Venus Over Lannery (10 page)

“So, except when you had these people at your flat, you spent your evenings alone?”

Joan nodded. “Unless Cynthia or Edna came to keep me company. They've been awfully good tome.”

“You must have been terribly lonely, my poor child,” said Mrs. Dryden.

“O, I shouldn't have minded the loneliness so much, if I hadn't felt that Norman and I were drifting further and further apart. And yet he wasn't unkind. He was nearly always cheerful and affectionate. But I had the impression that it came ... well, not from his own feelings, but from mere habit, like his charming manners.”

Mrs. Dryden nodded. “Yes,” she said with an acidity she could not conceal, “Norman has considerable charm of manner.”

“And it's easy,” said poor Joan, “to fall into the habit of saying ‘Darling.'” She was silent for a moment, gazing sadly at her hands. Mrs. Dryden did not interrupt her thoughts, and in a few moments she raised her head and went on: “I remember, before we were married, his sister told me that when he was a little boy he always wanted the other child's toy. That amused and charmed me at first: I used to picture him in a little blue suit, gazing longingly at a toy which another little boy was playing with. But lately, when I was thinking of the days when he and I first met, that story suddenly came back to me in a new light, and I realised that I had never been anything more to him than the other child's toy. He wanted me only because he thought someone else . . .”

“Because he thought Eric wanted you?”

Joan nodded. “I suppose many people would say it was my own fault. I ought to have discovered what he was like before I married him. But how could I discover? Before we married he was different and we were perfectly happy together. We liked the same things: we spent evenings and whole days alone together and he was never bored; in fact, he preferred to be alone with me. I saw none of his friends till after we married. I only wish I had; then I might have seen that I didn't quite fit into his life.” She raised her head and looked at Mrs. Dryden. “Suppose I had asked your advice before I married him, what would you have told me?”

For a moment Mrs. Dryden did not answer. “I
don't think,” she said at last, “that I should have been able to say anything that would have been of much help. I knew as little as you did of his actual life. All I could have told you would have been my own impressions of his character.”

“And what were those?” asked Joan.

Mrs. Dryden hesitated. “Well, I always felt,” she said, “that he was a spoilt child. I'm sure he's an only son.”

“Yes,” said Joan; “the other three are girls and he's the youngest. But do you mean that you don't like him?”

“Dear me, no! It's impossible not to like him; he's so extraordinarily charming. But I've always found it impossible to get to know him—to get at the real Norman behind that charming screen; and I've sometimes wondered—you mustn't mind what I say, Joan; I'm trying to be perfectly sincere—I've sometimes wondered if there was anything more behind the screen than a ravening little animal determined to get what it wants. One gets the impression that he's always had what he wanted. I feel sure his family refused him nothing.”

“They all adore him.”

“And I'm sure he always got the other child's toy when he wanted it. But what good would it have done if I had told you these surmises of mine. You were in love with him, weren't you, and they would merely have seemed the carpings of an old woman. Besides, I might have been all wrong. It's always dangerous to theorise about people unless you know
them extremely well. I don't suppose you agree in the least with what I have been saying.”

Joan hesitated. “I think it's verv likely true,” she admitted.

“But you don't
believe
it?”

Joan looked at her and there was the glitter of tears in her eyes. “I
can't
believe it.”

Mrs. Dryden took her hand. “My poor child, you're still in love with him.”

“I was in love with him when I accepted him,” Joan said, “and surely it must take years to change that.”

Mrs. Dryden was thinking. “Would it do any good, do you think, if I were to talk to Norman?” she asked gently. It was not till she had said it that she noted, in a flash of amused and horrified selfcriticism, her own instinctive duplicity; for the gentle tone in which she had asked the question disguised feelings which were by no means all gentle. Despite the mollifying effects of old age, Emily was still something of a lion-tamer, and there was nothing at the moment that she would have liked better than to get hold of Norman and introduce him to himself in the grimmest possible terms. If the opportunity occurred, she would certainly do so: it could do no harm, and it might very well do good, if he were given a more searching view of himself than that provided by his own self-complacency. But the opportunity, for the present at least, was denied her, for Joan did not accept her offer. “You're very kind,” she said, “but I'm afraid it's
too late for that. I haven't told you everything yet.” Her eyes suddenly filled with tears. “He asked me, two days ago, to divorce him. He has fallen in love with someone else.”

