Venus Over Lannery (8 page)

“I feel a hundred,” she said, but he saw that her eyes glowed with pleasure. In fact her eyes, he noticed for the first time, carried on activities of their own which bore little or no relation to what she was saying. At one moment their wide innocence would warm to a puzzled amusement, at another they seemed to be searching him sharply for some response, or he would catch them examining him with an interest and approval that were almost embarrassing. Once, at some trivial remark of his, they changed suddenly to a cold, hard blue. What the devil was she up to? What did she want? Why were they rattling along at this extraordinary speed instead of taking each other for granted as they had always done before? Eric found himself enormously exhilarated. How strange that they had suddenly become such particular friends, or, rather, not exactly friends; this gay, sparkling, delightfully dangerous encounter was not mere friendship; it was more like a lively fencing-match in which each was amusingly puzzled by the tactics of the other. They talked of Lannery and their meeting there and the others who had been there with them, and then Eric, with deliberate brazenness, asked: “How's Roy?”

Instantly Daphne's expression changed. Her face became the face of a peevish child. “I don't know,” she said emphatically.

Eric felt a little thrill of excitement. “I'm sorry,” he said; “I thought . . .”

“You thought we were lovers,” said Daphne,

FL

and for a moment he was shocked by the callousness of her tone.

“Well, yes,” he said, “as a matter of fact . . .” But Daphne ignored his modest hesitation. “Tell me, Eric,” she asked, with the cold self-possession of a woman of the world, “what do you think of Roy? Do you like him?”

Eric considered. “Yes,” he said, “I like him. I've always thought him a very good chap. A little too pleased with himself perhaps, but then he's an actor, and actors, of course . . .”

“Yes,” she broke in with bitter sarcasm, “a marvellous actor, when he's off the stage.”

“You mean . . .?”

“I mean he's utterly insincere and utterly unscrupulous.”

Eric was embarrassed by her vehemence. Her accusations were so inconsistent with what he had known of Roy that he couldn't believe them, while at the same time his feelings towards Roy were not strong enough to rouse him to take up his defence. What was he to say? He sat looking uncomfortably at his tea-cup.

Daphne watched him critically. “Of course you don't believe me,” she said. “Why should you?”

Eric was chilled by the sudden change which had come over their encounter. He had been thrilled by their sudden electric intimacy: now it seemed that he was being roped into some quarrel to which he was completely indifferent. He was too detached
from it all, too bored to respond. “It's not that I don't sympathise, Daphne,” he replied dully; “it's simply that ... well, that I know nothing about it.”

“Of course you don't, my poor Eric,” she said with a smile; “and it's horrid of me to bore you with my troubles.”

His eyes kindled. “O, please don't think I wouldn't sympathise. But I didn't know, you see, that you had any troubles. In fact, of all the people I ever met, you've always seemed the most carefree.”

“Care-free!” Daphne appealed to the skies. “For years my life's been simply hell.”

Ever so slightly Eric flinched. Wasn't there just a hint of melodrama in the phrase and the air with which she uttered it? “And all because of Roy?” he said with a faint twinkle.

Daphne noticed it without resentment. “Ah, Eric,” she said, “you don't know very much about love, do you?”

Eric was instantly aware that he had no wish to confide his own troubles to Daphne, but she was not, it seemed, expecting an answer to her question. “Life treats you kindly,” she went on; “you don't know how hateful it can be.”

“I know that one can sometimes be very unhappy,” said Eric, “but I don't blame it on life. After all, life with a capital L is nothing more than a word in the dictionary.”

She looked at him with a gently scornful smile.
“What a little philosopher you are, to be sure. But if I mayn't blame life, what may I blame? God?”

Eric shrugged his shoulders. “God, by all means, if you consider Him the guilty party. Personally I blame myself. I don't mean I've deliberately made myself miserable, but in nine cases out of ten one's miseries are the result of one's mistakes.”

