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_Title:_ Recapture the Moon
_Date of first publication:_ 1937
_Author:_ Sylvia Thompson (1902-1968)
_Date first posted:_ June 13, 2026
_Date last updated:_ June 13, 2026
Faded Page eBook #20260627

This eBook was produced by: Al Haines, John Routh & the online
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                          [Cover Illustration]

                          _By_ SYLVIA THOMPSON

                          THE HOUNDS OF SPRING
                       THE BATTLE OF THE HORIZONS
                             CHARIOT WHEELS
                          PORTRAIT BY CAROLINE
                             SUMMERS NIGHT
                          UNFINISHED SYMPHONY
                            BREAKFAST IN BED
                            A SILVER RATTLE
                          THIRD ACT IN VENICE
                           RECAPTURE THE MOON




                               RECAPTURE
                                THE MOON

                                   By
                            SYLVIA THOMPSON



                                 BOSTON
                       LITTLE, BROWN AND COMPANY
                                  1937




              COPYRIGHT 1937, BY LITTLE, BROWN AND COMPANY

                ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, INCLUDING THE RIGHT
                   TO REPRODUCE THIS BOOK OR PORTIONS
                          THEREOF IN ANY FORM

                             FIRST EDITION

                        _Published August 1937_


                    THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY PRESS BOOKS
                            ARE PUBLISHED BY
                       LITTLE, BROWN AND COMPANY
                          IN ASSOCIATION WITH
                      THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY COMPANY


                PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA




           This book is dedicated to Ozzy and Freddy, and to
           Betty Morey, in remembrance of all the fun we had
          at Egremont (in spite of it); and in celebration of
              all the things we mean to do (because of it)




                                 PART I


Bianca said, “When you come back, Richard . . .”

But whatever she would have said (she had had a far-off blurred vision
of a house in green country) was stifled again; because, again, holding
her closer in his arms, he set his grave, desperate lips on hers.

And it was better, anyway, she felt, not to have to speak; or not too
much. For during a sentence the pain in her heart pushed its way up,
pressed up her chest, up her throat, and, suddenly hardening the muscles
of her mouth, made it impossible for her to go on speaking.

She wouldn’t look at the little clock again—her new little gold-faced
clock beside the bed, that his mother had sent her as a wedding present.

They sat down on the stiff green plush sofa holding hands.

How could they ever let go each other’s hands? Whatever the clock said,
whatever time or trains or “leave” or “France” meant, how could she lose
the cool, hard, so real sense of his fingers holding hers?

But—“You must have some coffee. Let me pour you out some coffee?”

He said, “I think you look even lovelier in the morning.” As if this
morning, coming in, sunlit, to them through the immense lace curtains of
the Grosvenor Hotel, were no worse than an innocent attendant of her
loveliness.

She poured out the coffee, steadily, into both cups.

“—Like the girl in _Love in the Valley_,” he said.

She knew, by now, that he took saccharine with coffee, and none with
tea. She said:—

“I wish we had known each other always.” They were nineteen now, and had
only met a year ago, and so had wasted eighteen years.

The stiff pain came up her throat again. Turning her face away, she saw
the clock.

He said, “Drink your coffee, darling.”

They sat close with linked arms so that he had to hold his cup with his
left hand.

“What a jolly day,” he said. “I’d hate it much more if it was raining.”

She nodded. But she knew that it couldn’t be worse. Nothing could ever
be so bad as this. Nothing. Ever. She got her voice steady.

“What beastly coffee! Isn’t it?”

“Like all English coffee! But when we have our real honeymoon we’ll go
to Paris and stay at the Crillon and have perfect coffee, and I’ll take
you to Worth, like a proper husband, and buy you ten new frocks!”

The sun shone through the lace curtains on to his face, which looked
pallid above his khaki and under its familiar khaki freckles.

Every time she looked at him she saw him with her heart. And this acute
bright seeing hurt her, as if the process of emotional photography were
in itself painful. She felt his brown clear eyes, black-lashed under the
plump childlike eyelids; his sweet wide mouth; his square chin; the
lifted nostrils in his stubby nose. She felt his smile, and the boyish
whiteness of his teeth, and the funny jutting of his chin when he said
“proper husband.” And because she felt so sharply, because, as he spoke,
his hair curved up brown-gold from the heavy innocence of his forehead,
and his look rested on her, serious and marveling, she gave a silly
agonized little cry of, “But you _are_ a proper husband”—and then,
rattling down her cup, turned so to look and look into his face that it
should fill her whole heart. She said, “You mustn’t ever be different.
Darling, darling, I don’t want you ever to be different—” And he was
saying that he loved her; that nothing could ever change their loving
each other; saying, his eyes darkening (or was it her heart growing
dark—her courage growing dark?), “Nothing can ever be lovelier than
these last days. If we live for a hundred years nothing in the world
will ever be more unbelievably lovely—”

She said something—his name. “Richard—Richard, my dear—” She shut her
eyes. (She mustn’t cry, mustn’t cry, _mustn’t cry_!) His cheek was hard
and warm against hers, and his voice thick and soft and urgent telling
her that it wouldn’t be very long, it couldn’t be very long, before they
were together again. He said, “Bianca, my darling,” and, “When I come
back and it’s all over . . .”

She said, “I shall come on to the platform and see you into the train
and then I shall go away. I shan’t wait.”

“No, my sweet, don’t wait and say good-bye.”

And then, abruptly, violently, their limbs chilled, their pulses racing,
their vision dark and shivering, they caught each other close; caught
and held each other.

“Bianca.”

“Richard . . .”

“Darling . . .”

“My dearest.”

                 *        *        *        *        *

Carteret Cable came out of the dining room carrying the _Times_ and
found his niece in the hall.

“Hello, Bianca. Good morning.” He remembered at the sight of her luggage
that Violet had told him that she had invited “poor little Bianca” to
stay. He saw that Harvey was going out to pay the taxi. Bianca never had
change. This morning she seemed more vague than usual. Her beauty
prevented his being annoyed with her. So he spoke sharply to the butler.

“Threepence will be enough tip, Harvey.”

“Very well, m’lord.”

Harvey went out to the taxi with an inward expression on his pontifical
face. Carteret knew that he was giving the man sixpence all the same.

“I suppose you’ve just been seeing Richard off?” Violet had told him
that too. For his wife kept him informed about other people’s lives, in
which he was not spontaneously interested. But when she had told him the
facts he remembered them accurately. Thus he knew that Bianca, who had
married young Selwyn a week ago, had come back to London yesterday from
her honeymoon; that Selwyn had gone back to France this morning; and
that Bianca was to stay with them for a few days, and then go to
Harrogate and join her mother. (He never thought of Bianca’s mother
without a passing resentment at her impulsiveness. Although she was his
wife’s sister, she was totally different in character. Violet was
neither impulsive nor interested in health.)

“Have you had breakfast, Bianca?”

She took in what he said, and then answered:—

“Yes, thank you.”

“Where?”

“At the Grosvenor Hotel.”

“Were you comfortable there?”

“Yes. Thank you.”

“Well, then, you’d better go up to your room, hadn’t you?” It worried
him, her standing still and not noticing that Nicholls, the parlormaid,
was trying to take her little dressing bag from her. “You know the room,
don’t you? I don’t think Violet’s awake yet . . .”

“Thank you.”

“I don’t know where the deuce Frany is,” he burst out, for her absent
manner annoyed him. “Frany! _Frany!_”

“I believe Miss Drake has gone up to her ladyship,” said Harvey.

Carteret snapped out: “Well, then, tell her at once that Mrs. Selwyn has
arrived.” He turned on his heel, crossed the hall, his quick steps
alternately tapping the rugs and beating the marble, and disappeared,
carrying the _Times_, into the cloakroom beyond the lift.

As he vanished Frany was coming down the staircase carrying the letter
basket and accompanied, at the trailing folds of her skirt, by a
Pekinese.

“I was just about to telephone up to you, miss!” said Harvey.

“Mrs. Selwyn’s room,” said Frany to Nicholls, “is Number 5. See that her
luggage is taken up now.” She came down rapidly but imperturbably into
the hall. “Good morning, Bianca.”

“Oh, _Frany_,” said Bianca. There was relief in merely seeing Frany as
she had always been, ever since Bianca could remember: her brown,
inscrutable, crooked features; her black eyes; her swept-back white-grey
hair; her spotless high-collared shirt strained down over her big
shoulders and stately bosom to her belted waist. She kissed the brown
cheek that smelt (as it always had) of almond soap.

“A tray of coffee and fruit is being sent up to your room,” said Frany.
“Alice has put a hot-water bottle on the chaise longue, and one of your
aunt’s dressing gowns. When the orders are given, and an agent has been
interviewed in the matter of a concert in which your aunt is interested,
I will come up and see that you are comfortable! . . . Come here,
Thunder!” she said to the Pekinese. “Those hydrangeas were not put there
for the convenience of little dogs! . . . Your aunt,” she added, as
Bianca stepped into the lift, “will see you at luncheon. And I have
asked Mademoiselle to tell Charmian to let you rest.”

                 *        *        *        *        *

Number 5, a room at the top of the house in Portland Place, had often
been Bianca’s. A white-paneled, low-ceilinged room, with two windows
curtained in rose-and-white chintz, a faded green Wilton carpet, and a
mixed company of Louis XV furniture discarded by her aunt and Victorian
pieces inherited by her uncle.

Alice was putting the brass can of hot water on the washstand. (Lord
Cable disapproved of fitted basins.)

“Good morning, madam.” Alice had been in the church, in the gallery of
St. George’s, and seen Miss Bianca married. “I’ll fetch your tray at
once, madam.”

“Thank you, Alice.” There was an imprecise relief in Alice’s
mauve-and-white print dress and her banana-yellow hair, parted in the
middle under her cap. Alice was Harvey’s daughter and had entered
service with the Cables when she left school.

Bianca put her hat and coat on the dressing stool. Her “going away” hat
and coat. Her aunt’s dressing gown, a familiar white Roman satin one
with net frills, was laid out on the bed. There seemed no sense in
“lying down”; for how could lying down (that eternally prescribed
panacea of older women) help?

Perhaps Frany would come up soon.

And now Alice came back with the tray, and set it on the low table
beside the chaise longue, and said:—

“Shall I unfasten your dress, madam?” It was a navy-blue dress, matching
the coat, and fastening at the back.

“Thank you, Alice.”

When she put on the dressing gown, its scentiness made Bianca feel that
she ought to go to her aunt’s room and acknowledge her person as well as
her hyacinthine fragrance. But Alice drew the blinds half down, and set
all the little lace and net-covered cushions ready, and when Bianca laid
her head back against them she asked, glancing respectfully at Bianca’s
face and then, anxiously, at the tray, whether there was anything else
she could get? Whether she couldn’t get her any cream? (For the Cables
had cream, even in 1918, sent up from the Home Farm at Moon’s Green.)

“No, thank you, Alice. No cream.” (But it was upsettingly sweet to feel
what Alice wanted to say by suggesting cream.)

“How’s your brother, Alice?”

“He’s still at Aldershot, thank you, miss . . . madam, I mean.”

“I’m glad.”

“Thank you, madam.”

Alice went: her print rustling, the door whispering shut.

The ceiling was cool grey in shadows; the carpet by the window
lawn-green in squares of sunlight—the same sunlight that had come in
through the windows of the Grosvenor Hotel an hour ago.

There was a knock at the door.

“Come in!”

It was Callendar, her aunt’s maid.

“Her ladyship wishes to know if you would care to come with her to the
matinée at the Palladium this afternoon.”

“Tell her I’d like to, very much.”

“Very well, madam.” Callendar went with a tired momentary little smile.
She never, as Bianca knew, “had a moment” in the mornings. For her
aunt’s process of getting up had the elaboration of a levee, and the
routine yet subdued panic of a fire drill.

On the tray the breakfast set, a fluted thin china with rosebuds on it,
was the one she had liked best ever since she was a little girl and came
to stay and to go to the pantomime with her cousins, Charmian and Peter,
and was allowed the next morning to have her breakfast in her room. The
little set belonged to a time when she hadn’t known Richard; and her
complex moment of affection for it made him, for a second, unreal.

Frany knocked and came in, a Pekinese under one arm.

“Your lady aunt,” she said, “has decided that although Mrs. Elyot is the
housekeeper, she is not the right person to stand in the queue for
margarine. Harvey, she says, is too old, and Nicholls refuses.
‘Therefore,’ says your lady aunt, ‘Alice is the person to do it.’ I have
pointed out certain objections. But your aunt will not listen to me.”

Bianca thought, “Richard _must_ meet Frany.”

(“Why _Frany_?” he’d asked. “Francis Drake . . . Frany’s short and
endearing for Francis. But her real name’s Julia . . . not Francis at
all.”)

“You know Aunt Violet always listens to you in the end.”

Frany never replied to even the most incidental sort of compliment. This
was not because she was humble, but because she had a complete
self-respect, hard won by herself from her own judgment. Therefore other
people’s opinions, however pleasing or prejudiced, were irrelevant.

“It is unsuitable,” said Frany, straightening her tie before the glass,
and adjusting the silver buckle of her belt, “that Alice should stand in
a queue. Any sort of waiting about is demoralizing for a young girl. And
there are other reasons—of health. I do not mention to your aunt that
the Panel doctor forbids Alice to stand more than is necessary. Your
aunt does not wish to be told that servants have guts.” Frany dealt
imperturbably with language, as with facts.

“Couldn’t the Boy go?” The Boy was an odd-man: a more than
sixty-year-old inhabitant of the village at Moon’s Green, who had been a
beater until the War, and had then come “into the house” to replace a
younger man. When the Cables came up to Portland Place, he came in the
van with the first lot of flowers and vegetables.

Frany picked up Lightning, who had jumped on Bianca’s feet. “The Boy is
afraid of air raids. While he is in London he does not leave the
basement. I am told, by Harvey, he has bought a gas mask and that it
will not fit over his beard. Your cousin Ruth also”—Frany referred to
the Cables’ youngest daughter—“does not enjoy the air raids. She is
therefore down at Moon’s Green with Miss Faber.”

“Oh.” Bianca wasn’t interested in her cousin Ruth, who, at fifteen, was
manifestly a budding Englishwoman of the moneyed class—complacent and
hard-voiced, with sharp eyes, a stupid heart, and a conventional passion
for dogs.

“Peter went back to Eton a fortnight ago.”

Bianca still had a sense of her childhood solidarity with Peter, as with
Charmian.

A knock at the door. Callendar again. “Excuse me, miss—forgive me,
madam!—but her ladyship says, miss, did you order the motor for
ten-thirty instead of eleven?”

Frany’s brown features became more than usually inscrutable. Her black
eyes rested on Callendar. She spoke tranquilly and incisively:—

“The motor is ordered for ten-thirty. Tell her ladyship so. Tell her
also that I am coming.”

When Callendar had gone Frany said, “The last years at Moon’s Green have
been trying for your aunt. We have twice as many convalescents at the
Lodge—and the recent ones are not always sahibs. Thus we have certain
difficulties. Your aunt is nervous and worried. Exert yourself with her
this afternoon.”

“Is she worried about Charmian?”

“That. And other matters. But now rest.”

Charmian came after midday. She came in on tiptoe lest her cousin might
be asleep.

“Oh, Bianca darling.”

Charmian, by the rules of Portland Place and the traditions of Moon’s
Green, was still “in the schoolroom.” She was seventeen. She had shining
bobbed hair, dark blue eyes, and a lovely nervous mouth.

She threw her long arms round Bianca.

“What _can_ I do for you, Banky? Are you feeling too beastly for words?”

“It’s just the first going back—” said Bianca. “Once he’s there, and we
can write . . .”

“Yes. That helps,” said Charmian. “That does help. And you’ll probably
get your first letter from him, well, the day after to-morrow?”

“Yes,” said Bianca. She touched Charmian’s inky fingers. “Have you been
working all morning?”

“Mm . . . Ever since I kicked over ‘Heathfield,’ Mother’s had me driven
like a galley slave.” Charmian pulled a cushion on to the floor. Her
long limbs folded down on it like a puppy. “Oh, Bianca,” she said, “you
_do_ look marvelous and like the lily maid of Astolat. I cried buckets
and _swimming_ pools last week at the wedding. Peter and I cried
together; only he just blew his nose. You _looked_ like two people
walking into Heaven—you and Richard— Darling, how stupid of me to talk
like that now.” Her arm sprawled out across Bianca’s knees. “Only, you
know, it _will_ be over soon! Even Father says so! And two nights ago
when there were about a dozen Brass Hats dining here, and I was allowed
to come down, they were _all_ saying it would be over soon.” Charmian
spoke eagerly, her eyes azure, her head thrown back, her breath coming
and going quickly. There was a vital and fiery innocence about her which
often made Bianca wonder how her cousin would endure the future planned
for her by Violet Cable: a future summed up in “making the right sort of
marriage.”

“How’s Mademoiselle?” Bianca asked, perfunctorily, to escape thinking.

“She’s a darling, really. She tries to buff between Mummie and me.”

“Does she still read Thomas Aquinas when she can’t sleep?”

“More than ever. She’s worried stiff about her brother. They haven’t
heard now for two months.”

“Poor thing,” said Bianca.

There was no escape from thinking.

“What are you doing this afternoon?”

“The Palladium matinée with your mother.”

“_Oh!_” Even the smallest of Charmian’s disappointments were real. “You
couldn’t come and have tea in the schoolroom—when you come back?”

“I’ll try to. Anyway, I’ll come up afterwards if Aunt Violet lets me.”

“She will if she doesn’t realize that I want you.” Charmian flushed.
“How beastly I am about her!”

“She is difficult.” When Bianca was away from her aunt she saw her,
coolly, as a worldly woman without feelings. But in her company, she was
impressed by her worldliness and made nervous by her hardness.

“Yes, but so am _I_ difficult,” exclaimed Charmian. “And Mother’s so
pretty.” She added—“I wish you’d seen her last night, when she and
Daddy were going out.”

                 *        *        *        *        *

Violet Cable faced her own reflection, and with it, in the sense of
being occasioned by it, a doubt.

The doubt was about herself.

She had never had this kind of doubt before, because she had never
before questioned her own rightness. She had lived for forty-eight years
in full assurance, not only of her own prettiness, cleverness, and
ability, but especially of her rightness. She had been subject to none
of the natural checks to arrogance that may come with time, such as the
death of those she loved, or poverty, or illness, or even a habit of
combining experience with introspection. She had never been
introspective. Though she had never been happy she had never felt acute
unhappiness. As to her inner self, she had been chiefly concerned in
relieving, by successes and pleasures, that grumbling _malaise_ of the
soul which attacks the egoist.

But now, in the autumn of 1918, at quarter to one on an October morning,
sitting before her mirror and seeing her small face and blue-rinsed
curls shaded by the new hat from Reboux, she was introspective; and she
doubted.

The doubt hurt her.

But Violet Cable wasn’t a coward. And she was by character persistent.
So, having begun her doubt, she went on with it, in spite of its
increasing discomfort, which, for the strangest moment, as she drew off
her gloves, brought tears to her eyes.

She was still wondering, as Callendar came and took the gloves and her
furs, whether she had been wrong (so strangely sudden, the way he came
up to her before dinner, last night)—wrong about Lionel Cary
twenty-five years ago?

Callendar gave her her bag.

Bianca came in.

“Good morning, Aunt Violet.”

“Good morning, Bianca.”

Violet rose, slender but stiff. Bianca kissed her.

“Richard went off this morning early, I hear.”

“Yes, Aunt Violet.”

“Luncheon is at one, and we have to leave immediately afterwards.”

In mentioning luncheon Violet Cable felt her mind grasp normality again.
Her spirits grew clearer in anticipation of food. She was always hungry
for luncheon, for she ate no breakfast.

Followed by Bianca, she crossed the landing and entered the lift. “How
is Josephine?” she asked, as they descended slowly through the body of
the house.

“Mother’s enjoying her cure.”

“She always does,” said Violet. She added irritably, “She enjoys
everything.”

Glancing at Bianca, and mistaking her inattention for acquiescence, she
thought how tiresome it was that Josephine should have a daughter like
Bianca, with so much poise, while she, Violet, should have produced
Charmian.

It didn’t occur to her (though this had been clear even to young Richard
Selwyn’s immature and emotional perceptions of his wife) that Bianca’s
“poise” was a defense and that she was essentially as nervous and
unbalanced as Charmian was excitable and rebellious.

And of what was essential in them both, of their good and serious and
sensitive qualities, Violet Cable had no understanding at all.

                 *        *        *        *        *

Once, during luncheon, Bianca was able to stop thinking about Richard
and reënforce her conversation with her neighbor, Trevor Topham, an
elderly novelist, by real interest.

He was a friend of Lord Cable’s and Bianca had met him before, both at
Portland Place and down at Moon’s Green. He was stoat-faced, and full of
willfully scandalous little anecdotes. (Frany referred to him as “the
Eunuch.”) While the port was being handed round he said:—

“Once we’ve got these damned—ha!—excuse me, Lady
Cable!—these—er—Huns down we ought to _grind their faces in the
dust_.”

The sense of the remark was a commonplace of the moment; the metaphor
hackneyed, even for a popular novelist. But what roused Bianca was the
zest with which he added, “And we jolly well oughtn’t to stop fighting
until we’ve got them on their knees.”

“Hear, hear!” said Aunt Violet, peeling a peach. The grapes and peaches
at Moon’s Green had suffered little under the care of a lady head
gardener. The heat had been maintained through secret supplies of coal
sent down in one of the Cable-Bensley trucks from Staffordshire.

“True. That’s the stuff to give them, Toppy! You ought to write an
article on the subject in the _Mail_.”

“Of course you ought,” said Violet. “It all helps to give a lead.”

Bianca turned to him and made such a schoolgirlish remark that everyone,
except Frany, thought she was trying to be amusing.

“You deserve a V.C., Mr. Topham.”

He gruffled and showed his two long front teeth.

“I don’t—er—flatter myself, Mrs. Selwyn!”

Frany caught Bianca’s eye. Frany frowned. She knew how Bianca’s temper
could break through suddenly. Frany held Bianca’s look.

Bianca’s hand trembled as she took a cigarette from the American staff
officer who was sitting on her right. She had talked to him through the
earlier half of luncheon without realizing him at all.

Now he was lighting the cigarette for her, and asking her if she knew
the Scheurers, with whom he had lately lunched, in Paris.

“Oh, yes,” said Bianca. “I’ve met him here quite often.” She added,
vaguely conscious of kindliness coming from this big, stubby-nosed,
clear-eyed man: “Scheurers and Cables are affiliated in some way.”

The American smiled, showing white teeth in his cinnamon-colored face.

“‘Some way’ is a pretty good piece of understatement!” he remarked. Then
he said with his attractive enthusiasm, “I liked them. The Madame
Scheurer struck me as a sweet woman, under all her Faubourg-St.-Germain
manners—And that boy of theirs impressed me _very_ much! The boy that’s
in the _Aviation_.”

“Louis?”

“Yes. I liked him no end. Sort of sensitive, but with plenty of guts. He
was back on leave when I met him.”

Bianca was thinking about Richard. But she said:—

“I only met Louis Scheurer once. I thought him rather conceited.”

                 *        *        *        *        *

When Bianca got up to the schoolroom Charmian was leaning over the
fender making toast, and Mademoiselle Houville, standing by the table in
the twilight looking like Emily Brontë, was buttering it.

Bianca shook hands with her; and she, in her so elegant French, and with
one of her long, clever, painful glances, hoped that Mrs. Selwyn had had
a beautiful, even if so very short, sojourn in the country? Bianca
thanked her. Mademoiselle Houville left the room so that the cousins
might be alone together.

Charmian put another piece of bread on the toasting fork. “I hoped you’d
come. This is in your honor—nice and burnt.”

“So I smelt.”

“How was the matinée?” broke out Charmian. Then— “_Don’t_ tell me! I
know just what it was like! The stalls full of the lucky wounded being
swarmed over, in the intervals, by Mother and the rest of the committee
. . . and the orchestra playing ‘Keep the Home Fires Burning’ and ‘Long
Trail,’ and old Fanny Tremaine making a speech at the end!”

Bianca said, “Yes, it was like that. But they enjoyed it.”

“The Tommies?”

“Yes.” She had looked with a new frightened interest at them, in their
della Robbia blue clothes and scarlet ties, trying to see in their putty
faces some reflection of what they’d seen and what Richard would see.

“Lucky fellows! . . .”

“You’re burning that bit.”

“Hell!”

Bianca sat on the end of the fender. Being with Charmian again made her
feel worse, because she knew that if she were to break down and cry,
Charmian would cry with her.

Charmian said, “Put on the light.”

The light, streaming out from under the red silk shade, made the room
familiar, and a little comforting. Charmian said:—

“I know it’s selfish. But I _must_ tell before Mademoiselle comes back.
I’m in love!”

Bianca didn’t say, or even think, “Again?” For though Charmian had been
in love with a succession of people since she was five, each passion was
real. And each time that the subject of her violent, generous, and
undiscriminating love failed her, and reëntered the crowd of ordinary
people, she went through the same pains of disillusion; and soon after
felt again the alchemy of vision and madness of heart that presaged a
new hero.

“Who is it?” said Bianca. She had an idea, from Frany’s hints, that it
was one of the convalescent officers quartered in the “Dower House” at
Moon’s Green.

“Harry Kramer.”

Bianca checked an exclamation. Charmian saw her face. She flared:—

“You don’t know anything about him. You don’t know what his life has
been, and . . . what sort of childhood he had!”

Bianca said:—

“But, Charmian, he’s _married_! And he’s awfully . . . old.”

Charmian’s swift defensive anger changed, as Bianca spoke, to a mystical
calm which Bianca recognized as a sign that her emotion had passed the
point when criticism could hope to check its course.

“I like old people, incidentally,” said Charmian. She lifted up the
toasting fork and inhaled the fragrance of the toast. “And Harry’s a
great artist. And it isn’t anything to do with this,—us, I mean,—if he
has a wife. She’s never understood him. She’s just the worldly part of
his life.”

Bianca was shaken out of her own preoccupation. She couldn’t answer
Charmian. Certainly Charmian’s emotion had never been roused by “looks.”
Over and over again she’d fallen in love through pity, through her
romantic feeling for the underdog. But Harry Kramer! With his pouchy
eyes, his fat hands, his horrid frizzy brown hair, his shiny shoes.
Kramer, a second-rate pianist of forty-five with a rich wife, who got
himself asked everywhere by kissing the hands of easily flattered women
like Aunt Violet.

No wonder Aunt Violet was worried! “When do you see him?” she asked,
moving over to the window seat where Charmian’s old doll, Sabrina, lay
on a satin cushion stenciled by Ruth.

“We have to meet secretly. You see, Mother won’t have him to the house
any more.”

Bianca picked up Sabrina and smoothed her hair.

Mademoiselle Houville came in, followed by a young housemaid carrying
the tea and a letter for Bianca:—

                                             HARROGATE, _Thursday_

    MY DARLING CHILD:—

    Just _un petit mot_ to tell you that I am thinking of you and
    hoping that you are not too upset by Richard’s going back. It
    does seem a _dreadfully_ short honeymoon!!! When I think of my
    own lovely trip with your poor father in the Italian Lakes! What
    different and what sad times these are! (I am not reading _any_
    newspapers at _all_ just now as the casualty lists upset me so,
    and I do want to make this little cure a thorough one.)

    I am sorry you refused my invitation to come here and stay with
    me. But I suppose you think staying with Violet at Portland
    Place will be more distracting? Anyway, you know your mother is
    always ready to welcome you at _any_ moment you should feel the
    need of her companionship and sympathy. Poor Richard! How tragic
    _he_ must have felt, leaving his lovely bride _so soon_! But
    still, my dear, one must be philosophical and realize that
    everyone is in the same boat, and that yours is only one of
    these “war marriages.” But the seeing off is always the worst.
    And then you can always go home and wait for a letter! Though I
    must say I feel sad to think you are not settling down in the
    normal way into a lovely new home with all your own things. (I
    don’t believe you _half_ looked at your presents, dear? Mrs.
    Barrington sent such a delightful pair of candlesticks and dear
    old Colonel Gates sent a crumb brush with yours and Richard’s
    initials engraved on a silver-plated handle, just after you
    left. I know you will laugh at this, but you are really lucky,
    as he gives most people his dreadful book on Butterflies!)

    Well, dear, I don’t know what news I have to cheer you up. I
    have been rereading “old favorites,” as I want to keep my mind
    away from the War. I reread the _Man of Property_ yesterday.
    (Poor Irene, one _is_ sorry for her. That hard _brute_ Soames!)
    And to-day I have been reading a charming life of Mademoiselle
    de Lespinasse. She really was more “sinned against than
    sinning.” I brought _Mansfield Park_ with me, as you and Richard
    urged me to. But I still cannot help feeling she (Jane Austen, I
    mean) is overrated. The people are so very _bornés_. How
    _difficult_ it is to find books that are neither dull _nor_
    improper!

    My masseuse is coming in a quarter of an hour and I am supposed
    to relax beforehand, so I will say _Arivederci, cara mia_. (How
    foolish it is, isn’t it, not to be able to say _auf
    Wiedersehen_, which always makes me feel quite sentimental and
    remember my very first “love affair.”)

    Well, dear, look after yourself and have plenty of rest, and
    don’t let Violet _drag_ you about from one smart luncheon party
    to another! Give my love to Richard when you write, and tell him
    not to bother to write to me as I know, once he is out there, he
    will be kept at the grindstone.

    Ever your devoted and affectionate

             MOTHER

When Bianca was putting her mother’s letter into her dispatch case,
deciding that she might think of an answer to it to-morrow, she came
across the letter which her father had written her last spring, from
Bali, when she became engaged. His last letter to her.

    MY DEAR BIANCA:—

    I have read with pleasure your letter, following on your
    cablegram of February the fourth. I have looked, also with
    pleasure, on the photograph of your fiancé. Your mother will
    congratulate you on the fact that he is well born; your Aunt
    Violet will regret that he is not wealthy. Thus it remains for
    me to rejoice with you that he is beautiful in his person, to
    felicitate you that he has (as you tell me) _l’âme bien née_;
    and to join in your regrets that instead of having to wait until
    the advanced ages of nineteen to marry, you and Mr. Selwyn were
    not wedded by a kinder destiny, at the respective ages of six.
    You know how nothing could have pleased me better than to have
    given you away—a child-bride in the pearl-colored satins as by
    Van Dyck—to a bridegroom resembling, perhaps, the little boy of
    Rubens as he was painted by his papa—

    But one must not have regrets, however charming their form.
    Greatly I wish that I could visit you both. Or that you could
    visit me. But in the first matter my health will not permit me
    to leave this sunshine. And for the second it appears that the
    War still continues in Europe; so that your fiancé is not
    therefore free to travel; nor, I suppose, to enjoy any other
    civilized pleasures. Indeed, I imagine that boredom must be one
    of the many displeasures of war.

    So, meanwhile, I must send my felicitations and affection from a
    distance. And the enclosed check, which may serve some, I hope
    not too _useful_, purpose. I should like best that you’d get
    some _bibelot_ or picture, or books, from me. But I will not
    coerce you. . . .

Frany was with Bianca when she got the telegram from the War Office.

It was Frany who went through it with her.

Frany managed to be there when everyone else and everything else was
hideously far away and mad. Frany’s queer grand truculence was there
through every inch of the blackness, and close by at each new beat of
horror.

