Venus Over Lannery (4 page)

The door opened softly and a maid came in with a lamp, and as she moved forward, a soft orangecoloured bloom crept over the walls and ceiling and bright streaks slid along the edges of picture-frames and polished tables—a slowly growing luminous disturbance that settled into tranquillity as she placed the lamp on the piano. The old people blinked, and looked at each other as if surprised to find that they were anything more than voices, and Elsdon, glancing at the windows, saw that they had suddenly become dark. Garden and room which a moment ago had been continuous were now sharply separated. The young people, whose voices and movements just now had filled the room, whose very
thoughts and emotions had been visibly and audibly fermenting there, were suddenly swallowed into an outer darkness, leaving the elders idle, serene and a little lonely in the security of their four soft-lighted walls. For a moment Elsdon felt isolated and imprisoned: for a moment—no more—he wished he was searching, groping, however blindly and ineffectually, in the darkness out of doors; that there were still hopes and cravings and possibilities ahead of him, not—good heavens, no—not a repetition of the old ones, but others, brighter, keener and more successful. But next moment that feeble echo of youth had died out, for his body, he was aware, was tired; it was grateful for the comfortable chair in which it reclined; and his mind, too, admitted to a sense of relief that all the questing and craving was over. No, it was more comfortable to sit and enjoy the mild distractions of a spectator in this peaceful, selfcontained room where all he sought was to be found. He recalled that passage at the beginning of the
Republic
which tells of how someone asked the aged poet Sophocles: “How does love suit with age, Sophocles? Are you still capable of it?” and of how Sophocles replied: “Hush! I am glad to say that I have escaped from it, and I feel as if I had escaped from an insane and savage master.” And there was that far greater passage on love which Plato in the
Symposium
puts into the mouth of the wise woman Diotima. Emily, he knew, had Jowett's translation of Plato: he would take the first volume from the shelves over there and read it in bed.

When the others rose to go to bed he lingered behind in the empty drawing-room, found the three puce-coloured volumes in their usual place and, pulling out the first, took it over to the piano where the lamp stood to make sure that it was the one that contained the
Symposium.
But his search was slow: the earlier dialogues in the book waylaid him—the
Apology
and the
Phado
—and he stood, slim, dry, his elbows on the piano, his head between his hands, his feet crossed, reading in the mellow lamplight which turned the silver of his hair to pale gold. Nothing stirred in the room except when he dropped his right hand to the book to turn a page with a soft flick.

He had been browsing for a long time when a vague movement at the window brought him suddenly to himself. Someone was there. It was Daphne. She was staring into the room and Elsdon was shocked by the expression on her face. Its customary mask of childlike innocence was gone and in its place was a look half stealthy, half desperate. The lamp with its large shade stood between him and her, it was obvious she did not see him, and he had the uncomfortable feeling that he ought not to be there, that if she knew he was there she would be aghast at that betrayal of herself. He lowered his eyes to his book, so that if she saw him she might believe that he had not seen her. But she did not come into the room and when he ventured to raise his eyes again the dark oblong of the open window was a blank once more. He returned to his book, but
though he still turned the pages his mind was occupied for some minutes with what he had seen. Then, reaching the
Symposium
at last, he was lost again in his reading.

He had not yet found the great passage on love when another sound at the window disturbed him. It was Norman this time who was inspecting the room, but, beyond the mere fact that he was inspecting, Norman offered no unguarded self-revelation. His search was conducted under cover of his usual urbanity, and when, next moment, he stepped into the room and noticed Elsdon, it was Elsdon who appeared to feel the guiltier of the two.

“Hallo, were you looking for someone?” Elsdon asked.

Norman calmly took a silver cigarette-case from his breast-pocket. “Merely some matches,” he said, going to a table where matches were to be found, and he had not lit his cigarette before voices and footsteps were heard outside the window. It was Roger, once more obediently followed by Edna, who came in first, and then came several others, Daphne among them, demure and childlike as usual. They were all, it seemed, coming back to the house. Elsdon took up his Plato and, muttering a vague and general good night, retreated to the shelter of his own room.