“O, well, if you like to put it in that way! No doubt I made a mistake in believing that Roy wasn't a liar and a cad, in loving him and giving myself to him and letting him ruin my life. But it's a little hard to blame me for that. If I'd been less trusting and less generous and less ... well ... capable of love, everything would have been all right. But faith and generosity and love are supposed to be virtues, and suspiciousness and selfishness and cold-heartedness, vices, aren't they?”

“Yes, that's perfectly true, and it's true that one can be horribly let down, sometimes, through nobody's fault—just sheer bad luck. Still, apparently you did make a mistake about Roy; and now you've found it out, so everything's all right.”

“O, absolutely all right!” she said bitterly. “Everything's simply lovely.”

“Well,” he said, “what exactly is wrong?”

“What's wrong? Can't you see,” she almost sobbed, “that I'm in love with him?”

“In love with him? From what you've been saying I thought you hated him.”

“So I do,” she exclaimed with exasperation. “I
hate him and I'm bound to him, body and soul. I shall never escape from him.”

Once again, Eric couldn't help feeling, the note rang slightly false. And yet it was obvious that she was terribly distressed. “When one gets into that sort of state,” he said, “the only thing to do is to take oneself by the scruff of the neck, so to speak.”

“And do what?” she asked.

“Force yourself, I mean, not to think of him; exercise sheer cold-blooded self-control.”

“But I'm not cold-blooded,” she said. “After all, what is passion but the sacrifice of self-control?”

“Well then, keep your mind, as much as you can, on the things you like. Dose yourself with a few theatres and concerts.”

“I can't afford to,” she said bluntly.

“Then let me do the dosing,” he replied with the most charming goodwill. “I'm sure we could have a very good time.”

Her eyes danced with pleasure. “That's very sweet of you, Eric. Why should you bother yourself over my absurdly morbid affairs?”

“Why shouldn't I, if I want to?” he said, his dark eyes glowing. “What about to-night, for instance? What could we go to?”

Daphne was once more the excited, happy child. “Let's get a paper and choose, Eric,” she said, and having finished their tea they hurried out together to plan their evening.

From the moment of that chance meeting with
Daphne, Eric felt himself restored to life, though not to the life he had lived before. Life, now, had become at the same time shallower and more complex. After his plunge into the depths, the cheerful security of the shallows was exactly what he needed, and the complexities, such as they were, gave an interest and excitement to an existence which might otherwise have seemed too insignificant. In fact, this sudden, unexpected intimacy with Daphne was great fun and he pursued it with a cheerful and somewhat self-conscious recklessness. It had none of the oppressive tyranny of his love for Joan: it left him free to give proper attention to his work and all his other concerns. Life had become free and sane and full of variety. Daphne was the gayest and most amusing of companions: it was obvious that she was enjoying herself enormously, though she could never be brought to admit that her happiness was restored. No, her life was ruined, and that, she stubbornly maintained, was a fact that could never be altered. And yet her moods fluctuated surprisingly. Sometimes she would treat her broken heart as a standing joke, yet when Eric dared to impugn it seriously and accuse her of posing she at once grew angry and taunted him with his ignorance of the dark ways of passion, so that Eric found it impossible to decide whether her insistence was a pose or a mental obsession. It irritated and baffled him and, by so doing, kept their relationship in a state of exciting instability. If she had been consciously scheming to trap him she could not have laid her plans more
skilfully. Every day she was becoming for him a problem which he was more and more concerned to solve. He wanted to understand her, and not only that; he longed, as his feelings became more and more involved, to cure her. Yes, his feelings were becoming involved, and he was aware of it. But he was no longer, he told himself, the young innocent he had been when he fell in love with Joan. The present case was entirely different, as different as Daphne from Joan. Daphne was not, he was sure, of the marrying kind, and he had no wish to marry her: to be tied permanently to Daphne was the last thing he desired. But she was curiously attractive and a very good sort. A gay, light-hearted affair with her was just what he needed and, he was sure, just what she needed. And so, quite deliberately, Eric was letting himself go.

