Lover's Leap (8 page)

What a tangle it all is. If only I could be more generous and more indulgent I should be able to regard all these things as the little, insignificant things they really are. But try as I will, there are times, only too frequent, when I can't: the inequality of our relationship raises these molehills into mountains which tower above me like the mountains of a nightmare, portentous and insuperable.

Is it a good thing to be highly conscious, to peer into one's own mind and those of one's friends and theorize about their workings? If it is, then my engagement to Philip has done me at least that much good. Before, I took myself and my friends for granted: it never occurred to me to dig below the surface and question acts and motives or to assume that their face value was misleading and little more than a disguise. It seems that I have suddenly grown up, but grown up into rather a disagreeable person. I have become a creature of moods, which I never was before. And yet no one but Philip and I can be aware of this moodiness, for it concerns only him and me. In fact I feel sure that if Jennifer, the sharp-eyed Jennifer, were asked what effect my engagement had had on me, she would reply that it had made me more cheerful than ever. She cannot suspect that the cheerfulness is actually a symptom of loss of balance. For the truth is that Jennifer provides an instantaneous antidote to my fits of ill humour. She does not often see Philip and me together, but when she does, when we are all three together, my ill humour vanishes: in company my feelings and behaviour towards him are always friendly and cheerful. A third person acts as a solvent. And that: is not all. In proportion as I have been oppressed by Philip, I am exhilarated by
Jennifer. When I leave him and come home irritated and coerced, the relief provided by Jennifer's easy, sane, clearcut companionship lets loose all my pent-up spirits and I find myself breaking out into a perfect riot of gaiety. I can't help it: it is not a matter of will: it just happens. Jennifer asks, or seems to ask, nothing of me and I give her everything. Philip asks more than I can give and I give him little or nothing. It is as if I were enacting that difficult saying of Christ's: ‘Unto him that hath, to him shall be given, but from him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he seemeth to have.'

Is there any use in thinking out our problem if I do nothing about it? I believe I had a vague feeling, when I began, that if I could arrive at a clear view of its why and wherefore, the mere discovery would by itself relieve the tension. But it doesn't. Perhaps that is because I haven't really achieved a clear view. There are depths, both on my side and Philip's, which I haven't been able to plumb. But what can I do? I can imagine remedies or attempts at remedies, but how can I put them into practice? I believe, for instance, that if Philip would agree to our not being alone together for a while our discord might be resolved not merely for the moment but permanently and so we might be able to make a new start. We are like two discordant notes which, when another note is added, become harmonious. Jennifer is not our only solvent: almost any other person or persons will do as well. But how could I persuade Philip of that? I believe he is actually as much happier at such times as I am. His overcharged feelings, which weigh upon us both when we are alone together, are harmlessly dissipated in company. But he doesn't know it and certainly wouldn't admit it. And the fact remains that, for reasons I can't define, I haven't the courage to suggest such a plan.

A month later. Another month has passed and we are still drifting, but more rapidly than before. I have tried hard to suppress my black moods, but they are stronger than I am. At the least provocation they come down on me like a London fog. Philip has only to ask me to play to him for me to fume internally, and when I force myself to comply I play so badly that it must seem to him that I am doing so deliberately. Perhaps I am. When one is at cross-purposes with oneself it is difficult to recognize where accident stops and intention begins. Three times recently I have refused to play at all: I simply couldn't force myself to it. If I had tried I should have burst into tears. The first time he did not remark upon it, but when I refused again, the very next time he asked me, I saw his face cloud. But it was not until my third refusal that he spoke. ‘O do, Rose,' he said. ‘Why not?'

I said I was sick of playing.

His eyes searched my face. ‘Sick of playing, or sick of playing to me?'

I couldn't insult him with the truth; so I lied, saying I supposed I had had an overdose of music lately. But he didn't believe me and I saw him glance mournfully at his piano, as if for the first time realizing that he ought not to have bought it. Something in his attitude filled me with contrition and my ill humour was suddenly quenched. ‘I'll try, if you want me to, Philip,' I said, and I sat and played till I had made him happy again and stifled my remorse.