For a moment they sat silent, and, when Mrs. Dryden spoke, her voice was stern and practical. “It's the best thing you can do, Joan.”

“You really think that?”

“I'm sure of it, my dear child. Your life with Norman has reached a dead end: there's no other way out.”

Joan was silent. “It's terribly hard,” she said at last, “to make an end of it deliberately. It's like cutting out your own heart. And I dread all the business of the divorce: I don't even know how to start.”

“O, don't worry yourself about that,” said Mrs. Dryden. “It's a mere matter of routine. I could very easily take you to my solicitor, if you like. He would tell us what to do.” She paused: her eyes were fixed unseeingly on the grate; her mind was busy with practical problems. “Of course,” she said, “you and Norman will have to separate at once and, that being so, wouldn't it be best for you to come and stay here for some months? You could go back to London tomorrow afternoon or on Monday, pack up your things and come straight back. I should be very glad of your company here, if it suited you to come. I could give you any amount of work to do. Can you use a typewriter?”

“Yes,” said Joan.

“Then,” said Mrs. Dryden, “you'd be a godsend to me if you cared to come. And now,” she said, getting up from the sofa, “we must both go to bed. We'll see what you feel about it tomorrow.” She took Joan by the shoulders and gave her a kiss, brief, hearty, almost as practical as her talk. “Don't do any thinking to-night,” she said as she went out.

“What you want is a good sleep.”

To Joan, in the timid, wavering, emotional state in which she had lived for the last two days, the clear, practical way in which, Mrs. Dryden had dealt with her troubles brought just the antidote she needed. It came as a tonic to her mind and a sedative to her overwrought emotions. Her vague fears, her sense of helplessness in face of all the unknown complications of the law, were lifted from her shoulders, and her tragedy, reduced to simple terms, became more bearable.

As she closed her bedroom door, Emily heard steps on the stairs. The others were coming to bed.

Eric and Daphne lingered behind the rest. Cynthia had turned out the lights in the hall and now a long phosphorescent rug of moonlight lay spread across the floor, caught up by one of its corners over the edge of a long table on which stood a vase of flowers. Vase, flowers and leaves, reduced to a single colourless brilliance, shone like an elaborate silver filigree.

Eric paused at the foot of the stairs. “Look at that,” he murmured to Daphne. “Did you ever see such moonlight? Let us go into the garden.”

Daphne glanced sharply at the others, a few steps
ahead of her. “The garden?” she murmured back. “At this time of night?”

“Yes. Come on!” he whispered eagerly, seizing her arm.

But Daphne shook off his hand and followed the others upstairs, and when Eric reached the stairhead she and the others were dispersing quietly through the silent house to their respective rooms. Her room, he noticed, was on the opposite side of the passage to his own and one or two doors short of it. As he passed her door she was standing looking out, her hand on the door-knob, the light switched on in the room behind her. He did not stop, but wished her a sullen good night as he passed her, to which she primly and a little mockingly responded.

He shut his door, switched on the light and flung himself petulantly into an armchair. Minute followed minute and still he sprawled there motionless, a baffled, angry young man, his face sombre and flushed, his eyes staring sulkily at his legs stretched out full length in front of him. One hand, the fingers pushed deep into his dark hair, supported his head, and the watch on his wrist ticked monotonously in the silence, a few inches from his ear. He stirred himself irritably and raised his head. A clock in the room below struck a quick twelve on its faint, icy bell. His feet and legs were very cold. He pulled himself together, heaved himself out of the chair and began slowly to undress, throwing his clothes carelessly on to the chair at the foot of the bed.