Frany had her bed brought into Bianca’s room to be with her at night.
And when the horror was too bad, Frany’s hard-knuckled sunburned hand
was over hers.

Frany sat up five nights, silent and watchful. Sometimes she sat still,
her black eyes enigmatic in their hollow sockets, her brown crooked
features imperturbable. Sometimes she got up and made tea on her spirit
lamp. Now and then she took up a book and read it; then put it down
again. (It was the _Garden of Allah_.) Towards morning, when the room
grew cold, she would go to the windows and draw back the curtains and
say, “The sunrise is beginning.” That was the only whole sentence she
spoke during those nights, though she once or twice used such phrases as
“Some tea?” or “Here it is” (handing a tablet of Luminal). Or, when
Bianca started out of a brief sleep and then remembered, she muttered,
“Now, my dear—there, my dear . . . hold on—”

When seven o’clock came Frany went to her own room and dressed and came
back again looking exactly as she always did, her old white shirt
impeccably clean, her eyes perhaps a little hollower than usual. “I must
go down.” Impersonal. No comment. What must be must be. “I shall come up
when I can.”

She paused at the door. Her black “London skirt” touched the ground at
the back. “Later, try and go out. I’ll see no one talks to you. Go to
the Park. Your luncheon will be in my office. The order is given.”

                 *        *        *        *        *

“Bianca is out for a walk,” said Violet Cable to her sister. “She is out
with Frany, but she will be back soon.”

“Out for a _walk_!” exclaimed Josephine van Geldern. “Already? But, my
dear Violet, he only died a week ago and it’s raining.”

Violet Cable rang for Harvey to remove the small woollen coats which her
sister kept unpeeling and throwing right and left on to the sofas and
chairs. “It is ten days,” she said, “since Bianca had the telegram; and
it’s hardly raining at all.”

“I always think Regent’s Park is so damp,” said Josephine.

“Take those coats, Harvey.” Violet Cable put a cigarette in a holder and
lit it. “When we lived in Smith Square you always told us that
Westminster was damp.”

“So it is. And so is Chelsea. I’m staying with poor Anne Mallaby in
Cheyne Walk (as you couldn’t find room for me here), and I’m sure the
house is damp. How is Bianca?”

“Marvelous,” Violet said. “Terribly brave. Frany, as usual, has been a
tower of strength to us all.” She added, her sympathy for her niece
fraught by a vague irritation, “I had to send Charmian away, down to the
country, she was so harrowed by it all.”

Josephine sat down on the sofa and said, “It is very harrowing. _Very_
harrowing.”

Harvey brought in her hot milk.

“My plan,” she said,—“_could_ you bring a rather plainer biscuit?—is
to take her, for Christmas, to Bath.”

“I should have thought she would be better in your own flat. I don’t
know why you have that flat at all, you so seldom use it! And it must
cost you at least four hundred a year.”

Josephine had the pleasure of not telling her sister what rent she paid
for the flat in Campden Hill.

“Even if it did, I shouldn’t dream of staying in the place all the year
round. You never do. You and Carteret are always trapesing about.”

“Trapesing! Carteret’s work obliges him to move. I go up and down from
here to Moon’s Green, naturally. I have the convalescents down there and
my committees up here. But if I had a restful free life, like yours, I
should be glad to relax. I must say I never can understand, Josephine,
how you manage to get tired.”

“My dear Violet, if I had your calm I should not be tired either. But
there _is_ something in being rather thin-skinned! Ah, you lucky woman,
what good milk this is! Not _all_ of us can have a private farm! But, as
I was saying, I have only just been able to force myself to come and see
Bianca at all. And you know, dear, I do sometimes think that a _very_
close relative on these occasions can make things _more_ painful! I
almost came at once when I got Frany’s telegram, and then I thought,
‘Well, what good am I going to be to her if I _do_ go this minute?’ And
I knew, of course, dear, that it isn’t very easy for you to have me to
stay, and I didn’t want all the bother and worry of opening the flat
when I didn’t know what Bianca’s plans would be. And besides it did
really seem to me wiser to finish my course of baths so as to be really
fit to stand by Bianca when she got over the first shock and needed my
companionship! What baths, too . . . years younger . . . everyone ought
. . .”

Bianca came in.

                 *        *        *        *        *

When her mother said, “My darling child, my heart bleeds for you,”
Bianca didn’t hear her. She was simply aware that her mother, sitting
opposite her on the flowered sofa of the morning room, shared, with the
sofa itself, and with all inanimate things, the strange quality of
being, still, so exactly the same.

For her mother, like her Aunt Violet and Uncle Carteret and the new
parlormaid, had, in common with the furniture, in common with the Corot
in the hall, and the Whistler etchings on the stairs, this bland and
frightening unawareness that Richard was dead. Her mother’s voice,
saying “tragedy,” “shock,” and “time will heal,” was no more changed in
her than, at this moment, her shadow thrown by the queer morning lamp
upon the wall. Her mother’s sentences, arranged, with instinctive taste,
for sorrow, had no aroma either bitter or tender that could reach her
dizzied sense; and her silence, when it came, was blankness, not
understanding.

With burning stupid eyes Bianca saw that her mother was still beautiful.
Her hair was still arranged in silver swerves above the pointed oval of
her face. The fresh grey tulle was still doubled lightly about her neck
and pinned with a horseshoe of sapphires and diamonds. Her gaze was
limpid from restful sleep (_though Richard was dead_). Her complexion
clear and healthy (_though Richard was killed_). Her lips pink and her
hands smooth and fragrant with _Suc de Camélias_ . . .

“My poor child . . . so dreadful for you . . . I know . . .”

“I’m sorry . . . and I hate to upset you, Mother. I think . . .”

She got up. She thought that she would go up, up to her room, and draw
the blinds, all the blinds, because the not seeing it all so the _same_,
the merciful darkening out of all this bright smooth dreadful realness,
might be relief.

“I’m sorry, Mother. Don’t be upset.”

Frany, who had changed, might be relief again. When Charmian changed,
and so came close enough to help and hold on with her, they’d sent her
away.

“—I’ll tell Frany to find you some Faivres Cachets . . .”

Charmian had been near in that first screaming dark, saying, “Nothing
can take away how much you loved each other; nothing now, or ever, can
break that you were so lovely for each other. . . .” Charmian’s voice in
the dark, sobbing, “Keep all of him in your heart, all the sweet and
funny things.”

“. . . I’m sorry, Mother. Will you ring for . . . Frany?” Lamps going
out. “I think the lamp . . .” How dark! How dark the lamp . . .

                 *        *        *        *        *

The doctors wouldn’t let Bianca be alone.

She knew that they thought she would kill herself. That was stupid of
them. Because the dreadfulness was, above all, in having to live on.
They didn’t see, Sir Henry Bates, and Dr. Renshaw, that she wasn’t the
kind of person who would kill herself. She wasn’t brave enough, or
logical enough. They didn’t see that she must go on living because she
was instinctive and natural; and so, like a torn-up plant, would root
herself and try to grow again, on waste ground.

During what was called her rest cure, at the Home at Crowborough, when
Mother and Frany were allowed brief, strained, shadowy visits, she often
heard the doctors telling the nurses not to leave her alone. She didn’t
bother to argue. For twenty nurses in her white room with the green dado
couldn’t, even if she wanted them to, have broken her solitude.

                 *        *        *        *        *

Even when Matron herself came in on November 11 and told her that the
War was over, Bianca couldn’t make the effort to try to grope out of her
dark suffocating loneliness and understand what Matron, bringing her a
vase of red carnations, meant when she said, “The Armistice has been
signed.” “The Armistice?” repeated Bianca in the small flat stupid voice
that spoke for her. Anything made her tears begin: the housemaid dusting
the room; the coal being put on the fire; the sunshine coming on to the
bed in the morning; the frenzying boredom of being washed; the
desperation of a sleeve turned inside out . . . So being told by the
Matron that the War was over made her tears begin again.

She went on crying and crying (because the War was over?) and when the
Night Sister came in and asked her why she was “crying, dear?” she
couldn’t remember exactly. But it was, she thought, because “that bloody
little doyley on the dressing table is all crooked under the vase of
carnations!” For it was something, she remembered, to do with the vase
of carnations. But what?

                 *        *        *        *        *

At the end of November Bianca wrote to her mother. The housemaid took
the letter; for “Mrs. Selwyn is not being allowed to write or receive
letters.” Bianca wrote that she was better but must come away. But her
mother believed in Sir Henry Bates and Dr. Renshaw and didn’t answer
her. She only sent her a message by Matron to tell her to rest and she
would soon begin to feel better.

Bianca wrote another letter: to Frany this time. Frany wrote back that
she understood, but could do nothing “against orders.” Frany respected
all orders. It was her strength, and her peculiar, consciously martial,
foolishness. She had been bred with the “Charge of the Light Brigade” in
her brain tissue.

Bianca gave the housemaid five shillings to send a two-shilling telegram
to Charmian.

There was no answer.

Two days later, at eleven A.M., when Bianca had been up for an hour and
gone back to bed again, Sister came in and said, “Lady Mary Cleverley
has called. As she is only passing through Crowborough, Matron has given
special permission for you to see her.”

Bianca agreed, as she did to everything. She tried to remember the face
belonging to the name.

The visitor was shown in. She was old, with spectacles, and rather bent,
in an ostrich-feathered black hat and veils and a sealskin coat. Bianca
sat up. Sister went out.

“Bianca!”

Charmian’s make-up was admirable.

“_Don’t_ break down or anything again, darling, please! Just pull
yourself together and _don’t_ stare, sweet—it _is_ me, honest, but it’s
the only way. Listen, I’ve got a car! Never mind whose—yes, a young
man: he’s the chauffeur; we’ve come from London in fifty minutes. Now
get out, sweet. Yes, I _know_ it’s like a schoolgirl story, but that’s
just what it is— Get out of _bed_, darling—”

Bianca stood in her nightdress, holding the brass rail of the bed.
Charmian was taking off her sealskin, her hat, her veils, her glasses,
her black skirt, her snow boots— “Put these on! Buck up! Quick!”
Charmian was cold-creaming her face. “Quick!” She fastened her skirt
round Bianca . . . the sealskin, the spectacles, the hat, the veils.
“Put on the gloves. The bag and stick, too! That’s it. Your nurse’ll
never guess until she finds _me_ here!!!” Charmian, in her schoolgirl
vest and navy-blue bloomers, took a flying leap into Bianca’s bed.
“Gosh! How many _more_ hot-water bottles? Darling, you look perfect.
_Don’t_ talk, just go! Who’ll stop to notice if old Lady Mary Whatnot
has changed her face a little in Mrs. Selwyn’s room? _Go—now!_ The
car’s outside the porch. Just step in. He’ll whisk you to Moon’s
Green. . . . There’s brandy in that bag! _And_ smelling salts! See! And
when you get to Moon’s Green _you_ must square Frany. (Mother’s in
Scotland—) _Go_—bless you—_go_!”

“But you—you?” muttered Bianca (somehow fantastically near
laughing)—“You?—Charmian?”

Charmian primmed up her mouth.

“Ay em effraid, Miss—er—Ceeble—thet this Hom’ is only for peying
patients. . . .” She threw herself back on the pillows. “The chauffeur
has instructions to return and fetch me! Here!”

In the car Bianca fainted. But though the chauffeur saw this he didn’t
stop to give her brandy until they had left Crowborough a mile away. She
came round to find him sitting beside her. He was fair and anxious.

“Feel better?”

“Ye—yes.”

“Shall I go on?”

“Yes—please.”

“No more brandy?”

“No.”

“Sure?”

She said, “I’m sorry”—and then, with the detached untroubled ease of
manner that comes from nausea: “I shall have to be sick.”

He helped her out of the car.

It was difficult—being sick and an old lady in a sealskin coat. He
stood far off, smoking.

When he came back and helped her in, he said: “Bad luck. Must have been
beastly.”

She lay back.

“Thank you,” she said.

He said, “My name’s Finch. Victor Finch.”

“Thank you,” she whispered.

He got in in front and put his chauffeur’s cap on again. He drove on.

All the way to Moon’s Green she felt too ill to think or even cry. When
they got there she realized that the young man chauffeur had got out,
and then, as if she were watching a play that she was too sick to enjoy,
she saw first Harvey, then Frany, then Uncle Carteret, come out under
the portico and listen to him.

Then Frany came and helped her out; and Uncle Carteret picked her up in
her sealskin coat and carried her into the house and upstairs, and she
thought how strong his arms were, and that he was saying something most
oddly tender and understanding, and then just as she realized it was
“Bloody fools, most doctors,” she fainted again.

Mrs. van Geldern telegraphed from Hemel Hempstead and Lady Cable wrote
three postcards in succession from Scotland, urging that Bianca should
be sent back to the Nursing Home. Josephine van Geldern wrote, “_in
confidence_,” underlined, to Frany. Violet Cable wrote to her husband.
Violet wrote to Frany. Josephine wrote to Carteret as her “closest
surviving male relative.”

But Carteret didn’t answer. And Frany was laconic. To Mrs. van Geldern
she typed that Bianca did not wish to be moved. To Lady Cable, five
words: “Mrs. Selwyn is with child.”

Violet Cable wrote a postcard to Josephine. “Considering poor Bianca’s
condition I am telling Frany to keep her at Moon’s Green until _you_
return to Campden Hill.” Josephine telegraphed back to Violet in.
Scotland from Hemel Hempstead, “Have no reason at all to suppose that
Bianca is worse.” Violet, in Scotland, got the secretary where she was
staying to telegraph back to Hemel Hempstead: “_Bianca is not worse but
enceinte_.”

The post office at Hemel Hempstead took down “ancient” for “_enceinte_.”

Josephine, puzzled, telephoned to Frany at Moon’s Green. And to her
seven consecutive questions Frany replied, “Bianca does not wish to be
moved.”

Bianca stayed.

                 *        *        *        *        *

It was Carteret who insisted that his wife’s German second cousin and
her baby girl should be brought over from Cologne and housed at Moon’s
Green. It was he who had answered the letter that came through to his
wife a fortnight after the Armistice. The letter said that Lottie and
her child were in great poverty, and that her husband had been blinded
and would be in hospital for another three months. It was obvious to
Carteret, and upsetting to Violet, that Lottie was near starvation.
Violet said, “But what will people think? After all, they fought against
us.” Carteret, whose hidden grace lay in his failures to apply his
general prejudices to particular cases, made all the arrangements for
Lottie’s transport. But he agreed with his wife that they could not live
in the house or at the Dower House with the convalescents (to whom, said
Violet, Lottie and her baby would be “an insult”).

Finally Carteret leased a small furnished house for them at Ebony. He
and Bianca found the house and Bianca said it was _gemütlich_, and her
uncle, frowning at the German word, said it seemed a healthy situation
for the child.

“How old is the child?” said Bianca.

“I’m not certain. About six months, I believe.”

Bianca said, “I remember Lottie singing the _Erlkönig_ when she stayed
with us in Wiltshire, before the War, when she was first with Reinhardt.
She was golden and plump, and I remember Father thought her like a Paris
Bordone.”

“I believe she was on the stage,” said Carteret.

They were walking away from the little house towards the motor. He
turned back once more to look at it. Bianca wondered what prompted him
to say, “I shouldn’t mind living there myself.” She glanced at his face:
the hard grey eyes, the prawn-tinted cheeks and chin that shaded into
the chiseled complacent lips.

“Rather jolly,” he said to the white stucco tranquil little façade, with
its four sash windows below, five above, and the fanlight over the door.
Bianca wondered whether everyone secretly kept a life they might have
had; as a childless woman may set apart and lock a room with toys in it,
and a high fender, and a rocking-horse.

As they got into the motor he said, “Of course once I can get her money
out of Germany she’ll have to pay back all these expenses.”

                 *        *        *        *        *

Moon’s Green might have been a gigantic doll’s house brought from the
Netherlands by William of Orange and deposited, on his way to
Westminster, on the Kentish slope that rose above the marshes on the
isle of Oxney.

The steep roof, the white portico, the Madeira-red bricks, the
white-framed windows of the façade flanked by symmetrical cedars,
appeared both solid and fantastic. It was a “gentleman’s”
mansion—serene, handsome, and prosperous. But it had also (Bianca and
Charmian had seen this one winter dusk) two hooks on the west corner
which, when lifted, let the façade swing back, revealing the hall with
Harvey, perfectly lifelike, laying the letters out upon the lacquer
chest; the drawing room containing, besides Lady Cable, playing bridge
with three guests, a cocker spaniel, a chandelier, Charles II settees,
and an Adam chimneypiece in proportion; the library, on the left of the
hall, in which a Lord Cable in a shooting jacket was reading his
favorite _Three Musketeers_, while Frany entered the other doorway, from
the business room, carrying a bowl of chrysanthemums. Upstairs, you
could see the stairs disappearing from the back of the hall and the
banisters reappearing on the landing above; the schoolroom with Ruth at
her desk, straight above her mother’s head, and Miss Faber sitting on
her fender and powdering her nose with blue powder; Peter’s room
littered with books and Peter cross-legged on the floor reading three of
them; the mauve spare room with Alice unpacking trunks; the yellow spare
room with a female guest and a maid hooking her up; the dressing room
(on the west corner next to the top hook) of the King’s suite; and
upstairs again Charmian’s room with three pictures, of Mozart, Keats,
and Florence Nightingale, hung in a series above the bed; and
Mademoiselle’s little room, where, two ceilings above Lord Cable reading
the _Three Musketeers_, she was reading _Jude the Obscure_.

When Bianca and Charmian had explained to Peter (it was in the Christmas
holidays of 1916) about the “doll’s house,” he had contributed the
suggestion that Miss Faber, instead of being on the schoolroom fender,
was in the bathroom. (Because there was at this time a schoolroom
mystery called “What does Miss Phyllis Faber do in the bathroom?”)
Anyway, Peter’s part of the description began, “In the exquisitely
lifelike second-floor bathroom Miss Phyllis Faber . . .”

                 *        *        *        *        *

Bianca forced herself to get up every morning, and Frany made her come
for walks to the village to buy stamps or interview an underhousemaid’s
mother or see how the alterations were getting on in the village hall.

They went in mackintoshes, taking the bigger dogs. It made a three-mile
walk, one and a half miles each way. Once Bianca had managed to dress,
she felt less sick walking than staying in. She liked the rain on her
face, and keeping step with Frany’s scrunching tread dulled her nerves.
There were tattered election posters all over the village and posters of
Lloyd George outside the Mission Hall, and the cars and tradesmen’s
carts and vans that went by, splashing mud, had red or green or yellow
streamers and “VOTE FOR ——” stuck on the windscreens. Bianca asked
Frany one day how she would vote.

“I shall not vote. Women were not intended to vote.”

During the election campaign the house was full of people. Bianca didn’t
consciously know one from another. There were pretty women who came down
in big motors, and talked hard, and large elderly men in ulsters and
moustaches, and very young men from Oxford and Cambridge with motor
bicycles and small sports cars, and hustling, anxious, dyspeptic little
election agents of both sexes who were given the attic rooms and ate two
helpings of everything and called Ruth “Miss Ruth” and bullied when they
were out canvassing. Violet Cable came back from Scotland for the last
week and she and Carteret spoke at meetings every night. She was
wonderful with the women, and told them about the Coalition’s record and
Germany being a Criminal in simple terms which they could understand.
The candidate would come in from time to time for a hurried meal, or a
whiskey and soda, and one of his confabulations, weighty in manner
however trite in matter, with his helpers and supporters. He would stand
in the hall, not pausing to take off his British warm, hat in one hand,
whiskey glass in the other, while his female helpers sidled or slouched
(according to their breeding) and Carteret Cable nodded and muttered
inapposite “hear, hears”; and the young man from the _Kent Messenger_ in
bicycle clips wrote down in shorthand that Mr. ——’s election campaign
was in full swing and that the hall at Moon’s Green contained among
other _objets d’art_ a portrait of Lady Cable by Bellini. (He had
misunderstood Boldini.)

Every day the atmosphere in the house grew more excited. More people
came, more cars drove up, more meals were served to an increasing stream
of fast-munching, furiously busy, incoherently thinking people. And
every day the war-shocked countryside, unnerved by peace, fed with
rhetoric, intoxicated with prophecies, maddened by the press, tantalized
by the politicians, grew more violent in hatred, more sanctimonious in
triumph, more responsive to the suggestions incessantly blared at them
in print and in speech—suggestions of fear and cupidity and revenge.

On polling day Bianca drove round with Frany to fetch the voters from
their cottages. Friendly people: most of them with coats not thick
enough for the blue-misted rheumatic English winter; some of them
cheerful and a few of them trenchant in speech. They enjoyed their ride
and thanked her for it (Frany knew most of them well). It didn’t seem
possible to Bianca that these people, who got, on the whole, so bravely
and decently through life, whose good sense and kindliness were so much
of England, should be, conceivably, the British Electorate clamoring to
“hang the Kaiser.”

She said something of the sort to Frany. They had taken the last voters
home and swung in the dark off the road past the lodge and up the drive.

Frany quoted her Kipling:—

                “For frantic boast and foolish word,
                Thy mercy on Thy people, Lord!”

When the election was over Mademoiselle Houville went home. She had
stayed until after polling day so as to keep Charmian away from the
hypothetical charms of visiting politicians. She was to go to her family
in Auvergne. Her brother, who had been missing, was now believed to be
killed, and she wished to be with her mother for a time. She was to
return to the Cables after Christmas.

Violet Cable went to London, Carteret to Brussels, and the girls were
left in the country. Frany came down from London every two days. A party
was expected for Christmas and two of the spare rooms were to be done up
“to celebrate the peace,” Violet Cable said. Frany told Bianca that she
was to leave on December 16 and join her mother in London. Charmian
protested that Peter wouldn’t be back from Eton by then and so Bianca
wouldn’t see him.

                 *        *        *        *        *

Bianca didn’t get “upset” any more.

The idea of the baby hadn’t touched her emotionally, but automatically
it had given her courage and steadied her nerves. She didn’t either want
or not want the baby. But she settled down to live for it. Emotionally
the phrase “Richard’s child” meant nothing to her. His child was unreal
to her because it was something he had never thought about. Just as in
the opposite sense the places he loved were so real in her heart: the
places that they had been to together—the sea in Dorset, the high
ground at Edgehill, the trees at Savernake. And as the poetry that he
needed as a habit (just as he needed, all in the same proportion,
affection and fresh air) had become part of her,—Rupert Brooke and
Meredith and Philip Sidney,—so his special curiosities had become
habitual in her thoughts, making her aware of birds and Karl Marx and
cricket averages and Gordon Craig.

When she was alone she tried to think easily and steadily about Richard,
and his life as she had shared it; unaware of a mechanism in her mind
which, impersonally registering feelings, photographing impressions,
automatically docketing the emotional sum of each crisis, would in
another ten or twenty years have accumulated behind her thoughts,
something which might be called her “character”; which would have
created in her a basis for unconscious reference; an essential self, in
which the poems of Meredith, the ironies of _Kapital_, the woods at
Savernake, had long ceased to be Richard, whom she had loved, and become
Bianca, who had loved him.

                 *        *        *        *        *

When Lottie came she was a blonde, scraggy, hollow-eyed woman of no age.
She seemed to resent everybody and everything that was done for her; and
the baby girl had too big a forehead and a waxy skin, and her long,
tired, angry crying went on most of the day.

But the second time Bianca went to see Lottie at the little house at
Ebony she found her sitting by the nursery fire with the baby (Anna) in
her arms; and Bianca saw her expression before she had time to change
it. It was a look of such desolation and fear that Bianca ran and knelt
down beside her, saying, “Lottie, _please_!”

Lottie didn’t take her hand away. She looked from the sleeping baby to
Bianca.

Bianca said, “Things’ll get better now, Lottie.”

(Lottie’s collarbones showed up in the firelight, and Bianca remembered
her plump milk-white throat with its Paris Bordone russet patch of
sunburn.)

Lottie’s hand slackened in hers.

“—Soon your husband will be better and you’ll be able,” Bianca said
steadily, “to go back to him.”

“He will never see again,” said Lottie. “Yesterday I had a letter.” She
snatched away her hand.

Bianca got up uncertainly.

“I’m so sorry.”

Lottie’s anger flickered out. She said, “Do you remember what our own
general said? ‘_So ein frischer, fröhlicher Krieg._’”

“Oh, Lottie, I’m sorry.”

Perhaps Lottie realized Bianca suddenly: as a girl in black clothes and
muddy shoes, her hair in such soft brown curls, and her very young mouth
set in a perpetual obstinacy of self-control. Perhaps she remembered,
abruptly, in pity, what she’d been told, and not listened to, about
Bianca’s husband being killed. Or, in this warm sweet room with the
silver-dripping rain on the window, and in Bianca’s quiet presence, she
could feel, at any rate for a moment, an emotion that wasn’t bitter, or
lonely, or afraid; but summed itself up in the confession (made after
four endlessly enduring years):—

“—_Ich bin_ so _müde_ . . . I am so tired, Bianca.”

                 *        *        *        *        *

Bianca went to London three days before Christmas. As she drove out of
Victoria Station and passed the Grosvenor Hotel she realized that it was
only two months since she and Richard had stayed there.

All the shops were lit up and crowded with people buying for the first
Peace Christmas.

Mrs. van Geldern was waiting for her daughter in the drawing room. She
held out her arms and said, “My darling child.” Bianca knew that her
mother really meant to make her feel her sympathy and welcome. (She
noticed that she was in mourning.) But she said:—

“Oh, Mummie, you’ve had new chintzes.”

“Peace chintzes,” said her mother, delighted that Bianca had noticed
them at once.

                 *        *        *        *        *

Letter from Charmian Cable at Moon’s Green to her cousin Bianca Selwyn
in London:—

                                                      MOON’S GREEN
                                                   _December 28th_


    Bianca darling, this letter is pretty nearly written with a nail
    and my blood as there has been a gigantic row and Peter and I
    are outlawed, ostracized, and what not, and I am shut up feeding
    off trays and going for walks with Miss Faber alone, and Peter
    has been sent to a tutor in Hampshire! It all started with the
    _Picture of Dorian Gray_ because Father confiscated it from
    Peter, talking about “touching pitch,” and then they were shut
    in the gunroom for an hour having a row about Oscar Wilde (Peter
    wouldn’t tell me it all, but he came out shaking like he does,
    and Father squinting with anger). After that Peter said nothing
    until we were having supper in the schoolroom on Boxing Night.
    Miss Faber was away and Ruth in bed with one of “her” bilious
    attacks, and so Peter and I were alone. Peter ate nothing and
    then said suddenly: “Is Callendar out?” And when I said I knew
    she had gone to the rustic revelings in Wittersham he said, “Do
    you know which is Mother’s box of scarves and veils?” I did, but
    he looked hectic (like the time when he made the bonfire and
    Savonarola’d the foxes’ masks and the antlers)! So at first I
    wouldn’t tell. Then he made me and I got the whole box of
    Mother’s chiffon scarves and when Peter said “I want seven of
    them” of course I guessed his sinister plot, though not exactly
    how he was going to do it!!! Anyway, what he did do was to get
    Mother’s rouge and everything and make up his face and put coal
    dust and water on his eyelashes and lids, and put on my best
    pair of drawers with lace on and nothing else except the Mystic
    Veils over that. Then we crept downstairs and he fetched the
    death mask of Sir Walter Scott from the library and put it on a
    salver and then we went into the blue anteroom and we could hear
    everybody in the drawing room talking, as the men had just come
    in from the dining room. Then Peter said I must play the
    pianola, and got out the “Venus on Earth” waltz. Then (you know
    all the lights of the drawing room are in the anteroom) he
    switched out _all_ the lights and I started playing wildly, and
    he burst into the drawing room by the firelight there and did
    his dance, and there was a _fearful_ commotion, but he got all
    his veils off and proffered Sir W. Scott’s death mask to Father
    on the salver before anyone found the lights. And then, you can
    _imagine_, there was _everybody_ (including Lady Bellingdon, the
    Sinclairs, and Ivan Benz and old Trevor Topham, and about twenty
    others), and Father speechless and Peter in my drawers, rouged
    and laughing absolutely hysterically. And me being summoned by
    Mother from my humble post at the pianola!!! Most of the
    grown-ups behaved divinely and Lady Bellingdon was _sweet_ and
    _implored_ Father to forgive us, and old Topham positively hung
    round Peter’s neck and said he was “born to be a second
    Nijinsky.” However, as you know Mother and Father, you can guess
    what they said—Mother was icy to me and said she supposed I
    liked the idea of being the talk of London “in this sort of way”
    the year before I came out! And heaven knows what Father said to
    Peter the morning he left for this tutor, because he got Peter
    to cry, and Peter went off in the car, I saw him from the
    window, looking as if he was going to kill himself! Mother talks
    about sending me to a French finishing school at Wimbledon, but
    I told her I should go mad and run away, and that I couldn’t
    endure that horrible shut-in-a-nunnery feeling again— So I
    simply don’t know _what’s_ going to happen. Only one person is
    pleased and smug and that is Ruth! Luckily she is staying with
    her dreary friend Betty at Midhurst. Only unluckily, also,
    Mademoiselle Houville being away still, I bear the full brunt of
    Miss Faber, who is in a queer state herself, and locks herself
    in her room to read letters, and starts giggling about nothing
    and can’t stop, and is making herself two new blue silk
    camisoles, and embroidering sprays of heather on them.

    By the way, I hear Mademoiselle is going to stay with you for
    New Year on her way back here.

    Well, darling, what all this stuff and nonsense is leading up to
    is, do you think that you could wangle _any_ way your idea of me
    coming to Switzerland—as you suggested before you went? Because
    I think really Mother might be glad of the idea, if you said “It
    won’t be very amusing for her, I’m afraid.” Of course Father may
    be the snag, but one can never tell with him. Anyway, I do
    beseech you to try; for you know that I long to be with _you_,
    even more than I long to be away from home! And that is saying a
    good deal!

    So very, _very_ much love. And you know I don’t write anything
    except nonsense. But you know also how much I think about you?
    Don’t you?

             A hug from
                 CHARMIAN

Mademoiselle Houville arrived, on New Year’s Eve, in time for Mrs. van
Geldern to tell her that she need not change for dinner. “Any simple
little dress you happen to have. What you have on would do. Bianca and I
are living a very quiet life”—she dropped her voice—“as you can
understand. I shall only put on a tea gown.”

Mademoiselle Houville changed her dress, and Josephine wondered to
Bianca afterwards that she could afford to have two afternoon dresses.

At dinner Josephine, in grey chiffon and chinchilla, asked Mademoiselle
Houville questions about her visit to her family in Auvergne. Had they
celebrated Christmas at all? Or had they perhaps, too, preferred to
ignore it this year? How old was her mother? And was she, considering
everything, in good health?

After dinner Josephine, elated by her sense of the occasion,—“I’ve
always felt there was something romantic about New Year’s Eve,”—had one
of her sparkling phases of charm and prettiness; and was so engaging
(pouring out the coffee herself, sipping just half a glass of
brandy—and later, in the drawing room, singing Schubert and Reynaldo
Hahn) that the two younger women, quiet and haunted each by her sadness,
felt how ungracious they were in response to her grace, and how dully
they rewarded her vivacity. But at eleven, suddenly remembering that ten
was her bedtime, and that she must “avoid late hours and crowded rooms,”
she broke into good-nights and rapid hopes for the New Year for them
all, and then, her spirits still waltzing, hurried to her room,
completely unaware how solitary her gayety had been, and calling back,
“How I envy you two being able to sit up until midnight! I’m afraid I
shall have to receive the New Year in bed! But I shall put on my best
nightgown especially for the occasion.” And with this silvery and
laughing naughtiness Josephine closed her door.

