell into her soup. A false curl, you know.

Oh, dreadful,” said Teresa. “I didn't know where to look. I have never felt the same about the Bishop since. Imagine,—he laughed. Instead of looking away and pretending not to notice, he laughed. Such bad taste, I thought. But then, of course, he is an unmarried man.”

“And what did Mrs. Tolputt do?”

“That was the worst of all. She fished it out and held it up all dripping. She thought it a great joke. She wasn't a bit ashamed.”

“It seems to me that she behaved very sensibly.”

“What dreadful things you say, taking Maud's part like that. But of course it is my fault, for talking to you about things like false curls.”

“Because I am an unmarried man, like the Bishop? Tell me more about Mrs. Tolputt. When may I meet her again?”

“Now you are laughing at me, and it is very unkind of you. Tell me something about yourself instead. Tell me what it feels like to be you. Do you enjoy being yourself?”

“I enjoy being myself when you let me come to tea with you. I don't particularly enjoy it otherwise. Why should I?”

But Teresa was discreet and would not answer. Their friendship was still at a very tentative stage, and she bottled up many of the things she wanted to say to Sebastian, because her training had taught her that one must not be familiar with young men if one wishes to keep their respect. Sebastian saw through her gentility, and knew that not until he had made love to her would she treat him with any naturalness. He was, however, in no hurry to do so, knowing that this probationary period, when every meeting held the danger of avowal, was the most precious and tremulous of all; and that once it was over, a new phase was instantly entered, which brought its own delights, but which had lost a certain freshness, as surely as noon loses the freshness of the morning. He was therefore quite content to lounge on Teresa's sofa and listen to her prattle, contrasting her with other women and thinking how deliciously ingenuous she was, both in her confidences and in her reservations, without wishing to force the pace or to bring about a crisis which must alter their relations. If he wondered sometimes about her husband, he never asked her any questions. That was a matter which she must manage for herself. He did not even know whether the doctor was aware of the frequency of his visits.

“Why do you like coming here?” she asked him once; “you who can go anywhere and meet anybody?”

He looked at her, but she was sincere; she was not trying to flirt with him. That was one of her charms for him: a double-edged phrase was unknown to her.

“Would you be surprised to hear that I prefer your company?”

“Very much surprised. I never told you, but once I saw you at the Opera. I saw you in Lady Roehampton's box.”

Sebastian got up and walked over to the window. “In Lady Roehampton's box? That night? At
Tristan?
But how did you know it was Lady Roehampton?”

“She's very well known, isn't she, by sight?”

“I suppose so. Well, what of it?”

“Well, you can't prefer my company to Lady Roehampton's.”

“My dear Mrs. Spedding, you know nothing whatever about Lady Roehampton.”

Teresa felt terribly snubbed; Sebastian had suddenly become harsh and distant. She supposed that she ought not to have mentioned his friends. Evidently he thought of her as something quite separate, and with a chill at her heart she abandoned the dream that he would one night ask her to a dinner party in Grosvenor Square. He was standing over at the window now, staring gloomily out into the street. “Oh, I'm so sorry,” she said in her childish way, going up to him; “of course I know nothing about Lady Roehampton, only she is so beautiful, isn't she? And I am sure she is very brilliant.—I just thought, how could you find anything in me when you were accustomed to people like that?”

For one instant the balance wavered as to whether Sebastian would be irritated or touched by her humility. Then he looked down at her; saw her parted lips, her anxious eyes; and smiled. It was on the tip of his tongue to say that the less she knew of Lady Roehampton the better, but a retrospective loyalty to Sylvia restrained him. “Never mind about that,” he said; “I assure you, those people would very quickly lose their glamour for you if you knew them as I do. Let us talk about something else. All my friends are as alike as so many lumps of sugar.”

Dense young man! thought Teresa; doesn't he see that I only long for an opportunity of judging for myself? Doesn't he see how I am wasting my life, and my looks, and my social talents, tucked away in the society of doctors and solicitors and their wives? Very worthy people, but I was born for something better. Only give me a chance to prove it! Teresa was driven nearly frantic by Sebastian's stupidity, yet a mixture of shame and artfulness prevented her from betraying what was always in her mind. She could not say to him frankly, “Introduce me to your friends.” No, not even on the plea of helping John could she say that. So she hovered round the subject, unaware of how clearly Sebastian saw through her, and of the delight he took in teasing her, holding out some succulent morsel to her and then snatching it away as she advanced with outstretched hands to take it.

Still, her boldness grew. Every time she saw Sebastian she asked him at least one new question, as it were inadvertently, and added the reply to her stock of knowledge. Thus she ascertained that the fashionable world did not go to Henley, as she had always imagined, and also discovered the points for which Bridge was played in the houses of the rich Jews. Sebastian thoroughly enjoyed this would-be artless questioning; he would answer her gravely, knowing well that he made her mouth water with envy and curiosity, and all the time he would be thinking that he must cease tantalising the little thing, and must give her a taste of the life she so coveted. It was a shame to keep putting off the treat he could give her, when he could see that she was dying for the favour she dared not ask.

“By the way,” he said to his mother, “who is coming to stay for Christmas?”

Lucy reeled off a list of names.

“I have invited two friends of my own.”

“Yes, darling? Who?”

“A doctor and his wife.”

“A doctor, Sebastian? Where on earth have you made friends with a doctor?”

“They are the people who picked me up when I sprained my ankle.”

“But, darling, will they go well with the party?”

“No, they won't go at all.”

“But, darling, what an extraordinary thing to do. You know how an unsuitable element can ruin a party. Couldn't you have asked them here for a weekend alone?”

“That wouldn't serve the purpose. The lady wants a glimpse into what I suspect she privately calls high life.”

“Oh, heavens, Sebastian, a vulgar little snob!”

“A snob, yes; she is eaten up with snobbishness, but she is not vulgar. She is, on the contrary, extremely genteel. And she is very pretty.”