Lover's Leap (23 page)

So the days pass, days filled by working and walking,
evenings spent in the bar with a mug of beer, smoking and talking in the leisurely, comfortable manner known only to the frequenters of country inns. And my thoughts move from my work to the changing scenes about me, from Rose and me to Meriel and me. In this pause in my relations with both of them I have ample time to ponder on all that has passed in these two years and a half, and I have come to see how curiously parallel the two cases are, the case of Rose and me with the case of me and Meriel, for in the first I played the part which Meriel played in the second. Yes, I who during the last year have been wearily lamenting the reckless impulsiveness, the lack of self-control and self-knowledge, the grasping importunity of Meriel, the grown-up child, must have been, during my brief, unfortunate engagement to Rose, just such another grown-up child myself. Rose must very soon have discovered that and was driven to the only possible solution. What a light that discovery throws on everything. Old Etherton knew it, or suspected it, and in his wise, dry, cynical way tried to set me on guard against myself. But I hardly listened to him. It is Meriel and not Etherton who, unconsciously and at what cost to herself, has achieved my education and converted me from childhood to something like responsible manhood.

Eleven days later. To-morrow I shall go back to London. It will be four weeks, all but two days, since Rose went away and I must be back before her so that I shall be there, ready, when she rings me up.

Next day. He has come back. I SAW HIM THIS evening, but I shall never go to his flat again. How many times during the last month have I walked past it, always to see the windows shut and know that he was still away. Twice I have actually climbed the stairs and, after pausing to summon up my courage, knocked at the door. The first time was two days after I had written to him and received no reply. I have never written again. What would have been the use? But I thought that if I could have seen him I might make him understand, and so, when no reply came, I went to Brunswick Square and knocked at his door. I could hear, at the first knock, that the flat was empty and when I got back into the square I saw that the windows were closed. He had gone, then. He was determined not to see me. And yet it was only one half-finished picture that I had destroyed. It was a terrible thing to do, but surely not unforgivable, considering how he had provoked me? But the truth is, he was only too glad to have a grievance against me. I might have known it. If I had thought for a minute before I did it, I would have seen that in injuring him I should be much more deeply injuring myself. But how can one think at such times? To be able to do so one would have to be as cold and sensible and heartless as Philip himself. Yes, he is cold and heartless. I believe I could hate him if only I could rid my mind of his presence, his eyes, the curve of his lips, the touch of his hair and slim brown hands. If his mind and will could be destroyed and I could have him as a mere doll, deaf, speechless, obedient, I believe I should be perfectly content. There would be nothing to fight against then; everything to love.

This afternoon at last, when I again passed his flat, I saw with a leap of the heart that the windows were open and went trembling upstairs. On the landing I paused and
listened. Yes, someone was there; somebody was moving about inside. I tapped at the door and waited in terror. There was a deathly pause: then footsteps came to the door. But I could hear at once that they weren't Philip's.

It was Mrs. Batten who opened the door. She said that Philip was coming back this evening.

‘From Saltdyke?'

‘Yes, from Saltdyke. He said he would be back about a quarter to seven.'

Ah, then I should know, if I looked at a Railway Guide, what time his train reached Victoria.

How strange it felt to be anxiously watching for Philip again in Victoria, as I had watched—how long ago? It seems years and years—for him and Rhoda Gaunt. It was as if the nightmare which tormented me on the night before that earlier watching had got me in its clutches again. But life, it seems, is like that; a dream now happy, now horrible, that repeats itself over and over again, always a little different, always really the same, till one gets tired out by its miseries and hopeless struggles and longs to be done with it.

The train was late, and as I stood there, tired, wretched, devoured by anxiety, my resistance suddenly and gently gave way. I would struggle no more. Why should I go on torturing myself? I turned to go. As I did so I saw that the train had come in and the people were streaming along the platform.