Bianca went to the piano and shut it. Mademoiselle Houville glanced at
the clock.

“I shall get dressed now.”

“You’re going to Mass?”

They spoke in French; the change of language was a relief.

“Yes. And it’s always crowded.”

“I’ll give you a key.”

“Thank you.”

                 *        *        *        *        *

Peter Cable put his father’s letter in the pigeonhole of his writing
desk, beside the slab of Mexican chocolate and the postcard of the Opéra
sent him by his mother.

His father had written again about having him coached for cricket before
the summer half.

Peter felt angry but inferior. He poked the fire.

He knew what his father felt about his cricket just as clearly as if
Carteret Cable, instead of maintaining on the matter a forced, rather
hard-eyed optimism, had said, “In this at least you might not have
disappointed me”; the “at least” implying all the occasions on which
Peter, since he was five, had, by being nervously but defiantly himself,
failed to be his father’s son. These occasions, such as Peter’s refusal
at six to enjoy a Punch and Judy show; at eight to speak to the
Archbishop of Canterbury (because he was appointed by that bad man Henry
VIII); at nine to go out with the guns (and see Father and his friends
“murdering away”); his scene about preferring Charlotte Yonge to
Ballantyne; the times when he had ridden with hysterical courage in the
hunting field, and then coming home and being sick—all these occasions
had left in his father’s mind an accumulated feeling of disappointment;
and in Peter’s a sense of being perversely misunderstood.

When he was fourteen his father had found him reading _The Ring and the
Book_. “If you want to read poetry, read first-class stuff, like
Shakespeare or Milton or—or some of Tennyson . . .”

“Why not this too?”

“Browning? He’s obscure and sentimental. And not for your age, anyway.”

After that he and Charmian read it together in the apple loft. It was
the Christmas holidays of 1916. They huddled in rugs, snow down in the
yard, and in the loft a freezing apple smell, and Charmian’s voice
breaking on:—

        “She started up, stood erect, face to face
        With the husband: back he fell, was buttressed there
        By the window all a flame with morning-red,
        He the black figure, the opprobrious blur
        Against all peace and joy and light and life.”

Now, putting more coal on his fire, Peter wondered, if he took trouble
about his cricket in the Easter holidays, whether his father would let
him go, in the summer, with the Blyths to Switzerland. He had always
wanted to see snow mountains. His father had ideas about not going
abroad until you were eighteen. So far the question hadn’t arisen,
because of the War. And before the War he was too young to want to go.

Peter wondered how this plan of Charmian going with Bianca had been
worked.

He looked at his watch. They ought to be here soon. He got down his
brushes, thick with hairs and dust, off the top of his bookshelf and
brushed his hair carefully in front of the _gesso_-framed glass over the
chimneypiece.

Peter liked in theory to look tidy. He used one of the hairbrushes to
brush his tail coat. It streaked on more dust, but he didn’t notice
this. He looked back in the glass to straighten his tie. Above that
white, slightly grubby bow and winged collar his face was small and
oval, with dark opaque eyes set apart and flat under thin, wide-arched
eyebrows.

He had an Elizabethan face. It looked as if it ought to surmount a ruff;
the girlish nose, the sweet upper lip closing a little hesitantly on a
stubborn underlip, the amber pallor of his coloring, suggested a
sixteenth-century portrait on a wooden panel.

He glanced round the room and perfunctorily attempted to tidy it. He put
_Richard Feverel_ back in the set of Merediths, slipped the _Badminton
Diary_ into a drawer, and straightened the photographs of the Parthenon
that hung on the wall, in a black _passe partout_ frame, between a
Swaine photograph of his mother in Court dress and a colored
reproduction of Cézanne’s “Apples.”

He wished he had thought of flowers. Bianca would like flowers.

He was glad Charmian was coming with her. He felt afraid of meeting
Bianca now. He remembered how beautiful she had looked at her wedding.
He was afraid that now she would look different. He couldn’t imagine
what he would say to her. He thought she wouldn’t be Bianca any more,
but a tragic person moving about in a shadow.

They came into the room suddenly. And before he had time to realize and
go stiff and choked with the shyness for Bianca, she kissed him. And
when she drew back he saw that, though she was pale and in a shadow, she
was the same person.

He was so glad of her being the same person, and, in the same second, so
hurt for her, that he hugged her as if she had come back from a long
journey.

“So you _do_ use my coal glove,” said Charmian to Peter.

“Oh, Peter, you are _nice_,” Bianca said, so glad of his swift awkward
loving her, and moved by the way his small, now so high-up face had
winced. (Exactly as, when he was four and she, at nine, was learning to
ride a bicycle, he’d seen her cut knee and cried out, agonized, “Call
_Jesus_, Bianca! Oh, quick, _quick_ call Jesus!”)

Charmian said, “Did you get my last letter with the code ending?”

He said: “Yes. But you ought to have known Ruth would tell. She always
does. And you always go trusting her.” It was unlikely, he pointed out,
that Ruth would want to help Charmian clothe and subsidize the village
whore. And on top of the Salome row at Christmas, of course Father would
be furious.

“You’re lucky Mother’s away and that it’s only Father that Ruth told.
What did he say, anyway?”

Charmian’s archangel face was stern between a grey squirrel cap and
collar. Her voice was angry, but not ironical.

“Father accused me of reading Galsworthy.”

                 *        *        *        *        *

They went across the bridge and down the street to Brown’s. Peter had
reserved a table. He ordered two Indian teas, and knew Bianca’s
preference for China. And three sausages and bacon.

Bianca said that she would rather not have sausages.

Charmian looked at her wisely and understandingly. They had decided not
to tell Peter about the baby because he would feel too emotional about
it. And Charmian had said, “It must be just a quiet _steadily_ lovely
thing for us to look forward to.” Peter could be told at the end of the
summer half (when he wouldn’t have any more cricket to be upset).
Charmian, taking a crumpet, knew exactly the things Peter would feel:
about the danger, and the sort of sanctifying of Bianca; about Bianca
being strange but still dearer and lovelier to them; and about the baby,
because of its tragedy, being like a very young creature brought by
Bianca to them out of a dark wilderness—a mysteriously young thing to
be fostered by them all.

“Here are the sausages,” said Peter.

Chairman often thought about the baby. . . . Secretly it was over and
over again frightening to her that in the core of Bianca’s whiteness and
tiredness and grief there was a Self, waiting only for months-in-time
and a small unshapely body-in-space to come alive. Thinking about it
made Charmian feel bits of poetry (that she never wrote); fragments
about Bianca, still and in pain between a Dark Angel and a Great Light.

“Eat your sausages while they’re hot,” said Peter.

Charmian put down her crumpet. Her fingers were buttery.

Bianca asked him if he had read _Joan and Peter_. He said “Yes,” but
that Wells always roused him to feeling bourgeois and like his father,
and glad that he didn’t know Intellectual-People-in-the-Suburbs. He
said:—

“I shouldn’t like to live in a world run by Fabian cads out of Wells’s
books.”

Bianca said, “But _Joan and Peter_ is a good book, about real people,
getting their teeth into a real life.”

Peter said it showed how unfastidious they were to swallow it.

“Peter’s being Pomandery,” said Charmian. (Their phrase for any
self-conscious manifestation of distaste.) She never would admit that
Peter held his anti-democratic views seriously; or that he didn’t
believe, in his paradoxical yet childishly sensitive heart, in the
perfectibility of man.

Bianca said, “I’ve brought you down a book by a man called Proust which
I think you _will_ like!”

“Oh, _Proust_!” Peter said eagerly.

Bianca said, “It’s exciting. I like it.”

“It’s disgusting,” said Charmian. “It’s like a monkey looking on itself
for fleas.”

“David Blyth,” said Peter, “says it’s simply extraordinary.”

Bianca said, “Who’s David Blyth?”

“He’s Peter’s new greatest friend,” said Charmian.

Peter colored. He spoke faster. “I’d like you to meet him, Bianca. You
and he like the same books. I got to know him well in the summer, over a
debate. He’s awfully clever and an extremely good painter. I’ve got one
of his sketches in my study. I’ll show you afterwards.”

“I’d like to meet him.”

Charmian said dreamily, “I tell you what he looks like. He’s like the
Watts ‘Sir Galahad’ in the nursery bathroom.”

“Not a bit,” said Peter. “He’s much more Greek in type.”

Charmian took a doughnut. Since the Armistice she hadn’t stopped wanting
sweet and buttery food.

“You said in your letter that he was going to Oxford in the autumn.”

“Yes,” said Peter. “To the House.” He became silent. Charmian said,
after a pause, “How far is Oxford from here?”

Peter heard her slowly. Then he looked happier and said, “Well, not more
than thirty miles, I suppose.” He turned to Bianca and smiled. His smile
quivered in his eyes and mouth and went out, leaving his look opaque
again, and dark, and questioning.

                 *        *        *        *        *

When they came out of Brown’s it was dusk and raining. As they went back
to Peter’s house, all three getting wet under Bianca’s umbrella, Peter
wanted to know how his father had consented to Charmian’s going with
Bianca; and Charmian said, “He’s so fussed about the Peace Conference
that he isn’t really interested about what I do. I asked him the
week-end that the _Ziegenbock_ was staying and he said ‘I suppose you
can.’” The _Ziegenbock_ was the children’s name for Sir Ivan Benz, who
looked like a malicious and white-bearded goat and was a partner in
Cable-Bensley.

When they went up to Peter’s study a boy was sitting by the fire making
toast. Peter said “Oh, David,” eagerly, and introduced him to Bianca.

The boy got up with the toasting fork in one hand, and said, “I’m so
sorry, I’d no idea.”

Peter urged him to stay, and David Blyth explained that his own fire
wouldn’t toast properly, and that his fag was an inexpert toaster. Blyth
had a sweet but detached manner, pale green eyes and velvety aquiline
features. He impressed Bianca as likable, and a good friend for Peter.
Peter fetched a portfolio and showed them one of David’s water colors.
It had charm and sensitive coloring.

As they sat round eating chocolate, while David made two more neat bits
of toast, Peter watched him admiringly. He seemed unaware of Peter’s
admiration, and divided his attention quite simply between his deft
toast making and his conversation with Bianca. He told her that he hoped
to paint when he went with his family to the Pyrenees, at Easter. Bianca
asked him if he liked traveling.

“Yes, but not with my mother.” He said this in such an ingenuous way
that it sounded pleasant. He added, “I want Peter to come with us. Not
that it’ll be much fun for him, as I shall be busy painting.”

Peter said, “I know there isn’t really any chance of my going. Unless,”
he went on, turning quickly to David, “you could enthrall my mother when
she comes down here.”

David hung up the toasting fork, and said diffidently, “I’m sure I
couldn’t.”

Then Peter changed the conversation to modern French authors, and made
David say what he thought about Cocteau, and Proust and Valery Larbaud.
What he said was always critical and sometimes amusing. Whenever he
expressed a distaste the look in his green eyes was very sweet.

When he had gone and Bianca had agreed with Peter and Charmian about
him, she asked how old he was.

“He’ll be eighteen in June,” Peter said.

Bianca remembered Richard’s eighteenth birthday (the week after they
first met) and the dance at his father’s house at Farringdon.

She remembered the night garden and Richard’s voice and the syringa and
the dark grass. Richard’s voice saying:—

“You should wish! It’s a new moon.”

And she’d said, “I have wished,” and turned back towards the lighted
house, wishing that he would love her.

                 *        *        *        *        *

Josephine van Geldern visited her sister Violet to protest against
Charmian’s accompanying Bianca to Ascona. She said that the doctors
wished Bianca to have a change of air and scene and complete rest from
people.

Violet, who was having her nails manicured, said, “Then why are _you_
going?”

Josephine said that she needed a change of air and scene and complete
rest too. Violet knew that her sister’s real fear was that Charmian
would develop measles. Because ten years before she and Louis and Bianca
had taken Charmian with them to Dolgelley, where Charmian had developed
measles. So Violet said:—

“You _know_ that Charmian won’t have measles.”

“Of _course_ not! Not that one can’t have it several times. You remember
poor Judge Emery.”

Violet always pretended not to.

“All the same,” said Josephine “—and it will be very dull for her.”

Violet was in no doubt that Charmian must go. “She has had a great deal
too much excitement lately. The whole war atmosphere has been extremely
upsetting to young girls. Even the ones who weren’t ‘out.’ Cécile
Scheurer was telling me the same thing the other day in Paris. She told
me that she sent their girl, Marthe, away to Switzerland to their villa
near Geneva, for most of last year. She told me several extraordinary
cases of young, perfectly well-brought-up girls completely _détraquées_
by the air raids and the sound of guns.”

“And not enough fats, I’ve no doubt. Sir Arnold Latham was telling me
only yesterday that he is convinced the lack of fats for growing
children has done incalculable—he said ‘incalculable’ harm in these
last years—”

“Cécile Scheurer had some _very_ peculiar stories,” interrupted Violet.
“Her son Louis, you know, is in the _Aviation_, or was, and— No—_not_
that varnish stuff! This new idea,” she said to her sister, “is this
pink _varnish_! Horrible, I think! But I’m told all the actresses do
it.”

“I saw that girl Elsie Janis the other night in _Hello, America_. I
thought it very amusing. I’m afraid I went secretly—with Lady
Platt-Eresby, without telling Bianca. I shouldn’t like her to think me
heartless.”

Violet Cable said, “Lady Platt-Eresby’s boy, Harold, is very charming, I
believe. I hear he’s going into his poor father’s office on the Stock
Exchange.”

“The boy was there too, the other night,” said Josephine. “His teeth
stick forward—like this.”

Violet wasn’t amused. The manicurist bent her head.

“When his uncle dies,” said Violet Cable, “Harold Platt-Eresby will have
Fayrings.”




                                PART II


At three minutes to four Marthe Scheurer took off her black alpaca
overall, glanced at her hands, picked up the volume of Racine, and
descended from the room still known as _la Nursery_ to her mother’s
boudoir.

Her mother was, as usual at four o’clock in the afternoon, sitting in
one of the armchairs by the fire. This wood fire set on brass dogs lent
a quality paradoxically English to the room, which was copied, even to
the goddesses with the lyre above the door, and the gilt and marble
clock on the chimneypiece, from the boudoir of Marie Antoinette at
Fontainebleau.

Marthe sat down on the chair opposite her mother. They both sat upright.
They were alike in the narrow oval of their faces, pale with the solid
transparency of shells, in their wide-open Saxe-blue eyes and
_blanc-cendré_ hair. But Marthe’s hair was plaited in a thick plait tied
with a black velvet riband; while her mother’s was coiled closely round
her head and secured by pins of light tortoise shell. Their thin wrists
and slight fingers were alike too. But Madame Scheurer wore rings, one a
large ruby cut square.

She put aside _Le Temps_. Her eyes smiled at her daughter. Her mouth
remained grave.

“It is Act III to-day?”

“Yes, Maman.”

Marthe opened the volume. Just as she was about to read she lifted her
head and exclaimed:—

“Oh, Maman?”

“What’s the matter?”

“Maman, I have had a letter to-day, by the post of two o’clock, from my
friend Charmian.”

“Charmian Cable? What does she say?” There was the faintest expansion of
the nostrils of Cécile Scheurer’s short aquiline nose.

Marthe hesitated. She was too well trained to show embarrassment. But
she chose her words.

“It’s a fairly complicated situation, Maman.”

“Explain it.” The softness in Madame Scheurer’s voice was for her
daughter. “But you know,” she added, “that Charmian is for me the least
pleasing of the Cables; and that I never wished her to be, especially,
your friend.”

“Yes, Maman.” Hardly perceptible in the fabric of Marthe’s ingenuous yet
polished manner there was obstinacy. “Yes, Maman. I know it.”

“Well then?” Cécile Scheurer’s left eyebrow slanted a little higher than
the other. It was a trick of expression betraying, to those who knew her
well, a sudden wariness—a mental _en garde_.

“You remember, Maman, the niece of Lady Cable, whose husband was so
tragically killed ten days after the marriage.”

“Bianca? Naturally I remember. She married a young Selwyn, son of the
General Selwyn. His mother was, I believe, a distant relation of my
mother’s family in Washington.”

“Yes, Maman. Well, it seems that this poor Madame Selwyn has been ill
all this winter. And now it has been arranged that she shall go to
Switzerland and Lady Cable has permitted her to take Charmian with her,
as a companion. They are going to Ascona, it seems.” Marthe paused. She
breathed a little deeper. The very slight change in her color was like a
momentary and far-off reflection of a sunset. “What Charmian asks,
Maman, is that I should ask you if you would permit them to stay here,
with us, for a day or two on their way through Paris.” She breathed out
now.

Her mother was wearing a rope and tassel of seed pearls. She picked up
the tassel and gave it an oblique glance.

“Why has not Violette Cable written to me herself in this matter?—And
your father saw Lord Cable here last week—when he came over to see
Lloyd George. And he also said nothing on this matter.”

“Charmian also says that she thinks that her aunt intends to telephone
to you.”

“That I do not believe. Violette will not telephone.” Her tone, though
mild, held irony. It implied that Violette Cable did not waste money
except on herself. She dropped the pearl tassel. “In any case,” she
said, “I will think about it. Now let us go on with our play.” She took
a marker out of the volume on her knee.

         “_Où tendait ce discours qui m’a glacé d’effroi?_
         _Phèdre, toujours en proie à sa fureur extrême,_
         _Veut-elle s’accuser et se perdre elle-même?_”

She handed Marthe the book.

           “_Dieu! Que dira le Roi? Quel funeste poison_
           _L’amour a répandu sur toute sa maison_. . . .”

When Marthe had finished the play, her mother read aloud to her one of
La Bruyère’s _Caractères_. It seemed to Marthe that her mother read with
delicately controlled pleasure the passage describing the peasants as
brutes standing in the fields.

Marthe never understood her mother’s hatred of “the people.” It wasn’t
simply that, with her acutely developed sense of the past, she could not
“forgive them the Revolution.” Nor, even, that Cécile’s mother’s
American ancestry was Southern and intensely, consciously,
aristocratic. . . . Once Louis and Marthe had gone up to _la Nursery_
after a luncheon when their mother had told Monsieur Théodore Plon, the
Socialist Député, that “the people” were differentiated from “us”
because they “had no souls,” and Louis had said, “Maman hates the
proletariat because she, and we, live on their dead bodies.” And then he
had added,—it was his last term at the Lycée,—“Though on that ground
she ought to hate me too. Because it’s quite possible that I shall be
killed, to enrich my father.” Louis had gone to the window and stood
staring out up the wide Avenue towards the Bois “—My father—and Lord
Cable, and all their good friends.”

At five o’clock exactly Cécile Scheurer closed the volume. Marthe stood
up.

Her mother said:—

“And I, also, have something to tell you. Something that will please
you.”

“Oh! Maman?”

“I have just received a telegram from Louis, from New York, to tell us
that he sails to-day, and will arrive at Cherbourg on Saturday of next
week.”

“Oh, _Maman_!”

Her mother smiled, but added: “It is just like Louis, that. For six
weeks we have had no letter. And now he telegraphs with such affection
that one would imagine he thought of nothing but his family.”

“Oh, but Maman, you know how devoted he is, above all to you!”

Cécile Scheurer’s glance rested on Louis’s photograph taken last year in
his airman’s uniform.

“Yes, my dear. I know it.” She hesitated, and then formulated an
impression that she had, as yet, not expressed even to her husband.
“But—he is above all an artist, Louis . . . That is to say, his heart
absents itself, from time to time, and becomes a part of his
imagination.”

Marthe was too loyal to her idea of Louis to agree. She said with her
innocent deferential severity, “He has so many interests, Maman.” All
the same Marthe understood. He could be hard,—cruel sometimes,—but she
didn’t like thinking so.

She went up to her mother, who kissed her on both cheeks. She was
inwardly excited by the news, and when Maman said, as she spun round to
go, “As to Charmian, I will think about this matter,” Marthe answered
perfunctorily:—

“Thank you, Maman.”

                 *        *        *        *        *

“Miss Clark! _Miss Clark!_”

“Yes, Marthe?”

“_Miss Clark!_ Maman says that Louis is coming back next week. She had a
telegram this morning from him, he is sailing to-day, he arrives on
Saturday next week—”

“Let’s hope he won’t be blown up by a mine,” said Miss Clark.
(Pronouncing it “main.”) “They say there are a lot of explosive ‘mains’
still about in the Atlantic.”

“For goodness’ sake don’t let’s think about such a thing!” said Marthe,
who had, after three years, got used to Miss Clark’s automatic
pessimism, but had not lived enough among the English to realize that it
was merely one of the symptoms of Miss Clark’s gentility.

Nora Clark had, to her great satisfaction, been imported by Madame as an
English Lady, to be, in the mildest sense, “governess” to Marthe, who at
fourteen had been deprived of her and Louis’s adored English Nannie. It
had been assumed that what Marthe then needed was a Miss who could
escort her to and from her classes while they were in Paris; and when
they were in Switzerland to accompany her, outside the grounds of the
Villa Scheurer, along the pacific shores of Lac Léman.

                 *        *        *        *        *

Louis came back gayer and even more restless than when he went.

To Marthe he seemed even more vital, more lean, and more unhappy.

His mother found him in better spirits but too fond of “cock-tails,” a
form of alcoholic stimulant which she considered barbarian, and had
never seen. His father observed him with interest, read the typed
collection of sketches (in English) which he had written while he was
away, and remarked that “_Louis se forme_—”

Louis had long limbs and wide heavy shoulders, but moved as swiftly and
lightly as a kitten. His face was lean from nerves, his chin truculent,
his mouth ironical; his eyes under peaked eyebrows were sombre and
slanting as an Asiatic’s. But he smiled suddenly and radiantly, like a
child.

Louis’s smile made people feel warm. It lit their affections and charmed
their fancy. It made them feel that he, candidly, with a touching
innocent spontaneity, liked them; that he wanted them to like him—even
to help him. Then his smile would blank out, and his impassive eyes and
chiseled secretive lips were as unfriendly as a Buddha. A Buddha without
fat; an idol without repose; remoteness without calm; mysticism without
peace.

Louis brought back dance records, American slang, fifteen new shirts, a
case of books about the color problem, and the habit of a fresh orchid
every day for his buttonhole. He played the records to Marthe up in _la
Nursery_, and made her dance with him, talking to her all the time about
_zoning_ and steel-and-glass architecture, and Henry Ford, and the
Bowery, and low dives, and mixed populations, and Marilyn Miller, and
the Theatre Guild, and shooting alligators, and burlesque shows. And he
said the orchid was because what was the use of being so darned rich if
you didn’t spend it? _Spend it!!!_ And then he sat down at _la Nursery_
piano, and when Miss Clark came in he played her his “Syncopated Cradle
Song for a War Baby,” which began:—

                    “A Priest or Divine
                    May turn blood into wine,
                    But Scheurer and Cable
                    Are magically able
                    (The pistols they’ve sold!)
                    To turn blood into gold—
                    Slee-eep, my Little One
                    Sleep, my Brittle One—”

Miss Clark said “O Moosier Louee!” and stood giggling and staring at his
delicate but steely-strong fingers. He was rather drunk, for he had had
several cocktails mixed from the bottles (locked away from Maman) in his
new wardrobe trunk. . . .

                 *        *        *        *        *

The Scheurers’ motor slowed, and sped again, through the dusk of the
Champs-Elysées lit by yellow pearls.

Charmian was quiet with excitement.

“Oh, Bianca . . .” lowering her voice, lest they should fail to hear
each note, each echo, of this music that was France.

And Bianca, leaning back in the Scheurers’ motor, her mind dull, her
heart deadened, her body tired, reacting at the same moment to
Charmian’s whisper and to the discomfort of the slipping of the
Scheurers’ sable rug from her chilly knees, opened her eyes.

It was in this moment that, grasping down for the rug, glancing out of
the window of the motor, breathing perhaps a little deeper and so
actually tasting the air, she felt an emotion that swerved, like a small
brilliant bird across the darkness of her mind, its plumage brushing a
phosphorescent trail; a new emotion that sprang suddenly from an obscure
and so far undiscovered place in her, that had the flare of a passion,
the swiftness of an impulse. For in that second in which her hand
grasped the rug and her eyes saw the February dusk of 1919 in the
Champs-Elysées, she, who knew Paris, felt Paris for the first time.

The sensation, though sweet, was too swift to impress her then. And as
she leaned back, pulling the rug close about her, she hardly knew what
had happened to her; or why she was telling Charmian to look back . . .
“Look back, Charmian, at the Place de la Concorde.”

                 *        *        *        *        *

The white house, in the Avenue du Bois, set back behind wrought-iron
gates, had been built in 1904 by an Argentine, who, when the last
segment of parquet had been laid in the ballroom, was recalled suddenly
to Buenos Aires and death in politics.

The Philippe Scheurers had bought the house, allowing their doubts of
its taste (Cécile Scheurer had felt at the time that there was
distinctly too much marble and too many _salles de bain_) to give way to
such considerations as perfect nurseries; the nearness to the Bois, and
the garden in which Louis, who was delicate then, and had been
prescribed an “open-air life,” could have his lessons.

Within its sanctuary of scrolled iron, and trees, the house had kept an
over-rich whiteness—that _rastaquouère_ whiteness which makes the
clothes of Argentine women too smart and the teeth of their men too
bright.

Charmian said, as they drove up: “It makes Portland Place seem very
homespun.”

In the columned hall two Sisters of Charity were sitting on a marble
bench. There was a fountain in the centre of the hall whose basin was
filled with brown paper parcels.

Marthe came from behind two pillars. She wore a dark blue blouse and a
petaled collar of _broderie anglaise_. She welcomed them gravely and
warmly, turned to speak for a moment to the two nuns, and then led
Bianca and Charmian through an inner hall to a _salon_ beyond. She spoke
English.

“I am so glad to see you. Maman will be here in a moment. We have been
expecting you with such pleasure.”

She begged them, with a little gesture of her hand, to be seated. She
asked them, in conventional phrases, but with great sweetness of manner,
about their journey. She had, on their arrival, shaken hands with
Bianca, accompanying this greeting with a just perceptible curtsey; and
had kissed Charmian on both cheeks. Except for that, she wouldn’t, by
seeming in any way familiar with Charmian, make Mrs. Selwyn feel less
known, and therefore, perhaps, less welcomed. She addressed herself
chiefly to Bianca. She sat with her hands linked on her lap, very
straight up in a chair, designed (as were its fellows and forbears) for
a society that differentiated between sitting up and lying down.
(Bianca, squaring her own shoulders, noticed Charmian’s sprawl.)

A footman brought in a tray.

“Will you have some _porto_?”

Charmian said “yes” to everything. Sipping, she said, “I wish my French
was half as good as your English, Marthe!”

“Mine isn’t nearly as good as Louis’s. He speaks also American now.
Since he came from New York.”

“New York?” said Charmian. Her eagerness made Bianca remember that Harry
Kramer was there, on a concert tour.

Marthe said to Bianca, “I think that you did once meet my brother Louis
in England?”

“Yes,” said Bianca, and, “I hear he was an aviator?”

Madame Scheurer came in.

“You must excuse me. You must please forgive me for not being there when
you arrived.”

She sat down by Bianca, having given Charmian a welcome that was exactly
measured. She asked Bianca the same questions about their journey that
Marthe had asked; only with more precision. And would they not have
preferred tea to port? Surely?

Bianca thought that Madame Scheurer and her daughter had the same face
painted, respectively, by Holbein and Botticelli.

Bianca said that they had had tea on the train.

“And the notices prayed you not to _gaspiller le pain_!” broke in
Charmian.

“Really?” said Madame Scheurer, and to Bianca, “I have not been in the
train for two years. For two years I have not left Paris. One could not
go. These last two years Paris became an ill child, that one could not
leave.” As she said this her features grew sharp and sad. “A year ago,
last March, we sent Marthe and Miss Clark to Céligny.”

“Yes,” said Marthe. “Papa awoke us in the night and made us dress and go
in the motor.”

“We shall never forget those weeks,” said Madame Scheurer, finger and
thumb catching one of her pearl tassels. “Never. It was the 1870 of my
father’s youth again. Every day one thought ‘They will be here’ and the
guns never stopped. . . .” She broke off in a low quick apology to
Bianca. “These things are so near still.”

“Why pretend they aren’t?” said Bianca.

“But at least _now_ they are making peace! Maman, I saw Papa just now
and he had seen Monsieur Clemenceau to-day and—”

“—Who was _not_ too optimistic, _chérie_. My husband,” she said to
Bianca, “is of the opinion of Monsieur Clemenceau that we must, at
least, protect ourselves. But that, it seems, is not the opinion of
Lloyd George or of _ce fou de Wilson_.”

Monsieur Scheurer came in as she spoke. A short-legged, thin man. The
face clever but ugly, as if it were on the convex side of a spoon; the
eyes set deep, the chin simian below the dark moustache.

He kissed Bianca’s hand. His eyelids were fringed with close fine
lashes, growing straight and half an inch long. He welcomed Charmian,
shaking hands with her. He began at once an admirable conversation in
which he contrasted the present state of political atmosphere in London
and Paris. He quoted a friend as having said that Paris was a
shell-shocked city, in which it was unwise to hold a Peace Conference.
He said, “It is difficult enough to build a house of cards; but to try
and build it when one’s hands are trembling with fear and one’s eyes
blinded with hope is idiotic.” He turned to his wife and asked her if
she had read the article on Wilson in the _Figaro_.

“—On _Wilson_? I was just saying . . .”

Louis came in. His father glanced at him and went on talking. Madame
Scheurer said, “Here is Mrs. Selwyn, Louis. And you already know
Charmian.”

“I know them both,” he said.

He came to Bianca with his long light stride. His dark suit fitted close
over his wide shoulders, his pale green orchid contrasted with his pale
brown face. He didn’t smile at Bianca. He came up to her, looked at her
out of his slanting eyes with a quick perfunctory curiosity, and kissed
her hand. She remembered that she had disliked him when she last met
him, when he came to Moon’s Green with his parents in 1916. There had
been a tennis tournament in aid of the Red Cross, and they had been
partners. He had played brilliantly; and lost them the finals through an
unaccountable attack of temper.

He referred to this now. He said, “I wonder if you have forgiven yet my
play in that tournament? Unforgivable: that bad humor . . . But we were
winning. And I detest success!”

“In everything?”

“In myself.”

“Why?”

“Because it proves to me the thing that I don’t want to believe, that I
should hate to believe, which is that other people are even more stupid
than myself.” He added, turning away his glance, looking toward
Charmian, who was sitting on the edge of an Empire sofa talking to
Monsieur Scheurer—“I only like people who are superior to me not only
in soul, which is easy enough, but in intelligence also.”

Bianca noticed that what he said betrayed both his conceit and his
sensibility. But now she felt too tired and miserable to go on talking
to him or thinking about him.

Louis went to talk to Charmian. Bianca saw her turn to him—listen—then
laugh.

Madame Scheurer was speaking to her.

“I am sure you will want to rest?”

“Thank you.”

She was aware in her state of highly sensitized vagueness of Madame
Scheurer’s liking for her; just as she had realized her dislike of
Charmian. She could feel that for Madame Scheurer there was an elegance
in her well-concealed grief and her perfectly disguised baby which
contrasted with Charmian’s appearance of being a tomboyish but
overdecorated angel.

