Lover's Leap (15 page)

And yet, if I am to be quite honest with myself, I must admit that I am titillated by the way she flings herself at my head. Mixed with my shame and disgust there is a secret excitement and gratification. How contemptible! For it's nothing but gratified vanity, of course. I'm not in the least in love with her. How could I be? She's attractive and disarming and really, in the end, a nice little creature; but compared with Rose she's a mere performing doll.

But what the devil am I to do about her absurd letter? Wouldn't it be better to ignore it altogether? She expects me, I suppose, to reply in similar style, tell her how the
certain person
reacts to the
would-be donor's
audacious advances, to mop and mow in the high Early-Victorian manner. Lord! I could as soon turn somersaults down Piccadilly. And what, after all, is she after? Are we merely to have an endless romantic flirtation, or does she flatly propose to become my mistress? Impossible! If that's what she means I'll never trust Jane Austen again.

And yet, if it were, wouldn't it be rather fun?

Next day. When I came in after lunch to-day I found a parcel waiting for me, a loosely-wrapped paper funnel, obviously containing flowers. It turned out to be a great bunch of pink roses. Tied to the wire that bound them was a note.

‘I couldn't get red ones anywhere, so these will have to do. Please come to tea as soon as you can bear to.'

She must have brought them herself. In the large green glass vase on my mantelpiece they look superb and fill the room with their scent. And yet, ungrateful beast that I am, I can feel nothing more than a slight annoyance. After all, the woman, not the man, is the proper recipient of bouquets. To find oneself the serenaded instead of the serenader makes one feel rather an ass. On the other hand there's nothing humiliating about a pressing invitation to tea. That, after all, is not romance but plain realism. I'll ring her up and tell her I'll go to-morrow. Why not?

Next evening. I ought, I suppose, to have taken her some flowers, in retaliation, when I went to tea with her to-day. But I didn't. I should only have provoked her to retaliate in turn and we should soon have found ourselves
involved in a battle of flowers, like the race of armaments, which would have had elements of the ridiculous.

I had thought she might be embarrassed, when I arrived, by the consciousness of her absurd letter. Not a bit of it. She received me with shameless enthusiasm.

‘How nice of you to come. Sit down. You see, your chair's waiting for you.'

‘Is this
my
chair?'

‘Yes. No one else is allowed to sit in it now.'

‘But how do you stop them?'

She hesitated and then her eyes twinkled. ‘I tell them the springs are broken.'

‘And are they?'

‘Certainly not.'

During tea I found her regarding me with an earnest, inquisitorial gaze. “Tell me,' she said at last, ‘why you said that poem about the red rose and white rose was bad.'

‘If you'll give me the book,' I said, ‘I'll give you chapter and verse. Last time, you know, you wouldn't let me.'

‘O I know. And I don't want you to do that even now. What I mean is, what was your
real
reason for saying it was bad.'

I shook my head. ‘I don't understand. Haven't I given my reason? I said it was bad because it
is
bad.'

She eyed me narrowly, ‘Was that the only reason?'

‘But what other possible reason could there be?'

‘O I don't know. It occurred to me that perhaps you wanted to … to … That perhaps you had some other reason.'

‘Some ulterior motive?'

‘Yes.'

‘But wouldn't that have been sheer dishonesty?'

She raised her eyebrows. ‘Would it?' The point did not seem to interest her.

After a few moments she added: ‘I suppose you would call
my
poems bad.'

I felt that I was walking into a trap. Obviously she meant me to ask to see them. ‘If you asked my opinion,' I said warily, ‘I would give it you honestly. Wouldn't you expect me to?'

She smiled. ‘I think you're a very formidable person.'

‘Shouldn't I be much more formidable if you never knew whether I was speaking the truth or not?'

‘Well,' she said, ‘I think you would be more human.'

She jumped up and went to a drawer. ‘I'll show you one.'

‘Don't,' I said.

‘Why not?'

‘Because if I say it's bad you'll be offended.'

‘I'll risk it,' she said.

