Venus Over Lannery (21 page)

“DEAREST ROY,—Haven't I been good and left you all these months in peace, and haven't you punished me enough? Our long separation may be merely a blessed holiday for you, but it's killing me. Mayn't I see you sometimes, as seldom as you like, so long as it is not too seldom? Remember, you used to be happy with me sometimes. Why can't we be so again, if I promise, as I do, never to bother you, never to be angry and suspicious, and never to try to see you except when you have said I may? You see, I have kept away from you all these months because you insisted. Doesn't that prove that you can trust me now if you show me a little human kindness? Let me see you at least, and talk to you. I can't say how could I?—that that would be enough, but it would be something to keep me alive. Do what you like with me except force me never to see you: that I can't bear. I can't get you out of my mind and never shall. I would rather have you angry and cursing me than be cut off from you altogether.”

She read the letter carefully through. Surely that would move him: she herself had shed tears as she read it. If it didn't, he would be a monster.

She went out and posted it and from that moment she lived in a state of feverish expectancy. The postman's knock a few minutes after she had returned to the flat brought her heart to her mouth, though she knew that her letter still lay in the pillar-box into which she had dropped it. He would receive it to-morrow morning and, if he were to answer it at once, she would get it the same evening.

Juliet was at home next evening, and Daphne and she sat chatting and knitting jumpers. How soothing it was to knit and talk, as she could talk to Juliet, of the first thing that came into her head. She felt her fingers working, clicking the knitting-needles as regularly as clockwork, and she heard herself chattering like a machine that runs busily on, while her nerves waited on the
qui vive
for the postman's knock. It came at last, paralysing her knitting hands and freezing her into silence in the middle of a phrase. Juliet, who was nearer to the door, jumped up and went to get the letters, while Daphne waited, staring in front of her with that same expression on her face which Elsdon had seen, years ago at Lannery, staring into the drawing-room from the dark garden.

“One for me, that's all,” shouted Juliet, and a moment later she came back, opening her letter.

“Damn!” said Daphne.

“Sorry you've been trrroubled!” said Juliet

gaily in the manner of a telephone operator. “This is from Bill,” she went on. “It will be about the week-end.”

Daphne's heart sank. “You're going to be away?”

Juliet unfolded her letter. “It remains to be seen.”

“I shall probably be away too,” said Daphne, “with that devil Roy. But of course he hasn't written. You can always trust Roy to let you down.”

“A reliable young man!” said Juliet. “But I thought Roy was a thing of the past.”

Daphne raised her eyebrows. “Why on earth should you think so?”

“Well, my dear, I naturally assumed, when you took on Eric ...”

“O, Eric!” said Daphne with a cheerful laugh. “Eric was merely a little interlude.”

“So Roy's on again?”

“He's never been off,” said Daphne; “at least, not permanently off.”

Her little fiction about the week-end had comforted her and eased her mind. It was as if, by uttering it, she had given it reality. Juliet had accepted it and she herself almost felt that it was true. But another day came and went and there was no letter from Roy, and none came the following morning. By the midday post came a note from a woman for whom Daphne occasionally designed dresses, asking her to call and discuss a new one, and after she had had some lunch she set off and did not get back till evening. When she opened the door of
the flat a letter from Roy was lying on the hall floor.

She hurried to the sitting-room, switched on the light, flung herself into a chair, and, with trembling hands, tore open the envelope. The letter was addressed from Brighton.

“DEAR DAPHNE,” she read,—“It's no good. We have tried these reconciliations over and over again with the results that we both know. What is the use of starting again and having more rows and miseries? I'm sure you can't want that any more than I do. You remind me that we used to be happy sometimes. I know we were, but I know also how much more often we were unhappy. It's foolish to ignore facts, and the facts are that we're bad for each other, that we act like a poison on each other. You ask me if I haven't punished you enough, but I haven't the least wish to punish you. If I wanted to punish you I would ask you to come back. That, believe me, would be the worst punishment for both of us. I mean what I say and shall not change my mind.”

