Venus Over Lannery (19 page)

Over a fortnight had passed since his last visit to Daphne, when he ran into Juliet one Friday evening on his way home from the office.

“O, Eric,” she broke out, her face alight with sympathy, “I
was
so glad. You must have had a perfectly awful time.”

“I had, God knows,” he said with a bitter laugh. “But what were you glad about?”

“Why, that everything's all right.”

“All right?” said Eric. “Do you mean . . .?”

She stared at him. “You don't know? You mean to say Daphne hasn't told you?”

“She's told me nothing,” he said with a suddenly pulsing heart.

“Well, I must say,” said Juliet, “that's too bad. It's disgraceful. Why, we've known for at least a week. She's been like a child at a school-treat ever since.”

He stood there like a man in a trance. It seemed as if every muscle and every nerve in his body were slowly and deliciously relaxed.

“I shall give her a piece of my mind when I get back,” said Juliet.

“No,” said Eric, “no, Juliet, don't say a word.”

“But why not?”

“I'm rather curious,” said Eric grimly, “to see what, if anything, she meant to do.”

But what did it matter what she did or didn't do? He was free—suddenly, miraculously free—from the scalding anxiety and misery, restored in a moment, by a chance meeting, to health and happiness. What should he do? He couldn't go home and spend the evening alone: he must get hold of someone to talk to and laugh with. And, good Lord, it was Friday. He would wire to Aunt Emily and say he would go down to-morrow for the week-end. He crossed the street. There was a post office, he remembered, in a passage between Piccadilly and Jermyn Street: he could wire from there ... .

Elsdon, making his way towards his club through the blue London evening in time to glance through the evening papers before dinner, saw Eric coming towards him. He had known Eric since he was a small boy and had always had a fatherly affection for him, not only because he was Emily's nephew, but for his own warm and smiling temperament, and now, on this beautiful but rather melancholy evening, it was pleasant to see his cheerful young face, particularly cheerful, it appeared, at the present moment. He stopped and held out his hand. Eric hadn't seen him and was on the point of hurrying past him, and it occurred to Elsdon that the boy probably had something more exciting on foot than to stop and talk to an old buffer like himself.

But Eric, as soon as he recognised him, seemed to be delighted. “Hallo, Uncle George,” he said, taking his hand; “I didn't see you.”

“You're looking extraordinarily full of beans,” said Elsdon; “though, now that I look at you, you're a bit thinner than usual.”

“I'm very well, none the less,” said Eric. “Where are you off to, Uncle George?”

“To my club,” said Elsdon, “to have dinner with myself. And where are
you
off to, if it isn't indiscreet to ask?”

Eric laughed. “Where
am
I off to? I haven't the least idea. Nowhere in particular. I'll walk with you as far as your club.”

“I suppose you don't feel like joining the dinnerparty?”

“Don't I?” said Eric. “I should be delighted.” Elsdon's face lit up. “That's splendid. Come along, then. Now let me see,” he ruminated as they went on their way together, “we might have a bottle of the 1923 Chevalier and follow it up with a half-bottle of Sandeman 1908. What do you say to that?”

“Words fail me, Uncle George,” said Eric.

“You know,” said the old man, “I was feeling a little depressed when you came along—the weather, I suppose. We might begin with a few oysters. But no, confound it all; there isn't an ‘r' in May. We'll see if they have any caviare. I made sure, by the look of you, that you were dashing off to meet some young woman.”

Eric laughed and his face flushed. “Better still,” he said; “I've just got clear of one”; and as he said it the whole of his delightful, appalling affair with
Daphne seemed to recede into the past, resume itself, like a great disorderly room collected and composed into a convex mirror, into a piece of fiction, a vivid story of some youthful escapade.

