Lover's Leap (16 page)

This morning came a letter from Geordie.

‘My dear Meriel,—I hope you are enjoying yourself. It occurs to me that your present balance at the bank may not go very far in London. Keep an eye on your passbook and be careful not to overdraw. If you will let me know when funds are getting low, I will transfer some money from my account to yours. If you have taken the dramatic world of London by storm,
The Times
is strangely reticent about it. However, the chief thing is that you should enjoy yourself. Miss Bredall, Mrs. Goring, Mrs. Nutall and old Colonel West have asked me at various times when you are coming back. Having no information on the subject myself I have made vague, ingenious, and I hope not contradictory replies. I have endowed you with an invalid cousin in London and I trust you will do your best not to forget her, should occasion arise. All goes on much as usual here. Mrs. Jackson admirably justifies her promotion from cook to cook-housekeeper.

‘Your affectionate

‘George.'

Dear Geordie! How like him his letters are. As I read this one I seemed to hear the very tone of his voice and see his dry smile, and for a few minutes I felt quite homesick. It is like him, too, to say nothing of how terribly he misses me. But he does ask, in that clever, roundabout way which he thinks will deceive me, when I am coming back.

When
am
I going back? How can I ever go back, now that I have met Philip? When I left home I was quite vague about all that. All I knew was that I was going away like Nora in ‘A Doll's House' and that perhaps some day, when I had made a career for myself and Geordie had become worthy of me, we should begin again. But Philip
has changed everything. I could never leave Philip: if I did I should die. But what will Geordie do if I refuse ever to go back? Will he divorce me? That would be terrible: I could never face that. Besides, I can't desert him for good and all, never go home again. That was never in my mind, because I really am devoted to Geordie, though we do get on so terribly badly. It's more as if he were my father. Whatever will happen? It's too complicated to think of; besides, it's time I got ready to meet Philip.

A Fortnight Later. Last night Philip and I had dinner together in Soho. I forget the name of the restaurant. After dinner he asked me if I knew the Café Royal and suggested that we should go there. I had heard of it, of course, but I had always imagined that it was rather a wild place, like the Moulin Rouge in Paris, and I felt a little frightened at his suggestion.

‘Isn't it a Bohemian place?' I asked.

‘Bohemian?' said Philip. ‘No, it's French; at least it's the nearest thing we have to a French café'

‘That's what I mean,' I said. ‘But could
I
go there?'

‘Certainly, if you'd like to. It's a pleasant place for a lazy evening.'

‘But Philip, what does one do there?'

‘Do? Nothing. That's the beauty of it. Just sit and talk and smoke and drink something.'

‘I always understood it was rather … well, wild, you know.'

He laughed. ‘It depends on what you call wild,' he said. ‘Have you ever been to the Royal Academy?'

I told him I had been there once or twice with Geordie in past years.

‘Well,' he said, ‘it's about as wild as the Royal Academy.'

I said I should like to go. After all, I knew I should be perfectly safe with Philip.

I must say, it seemed to me a strange, rather sinister-looking place, rather like a huge, old fashioned third-class railway carriage, with its worn red plush and all the tawdry mirrors and gilt and the whole place full of tobacco smoke. At first I thought Philip was joking when he asked me if I didn't think it charming.

‘Well,' he said as we sat down, ‘what are we going to drink? A pint of absinthe each?'

‘Is one … do they expect one to?' I asked. I was beginning to wish we hadn't come.

‘No, it's not compulsory, and I'm told it's extremely nasty. Let's have a black or white coffee, or a lager, or some vermouth and soda—that's very nice on a hot evening like this.'

I chose white coffee and Philip had a vermouth and soda, and when the first strangeness of the place had worn off I really began to find it very pleasant. Most of the tables were occupied and the place was so full of the hum of conversation that it was possible to talk without that uncomfortable feeling that people at the next tables are listening to what one says. Some of the people there looked very foreign; strange men with untidy hair and loose ties, hard-looking women with cold eyes like actresses, who made me feel shy and rather frightened. It made me miserable to think that perhaps Philip knew them. But he didn't take any notice of them. Perhaps it was because I was with him. A few tables away, to our left, a youngman with a fair beard and a large hat like a cowboy's was talking to a middle-aged woman with face and lips covered with paint like Jezebel. One could see how old she was under the paint. I asked Philip who they were.