Elsdonsat in the Library of his club, toasting his feet at a blazing fire. It was a quarter to one: at one o'clock Bob Buxted was lunching with him. They had not met since their visit to Lannery in the summer, nor had Elsdon, who had been abroad, seen Emily since then. It was snug in the library, but outside the tall windows a cold rain that seemed to fall from a great height was driving diagonally down Pall Mall. Colour had vanished from the world: the opposite houses rose gaunt and grey, mere ghosts of houses, behind the slanting lines of the rain: the pavements shone like flint. What a contrast, thought Elsdon, to the warm, open, colourful life at Lannery last July. He recalled the crowd of young people and they seemed to him now like butterflies, ephemeral creatures that exist only in the summertime. Was it possible that they crept about now in coats and hats and cowered under umbrellas like himself and Bob Buxted and all the other winterstricken folk that hurried down the dark London streets? Cynthia and the curate Todd were the only two that seemed to him independent of the seasons.

The rest must surely have tucked themselves away to hibernate among the disused nets, rackets and deck-chairs, and all the other paraphernalia of summer, in some dark shed. Possibly Bob Buxted would have some information about them, since he and Ida—so he had learned over the telephone yesterday—had recently spent a week-end with Emily.

The Colonel arrived, of course, on the very stroke of one. After a preliminary sherry they made their way to the dining-room, and there, when they had selected and ordered their luncheon, Elsdon put his question.

“Hibernating?” said the Colonel. “Far from it. They've been up to all sorts of tomfoolery. The two young scientific folk, Roger Pennant and his girl, have gone and got married. Well, there's nothing very dramatic about that, I suppose. The drama comes in, very appropriately, with the actor and his young woman. He has gone with some show or other to America. Apparently he was regarding it as an opportunity to give that girl Daphne the slip. It seems he was having altogether too much of Daphne, and I must say I sympathise with him. Something rather meretricious, to my mind, about Daphne! So he kept the thing quiet. For the last fortnight, according to Cynthia, he was all winks and whispers, imploring all his friends to keep their mouths shut. And it seemed to work. Whenever they were seen together Daphne wore that look of babelike innocence which she cultivates so successfully, while Roy
displayed the boisterous and hearty candour of the melodramatic crook. Cynthia says that she felt very unhappy about Daphne, was all conscience-stricken at being a party to the deception, wondered if she oughtn't to do something about it. However, in the end she didn't: she decided it would only make matters worse. The rest of the story she gathered from Norman.

“It was Norman's view that actors going abroad like to be seen off by a bevy of friends and admirers; so he betook himself to Waterloo, carrying with him—trust Norman to do the thing gracefully—a box of a hundred Turkish cigarettes as a parting gift. Well, he had just spotted Roy leaning out of a first-class window, in a magnificent fur-collared coat—no doubt the young devil would take a third-class seat after the train had started—had just reached him, been hailed and greeted and introduced to a singularly fine young woman—the leading lady, it seems—when, glancing for a moment down the platform, he saw approaching him, hardly ten yards away, Daphne rigged out in Wedgwood blue and followed by a porter and a bag and a rug. She gave them both a little wave of recognition—a miracle, according to Norman, of demure self-possession. Norman, so he told Cynthia, was far too embarrassed to observe the effect on Roy, for the fact that he was there, seeing Roy off, revealed him at once as an accomplice. At all costs the situation—
his
situation—must be saved, and with sudden presence of mind he darted forward.' Ah, here she is, here she is, just in
time,' he said. 'I was waiting, my dear Daphne, to wish you
bon voyage.'
He handed her the box of cigarettes. 'A small parting gift,' he said. 'I knew you liked Turks.' And with that he bolted down the platform. At a safe distance he glanced back. Daphne was shaking hands with the leading lady while the porter lifted her things into the carriage.”

The Colonel gave his grim laugh. “Quite a charming little unrehearsed drama, don't you think? As for the other young folk, I've nothing to report. You heard, of course, of Joan's engagement?”

“No!” said Elsdon. “To Eric, of course.”

“On the contrary,” said the Colonel, “to Norman.”