She lay back in her chair and closed her eyes. The defeat of the impossible hopes on which she had lived for the last few days had stunned her for the moment. She didn't weep: she felt as if she had no tears left to shed. Her heart was hard, empty, arid. Once again life had shown its hatefulness, its horrible injustice: it had refused her supreme demand and she had nothing left to live for. Then, like returning
consciousness, her hatred for Roy woke and began to stir. It was he who had brought her to these agonising straits. He knew she couldn't live without him, she had told him so in her letter, but what did he care? He hadn't so much as referred to it in his reply. No doubt he thought it was romantic nonsense. Very well, if he did, she would show him that he was mistaken.

It was after their last quarrel that she had first contemplated suicide. The interlude of Eric had diverted her mind from that absorbing idea, but now she returned to it. It would be a marvellous revenge. That at least would convince him of his brutality. She would heap reproaches on him and then, suddenly, before he could do anything to stop her, shoot herself before his eyes. But how was she to get a pistol or revolver or whatever the thing was that one shot oneself with? There would be some difficulty, she suspected, about that. Perhaps she had better think out some other way. She thought of the gas-oven in their little kitchen, but there was something commonplace and sordid about gas-ovens nowadays. The thought of the usual drab account in the newspapers flashed across her mind. No, she must choose some less vulgar way. She would poison or drown herself, leaving behind her a letter accusing him of having driven her to it. Yes, it would have to be one of the two, and she let her fancy play with the idea, imagining herself pouring drops into a glass and then screwing up her courage and drinking; and then the pause, waiting, waiting, looking for the
last time at all the things in her room in the horrible certainty that in a few minutes ... Or the heavy plunge into deep water, the water pouring in at her mouth and nose, the ghastly bursting sensation in her chest... Always, as the fancy began to take on those details of reality, she put it from her with a shudder. Until she actually did the thing, if she did decide to do it, she must not think about it at all. If she let it work on her imagination she would never bring herself to do it.

So she passed her days, in a state of morbid daydreaming broken by bursts of hilarious merriment when the arrival of Juliet or some other friend relieved her unendurable loneliness. Once again she had no work, and her craving for Roy and her hatred of him gnawed at her like a disease. Her mind was completely split in two: she longed to have him to herself again, to cling to him and devour him with kisses, and she longed to be revenged on him.

It was a quarter to three in the afternoon. At Lannery, Mrs. Dryden and Joan had finished lunch an hour ago and Joan had gone for a walk. Mrs. Dryden had been arranging flowers and was placing a vase of irises on a table near one of the windows in the drawing-room when she saw a car—a hired car, she thought—coming up the drive. She was not expecting a visitor and stood watching the car till it stopped at the front door and a young man got out. It was Norman. Without losing a moment she made for the bell, rang it and hurried out into the hall, where she waylaid Elizabeth. “Elizabeth,” she said. “Mr. Norman Gardner is at the door. He'll ring the bell in a moment. If he asks for Mrs. Gardner, tell him she's away and you don't know when she's coming back. Say that I'm at home and, if he asks to see me, show him into the drawing-room.”

At that moment the front-door bell rang and Elizabeth was on the point of going to answer it when Mrs. Dryden detained her. “One moment, Elizabeth! It's important that he should not see Mrs. Gardner, so, in case she comes back while
he's here, lock the front and side doors. Then she'll have to ring and you can tell her when you let her in. Say Mr. Gardner's with me in the drawing-room and she had better go to my study.”

Elizabeth hurried away to the front door and Mrs. Dryden stepped into the dining-room and stood listening. She heard footsteps, heard Elizabeth show someone into the drawing-room and then the shutting of the drawing-room door. Thereupon she emerged. “He wants to see me?”

“Yes, ma'am.”

“Don't forget to lock the doors and warn Mrs. Gardner.”

In the drawmg-room she found Norman standing with his back to the fire. He met her eyes with something less than his usual self-possession, but her smile and extended hand reassured him. They shook hands. “Do sit down, Norman,” said Mrs. Dryden, pointing to a chair and taking one herself.

