Venus Over Lannery (17 page)

She turned away impatiently. “My good Eric, why will you go on at it? I've told you I won't marry you and I've told you I won't have the child.
Get that into your head. I'd rather ... I'd rather kill myself.”

They had reached a dead end: there was nothing more to say. Daphne sat huddled in her chair: Eric, with his hands in his pockets, stood with his back to the room staring miserably through the uncurtained window, and silence flowed round them, filled the room, drowned them so deep that it seemed they would never break free of it. In the dark square below, the street-lamps flickered through screens of plane-boughs, swayed before them on the evening breeze. An illuminated dial on a building that rose above the roofs of the square showed twenty-past eight. He turned. “You must eat something,” he said. Daphne made no reply and he added: “I believe you'd rather I went away, wouldn't you?”

Daphne got wearily out of her chair and went towards the door. “I got some cold things in for supper; you'd better stay and have something,” she said indifferently, and the mere cessation of hostility in her seemed to Eric a sort of kindness. He followed her out of the room and went to the dining-room to draw a bottle of burgundy. A few weeks ago he had had a dozen sent to the flat for festive occasions, and it seemed to him now that a glass of it might help to thaw this frost that had so suddenly frozen all kindness between them. He opened the drawer in the sideboard to get the corkscrew, but he couldn't find it, and he stood staring into the open drawer, overcome suddenly by their disaster and too unhappy to exert himself to search.

At that moment Daphne came in with a tray. “What are you doing?” she asked sharply.

“I was going to open some burgundy,” he said. “I was looking for . . .”

She put down the tray and turned a horrible smile on him. “I see,” she said. “To celebrate the occasion, I suppose. Well, open it for yourself, if you want it.”

“But you'll have a little, won't you?” he said.

“No, thanks!” She went over to where he stood and pushed him aside. Under the drawer there was a small cupboard: she opened it and brought out a half-empty bottle of gin. “This is the way I celebrate the occasion,” she said, uncorking it. She filled a claret-glass and drank it off.

Eric began to take the plates off the tray and set them on the table. When he had finished they sat down. Daphne served the food, handed him his plate, and then helped herself and began to eat. But Eric couldn't eat. This hideous parody of all their delightful meals together numbed him into a torpor of mind and body. What a fool he had been to stay. He had hoped that her mood would change—that, if he stayed, they might be able to comfort one another and then talk practically and reasonably about what was to be done. But now, what was the good of his sitting there? It wasn't doing Daphne any good and it was excruciating for him. He pushed back his chair and stood up. “I think I'll go,” he said.

At the door he turned. “I'll do my best to ... to find out . . .”

“You needn't trouble,” said Daphne. “I'll look after myself.”

He stood there, helpless and tongue-tied. “I don't know what you want or what you don't want,” he burst out in desperation. Then, steadying himself with one hand on the door-post, he turned and went out. As he was putting on his coat in the hall he heard her step behind him and then felt her take hold of his coat to help him on.

“Eric,” she said remorsefully, “I don't
want
to make you miserable.”

He turned, but her eyes, though no longer hostile, checked him. He unlatched the front door. “I'll come to-morrow after work,” he said.

That change in her had brought him an unhoped–for consolation, but before he reached the bottom of the stairs his relief had turned to scepticism. Had she really relented, or was it that she didn't want to lose her hold on him? In the bus, on his journey home, his mind groped for explanations, for the central impulse which prompted her behaviour. He judged her, as he judged everybody, only by what he knew of his own warm and simple nature. He did not know that there were people who acted from a mass of warring impulses, and the more he searched, the more he was baffled. He was bewildered by the monstrous injustice of her attack on him. She knew, she must know, as well as he did that he was not to blame, that never from first to last had he allowed
his desires to run ahead of his care for her. Nor could he see any reason, in what had happened, for the horrible change in her feelings towards him. Surely, in whatever light she regarded it, it ought to have drawn them closer together. She had shown beyond doubt that she loved him: she had even gone so far as to admit it; and then, all in a moment, she had changed from love to hatred. His mind struggled like a fly in a spider's web, becoming more entangled the more it struggled.