‘But
I
won't,' said I.

‘Why not?'

‘Because I don't at all want to offend you.'

‘Ah, that's human. If you don't want to, you won't.'

‘Not even if I say it's very bad?'

‘Not even then.'

With horrible forebodings I took the sheet of paper she handed to me.

‘If this one's bad the rest are hopeless,' she said.

To The Unknown Beloved
, I read:

Unknown beloved, hear my prayer

And gather from the empty air

Your garment of smooth flesh, your eyes

Dark shining with love's mysteries,

Your smile whose warm and golden light

Shall wake me from my frozen night,

And those strong arms whose prisoning girth

Shall give me more than Heaven and Earth.

I looked up. She was watching me with breathless intensity. ‘Well, upon my word, I don't call that bad at all,' I said.

‘You don't?'

‘Indeed I don't.'

‘I'm very glad,' she said humbly.

Suddenly her intensity was gone, her eyes sparkled and her lips curled humorously. ‘Might I ask you, would you go so far as to call it good?'

‘Yes,' I said, ‘I would. I would call it a very creditable bit of work.'

She laughed. ‘You speak as though I were a plumber. What would you have said if I had told you that one of your pictures was a very fine bit of carpentry?'

‘I should have been delighted. Isn't that, after all, a very satisfactory kind of criticism? When did you write it?'

‘About a year ago,' she said.

‘Thank God,' I thought to myself.

‘I don't write them very often,' she went on. ‘Just now and then when it's simply got to be done.'

‘Will you make me a copy of it?'

Her eyes shone with pleasure. ‘You'd really like me to?' ‘I would indeed.'

‘Ah,' she said, ‘that's what
I
call a very satisfactory kind of criticism. Yes, you shall have a copy.'

When I left she handed me a small parcel. ‘Will you refuse this too,' she said, ‘as you refused the roses?'

‘What is it?'

‘Never mind what it is; but it won't make you look like a bridesmaid anyhow. It'll go into your pocket. Look, I'll put it in for you.'

When I took her hand to say good-bye she was trembling and her face was aflame.

Having climbed on to the top of my bus and lighted a cigarette, I took the parcel from my pocket and opened it. It was a little gilt-edged book bound in red morocco. I opened it at random and found blank pages: then, turning back, I came, after more blanks, on a neatly written poem, the one she had shown me. On the page before it were
two little stanzas of four lines each. I turned back another page and another. These were her poems, then. There were about a dozen of them altogether. Each had its date carefully entered at the foot: the earliest of them dated from three years ago. On the front page in red ink the title was laboriously inscribed in Gothic capitals with careful, amateurish flourishes: ‘To The Unknown Beloved.'

And she had handed the whole lot over to me, actually given them to me. I began to read:

I lie in the numbness of death.

Phœbus, bright god,

Call me with quickening breath

Through the frozen sod;

That, roused from a winter of sleep

In the seed's close tomb,

I may burst through its husk and upleap

To leaf and bloom.

Not so good as the other, but still not half bad, though it goes to pieces a bit in the last two lines. I turned to another:

For you, the still unfound,
I made this gift of rhyme,
That when the appointed time
Should come, and with a sound
Of music in mine ears
And sight of flowery springs
To weary eyes, should bring
You whom I sought with tears,
I might run forth to meet you
And take your proffered kiss
Not unprepared, with this
One gift at least to greet you.

I closed the book, wrapped it again in its paper and put it back in my pocket. Poor little creature! And I suppose that if some other fellow, not too repellent, had got into the train beside her, he, and not I, would have come in for it all.