‘O he writes poetry,' he said; ‘his name's Scholefield.'

‘And she?'

‘She's the famous Mrs. Giles Ebbsworth.'

‘What's she famous for?'

‘O just for being famous,' said Philip. ‘She's rather an intelligent old thing and she knows everybody.'

‘But isn't she rather … well, rather fast?'

Philip laughed. ‘Not she. She doesn't live down to her appearance any more than Scholefield lives up to his. He believes that to write poetry you've only got to leave out the verbs and the capital letters.'

‘It seems to me,' I said, ‘that I'd better paint my face, buy a strange hat, and call myself a poetess.'

‘Leave out the paint and the hat,' he said; ‘you're nicer as you are.'

It wasn't till we had been there about an hour that I saw Philip make a sign with his hand to two people, a man and a woman, who had just come in. They came towards us. My heart sank: I had hoped that we should be alone the whole evening. I felt afraid, at once, of the woman: she looked so cold and so terribly self-possessed. She was tall, with a hard, handsome face like marble, and she wore a wide-brimmed Spanish hat and a black cloak. Philip introduced me to her, Miss Rhoda Gaunt, and the man, Edward Dennis. They sat down at our table, Mr. Dennis opposite me and Miss Gaunt opposite Philip, and she began to talk to him at once. She seemed to be explaining something about a new gallery, but I couldn't hear much of what they said because Mr. Dennis was talking to me in a slow, rather precise voice. I had hardly noticed him till he began to talk. He was dressed very unconventionally in a rough brown tweed coat and a blue flannel tennis shirt with a yellow silk tie held in a strange ivory ring. I guessed he was an artist, and yet his slow, precise, deep voice made me think of a clergyman rather than an artist. His face, too, was severe and priestlike, his hair black and carefully brushed.

I don't quite know why I am always rather afraid of artistic people. I always feel, somehow, that they know so much more than I do and that they must think me very
silly and commonplace. But I soon began to feel that Mr. Dennis was quite nice: he was so natural and friendly. If it hadn't been that my attention was so fixed on Philip and Miss Gaunt I should have quite enjoyed talking to him. She was trying hard to persuade Philip to do something he didn't want to do. They were laughing and arguing and chaffing each other. Philip seemed to be much more familiar and cheerful with her than he is with me. Her voice suddenly rose.

‘Now do, Phil dear,' I heard her say. ‘Don't be such a silly old chump.'

It was terrible to hear her talk to him as I had never dared to talk, to call him
Phil
and
dear
. I longed to take Philip away. I felt as if I were losing him, as if at any moment they might get up and leave me in that horrible place, among all those horrible people, with no one to get me out of it but Mr. Dennis. But to my immense relief Miss Gaunt suddenly got up.

‘Well,' she said, ‘I must go and talk to Fairweather. Come on, Ned.'

She nodded and smiled to me, then swung round and walked away, followed by Mr. Dennis. What a relief it was. But the evening was spoilt for me: all I wanted was to go home.

‘Did you like Dennis?' Philip asked.

‘Yes, I thought him very nice,' I said. ‘Is he a painter?'

‘A sculptor. Don't you know his name, Edward Dennis? He's the best sculptor we've got. Rhoda's the painter.'

‘Is she good?'

‘Very good. I wish they hadn't hurried away. I wanted you to talk to her.'

‘I don't think,' I said, ‘that I should have liked her.'

He glanced at me in surprise. ‘O but I'm sure you would. She's a perfect dear.'

A week later. Yesterday afternoon I had tea with
Philip in his flat. I asked him when we were to go to the theatre together again.

‘Soon,' he said, ‘but not just yet, because to-morrow I'm going away for a fortnight.'

It was such a shock that I could hardly speak. ‘Going away?' I said. I could hear my voice tremble. ‘Where to?'

‘Into the country, to a little place called Saltdyke. I go there from time to time to work.'

I thought at once of Rhoda Gaunt. Was he going with her?

‘Are you … are you going alone?' I watched his face.

‘Yes, alone,' he said; but I couldn't tell, from his face, whether it was true or not.

‘Why didn't you tell me before?'