The lump of coal which he had put on his fire before he went out was not yet half burnt. It was five minutes past nine. He had been away, not for two and a half months, but for two and a half hours. In a moment the care-free, enchanting castle in the air which he and Daphne had made for themselves had crashed to earth, leaving them face to face with the iron reality. But he had not flinched before the reality: after the first shock he had found himself enthralled rather than overwhelmed by it. At that unforeseen result of their love, the plain fact that seemed to him not merely physical but full of an august and tender mystery, he had felt that life had caught Daphne and him in a stern but benevolent grasp. In exchange for their irresponsible, butterfly existence which had collapsed with such appalling suddenness, they had been offered a new life, deeper and more real. He was glad to think that he had been able to accept it willingly and to offer it honestly to Daphne. It was the first crucial test that life had imposed on him and he was glad he had come
through it decently. But Daphne had rejected it with horror, and they had been plunged into a second ruin in which he had found only hatred and inexplicable chaos. He dropped into the armchair near the fire. The current of his life, which had so recently broken down its impediments and swept forward in full flow, had been suddenly and ruthlessly wrenched out of its course. His deepest feelings had been lacerated and he was still quivering with the pain of it. It was as if a running engine had suddenly been thrown into reverse. And that was not all. He was tormented by his growing anxiety for Daphne. What could he do? She wouldn't let him do anything but that one thing against which his nature rebelled—find out some doctor who would consent to help her. The idea not only horrified him; it frightened him. The thing was illegal, he knew, and often dangerous. Heaven only knew what might not happen to her. And yet if he refused to be concerned in it, he would be refusing to help her in the one way in which she had asked for his help. But how was he to set about finding out? He knew of no way except to ask a friend of his who was a doctor. He might tell him where to go, though he thought it very unlikely that he would. More probably he would warn him to have nothing to do with it. Well, anyhow, there was no one else to whom he could turn. He had better ring him up and ask when he could see him; and for the next ten minutes he lay in his chair, trying half-heartedly to overcome the heavy inertia which held him down. It was terrible to feel it his
duty to do what everything else in him revolted against; and when at last he had forced himself to ring the doctor up, and the reply came that he was out of Town and would not be back for a fortnight, he went back miserably to his chair and lay there till bedtime.

Next day he worked hard at the office, taking only half an hour off for lunch. His head was extraordinarily clear: his mind fastened greedily on office work as an antidote to his troubles. Work kept them at bay: they were present to him only as a physical sensation, a cold white smart inside him. He would have liked to go—on working all day and all night in the secure limbo of the office. He had an absurd, irrational feeling that by working, working at column after column of figures, he would exorcise the evil spirit that stood waiting for him outside the office door. He dreaded the visit to Daphne in the evening. What was the good of going to see her? And yet how could he not go?

And when the evening came he went. He rang, and, after an interval in which he seemed to feel all her unwillingness, Daphne opened the door.

“O, it's you,” she said in a cold, matter-of-fact voice, neither friendly nor hostile. She stood aside to let him in and then shut the door.

“How are you, Daphne?” he asked, and the question and the tone of his voice sounded to him feeble and silly.

She shrugged her shoulders. “Quite well, worse luck!”

“I rang up a friend of mine last night,” he said, “a doctor, but he was away till Saturday.”

“So you've come round to my way of thinking, Eric?” she said.

He shook his head. “No! But there's nothing else you'll allow me to do. As soon as I've seen him I'll let you know.”

They stood in the hall, facing each other like strangers. “Right! Thank you!” she said.

She did not seem to expect him to stay and he turned towards the door. “Perhaps I'd better go, then.”

She made no reply, but went past him and opened the door. His eyes met hers, searching, begging for some response, but hers were cold and empty.