Eric went down to Lannery by train. He didn't feel like driving: he wanted to get there as quickly as possible and without the delays and bothers involved in getting out of London by road on a Saturday. He felt like one who has recovered from a sudden and severe illness, and was content to sit idle while the train forged ahead and the two landscapes, right and left, flowed past him. He had not even provided himself with anything to read: he had no need of external interest or distraction. His mind was full enough, full of his grim experience of the last few weeks mitigated and dissolved in the comforting sense of his new security. The train plunged into a tunnel, was lost in a dark confusion of noise which grew to a deafening roar and was suddenly abolished in sunlight and peace, and it seemed to him a symbol of what he himself had been through. Life had been a simple matter before that incident of Daphne; even his experience with Joan, painful as it had been, had been simple. But, with his meeting with Daphne in the Haymarket, life had suddenly accelerated, the happiness and misery of years had been packed into
a few months, and then yesterday, as suddenly, as unexpectedly, had dropped back into the old leisurely pace. And he had come out of it completely changed. He felt himself a different person from the young man who, a few weeks ago, had driven Daphne down to Lannery. But the experience had not hurt and disillusioned him only, it had also strangely and inexplicably enriched him. Perhaps that was why he felt no impulse to avoid the memory of it: in a curious way it fascinated him. He recalled that yesterday at this time he was still a prey to that haunting anxiety. For all Daphne knew, he hadn't even now escaped from it. She was determined, apparently, to make him suffer as much and for as long as she could. Well, she couldn't wound him any more now; he was immune. The trouble that bound him to her was at an end and, besides, he no longer loved her. And yet wasn't he still the least bit vulnerable in his resentment at her desire to torment him? Yes, that wounded him and he hated her for it. He stirred abruptly in his seat and shrugged his shoulders impatiently. How absurd to bother about it: his troubles were over, he was free, he was on his way to Lannery; the country outside the carriage windows was drenched in the sunlight of early May. He drew a long breath and once again the sense of his restored happiness and security flowed over him and through him like warm sunlight.

He had long ago insisted that, when he invited himself for week-ends to Lannery, he would walk from the station unless the car happened to be meeting
other visitors, and so when he found the car waiting at the station and his aunt inside it he supposed that someone else was expected. He handed his rucksack to the chauffeur and greeted his aunt through the window; but she called to him to get in. “You're the only one,” she said. “This isn't as polite as it seems, Eric,” she explained as they drove away. “I met you because I want to have a word with you before we arrive. I didn't know if you had heard that Joan is divorcing Norman.”

“Divorcing him?” said Eric, amazed. “I didn't even know that... that...” His words died away in the hum of the engine.

“I thought it unlikely that you knew,” Mrs. Dryden went on, “and so, as she's staying down here during the next few months, I thought I'd better let you know how things stand, to save her any possible embarrassment.”

“She's here now, you mean?”

Mrs. Dryden laughed. “My dear boy, you sound positively alarmed.”

Eric muttered something about surprise, unexpectedness, and then, to cover his agitation, asked: “And are there any other visitors, Aunt Emily?”

“No,” she said. “But Cynthia's coming at fivethirty. You might drive the car down to meet her, so that Clark won't have to turn out again.”

When he left the house at half-past six on Monday morning, to catch the early train which would land him in London in time to get punctually to the office, it seemed to Eric that only a few hours had passed since his arrival. It was a delicious morning, glittering with dew and early sunshine, with a frosty sting in the shady places, and as he swung along at a brisk pace he felt serenely happy. He always enjoyed himself at Lannery, but this time there had been something more than enjoyment: he had been refreshed and healed. When his aunt had told him, on the drive from the station on Saturday, that Joan was staying there, the news, as she had remarked, had upset him. He had had enough of emotions of every kind lately: what he had hoped for at Lannery was peace and quietness and affection, and he had shrunk from the prospect of meeting Joan. But, once the meeting was over, all had gone well. After all, everything was different now. His reasons for avoiding her had vanished: it was like meeting again in another life, or as if the last year or two had fallen out and they had dropped back
to the early days of their friendship. Their meeting was made the easier by his reluctance to involve himself in any new emotions and by his realisation that she must be treated with the greatest forbearance and sympathy. And how naturally they had recaptured their old friendship! His heart was still warm with the sense of her voice and presence. He had been glad that they had not had an opportunity of talking alone: the presence of the others had acted as a solvent to their reunion. How delightful to think that whenever he came to Lannery during the coming summer and autumn he would find her there.