For Charmian, dressed for escape (from home) in bright blue, adorned for
adventure (with life) by two clandestine rows of cheap pearls, was the
doll angel of the _festa_: glamorous to a child, to a peasant; touching
in its symbolic glamour to an adult. Glamorous perhaps, Bianca thought,
to Louis Scheurer, who was leaning over her now, lighting her a
forbidden cigarette. And absurd and charming to Monsieur Scheurer, who
was giving her _marrons déguisés_ out of a flowered-silk box.

Marthe accompanied Bianca to her bedroom, switched on lamps, opened
_armoires_, handed over keys to the _femme de chambre_, was solicitous
lest she might be overtired. Wouldn’t she, perhaps, after her journey,
even prefer to stay, for this evening, in her room?

Bianca was pleased by Marthe. There was a propriety in her way of moving
and thinking that must be intrinsic, and not caused merely by her
upbringing.

Bianca said she would come down for dinner.

Who would be there, she asked, sitting down before the glass and
wondering if the _femme de chambre_ could borrow her some rouge.

“Only ourselves,” Marthe said, “and Monsieur and Madame Tissot.”

“Who are they?” said Bianca.

“Monsieur Tissot is a banker, and Madame Tissot occupies herself very
much with works for the poor. Louis doesn’t like them. But he is coming
all the same.”

“Coming? Doesn’t Louis live here?”

“No. He has taken an apartment. Rue de Grenelle. An old house. It is
very beautiful.”

Outside in the corridor a voice bleated—“Ma-a-at? _Maa-a-a-t?_”

“Ah!” said Marthe. “It’s Miss Clark. Then—” she came and took Bianca’s
hand for a polite second—“then we shall meet again at dinner, madame.”

Bianca went to the writing table to write to her Aunt Violet. The
inkstand was a large crystal swan whose neck swung back on a gilt hinge.
There was a purple feather pen. Its long nib sputtered under the
pressure of Bianca’s writing. The ink was purple too.

“We are,” she wrote illegibly, and blotted one corner of the card, “well
arrived. Charmian has enjoyed her journey.”

When she had written this she noticed her odd English; and then she
remembered that when she was in France before she had often found
herself talking a French person’s English; just as whenever she changed
from one group of people to another she found herself assimilating their
thoughts. Thus, with her father, she had judged in terms of beauty and
taste; with her mother had accepted the importance of health and gayety;
and with Richard had thought and felt and spoken in terms of simplicity
and delight.

                 *        *        *        *        *

Madame Tissot was large and in black from double chin to square-booted
feet. Monsieur Tissot was dapper. They looked like provincials, and
were, in fact, from Lyons; where Monsieur Tissot had been manager of a
small bank, La Banque Lyons-Parisienne, until 1913, when his bank had
come under the control of, among others, Sir Ivan Benz and Monsieur
Scheurer. Then Monsieur Tissot had been moved to Paris.

At dinner, in the dining room newly decorated by the young painter Sert,
the conversation was entirely of politics: of the Conference; of the
Russian Revolution and the Bolshevists in Poland; of Lloyd George and
the English strikes; of Sinn Fein, of Bela Kun, of the Græco-Turkish
situation . . . and again, of the Conference: of the personalities of
the Conference; of Clemenceau, of Venizelos, of Sonnino. Of General
Plumer’s telegram to the Peace Conference begging them to feed Germany
and saying that the English troops could not stand the spectacle of
starving German children.

Madame Tissot sighed and said it was the War.

Louis contradicted her and said it was the blockade, and that three
quarters of a million deaths had been caused since the Armistice by the
blockade.

Madame Tissot changed the subject by saying to Monsieur Scheurer that it
was on account of Mr. Venizelos’s presence in Paris that Ivan Benz had
left for London. Monsieur Scheurer said, with a half smile, that Ivan
Benz was no longer in London. “I saw him there days ago,” said her
husband. She folded her lips in righteous resignation as if, once more,
he had deceived her.

Charmian confided to Louis her and Peter’s name for Benz—the
_Ziegenbock_ (the goat). “Peter is my brother,” she said.

“I forget if I saw him. Is he like you?” Louis asked.

“No.”

“What a pity.”

“What,” Monsieur Tissot asked Bianca, “did one think in London about
Lord Northcliffe?”

Bianca said that he poisoned the news reservoirs of the country. She
went on to quote Keynes’s remarks to her Uncle Carteret about the
impossibility of Germany’s paying. This topic spread like lighted
petrol, round the table . . . The words “Germany, crime, ruin,
devastation, revenge” mingled with the rattle of coffee cups on a silver
tray.

Louis said to Madame Tissot, “What is the use of hanging the Kaiser?”

“We must have vengeance. Two pieces of sugar,” she said. And Cécile
Scheurer, shimmering as her portrait by Boldini, arrogant and sad as her
portrait by Laszlo, said:—

“Certainly, we must have revenge.”

“It seems,” said Louis later, when they were all in the _salon_, “that
in London they are still giving _Chu-Chin-Chow_.”

Bianca said, “It has become an old English custom.”

“Ah!” said Monsieur Tissot, joining their group. “Yes. I saw
_Chu-Chin-Chow_ when I was in London two years ago. Magnificent. I found
it magnificent. What a spectacle!”

He turned to Louis. “What ravishing women!” he said; and to Charmian,
“What beautiful costumes!”

“I’m not allowed to go to it,” said Charmian.

“Naturally,” said Madame Scheurer. “It is not at all a thing for young
girls.” She added, “Violette Cable took me to the _première_ when I was
in London three years ago.”

“No,” said Monsieur Scheurer, judging Bianca’s features dispassionately,
“not for young girls. I went last spring with Lord Cable. He had already
seen it four times.” He paused, relighting his cigar. “It seemed to me,
in fact, a very mediocre entertainment but exactly what is demanded by a
public suffering from war. . . . There has been the same effect from war
nervosity here.” He went on, suddenly acrid, “Let us hope that the Arts,
at any rate, will recover soon.”

Louis sat down at the piano and played the “Robbers’ March.” Then he got
up, bowed to Madame Tissot and his mother in turn, and strode out of the
room.

Later, when the Tissots had gone, Madame Scheurer turned to Marthe and
asked her what had been the matter with Louis this evening. Marthe said
quickly, “He had to meet François for supper!” François was a friend of
Louis’s who had been in the _Aviation_ with him. Marthe glanced from her
mother to her father.

“Ah, François Dubar!” Madame Scheurer turned to her husband. “He is a
bad influence for Louis.”

Monsieur Scheurer was examining his own face in a glass above one of the
console tables. He said, smoothing his eyelashes between thumb and
forefinger, “I have no fear for Louis. He is what the English call an
ace.”

                 *        *        *        *        *

François Dubar had no looks, no physique, no money, and no profession.
His assets were his youth, a teasing wit, and a tender heart.

Louis and François Dubar had both been in the _Aviation_. But they
didn’t meet until they were on leave in September 1918, when they met in
a small hotel off the main road between Aix-en-Provence and Toulon. The
hotel was run by an impressive old lady with a knowledge of modern
politics and a taste for the works of Zola. The boarders dined with the
landlady and four girls of remarkable erudition and gentleness. (Louis
and François didn’t realize they were in a brothel.) Never, during their
stay, did the girls show any signs of professional interest in them, and
the day their leave was up the old lady informed them that she had heard
that her son had got the _Croix de Guerre_, and as she felt that his
distinction made it unsuitable for her to keep on this business (“_C’est
surtout pour les officiers de la Marine, messieurs_”), she was now going
to retire and buy an _appartement_ for herself and her son in Arcachon.

This evening Louis found François waiting for him at the Deux Magots. He
was with two Englishwomen in black sombreros who were drinking Pernod
and explaining to him why the Peace Conference was going to fail. It was
a man-made peace, said one of them, just as it had been a man-made war.
François’s big, bright-hazel eyes were wide open, and he kept on nodding
and sipping his _café-crème_. He was wearing a parrot-green muffler, and
his small hunched body below it and his beak-nosed, sallow,
brilliant-eyed head above it made him look like some peculiar tropical
bird. He got up and left the Englishwomen when Louis came in and sat
down with him in their usual corner. François asked Louis why he was in
a bad temper, and Louis described the dinner at his parents’ house, and
began a tirade against Tissot, whom he described as the tool of Ivan
Benz. He said that everyone knew that Ivan Benz had done more than any
other one man to bring about the War, but that Tissot was an example of
the sort of financier-banker who made Benz’s power possible; that it was
Tissot who had bought _Le Petit Parisien_ and _La Patrie_ for Benz
(whose then “Russian” nationality had prevented his owning French
newspapers, or directing French banks), and that Tissot had been more
highly “subsidized” than all the others by Krupp’s to “influence” the
French press at that dangerous moment in 1917 when it seemed possible
that the War might come to an end. Louis commented on the fact that
Madame Tissot, who spent her husband’s money on her Children’s Clinic at
Neuilly, should accept the fact that German children were starving less
than three hundred miles away. François interrupted. He said:—

“Why don’t you come with me next week to Austria? I’m going there with a
charming and ugly English lady to work with the Quakers. I met her in
the train coming from Dieppe last week. She returns to Vienna to-morrow.
You ought to hear her description of conditions in Central Europe. She
is so ugly and so nice. She is the daughter of a duke. Waiter! Another
_café-crème_! Come with us?”

Louis’s hands had been clasped. They fell apart and lay open on the
table, showing the square palms, the hard transparent-looking tapering
fingers. His features were expressionless; but François, watching, saw
one thought flicker after another behind his eyes.

Then he said “I can’t,” and again, with an undertone of anger, “I
_can’t_.”

François understood.

“For me,” said Louis, leaning forward now on the table between them,
“for me the War is finished. Over. Done with.” Now he looked at
François. Now his fingers closed round the stem of his glass. “You
remember that time I told of, when it seemed impossible that I should
get down alive, over the English lines? Well, when I did get down and
the English stretcher-bearers were taking me to the dressing station,
there was a moment when I realized, completely (you know how difficult
it is to realize any condition with one’s reason and imagination at the
same time), I _realized_ what I had escaped; and I had a moment of
absolute horror, not of death, but at the thought that I had so nearly
lost life itself which I had hardly experienced! And in that moment I
had, like a shock, a sense of Life-as-it-might-be. And that shock has
left a memory of _pain_ which my elbow wound hasn’t!” Louis hesitated.
“I felt that _Life_, a fantastic mixture of violent and beautiful and
curious sensations, was _what I must have_! And,” he spoke slowly,
elucidating his own thought, “and now, and above all in terms of
whatever is beautiful and curious and exciting, _I must have it_!” He
picked up his glass and put it down again. “Therefore, for me, the War
is—” he made a gesture—“_Schluss_!”

“But the consequences?”

“I try to ignore them.”

François stirred his coffee until it made a whirlpool in the cup.
“Nobody,” he said, in his sweet thick _méridional_ French, “nobody will
be able to do that!”

                 *        *        *        *        *

When Louis was a little boy he used to have rages that culminated in
despair, tears, and, finally, an inability to sleep.

When he couldn’t sleep he kept on turning over, so as not to see the
face of _Barbe Bleue_ with features like “_ton oncle_ du Plessis”
staring too close into his. But at last, when he was too miserable, he
did cry out loud, and then, through the dreadful thick dark with the
Face everywhere, his Nannie came, big and solid; and her voice, her
English voice, that was comfort, was close above him; and her hand, that
was safety, was warm and firm on his shoulder. “Now then, Loo-iss dear
. . .” He caught her wrist, he climbed his hands up her arm until he got
to her shoulder, he got hold of her starched apron strap and pulled her
down close to him; and when his arms were round her neck, he could
whisper and not be ashamed how his voice gulped and shook—“I can’t
sleep, Nannie—I c-can’t—” And then she would fetch the night light and
set it on the washstand in the corner and bring her chair beside the bed
and sing the English song that he liked best about _Jean Peel_, while
her hand came in between the bars of his cot and held his. And when at
last, when the Face had gone away and the room was safe and quiet, and
even his own heart felt safe and quiet, and when sleepiness began to
come up round him and over him, he said, “I wish you could sit with me
every night like this, Nannie, until I’m asleep.”

And she said, “You want the moon, don’t you, Louis?”—that phrase of
hers that always fascinated him.

For it was part of Nannie’s glamour that, as well as being so familiar,
so good, so big, so utterly secure, she said strange things like
“Someone’s walking over my grave” or “There’s an Angel in the room” or
“You want the moon.”

Once he had a dream about the Angel. It was the Angel in crimson out of
the Italian picture in the library at the Villa. He was on the lower
terrace in the gardens. The sun had just set and he could see Mont Blanc
glowing pink above all the other mountains, on the other side of the
lake. He was alone, and then the Angel came along the terrace towards
him with its back to the shining mountains, so that its face was dark.
And the Angel said, “I give you three wishes, Loo-iss” (speaking English
and in Nannie’s voice). And Louis said, without knowing why, “I want the
moon.” The Angel turned so that her face (it was a woman’s face now) was
lit up by the rosy sky, and she said, “Nothing is easier” (in French).
And as she said this the full moon came up behind Mont Blanc and began
slipping up and up the sky, which darkened as the moon moved up and up
and then stood still above the cypress trees. Then the Angel held out
her long hands and he saw the moon quiver and start falling and spinning
down toward them until it fell into the Angel’s hands. Then the Angel
said, “Here you are, Loo-iss,” in Nannie’s voice, and gave him the moon,
which was a milk-white balloon, shining all over because it was wet. It
was so light that he wondered how it had fallen downwards at all; and it
was slippery like _crème renversée_. Then he saw that the Angel had
gone; and he was alone, on the terrace, holding the moon. And then he
began to be afraid, because he knew that if he let it go it would float
up into the sky and he would never get it back, and it had no string so
he began calling for Nannie to bring him some. But his voice made no
sound at all and this frightened him and his hands began slipping, and
suddenly he was letting go and the moon drifted up out of his hands, up
and up, and in the air it became silver-shining and more and more
hurtingly beautiful, and he tried to shout to it to come back again; but
his voice made no sound. And he woke up.

And when Nannie was giving him sips of cold water he still kept on
saying, “I want the moon back. I want the moon back.”

And Nannie said, “Bless the child” and then—“You just turn over and go
to sleep, my lamb.”

                 *        *        *        *        *

Louis called for Bianca and Charmian the next morning, in an egg-blue
sports car. He took them to a show of Zuloaga’s pictures. Marthe could
not come, for she had a violin lesson.

Louis and Charmian were excited by the colors and perspective of the
pictures. But Bianca thought that under their showiness they had the
thick boring quality of Spanish things. They went on to the Louvre. On
the way Louis bought some red carnations. Bianca thought it was part of
his flirtation with Charmian, but as an afterthought he bought Charmian
and herself each lilies of the valley. When they got to the Louvre he
laid the carnations at the feet of the “Victory.” Then they went up to
the Italian Primitives, but Charmian thought Bianca looked too tired to
stay long. On the way out Louis stopped in front of the Carpaccio and
asked Charmian if she didn’t think “_cette belle lumière dorée_ was
swell!” Charmian laughed at his language, which was a mixture of French,
English, and American slang. He said it was the language of the future:
“_C’est du polyglotte_.”

He took them to luncheon at the Crillon, where they were joined by two
friends of his, a young Belgian and an American. Bianca never grasped
their names. She thought that they were both rather sycophantic towards
Louis, and that his having friends who were too good an audience was
probably a fault in him, in spite of his assertion about liking only his
“superiors” in soul.

The restaurant was filled with anonymous men in remarkable staff
uniforms and well-known politicians looking older than their
photographs. Bianca saw Alan Blyth lunching with Sonnino and two French
officers, and two tables off she recognized the American whom she had
met at luncheon at Portland Place last October. He saw her, and got up
and came over and shook hands with her, and then with Louis, and
reintroduced himself as Herbert Langridge. He stayed for a few minutes
to talk, but he wouldn’t, in spite of Louis’s lightly barbed questions,
commit himself to any opinion about Wilson. Louis’s Belgian friend said,
“Did you see the cartoon of Wilson yesterday in _Paris-Soir_?” And Louis
said, “The first time I was ever in London, my governess bought me, in
Regent Street, a rubber animal that was called ‘Dying Pig.’ One blew him
up, he was immense; and then he began, just very slowly, to deflate,
with a monotonous thin sigh that grew more painful as he grew small, and
in the end . . .”

Langridge gave Louis a kindly and tolerant grin:—

“I’ll tell everybody you’re a bright boy, Louis Scheurer. You’ll go a
long way!” He shook hands again all round and went off, waving a hand.
Bianca saw him sit down again beside a woman in deep mourning.

“I certainly like to be a bright boy,” said Louis. “Now I’m filed for
reference!”

Bianca detected bravado.

“Langridge is one of our double-eagle Galahads,” said the American, who,
in a confused nervous way, hoped that by looking like a Pierrot his
nationality would escape detection.

“Show me which is Cocteau,” said Charmian. Louis showed her, and named
all the other people at the table with him.

“You know _her_ too?” Charmian asked.

Louis touched the hand that grasped his arm. “Know her? No—I don’t
_know_ her. I’m in love with her.”

Charmian turned to look at the woman. A waiter tried to make her realize
a _soufflé_. She turned to Louis again, her translucent wonder facing
his pale brown mask. She said, “Yes. If I were a man I should love a
woman who wrote such poetry.”

“Would you?” said his wry lips, his caressing voice. “Would you,
Charmian?” While his eyes surveyed her with a transitory amusement.

She answered “Yes,” thinking he heard her; grateful for his
friendliness; unaware, as Bianca was for her, either of his coquetry or
of his indifference.

“Louis is nice,” thought Charmian, elated by the crowd and the music and
the scents in the muffled air.

“Louis is odious,” thought Bianca—as far as she could think or feel in
this nightmare of too many faces and too insistent music and too
fragrant, sickening flowers.

And Louis, ordering coffee, ordering liqueurs, glancing at his
fingernails and explaining that over there, just coming in, was Jacques
Blanche, Louis thought: “Mrs. Selwyn is unhappy. She is so unhappy that
I can’t bear to look at her and see her ‘amused’ at what my friends
(whom she hates anyway) are saying. She is so unhappy that I think if
she doesn’t scream soon, I shall scream for her. I shall get up in this
gibbering rotting smiling place and scream to the politicians and their
rich sluts, to the Chiefs of Staff, and the _maître d’hôtel_ bent
servile like a question mark, to this whole _singerie_ chattering round
flares of mimosa . . .”

“A liqueur?” said Louis in his brittle manner, smiling nicely at
Charmian, at Mrs. Selwyn, at his own friends.

Bianca refused.

“_Oh!_” said Charmian. “_Can_ I have the lovely one that tastes of
chocolate and cream?”

“Ah!” said Louis. “But of course”—and to the waiter, “_Une crème de
cacao pour Mademoiselle_!”

                 *        *        *        *        *

That night Bianca and Charmian left Paris for Switzerland.

                 *        *        *        *        *

Bianca woke and saw the sun on the snow peaks. Yet the snow peaks
belonged to her bad queer dream.

Charmian came in, in her pyjamas. She sat on the bed. She said:—

“I’m going to show you one of his letters. And then you’ll _see_.” She
held it out.

“I’d rather not see it.” . . . A white and dark dream. People with dark
faces and white clothes—as on a negative.

“Yes. I _want_ you to. I can’t bear you even to _think_ unjustly about
him.”

Bianca took the letter. “Please read it,” Charmian said. She was wearing
her sugar-pink flannel pyjamas which had shrunk and showed how thin she
was, with her bony arms and small breasts and long legs.

Bianca said, “Must I?”

“Yes, of course.”

The letter was written on the notepaper of the Blackstone Hotel,
Chicago.

    MY DARLING GIRL: As I take up the pen I feel that I am, in a
    very distant sad way, taking your little hand in mine. Just as I
    shall feel when I lay it down once more at the end of this
    letter that I am letting that sweet little hand go again. But,
    _que voulez-vous_? Men must work (though don’t you believe, my
    darling, that it’s only the women that weep!) and, _enfin_, what
    else is there? But perhaps I am ungrateful. At my age it is
    quite a lot to expect when a young and sensitive and very
    beautiful girl writes to you to say, as you say in your sweet
    last letter, that she will be always there for him, and that
    there is nothing she would not do for him. All the same, old
    cynic that I am, I can’t help asking myself just exactly what
    those words mean; and when I am depressed and so very, very
    lonely, I say to myself, “But of course her words mean no more
    than the little kisses that she sometimes gives to me, those
    kisses like little white flowers, fragrant, and fresh as lilies
    of the valley; she is a child still, although she seems in many
    ways a woman. But she does not yet understand the deepness, the
    beauty and excitement, of a Great Passion!” And how should you,
    my little darling girl? You who are shut up in that pretty cage
    that is called your home, and guarded by those so very kind
    jailers that are called your family!!!

    However. Don’t let me complain. Let me think to myself instead
    that you are happy and contented, and that I am glad really that
    what you have sometimes said to me is nothing more than the
    _Schwärmerei_ that a charming flapper will have often for an
    elderly, perhaps a little bit famous, musician, that can play to
    her and sing to her now and then a song or two.

    Do you remember “_Du bist wie eine Blume_” that evening? My
    little “_Blume_”? I think it has been written for you in
    advance!

    I wonder if you do remember that last evening, when I sang to
    you . .

Bianca couldn’t go on reading. But she couldn’t lift her glance from the
big splurging writing lest Charmian should see what she felt. So she
kept staring at “_Du bist wie eine Blume_” and seeing Harry Kramer’s
podgy hand, his ringed cushiony damp little hand closing round a flower
. . .

Charmian was lying across the foot of the bed, her head buried in her
pink flannel arms; and she could only stretch her hand, saying, “_Don’t_
be sad, Charmian, darling!”

The letter fluttered to the carpet.

“How can’t he _believe_ that I love him?”

“I—of course he does, really.”

“—I write every mail. Sometimes ten pages. I write every day, you see,
and then put it all in one envelope . . .”

“Charmian . . .”

                 *        *        *        *        *

Celimène stood halfway between the doors and the bed.

“_Le masseur, Monsieur Louis_ . . .”

Louis lay dead-still.

“_Il y a le masseur_ . . .”

Louis stirred; stiffened; bounded upright on to the white bearskin,
staggered naked, and blind with sleep, into the bathroom, stretched out
his hand, and bent under the shower.

The icy water drenched his head and body. He stood straight again, his
hair streaked down in an Apache fringe, his eyes screwed to slits.

“_Zamorr!!!_”

The negro came, seized a hot bath towel, and dried him, whistling
through his teeth like a groom. In the bedroom Celimène was talking to
herself and tidying the enormous canopied bed, pulling the black crepe
de Chine sheets, smoothing the white satin quilt. Louis heard her; and
her customary monologue about the _concierge’s_ wife mingled with the
tangled skeins of his dreams. (_Who_ was leaning over the piano?)

He put on his dressing gown and Zamorr brought a cigarette and lit it
for him.

In the bedroom Celimène had looped back the pink window curtains. The
sun came in. The pattern of the three iron balconies was printed three
times upon the white carpet. Celimène went out and brought in the roses.
She never allowed Louis to sleep with his flowers. “_C’est malsain. Ça
donnera de la fièvre à monsieur._” At ten o’clock every evening she took
out his flowers and put them on the balcony of the _salon_, and Jeanne
(the _femme de ménage_) changed the water, or threw them away in the
morning. Louis himself always arranged them. Celimène had only two
revealed anxieties for Louis: that he should not sleep with flowers at
night, or miss a meal during the day.

Otherwise she showed no awareness of his nights or days. The
_concierge’s_ wife could learn nothing from her. And the voices on the
telephone, the thin or deep or vague or angry voices, that asked if
Monsieur Louis was at home—when he would be back? if he had left any
message?—got, from Celimène, the invariable formula—“that Monsieur
Louis had just gone out and had not said when he would return.”
Celimène, graduate in the service of bachelors under forty, suspected
telephone voices of being either creditors or discarded loves. For she
knew that desirable visitors, such as publishers and _tantes à
héritage_, announced themselves by letter; and that, in matters of love,
you do not wait to receive the _coup de téléphone_ of the person you
desire. . . .

But if Celimène’s tendency was to seize the telephone only as a weapon
of defense, Zamorr (his real name was Jesus Holowell) could hardly be
restrained from using it as a receptacle for all possible information
and good nature. Thus the voice which, at eleven, had been checkmated by
Celimène’s wooden assertion of Louis’s absence might at eleven-fifteen
(when Celimène was in her kitchen) be welcomed by the rolling
full-flavored tones of Zamorr, who, beaming and nodding his head over
the ivory receiver (which in his bronze hand looked as frail as a
chicken bone), would, irrespective of the language in which the voice
inquired, assure it that “Mistah Louis’ll be right heah . . . Yes, suh
(Yes, ma’am) . . . He ain’t bin out dis morning— No, suh, he slep’
until quarter of eleven— We had a party lass night, yessuh, an’ der’s
six for lunch to-day an’—yessuh, I’ll fetch Mistah Louis right away
. . .”

                 *        *        *        *        *

The Swede in the white coat worked over Louis muscle by muscle. “Now
turrn over . . . Tank you . . . Still a leetle steefness here” (catching
the knot of nerves at the back of his neck). . . . “Iss the head comfee?
Yess? . . .”

Louis’s mind hurt. He kept his cheek flat on the mattress and the Swede
got his neck and shoulder loosened up a bit, but his mind was twisted
and there was a pain of left-over anger in his diaphragm.

“_Now de exssercisess, pleass— Reseest—re-seest—re-seest_—”

(It was Alice last night, suddenly turning on him and saying those
things, in front of everybody. A lot of filth.)

“—_Reseest—re-seest!_”

Not that the party hadn’t been funny and fantastic. Marie in her bear’s
head, and the old Thoreau chasing her, and that squealing little Bengy,
in ostrich feathers, dancing with Esmé Harrington; and at four in the
morning Mamie and Pierre and Alice in his bed all trying at once to
telephone a cable of their love to Jimmy Lothair in Chicago.

“_Now re-lax_—”

Louis stopped thinking about Mamie and Pierre and Alice (Mamie was
doping again and her nails were dirty) and began thinking about Jimmy
Lothair, and the party they’d given in New York the night before he
left; and Jimmy standing on the ledge of that window sill with a glass
in his hand and a drop of twenty stories into Fifty-seventh Street—

Louis’s thoughts changed from flicking about in American to thinking
about Jimmy Lothair in French; which marked the way in which Jimmy had
really affected his feelings. For, at this epoch, one part of Louis’s
mind thought rapidly and forcefully in a mental dialect derived from his
period in New York; while another intermittent element in him which, if
he thought about it, he recognized as essential self did its thinking
and feeling in his own language.

Jimmy had written a postcard since, saying the play was coming off in
April and that he was going to Hollywood to make a picture with Lillian
Gish. Louis supposed he needed the money. He had never seen Jimmy in a
film and couldn’t imagine him a flat grey figure moving dumb lips. “And
once they get you in pictures,” Jimmy said, “you can stick there until
your profile wears out!”

The Swede went into the bathroom and washed his hands, and took off his
white coat and put it in his little valise. He bowed, ducking his head,
as he went out.

Louis lit a cigarette. He wondered if it was Jimmy’s radiant good humor,
or his courage, the mad elated courage of a schoolboy, which gave him
his power over other human beings. Probably both. Probably the most
successful charm consisted in being always pleased and never afraid. To
be so, hadn’t you to be, also, stupid? Jimmy’s shining health and looks
made his stupidity unrecognizable; and the daredevil implications even
of his mediocre activities (for he drove off at golf with the same glint
and grin as he dived forty feet, or went into the lions’ cage, or drank
off two bottles of neat gin) made it impossible to believe that he was
dull! If one said to Jimmy Lothair something that he didn’t
intellectually understand, he turned on you his physical glamour, the
glamour of a sort of cowboy-Apollo, and waited, smiling, until you
smiled back.

In the theatre he had played hero after hero, lover after lover. There
had never been any question as to whether he could act. He hadn’t needed
to since he came to New York in _Angel-Face_ in 1912. At parties he
sometimes did an imitation of himself in _Angel-Face_, in a tight sailor
suit. Lots of his friends called him Angel Face, and some varied the
anatomical description and tacked Angel on.

Louis reflected that he might write to Jimmy. But he disliked writing
letters almost as much as Jimmy disliked getting them. You might as well
dance a minuet with Jimmy as have a correspondence with him; it
wouldn’t, in his parlance, “get you anywhere.”

While Louis was thinking about him, Zamorr came in, bringing coffee and
two letters, both foreign.

One was a bill from his London tailor. The other, from Switzerland, was
from Bianca Selwyn.

    DEAR MONSIEUR SCHEURER:—

    My cousin, Peter Cable, Charmian’s brother, is coming out here
    to join us for his Easter holidays. I wonder if you would be
    very kind, and, as I hear your parents are now away, look after
    Peter for a few hours. If you are busy he might perhaps wait at
    your flat, as his mother doesn’t want him to drift about Paris
    on his own. He is coming as far as Paris with a friend, arriving
    at 5.45 on the 22nd—and doesn’t get his train for Bâle until
    nearly nine.

    Charmian sends you her love. Thank you for entertaining us both.

             Yours,
             BIANCA SELWYN

Louis looked at the address: “The Grand Hotel, Ascona.”

How fantastic the English were, with their schoolboys of sixteen still
in the nursery. He saw himself feeding a pink-faced young Cable, on
ice-cream certainly, and listening to interminable accounts of cricket
matches. Without doubt Peter Cable would be a replica of Lord Cable.
Carteret Cable was, for Louis, the typical Englishman of his class:
clever but not witty; important but not elegant; decisive and complacent
in judgment, and in manners, like all the English, conventional but
unsophisticated.

Louis got up and went to his desk and wrote out a telegram to Mrs.
Selwyn saying that he would meet Peter whenever he arrived. He gave it
to Zamorr. As he did so he wondered why he should bother. He supposed,
as he began to dress, that he was trying to refute one of Alice’s
charges of last night, her accusation that he had no sense of other
people except when he wanted to “use them.”

Her drunken words had bruised him, because he believed that he had a
talent for friendship. This was true—at any rate in its results.

In friendship Louis was loyal, sensitive, and, even to the manner of
quitting a fellow traveler, or the greeting of his hairdresser, or the
choosing of a New Year’s card for Celimène’s husband, inspired by his
imagination. For by the time such a card had been chosen (a card which
was to accompany an envelope containing a hundred francs) Louis would,
in his imagination, have identified himself with Celimène’s husband;
have acquired his taste for Marr, his dislike of dentists, his sciatica,
his bristled cheeks, his Communism, his sharp stare. And with that stare
(the stare of a man irritably and ignorantly combative; the stare of a
disciple of a Rousseau, yet the stare too of a man who had the good
sense to have loved Celimène for twenty years) Louis would have chosen a
card—in color, portraying a rural scene, including house and poultry,
roseate and glossy in the setting sun.

So, also, Louis’s greeting of his hairdresser (a “_Bonjour, Rouard_”
that implied difference of class and equality of intellect) had been
distilled by Louis from Rouard’s own atmosphere, from Rouard’s
admiration for Pascal, from his dislike of England, his money snobbery
(it was the “Scheurer” he loved in Louis), and his appreciation of the
style of Maupassant.

