Chapter 22

"I had," Gilbert said, "but I didn't think he was going to let the life force catch hold of him. Close chap, Roger! He never gives himself away ... and that's the sort that's most romantic. You and I are obviously sloppy, Quinny, but somehow we miss all the messes that reticent, close chaps like Roger fall into. You don't much like her, do you?"

"Well, I'm not what you might call smitten by her, but that's because she seems to think I'm wasting time in writing novels. She's too strenuous for me. I like women who relax sometimes. She'll orate to him every night, just as she orated to us, about people's wrongs...."

"Mind, she's clever!" said Gilbert.

"Oh, I don't deny that. That's part of my case against her. Really and truly, Gilbert, do you like clever women?"

"Really and truly, Quinny, I don't. Perhaps that's not the way to put it. I like talking to clever women, but I shouldn't like to marry one of them. I'm clever myself, and perhaps that's why. There isn't room for more than one clever person in a family, and I think a clever man should marry an intelligently stupid woman, and vice versa. You can argue with clever women, but you can't kiss them or flirt with them. All the clever ones I've ever known have had something hard in them ... like a lump of steel. Men aren't like that! They can be hard, of course, but they aren't always exhibiting their hardness. Clever women are."

Henry tossed Marsh's letter across the table to Gilbert.

"Read that," he said, "while I look through the _Times_!"

They both rose from the table, and sat for a while in the armchairs on either side of the fireplace.

"You know, Quinny," said Gilbert, as he took Marsh's letter out of its envelope, "I often think we're awfully young, all of us!"

"Young?"

"Yes. Immature ... and all that. We're frightfully clever, of course, but really we don't know much, and yet you're writing books and I'm writing plays and Ninian's building Tunnels and Roger's playing ducks and drakes with the law ... and not one of us is thirty yet. Lord, I wish Roger hadn't got engaged. That sort of thing makes a man think!"

He read Marsh's letter and then passed it back to Henry.

"Seems all right," he said. "It's a pity those Irish fellows haven't got a wider outlook. Sitting there fussing over their mouldy island when there's the whole world to fuss over! I must be off soon. There's a rehearsal of my play this morning...."

"I say, Gilbert," Henry interrupted, "do you think I ought to go and join this Irish Renascence business?"

"How can I tell? It probably won't amount to much. I should take an intelligent interest in it, if I were you. Perhaps you can induce Marsh to come over and talk to the Improved Tories about it. What are you doing this morning?"

"Oh, working!"

"Well, so long!"

"So long, Gilbert. You'll be back to lunch, I suppose?"

"I don't think so. The rehearsals are very long now. You see, the play's to be done on Wednesday...."

2

When Gilbert had gone, Henry, having glanced through the _Times_, went up to his room and began to write, but he did not continue at his manuscript for very long. The words would not roll lightly off his pen: they fell off and lay inertly about the paper. He was accustomed now to periods during which his mind seemed to have lost its power to operate, and he was not alarmed by them. He knew that it was useless to attempt to do any work that morning, so he left his room and, telling Mrs. Clutters that he would not return to lunch, went out of the house and wandered about the streets for a while without any purpose. It was not until he saw the sign on a passing motor-'bus that he decided on what he should do. "Hyde Park Corner" was on the sign, and he called to the conductor and presently mounted to the roof of the 'bus and was driven towards the Park.

"I wonder," he thought to himself, "whether I shall see Lady Cecily to-day!"

Lady Cecily had curiously disappeared from their lives. Gilbert, absorbed in the production of his play, had not spoken of her again, nor had he made any mention of his proposal to leave London and go to Anglesey. He had resigned from the staff of the _Daily Echo_, and, since he no longer attended first-nights at the theatre, he had not seen Lady Cecily since the night on which "The Ideal Husband" was revived. Henry had said to himself on several occasions that he would go and see Lady Cecily, but he had not done so. He did not care to go alone, and he cared less to ask Gilbert to go with him ... but to-day, as suddenly as she had quitted his thoughts, Lady Cecily came into them again, and, as he sat on top of the omnibus, he hoped that he would see her in the Park. "If not," he said to himself, "I'll call on her this afternoon!"

