Lover's Leap (17 page)

But he didn't come, and after waiting a moment or two longer I turned away, half relieved, half horrified at the prospect of going through it all again two hours later. How was I to fill in the time? I was too tired to walk. All I wanted was to sit down and rest. I would go and sit in the Ladies' Waiting Room. But I couldn't sit there doing nothing: I must have something to occupy me, and I went to the bookstall and, after glancing along a row of cheap books, bought the first whose writer's name I knew:
Some Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson
. I took it to the Waiting Room, sank into a chair and lost myself in reading.

I was quite surprised, when I paused to look at the time, to find that I had only three quarters of an hour left. Very soon I should have to be going to find out the platform and start watching again. But I did not give myself so long this time, for I felt sure that Philip was not the sort of person to arrive at a station half an hour before a train started. So I waited till twenty minutes to train time: then I went and discovered the platform, a different one this time, and found a safe position for myself.

The gate was not yet open and nobody was there, but I had not to wait long. In five minutes a ticket-inspector opened it and soon people began to dribble through. I
stood some distance away watching them. The whole affair seemed unreal now. What was it all about? Why was I standing there watching? Did I really want so much to know if Philip was going away alone? It was a weary business. Hadn't I better go home and not bother any more about it? Yes, I felt that I would really rather go, but I didn't. I stood there, wrapped in my own thoughts, and when I glanced at the gate again I was just in time to see Philip, already inside, going down the platform carrying two bags. He was alone. At the sight of him my heart, which had been dully asleep all this time, seemed to burst into flame. I ran to the platform gate and stood there watching him. He didn't go far, but chose a carriage near the back of the train. There was no sign of Rhoda Gaunt. I waited to see if he would come out on to the platform when he had got rid of his bags and chosen his place, but he didn't.

‘Well,' I thought, ‘I can go now.' Then I remembered that Rhoda Gaunt might still be coming: I must wait till the train started. It would not be long; there were only five minutes now.

I waited out the five minutes and no Rhoda came. The porters began to shut the doors, shutting away Philip from me still further. Then the whistle blew, the guard waved his flag, and I stood watching as the train shrank away down the platform and drew my heart after it.

A week later. How dreadful it is to live only for the hours when the postman comes. For a whole week now I have listened for his step on the stairs and for the sound of a letter falling into my letter-box, followed by the smart double knock on my door. Sometimes he misses the house altogether, often he fails to pause on my landing and goes on upstairs, leaving my heart heavy with disappointment. When I hear his approaching steps pause, I know there is something for me and by the time the letter
drops into the box I am there, ready. But for the whole of this week there has been nothing but disappointment on disappointment, till I began to feel that I could endure no more.

And then this morning, at last, his letter came; just a brief note in his charming writing, saying that he has been working hard and is still doing so, ‘and I can never write letters when I am working. Hence my impressive silence.' ‘Remember,' he says in a postscript, ‘to get tickets for to-morrow week, whatever play you like.'

How astonishing it is that a small piece of folded paper can transform one's life from misery to happiness. I have carried his letter about with me all day, reading it over and over. While I ate my lunch it lay open beside me, and also while I had my tea. I have stayed indoors all day, reading my favourite poets, for there is nothing to tempt me out-of-doors; and each time I heard the postman's step on the stairs I laughed to myself, knowing that I didn't depend on him any longer, didn't care tuppence whether he paused at my door or not. O Philip, if only you knew how easily you can lift me to the seventh heaven of happiness!

But this evening, as I was telling myself that his absence is already half over and that I shall see him to-morrow week, the shadow of Rhoda Gaunt in her black hat and cloak fell across my mind. She will see him before I do, a week to-night. Has he written to her too? O I hate her. How clearly I see her face now, much more clearly than I can see Philip's, and hear her hard, laughing voice saying: ‘Now do, Phil dear!' He can't really like her with her cold, arrogant face. He only thinks he does, because she flatters him and runs after him. But she shan't have him. I'll get him away from her. After all, he's mine. It was fated that we should meet: I knew that directly he got into the train at Beresford.