And evidently Daphne, too, was letting herself go; at least she imposed no limits on their meetings. Whenever he rang her up he was answered by a gleeful voice, accepting whatever scheme he proposed, and once or twice a week, when Daphne's friend Juliet was out with her Bill, he spent the evening at the flat, where he and Daphne concocted the most charming suppers.

Once, while she was cooking an omelet, she sent him into her bedroom to fetch her handkerchief. He found it on the dressing-table, but, to his annoyance, he found also a large photograph of Roy in a silver frame. The fellow stared at him, absurd in his selfsatisfied handsomeness, and Eric stared angrily back.
Then, on an impulse half serious and half flippant, he took the thing up, laid it flat on its face, and left the room.

Daphne, darting in to brush her hair a few minutes later, found it. “Eric!” she shouted. “Eric, come here!”

Eric appeared in the doorway. “Eric,” she said, pointing to the photograph with her hairbrush, her eyes dancing with amusement, “did you do that?”

He opened his eyes with mock innocence. “My dear Daphne, is it likely?”

“Yes,” she said, “I think it's very likely.”

“Ah!” he said, “if you're sure it's likely, perhaps I did.”

Her eyes met his, lively and provocative. Then she threw down the brush. “Supper's ready,” she said turning from the dressing-table without replacing the photograph; and that small omission, whatever she meant by it, had for Eric a thrilling significance. She had confessed she had thought it likely he would do it and, when he had done it, she had accepted it. What else could that mean but that she knew he was in love with her and accepted his love? The assurance fired him: his glances, his words, his thoughts glowed with a delicious excitement. He discovered that he was much more in love with Daphne than he had supposed, and he was resolved to tell her—not in the absurd hints that they had exchanged over Roy's photograph, but outright.

After supper, when they had moved into the little sitting-room, Daphne went to light the gas-fire. Taking a box of matches from the mantelpiece, she knelt down to turn on the tap. But Eric took her by the shoulders. “Here,” he said, “I'll do that.”

Daphne wriggled her shoulders. “Leave go. Go away. You don't understand it.”

“O, yes, I do,” said Eric, crouching down beside her.

But she had already turned on the tap. She struck a match and the stove lit with a loud pop. At the same moment Eric, his face close to hers, kissed her on the cheek.

She stood up, still holding the match. “Eric,” she said without the smallest resentment, “how dare you?” Her cheeks were flushed, her eyes danced.

Eric, still crouching down, his face as flushed and his eyes as bright as hers, gazed up at her. Then he stood up and took a pace towards her.

“No,” said Daphne, “certainly not! Go away. What's the matter with you?”

“The matter is,” said Eric, “that I love you.” “No, Eric?” she exclaimed incredulously. “O, no; that would spoil everything. And I thought we were such friends.”

Eric was not abashed. Why should he be when her eyes invited him so unmistakably? “So we are,” he said, “but is that any reason why . . .?”

“Of course it is,” she said. “When people begin falling in love, everything goes wrong.”

“Goes wrong? Nonsense! It goes all the better.”

“No, no; you don't understand. Besides, you know I'm ... you know I can't . . .”

“Can't fall in love with me? Why? Because of ... because of the photograph? Well, try leaving it as you left it before supper.”

She pointed to the armchair. “Sit down and don't be silly.”

“Not on the sofa?” he asked in half-comic entreaty.

“Certainly not on the sofa! I'm going to get the coffee.”

She went off to the kitchen, and Eric dropped into the armchair. He felt disappointed, let down. He had been so sure. Her eyes, her whole behaviour, everything but her mere words, had invited him and led him on. Was she doing it deliberately, to tantalise him, or was she really so ignorant of her own instincts? It must be one or the other, and, whichever it was, there was no reason to give up hope: quite the contrary. But this evening he would say no more: he would behave as usual.

Daphne returned with the tray, poured out the coffee in silence and handed him his cup. He took a lump of sugar and sat thoughtfully watching it melt. When he raised his head he found her eyes upon him.

“Poor little Eric!” she murmured. “I never thought this would happen. Is it very bad?”

“Pretty bad,” he said.

“But you won't let it make any difference? You're
not going to run away to Africa or do anything of that sort?”