And so, too, at the end of a journey, a holiday, even a walk through the
streets after a party, Louis, having created a friendship in miniature,
would in his leave-taking express, by a phrase or glance, how he had
inhabited (and to that extent loved) the person whom he must leave.

But if his imagination made him, sometimes, loving in friendship, he was
incapable of friendship in love.

In love his adventures were of the senses. And his senses were so direct
in their apprehension that they demanded nothing of his imagination. His
eye, seeing beauty, demanded no adjectives from his brain, no simile to
persuade his awareness from pleasure to ecstasy. His hearing felt a
voice, not as comparable to music, but, with delight, as a sweet
speaking of words. He tasted directly, smelled acutely, touched
joyously. As meat in his mouth was meat, with its own carnal savor and
satisfying texture; as the smell of loam involved no echo of violins in
autumn; so the feel of another body, smooth and maddening, left his mind
untroubled by irrelevant images of petals, of peaches, of flames. For
his delight was in sensitive flesh and bone, and his lust satisfied by
lust in action. Where he saw a beautiful profile he saw, not the nose of
Cleopatra, the eye of Helen, the fragrant neck of Alexander; and so
dreamed himself idly the possessor of an hermaphrodite beauty whose
lineaments might remain minted on his imagination. Instead he saw a
profile whose beauty approximated exactly his desire for it; and which,
by some suitable act of possession, the taking of a photograph, a
luncheon at the Ritz, an afternoon’s love-making on a divan, he could
achieve—and so eliminate.

                 *        *        *        *        *

Louis stood on the platform hunching his shoulders.

He had stayed in until four, failing to write. And when he came out
there was an east wind. At five he’d called on Marie de Montcontour,
because she was the sort of woman he liked (tired and witty, and fifty).
And she was out. As he bought a _Paris-Soir_ he reflected how bored he
was by young pretty women who expected one to fall on top of them, even
in their motors. (Thérèse telephoning again this morning. Impossible to
say to her, “You are a handsome girl, but the shape of your admirable
body irritates me, and you have too many teeth.”)

Marie de Montcontour might have calmed him. Sometimes she could. For she
could make him see the charm, as well as the satire, of his own
unimportance. She pricked their friends into an amusing pattern, as
children do with pins on a pincushion; and there was his own little
pin’s head—a dot in a pretty curve on velvet ground. But since Marie
had been out, he had returned from the Rue de Bourgogne, still carrying
upon his shoulders, like a sufferer from elephantiasis, his enormous and
distorting mood of egoism; and so conscious, as he crossed his own
courtyard, of its hooding ugliness that he expected Zamorr, instead of
saying “Cocktails, suh?” (as he did), to ask him, in a voice deeply
sounding with Fear, whether anything was “de mattah”?

As Zamorr fetched the shaker Louis had reflected that the answer to that
unasked question was that nothing was the matter.

Nothing and everything. Since life, which seemed to him the most
insidious of drugs, both enthralled him, and drove him mad.

He opened his _Paris-Soir_. . . .

                 *        *        *        *        *

The train came in.

A new game for him, he thought, meeting schoolchildren at termini!

The people were spilling out of the train. British Staff Officers in
khaki with scarlet hatbands. Smart Englishwomen, but with long feet.
Dowdy Englishwomen with still longer feet. Suave young men in bowlers
carrying the _Times_ and the _Daily Mail_ and the _Westminster Gazette_.
Shapeless women in mink coats . . . and still more Americans.

Paris was becoming American, he thought; and nothing but the growing
hatred of Wilson can prevent us, with the Crillon already occupied by
them, the Champs-Elysées already policed by them, the champagne
factories making 100 per cent profit on them, from becoming a
_succursale_ of New York. (From becoming a nation which calls black
coffee a _demi-tasse_, and eats ice cream twice a day.)

The notion, though superficial, irritated him. He liked America; he had
a violent taste for New York. But not New York in Paris. For what he
demanded of places was what he demanded of people, that they should be,
to the most exaggerated degree, themselves.

He began to move up the platform, glancing among the pink Anglo-Saxon
faces so little different, he thought, from the buttocks of the rosy
pigs’ corpses which adorn the butcher shops of English country towns.

As he moved up the platform Louis looked cursorily on at least four
faces that he was never to see again. That of Major Keats-Berriman, on
his way to Egypt; of Nicholas Smith, of Smith and Farley, Solicitors, on
his honeymoon with Maisie, who had just left her job at the War Office;
of Sir Flummery Sewell, arrived to visit his many friends who had the
luck to be at the Conference; that of a young archæologist released,
with one leg, from defending the Future in Mesopotamia, to resume a now
three-limbed attack on the Past in Greece. Of these four men the latter
only saw Louis Scheurer, and in that moment of purely anthropological
interest (“Chaldean type” was what he noted) he got an impression which
he was to verify, fifteen years later, in a _Harper’s Bazaar_, in an
hotel lounge in Alexandria; when the name Louis Scheurer was familiar to
three big publics of America, England, and France, and his features were
among the five hundred sets of features recognized, as a professional
duty, by the _maîtres d’hôtel_ of the world.

                 *        *        *        *        *

Suddenly a hesitant voice said with an English accent: “_Est-ce que vous
êtes, par hasard, Monsieur Louis Scheurer_?”—and Louis was looking into
the face of—wasn’t it the “Blue Boy”?

“I am.”

“Oh . . . I’m Peter Cable.”

“How do you do.”

“—It’s terribly good of you to meet me like this. I could really have
managed quite well. Only my family . . .” They moved down the platform,
past the barrier, through the crowd. The boy, shoulder to shoulder with
Louis, was both diffident and graceful.

When they got to Louis’s pale blue car he exclaimed in admiration. Louis
drove him fast. In the Rue de Grenelle, the boy exclaimed at a shuttered
_hôtel_ of the seventeenth century glimpsed through a cobbled courtyard.
Then he was shy again. When they got into Louis’s apartment, he said
“How _absolutely_ lovely!” and stood clutching his overcoat and dispatch
case instead of letting Zamorr take them from him. Then he noticed
Zamorr, who gave him one of his white, flashing, engaging smiles; and
when Zamorr had gone out Peter said, suddenly amused, “How jolly to have
a man like that!”

Louis said, “He was leaving the people I stayed with in Charleston
because they were shutting up their house. I asked him if he’d come. And
he wanted to.”

Peter, watching Louis Scheurer, thought he had never seen anyone so
vivid, or so curious and beautiful a setting. He looked round again at
the books, the pictures, the Chinese figurines, the tuberoses, the
_lumieri_ on the paneled walls, the Empire sofa and footstools, in
tarnished gold and white. The negro came back bringing a tray of glasses
and decanters and set it down on a low table. Louis said:—

“I was afraid I’d have to feed you ice cream! But I saw, at once, it
wouldn’t be necessary. Light the candles, Zamorr.”

The negro lit a taper and went from the sconces on the walls to the
candelabrum that stood below a dark picture—a still life of roses and a
dead hare and nectarines and a guitar. Louis followed Peter’s look.

“I bought it last week. I don’t know even who it’s by. It’s French, late
seventeenth century. I sold a small Monet I had there. I had the passion
for Impressionists. Then a reaction against them. They aren’t decorative
in a room. They’re pictures for picture galleries, or studios. I’m not
sure that they aren’t just pictures for painters! Like James Joyce is a
writer for writers! What do you think?”

Peter, too uncertain, too conscious of how primary his knowledge and
perceptions were in such matters, was silent. But Louis, without waiting
for his answer, went on talking: about Joyce, about Dorothy Richardson,
about Katherine Mansfield, about the modern English novel, and its
relation, if any, to the writing of a former generation—to Conrad, to
Kipling and Henry James; and how Henry James compared, to his detriment,
with Stendhal, who was capable of being as subtle, or more so, with that
amazing simplicity of style. Pouring out a glass of port, which Peter
refused, Louis got from Stendhal to Napoleon as a stylist; and from
Napoleon to the question of French influence in modern Europe, and so,
through another series of intellectual acrobatics, to painting again,
and the work of a painter called Utrillo, and of Derain, of Marquet, and
Augustus John, whose work was “_postiche_, false great-painting,” he
said, although “his early drawings were good.”

Louis lay back on the Empire sofa smoking one cigarette after another
and began developing the theme that the lack of talent in the world was
not only because of the War (which had only covered four years) but
because of the lack of Taste, and that modern America was an example of
a Culture led by Art Dealers. He said that only by motoring far enough
into the Italian or French countryside, and then going on up roads which
wouldn’t support motors, could one find people living with beautiful
things (_des belles chases_) as a matter of course; and reading the
books in their libraries, even if they happened to be First Editions.

Peter sat listening. And as, in this room lit by many candles and
fragrant with books and tuberoses, he watched the expressions changing
in Louis Scheurer’s pale brown mask, and heard his voice alternately
hard-edged and musical, assertive and gentle; as he felt the play of his
thought and followed (his own wit quickening, and his own mind stirred
by the sense of coming extraordinarily alive) the adventures of Louis’s
imagination,—the somersaults of his wit, the rapid half-defiant
improvisation of his fancy,—he felt that here at last, in this room, in
this man, in this talk, was a justification of the emotion which had
made him fling at his father (in reply to an exasperated “I don’t know
what the hell you _do_ want”)—“I want to be civilized.”

Louis was talking about Greece now. Comparing the ruins in Athens with
the ruins at Pæstum. Zamorr came in and said that dinner was served.
Louis said, “I went, with my father, when I was fourteen: then back to
our villa in Sicily— Some day I must show you the photographs. You’ll
see exactly what I mean. . . .” He went on talking, impassioned by his
own thought: but aware, too, that this boy opposite him, listening to
him, was fascinated, intoxicated, and in some special way that he
couldn’t define. When he glanced at him he saw his dark eyes grave and
brilliant, his cheeks flushed.

As they went into the dining room Louis said, “We mustn’t forget your
train.” But the boy didn’t seem interested. He said: “I want to go to
Greece and Sicily . . . and Cyprus . . . and Constantinople. I’ve never
been anywhere except St. Moritz.”

He looked very tall and narrow and childish—waiting for Louis, his
host, to sit down first. When they were seated Celimène hurried in, and
whisked out again (to make sure that they were really ready for her to
serve the _soupe aux poissons_). Peter said, “But I have a friend, David
Blyth, who’s traveled quite a lot. His family go abroad every year. He’s
going to be a painter—when he’s been to Oxford.”

“Are you going to Oxford?”

“Yes.”

“To study what?”

“History.”

“And then?”

Peter hesitated—“Politics, I think.”

Celimène’s head came round the screen.

“_Elle est bonne, la soupe?_”

“_Exquise!_”

Zamorr, standing behind Peter’s chair, moved his bulk two steps to the
right to hide Celimène.

Louis said, “Politics in England can be a career. Here, it’s a
business. . . . I see you very well as another Pitt.”

He began to ask questions about English political parties, about the
last election, about Lord Cable’s political opinions. He asked how much
influence he lost by being in the Upper House? And whether it was true
that he had a brother at the War Office? And whether his sister hadn’t
married the Admiral Briggs who was one of the Naval Experts at the Peace
Conference and had dined with the Scheurers and Ivan Benz a few days
ago. Louis went on to ask whether a man called Brownlow Best, who was in
some way attached to the American delegation, had been to stay at Moon’s
Green. Peter said yes, he had been there just before Christmas. Louis
dropped the subject suddenly, and went back to politics in general. He
said that there were only two real forces in politics all over the
world. The people who profited by the Big Interests, and the people who
were harmed by them. He said that all the Interests all over the world
were interconnected, and that it was this close profitable interplay of
Banking and Industrialism and Political Influence which had made the War
possible. He said, just as Celimène forced her way past Zamorr to urge
them to have some more of the chicken, that the Peace Conference would
fail because the Interests in Oil, in Steel, in Coal, in Chemicals, were
behind the scenes, determined that it should. When Celimène had gone
Louis came back suddenly to the subject of Brownlow Best. He said:—

“Did he speak to you at all?”

Peter hesitated. “I don’t remember. Oh yes—once.”

“What did he say to you?”

“He—I remember now. He asked me if I was going into Cable’s later on
. . . But he talked to Charmian mostly.”

“Oh yes. Your sister . . . How pretty she is.”

Peter was pleased. He said:—

“She stayed in Paris on her way, didn’t she?”

“Yes. Your sister. And your cousin . . . Mrs. . . .?”

“Bianca Selwyn.”

“Oh yes.”

Suddenly Louis remembered her face. He said—“Do you know, she’s a
little like you! Her face is shaped like yours—only paler, and . . .
aren’t her eyes blue?”

“No. Grey.”

Louis said, “What time’s your train?”

“Nine o’clock, or five minutes to.”

“Zamorr, what’s the time?”

“I’ll find out, suh.” He went out. They heard him: “Whad’s de
tahm—_l’heure?_” He came back. “Quarter of nine, Mistah Louis!”

Louis turned to Peter.

“You won’t make it! You must resign yourself and stay the night.”

“Oh—but—”

“We’ll telephone to them—afterwards. Zamorr, coffee in the other room.”
He added, exactly in the casual way in which he thought it, “I’ll motor
you there. We’ll go by Geneva—and stay at our villa there on the way.
It’s very beautiful, and we can distract ourselves by thinking about
Madame de Staël, and Benjamin Constant—and Voltaire.” He got up, making
a sign to Zamorr to bring the brandy into the next room. “Come,” he
said. And as Peter, elated out of his reticence, said, “I _am_ glad I
missed that train,” Louis said, “_Candide?_ D’you enjoy _Candide?_ And
the _Princesse de Babylone_ . . .? Your cousin is rather like her . . .
You haven’t read it? Then we’ll spend this evening reading
it—Zamorr—Zamorr! . . . Telephone to Madame de Brissac and say that I
can’t go to her party to-night. Tell her I’m ill . . . And _Adolphe_
. . . But we’ll read _Adolphe_ at Geneva. . . .”




                                PART III


While her maid unpacked, Josephine van Geldern went through her rites
for arriving at a hotel. Having gargled, she sprayed her bedroom and
bathroom with Formalin, burnt methylated spirit in the bath and wash
basin, and sponged a Lysol mixture over the seat of the W.C. When she
had hung mothballs in the cupboards and shaken out on the balcony the
sparse rugs allotted to the linoleum floor of a _Kur_-Hotel, she
transferred her energies from health to beauty. She washed her
Lysol-smelling hands with Vera-Violetta soap, and then with Pâte Agniel;
tapped her foot till her maid found her muslin jacket; re-did her hair
in adept silver swirls; powdered her face and wiped off the powder
again; changed her brooch from diamonds to sapphires; tapped her foot
till her maid had found a fresh grey tulle scarf for her neck and a pair
of clean wash-leather gloves. Then she went out on to the balcony and
deep-breathed, raising her arms six times.

When her daughter came in she said:—

“This is wonderful air. It ought to do me all the good in the world.”

“I hope so,” said Bianca.

“It seems to be doing you good.”

Bianca said, “Peter and Louis Scheurer are arriving this morning. By
car.”

“Is that the Philippe Scheurers’ boy?”

“Yes. They seem to have made friends in Paris. Louis took Peter to stay
at the Scheurers’ villa, near Geneva, on the way here.”

“How delightful for Peter— My sister Violet always seems to pick the
right friends for her children. How wise she was always to be careful to
keep up _relations_ with the Scheurers!”

Josephine added, “But Charmian doesn’t look very well. I’m afraid she
isn’t going to be pretty as we all hoped last year— By the way, I see
that Mrs. Edgar Lacy is staying here! I looked at the visitors’ book as
soon as I arrived. You never tell me anything in your letters. And of
course, I remembered at once! She used to be a neighbor of ours. Your
father liked her very much, though I must say I always found her house
dreadfully dark and too full of things. But I expect you were too young
to remember! Or have you been seeing something of her? I always thought
her a little eccentric, out in all sorts of weathers without a hat, and
_far_ too much meat for a woman of her sedentary habits. I expect she
has gout. But this is quite the wrong place for gout. She must go to
Acqui, or Vichy—or even a good English spa—like Llandrindod Wells!”

                 *        *        *        *        *

Mrs. Lacy, widowed and considerably impoverished since the van Gelderns
had known her in Wiltshire, turned out to be otherwise quite well; and
on her way to Cairo. She was a fragile, elderly little woman,
inconspicuous except for her lidded eyes, cloudy blue in color. She
greeted Mrs. van Geldern with a birdlike reserve, but was friendly
enough in explaining that she had taken an opportunity to travel, in
between the death of one dog and the purchase of another. She added that
the inevitable selling of her house, the ending of the War, and the
demise of her husband had been added reasons for her decision to see
Cairo, and, if possible, Jerusalem. It turned out that she was
particularly anxious to study the methods of the fortune tellers in
Cairo, as she herself dabbled in the Occult.

This conversation led to her being beseeched by Charmian to “tell her
fortune.” She promised to do so.

                 *        *        *        *        *

Mrs. Lacy was in her usual corner by the standard lamp behind the tall
palm trees. When she saw Bianca coming, she put down her embroidery.
Bianca introduced Louis and Peter. She said, “This is Charmian’s
brother.” Then Charmian came with Mrs. van Geldern, but the latter
refused coffee and went away after a few minutes’ conversation with Mrs.
Lacy. She had promised to play bridge with the Hungarian general and the
Swedish banker and his wife.

Louis was charming with Mrs. Lacy. Bianca thought that he had a way of
being rather consciously courteous to people who must bore him. Charmian
went up to her room and came back with the crimson jersey she was
knitting for one of the children of Central Europe. Louis ordered a
brandy for himself. Bianca wouldn’t let him order one for Peter.

Soon Charmian reminded Mrs. Lacy about the fortune telling and held out
her two palms.

Mrs. Lacy bent forward under the lamp. She held Charmian’s right hand.
After a moment she said, “I can tell your character better than your
future. Your fate line isn’t very clear.” She hesitated . . . “You’ll go
abroad . . . I see that. . . . You’ve more heart than wisdom.”

“Shall I marry?”

“Not yet.”

“Oh!”

“Are you in such a hurry?”

“I’m in a hurry to be happy! Shall I be happy?”

Mrs. Lacy’s glance lifted to Charmian’s face.

“You’ll always give happiness.”

“What more do you see?”

“It’s difficult with a very young hand. The lines alter, you know, from
year to year.”

“Chinese people,” said Peter, “tell fortunes from the soles of your
feet.” But he held out his hand.

After a moment’s hesitation, Mrs. Lacy raised it closer under the light.
Then bent down to it. She murmured something about “very few lines.”
Then she said, “You’re very loyal . . . Capable of great feeling— Very
great feeling.”

“Shall I travel?”

“Yes. Quite a lot.”

“Oh, _good_!”

“But you mustn’t overdo things.” She spoke in an uncertain voice, as if
she were searching for a sentence which her own thought couldn’t define:
“You mustn’t go too _fast_ . . . You must be—steady . . .” She dropped
his hand. For a second her lidded bird-gaze stayed on his face.

Louis spread his broad palm, his long fingers.

“You?” She looked up; saw him. “Oh—yes.”

Her wrinkled forefinger traced the palm of his right hand as if it were
a map. “Great talent . . . The success lines are clear.”

“Artistic success?”

“Yes.”

“And what other sort?”

“What do you mean?”

“What shall I _be_? Apart from what I shall _do_?”

She said with what he suddenly felt was her deceiving simplicity: “Well,
I suppose you will _be_ whatever what you have _done_ makes you.”

“Shall I be happy?”

“I can’t tell.”

“Do you see misfortune?”

“There’s something . . . When you’re about thirty.”

He said, “That’s a long way off.”

“It seems so now.”

Charmian said, “Will he marry?”

Louis glanced at her. “Romantic Charmian!”

Mrs. Lacy said, “I can’t see.” She let his hand go.

He got up and walked off, lighting a cigarette. Peter followed him.

Then Mrs. van Geldern came. Had Bianca seen her fur? She had put it down
_somewhere_. Everyone began looking for it.

                 *        *        *        *        *

Louis and Peter sat up in Charmian’s room until after two o’clock
talking politics.

Louis talked politics because he was French; Peter because he believed
that politics was one of the interests of a gentleman; Charmian because
she believed that through politics humanity might be saved.

When she asked Louis what his politics were he said, “Vaguely to the
Left.”

“You mean you’re a Socialist?”

“Not exactly. But my friends are to the Left. My family are
Conservatives.”

“Like ours,” said Peter. “But still I don’t see what else you can be
except Conservative unless you want to see every big estate made into a
garden city.”

Charmian began about slums. They argued about poverty and education and
housing until Charmian threw her slipper at Peter for saying that if he
had to choose between one slum baby dying or the destruction of Hampton
Court he would prefer the baby to die. He picked up the slipper and said
earnestly, “I didn’t mean I _want_ the baby to die.”

Louis laughed at Charmian and put his hand on Peter’s shoulder. “There
have been enough babies dying and palaces destroyed without arguing
hypothetical cases.”

They began arguing about war; and then about “the Peace.” Peter quoted
Fontenelle’s remark that “war was an interruption of good conversation.”
Then quite suddenly Louis stopped pretending that nothing mattered to
him, and said that the real perpetrators of war weren’t some of the
politicians, but men like their respective fathers, who manufactured
armaments and got rich by being linked up with all the other armament
firms all over the world. He said the aliens had been killed all the
time with guns made by Cable’s and Scheurer’s. He said Krupp in Germany
was closely linked up too, and Skoda. And that his father owned three
Paris newspapers (he cited which) that had been building up anti-German
propaganda for years. And that the German firms had spent thousands of
pounds in bribing French papers to intensify the mutual hatred by false
scares so that both sides would order more guns. He cited which members
of the French Government had shares in Scheurer. And he said that old
Ivan Benz—

“—The goat?”

“—Yes. The _Ziegenbock_”—had founded the Paris-Lyons Bank and made
Tissot the head of it, and that he had then, through Tissot, bought
himself into Scheurer’s in 1908 and so become a codirector with Philippe
Scheurer and two important members of the French Government; just as in
England Benz had for years been codirector with Lord Cable, of
Cable-Bensley.

Louis walked up and down the room as he talked, lighting cigarettes and
throwing them away half-smoked. He said that unless all this, and more,
were exposed at the Conference (which it certainly would _not_ be), the
whole Peace would be _foutu_ anyway. And that all the governments had
better go right home and start making new guns, new air fleets, and lots
of poison gas at once—instead of waiting to sign a treaty and pretend
that Scheurer’s and Cable’s and Krupp’s and Skoda were going to grow
olives after this! Then he began talking again rapidly and angrily about
the “old men at the Quai d’Orsay.” He said every single government had
come to Paris with the essential purpose of grasping what it could get.
At least Clemenceau faced that fact. But that Lloyd George was Janus,
and Wilson was a magnificent moron, and the Italians a couple of
brigands. He said that the only real fear underlying the Conference was
that there might be less profiting out of the Peace than there had been
out of the War. He said that it was like the Congress of Vienna only
much more hypocritical; he quoted Wilson’s remark that there was to be
“no odor of Vienna.”

Charmian, hugging her knees on the bed, said that at least Wilson had
ideals, even if they were difficult to work.

Louis said an unworkable ideal was like bad plumbing. Better to have
none; and there was less “odor.”

                 *        *        *        *        *

When Lottie and her baby left the house at Ebony, and went back to
Germany, it seemed a matter of course that its lease should be made over
to Bianca.

That, at any rate, was Carteret Cable’s notion. And his wife agreed;
because it seemed to her unlikely they would let it to anyone
interesting. Violet Cable preferred to be charitable to someone of her
own family than outside it. All the same, when she saw Bianca’s
Hepplewhite chairs in the newly painted dining room, and realized how
even Bianca’s perfunctory redecorating brought out the charm of the
little house, she couldn’t help wishing that Bianca were paying
rent. . . . After all, she wasn’t poor. She must have quite fifteen
hundred a year after her income tax had been taken off. . . . Young
Selwyn had had a clear thousand a year. She had discovered that from his
uncle, Hamish Selwyn. And Bianca’s father, according to one of his
fantastic theories, had made over the capital of six hundred a year to
her when she was sixteen.

Violet Cable found her husband’s excesses of generosity more annoying
than his fits of temper, because their results were apt to endure.

Only Bianca’s condition and all the business of Charmian’s first season
in London . . . her clothes, her presentation, her coming-out ball . . .
prevented Violet Cable from going to have a little talk with her niece
about the rent. However, the baby was expected in June. After that she
would speak to Bianca.

Meanwhile, if only Charmian would take a little trouble either about
Sark, or young Platt-Eresby. . . .

                 *        *        *        *        *

Paris danced.

At the Ritz, at Claridge’s, at the Crillon . . . at midday . . . at
_thés dansants_ . . . during dinner, all evening, all night. In the
_boîtes_ in Montmartre, in the little “dancings” up and down the Rue
Pigalle . . . in the square scrubby little room that was “Le Bœuf sur le
Toit,” they danced until morning.

The white lilac bloomed in the Champs-Elysées; and the glamorous
gold-dusted evenings changed, as the lime trees darkened, as the shadows
quivered beneath the trees and blackened and gleamed beneath the bridges
(the Pont d’Iéna, the Pont de la Seine, the Pont-Neuf); the golden
twilight darkened, veil by veil, to a disturbing and fragrant and
jeweled night. And in the chunks of radiance under striped awnings, in
the big restaurants, in the little _bistros_ up on Montparnasse, in the
bright-lit _cafés_—all mirrors and red plush and stained marble—from
the Avenue de Wagram to the Place d’Italie, the American jazz bands, the
_bal musette_ orchestras, the cracked phonos, the tinkling and rheumatic
pianos, played “El Relicario” . . . “Swanee” . . . “_J’en ai marre_.”

                 *        *        *        *        *

The women whose husbands and lovers and sons had returned danced through
the days and nights; until they forgot the faith and love and tenderness
for which they had dreadfully waited; forgot the long terror and the
agonizing sweetness of relief; forgot the darkened boulevards and the
rising wail of sirens and the unending sounding of guns. They swayed,
dipped, turned. . . . “_J’en ai marre._”

Dressed by Patou, by Worth, by Chanel, they danced; with pink rouge on
their cheeks and their ears hidden under their hair, and their toques
and ospreyed headdresses pulled down to their soft thick eyebrows—and
flesh-pink stockings on their swerving dipping ankles. . . . They
tangoed, dressed in little artificial satin frocks, in shiny stockings
with cotton knees, wearing out their stubby shoes to the last thread of
satin across the toes. . . . They fox-trotted (the marketing, the
housework, the washing-up, being done), in black serge, hair crimped,
their faces broad and serene, their hands smelling of Eau de Javelle;
and, when the disk spun irresistibly . . . _Ça c’est une chose_ . . .
they danced in their checked cotton overalls, their big forearms round
the brown necks of their partners.

                 *        *        *        *        *

At _thés dansants_, at _diners dansants_, the _jeunes filles_ swayed a
little dizzily, in their partners’ arms, excited by this queer, heady,
dusty fragrance. (Of the summer? The lime trees? The—Peace?) They were
pale and gay and nervous and bloomily amorous, these _jeunes filles
d’après guerre_. They danced (with their parents’ permission) with such
suitable young men as had come back from the War; and, with their
parents’ permission, got married to them. And the young men took them
with an experienced and vehement tenderness, not only because they were
innocent and gay and lovely, but because they were innocence itself—and
gayety—and loveliness reclaimed; just as the white sheets in which they
slept with them were not only cool and smooth, but, in their smoothness,
a symbol—and therefore a reassurance—of peace.

The American jazz bands thudded and wailed. And at the Tabarin, at the
Moulin Rouge, at the “dancings” in the Boulevard de Clichy, in the Place
Blanche, the British and Americans, the
from-all-the-corners-of-the-world’s, delegates for Peace, saw the French
_cancan_—black silk legs and the swirl of _froufrou_ petticoats; saw
the naked girls with gloves on; negresses with feathered behinds;
Venuses by the undulating dozen with _caches-sexes_ and top hats—and
ordered more champagne, more brandy. And moved on, according to their
tastes, to shuttered houses with big numbers above the doors, to
addresses discreetly or nudgingly acquired, to be welcomed behind
swiftly pulled portières by curving ladies with quick up-and-down
glances; by boys with long eyes turned up at the corners; or by a
dry-bitter fragrance in the close and darkened air.

These shutters remained closed.

But in the Bois the chestnut flowers opened in the translucent morning
shadows; the swans moving out across the lake slipping, chalk-white,
through the furling pallor of the mists.

                 *        *        *        *        *

Marthe stirred and woke suddenly.

Louis was standing by the bed. Shuttered light was in the room. He was
in his “smoking.” She noticed the pin below the buttonhole where his
orchid had been. He said:—

“Sorry to wake you, my dear. But have you got some money?”

She sat up, pushing back her plaits. “Yes, Louis.”

He said, “I spent all mine to-night. And I want to go to London. And the
bank doesn’t open until ten.”

“But how? At _this_ hour?”

He said irritably, “Yes, by the nine o’clock.”

Marthe got out of bed and pattered across the carpet in her high-necked,
puff-sleeved nightdress. She unlocked the right-hand drawer of her
dressing table.

He said, “Paris exasperates me at present. London will be gayer. And
there will be fewer heroes getting drunk.”

“Here is three hundred and fifty francs. It’s all I have here.”

He took it. “Thank you . . .” He added doubtfully, “I suppose I shall
get to London with that. At any rate, second class. Anyway—I can get
the rest from Zamorr . . . Good-bye, my dear. Be good. Be contented
. . . Work well! Tell Maman I’ll telephone to her from London. . . .” He
was at the door. For a second he poised on his toes and, half laughing,
threw her a kiss, then, with an elaboration of stealth, crept out,
closing the door after him.

Marthe looked at her watch. It was quarter past six. She got back into
bed, smoothed her pillow, and fell asleep again.

                 *        *        *        *        *

The band was still playing “Swanee,” and the dancers passing and again
passing the open windows of the ballroom saw that dawn was beginning,
driving a long wedge of yellow light between the pewter-dark sky and the
horizons of the Park.

Charmian broke away at last from her partner, and went through the
dancers and out onto the balcony and saw the morning star high and
bright silver.

Louis, sitting at the end of the ballroom, saw her go out and stand like
a strayed _sylphide_ on the balcony. He made an excuse to his aunt du
Plessis, and went out too, and leaned his elbows beside her and lit a
cigarette.

He said, “Is anything the matter? Or is it just that you’ve danced too
long?”

She shook her head and didn’t speak. Her hair was caught back by her
wreath of little white gardenias. She took off her gloves. (The dancers
in the ballroom were singing “Swanee.”) She gave him her gloves and her
fan and then hid her face in her hands.

He was moved, partly by her, partly by the achingly sweet and cool and
mysterious first-light.

“What is it, Charmian?”

“Louis—help me!”

“How can I?”

“I’m so in love . . .”

“My dear!”

“I must go to him or I shall die.”

“Can’t you marry him?”

“He’s married.”

“I see.”

She put down her hands and folded them on the parapet. Light began to
come from all over the sky. Below them in the street another motor drove
away.

He said: “Can’t he divorce?”

“Still I shouldn’t be allowed to marry him.”

“. . . How long have you loved him?”

“Two years.”

“Who is it?”

“Harry Kramer.”

“. . . I see . . .”

                 *        *        *        *        *

The next day Louis went down to Eton.

Peter was startled to see him. He was shy.

Louis said—“Come and walk about.”