A Week Later. He must be back in London now, and yet I have to wait a whole day before I can see him. He's with Rhoda Gaunt by now, no doubt. I hear her hateful voice: ‘Phil, dear, how delicious to have you back!' and he smiles at her and takes her hand. It drives me almost frantic to think of it, and I've got to wait here, wait, wait, with nothing to fill the interminable hours till to-morrow evening. I wrote to him two days ago, saying I would rather not go to the theatre after all and asking him to come and have supper here in the flat instead; and I asked him to ring me up when he got back, to say if this was all right. That was a little plot, so that at least I should hear his voice, even though I wasn't allowed to see him. But though I've waited in ever since this morning, he hasn't rung up. He's too busy with that hateful creature, I suppose. And here I've sat, waiting for the telephone bell, and it's now a quarter to eleven. He won't ring up till to-morrow now.

O Philip, Philip, you must know how I'm longing for you. Can't you give me so much as a word, to send me to bed happy and at peace?

Next day. He has just rung up while I was having my breakfast. I was so breathless with joy at the sound of his voice that I could hardly answer him.

‘Have you got a cold?' he asked.

‘No. Why?'

‘Your voice sounds very remote.'

‘You must expect that if you interrupt a person when she has her mouth full.'

‘Mouth full? You haven't finished breakfast yet?'

‘Well, have you?'

‘Of course I have, long ago.'

‘And you'll come to supper this evening?'

‘Rather; if it's not too much bother.'

‘Bother? For you?'

‘For
you
.'

‘It's the kind of bother I rather like.'

‘You like cooking?'

‘Sometimes.'

‘What time shall I come?'

‘As soon as you can. Supper will be ready at seven-thirty.'

‘Then I'll probably turn up about seven. And, listen, I'll bring some fruit and a bottle of wine.'

‘No.'

‘Yes, I will.'

‘If you do, I shall probably be offended.'

‘Well, I'll bring them, and if you refuse them I shall be offended too. Good-bye. Seven o'clock.'

Now I must plan the supper. I must get out my cookery book and a pencil and paper, and when that's done I shall go and shop. It must be a small supper but a terribly good one. Although it is only nine o'clock and I have ten hours before me, I feel as if there wasn't a moment to lose. Ten hours, and I shall hear his feet on the stairs and then a ring at the bell. I can hardly believe it's true. How shall I ever dare to open the door?

Next day. Was it only yesterday he came? It seems a whole lifetime away. It is as if I had been swept through space into a new world and a new life and my brain was still dazed with the journey.

I managed to behave very well when he arrived: no unseemly display of emotion, nothing out of keeping with his calm, his dreadfully calm friendliness. But as soon as I had opened the door and we had said a few words, I sent him into the sitting-room, saying that I was busy for the moment in the kitchen, and I went into the kitchen to recover. It was a great achievement.

When I joined him in the sitting-room he was prowling about with his hands in his pockets as he always used to do.
How much of him I had forgotten in the last fortnight. He had faded in my mind like an old photograph, and now, turning quickly as I went into the room, he seemed more, much more than real. I had forgotten how his dark hair curls forward on his temples to meet his eyes like the lower horn of a crescent moon. I had forgotten the clear, dark glow of his eyes.

‘You look very well,' I said.

‘And so do you. You look as if you had been away too.'

‘No, my dear,' I thought to myself, ‘I look as though
you
had come back.'

It was a lovely, warm evening and we opened wide both the long windows which give on a balcony and reach from floor to ceiling. In the fading twilight the yellow trees in the garden looked like beautiful pierced screens set up for some eastern festival. Here and there lighted windows in the opposite houses shone through them, their squares broken by the hanging leaves. I lit only the four candles on the supper-table so that the room should not be too bright for us to enjoy the view. Philip opened the bottle of wine he had brought and filled our glasses. We sat down.