He had switched out the light and was on the point
of getting into bed when he heard, faintly but unmistakably, a door open in the passage. He stopped short and for half a minute he stood motionless, ears alert, his heart fluttering in his breast. Then on tiptoe he crept to his door, slowly and noiselessly opened it and looked out. His heart leapt to his mouth. A tall rod of light in the darkness to his left showed that Daphne's door was ajar. He watched breathlessly, and, as he watched, its lower half was suddenly obscured. There was a long pause and then the brightness glided back. She must have come to her door, waited, watched perhaps, and retired. What was she doing? What could she be doing but waiting for him? He tiptoed out, noiselessly closed his door, then slid across the passage, pushed open her door and went in.

Next moment the passage was dark again.

At the other end of the house, Joan lay awake. After her talk with Mrs. Dryden she had no longer any doubt about divorcing Norman: in a single hour her mind had turned from frustration to resolution, from a timid aversion from any action to a longing to act at once, to get the whole wretched business begun and ended as soon as possible. That, at least, Mrs. Dryden had done for her already. But she was still haunted by the memory of that terrible evening two days ago which had precipitated the final catastrophe. Once more her mind, numbed and bewildered by the blow, began like a cinematograph to revive the events of that evening—a tragic film of which she was at once the spectator and the victim.

He had rung up, as he had done more and more often of late, to say that he was detained at the office, that he wouldn't get home till eleven. It was already past six and she was on the point of ringing the bell to tell the servants, when there was another telephone call. It was Edna this time, offering herself for the evening. How providential it had been, as it turned out, that Edna was with her, for Edna's company
had warmed and cheered her as it always did, and not only that: she had stood by her in the humiliating scene at the end.

It was nearly eleven o'clock when Norman rang up again. She knew it must be Norman although at first she could hear nothing but a chorus of laughter and confused talk. Then came Norman's voice, excited, hilarious, talking to someone else. “What? The telephone! Am I telephoning?” Through the laughter that followed, his voice came suddenly louder. “Hallo! Is that you, darling? Listen, we're coming round. Will you get out some drinks?”

Her heart sank. “How many are coming?”

“How many?” came the bright, excited voice, and again she heard the chorus of gramophone laughter. “O, say a round dozen, or a round halfdozen, or a round ... I say, are you there? Is that all right? Good! We'll be round in a few minutes.”

She put back the receiver. “Edna, they're coming round, a whole lot of them. Wouldn't you like to escape?”

How good Edna was. She must have seen her dismay, because she refused at once to go. “No, I'm in no hurry. I'll stay and give you a hand”; and they had set about getting glasses and bottles. And ten minutes later they had heard the clicking of a key in the latch; but the door didn't open and the clicking went on. Edna went to the door and opened it, and the party—Norman, followed by a couple of women and two or three men—poured in, laughing
and talking. All but Norman were in eveningdress. They heaped coats, hats and cloaks on the hall chairs and proceeded in single file into the drawing-room. To Joan, coldly sober and dressed in a plain morning-dress, they looked like a crowd of revellers from a carnival. She glanced at Norman, but Norman was in a state of flamboyant hospitality. He and his guests, it appeared, had reached that pitch of gaiety in which the outer world has ceased to be anything more than the amusing details of a dream. They did not notice Joan and Edna, and Norman forgot to introduce them. He went to the table and began to fill glasses indiscriminately, mixing gin with sherry, and sherry with vermouth. Joan recognised one of the men, though she could not recall his name. The rest of the party was unknown to her. From time to time she glanced timidly at the two women. One was tall and slim, a woman no longer very young: everything about her—her smooth, dark hair, her oval face, skilfully made up, her plain, dark, perfectly fitting evening-dress—was a conscious work of art. Joan admired her, but she was afraid of her cold perfection. The other was much younger—a hard, brilliant creature, dressed in yellow, with magnificent auburn hair, very blue eyes, and a red mouth which looked too full-lipped and loose for her to control. She was in an excited, reckless state and kept glancing from one to another of the party, eager—too conscientiously eager—to respond to the hilarity that the occasion demanded.