They walked up and down in the sun and Louis said:—

“She mustn’t see Kramer again.”

Peter said, “Nobody can stop her doing things. They can only try to.
Last year she nursed Mademoiselle Houville, our French governess, with
flu when the hospital nurse collapsed, although Mother forbade her.”

“She must be stopped.”

Peter glanced at Louis and wondered if he was in love with Charmian. He
thought that he would be as proud if Louis married Charmian as if she
were to marry the Prince of Wales. But the idea disturbed him too.

“I’m sure you could stop her,” Peter said.

“I?”

“Well. Because she’d respect _you_.”

“Respect me?” Louis became aware of Peter’s look. He caught the boy’s
hand and dropped it again.

“Come and have some ice cream!”

                 *        *        *        *        *

Charmian refused to encourage Harold Platt-Eresby; and when her mother
pointed out that Sark was the “best _parti_” in London Charmian quoted
Peter’s comment that “Eddie Sark was positively encrusted with chorus
girls.”

Violet Cable complained to Frany that Charmian frittered away her time
flirting with Victor Finch.

Frany said, “You needn’t worry. Victor Finch isn’t dangerous to
Charmian. He’s merely a dancing partner.” Frany didn’t add that Charmian
incessantly crossed and recrossed the hall on the days the American mail
came in.

                 *        *        *        *        *

Lord Cable’s little joke for that summer was the friendship between
Louis Scheurer and Frany. He found it extremely paradoxical, and
impossible to explain.

Violet Cable was equally surprised. But not amused. She felt that
anything inexplicable happening somehow added to the difficulties of her
own life. She could see no reason why Frany, so almost tiresome in her
integrity, should like Louis, who was fast, neurotic, and about whom one
began to hear all sorts of things.

Carteret christened them “Dignity and Decadence.”

When Frany heard this she smiled at one corner of her mouth and looked
at Lord Cable with enigmatic, bright black eyes. Some inward amusement
suffused her brown face. Then, as she was going out of the room on some
other matter, she said, “Louis and I understand one another.”

And Louis, when Charmian teased him, said, “Frany is like a work of art.
She is entirely original. She isn’t any ‘type.’ She isn’t like any other
woman, or any other secretary, or any other English person in the world.
She is purely ‘Frany.’ If she was a monument and tourists came, and took
away as souvenirs even the smallest bits of her, even if it was only one
of her eyelashes, or a scrap of handkerchief, any connoisseur of human
beings would say at once, ‘Ah, of course . . . _C’est du vraie Frany_.’”

The culmination of the joke for Carteret, and for Charmian, was when
Louis took Frany to Ascot.

He fetched her in the Vauxhall which he had hired while he was in
London. He wore his grey top hat slightly tilted, and one of his green
orchids. (Solomon’s had an order to supply him with two, every morning.)
Frany was dressed in a white face-cloth coat and skirt, made for the
Durbar in 1910, a black straw toque, and an Irish-lace blouse newly
dipped in coffee for the occasion. (So that Louis was haunted all day by
its unexpected aroma.) Louis had an ivory gold-topped cane. Frany
carried a crimson parasol, and a feather boa that she had once prevented
Lady Cable from sending to a village jumble sale.

When they got back in the evening, Frany had won seven pounds, and
they’d finished up their day with champagne cocktails at the Hyde Park
Hotel. Frany looked even more sun-bronzed than usual; and Louis was in a
state of lunatic high spirits and stood in the hall at Portland Place
singing “Give Me the Moonlight” with his extraordinary French-American
accent to Charmian and Harvey and the Pekinese, twirling his cane like
Vesta Tilley, and improvising a dance which led him spinning with
incredible agility, his white spats flashing, his tails flying, up the
staircase—straight into the arms of Sir Ivan Benz, who had been calling
on Lady Cable in the drawing room.

“Ah!” said Benz. “Young Scheurer? What a—pleasant surprise.” He bent
stiffly, like an old goat grazing, and picked up Louis’s cane, which had
fallen in their impact. “How are you?”

“I beg your pardon—Sir Ivan.”

Benz turned to a man behind him. “Allow me to introduce you—Monsieur
Scheurer, this is Mr. Brownlow Best.”

Louis said, out of breath, “We’ve met before!”

The other man, whose general effect was of having his expensive clothes
too closely fitted, and his skin slack and soft over his features,
looked at Louis blankly.

“I haven’t had that pleasure.”

Louis hesitated. One of his eyebrows peaked higher than the other. Then
he held out his hand.

“How d’you do, then—”

                 *        *        *        *        *

The Treaty was signed in the Galerie des Glaces at Versailles on June
28, 1919.

Louis wrote to François, who was in Vienna, “The ‘War to end War,’ as
the English called it, has been followed by a Peace to end Peace!”

                 *        *        *        *        *

Charmian leaned over the cradle.

“Oh, Bianca, he’s _so_ lovely!”

Charmian wanted to cry. She shook her hair forward, so that Bianca and
Peter shouldn’t see tears in her eyes.

Bianca lay back looking as if she had been painted in pale water colors
against the solid linen of her pillows. She was possessed by an animal
tranquillity, and watched her own thoughts with indifference, as a cat
in the sun blinks at the ethereal staggerings of thistledown.

Peter said, “What’s his exact age?”

“Two weeks and three days.”

Peter stared down at the baby. Only Charmian could think that bald
porcelain brow, those lashless eyelids, this little hunched, placidly
bloated dwarf was “lovely”! He said:—

“I know what he’s like. He’s exactly like the old toby jug in the
nursery at home!”

“Toby” became his name. Though Richard Peter van Geldern Selwyn was
written in the register of the church at Moon’s Green.

                 *        *        *        *        *

The Moon’s Green War Memorial was to be unveiled by Lord Cable on the
third Saturday in August. Violet Cable suggested to the Vicar, Paley
Mathews, that she might also say a few words, as she thought “they would
like it.”

Mathews privately deplored this idea to Frany. But Frany said:—

“She will do no harm.”

The Saturday was one of those days which, set in an English summer like
a stained-glass window in a cold wall, are memorable when whole seasons
in other climates are forgotten: a day beginning with a jeweled light
slanting dewy shadows and moving through an arc of honey-colored hours
to a night so starry and so fragrant that, in comparison, a Southern
night seems tinseled and scentless.

Charmian had returned from Scotland. Peter was there, and Ruth, and
Louis Scheurer, who had announced himself after a fortnight spent with
the Bensleys at Frinton. Ivan Benz had arrived from his Welsh castle,
and Admiral Briggs, Carteret’s brother-in-law, and a partner in
Cable-Bensley.

After luncheon on the Saturday Violet offered her guests the Memorial
Service much as, on Sunday, she offered them an expedition to church.
“. . . Anyone who cares . . . this is Liberty Hall . . . Carteret and I,
of course, _have_ to go. . . .”

Sir Ivan signified that he wished to go. Charmian refused. Frany said,
“Bianca telephoned this morning. She wishes to go. Could one of the
motors be sent for her?”

Violet Cable said, “I consider it most unsuitable for Bianca to go
along. She’s only just up, and the whole thing will make her very
_émotionnée_.” She turned to Sir Ivan. “My poor niece Bianca Selwyn, who
lives near here, lost her husband—so tragic—and anyway, neither of the
motors can be spared, and she really could quite well afford to have one
. . .” She stopped abruptly. Bianca had come into the room. She said,
“Good afternoon, Aunt Violet,” and “I’d rather walk anyway.”

She looked fragile and cool.

                 *        *        *        *        *

Frany and Louis walked, with Bianca. The lanes smelled of meadowsweet
that grew high on either side against the hedges. Beyond the hedges, the
cornfields rose in a slow burnt-golden curve towards their own horizon;
and above the corn, hidden high in the hot, drowsy blueness of the
afternoon, a lark kept up his running commentary on summer and ether and
the long irrational bliss of being alive.

As they approached the village, Frany put up her parasol. She said to
Bianca, “You aren’t tired?”

Bianca shook her head.

Louis said, “What’s that pink flower?”

“Ragged robin,” said Frany.

“What a pretty name.”

Their voices sounded more constrained than their silences. The cottage
gardens were full of flowers. In some, the hollyhocks grew as high as
the thatched eaves. Bianca said:—

“What lovely convolvulus.”

Frany said, “They call it morning-glory in America.”

“And with us,” said Louis. “There is a blue one—of an extraordinary
deep sharp blue—in the gardens at Céligny.”

A motor passed them, raising the dust. They saw it slow down towards the
crossroads and stop outside the churchyard. Louis saw Lord and Lady
Cable get out, followed by Admiral Briggs and Peter.

They passed the Coöperative Store. There was a notice, hung crooked, in
the window saying that the War Memorial would be “unveiled by the Right
Honorable Baron Cable, K.C.B., C.M.G., on the afternoon of Saturday,
August 15, 1919, at three o’clock.”

They could see the crowd assembling on the grass slope opposite the
church. At the top of the slope, the monument had a canvas curtain hung
across the main block of the stone.

A figure in a cassock and surplice came out of the churchyard gate,
shook hands with the Cables, and crossed the road.

Bianca said in her cool, steady voice, “I like Mathews. He christened
Toby very nicely.”

Now they saw the choirboys follow him, crossing to the green slope,
looking like a procession of penguins.

There was the “ping” of a bicycle bell and Ruth pedaled past. She had
her Sunday leghorn hat on, and her white serge coat and skirt. When she
got off her bicycle, she leaned it against the churchyard wall,
unstrapped her prayer book from the carrier.

A boy, in shirt sleeves and bowler hat, was hoisting a Union Jack to
half-mast up the flagpole. The Boy Scouts were forming in double rank
behind the Memorial. The choir flocked in front of it—beside a small
wooden platform that had been set up for the service, its side rails
draped in black muslin, and a strip of red felt stretched up over the
two steps which led to it. Lady Cable, in black, ascended these steps,
followed by her husband and the Admiral. A phalanx of Girl Guides
marched up, from, the other end of the village, carrying their colors.

Louis and Frany and Bianca joined the crowd. Nearly all the village men
wore bowler hats and stiff collars which were beginning to soften in the
heat. Most of the women wore dark dresses, though a few younger ones
wore lighter clothes and white cotton stockings, and their hats tilted
fashionably over one eye. All the little girls wore white dresses and
white gloves, and their hair crimped; and the little boys had starched
Eton collars over their Norfolk suits. Louis wondered what the Girl
Guides were. He supposed from their clothes they must be from some sort
of reformatory.

The clergyman followed the Cables up on to the platform and stood there,
facing the crowds now, and raising his hand to shade his eyes from the
sun. The crowd shuffled closer together up the grass slope. On the steps
of the Memorial the heaped-up flowers were wilting. The roses and
snapdragons and marigolds looked bruised.

Three small Boy Scouts went among the crowd handing out the printed
leaflets of the special service. When they had done, the Reverend Mr.
Mathews stood forward on the platform.

“_I am the resurrection and the life_ . . .” The crowd stopped shifting
and rustling their leaflets and stood still. A motor whizzed past on the
road and vanished in dust. The intoned words went on. The sun beat down.
“_He cometh up, and is cut down, like a flower; be fleeth as it were a
shadow_ . . .” The air seemed to thicken and grow more golden, making an
amber in which the sombre tension of the crowd was caught and
imprisoned. “. . . _in the morning it is green, and groweth up_ . . .”

Now the ranks of penguins shifted. Then their voices led:—

“_O God, our help in ages past_ . . .”

The crowd sang.

Frany sang too, staring before her.

Louis watched Lady Cable and Admiral Briggs singing up on the platform.
Lord Cable seemed to be reading his notes.

“. . . _eetern-al home_” died out. Again the Reverend Mr. Mathews stood
forward.

“_And I saw a new heaven and a new earth_ . . .”

A motor flashed past on the road, and was gone. A girl pushed a dusty
perambulator down the other side of the road by the wall of the
churchyard and halted down at the corner to stare.

“. . . _neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are
passed away_. . . .”

In the silence that followed Lord Cable stepped forward, glancing
sideways towards the boy who stood behind the Memorial holding the end
of the rope. He lifted his neck once or twice higher out of his stand-up
collar, gave a tug at the front of his waistcoat, rocked from his heels
to his toes and back again. Then he said:—

“Ladies and Gentlemen: This isn’t an occasion when you want to hear a
long speech, and I don’t intend to make one.” He cleared his throat. He
looked rosy and stern, standing there in his tail coat and grey
trousers, the gold hairs in his white moustache gleaming in the sun.
“What I chiefly want to do is to thank all of you for helping to make it
possible for us to have this—er—very beautiful and fitting Memorial in
our village! When it has been unveiled you will see a list of the names
of those from this village who have fallen in the recent War.” He
cleared his throat. “Many of us here, as that list shows, have given our
Dear Ones. And it is of them that we are thinking this afternoon.” He
cleared his throat again. “They played the game for England.” His voice
thickened, he squared back his shoulders, frowned, and jerking down his
waistcoat with one hand went on speaking a little faster and staring
straight over the heads of the crowd. “They fought and died gloriously
and their memory will never fade. And also I should like to take this
opportunity to mention that if any of you have by any chance not yet
subscribed to the fund for the Memorial and wish to, Mrs. Wilcox at the
post office will be very glad to—to add your names to the list. The
idea is that if there should be any surplus, and thanks to a very sudden
and very generous donation from Admiral Briggs here, I may add that
there _will_ be—the idea is to devote the money to providing an annex
for the Hall! Also we—thought that some sort of suitable Memorial
Tablet should be erected to indicate that the annex is a sort of
Memorial too. And er—this seems to me a capital idea. And now let me
close by a quotation.” He stopped, and extracted a slip of paper from
his waistcoat pocket, muttering, “Yes, here we are. . . . I like to have
the exact words, although I am sure these words by a young English poet
who, himself, died fighting are familiar to most of us:—

        “If I should die, think only this of me:
          That there’s some corner of a foreign field
        That is for ever England. There shall be
          In that rich earth a richer dust concealed . . .”

He blew his nose.

“And now Lady Cable will say just a few words.”

He stuffed the slip of paper back in his pocket, nodded, with a stiff
neck, at the crowd.

Lady Cable came down the steps of the platform and placed herself
beside, but a little in advance of, the Memorial, holding her prayer
book and her notes between her two hands. Keeping her head erect, and
resting one foot on the lowest step of the Memorial, to Louis she
appeared admirably to combine the austere stance of a chorister with the
ingratiating attitude of a _diseuse_. Her competent stare took in the
crowd, and glared for a moment at a little girl who had dropped her
printed sheet. Then she spoke:—

“My friends. It is both an honor and a privilege to me to add a few
words to those of my husband. As you all know well, both he and I have
always felt a very keen interest indeed in all your lives, and—” she
referred for a second to her notes—“and I think I can say that nothing
has drawn us all together more closely than the shadow through which the
country has passed in these last four terrible years. Probably in some
ways a woman—” she glanced at her notes—“a woman in certain ways has
even more of an understanding of what these last four terrible years
have meant to many of us than a man can have, because I know that in so
many cases ‘keeping the home fires burning’ has been a very anxious job;
and thinking about those who—who might never come back again. So, and
this is what I want to say, just quite informally to you. We here in
Moon’s Green have done what we could. Let us, if we have had sorrowful
times, remember those beautiful words which you will see carved—” she
turned her head to the boy holding the rope, fixing him with a glassy
and insistent stare—“carved here. We have done _what we could_ to raise
a _fitting Memorial_ (Mr. Mathews, please tell him to be ready!)—a
_fitting Memorial_ to them. . . .” As she spoke these last words she
seemed to be performing some rigid and terrifying act of hypnotism upon
the boy, who at last jerked his rope, thus letting the canvas curtain
slip down on to the wilted wreaths and flowers. As he did so she
regained complacency, lifted her lorgnon, and stood looking at the
inscribed block of stone.

Mr. Mathews announced, “Now we will sing Kipling’s ‘Recessional,’ which
you all have printed on your leaflets.”

The penguin choir opened their mouths:—

                 “God of our fathers, known of old,
                 Lord of our far-flung battle-line—
                 Beneath whose awful Hand we hold
                 Dominion over palm and pine . . .”

When the “Recessional” was sung the crowd began to disperse, many of the
women bending their heads so that their hat brims hid their eyes,
several of the men blowing their noses. More of them filed before the
Memorial and read the names, and peeked to see whom the flowers were
from.

Lady Cable came down the grass slope cautiously in her high heels. She
came up to Frany and Bianca and Louis.

“I think that went off all right?”

“Yes,” said Frany.

“I was terribly afraid that that idiotic boy wasn’t going to pull the
string when I was ready. I was quite agitated.”

“Nobody in the audience would have supposed so,” said Louis,
courteously.

“As for the Scouts,” she added, peeling off one of her black kid gloves
and glancing automatically at her rings, “they were out ‘flat’ twice. I
shall have to speak to Mathews about it.”

Louis said to Bianca:—

“My car has been sent from the house. Please allow me to drive you home.
It is really too hot for you to walk.”

She thanked him politely without seeming to hear him. Peter, who had
been looking at the Memorial, strolled toward them.

“I’m driving Bianca back to her home,” said Louis. “Come with us?”

On the way back Louis talked about the differences between this Vauxhall
and his own Lancia.

When they drew up in front of the house at Ebony, Charmian came out.
Bianca went in with her, but first thanking Louis for having brought her
home.

When she’d gone in Louis said to Peter:—

“What made her insist on coming?”

Peter climbed into the front seat.

“Pride, I should think. . . . Or else a sort of feeling that she ought
to be there.”

“Strange . . .” As they drove out of the gate Louis said, “Is she still
very unhappy?”

“Absolutely miserable. You never knew her before. She used to be awfully
gay and high-spirited.”

A little later Louis said, “What were the ‘beautiful words’ your mother
referred to in her speech?”

Peter was inexpertly lighting himself a cigarette.

“Oh, just the usual . . . _Dulce et decorum_. . . .”

“Give it to me,” said Louis, “and I’ll light it for you.” He took the
cigarette and put it between his lips. Peter flushed.

“. . . Only,” said Louis, “nobody ever inscribes ‘It is bitter and
indecorous to die for Sir Ivan Benz—for Cable-Bensley—for
Scheurer—for Krupp.’ Here you are. When you go to Oxford next year I
will give myself the pleasure of presenting you with a lighter.”

Ever since they could remember, Charmian and Peter had trailed after
Frany like this while she cut the flowers. She had always carried the
same two baskets, the broad yellow flat one, and the long brown one
shaped like a canoe and with the high handles. She had always worn, as
far as they knew, this same pair of stiff, wash-leather gloves, and the
same man’s Panama hat with the piece of bright green net round it
knotted and hanging down her back over her white shirt. It almost
seemed, thought Peter, holding the flat basket as she passed down the
herbaceous border, as if she were cutting always the same snapdragons,
the same dahlias—only now, so strangely, so pleasantly, Louis was there
too! Louis was carrying the canoe basket with the roses in it, and it
was to Louis that Frany was telling one of her stories of her expedition
in 1893 up the Yukon River with her brother.

She was telling him the one about their companion whose damp gloves gave
him frostbite, and Charmian was turning a poppy inside out to make a
lady-with-skirts, when Violet Cable appeared, round the end of the
border, carrying a telegram. She spoke to Charmian, blandly.

“Here is a telegram from Eddie Sark proposing himself for this
week-end!”

Charmian said, “I suppose you asked him?”

“Not at all—I only happened to mention to him that we should be here
all September.”

Charmian dropped the pink poppy and said sullenly, “I shall go over and
stay with Bianca for the week-end.”

Violet Cable was suave. “You seem to forget that Bianca is in
Broadstairs with your Aunt Josephine— Anyway, there’s no _question_ of
your going away. . . . Frany, I want Lord Sark to have Number 4. . . .
He’ll be here for tea. . . .”

She turned away, smiling with vague hostility at Louis, and saying to
Peter:—

“I see another parcel of books has arrived for you from Hachette’s! More
‘Literature’?”

This last comment was for Louis, who had defended Peter’s buying of
_Candide_ on the ground that it was “Literature.”

She went off down the pergola, to seek out Trevor Topham, who was
practising diabolo, his hobby, in the “nut walk.”

Charmian was swallowing and trying not to cry. She said: “It isn’t
_just_ Mummie wanting to see me well married— Heaps of mothers are like
that— It’s this feeling she gives me of persecuting me. . . .” She
turned to Louis: “You’ve seen Eddie Sark too! He is _such_ a _horrid_
little nobody.”

“Cheer up,” said Frany, snipping some Michaelmas daisies. Peter slipped
his arm in his sister’s. Louis took her other arm. “Nobody can make you
marry anyone, darling!” He added, thoughtfully, the corner of his mouth
curling up, “We’ll fix Sark, as they say in New York. We’ll find some
way to fix him.”

“Oh, _what_, Louis?”

“No,” said Louis, firm and almost mystical, “you must just trust _me_.”

                 *        *        *        *        *

Louis dressed early, for dinner. He had told Peter to inform Eddie Sark
that dinner was at eight. It was actually at eight-thirty. (He had
confided in Peter; but not in Charmian.) Therefore, as he hoped, he
found himself alone with Sark before dinner, in the library, and started
a conversation at once, about the set of tennis they’d all had after
tea. Sark agreed that it had been quite a good set.

“Peter’s quite a good player,” said Louis.

“Not at all bad. A bit erratic at the net.”

“Your game was excellent!”

Sark said complacently, “Ah, well— I’ve played a good bit with Lenglen.
She’s rather a friend of mine!” It was his particular “snobbishness” to
know, or pretend to know, intimately, any or every kind of
“professional” actors, golfers, boxers, jockeys, motor-bicycling
champions.

“Ah, yes. Lenglen! What a marvel she is!—Not a beauty, but a wonderful
player!”

“Yes, absolutely wonderful.”

“Well,” said Louis, “no woman can have everything— Charmian, for
instance, is such a pretty girl, but her tennis is _very_ mediocre!”

When this idea had reached Eddie Sark’s mind, he agreed
emphatically—and repeated twice that she was really “awfully pretty.”

Louis paused and then said, “Poor Charmian!” He seemed rather to be
talking to himself.

“I don’t know why poor!” said Sark. “I mean—”

Louis turned and looked into Eddie’s protuberant blue-grey eyes. Then he
said rather quickly, and gently, “Well—money isn’t everything—”

“Oh, I say, I didn’t mean that! I wasn’t talking about her _money_,
although goodness knows she must be one of _the_ little-rich-girls about
just now!”

Louis continued to look gentle and rather sad. “Let’s talk about
something else,” he said. “Tell me,” he urged, his accent suddenly
becoming much more French, “tell me what you _do_, Lord Sark.”

“Me— Oh, well— Well, I haven’t done anything since I was demobbed.”

Louis nodded comprehendingly. “For those who can afford to do nothing—”
he said.

“Why, what do _you_ do?” demanded Sark. “I thought—”

Louis said, “It’s a long story. Anyway, my father arranged things so
that I must work—” he added. “I am a biologist.”

“Really— You mean you study newts and breeding and all that?”

Louis nodded. Then, with a troubled, secretive expression he glanced
about him, and, lowering his voice, said, “That is _why I am here_!”

Suddenly he seemed to make some resolution and came and sat down and,
leaning towards Sark, said, “Don’t you know really? About—poor
Charmian?”

Sark looked as startled as a child hearing a ghost story. He answered in
an equally low voice, “_What do you mean?_”

Still Louis seemed to hesitate, temporizing. “—Poor Lady Cable—she’s
always trying to get her ‘married off,’ you know—without the young man
discovering—”

Sark’s eyes bulged more than ever.

“Why?— Look here, Scheurer, I wish you’d tell me!”

There was a sound of voices outside in the hall. Quickly Louis bent even
nearer to Sark, and said:—

“She’s got a tail!” He added, in a low penetrating whisper, “A long tail
like a monkey!”

Dinner didn’t seem to “go” at all.

Violet Cable made every effort to amuse young Sark, who sat on her
right, drinking one whiskey and soda after another, and answered her
distressingly at random (and with, she felt, some sort of hidden
hostility). To Charmian, who sat on his other side, he didn’t speak at
all. And Charmian, instead—for her mother noticed—of trying to
distract him, kept glancing across the table at Louis and Peter, who
were sitting on either side of Frany; and appeared, to Violet’s acrid
observation, to be in high spirits.

Old Trevor Topham, however, on Violet’s left, seemed quite content to go
on narrating scandals about dead duchesses, while Carteret, at his end
of the table, explained to both Peter and Frany why the Coalition could
not last another year. Violet heard the
words—“_Unionist_—_secession_—_Lloyd George_—_Bonar
Law_—_Labor_—_Capital Levy_—”

Next to her Mr. Topham was saying, “Lady Georgiana, I am afraid, has not
inherited her mother’s beauty—”

Louis turned to him.

“What a curious thing heredity is.”

“Yes, _indeed_!” Topham brightened, glad to find a new listener, for he
had an impression that Violet Cable was being inattentive.

“Yes, indeed, Monsieur Scheurer—now Lady Georgiana, for instance, the
daughter of _such_ a mother—one was so disappointed, don’t you
know—after all—in so many cases, the daughter will inherit the
mother’s characteristics.”

“Biologically speaking,” said Louis, “one can never be certain. But, by
all the rules of Mendel, _some_ of the descendants will inherit—” he
paused, and for a second his glance flicked across the table to
Sark—“will inherit any very marked characteristics.”

Violet turned to Sark again:—

“How _interesting_ all these problems are, aren’t they, Lord Sark?”

She got no more answer than a bloodshot stare, and a sort of muttering.
She began to be afraid that he was drunk. And now Peter seemed to be
having a coughing fit and had spilled his wine.

Violet looked at Frany. But Frany was still discussing politics with
Carteret. Topham, meanwhile, was saying to Sark, “Now you come of a
family of beautiful, remarkable women— Your mother—your grandmother on
your father’s side—”

It was then that Eddie Sark, his always frail intelligence tossing on
seas of whiskey and soda, arrived somehow at what was (at any rate for
Louis and Peter) an epigram. He leaned right over his plate towards
Trevor Topham, and, at the same time flirting his protuberant glance
round at Violet, said thickly:—

“I don’t like women to be remarkable!”

                 *        *        *        *        *

Violet never knew why Eddie Sark left early the next morning.

Peter and Louis told Charmian why just before she had to say good-bye to
him.

When they told Frany, she said it was a good thing Louis was going back
to France.

                 *        *        *        *        *

Louis went back to Paris. Then on to Valescure to stay with a Pole
called Nicky Zatec, who had bought his property in France the last year
of the War. Nicky was twenty-eight, pallid and gross in appearance. He
was alternately neurotic, lecherous, and childishly contented. (This
cycle was unalterable.) He had read everything worth and not worth
reading in French, German, Russian, and English. He never slept at
night. He read always from ten at night until four in the morning. Louis
had met him at a party in Paris at Marie de Montcontour’s. He had been
diverted by the contrast between Zatec’s gross untidy body and his
staccato brilliant sentences that went on rapping out as if his voice
were a typewriter.

Nicky Zatec was amused by anyone so obviously poseur as Louis, betraying
in his talk so much just thinking and sensibility.

Louis stayed three weeks with Nicky. Other people came and went.
Painters mostly, who sat about drinking wine and discussing women of a
Bohemian or demimondaine sort. But most of the time Nicky read. And
Louis read. And Nicky’s admirable chef cooked for them.

Louis became sunk in this existence of books and sun and rich food, and
never bothering to dress except to change into another bathing suit, or
a sarong. Moon’s Green seemed unreal. And the one or two postcards that
came from Peter and Charmian lay about his bedroom with its tiled floor
and the palm trees outside, like the dusty souvenirs of a long-ago
journey.

In October he left Nicky (installed with an Egyptian girl), and went to
Céligny to join his parents and Marthe.

The villa was full of visitors and the atmosphere electric with
political and economic problems. Among others Alan Blyth, David Blyth’s
brother, was there. He told Louis that he had a job on the Permanent
Secretariat of the League of Nations now established at Geneva. He was
looking for a flat in Geneva. He was very gloomy and said that the
difficulties of the Peace would begin once the Treaty came into force,
next January.

The villa was also overrun by a family of White Russians, to whom Madame
Scheurer had lent the Orangerie (an annex to the main villa). They had
all had appalling experiences in their flight from the Bolsheviks, but
they were so like Chekhov characters that Louis enjoyed this, instead of
being able to be sorry for them.

He told Marthe that the villa felt as if it had become a hotel at an
international railway junction. Ministers, Economists, Secretaries,
Journalists, from every country stopped off for a night’s lodging or a
luncheon; conferred; smoked; paced up and down the terraces, strayed in
cigar-chewing converse in the tall avenues of trees, or stood about the
pools and fountains, arguing and declaiming. And then departed again,
for Prague, or Vienna, or Paris, or Rome—or went, in one of Philip
Scheurer’s white-and-maroon speedboats, across the lake to Geneva.

At the end of October Louis’s parents returned to Paris. Marthe and Miss
Clark were sent to stay with “_mon oncle_ du Plessis,” a retired
Ambassador who lived alone on his property at La Motte Chalançon. He was
considered by Madame Scheurer to provide a more suitable atmosphere for
Marthe than Paris.

Louis sailed for New York early in November. There he shared an
apartment with Jimmy Lothair on East Fifty-seventh Street.

                 *        *        *        *        *

Charmian came to stay with Bianca for a fortnight at Ebony while her
parents went to Vichy. She was so listless that Bianca, who had sunk for
weeks into an unnoticing and indifferent state, was troubled for her.
And at last, against her own prejudices, she spoke to her about Kramer.
Where was he? Did he still write to her?

Charmian was thirsty even to speak of him. He was still in America. He’d
been, on a concert trip, to California. He wrote to her all the time.
She had the letters sent _poste restante_ now, to London, to the post
office opposite Debenham’s, so that her mother shouldn’t intercept them.
This meant she couldn’t get them except when she was in London. That was
why she had these violin lessons, so that she had to go up once a week.

“But, Charmian, what can it all lead to?”

“I don’t know.”

“Mustn’t you try and face that out?”

Charmian pushed a yellow lock of hair back from her forehead.

“His wife’s divorcing him.”

“Out there? In America?”

“Yes, it’s easier there. He’s naturalized now.”

“But Charmian, _not_ with any idea! . . .”

“Oh, no. She hasn’t even heard of me. I gather she wants to marry some
other man. She doesn’t care about Harry’s career, or anything. Oh, God,
what a mess it all is! She doesn’t want him. He needs me. He tells me
that in every letter. An artist needs someone to . . . care for him
. . . to be _there_. . . . And I can’t go to him. Even if I disobeyed
Mummie and Daddy, I haven’t the money for the fare . . . except what
Mummie doles out to me through Frany every month . . . and I shan’t have
anything until I’m twenty-five with Grandfather’s beastly will . . .
although Peter gets his when he’s twenty-_one_!”

Bianca didn’t suggest that Kramer, if he wanted her, could send her the
money.

“Bianca, how am I going to get _through_ this next year? . . . At least,
at the very worst, he’s coming back next autumn. But that’s a _whole
year_!”

“A year isn’t so long,” said Bianca.

“Twelve whole months, endless weeks. . . . London again next month. Then
_Cannes_. (Mummie’s taken a villa there.) Then another ‘Season’ and
Mummie saying ‘a girl in her Second Season—’”

They were interrupted by Nannie bringing in the baby, newly woken from
his morning sleep.

“I think he gets more lovely every day,” said Charmian. Toby blinked,
swathed in Shetland shawls.