He descended from the 'bus at Hyde Park Corner and hastily entered the Park. He crossed to the Achilles monument and debated with himself as to whether he should sit down or walk about, and decided to sit down. If Lady Cecily were in the Park, he told himself, she would pass his chair some time during the morning. He chose a seat near the railings and sat down and waited. There was a continual flow of carriages and cars, but none of them contained Lady Cecily, and when he had been sitting for almost an hour, he told himself that he was not likely to see her that morning. He rose, as he said this to himself, and turned to walk across the grass towards Rotten Bow, and as he turned, he saw Jimphy. He was not anxious to meet Jimphy again, and he pretended not to see him, but Jimphy came up to him, smiling affably, and said "Hilloa, Quinn, old chap!" so he had to be as amiable as he could in response to the greeting.

Jimphy wanted to know why it was that he and Henry had not met again since the night that "Cecily let a chap in for a damn play," and reminded him of their engagement to visit the Empire together. "Anyhow," he said, "you can come and lunch with us. Cecily'll be glad to see you. I said I'd come home to lunch if I could find some one worth bringing with me, so that's all right!"

"How is Lady Cecily?" Henry asked, as he and Jimphy left the Park together.

"Oh, I expect she's all right," Jimphy answered. "I forgot to ask this morning, but if she'd been seedy or anything she'd have told me about it, so I suppose she's all right!"

"When's this play of Farlow's coming on?" Jimphy asked on the doorstep of his house.

"Wednesday," Henry answered.

"Cecily's made me promise to go and see it with her. What sort of a piece is it?"

They entered the house as he spoke.

"It's excellent...."

"Is it comic?"

"Well, I suppose it is. He calls it a comedy," Henry said.

"So long as there's a laugh in it, I don't mind going to see it. I can't stand these weepy bits. 'Hamlet' and that sort of stuff. Enough to give a chap the pip! Oh, here's Cecily!"

Henry turned to look up the stairs down which Lady Cecily was coming, and then he went forward to greet her.

"How nice of you," she said. "Has Gilbert come, too?"

"No," he answered, chilled by her question. "He has a rehearsal this morning!"

"Oh, yes, of course," she said. "His play! I forgot. We're going to see it on Wednesday. I hope it's good!"

"It's very good," Henry replied.

3

Jimphy left them after lunch. He was awfully sorry, old chap, to have to tear himself away and all that, but the fact was he had an appointment ... an important appointment ... and of course a chap had to keep an important appointment....

"We'll forgive you, Jimphy!" Lady Cecily said, and then he went away, begging Henry to remember that they must go to the Empire together one night.

"Well?" said Lady Cecily when her husband had gone, "how are you all getting on?"

She was reclining on a couch, with her feet resting on a cushion, and as she asked her question she pointed to another cushion lying on a chair. He fetched it and put it behind her back.

"Splendidly," he answered. "Is that right?"

She settled herself more comfortably. "Yes, thanks," she said. "I read your novel," she went on.

"Did you like it?"

"Oh, yes. Of course, I liked it. I suppose you're writing another book now!" He nodded his head, and she went on. "I wish I could write books, but of course I can't. Mr. Lensley says I live books. Isn't that nice of him? Do you put real people in your books, or do you make them all up? Do you know, I think I'll have another cigarette!"

He passed the box of cigarettes to her and held it while she made up her mind whether she would smoke an Egyptian or a Turkish. Her delicate fingers moved indecisively from the one brand to the other. "You like Turkish, don't you?" he said, wishing that he could take her slender hand in his and hold it forever.

"Choose one for me," she said, capriciously, lying back and clasping her hands about her head.

He took a cigarette from the box and offered it to her, but she did not hold out her hand to take it, and he understood that he was to place it between her lips. His fingers trembled as he did so, and he turned hurriedly to find the matches.

"Behind you," she said, and he turned and picked them up.

He lit a match and held it to her cigarette, and while he held it, her fingers touched his. She had taken hold of the cigarette to remove it from her lips.... He blew out the light and threw the match into the ash-tray, and then went and sat down in the deep chair in which he had been sitting when she asked him to get the cushion for her.