He talked of the country, saying that it was absurd for people who weren't compelled to, to live in London where every day was broken into a hundred fragments. In the country, he said, life is continuous: nothing happens but morning, afternoon, and night indicated by meals and the sun.

‘So you're sorry to be back in London?'

‘Yes.'

‘Isn't even this peaceful enough for you?'

‘O this is all right, but London isn't all like this.'

I smiled to myself. ‘All right!' That, from Philip, was, I felt, a dazzling compliment.

‘I hope you had a successful meeting last night.'

‘Yes, I suppose it might be called successful. Anyhow Rhoda got a couple of pictures out of me.'

‘For her gallery?'

‘Yes.'

‘Wasn't that rather selfish of her, if you didn't want to give them?'

‘Selfish? Not likely. She's the most unselfish creature in the world. She knows I'm lazy and unenterprising, so she takes me in hand from time to time and gives me a push. It's pure kindness on her part.'

I said nothing. I was wishing I had never started the subject of Rhoda; but Philip went on:

‘You know, Meriel, you've got quite the wrong idea about Rhoda. You must meet her. I shall ask you both to tea.'

‘I'd rather not,' I said.

‘Why not?'

‘Because she's not my sort.'

He smiled. ‘How funny women are. When one introduces two men one takes it for granted that they'll hit it off, more or less. But when two women meet, the air fairly hums with danger. It's like confronting one's old cat with a new one: one stands by in terror, knowing that at any moment they may set to and maul each other beyond recognition.'

‘Thank you,' I said. ‘And which of us, if I may ask, is the old cat?'

He laughed. ‘Neither, let's hope. I merely put the hat— a new, still unbought hat—on the table. Don't, please, buy it unless you're quite sure it fits.'

‘I certainly shan't. I wouldn't dream of it. In fact, its trimming seems to me in the worst taste.'

‘But honestly, as man to man, don't you think there's something in what I say?' His eyes were wrinkled at the corners with the most deliciously sly humour.

‘O, if we begin talking as man to man,' I said ‘goodness knows what nonsense we shan't descend to.'

We had finished supper, and leaving the four lighted candles on the table we pushed up two easy chairs to the open windows and sat looking out into the garden of the square, smoking. We talked of books. I asked him what he had read while he was away and he said he had taken nothing with him but Donne and Wordsworth and hadn't read much even of them. I said I had never been able to make much of Donne: he was too difficult and crabbed for me. Philip said there was a certain kind of passion in Donne which no other poet had.

‘Passion?' I said. ‘I should have thought you would have looked on passion as nothing but a tiresome disturber of your “sacred, everlasting calm”.'

‘And so it is.' His voice was almost angry, but in a moment it was calm again. ‘But happily poetry renders it innocuous, so that it can be taken in. that form with impunity, even in fairly large doses.'

He likes to talk in that cool, slightly mocking way, but I never believe in it, not for a moment. It's a screen behind which he hides from me. His eyes were gazing out into the deep, shadowy boughs in the square and, unknown to him, I watched his face, trying to guess what strange, wild creature lurked behind the screen. His hand, his slim brown hand with its delicate coating of silky black hairs, lay on the arm of his chair. Why does he always hide himself, I wondered. Is he like this with everyone, even with Rhoda Gaunt? I remembered with a pang how they had laughed and chaffed each other in the Café Royal. Does she know the real Philip? Has she seen his eyes like fire, felt the grip of those strong hands?

The thought was so unbearable that I made a sudden abrupt movement. He turned his calm eyes upon me. ‘Are you cold?' he asked.

Then he glanced at his watch and said he ought to be going.

‘Not yet, Philip. Stay a little longer.'

‘But it's late.'

‘Then just a little longer.'

‘Well, a quarter of an hour perhaps.'

But the spell had been broken. He was thinking of the time now, and I was feeling that my happiness and security were suddenly on the edge of a precipice. A cold fear crept over me at the thought that in a few minutes I should be alone again, cut off from him just when I had got him back. We sat, each in a kind of trance, trying in vain to talk, and soon he stood up.