“Doesn’t he!” said Nannie.

“He’s smiling!” said Bianca.

“So he is!” said Charmian.

Bianca held out her arms.

“Give him to me.”

Nannie handed him as if he were the crown at a Coronation. Bianca held
him. His brown clear eyes fringed with black lashes stared up into hers.
He smiled at her.

She held him closer. He was comforting. It was like holding a hot water
bottle to your soul.

During that autumn Bianca lived superficially the life of a schoolgirl
suddenly emancipated and sent to live on her own in the country. She
bought a bobtailed sheep dog which somehow got the name of Peggotty; she
ate a great many peppermint dreams; and read a selection of books chosen
simply because they would distract her mind. She would read _The
Prisoner of Zenda_ in a day; and spend another two days over _Vanity
Fair_. Then for a week she would read nothing but _Vogue_ and the
_Nursery World_ and the _Times Literary Supplement_, and _Home Chat_, to
which she had been addicted for years. Then a bout of Henry James, which
would last perhaps three weeks, until she found herself unable even to
order a boiled egg without some circumlocution that made it impossible
for her cook perfectly to apprehend what she desired. Reaction from
Henry James might be the adventures of Sherlock Holmes or Kipling’s
short stories. Then Jane Austen. Then Tolstoy. Then a heavy bout of
magazines again.

But more than anything she got through that autumn and, stage by stage,
through those first two years after Richard’s death by living in the
country. For there she thought of him more easily, with less pain. Or
with as much pain, but less bitterness; because, living alone with the
days that changed summer to autumn, and autumn to winter, the idea of
death seemed more natural. And there was even a day, of sun and white
high clouds, when the swallows went, that an emotion, poignant and yet
impersonal, made her think of early death as escape from winter.

Leaning on the paddock gate, the drifted leaves whispering at her feet,
the bright still air about her tanged with the morning frost, she told
herself that Richard, leaving life half discovered, and leaving her, at
the beginning of love, had, at least, escaped those things that make
experience ugly and age terrifying: insensitiveness of spirit; caution,
self-interest, calculation; dullness after delight; irony after hope;
indifference after love.

She remembered that morning in the Grosvenor Hotel, and Richard saying,
“—If we live for a hundred years nothing in the world will ever be more
unbelievably lovely—”

All the things he’d ever said, his looks, his light or clumsy gestures,
his shy uncertainties and quick caresses, lived with her that
autumn. . . .

Once, towards the end of the day, as she came homeward across a ploughed
field, in the darkening soft rain, she felt him beside her; moving
close, step to step, with her. And always, afterwards, she remembered
those minutes of his being there across that tract of ploughed land as
distinctly as she remembered the autumn smell of the air, and the
far-off uneven click and rumbling of a car down the lane, and the chill
of the mist against her face, and the sweetness of the rain.

                 *        *        *        *        *

Louis Scheurer to François Dubar:—

                                                     122 EAST 57TH
                                                     NEW YORK CITY

    MY DEAREST FRANÇOIS:—

    Good: that you are back from Vienna. (After your letter from
    there I couldn’t sleep for two nights.) Good that you write
    again. Good that you have got that place at last in the Rue
    Visconti. It is so much you. And you will be nearer my
    apartment. If I ever return to it. Wherever I am seems the only
    real life; not because I like it, but because it is so difficult
    to imagine oneself in any other ambience.

    Here, under the new dry régime, life is a perpetual Bacchanal.
    No one talks of anything but alcohol. Yesterday six men in New
    Jersey died of drinking “wood alcohol.” Champagne is everywhere.
    So is money. As many people have got rich here from the War as
    in Europe. So the Nymphs wear jeweled heels costing ten thousand
    dollars each on their evening slippers. And the Satyrs pay; and
    only ask to pay still more. There is a Rolls-Royce factory
    established in Massachusetts. Schoolgirls wear ermine coats.
    Meanwhile everyone says Wilson will retire in March. Is he a
    great man? Failed? Or a mediocre man (as I used to think) who
    has put himself in too great and complicated a situation? I
    think still that he has a bombastic soul. But at least he has
    been _disinterested_. No other representative of any nation has
    dared to be. That is why his country won’t support him.

    At this moment I am waiting for Jimmy to get back from the
    theatre. He is playing in the most banal comedy imaginable. You,
    as an amateur of the theatre, would find it a curiosity. Jimmy
    plays a mechanic in a garage, always dressed in “blue jeans,”
    who loves his mother and his fiancée equally, and cannot afford
    to support both of them. The solution, you may imagine, is in
    the death of the mother. There is a great cult here for the
    Mother. The people celebrate “Mother’s Day.” Those whose mothers
    are alive wear a red flower. Those whose mothers are dead wear a
    white flower. The popular idea of Mother is of a very old lady.
    Equally the popular ideal conception of a woman is of a very
    young girl; and of marriage as a kind of sentimental rape, after
    which the woman gets up and makes waffles.

    I speak of the “people.” A European misconception. They aren’t a
    people; only a nation. In France we are grains of rice. Here
    they are confetti.

    I have written a few chapters of “Doves in Aspic.” But we are
    too gay for work. We are invited out every night. The _femmes du
    monde_, the “ladies” in fact, get drunk here, openly. Often they
    are laid in rows in the cloakroom. The young girls, too. There
    does exist too a kind of New York “Faubourg-St.-Germain.” One
    may see it at what they call the Thursday Evening Club;
    old-fashioned jewels, stiff corsets, _tenue_, courteous old
    gentlemen with moustaches.

    As you may imagine we don’t spend all our evenings at drunk
    parties on Park Avenue. There are more curious and amusing
    things to do. When Jimmy and I look at one another in the
    morning light we see a mutual greyness of complexion, like two
    oysters. I shall go to the country for Christmas. To visit some
    friends in Connecticut. Each bedroom has gold bath taps and a
    w.c. of mother-of-pearl. But there is a beautiful park, horses
    to ride, and a cold air that excites your very soul.

    Write to me.

    I came here to escape the horror of the Peace. There is no
    escape. It is the Eye and Cain! Yesterday my hostess spoke to me
    of our Victory. “Victory, madame?”

    “Why, Mr. Scheurer, over Germany! . . . And Austria!”

    “Victory over German children starved slowly to death? Victory
    over infants in Austria born to die writhing and screaming with
    hunger? Victory over human beings whose humble and difficult
    happiness has been destroyed?”

    “Why, Mr. Scheurer, of course we all know war has a turrible
    sahd to it. . . .” There she adds that old _cliché_, “Think what
    the Germans did in Belgium.” I left her.

    The Germans in Belgium! The British in Ireland! The Turks in
    Armenia! The Bolsheviks in Russia! Our troops now, in the Ruhr!

    However—the Peace. Jimmy has just come in with half a dozen
    people. And the night begins.

             Yours,
                 LOUIS

                 *        *        *        *        *

From Peter Cable to Louis Scheurer:—

                                                     _December 22_
                                                      MOON’S GREEN

    MY DEAR LOUIS:—

    I fear this won’t reach you for Christmas, as it should.
    However, it will get to New York with my best wishes for 1920.

    I wonder how you are faring? Thank you for your postcard of the
    famous sky line. It looks like one’s notion of Valhalla. I’d
    like to see America in a way! But it’s the South, Virginia and
    the Carolinas and the Colonial architecture there, that would
    interest me. And I’d like to see some of the Spanish stuff in
    New Mexico.

    We have a large party here for Christmas. Mother is working hard
    over Harold Platt-Eresby and Charmian. But her efforts will be
    futile. Charmian is obsessed by Kramer. For once I think
    Mother’s plan would be better. I expect Frany is writing to you,
    so I needn’t give you news of her. She is living over at Ebony
    with Bianca at present as she doesn’t think Bianca ought to be
    alone all the evenings. So Frany has got out her antique bicycle
    and insists on bicycling that two miles to Ebony every evening
    at eight o’clock and back here by eight-thirty in the morning.
    Mother, after fighting against the whole idea, offered to send
    and fetch Frany in the car. But Frany just said, “Lady Cable, I
    prefer my bicycle.” She rides it too, like a Rajah riding an
    elephant. I wish you could see her.

    Charmian and I and David Blyth and Charmian’s _cicisbeo_ Victor
    Finch and the younger Bensky girl had a very jolly party in
    London the evening before we came down here. We went to _Buzz
    Buzz_ with Nelson Keys and Martha Thatcher in it, which is a
    very good show. Afterwards we went to the Piccadilly and had
    supper and danced, and went afterwards to Rector’s. As Mother
    was away that night this was undiscovered.

    I wish you were here. When are you coming back? I have just read
    _Il Fuoco_ in French. Awfully exciting. But I, personally,
    always feel all this raging violent passion is a thing I could
    never feel. I expect there is something brutal left out of me.
    When I think about falling in love I imagine adoring a very
    beautiful and cultured woman, and wanting to be with her all the
    time. I know it is squeamish and romantic, but a lot of things
    about sex make me feel perfectly sick. The Latin idea of taking
    any stray woman as one’s mistress for the good of one’s health
    I’m afraid brings out all my family’s puritanism.

    And as for the sort of Boat-Race Night “sprees” that end up by
    hearty drunks taking prostitutes off the London streets, well,
    that sort of “harmless fun” _appalls_ me. And above all I wish
    “Love” and the “act of procreation” (as my housemaster put it)
    had absolutely nothing to do with each other.

    Well, I don’t know why I should launch into this diatribe. I
    feel end-of-termish.

    Do write another postcard if you have a moment.

             PETER

From François Dubar to Louis Scheurer:—

                                                   8, RUE VISCONTI
                                            _le 31 Décembre, 1919_

    DEAR LOUIS,—

    Your letter gives me, at least, an impression of gayety. Here,
    whatever vivacity there was six months ago has been dissipated
    already by the increasing evidence that we have passed from the
    acute crises of the War to a whole series of crises following
    it.

    Everyone talks of the arrival of Lloyd George next week.
    Monsieur Cambon and the Supreme Council are still discussing
    details of the Treaty. There is a more or less ironical feeling
    that it had better be enforced before the disagreements between
    those who framed it become more acute.

    Meanwhile, I have just returned from doing some reporting in
    Rouen. There one sees a direct effect on ordinary transport of
    the late War. At this moment the whole of France suffers from a
    coal shortage—and at Rouen, 70,000 tons of coal are stacked on
    the quays and in the _péniches_; 30,000 tons are already on
    board barges which cannot be moved because of a lack of tugs!
    Not to speak of 100,000 tons already on steamers. . . . In fact,
    there are altogether 420,000 tons at Rouen.

    Meanwhile in England the coal output is increasing. But when a
    German steamer was picked up the other day short of coal and
    towed into the English port of Grimsby, the coal heaver there
    refused to load her.

    _Viva la Guerra._

    In England too one sees also a paradox of supply and demand. The
    Thames is full of ships loaded with meat which have been there
    for weeks. One of those little triumphs of bureaucracy that are
    ignored because the larger mismanagements of this last year have
    been in such colossal proportions.

    You are all the time among people. Therefore you have less
    occasion than I have to realize these last years. Or do you, as
    happens to me from time to time, wake up in the night and find
    yourself alone with your memories of the War?

    The thing which haunts me, above all, is not the necessary
    killing which took place, but the almost willful throwing away
    of human lives that last year. Thousands, in that 1918 retreat,
    flung into the line in a futile attempt to repair the cardinal
    errors of organization behind the front, which left us, French
    and British, without ammunition.

    But at least you and I escaped the trenches. For us, in the air,
    there remained at least something of war in another epoch: the
    quality of personal adventure, personal triumph, and personal
    courage. . . . In fact it wasn’t simply carnage.

    I write to you out of a sort of solitude which has built itself
    around me since I returned from Rouen. For the moment, I am
    content with the company of Monsieur François Dubar. . . . I
    look out of my window at the backs of the old houses, and feel
    affection for each of them, and, with true friendship, do not
    ask what secrets are within their shutters. I admire the gardens
    and the blackened trees who accept with indifference this bitter
    cold (which I so detest). Equally when I go out into the
    _cafés_, I admire “the people,” who accept the harshness of life
    which an invisible and unquestioned destiny has imposed upon
    them. But look how my metaphor, so prettily begun, has, in the
    way of metaphors, deceived my own thought! For my neighbors the
    trees need only wait for the spring to come to them. But the
    people? These creatures that I visit in my solitary expeditions,
    as, in the country, one passes from shrub to shrub, from one
    plant to another; thinking the frost had half killed this one;
    the wind has blown too hard on this tree when it was growing;
    here there was too much shade for a flower that needed sun!
    There is no spring for them.

    As you know well, I am not a Socialist. Having been born and
    brought up among “the people” I know that they are only the rich
    without their riches. . . . Enrich them—there will be more rich
    people; more comfort.

    But (and this is the thing all economical and political
    reformers forget) the problem of life is not comfort, but
    happiness.

    _Will there be more happy people when more people are
    comfortable?_ Walk through those quarters of any town in the
    world inhabited by comfortable people. Look into the faces of
    the men and women who come out of the houses. Do they _live_? Do
    they feel life? Have they delights and adventures of the mind?
    Are they gay? Are they sensitive? Are they in love?

    They are, for the most part, sadder than the poor. For there is
    in poverty an element of perpetual danger which makes gayety
    more precious, and love more real.

    (In passing, is it the unconscious need of that element of
    danger that makes the Great Bourgeoisies of the world throw
    themselves into war? Whose vicious power is to make their too
    certain life once more desirable?)

    Forgive me. I send you the _belles pensées_ of my attic like the
    English ladies who send pressed “specimens” of Alpine flowers to
    their friends! And which arrive to litter your bureau without
    giving you the least interest in my amateur explorations.

             Return soon,
                 FRANÇOIS

Louis wrote _Doves in Aspic_ that winter in New York. And finished it on
board the _Berengaria_, on the way home.

He wrote in his preface that it was a collection of short stories “about
Peace being Enjoyed.” He dedicated it to Ronald Firbank. He wrote well
in English, using words with a foreign sensibility and skill. The
stories themselves were too smart and clever and exasperated. They had a
slight smart-clever success in America and in England. François
translated them back into the French they would have been in in Louis’s
mind. The New York, Chicago, and London reviews spangled his young
reputation with phrases like “coruscatingly amusing,” “delicious and
shocking irony.” The French critics commented on Monsieur Scheurer’s
“witty masochism.” One critic pointed out that though each story was
well constructed, only the characters of women over fifty were
convincing.

Zamorr pasted all the clippings in a book. He pasted the adverse ones
upside down. Celimène said that she had always thought that M’sieur was,
at bottom, _sérieux_; which meant that she approved of his making money
by his writing.

                 *        *        *        *        *

It was July, two days before Toby’s first birthday.

Bianca went into the nursery. Nannie was sewing.

“I’m taking Toby over to tea with Lady Cable,” said Bianca. “Get him up
at half-past three so that he’s in a good mood by four.”

“Yes’m.” Nannie put down her blue sewing on the table, beside the
machine. Her saint’s eyes in her Dutch-doll face were black, and saw
inwards. “He haven’t done what he should to-day.” Her customary gravity
became gloom.

The gloom spread to Bianca.

“Oh!” she said. “Oh, dear.” The primrose walls of the nursery deepening
to fog. “But yesterday was all right?”

“Yes,” Nannie conceded. “Yesterday was all right.” But she added, with a
forbearance more condemning than wrath, that when Mrs. Cobb cooked the
semolina too quickly, it was very binding!

“Oh . . .”

The fog-colored walls grew yet darker. In their darkness Bianca beheld a
Semolina Pudding, pale as an ectoplasm and lurid in its silent power of
“binding.”

“If . . .” said Bianca “. . . by to-night . . .” She turned from the
apparition of Semolina and glanced out of the window across the bright
garden to the pram, drawn up, luxurious and varnished as a barouche,
under the quince tree. She forced herself to speak cheerfully. “Perhaps
a little paraffin?” she suggested.

Nannie took up the blue sewing.

“—Or maybe her ladyship might let us have one or two prunes for tea.”
She added that she knew there were likely to be prunes already cooked,
as his lordship always had prunes first thing.

“How do you know, Nannie?”

“Mr. Harvey happened to mention it one tea time.”

Bianca’s spirits revived a little.

“Well, let’s hope his lordship’s prunes will help.”

Nannie, not easily disturbed from her mood of serene and rational
pessimism, said her aphorism about “everything taking twenty-four hours
to pass through.”

                 *        *        *        *        *

Violet Cable was by the pool in the Japanese garden and Lionel Gary was
saying to her:—

“You were right and I was wrong. You weren’t made to be a soldier’s
wife.”

She couldn’t speak. Twenty-three years ago was yesterday. The water
lilies were blurred.

“. . . And your life with Cable seems to have made you very happy.”

Had it made her happy? She didn’t know. She had her assumption about
happiness, which was, in brief, that it was based on all the things she
had had. She pierced the green turf with the ferrule of her parasol.

“. . . Perhaps it’s made me a little hard.”

He said, “Having been right always is apt to make people hard. Possibly
the battle is to the hard.”

She turned her head and looked at him. “You’ve become quite a . . .
philosopher.”

His smile, that wrinkled the corners of his eyes and hardly moved his
lips under the moustache, was still so attractive.

“No, my dear. I’ve only observed my kind.”

“When do you go back to India?”

“Next month.”

“Next month?”

(Twenty-three years ago: “_When do you go back?_” . . . “_Next month._”
. . . “_Next month?_” . . . “_Will you come with me, Violet?_” . . .)

She put her hand on his.

“It wouldn’t have been possible.”

“Possible, dear. But not expedient.”

“Did you . . . were you very much in love with me?”

He said, shortly, “I wouldn’t go through that again.”

“But you never wrote!”

“There would have been no sense. And I wanted to forget you. I remember,
several years after, picking up the _Sketch_ in the house of a friend,
in Simla, and seeing a photograph of you and two of your children.”

There was a rustling among the reeds. Two water fowl pushed out and swam
across the pool, leaving two arrowed rifts on the water. The lily leaves
rose and fell, and were still again.

“. . . When did you . . . stop caring?”

He smiled. “How feminine you are!”

“I . . . just wondered.”

He leaned back, crossing his arms, and stared out of their shade across
the bright pool. He said “. . . _And after many a summer dies the swan._
Do you ever read poetry, Violet?”

Her surprise was that he did. “Very little. I really never have time for
it.”

He said, “You never had, my dear,” in a tone whose gravity and irony and
tenderness gave her so queer a sense of being understood, and of utterly
not understanding.

Bianca came down the grass path.

“Am I too early, Aunt Violet?”

She didn’t know why her aunt kissed her and kept hold of her hand. And
she wondered who Major Cary was, who walked back with them to the house,
and went away in an old two-seater Wolseley before tea.

Violet was preoccupied during tea. But Charmian and Victor Finch, who
had been playing tennis all the afternoon, seemed to chatter and laugh
without stopping; and Peter and David Blyth (who was staying to do a
picture of the house for Lord Cable) amused themselves by trying to
teach Toby to beg by putting sugar on his freckled nose.

The game delighted Toby, who got up laboriously on to his unsteady feet,
waited, blinking his eyelashes, for the piece of sugar, and then
collapsed backwards on to the grass, chuckling and muttering, “Oh, Toby!
Oh, Toby, sugah!” But when Nannie came out she was pained at seeing the
back of his smock and his knickers all green.

When Bianca was going, Charmian said she wanted to come back with her
and see Toby have his bath.

Bianca saw that Victor Finch was hurt at Charmian’s leaving him, so she
suggested that she might come to-morrow. But Charmian said that she
couldn’t come to-morrow as she had to go to London for two days.

David Blyth escorted them both to the car. He admired the car (Bianca
had just bought it) and asked if he might come over and see her
sometime, while he was staying at Moon’s Green.

When they got back Nannie went to change, for a Whist Drive in the
village, and Charmian helped Bianca give Toby his bath and put him to
bed. He was gay in his bath; cross at coming out; and serene again when
Bianca began to give him his supper.

Charmian, watching him, said, “Is he like Richard?”

“I don’t know.” Richard’s name touched that string in her heart that
hadn’t yet stopped quivering and hurting her. She said, holding Toby
warm and solid on her knees, lifting another spoonful to his mouth,
“Sometimes he is. When he’s asleep his eyelids look like Richard’s.” She
thought how Richard might have delighted in this smooth, solid,
silken-haired creature; in his round head and brow, and the sweet nape
of his neck above his nightgown collar, white like magnolia petals; and
his shining squirrel’s eyes; and when he laughed; and teeth spaced out
like small gay pearls.

When he was tucked in, the night-nursery curtains drawn, and the door
left ajar, Charmian said, as they went downstairs:—

“I’m glad I came, Bianca darling. I like thinking of you—enjoying how
sweet Toby is.” Then she went out into the evening garden and said, “How
lovely the syringa smells!”

Bianca said, “The scent gets more as it gets dark. And comes into the
whole house. Last night it woke me up.”

Charmian said, “That must be Victor’s car coming up the lane now. He
said he’d fetch me.”

Bianca asked, “Why do you like him so much?”

Charmian hesitated. “He’s been a very good friend to me. Especially
lately. More than I can explain. He got me that page on the Sunday
_Telegraph_ to do.”

“It is . . . _cheap_ stuff, Charmian!”

“I know. But well-paid. And anyway . . . that’s over now.”

“Is it? I’m glad. I slightly shudder when my cook, Mrs. Cobb, brings me
a kind of blotted angel-head of you, stuck in the middle of the sort of
print you wrap fish in.” Victor Finch called across the garden.

Charmian put her arms round Bianca and hugged her. “Darling, _don’t_
think about me as angel-head and fish!”

“What’s the matter, Charmian?”

“Nothing.”

“You’re not unhappy?”

“Oh, no.”

“Wait. Here’s a piece of the syringa for your room to-night.”

“Oh, Banky, how lovely,” and “Good night. (I’m coming, Victor!) Good
night, Bianca, darling. . . .”

                 *        *        *        *        *

Three days later Frany telephoned. “Your aunt has just had a radiogram
from Charmian. She is on board the _Olympic_. On her way to New
York. . . . Your aunt would like you to come over and see her. She
wishes for company. Your uncle has gone to London to consult his
solicitors. As Charmian is not yet twenty-one, he wishes to stop her
marrying when she arrives.”

                 *        *        *        *        *

Violet was saying for the fifth time that of course Carteret would stop
Charmian’s allowance, and beginning again about her having deliberately
thrown away all her chances, when Alice came in, startled.

“Oh, m’lady—”

“What is it, Alice?”

“_Oh, m’lady!_”

“Alice, please speak to me if you have to.”

“M’lady, I wonder if—if you’d come and see in the mauve spare room—I
had to go in to open it up and—I tried to find Miss Drake, m’lady, and
she isn’t _any_where . . .”

“Really, Alice. Surely this can wait?”

“Well, m’lady . . . only I believe it’s something to do with Miss
Charmian, m’lady!”

When she’d gone they went up to the mauve spare room.

The door was open.

Bianca saw at once . . . the _bed_ had gone! The immense double bed, so
Edwardian—of French design, with the head and foot of white painted
carving framing wickerwork. Where the bed had been, in the centre of the
big square carpet, unfaded by the sun, was pinned a letter in Charmian’s
handwriting. Violet darted to snatch it up. She stood reading it. She
handed it to Bianca. Bianca saw how her hand was shaking.

    Darling Mummie and Daddy—I am taking the bed as my only
    heritage, so you mustn’t mind. (Nobody on the estate helped me
    to get it away so you needn’t blame any of them.) I expect you
    will think this the maddest part of all, but when I was a little
    girl and you were both still sleeping in that bed, and hadn’t
    yet exiled it to the spare room, and Peter and I used to be
    taken in to say good-morning to you, I always thought then that
    two people who slept in that lovely bed must be absolutely happy
    (as well as very grand). So I suppose that really I feel it’s a
    kind of talisman, though a big one! Though anyway I shall be
    happy. (I _know_ that— But you don’t think that matters so
    much.) And, I don’t expect to be “grand”— All the same I want
    it— And it will make me remember you both in the nicest years
    of all. And it is so white and ornate and pretty, it will be
    instead of having a wedding cake!

             Your loving daughter,
                 CHARMIAN


    P.S. I have ordered another bed to be sent down from Heal’s when
    I’ve gone.

The _Olympic_ swung round and seemed to wait, resting across the river,
for the slow approach of the line of docks.

Charmian pressed so hard against the rail of the Third-Class deck that
she was in pain and didn’t know it.

She didn’t know that the heat was stifling; that her head ached from the
throb of the engines; that she was sickened and hungry with excitement.
Her hair hung lank from the heat; her face was white, and childishly
hollowed from lack of sleep, and the bridge of her nose pink from
hatless hours on deck. (She had forgotten to pack a hat.) She was so
thin that even the old pink cotton frock of two summers ago, one of the
few light garments it had occurred to her to bring, was loose on her, as
well as short: she had belted it in with an old tie of Peter’s which
she’d brought from Portland Place tied round her books. And the books
(three of them, the _Sonnets_, _Anna Karenina_, and Hans Andersen fairy
tales) were tied up in the bandana handkerchief which she held in her
left hand.

A fellow passenger, standing beside her, said something to her. But she
didn’t hear. The dock was getting near. She saw little daubs of serried
faces and hands. Light beat up from the river. The dock was nearer now.
The rows and rows of little upstaring faces. . . .

She was trembling.

She didn’t know she was trembling.

She only knew she had been waiting all her life for this moment; and
that her gratitude, that she should have come to it, to this very end of
the known, this blinding edge of heaven, was a pain of happiness
breaking her heart.

The faces were getting clearer now. She kept on raking and raking them
with her stare.

Was _that_ . . .? No . . . Or . . .? No. So _many_ faces . . . So many
people waving, smiling, beginning to shout now . . . Surely that _must_
be? She leaned still harder . . . It wasn’t . . .

They were docking now.

Now they were throwing up the gangways . . . She stayed still, keeping
on and on staring. . . .

People began to shift and lurch and push behind her on the deck. (“_Off
this way_ . . . off _this way, please_ . . .”)

Still she stayed at the rail, peering down, staring back to those
further faces, shifting, pallid, indistinct, in the shadow of the dock.

“_This way off, please! Your landing cards ready, please!_”

She kept on staring down on to the dock but began to move instinctively,
buffeted in the wake of the crowd. Perhaps he was late? Perhaps the boat
had docked earlier than he expected? Perhaps . . . perhaps he hadn’t had
her telegram?

She fumbled dizzily for her landing card. Dropped the bandana with the
books in. Someone picked it up. She thanked him.

“_Move along, please_ . . . _Hurry off, please_.” She found the card,
bent up inside the pocket of her dress. A hand took it and she was
moving down the gangplank. A crowd stood in a semicircle at the foot,
kept back behind a barrier. Faces behind a barrier . . . Not his . . .

She got to the bottom, to the dock, and passed through a white gate, and
was just beginning to let her fear get hold of her (that somehow he
hadn’t come, hadn’t heard) when she saw him in the distance (half turned
away from her, but she knew him)—standing far down the dock by another
gangway.

He hadn’t seen her.

She began to run along the dock, darting between groups of staring
people, flying over baggage, bumping past porters and stewards, her
sight blurred, her breath choking her, and when she was within a yard,
gasping, and saw him turn and heard his “Charmian”—she checked for a
second, speechless, waiting, at his next look, to throw herself into his
arms—saw his expression.

He was looking at her face, her hair, her crumpled dress; and at the
bundle of books; and then at her dress and her white face again. And
then he said:—

“Naturally I supposed that you would come First Class!”

                 *        *        *        *        *

H. Brownlow Best to Lord Cable:—

                                THE NEW WILLARD HOTEL, WASH., D.C.
                                                 _Sept. 2nd, 1920_

    SIR,—

    As you may perhaps remember in connection with a certain
    arrangement with your firm which you and Sir Ivan Benz and I
    discussed last June, I happen to be here on business. This
    brings me in contact with a good many people. Happening to
    mention your name to one, as it happens a newspaper man of high
    standing, he asked me if I knew anything about a rumor that your
    elder daughter, the Hon. Miss Charmian, was now in New York and
    had been secretly living unmarried with a pianist called Kramer,
    whom subsequently she had married. Naturally I denied the rumor,
    but I had an impression at the time that he did not believe me.
    And since then I have happened to hear much the same rumor from
    other quarters, and with certain additions as to the said
    Kramer’s reputation which I prefer not to put down in a letter.

    Now, sir, I wouldn’t be troubling you with this if I did not
    think I could be of some use in the matter. It is part of my
    business to deal with the Press, and there are one or two simple
    ways of having rumors stopped. In this matter a word or two in
    the right quarters, and a small matter of expense, and the
    rumors concerning your daughter need not go any further.

    Be assured, Sir, that I can and I will undertake this matter for
    you. One of the usual code-telegrams would reach me either here
    or at the official address and would avoid any possible
    publicity on the way.

    Believe me,

             Yours very truly,
             H. BROWNLOW BEST

Decoded telegram from Lord Cable’s solicitors, Jervis, Lane and Gearing,
6 New Square, Lincoln’s Inn, to H. Brownlow Best, The New Willard Hotel,
Washington, D.C.

    REPLY YOUR LETTER SEPT 2ND STOP LORD CABLE WISHES ALL PUBLICITY
    SUPPRESSED REGARDING DAUGHTER’S SITUATION STOP KEEP US INFORMED
    OF ANY DETAIL ABOUT KRAMER STOP LORD CABLE EXTREMELY OBLIGED

             JERVIS

Kramer, his brocade dressing gown over his shirt and trousers, kept
pacing about the room waiting for Loeb, his agent, to come.

Charmian said again:—

“But Harry, it won’t be any _use_, my writing again. Father isn’t that
kind of man. You see what his letter says.” The feeling of nightmare was
in her again, making the familiar shapes in the hotel room seem
distorted, and the drab colors too hot.

“Yes!!! That he will not pay the seducer of his daughter. That is how he
writes to me. To _me_! Eh?”

“Harry, he can only _see_ it in this way!” She moved to him, holding out
her hands as if she were trying to break through the invisible ugliness
in the air. Said, “Why don’t you have your coffee?”

“Do you think I am thinking about _coffee_? When I am in such a mood?
When I have received such a letter? And to-morrow I have my concert in
Philadelphia and should be thinking _only_ of that!”

“I . . . know. I wish you could let me see Loeb; and you go and rest.”

“Ha! _Rest!_ And, as for you to see Loeb, you will do nothing of the
sort. He does not know you are married and live here with me in the
hotel. I have told him you are my fiancée, that you’re staying in the
Marguery.”

“But . . . why?”

Kramer threw up his arms. His face was pallid with ill-temper.

“Why? Because he will take more trouble if he thinks you have plenty of
money. Do you _see_? He can make better publicity for me if he can say I
am about to marry the daughter of an English Lord with plenty of cash.
Which is better than that he finds you living here in this hotel of
second class with me!”

“I . . . see.” She looked from his face to the clock. She got up. “Then
I am to go . . . now? And hide from Loeb?”

“You had better go in the next room. Yes.”

She turned away.

“. . . And anyway you would not, in that dress, be fit to see any one of
my friends. I never understand that you have brought nothing with
you—except that _bed_ we now must pay storage for!”

She glanced down at her frock.

“I put it on because it was cool. I . . . might go out and try and buy
something more . . .” She smiled for a second. It _was_ awful, and
short, and darker pink where she’d lost its own belt and tied on a white
corded ribbon.