It is all like a dream and I can hardly believe yet that he has come and the years of waiting are over. How little I thought, when I finally decided to leave Geordie and come to London to start my career, that all the time I was coming to him. I might have missed him so easily. If I hadn't taken part in the theatricals, if Geordie hadn't been more exasperating than usual or even if I had come to London by a different train, we should never have met. But doesn't that prove that I was guided all the time, that our meeting was fated? And yet how different he is from what I expected. Not in looks: I always knew he would have dark hair and dark, dark eyes with that look that makes me feel as if my heart were melting away. It is his ways that are different. I had expected that he would be masterful, irresistible, that he would carry me off my feet as those Roman warriors did to the Sabine women, and afterwards that he would be conquered by his love of me and adore me as his goddess. But he does neither. His masterfulness is much more subtle. He treats me with a calm and. amused indulgence as though I were his favourite slave. When I lay my heart at his feet, show him the poem I wrote for him a year ago, all he says is: ‘A very creditable bit of work.'

I don't know why, but that enchanted me. Yes, he is infinitely more adorable as he is. He took no more notice of my letter about the roses, which I wrote trembling with shame and anxiety, than if I had sent him an advertisement for unshrinkable socks; he brings me no flowers; makes rude replies when I quote poetry to him; would rather die than pay me the least little compliment, and I find it all simply captivating. I feel as if I were stroking and teasing a proud, gentle animal that doesn't know its own strength and would rather be left alone.

And now, at this moment, he is probably looking over the poems I have made for him so carefully and patiently during the last three years, the poems into which I put my very heart and soul, turning the pages and calmly remarking: ‘Not bad! Might be worse! A bit too like Ella Wheeler Wilcox!' And soon he will lay them aside and take up an evening paper. Well, I don't care. They were written for him and now they're his to do what he likes with. I've kept no copies. If I had done so I would have been keeping back a part of the gift, like Ananias and Sapphira. Besides, what are the poems to me, now that he's come?

A Month Later. I wonder if he would ever make an effort to see me if I didn't ask him. Probably not. It would be contrary to his dignity, and he knows that, without saying a word, he can compel me to ask him, so he gets his own way none the less. And when I
do
ask him: ‘When am I to see you again?' he always replies: ‘Whenever you like,' and we make an appointment then and there for him to come to me or me to go to him.

A week ago we went to the theatre together. That was wonderful, for I felt that I was much closer to him there than ever before. I had not expected that: I had felt that it was going to be almost a wasted evening if we were to spend it in a place full of people. But as soon as I got into the theatre, with that crowd of strangers all round us, I felt that we were alone together on an island, and I felt too that I had become much more his, now that he was willing to appear with me before the world. Then the lights went out, the audience vanished, and I found myself suddenly close, O so close to him, his shoulder and arm touching mine. I could smell the smell of his coat, I seemed to feel the warmth of his body, and I closed my eyes and was drowned in bliss.

For the first half-hour I saw nothing of the play and
heard nothing but the rise and fall of voices on the stage saying things I didn't understand and didn't want to understand.

It was hot in the theatre and in the interval we went and stood in the entrance to get cool. He took out his cigarette case and offered me a cigarette. I shook my head.

‘Why not?' he asked.

‘I don't smoke in public.'

‘O nonsense.' He smiled, his eyes glowed down on me, and he still offered the cigarettes. I took one obediently. How happy it makes me when he forces me to do things against my principles.

When he spoke of the play I felt rather uncomfortable, because really I had taken hardly any notice of it. I remembered that he had given me a programme. What had I done with it? It wasn't in my hand. He mentioned various names, Sybil Thorndyke, Ernest Thesiger. ‘What do you think of them?' he asked. ‘Let me hear your professional opinion.'

‘Professional?'

‘As an actress, I mean. Aren't you watching their technique?'

‘O of course. I ought to be doing that,' I said. ‘I had forgotten.'

That seemed to amuse him, why I don't know. As a matter of fact, I've rather given up the idea of going on the London stage: there seem to be so many difficulties in the way, and it's so difficult to know how to set about it. After my failure with the letters of introduction I did consult one or two people who, I thought, might be in the know, but all to no purpose. They seemed never to have heard of Mr. Seaton-McPherson. So I'd rather let the matter drop, partly because of the difficulties and partly because I've really rather lost interest in it; in fact for the last few weeks it has never once entered my head.
That was why, when Philip mentioned my being an actress, I didn't at first know what he meant.