“Will you tell me,” he asked, “what I can do about hearing how you are? It seems no use my coming here, does it?”

“That's for you to choose, Eric,” she replied indifferently.

“No,” he said; “it's for you to choose. If I could be of any help or comfort to you, you know I'd be only too glad. But I can't, it seems; so where's the use of my coming?”

“If you want to come, come,” she said; “but don't imagine I'm going to ask you to come if you don't want to.”

“How can I say if I want to come? It depends entirely on whether my coming means anything to you.”

“I see,” she said coldly. “You have no feelings yourself either way.”

“My dear Daphne,” he exclaimed, exasperated almost to tears, “need you make it any worse for me than it is already? Need you deliberately misunderstand every damned word I say? You know perfectly well that it's horribly painful for me to come here and be treated worse than a complete stranger, whatever you may feel about it.”

It seemed for a moment that she was going to relent. She made a vague movement with one hand; but next moment she had checked herself and turned away without a word, and Eric went out.

“Good night, Daphne!”

“Good night, Eric!”

As he rounded the bend of the stairs he saw her still standing there, holding the door open, but when he waved his hand she made no sign.

Edna was pacing the platform of Sevenoaks station, waiting for her train back to London, when she felt a touch on her arm. It was Roy—Roy in a black sombrero and a coat with a fur collar, more handsome, more resplendent than ever. He stood before her, smiling and holding out his hand.

“This is an unexpected pleasure, Edna,” he said. “I never see any of you people nowadays. You don't live here, do you?”

“No,” said Edna, “I came down an hour or two ago to see a case.”

“And you're going back to Town! May I travel with you?”

“But of course!” she said. “I shall be delighted.” “Forgive my asking,” he said, “but are you travelling first or third?”

“First?” she said. “Do you take me for a Harley Street specialist?”

“Then I'll just ... er . . .” He left her hurriedly and returned, as the train came in, with a ticket in his hand. “You mustn't mind,” he said, as he opened the door of a first-class carriage and stood
for her to get in. “You see,” he explained as they took their seats, “I've got to travel first nowadays.”

“A matter of prestige?” Edna asked with an amused smile.

“No!” he said. “A matter of peace and quietness! If I go third nowadays people begin to nudge one another and stare as if I were a fourteenthcentury cathedral.”

“And the first-class people don't?”

He waved his hand. “As you see, there aren't any. But tell me, how's Roger; how are Mrs. Dryden and Cynthia and Joan and Norman? I daren't go near any of them nowadays for fear of meeting Daphne.”

“Is it as bad as all that?” said Edna.

“It? You mean Daphne?”

“Well, your quarrel with Daphne?”

“O, if I was sure the quarrel would last, I wouldn't mind. It's a reconciliation that I'm frightened of. But seriously, Edna, you've no idea what a dance Daphne has led me.”

Edna laughed. “It must be dreadful, Roy, to be so mercilessly pursued, what with Daphne and all the third-class passengers; but isn't it just a little bit flattering?”

“Not a bit,” he said with grim emphasis. Then, after a pause, he added: “Tell me, have you ever come to see me in any of my successful parts?”

Edna shook her head. “To be truthful, I haven't, Roy.”

“Of course you haven't,” he said; “because you
know that the shows I'm playing in are perfect rot. I know that as well as you do. Don't imagine, please, that I have any illusions about my success. But it's very nice, I can assure you, Edna, to have a comfortable income instead of struggling along in absolute squalor. If I have no illusions about my success, I have no illusions about squalor either. If I had nobly insisted on sticking to first-rate stuff, I should have stuck to the squalor as well: I wouldn't have been good enough to work my way out of it. One's got to be practical in such matters; don't you agree?”

“Absolutely, Roy! I'm all for being practical. And you're being practical about Daphne as well?”

“I am indeed; and not merely selfishly so. We're terribly bad for each other. You don't go in for psycho-analysis, do you?”

“No. Why do you ask?”