Venus Over Lannery (3 page)

The Colonel barked a laugh. “The white man's burden, my dear Emily; and doubly important among all these young savages! I may even be driven to a white tie.”

Mrs. Dryden turned to Elsdon with a gesture of mock admiration. “There's nothing Bob won't do for the Old Country. Come and walk with me as far as the house, George.”

They moved away together, leaving the Buxteds to watch the tennis. At the front door they separated, Emily Dryden to retreat to her study—she would have scorned to call her workroom a boudoir—and Elsdon to enjoy the respite of a solitary stroll in the garden. He paused at the bottom of the steps, considering which' direction to take, but before he had made up his mind Mrs. Dryden's car came round the corner of the house and stopped beside him. A short, thick-set man, bare-headed and dressed in black, got out, and Elsdon realised from the parson's hat he carried in his hand that he must be the expected curate. The chauffeur carried his suit-case up the steps, but the curate, instead of following, turned to Elsdon. “How do you do? Is Mrs. Dryden in the garden?”

“She has just this moment gone in,” explained Elsdon, “to write letters.”

“Then I won't disturb her,” said the curate. Elsdon found himself pleasantly impressed by the easy friendliness of his manner and also by his face. What particularly commended his face to Elsdon at that moment was its total lack of good looks. He positively thanked God for the fellow's ugliness. “I was just going for a stroll in the garden,” he said. “Would you care to join me?”

“Yes, I should like to,” said the curate, and
Elsdon was soothed and reassured by that unadorned affirmative. “My name is Francis Todd,” he added, as they took the path that skirted the long flowerborder.

Elsdon replied with his own name. “I've been trying to learn new names and fasten them on to new faces all afternoon,” he explained.

Todd laughed. “I'm fairly good at that. You see, it's part of my job: I come from a crowded parish in South London.”

“In that case”—Elsdon made a gesture enveloping the whole bewildering party—“this will be mere child's play to you.”

“Absolutely,” said Todd; “especially as I know some of them already, I believe.”

“It will even be a rest for you, no doubt. It's strange that what is one man's rest should be quite a formidable undertaking for another. Mind you, it's not that I'm a misanthrope, but I'm unaccustomed to young people in the mass and I find it quite a problem to adapt myself.”

“O, there I'm like you,” said Todd. “In fact, I'm incapable of adapting myself, and if I were to succeed I should be lost. But why should one try?”

“Well, merely so as to get in touch,” said Elsdon. Todd was silent for a moment. “I don't think you can get in touch with others,” he said at last, “by losing touch with yourself. After all, we're in touch already, aren't we; we all belong to the same civilisation.”

“You don't feel there's any difference, for instance, between the young people here and your people in South London?”

Todd shook his head. “No real difference. There are superficial differences, of course, such as a Cockney accent.”

“And some difference in intelligence, surely?” “Not in real intelligence. There's a difference in education and consequently a difference in the materials of intelligence, but not in the intelligence itself. At least,” he added, “I don't notice any.”

They had reached a garden-seat at a point where three paths met, and sat down by common consent. “Well, at least,” said Elsdon with a laugh, “I don't feel I have to do any adapting in talking to you. Tell me, how long have you been in your South London parish?”

“Six years,” said Todd.

“Then isn't it possible, if you'll pardon the suggestion, that your—what shall I say?—your finer perceptions have, in self-defence, become blunted?”

“It depends on what you mean by finer perceptions. What I should call my finer perceptions have been immensely sharpened. But I've ceased to shudder at stinks and dirt, if that's what you mean.”

“Ah,” said Elsdon, “then you have, after all, done some adapting.”

“O, lots of it, to circumstances. But that's simply a matter of the senses, isn't it?”

“And we were talking of human relations. Yes,” said Elsdon, “I quite see your distinction. At the
same time, unless one has extraordinarily wide sympathies, I don't see how, without adapting, one is to get in touch with all sorts and conditions.”

“Perhaps you don't want to,” said Todd. Elsdon laughed. “No, I rather believe that's true.”