But I had escaped only from that one particular mood. I am still no less at the mercy of others. More and more I hate going to his flat. When he comes here it is not quite so bad, even if we are alone; and when we meet at concerts and picture galleries and other people's houses it is better still.

I had promised to go to tea with him last Thursday and see a picture he has just finished. As the time drew on for me to start, my mood descended on me, grew, enveloped
me. I sat, angry and numb, in this sitting-room, knowing that it was time to start but doing nothing. No, I couldn't face it: not possibly. I determined, or rather the mood compelled me, to stay at home. But if I stayed at home Philip would be sure to ring me up. Yes, at about a quarter to five, inevitably, the telephone bell would ring. At least I would save myself from that, and almost without thinking what I was doing I went to the telephone and rang up Philip.

In a moment I heard his voice. ‘Yes, it's me, Rose.'

And I heard myself saying with a horrible false gaiety: ‘Philip, I can't come this afternoon. What? Yes, a subsequent engagement.'

‘Subsequent?'

‘Yes, absolutely subsequent.'

Did my frivolity sound as hideously hollow to him as it did to me? It seemed not, for he took it well and asked if I would go next day.

‘To-morrow? Yes, to-morrow by all means,' I heard myself say, and hung up the receiver feeling baffled, entangled, humiliated. It was hateful to have lied to him, and by lying I had done neither him nor myself the slightest good. I had merely postponed till to-morrow what it would have been better to have done and been done with to-day. I felt miserable and horribly ashamed of myself.

I rang for Martha to bring me some tea, took up a book, and dismissed the whole wretched business from my mind.

A week later. A lamentable and ridiculous thing occurred this afternoon. Again I had promised to go to Philip's flat. I can't refuse repeatedly without giving a reason and I can't again bring myself to tell him lies. But to give the true reason would open the whole subject of our situation and would produce endless complications,
endless misunderstandings and arguments. Philip is so innocent in intention and so vulnerable that I can't face hurting him deliberately. So again I had promised to go to tea with him, and when the time came to start, I started.

It is terrible to be in such a false position as I am in at present. It's not simply that one's better nature is fighting against one's worse nature: that would be simple. In obeying the first, one would be helped by the knowledge that one was acting for the best. But when I give in to Philip I don't feel at all sure that I am acting for the best. It cannot be for the best to do violence to one's innermost feelings, to every nerve in one's body. By the time I reached Brunswick Square I had reached the point at which I couldn't face the visit. My heart was full of angry despair: I felt that at any moment I might burst into tears. I turned back and walked to the corner of Handel Street so as to give myself time to pull myself together, and then I turned and again walked to his door. I was already a quarter of an hour late: I must make up my mind quickly. Again I turned back in an agony of indecision, struggling with myself, arguing with myself. Wouldn't it be even crueller to go to him in this state of hopeless irritability than to fail him? If I went in, I should sit there sulky, bitter, undisguisably resentful without any apparent provocation from him. What would he think? What would he feel? Better, much better to go home and shut myself up alone. I had again reached the corner of Handel Street and I gave up the struggle.

But before starting for home I glanced back, why I don't know, and saw Philip standing on the steps of his house. He was gazing in my direction, looking for me no doubt, and though there were several people coming and going between us he must have seen me, for he ran down the steps. A wild desire to escape seized me and I turned the corner and hurried up Handel Street, at right angles to my way home. Almost at once I passed three men and,
screened by them, I glanced back again just in time to see Philip, hatless, his hair streaming, run across the road and vanish down the street I should have taken. Thank God! Thank God! A feeling of immense relief came over me and I hurried on, northward, so as not to meet him if he turned back.

How on earth should I explain the miserable, ridiculous business to him? Only by more lies. I had had a headache, I would say. I had started, thinking that the fresh air would do it good, but it had become worse and so I had turned round on his doorstep, determined to go back home. No, I must not say that, in case Philip had run all the way there and failed to overtake me or find me there. I had determined, I must say, to go for a walk, in the hope of walking the headache away. What a wretched, ignominious tangle.