Daphne Lay on the bed in her cabin staring at the grey moon-shot circle of sky framed by the brass rim of the porthole. Its cold, grey emptiness seemed to her the mere reflection of her mood. She felt emptied of everything but disillusionment, a numbed pain that possessed her like a narcotic. What was it that always forced her to cling to Roy even though she hated him? He had become a sort of drug that she couldn't shake off, a drug that she had tried, simply as an adventurous joke, two years ago. It was really Juliet who had started her off. She and Juliet shared a flat: Juliet was working at the Slade while she herself did dress-designing and dress-making, and they shared that funny little attic flat which they had fitted up so cheaply and so amusingly. It had been great fun at first, until Juliet had got hold of Bill and that had spoilt everything. It was just like Juliet to make use of her and then suddenly leave her in the lurch. Not that she disliked Bill: on the contrary, he was a perfect pet. She had been delighted when he had turned up at the flat from time to time with a bottle of wine,
and she and Juliet had set about preparing a perfectly marvellous supper out of nothing at all, dashing out to get half a dozen cutlets and a bunch of watercress or some totally unforeseen luxury, as on that occasion when she had run out secretly with an empty medicine-bottle, darted into a pub and got three glasses of sherry in it, bought three spongecakes and some cream and then turned out the most amazing trifle, to the astonishment of the other two. Yes, it had been lovely at first. Then Bill had begun carrying Juliet off to theatres and concerts, even snatching her away for a week-end, leaving Daphne alone in the flat with no one to amuse her. That had wounded her deeply. She had seen then, what she ought to have seen at first, that she was nothing to them.

It was on one of those Saturdays, when she had just finished a lonely tea and simply couldn't face the thought of a lonely evening, that she had decided to go to a theatre.
Hamlet
was on at the Cupola and she had gone into the pit. At first she had been too fed up to pay much attention to the play: she had been turning over and over in her mind what she should say to Juliet on Monday. Not that she was going to complain: on the contrary, she was going to tell Juliet what a perfectly marvellous time she had had, just to show her how independent she was of her and Bill. And then a man's voice on the stage had caught her attention, a wonderful voice, so alive, so young, so much more real than the usual stage voices. Her thoughts of what she was going to
say to Juliet vanished: the stage came into focus. Yes, it was a young man, a beautiful, tall, dark-haired creature. He was speaking to the King. “My thoughts and wishes bend again toward France, and bow them to your gracious leave and pardon.” It was Laertes, of course, and from that moment her attention was fixed on Laertes. It was enough for her that he was on the stage: when he went off she was bored and lonely and impatient till he came on again. All the middle of the play was a dreary waste: he would not come on again, she remembered, until Polonius had been killed, and when at last the moment came her heart began to beat so fast that she could hardly breathe. Yes, there he came, bursting in and demanding his dead father from the King. Once more she was happy, enthralled. There was a boyish awkwardness about his self-assurance that was simply bewitching. The whole stage seemed to centre in him whenever he spoke.

Daphne, lying on her bed, smiled bitterly. Actually, she felt sure now, he had been quite bad: he had never been any real good as an actor. He was cheap and crude: he played to the audience all the time. If it hadn't been for Juliet and Bill she would have thought nothing of him. But, the moment she told herself that, she doubted it. She would have thought nothing of his acting, perhaps; but how could she have escaped his beauty. Because he was, still, terrifically beautiful. Even now, the mere sight of him never failed to dissolve her, body and soul, like wax in the fire. Yesterday at Waterloo, when she
had caught sight of him standing beside Norman on the platform . . .! She turned suddenly on her bed, snatched her handkerchief and burst into hysterical sobs, stuffing her handkerchief into her mouth for fear she should be heard in the adjoining cabins.

When the crisis had passed, her mind returned to that first sight of him two years ago. When the play was over she had gone round to the stage door and waited. Would he be very different in ordinary clothes? Would she recognise him? But, when he did come out with another man, she knew him at once and, with her heart in her mouth, she touched his arm as he passed her. He stopped and she asked him for his autograph. He paused, surprised, while his friend went on.