Norman sat down. “I came, as a matter of fact, Mrs. Dryden,” he began nervously, “to see Joan, but I'm told she's not here. Would you tell me how I can get at her?”

“No, Norman, I can't do that,” Mrs. Dryden replied blandly. “Joan's solicitor has told her that she must not communicate with you except through him.”

Norman made a gesture of impatience. “But it's extremely urgent, Mrs. Dryden. I've something very important to tell her.”

“Then write at once to Joan's solicitor. You have his address, haven't you?”

“But surely ...?” he began, in pained expostulation. But Mrs. Dryden interrupted him.

“Listen, Norman,” she said, rising from her chair and standing with her elbow on the mantelpiece and one foot on the fender, “there is nothing you can tell her that will alter the course of things.”

He raised his eyebrows and smiled patiently. “But how can you know?”

“I know, because I know what her present frame of mind is. I know she's quite determined to divorce you.”

“I'm afraid,” he said, without acrimony, “you've been setting her against me—naturally perhaps.”

“No, Norman. I'll be quite honest with you. When Joan told me that you ... that she was thinking of divorcing you, I strongly advised her to do so because I was convinced that you were entirely unsuited to each other. You can hardly call that setting her against you; in fact, you might more accurately have called it reinforcing your own wishes, though, as far as I was concerned, that was an accident. No, I've done nothing to set her against you. On the other hand, you don't expect, I'm sure, that I'm going to plead your cause. With me, Joan's interests come first. That's why I refused just now to put you in touch with her, and why, if she had been here, I would not have allowed you to see her.”

“But would you have had any right to stop me?” Norman considered the point with a pensive frown.

“My dear boy,” said Mrs. Dryden, “surely you're not going to maintain that I'm compelled to let Tom, Dick and ... and Norman into my house whether I like it or not?”

They both laughed, and that cleared the atmosphere as Mrs. Dryden had intended that it should. She became serious again. “I feel sure you don't want to treat Joan unfairly.”

“But of course not,” Norman replied.

“Then,” said Mrs. Dryden, “you can prove that by leaving her alone.”

“But that's just what I don't want to do,” he exclaimed, “as you would understand, if. . .”

“You had no difficulty,” said Mrs. Dryden tartly, “in leaving her alone when you lived together.”

“Leaving her alone?” he said, amazed.

“Leaving her alone, I understand, almost every evening.”

“But, my dear Mrs. Dryden, that was her own choice.”

“I know that. But do you imagine, for all that, that she enjoyed it?”

Her eyes met his searchingly and he glanced away. “You've only heard one side, of course,” he replied; “but, believe me, there's something to be said on my side too.”

Mrs. Dryden nodded. “I'm sure there is, Norman, but not by you.”

He opened his hands. “If I don't say it, who will?”

“I will,” said Mrs. Dryden. “You can rely on
me to make every allowance for you. I understand very well what made it impossible for you and Joan to be happy together. I don't put all the blame on you. You were absolutely unsuited to one another.”

“Yes,” said Norman, “we were; but I'm sure we needn't be. It's precisely
that
I'm so anxious to see Joan about.” He paused, knit his brows and stared at his feet. He seemed to be trying to make up his mind. Then with a quick movement he raised his head and faced Mrs. Dryden with his most charming smile. “If you're really not prejudiced against me, Mrs. Dryden—and I believe you're not—I can trust you to help me in what I came to see Joan about.”

“You can trust me to consider the interests of you both,” she said, “though, as I've admitted to you already, I shall put Joan's first.”

“Yes, I quite recognise that,” he said; “in fact, I'm very glad you do.” He clasped his hands round his knees. “I want Joan to know that Pauline and I have separated. I want her to come back and make a new start. Pauline and I have discovered in time that... well, that. . .”

“That you're not suited to one another?”

“Yes,” he said, looking up at her eagerly.

Mrs. Dryden fixed her eyes on him with disconcerting penetration. “And which of you was it that made the discovery first?”