On his arrival in London he went straight to his office and it was not until the day's work was over that he returned to his rooms. Among the letters waiting for him an envelope in Daphne's writing caught his eye. He picked it out and threw the rest on the table. His week-end at Lannery and the company of Joan had removed his mind so far from Daphne that she seemed to have dropped far behind into the past, and his first impulse now was to let her stay there and burn her letter unopened. He stood examining the envelope doubtfully; then, with a feeling that was half curiosity and half apprehension, he slowly opened it, unfolded it and began to read.

“DEAR ERIC,—You seem rather to have disappeared lately and I'm not sure if you will care to hear that everything in the garden is lovely. Still, whether you care or not, I suppose I'd better OL
let you know that all the bother and worry is ended. If only you had let me alone, it would never have happened. But you're such a persistent blighter, aren't you?—so wrapped up in your own little simple self that you don't stop to think of others. Well, you can't say I didn't warn you. I told you at the beginning that everything would be sure to go wrong, and now you've had your lesson. I
have
been rather beastly to you, I know, during the last few weeks, but, after all, you let me in for a pretty ghastly time and you can hardly have expected me to feel very friendly. But now it's all over and forgiven. Let us forget the whole miserable business and be friends again, as we were before that wretched visit to Lannery and all that followed it. Ring up and let me know when we can meet.”

He read it over again, pondering each sentence with a cold and horrified amazement. The incongruity of those hard, cheap, bright little phrases with what they had been through filled him with a profound disgust. “That wretched visit to Lannery and all that followed it” : did she really believe that? Of course she didn't. She was lying to him and, worse still, to herself. During those few rapturous days she had been as ecstatically happy as he: she had said so over and over again and, whether she had said it or not, it had been undeniable. Did she really believe that she could alter the past, transform accomplished facts to fit in with her present
mood? And then that ghastly little Cockney phrase, “Everything in the garden is lovely” : how horribly that cheapened their release from their dreadful dilemma. It was as if someone had switched on a tinkling little mechanical musical-box at a funeral. And did she really believe that he had worried her into yielding to him? No! Again she was lying. She knew perfectly well, she
must
know, that when she had realised that he was determined to give up urging her she had called him a turncoat and enticed him back. In everything from beginning to end they had been equally responsible, and it seemed to him contemptible that she should refuse to acknowledge her share. “You've had your lesson,” she wrote. He had, indeed! A very much grimmer lesson than she realised.

He went to his desk. He was damned if he was going to let her run away with the idea that he accepted a word of her fantastic travesty; and for the next hour he worked away at his reply, cancelling, rewriting, his hand trembling with the urgency of his desire to set their whole story clearly and impartially before her. When it was finished at last, he copied it out. Thank God, that was done. He closed his desk, pushed back his chair and got up. He lit a cigarette and stood a long time near the window, with his hands in his pockets, watching the movement in the street below. He gave a deep, satisfied sigh. Something had been accomplished: he had loosed off a load of bitter resentment and he felt soothed and appeased. A clock struck. It was
half-past seven—time to have dinner. He threw away his cigarette and went out.

Later in the evening he opened his desk, took out the letter he had written and, dropping into an armchair, read it through. Yes, it was a thorough job: it said everything that had to be said. How satisfying, and yet what a waste of time! With a smile he crumpled it up and threw it into the fire. It had answered its purpose. Then he returned to his desk and wrote a short note.

“DEAR DAPHNE,—What a blessing that all the trouble is ended. As a matter of fact, by the merest chance I heard of it some days ago and was surprised that you hadn't written to let me know. Yes, we'll forget everything; but I won't come round. I feel, and I expect you do really, that we shall need a little time to settle down.”