“Then don't. To adapt oneself minute by minute and person by person falsifies all human relations. The only hope of achieving any relation is to be completely one's self.”

“Ah,” said Elsdon, “isn't that a counsel of perfection? I'm not sure I know what my self is. For each friend I'm aware that I have a slightly different self, a self tuned-in, as it were, to the particular friend. I don't do it deliberately, nor, I think, am I guilty of hypocrisy to any of them. Even when I'm alone my self varies with my moods. Evidently you're more stable than I am.”

“I suspect it's simply that I'm less aware of my self. I lead a very busy life: I don't get time for introspection.”

Elsdon sighed. “You speak as if introspection were an idle luxury. On the contrary, life sometimes forces it on you as a punishment, makes it a condition of your regaining your balance.”

Todd noticed the undertone of bitterness in his companion's voice. “Don't imagine,” he said, “that I was boasting of my freedom from introspection. I only stated it as a fact, a condition of my present life.”

Todd, Elsdon found, was looking at him with quick
sympathy, and it seemed to him that he had never before seen a face, even the most beautiful, with an expression so honest and so warmly human. By comparison, Norman's was a mere paper-lantern with no candle in it, Roy's a mere poster advertising charm. Yes, he thought to himself again, thank God for an ugliness like this, with so much more real beauty than mere good looks. They resumed their walk and their talk and at last joined the others at the tennis-court.

At the dinner-table people sorted themselves as they pleased, and Elsdon, yielding to cowardice, secured a place between Emily and Ida. Whatever braveries 'he might attempt at other times, mealtime, he felt, should be a time of relaxation and enjoyment. The disposition of some of the other guests he found to be instructive. It was hardly necessary to note that the doctor girl, Edna, sat faithfully beside her engineer; but the position and behaviour of the couple next to Edna provided food for speculation. Roy and Daphne, in fact, were sitting together. Was it by mutual consent, or by the management of one of the two? Or was it, rather, by pure accident? It almost seemed like it, for neither, as far as Elsdon could observe, paid the smallest attention to the other. Roy, having laid aside for a while the admired young actor, was absorbed in what appeared to be a serious discussion with Edna. Elsdon tried in vain to discover whether Daphne was conscious of this and whether the animated monologue she was directing at the somewhat inattentive Eric across the table was merely CL
intended to show her indifference to it. Eric had contrived to sit next Joan, but Norman had promptly worked himself into the chair on the other side of her and was now monopolising her attention. From time to time Eric glanced shyly at her, but her shoulder was still turned to him. He couldn't see her face, couldn't see, as Elsdon saw, her heightened colour, her dark eyes shining through the long black lashes, her small teeth flash suddenly as she listened fascinated to Norman's lively chatter. For the first time, Elsdon noticed how pretty she was. Her eyes had the fullness and unself-consciousness of a young animal's. He recalled a young water-rat he had watched years ago, as it sat under the bank of a stream, between water and tree-roots—the soft lustre of its large eyes, every hair of the lashes that fringed them separately visible, every hair of its fluffy coat perfectly in place. Joan, it seemed to him, had reached just that moment of youthful perfection, the very bloom of innocence, so different from the minx Daphne's carefully assumed childishness which Emily had so quickly seen through, so different too from the mature and (as he always felt) too serene handsomeness of Cynthia, and from the earnest concentration of the spectacled Edna. He hoped she wasn't being completely taken in by Norman's facile charm. She had much better turn away and occupy herself with Eric: Eric, he felt, was worth ten of Norman. Perhaps she actually wanted to, but Norman's assiduous chatter didn't give her a chance.