"Why didn't you call before?" she said, lazily blowing the smoke up into the air.

It was difficult to say why he had not called before, so he answered vaguely. There had been so much to do of late....

"And Gilbert? He doesn't rehearse all day long, does he?"

"No, not all day, but he's pretty tired by the time he gets home."

"Why didn't he come to the Savoy that night?" she asked.

He wished she would not talk about Gilbert. He could not tell her the real reason why Gilbert had not kept his promise to join the supper-party and he was a poor hand at inventing convincing lies.

"There was some trouble at his office, I think," he said, "and he couldn't get away until too late!..."

"He didn't write or come to see me!" she protested.

It was probable that Gilbert forgot his duty in the excitement of hearing that his play was to be produced....

"I suppose so," she said.

She talked to him about his books and about Ireland. She had been to Dublin once and had gone to the Viceregal Lodge ... Lady Dundrum had taken her to some function there ... and she was eager for the tittle-tattle of the Court. Was it true that Lord Kelpie was indifferent to his lady?... Henry knew very little of the Dublin gossip. "I haven't been there since I left Trinity," he said, in explanation, "and the only people who write to me don't take any interest in Court functions!"

He rose to go, but she asked him to stay to tea with her, and so he remained.

"I don't suppose any one will call," she said, "but in case ..."

She told a servant that she was "not at home" to any one, and Henry, wondering why she had done so, felt vaguely flattered and as vaguely nervous. Her beauty filled him with desire and apprehension and left him half eager, half afraid to be alone with her. He understood Gilbert's fear that if he yielded to Cecily, she would destroy him. There was something in this woman that overpowered the senses, that made a man as will-less as a log, and left him in the end, spent, exhausted, incapable. He saw the danger that had frightened Gilbert, but he could not make up his mind to run away from it. There was something so exquisitely sensual in her look as she lay on the couch, looking at him and chattering in the Lensley style, that he felt inclined to yield himself to her, even if in yielding he should lose everything.

"Of course," he said to himself, "this is all imagination. She doesn't want me at all ... she wants Gilbert!"

She asked for another cigarette, and he took one and placed it in her lips and lit it for her, and again his fingers touched hers, and again he trembled with unaccountable emotion. As he bent over her, holding the match to the cigarette, he felt the blood rushing to his head and for a moment or two his eyes were blurred and he could not see clearly. Then his eyes cleared and he saw that she was looking steadily at him, and he knew that she understood what was passing in his mind. He dropped the match on to the ash-tray and bent a little nearer to her. He would take her in his arms, he said to himself, and hold her tightly to him....

"Won't you sit down," she said, pointing to his chair.

He straightened himself, but did not move away. His eyes were still intent on hers, as if he could not avoid her gaze, and for a while neither of them spoke or moved. Then she smiled at him.

"You're a funny boy," she said. "Won't you sit down!" and again she pointed to the chair.

His answer was so low that he could hardly hear himself speak, and at first he thought she had not heard him. "I'd better go," he said.

"Not yet," she answered. "You needn't go yet!"

"I'd better...."

She put out her hand and made him sit down.

"There's no hurry," she said.

He leant back in his chair, resting his elbows on the arms of it and folding his fingers under his chin.

"You look frightened," she said.

"I am," he answered.

"Of me?" He nodded his head, and she laughed. "How absurd!" she said. "I'm not a bit terrifying...."

He was not trembling now. He felt quite calm, as if he had resigned himself to what must be.

"No, I ... I know you're not," he said, "only ..."

"Only what?"

"I don't know!"

She put her cigarette down and turned slightly towards him.

"Funny boy!" she said. "Funny Irish boy!"

He smiled foolishly at her, but did not answer. He knew that if he spoke at all, he would say wild things that could not be withdrawn or explained away.

"Funny scared Irish boy!" she said, and he could see the mockery in her eyes. "Such a frightened Irish boy!..."