A fortnight later. What can have happened? It is now nine o'clock and after waiting and waiting I have come home. What can have prevented her from turning up? We were to dine at seven o'clock at Martini's and go on to the Philharmonic concert at the Queen's Hall. I waited till a quarter to eight and then rang up her flat from the restaurant. Martha answered the telephone. Rose was not in. What time had she gone out? Martha couldn't say. I returned to our table and ordered something for myself because I hadn't the face not to. I felt that the waiter was an interested spectator of my predicament. If she had left her flat she must arrive soon. And yet a terrible foreboding told me she wouldn't come. I was quivering with anxiety and the thought of food was loathsome; but I forced myself to eat and at a quarter past eight I left the restaurant.

What was I to do now? There was nothing to do but ring up her flat again and I was ashamed to do that. Could an accident have happened to her? I imagined all sorts of horrors and turned away, shuddering, from my imaginings, trying to account for her absence by a variety of theories which my mind evolved with a feverish glibness. I believed none of them. When this torturing uncertainty was over, I kept assuring myself, there would turn out to be some perfectly simple and obvious explanation. I fingered the concert tickets in my pocket. Perhaps, finding she was going to be late, she had gone straight to the Queen's Hall and was waiting for me there. I took a taxi and drove there. The concert would be starting in five minutes. A stream of people poured in through the various doors, and in the entrance-hall a few loiterers like myself scrutinized them, glancing anxiously at their watches. But there was no Rose.

The flow of arrivals thinned, ceased. The loiterers
vanished: I was alone. I hung about in the empty hall. She wasn't coming, I knew, and yet the faint chance that she might held me there. But after twenty minutes I gave it up and came away. I couldn't go in. How could I sit and listen to music, distracted as I was?

And now here I am, at home, waiting in an agony of anxiety and misgiving. What time was it when I rang up her flat? A quarter to eight. Now it is after nine. I will ring up again.

I have rung up. It was Martha again who answered. No, Miss Bentley had not returned. Could anything have happened to her, I asked. Martha was reassuring.

‘O no, Sir. Were you expecting her, Sir?'

‘Yes, she was dining with me.'

‘Don't you think perhaps she may have mistaken the day, Sir?'

‘Yes,' I said, ‘yes, that must be it. She must have mistaken the day.'

But I don't really believe it. Rose doesn't make mistakes of that sort. Besides, she had the programme of the concert with the date and time printed on it. O Lord, Lord! What shall I do? I can't sit here idle and tortured. I'll go out and walk.

But if I go out, some message may come in my absence. No, I must stay in and wait. I will get out my diary and read it. I shall find her there at least: the Rose that lives in the diary will perhaps help me to bear the absence of the real Rose.

I took the diary out of the drawer and had just begun to read when the door-bell rang. My heart stood still and I jumped from my chair, ran downstairs and opened the door. It was not her. It was a messenger boy with a letter: the address, in pencil, was in her writing. I tore it open: it was a brief note. ‘So sorry I couldn't manage this evening. Good night. All well. Rose.'

I signed the boy's form, shut the door and brought the note upstairs, and I sit here now staring at it, trying to see through its three dry little phrases into the real significance of it.

I seem to see a process in it, a change of mood. It is as if, having written ‘Sorry couldn't manage this evening,' she had felt that she was being too off-hand, too harsh, and had added the ‘good night' to mitigate it. And then, knowing how anxious and upset I should be, had decided that she ought, after all, to reassure me. That ‘all well' shows that she knew I should be suspecting that all was not well, else why should she add it? But the very fact that she decided to add it seems to warn me that all is not well. Perhaps, even, it was not added to reassure me but to forestall my tiresome solicitude.

Yes, something has happened. For weeks, though I have never dared to admit it to myself, she had been drifting away from me. I have seen it, felt it all the time. There have been mysteries, evasions that chilled me to the heart and this desertion of me to-night marks a new stage in her retreat. They have been setting her against me, that's what it is. Jennifer and that old woman have been against me from the first. They are jealous of me. They both regard Rose as their property: both are in love with her, Martha with the selfish motherliness of the childless old woman, Jennifer with the desperate rapacity of the starved spinster who cannot love men. At the first moment I met Jennifer, at the first glance of her spectacled eye, I was aware of her hardly veiled hostility. Last Tuesday I passed her in Southampton Row and she cut me. At the time I supposed she hadn't seen me; but she saw me right enough, I'm sure of it now.