When dinner was over they moved out of the
dining-room and the broken voices of their talk rippled away with them like water over pebbles, till the dining-room was slowly emptied of sound and the hall received it. There it was thinned, rarefied by the height and space, like water turned to mist, drifting up the wide well of the staircase and losing itself in the passages above. Then, condensing again, it flowed into the drawing-room and settled there in a slowly whirling pool. And then a trickle of musical notes, suddenly clear and precise, broke across the vague rumour of talk, and the talk died out. Somebody had asked Cynthia to play the piano. She sat absent-mindedly stringing a few running chords, trying to think of something to play. Then she began the prelude to Strauss's “Morgen,” and at once Elsdon dropped back thirty years, remembering with a pang how her mother used to sing it. Marvellous her singing had been. He recalled the wonderful opening phrase—Cynthia had reached it now—as her voice came out above the slow swing of the accompaniment, and the calm intensity with which she held from beginning to end the mood of the song. He stirred in his chair. It was too much, to be plunged into those memories among this crowd of young people. He leaned towards Emily. “Sing it, Emily,” he whispered.

Her eyes twinkled. “Sing it, my dear, at my time of life? You might as well ask a crow.”

He turned away and glanced at the others. They sat about, in their various attitudes, listening or pretending to listen. Roy with his head slightly inclined
gave the performance his polite attention, the tribute of one artist to another. Daphne appeared absorbed. So she was; but she was absorbed in trying to decide what she herself should play, if invited. She was listening, too, to discover whether Cynthia, as she had always uncomfortably suspected, played better than she did. If she did—and it really sounded as if she did—she herself would refuse to play. Joan was enjoying the music because she loved and admired Cynthia. “How clever she is,” she thought. “Everything she does, she does well”; and the music seemed to her beautiful because Cynthia was playing it. Roger listened with his brows slightly contracted over the rims of his spectacles, but Edna's eyes, magnified a little by her lenses, showed the wide, unfocused gaze of inward absorption. She loved music, and this song, which she had not heard before, seemed to her full of rich emotion. She glanced at Roger, stirred by a sudden desire to share it with him, but she could not catch his eye. Ever since they had first met he had been trying to improve her musical taste and she had done her best to dislike Chopin, Schumann, Wagner, Tchaikovski and Scriabine, and to prefer Bach, Haydn, Mozart and that incomprehensible symphony by Sibelius which they had twice heard together. But surely he would approve of music as satisfying and deeply moving as this that Cynthia was playing.

Coffee came in as Cynthia reached the end of the song, and, when they had finished their coffee, Eric and Joan, who had been talking together near the
tall French window that stood wide open to the evening, slipped out quietly, as Elsdon noted with pleasure, into the garden. Norman, he was glad to see, was occupied with Ida Buxted and had not noticed them go.

Edna saw that Roger was coming towards her. Cynthia spoke to him as he passed her: “I must apologise for playing Strauss in your hearing, Roger.”

He laughed. “Well, you must admit,” he said, and Elsdon hated him as he said it, “that it's pretty saccharine. I had to take my coffee without sugar.”

Edna was still glowing under the spell of the music, and his words roused a deep antagonism in her. At that moment he caught her eye. “Come for a stroll in the garden, Edna,” he said.

For the first time she disobeyed him. “I can't,” she said, leaving him before he could reply. “I'm going with Cynthia,” and she threaded her way to where Cynthia stood, and took her by the arm. “It's the most lovely thing I ever heard,” she said.

As they went together towards the window, Roy, who had caught Daphne's eyes fixed on him, joined them and the three went out together. Daphne turned away and there was a flash of tears in her eyes. Perhaps Todd had seen it, for he went over to her and, after a moment of hesitation, she went out with him. The derelict Roger, looking grim and preoccupied, followed them, and Norman, after a quick, surprised glance round the room, followed Roger. The old people found themselves alone in the large twilighted room.

It was Elsdon who broke the silence. “One gets the impression that they're always seeking for something.”

“So they are,” said Emily. “They're seeking for love, life, experience, or whatever name you like to call it by. It's an instinct of youth.”

“A reflex action perhaps,” said Elsdon, “or what the scientists call a tropism. They're like those young spiders that at a certain moment of their lives are automatically compelled to climb to the extreme tip of the highest stalks and leaves. Do you think they really know what they want?”

“O, they know what they want,” said Ida Buxted, “but very few of them know how or where to find it. That's the tragedy.”

From an almost invisible chair the Colonel's voice croaked sharply above their murmur. “Blind-man'sbuff!” he said.