O why didn't I hurry away as I had determined to do? What was it that made me pause at a safe distance for one last glimpse of him? And there he came, among the others, but for me so utterly, so agonizingly apart from all the others. He came through the gate and then I saw that someone was with him., a woman. No, it was not Rhoda Gaunt. It was the beautiful girl we had met, he
and I, in Waterloo station when we were going away together for the week-end. And as they came along together he turned his face to her with just that same earnest attentiveness with which he used to turn to me.

You have dealt me your last blow, Phil. I will leave you free now.

The same day. I am almost tempted to believe in that flattering, romantic: Fate in which poor Meriel had so much confidence, for unexpected happiness makes the most cynical of us romantic and then Coincidence becomes too cold and mechanical a name for the happy accident that visits us only once or twice in a lifetime.

I left Saltdyke this afternoon, as I had intended, so as to be back in London when Rose arrived sometime during the next few days. I had to change, of course, at Beresford, and as I stood inspecting the bookstall on the main platform and waiting for the London train, a voice, Rose's voice, spoke my name. Flow could the blind hand of Chance have fashioned so blissful a surprise? But wasn't I, too, blind and insensitive not to have known, the moment I got into the train at Saltdyke, that she was in it?

‘How did you discover Saltdyke?' she asked when we had taken our seats in the London train. ‘I never took you there when you stayed with us at Downchurch, did I?'

After a moment's hesitation I told her how I had discovered Saltdyke, how I had started from London to follow her to Downchurch and then, pulling myself together at the last minute, had left the train at Saltdyke and given up the pursuit. ‘But this time,' I said, ‘I've been escaping from Meriel, not failing to follow you.'

I told her of what had occurred since I had seen her and of how, after thinking often of what had happened during the last: few years, I had discovered the strange resemblance between my behaviour to her and Meriel's to me.

She smiled. ‘So you've discovered that?' she said.

‘And you've discovered it too?'

‘Yes, when you were telling me, a month ago, about Meriel, every single thing you said of your troubles might have been said of mine.'

‘Yours with me?'

‘With you. That's why you thought me so wise, Philip. When you asked me where I got my wisdom, the true answer would have been: “From you.” It was you who taught me.'

‘Poor Rose, didn't I just? And Meriel has taught me. It seems that lessons, even when one is grown-up, are just as disagreeable as they used to be when we were children. If I had known as much two years ago as I know now….'

But Rose interrupted me. ‘Do you remember, Philip, when I failed you that evening when we were to dine and go to the Queen's Hall?'

‘I do, indeed.'

‘And that afternoon when I was coming to tea and turned back?'

‘And I ran after you, but you dodged me. How did you manage it, Rose?'

Rose laughed. ‘Never you mind,' she said. ‘But do you know why I behaved like that?'

‘Yes. For the same reason that I cut my engagement with Meriel a month ago; because you simply couldn't face it. Was I so insufferable, then, by that time?'

‘You were no longer the Philip I had first met. You had ceased to be yourself.'

‘And had become, what?'

‘What you told me Meriel had become.'

‘Yes, a large open mouth, like a helpless, unfledged bird, clamouring for food.'

‘For more food,' said Rose, ‘than there was in the larder, than there ever could be in even the most richly stocked larder.'

For some moments we were silent, each watching the woods and fields that wheeled past the carriage window. ‘The truth is,' I said at last, ‘that love is a very complicated business.'

‘It's we that are complicated, not love,' said Rose. ‘Love,
like goodness, is too simple for us. We can't cope with it till we have learned to be simple ourselves.'

When we reached Victoria I saw her into a taxi and left her to go home alone.

Six months later. Yes, I have grown up: I am my own master. It is not from mere diplomacy nor because I now know the inevitable consequences, that I no longer try, as I vainly used to try, to devour Rose like a hungry shark; it is from human understanding. I am no longer the exorbitant child that howls for the unattainable: I have found the happiness that comes of temperance and acquiescence in our human nature. What a stupid, voracious animal I was before. I spent my time, it seems, in trying to swallow Rose whole, and I don't believe it ever occurred to me to ask myself whether, perhaps, she might prefer not to be swallowed. Like all animals I was an egoist: I simply obeyed my hunger. Why was I like that? Was it because of my motherless childhood, and because my Aunt Lucy, warm-hearted though she really was, was such a perfect English lady that she could never bring herself to express more than merely elegant feelings?