He could hold out no longer. She had put her hand out towards him ... why he could not tell ... and impulsively he seized it and clasped it tightly in his. His grasp must have hurt her, for she cried a little and tried to withdraw her hand, but he would not let go his hold of it until, kneeling beside her, he had put his arms about her and kissed her.

"I love you," he said. "You know I love you...."

"Don't!"

"I loved you the minute I set eyes on you, and I wanted to meet you again ... and then I was jealous of Gilbert because you took so much notice of him and so little of me, and ... I love you, I love you!"

She thrust him from her. "You're hurting me," she said, and she panted as she spoke.

"I want to hurt you," he answered.

"But you mustn't...."

He did not let her finish her sentence. He pressed his lips hard on hers until his strength seemed to pass away from him. He felt in some strange way that her eyes were closed and that she was moaning....

He put his arms about her again, and drew her head gently on to his breast. "My dear," he said softly, bending over her and kissing her hair.

She lay very still in his arms, so still that he thought she had fallen asleep. Her long lashes trembled a little, and then she opened her eyes, sighing contentedly as she did so. He smiled down at her, and she smiled in response. Then she put her hand up and stroked his cheek and ruffled his hair.

"Funny Irish boy!" she said again.

4

He climbed on to a 'bus which bore him eastwards. It was impossible, in his state of exaltation, to go home and eat in the company of the others. Ninian would probably be back from Southampton, unbalanced with admiration for Tom Arthurs and the _Gigantic_, and then Gilbert would tell him how Sir Geoffrey Mundane had behaved during the rehearsal and how exasperating Mrs. Michael Gordon, the leading lady, had been. "She's brilliant, of course," he had said about her once, "but if I were her husband I'd beat her!" He could not endure the thought of spending the evening in the customary company of his friends. They would want to talk, they would draw him into the conversation, and he neither wished to talk nor to listen. His desire was only to remember, to go over again in his mind that long, passionate afternoon with Cecily.... So he had telephoned to Mrs. Clutters telling her that he would not be in to dinner, and then, climbing on to a 'bus, had allowed himself to be carried eastwards, not knowing or caring whither he was being carried.

He paid no heed to the other passengers on the 'bus, nor did he interest himself in the traffic of the streets. When the conductor came, demanding fares, he asked for a ticket to the terminus, but did not bother to ask where the terminus was. His mind was full of golden hair and warm, moist lips and soft, disturbing perfume and the touch of a shapely hand. Cecily had insisted on calling him "Paddy" because he was Irish and because so many Englishmen are called "Henry," and when he had left her, she had offered her lips to him and, when he had kissed her, had told him she would see him again soon. "When Gilbert's play is done," she said, and added, "Tell Gilbert I shall expect him to come and talk to me after the first act!"

He had been jealous when she said that. "You don't really care for me," he had said. "You really love Gilbert!"

"Of course I love Gilbert," she had answered, laughing at him and patting his cheek, "but I love you, too. I love lots of people! ..."

Then, ashamed of himself, he had left her. It was caddish of him to speak of Gilbert to her, for Gilbert was his friend and her lover. If one were to try and take a friend's mistress from him, one should at least be silent about it. But how could he help these outbursts of jealousy! He cared for Gilbert far more than he cared for any man ... but he could not prevent himself from raging at the thought that Gilbert had but to hold out his arms and Cecily would run to be clasped in them. "I'm a makeshift," he said to himself. "That's all!"

But even if he were only a makeshift, that was better than being shut away from her love altogether. "I daresay," he thought, "she's as fond of me as she is of any one!" and he wondered whether she really loved Gilbert. It was difficult for him to believe that she could yield so easily to him and love Gilbert deeply, and he soothed his conscience by telling himself that Cecily was one of those women who are in love with love, ready to accept kisses from any ardent youth who offers them to her. He remembered his contribution to the discussion on women and the way in which he had insisted on infinite variety of experiences. Cecily was, as a woman, what he had wished to be as a man. We had to recognise the differences of nature, he had said, but somehow he did not greatly care to see his principle put into practice by Cecily. There was something very fine and dashing and Byronic and adventurous in a man with a spacious spirit, but after all, women were women, and one did not like to think of adventuring women. He wanted to have Cecily to himself ... he did not wish to share her with Gilbert or with Jimphy or with any one, and it hardly seemed decent that Cecily should wish to spread her affections over three men. "And there may be others, too!" All this talk about sex-equality had an equitable sound ... his intellect agreed that if men were to have amorous adventures, then women should have them too; if men were to be unfaithful without reproach, then women should be equally without reproach in their infidelity ... but his instinct cried out against it. He wanted his woman to himself even though he might not keep himself for her alone.