‘I've only just decided to go. I often go there. It's a wonderful place for working in; partly, I suppose, because there's nothing else to do, nothing to distract one.'

‘Such as me, for instance?'

‘That's it,' he said, pretending that he thought I had been joking.

‘And you're going for a fortnight?'

‘Yes, that's all.'

‘All! It seems to me a very long time.'

He laughed. ‘Why, last autumn I went down and stayed there for nearly six months.'

I felt as if my life had suddenly fallen to pieces. ‘And I suppose,' I said, ‘that at the end of the fortnight you'll decide to stay another fortnight, and at the end of that, another.'

‘O no,' he said; ‘I've got to be back a fortnight tomorrow.'

The thought of his going away was so terrible that I couldn't talk and sat silent and miserable. I had the feeling that everything was over, that I should never see him again, and when I left him I asked, in desperation, if I might see him off at the train tomorrow.

His face clouded. I saw at once that he didn't want me to. ‘I'm not sure what train I'm going by. Besides, in any case, it's hardly worth it, is it? I might be late, and then it would be an awful scramble, in fact we might miss one another altogether.'

‘And you come back on Thursday, a fortnight to-morrow?'

‘Yes, and on Friday we'll have dinner together and go to a theatre.'

‘Not Thursday?'

‘No, I'm booked for Thursday evening.'

‘Already?'

‘Yes. A meeting about a new gallery that Rhoda Gaunt's interested in.'

Rhoda Gaunt! The name struck my heart like a stone. He was going to see her, then, the very evening he got back. But is he really going away alone, or is he going with her? Yes, I'm sure he's going with her. That's why he was so anxious to stop me going to see him off to-morrow.

Next day. Last night I was so tormented by fears about Philip and Rhoda Gaunt that I couldn't sleep. Half awake and half asleep, I kept imagining myself in Victoria station, waiting to see Philip off. I was standing at the entrance to the platform; and then I would see Philip coming towards me and would try to hide myself, to see him without being seen. But when he was quite close to me I would discover that it wasn't Philip but Rhoda Gaunt in her black cape and hat, and I rushed to the platform gate to stop her getting through. She tried to push past me, but I seized her cloak and held on. We struggled, and then the ticket-inspector caught my arm and Rhoda tore herself free and ran down the platform, and, far up it, I saw Philip laughing and beckoning to her. Then I tore my arm free from the inspector, but he seized me again and I battered his head and face with my
fists and then suddenly woke up with my heart beating so frantically that I thought I was going to die.

Over and over again I was caught in that nightmare till I was nearly driven mad by the repetition.

It was as if I were trapped in some terrible treadmill from which I couldn't escape. At last, to escape from it, I got up, went into the sitting-room, got out a railway guide and looked up Saltdyke. I had determined I would go to Victoria in the morning and watch Philip, without his knowing, to see for certain if he was really going with Rhoda.

Saltdyke, I found, was on a branch line from Beresford. Then Philip must have been coming from Saltdyke on the day of our first meeting. There were only four trains in the day; two in the morning and two in the afternoon. I would go to Victoria for the first and, if he didn't go by that, wait for the next and, if necessary, the two afternoon ones as well. The clock on the mantelpiece said a quarter to four. I went to fill the kettle and make myself some tea. I was determined not to go back to bed for fear of getting caught again in that maddening wheel of nightmare.

I got to Victoria half an hour before the first train started, and when I had found out the platform I chose a place near a large glass show-case from which I could see both the platform gate and the arches that lead from the booking-hall into the station. There I could stroll to and fro safely, for Philip would not see me on his way from the booking-hall to the train. Three times during the half-hour a train came in and a hurrying crowd swept across the station, so that I had to move nearer to Philip's platform for fear of missing him.

As train time drew near my anxiety became so intense that I hardly had the strength to stand up. Every other man that approached the gate and paused to have his
ticket clipped seemed for a moment as if he might have been Philip. Sometimes I was almost sure that a man and woman walking together were Philip and Rhoda and my heart leapt to my mouth. I seemed to be losing the power of distinguishing one person from another. Now there were only three minutes and the people that went through the gate were hurrying, some of them running. Could I have missed him? The doors of the train were all shut. A terrifying whistle went off: the guard was waving his green flag. If he came running now I felt I should not be able to bear the strain.