But when the tables were turned, when Meriel tried to swallow
me
whole, that was a very different matter. Then I was up in arms at once. Is it, then, simply because Meriel tried to swallow me that I have arrived at years of discretion? No: that, by itself, would have done nothing to awaken me. That is only half the reason. The other half is that Meriel, besides trying to swallow me, enabled me, by learning to understand her, unconsciously to understand myself, so that when at last I realized the connection between her and myself of two years ago, the discovery came as a revelation, a revelation for which I was ready.

That is why Rose is no longer driven to fight shy of me. I no longer think only of myself. And that isn't a virtue in me, it is an automatic impulse. The only conscious
virtue I practise is the crafty one of not even seeking her company as much as, I believe, she is ready to give it. That I do deliberately, artfully, and with the greatest difficulty. And so—miraculous change—it is she, now, who seeks me out, not I her. Is she beginning to feel for me a little of what I feel for her? I daren't guess. I know only that she is happy when we're together, and we have been together a great deal during the last six months.

Next day. Last night I dreamed of Meriel, a strange, tragic dream which has haunted me ever since. I was in Beresford station, waiting, it seemed, for the Saltdyke train. I was surprised that it wasn't standing at its platform, as it always is when the train from London gets in, and I walked up and down waiting for it. Then I realized that I was waiting on the wrong platform, number three instead of number four, and I tried to hurry across to number four with the heavy-footed helplessness that: sometimes assails one in dreams. When I got to number four the train was still there, but at the sight of it I discovered that I had made a mistake. I really wanted to get to London, not to Saltdyke. At that moment the train started and I stood watching it move down the platform. Then I noticed that Meriel was leaning out of one of the windows. She was trying to attract my attention. She was smiling and holding out to me a large bunch of red roses. I ran to take them from her, but I couldn't catch up, the train was going too fast. It carried her and her roses away and I stopped running and found to my amazement that the station was no longer Beresford but Victoria.

The dream was so vivid that it has clung to me all day. Surely, I thought, I might write to her now and make my peace, explain to her why I never answered her letter, tell her that the picture and all our differences were long since forgotten, and ask her to forgive all the pain I caused her. But where is she? She must by this time have returned to
her home. Surely she can't have stayed on in Powis Square.

I wrote to her this evening. I couldn't remember her home address, so I directed the letter to Powis Square. No doubt it will be forwarded.

A fortnight later. A fortnight, and Meriel has not replied. Did I write too soon? Does she still feel too bitter?

This afternoon Rose came to tea and afterwards played to me—Bach, Scarlatti, Haydn, and last of all that Mozart Sonata she played at the Ethertons' the very first time I saw her. Did she end with that on purpose? No, she could hardly remember—what reason would she have to remember?—that she had played it on that evening three years ago.

She was still sitting at the piano, with her hands on the music-stand, when I asked her point-blank:

‘If I asked you to marry me, Rose, what would you say?'

She did not move, she did not even take her hands from the music-stand, but she turned her adorable face to me. ‘The same as last time, Phil,' she said, and she rose from the piano and came to me.

Next day. I received a letter this morning in an unknown hand. This is what it said:

‘Dear Sir,—I write to inform you that my wife died of pneumonia three days before the arrival of your letter to her, which I have therefore opened. Please forgive my delay in writing.

‘Yours very truly,

‘George Filmer.'

The End

 

Martin Armstrong (1882 – 1974) was an English writer and poet. He was born in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, and educated at Charterhouse and Pembroke College, Cambridge. He served in World War I in the British Army in France as a Private in the Artists' Rifles. He was commissioned into the Middlesex Regiment in 1915 and promoted Lieutenant in 1916. He was included in the final Georgian Poetry anthology.
In 1929 he married writer Jessie McDonald, after she had divorced Conrad Aiken, making Armstrong the stepfather of the young Joan Aiken. He appears in disguised form as a character in Conrad Aiken's
Ushant
.