"And that's the beginning and the end of the sex-question," he said. "We simply aren't willing to let women live on our level. In theory, the man who goes to a prostitute is as bad as she is, but in practice, we don't believe it, and women don't believe it either, and nothing will ever make us believe it. And it's the same with lovers and mistresses. It simply doesn't seem decent to a man who keeps a mistress that his wife should have a lover. You can't help having instincts!..."

5

The 'bus drove over London Bridge and presently he found himself in the railway station. It was too early yet to eat, and he made up his mind to go for a walk through Southwark. None of them had ever been in the slums. They had set their minds against suggestions that they should live in Walworth or Whitechapel or Bethnal Green in order that they might get to know something of the lives of the very poor. "That's simply slush," Gilbert had said. "We shouldn't live like them. We'd have four good meals every day and baths every morning, and we'd only feel virtuous and 'smarmy' and do-good-to-the-poor-y. My object is to get rid of slums, not to go and live in the damn things and encourage slum-owners by paying rent regularly. All those Settlement people ... really, they're doing the heroic stunt for their own ends. They'll go into parliament and say they have intimate knowledge of the way in which the poor live because they've lived with them ... and it's all my eye, that stuff!"

The notion had made a faint appeal to Henry, but he had not responded to it because of the way in which the others had sneered at it and because he liked pleasant surroundings. Once, in Dublin, he had wandered out of St. Stephens's Green and found himself in the Combe, and the sights he had witnessed there had sickened him so that he had hurried away, and always thereafter had been careful not to enter side streets with which he was not familiar. Now, he felt that he ought to see a London slum. One had to have a point of view about poor people, and it was difficult to have a point of view about people of whom one was almost totally ignorant.

He walked slowly up the Borough High Street, uncertain of himself and of the district. He would want something to eat presently, and if he were to venture too far into the slums that lay hidden behind St. George's Church and the Elephant, he might have difficulty in finding a place where he could take a meal in comfort. He stood for a few moments outside the window of a shop in which sausages and steaks and onions were being fried. There was a thick, hot, steamy odour coming from the door that filled him with nausea, and he turned to move away, but as he did so, he saw two sickly boys, half naked, standing against the window with their mouths pressed close to the glass. They were eyeing the cooking food so hungrily that he felt pity for them, and he touched one of them on the shoulder and asked him if he would like something to eat. The boy looked at him, but did not answer, and his companion came shuffling to his side and eyed him too.

"Wouldn't you like some of that ... that stuff!" Henry said, pointing to a great slab of thick pudding, padded with currants.

One of the boys nodded his head, and Henry moved towards the door of the shop, bidding them both to follow him.

"Give these youngsters some of that pudding!" he said to the man behind the counter: a fat, flaccid man with a wet, steamy brow which he periodically wiped with a grimy towel.

"'Ere!" said the man, cutting off large pieces of the pudding and passing it across the counter to the boys who took it, without speaking, and began to gnaw at it immediately.

"Wod you say for it, eih?" the man demanded.

They mumbled unintelligibly, their mouths choked with the food.

"Pore little kids, they don't know no better! Nah, then, 'op it, you two! That'll be fourpence, sir!"

Henry paid for the pudding and left the malodorous shop. The children were standing in the shadow outside, one of them eating wolfishly, while the other held the pudding in front of him, gaping at it....

"Don't you like it?" Henry said, bending down to him.

"'E can't eat it, guv'nor!" the other boy said.

"Can't eat it?"

"No, guv'nor, 'e can't. I'll 'ave to eat it for 'im...."