“Another _dress_? With what money, please?”

She flushed scarlet. And then in one of his flash-over changes he became
pitiful. “When I am so _poor_? . . . When already I struggle to send
what I have back to my mother and sisters that live half-starving.
Because they are proud (we are all proud!) and will rather live starved
in our castle than leave it. They accept what I send. And I do not tell
them at what sacrifice often I _must_ send it. An Artist should not have
to make such extreme sacrifices. But I am also a man, I have a heart. I
think of them, in that beautiful place where as a boy I was, and I must
help them.” There were tears in his dark eyes. He turned to her, came to
her. “Charmian, _meine Blume_ . . . _mein Liebling_.” He came and put
his arms round her. She drew a quick breath, like a sob. Then was quite
still, uncertain. “. . . Do you think, _mein Herz_, that it is for
myself that I must speak always of this hideous matter of money?
_All_—everything that is _Artist_ in me, tells me—what do such things
matter? . . . That I have the two great things that are important in
life, my Art . . . and the woman that I love.”

“Harry.” She put her hand with a quick but afraid touch on his shoulder.
He could feel her thin body still rigid.

“. . . Only,” he went on, and now his hand slipped up her back to the
nape of her neck, “only Life is not all Love and Art. It cannot be. We
must live! And if an Artist can be free in this commercial world, he
must purchase such a freedom.” He drew her closer to him and bent his
head and kissed her neck below the ear. She felt his arms tighten, his
breathing quicken, his teeth on her neck.

She shut her eyes, not thinking. (_Never_ thinking.) It was she (hadn’t
he said so—that second day?) who was “unnatural” . . . “unloving.”

“_Liebling!_ . . .” He could carry her so easily, strong for all his
stocky height.

“But, Harry, you said your _agent_ . . .” He locked the door of the
bedroom. She knew better now than to struggle or speak. He never heard
her words. The room was dusty with hot morning sunlight. The bed unmade.
His clothes everywhere. The smell of him everywhere.

She got her eyes shut again, kept them shut, making herself think and
_think_ that she loved him, and that he needed her. . . . And that in
her fear and torment and disgust she was “unloving.”

                 *        *        *        *        *

That second Christmas at Ebony was partly sad but partly sweet for
Bianca; for Toby was old enough to feel his first Christmas time.

Already by the twentieth of December there was snow on the ground, and
by Christmas Eve the drifts were high against the hedges, and gangs of
men with picks and shovels and ploughs were working on the main road to
Ashford. All day the air sparkled, and at four o’clock the sun was a
hole of liquid flame in a smoky sky, and by five the stars were out and
the snow glittered as it froze.

Bianca spent the afternoon in Rye doing her last-minute shopping, and
having chains fixed on the wheels of the Fiat.

The town looked like the cover of a Christmas Annual; snow on the steep
roofs and the shops lit up early in the narrow streets. The greengrocers
were barricaded with fir trees, the butcher shops blazing with meat and
marble, with a pelmet of magnificent pigs hanging upside down, holly in
their eviscerated stomachs, red satin riband round their necks, and
sprigs of mistletoe in their smiling lips. The poulterers’ shops were
correspondingly fringed with plucked turkeys like plump acrobats
dangling in feather headdresses and linked by festoons of coral-gleaming
sausages, and below them on the slabs lobsters were adorned with red and
white and blue rosettes, chickens were impaled with flags proclaiming
“Merry Xmas,” and on the shelves the tinned salmon and the potted meats
rested in evergreens. Santa Claus in scarlet with a cotton-wool beard
was outside Boots’s, mistletoe swung above the entrance to the
ironmongers’, and in the grocer’s window a jeweled mosaic of
crystallized fruits, jars of ginger, boxes of dates, prunes, and
chocolate, had a central square of white cardboard on which was written
in candied cherries: “The Season’s Greetings.”

When the car was stacked with parcels and the chains put on, Bianca
drove towards home. On her way she decided to call in for tea at Moon’s
Green, and deposit her presents for them all.

As she drove up she thought how beautiful and romantic the house looked
in the dusk; the lighted windows on the ground floor still unshuttered
and shedding their yellow radiance out on to the snow.

She came in out of the cold into the atmosphere of warm wood-scented
luxury and Harvey said that her ladyship was still out, but Miss Drake
and the young gentlemen were in the library.

Frany, as usual, was priestess of the silver urn. Peter stood with his
back to the fire. Louis lay full length along the fender stool. He was
wearing a purple silk shirt and a cream-colored tie. Bianca thought how
exotic he looked in the familiar room. He stopped talking when she came
into the room, lay for the fraction of a second looking up at her, and
then, with one of his curious limber springs, was on his feet, taut,
polite, and too exquisite.

“How are you?”

“Very well.” She sat down by Frany.

“You look very well . . .” He was surprised by her beauty, and
indifferent to it in one glance. “You look like a lily that has just
collided with a red rose . . .”

“You’ve a good color,” said Frany.

“It’s the frost,” said Bianca.

Louis coiled down and along the fender stool again. “I haven’t been out
at all.”

Peter said, “Even Father couldn’t get him to move.”

Bianca turned to Frany.

“It was lovely in Rye. The shops looked like the little German model
ones Ruth used to have. The fruit looked as if it were painted.”

“I say, who’s talking about _me_?” As Bianca spoke Ruth came in and
stood, ruddy-faced and inquisitive, with her hands thrust in her
pockets.

“Nobody,” said Peter.

“Well, I _distinctly_ heard my name.”

Frany said, “Bianca mentioned your toy shops.”

“Mm, yes! That Fräulein brought me, I remember. I bet she was a spy!”

“You always bet that,” said Peter. “But nobody will ever lay you any
odds. What’ve you been doing?”

“Oh, Lord! Beryl and I have been for a walk with Miss Faber. . . . No
meet on Boxing Day if this frost goes on. Just my beastly luck. And
Beryl’s got to go on Wednesday.”

Beryl, a cheerful little squirrel-faced friend with a red pigtail, came
in.

“Ruth? Miss F. says tea! . . .”

“Oh, all right,” said Ruth. “Tell ’er I’m _coming_! Well, so-long,
everybody. Nobody need expect any presents from _me_ to-morrow, because
I haven’t been able to afford any! So that’s that!” She swung away on
her heels, her shoulders hunched, her hands thrust deeper than ever into
her pockets. “My new saddle took every penny of my blessed savings; and
on top of that, Mathews started this Save the Children Fund ‘subscrip’
in the parish, and, of course, I _had_ to stick my name down for so
much. . . . Oh, _well, there_ it is. . . .” She stumped off, slamming
the door after her. Louis, recumbent, gazed at the door.

“She is charming, Ruth!” he said gently.

Peter said, “She’s quite a good sort, really.”

Louis raised himself on his elbow. “Now that’s something I’ve always
wanted to know. What _exactly_ does that mean? What is a ‘good sort’?”

Bianca took a scone and glanced at him.

“Someone, I suppose, who is likable for no _showy_ reasons.”

“For no _apparent_ reasons,” said Peter.

“Why then does one like them?” asked Louis. “Frany—silent and
mysterious well of information that you are? . . .”

Frany looked down at him.

“One does not always like them.”

Bianca said tartly, “At least they’re usually useful people.”

“Ha?” Louis turned over slowly and lay prone, cupping his chin in his
hands and looking up at Bianca. She thought that at this moment his eyes
seemed as if they were looking out from inside the mask that was his
face. . . . He asked, “And what, madame, is their use?”

“They—_do_ something in life.”

“You think that’s essential? Doing something in life? Which may mean
anything, from going every day to an office, where you sell something
you never see to someone you don’t know, who won’t use it! Or it may
mean, as my aunt in Paris does, embroidering without talent things
without beauty. . . . Or again . . .”

Bianca cut him short.

“What I do think is ‘essential’ is to . . .” she hesitated, “to be of
some sort of _use_. . . .”

Peter broke out, “You _are_ being dreary, Bianca darling!” He knew she
disapproved of Louis, but she needn’t put her ears back like that
whenever she saw him.

“More tea, Bianca?” said Frany.

“. . . Not,” Bianca went on, “to be perfectly content to lounge through
life wearing orchids and making paradoxes and rippling one’s hips!”

“Here is your cup, Bianca!” said Frany.

Louis smiled. His left eyebrow rose a little higher than the other.

“You are so deliciously un-English, Bianca!”

Peter, seeing Bianca’s expression, said, “A cigarette, Louis?”

“. . . The English habit,” said Louis, “is to say clever things in a
dull way. . . . Yours is to say dull things in a clever way!”

“I’m sorry if that’s the effect. . . . I’m less aware of what . . .
effect I make, perhaps, than you, Louis.”

“_Le style—c’est l’homme, Madame Bianca!_ . . . Give me a lump of
sugar, Frany. I adore these square, rich, English lumps of sugar.” His
glance returned to Bianca. “I see that the idea of ‘style’ makes you
look, once more, at my shirt!”

“It’s very—pretty!”

“Useful, too, I assure you.” He slid a look at her, and bit the sugar
with his front teeth. “Without it you would see my body, which is still
_crème brûlée_ with the sun and idleness of my summer. . . . All the
same, madame, in condemning me, you forget perhaps my Literary success?”

“I don’t.”

Then, for no reason that she could understand, Louis’s look changed. He
smiled. A tide of warmth and ease seemed to flow up visibly under his
skin; and suddenly his whole expression was as direct and simple as it
had been dark and oblique a second before. He said, his voice dropped
two tones, “It was a very mediocre book!”

Peter protested.

“Wasn’t it, Frany?” said Louis, rolling off his stool and twisting up
like a released spring to a kneeling position.

“No,” said Frany.

Louis laughed. “The severe and beautiful Bianca hasn’t replied?”
Kneeling before the settee, his face was on a level with hers. “Wasn’t
it mediocre?”

Bianca said curtly, “I didn’t read it.”

(This wasn’t true.) She got up.

She wanted to end talking to him. She felt that there was some kind of
chemical antagonism between them. She wondered if he felt it too.

“All this disagreeing is wrong for Christmas time,” said Peter, “and
Mummie’s been on edge all day. And look at _Ruth_! It all comes of not
doing a play.”

Louis sat up. “A play?”

Peter explained, “We usually do theatricals, a play or something, in the
village hall on Boxing Night, don’t we, Frany? During the War we did
them at the Hospital instead.”

“Why?” Louis asked, intensely interested.

“Oh, well . . . we always have.”

“And . . . who acts?”

“All of us. And whoever’s in the house. Mummie, Bianca, myself . . .
sometimes neighbors too. Father doesn’t act. But he prompts.”

“Then why didn’t you this year?”

“Oh . . . well. Sort of ‘mourning’ for Charmian. We didn’t feel like it.
Actually Father pretended that it was because he wanted a quiet
Christmas, but he minds as much as we do. Charmian always played
character parts.”

“And who’s the leading lady?”

“Bianca. Two years ago we did scenes from _Twelfth Night_ and Bianca was
Viola and I was Sebastian.”

Louis looked from Peter to Bianca.

“You must have been altogether charming!”

“We were,” said Peter.

                 *        *        *        *        *

Frany came to see Bianca on New Year’s Day to bring Toby, as an
encouragement to mature behavior, a child’s silver spoon and fork which
had been in the Drake family for three generations. With them in the
stained maroon leather case was a card in Frany’s neat, masculine
handwriting: “_To Richard Peter van Geldern Selwyn. New Year 1921.
Manners makyth Man._”

She also brought the news that Louis was renting the Dower House (empty
since the autumn of 1918 when the convalescent officers had left) for
the spring.

Bianca couldn’t imagine what he would do there. He was hardly, she
suggested, adapted to English country life.

“Doubtless,” said Frany, “he will adapt himself in his own way.” She
added, “Your aunt is much pleased with the rent he will pay her. She
thinks now that she has misjudged his character; and lets herself hope
that he will take the place on a long lease and do many necessary
repairs. But he will not do so. He has other plans.”

Frany then changed the subject by bringing out her black bag (it was
worn leather of unknown age and always known as “Frany’s black bag”).
She produced an embroidery design which she had had copied from one
Bianca had admired when they were at the Museum. (She had made it part
of her routine that winter to make Bianca go up to London and lunch with
her once every week, although she had never made any comment on Bianca’s
continuous solitude at Ebony.)

                 *        *        *        *        *

The first Saturday in February Hounds were to meet at Moon’s Green.
Carteret came down on the Friday, deeply disturbed by the news of the
Mallow murder and its reprisals in Ireland; and by a letter from Peter,
from Oxford, saying that he had joined the Oxford University Dramatic
Society. He had also been exasperated on his way up from the station by
seeing a furniture truck going up the drive that branched off, through
the wood, to the Dower House. He said to Violet at dinner that he
supposed young Scheurer was starting to refurnish the house. Ruth, who
now dined in the evenings with her parents when they were alone, said
that Louis had a rubber cushion that he stuck on the back of the bath to
rest his head on. Carteret said he could almost believe it. Frany,
looking across at Ruth, said:—

“How do you know, Ruth?”

“Alice saw it. That nigger Louis has showed it to her when she went over
there to help Mrs. Cooper fetch his laundry.”

Ruth was as truthful as she was insensitive. . . . She continued to
talk:—

“D’you know, Father, when I saw Louis the other day I asked him straight
out why on earth he had taken the place.”

“And what did he say, I wonder.”

“He said that he was always trying on new lives to see if they suited
him.”

“Very witty,” said Violet.

“Typical!” said Carteret. “Typical of him. If he’d come here for any
good reason! He’s a good shot, I grant that, a first-class shot. But
what’s he do with himself most of the time? Doesn’t even play golf!”

Frany said, “He said he was going to start hunting soon.”

Carteret growled, “Rather late in the season to start! I offered to
mount him at New Year and he refused.”

Ruth giggled. “I can’t _imagine_ Louis on a horse!”

Harvey, who had gone to answer the telephone, came in.

“There’s a telephone message, m’lady, from Mr. Peter, to say that he is
coming to-night by car.”

Carteret, sipping his Madeira, began a perfunctory grumble about these
boys getting leave whenever they wanted it. But inwardly he was
comforted at the idea of seeing his son. When he came down like this,
tired and worried on Friday evenings, he was so haunted by the feeling
of Charmian’s not being there. . . .

Once or twice he’d wondered if Violet missed her. But she never
mentioned her. She seemed to be able to take his own words literally,
that “as far as they were concerned, Charmian had ceased to exist.”

It never occurred to Carteret to question his wife on the matter. Nor
would he have confided to her (since he never clearly admitted it to
himself) the fact that he sent Charmian anonymously, a ten-pound note
every week. He posted it in Piccadilly, registered, in one of a series
of cheap blue envelopes; her name and address typed on it, by his
secretary.

                 *        *        *        *        *

Peter’s explanation that he had come down for a day’s hunting absolved
him from very serious protest about the O.U.D.S. Carteret merely stated
at breakfast that he’d heard that the O.U.D.S. were “a queer lot”; asked
what they were acting; and deplored their choice of _Antony and
Cleopatra_. Why couldn’t they do _Henry V_ or _The Taming of the Shrew_?

Peter, eating mushrooms and bacon and eggs, didn’t know but was in high
spirits. Ruth, her little nose shining her pigtail looped up at the back
under her bowler, came in to say that she was going round to the stables
and did Peter really mean to hunt Diamond to-day, because if he did she
supposed she’d better take Sheba and resign herself to having her arms
pulled off, etc. . . . They started one of their childish disputes,
which went on until Frany, who was at the sideboard boiling Carteret’s
second egg its exact three and three-quarters minutes, turned round and
looked at them as she looked at the Pekinese when they began fighting.

Peter, to change the subject, asked if Bianca was coming out to-day.
Frany thought she was. She added:—

“Your father has bought her a horse.”

“On Frany’s advice,” grumbled Carteret, opening the _Times_. “_Look at
this_. . . . Nine constabulary men killed in County Limerick! . . .”

“Your egg, Lord Cable.”

“Thanks, Frany, thanks.”

                 *        *        *        *        *

By ten o’clock the sun had come through the mists, though a blue
smokiness still hung round the woods and made the air smell thick and
chill.

As Bianca rode up the drive, the trees were still dripping, and the
lawns, sloping brilliant green up to the house, were sheened over with
water. She sniffed the air. She felt her blood move faster.

Most people had already arrived; and a pattern of scarlet coats and the
women’s black habits shifted to and fro against the parrot-green grass
and the maroon brick of the house.

By the time Bianca trotted up they had begun to move off along the drive
towards Potman’s Wood. Peter rode up beside Bianca. He was struck by a
new vivacity in her, a swift brilliance in her smile. She looked so
lovely that he exclaimed, with his British training:—

“You do look jolly in that habit!”

“Thank you.” She laughed; strength and sparkle in her voice. Several men
riding near her bothered to look twice at her. One asked another, “Who’s
that?” . . . “That’s Mrs. Selwyn.” “Oh yes! Of course. . . .” “She’s
only just beginning to go about at all. . . .”

Peter said, “I heard Louis was coming out, but he doesn’t seem to be
here.”

Bianca said, “I expect the Meet was too early for him.” She added that
she hadn’t seen him since he had moved into the Dower House; but that
rumor had it he entertained a lot of queer people there.

Peter said, “You’ve got this thing about ‘queer,’ too.”

Bianca said stubbornly, “I like people to be normal.”

“Funny you being like that,” said Peter. He thought that in some ways
the shock of Richard’s being killed had made her an afraid person.
Thinking this, he leaned over and patted her arm.

“I _am_ pleased to see you, Bianca darling.”

Their dark eyes met. Their oval faces lit up in mutual affection.

“How’s Oxford?” she asked.

“Heavenly. Blissful. My life exactly.”

“I’ll come and see you one day.”

Hounds were moving ahead up the hill now and keeping along a screen of
beeches on the west side of the park. Ahead of Peter and Bianca the wife
of the M.F.H. was laughing a fat laugh at something Sir Charles Billet,
a K.C. with charming eyes like a bloodhound, was telling her. Just
behind them Carteret was discussing Ulster Unionism with two other men.

Suddenly Billet’s mare shied. In the same second Bianca’s horse started
and threw up its head, and she saw Peter catch up his rein, as Diamond,
his eye rolled back, his nostrils quivering, plunged sideways. Within
five seconds every horse in the field was shying, rearing, pulling to be
off like mad. Bianca saw Ruth’s Sheba gallop, ears back, straight up the
hill past the pack, which had turned sideways, the dogs crouched against
one another and staring towards the line of beeches and shivering and
yapping and growling, their tails between their legs, their muzzles
lifted. . . . She heard Peter, somewhere behind now, in the panicked
press of horses, shout something at her; she felt her horse shivering
and throbbing; heard Carteret swearing and roaring; heard another man’s
“What the devil?” . . . Then Peter’s cry, “_Look, Bianca!_”

Then Carteret’s “_Good God!!!_”

A hundred yards off, from between two of the beech trees, she saw an
elephant, emerging without haste and without sound. On its back rode
Louis, wearing a top hat, scarlet coat, white breeches, and black top
boots. He seemed to be guiding it by the touch of his riding crop
between its ears. As the elephant emerged, the growling of the dogs
changed to a long howl of terror; as it advanced slowly, and apparently
sunk in its own thoughts, towards them, they turned and fled, and a
second later had most of the field helter-skelter after them, down a
hollow of the park, across a far meadow, and over a hedge beyond.

Louis, bowing a polite good-morning, continued to advance; and the
remaining horses went mad. Peter, shouting out something about
“Hannibal,” had turned Diamond, his flanks running with sweat, towards
home.

Bianca, whose horse had gently bucked her off, sat in the grass helpless
with laughter, at the feet of a speechless gulping man whose horse had
somehow disappeared.

When Louis rode nearer, the man broke out, “_Sir!!!_ My name is
_Lethaby_! . . . I happen to be Secretary of this Hunt.”

Louis bent down forward and looked down from his great height.

“Enchanted, Mr.—Lethaby! Then perhaps you would be able to help me.”

“SIR! . . .”

Louis leaned over still more politely and said with calculated charm:—

“Mr. Lethaby? I am in search of a _fox_.”

                 *        *        *        *        *

Madame Scheurer received her son in her bedroom.

When he came running in, and kissed both her hands and then her cheek,
she found him delightful; and tried not to show it.

For this letter from Lord Cable was, after all, a serious matter. She
indicated the letter in her hand.

“Ah! Then you know already, Maman?”

“Lord Cable writes to your father that you have been asked to leave the
neighborhood, the ‘county,’ he said, for reasons which he preferred not
to detail.”

“He doesn’t tell you?”

“No.”

“Then I must?”

She hesitated, severe and disturbed, yet uncertain how to frame a
condemnation of this elegant and complex young man who was her son. For
there was clearly a matter of some serious solecism, some willful
scandal or carelessness of appearances, which was characteristic of
Louis, and therefore most difficult to censure. “Perhaps,” she said,
“you would rather tell your father?”

He saw what she feared, but didn’t show his amusement out of respect for
her gravity. But he said quickly, “It’s something I can perfectly well
tell you, Maman.”

“Very well.”

He told her. When he’d done she allowed herself to smile. “All the
same,” she said, “I’m afraid you have been imprudent. One never knows
the effect of such stories.” Louis’s expression of the extent to which
he didn’t care was in a phrase for which he immediately apologized.

“And that poor Violette!” said Cécile Scheurer with perfectly controlled
delight. “She will regret your rent!”

“No,” said Louis, “on the contrary. I have sent her six months’ rent
(instead of the three I owe her), in banknotes, in an ivory box!”

                 *        *        *        *        *

Charmian wrote a postcard to Bianca saying that she was coming home for
a holiday in July. It was the first time she had written since she went
away. The address on her postcard was “Eighth Street.” Bianca cabled to
her telling her to come and stay. A few days later when she saw Frany
she asked her if Violet and Carteret knew that Charmian was coming back.
Frany said that they didn’t. And that, in any case, they would ignore
the fact. She added that she, herself, was arranging to fetch Charmian
from Southampton and would bring her straight to Ebony. Bianca said that
she was afraid from Charmian’s silence, and her coming back alone, that
she was unhappy. Frany said, “Doubtless her husband is busy with his
concerts and cannot get away. . . . And it is natural she should wish to
visit her own country.”

In fact, only Frany knew, from two letters, what Charmian’s life had
been in the year since her elopement.

But Frany never crossed the strands of the confidences she received.

                 *        *        *        *        *

They were to remain in Toby’s mind, those three figures under the tree,
as a first, perhaps his first perfectly vivid, memory. The blue shirt
and white trousers; the white dress in the chair; the yellow dress and
yellow hair against the tree trunk.

He went across the grass towards them. They turned their faces to him.
Mummie. The Peter. And the lady with hair shining: the strange lady
called Charmi-an. He went on towards them. They smiled at him. He smiled
back at them. When he got near them his mother held out her arms. He
pretended not to see. In pretending hard he stumbled, but righted
himself.

Charmian said, “How well he walks.”

He went to Charmian, looking at her.

“Charmee-_an_?” he said. He flumped down harder than he meant to between
her and The Peter.

“Where’ss Peggitty?” he said.

“Peggotty’s asleep in the house,” said his mother. “She feels the heat.”

“Feelss da heat?”

“Yes,” said The Peter. “Because she can’t take off her coat.”

He repeated “can’t take off her coat,” bending his head forward and
slewing his look round and up at The Peter. He got Peter’s smile. Then
he leaned still further forward until he could see round The Peter’s
blue shirt, and there was Mummie!

“Mummie?”

“Yes.”

“Ah would like Peggitty to come out.”

“Poor Peggotty’s cooler in the house.”

“Ah would like her.”

“No. She’d rather not.”

“Ah want her to come.”

“No, Toby.”

“Oh, _yiss_, Toby!”

The Peter undid his wrist watch.

“Would you like to wear my watch, Toby?”

“Oh, yiss.”

The Peter strapped it on. Toby bent his cheek to it; it felt cool; it
ticked. He laughed. Then, quickly:—

“Peggitty would like to hear my watch tickin’.”

“Dogs aren’t interested in watches.”

“Peggitty’ss inter-ested.”

Mummie said, “Charmian’s got something for you. Go and see.”

“See? Charmi-an?”

The ground sloped. He lumbered and caught the yellow silk shoulder. He
was close to her face, looking in at her eyes. They shone: they were
blue. He looked in and in to them. He chuckled. She said:—

“I’ve got a book for you, Toby.”

“A book?”

“Yes. Sit down and I’ll show it to you. Mummie says you haven’t got this
one.”

“See it _quick_?”

“Sit down.”

“Oh. Yiss.”

“It’s called _The Tailor of Gloucester_.”

The book had a picture on the cover.

“Oh, mouses. Oh, _leetle mouses_!!!”

Toby opened the book. Then he paused. He turned to look up at his mother
in the chair. She was sewing. She didn’t hear.

“I want Peggitty to come.” He looked at Peter. The Peter had lain back
and was asleep.

He turned his look up to Charmian.

“Toby _wants_ Peggitty.”

“Yes. But Peggotty doesn’t want _you_. She doesn’t want Toby.”

“Doesn’t want Toby?”

“No. But I do. And so do the mice. Now let’s read.”

“Oh.” He glanced round once more at Mummie: she was still sewing, her
face bent down. The Peter was still asleep.

“Oh. Read then—Charmi-an. Read ‘once-a-pona-time.’” . . .

“‘In the time of swords and periwigs and full-skirted coats with
flowered lapels—when gentlemen wore ruffles and gold-laced waistcoats
of paduasoy and taffeta—there lived a Tailor in Gloucester.’”. . .

                 *        *        *        *        *

It was when Toby had been taken indoors to tea, and Peter had gone back
to Moon’s Green to play tennis, that Bianca said:—

“Why do you go back?”

“Because he does really need me, in spite of everything.”

“Then why did you come away?”

“To make it possible—to go on.”

It was the only time either she or Bianca, during her whole visit, spoke
of her marriage.

                 *        *        *        *        *

But when Peter and Bianca came to see her off on the _Mauretania_, and
Bianca cried and Peter managed not to, Charmian said, “Write to me,
won’t you?” and, “Write to me from Oxford, Peter?”

They promised to and made her promise to cable them if she wanted them
to come, or needed money, or anything else. They didn’t tell her about
her presents in her cabin, so that she should have them to unwrap when
she’d gone. Charmian said to Peter, just when they were leaving her, “Do
you think Father ever got my letters, or do you think Mummie tears them
up? . . . And anyway if you can tell him I’m _grateful_, and that I
. . . I shall pull through all right.”

The shouting got louder and they had to get to the gangplank.

They stood on the dock and waved to her; and the great hull of the ship
was moving away without seeming to. And still when the ship was away
across the sound they could see her waving her orange scarf, waving and
waving . . . and her yellow hair blowing. And she looked utterly, and
somehow so unjustly, desolate, like a little girl—with her yellow hair
blowing—who was being sent into exile.

And when, after a long time, the ship was out of sight, Peter made
Bianca come over to the Great Western Hotel; and made her sit in a
corner of the Lounge, and ordered tea for them both.

Neither of them could swallow it.

And the orchestra, with palms round it, played “The Japanese Sandman.”




                                PART IV


The group, with Louis Scheurer at its head, which was to become a kind
of Flying Squadron moving from place to place, was dubbed by someone, at
some moment in its formation, the _Galère_.

But none of the group ever knew who named it so inevitably. Peter always
supposed it began with one of those phrases that his mother flipped at
Louis in the belief that she was speaking French. But Kalla von Lüneburg
and her husband, the blond and endearing “Fritzl,” who only “joined” in
1924, maintained that they, in Berlin, had heard of the _Galère_ already
in 1922, which was before it became notorious enough for Violet Cable to
disapprove of it. (It was in 1926, after the New York Dueling Scandal,
that Violet described them as a lot of “dayclassays” and “daytraquays.”)

But, however it was named, it was originally launched by Marie de
Montcontour, whose genius was half deliberately, half desultorily, to
instigate movements, friendships, passions, like a child in an idle mood
letting balloons go from a high window.

Nicky Zatec believed that the thing began when he met Louis at Marie’s
apartment in Paris in the summer of 1919.

Louis dated the “sense of community of pleasure,” which was the salient
characteristic of the _Galère_, from the supper party Marie gave in the
garden of her villa at Le Pradet in June 1922, when four of the original
members were there: himself, François, Nicky Zatec, and Peter.

To Peter that party of Marie de Montcontour’s was something
unforgettable, exotic and disturbing beyond imagining. . . .

The hot moonlight, the black pines, the hidden swish and sounding of the
sea below the terraces. . . . The long table with flowers set in an
avenue of candles whose flames quivered, and were blown into pennons by
a faint salt-smelling breeze. The faces and voices; the movement and
glitter and flow of talk; the chance beauty of a face bent forward in
the candle flames, then leaned back into hyacinthine shadows; of a
shoulder and arm sharply white-edged against the moon. . . . And,
beneath that sequined surface of talk, close under rippling of thought
and wit and laughter, a sensuality that was in the night itself, in the
air, the voices, the lightest gestures, the lifting of a glass, the
movement to light a cigarette, weighted with desire, and casual words
catching an overtone of passion.

There was a movement when Peter realized that Marie was leaning and
talking to him down the table, and he was looking into her eyes (or was
it her soul?), which held, in terrifying concentration, the beauty that
had once been in her face. . . .

What was she saying to him? . . .

“Monsieur—” She summoned him to come and sit beside her.

She said, “Van Dyck painted you!” her extraordinary voice musical with
the echoes of played-out passions, and her long hands, with their
quality, saintlike, of lassitude (a lassitude of caressing) . . . her
voice and hands said to him (as the night and the troubled laughter,
Louis’s faun mask, said to him) that he was strange in his innocence;
that he didn’t know, didn’t feel, didn’t see, yet . . .

She turned to Louis, said something to him in French. Then turned again
to Peter. “. . . The form of your face, which is beautiful . . . and
those melancholy eyelashes.” She asked the servant behind her chair to
bring some more wine. One of the women halfway down the table was
singing a song of Yvonne George. Marie clapped her hands. “Another?
. . . _Encore!_”

Louis, standing up, fixing an immense ostrich-feather fan on his head,
did an imitation, incredible in its evocation of flashing eyes,
triangular underlip, and pertly suggestive behind, of Spinelly; and then
an osseous undulating “take-off” of Cora Madou singing “_Elle est
grande_.”

Then Nicky Zatec, in his crystalline and explicit French, began telling
one of his “Thousand and One Nights”—a series of his own adventures in
the East, devised by him to please his friends, and which were as
charming as they were pornographic. Peter watched him as he talked, his
small eyes black with vitality in his big pallid baby face; his body,
gross, almost dropsical, like some degenerated giant, leaned back in his
chair; his plump hands lifted now and again from their repose on his
stomach to make some small and only too explicit gesture.

As he ended an “Adventure,” Louis summoned a servant. Then the man
vanished up the terraces towards the house and returned weighted with so
immense a sheaf of roses that he came slowly. Louis laid them in front
of Marie on the table. “They should have come before.” He added, to
Peter, “They’re what I lost, on a wager!” Peter saw Louis and Marie look
at each other. Their looking was in a language rich and inflected and
beyond his least comprehension. And her voice saying, “Thank you, my
friend,” made even those three words mysterious, disturbing.

She bent over the roses; breathed in, her nostrils distended. Again her
look lifted to Louis’s face. She said:—

“They give me . . . a very great pleasure.” Her look stayed in his, the
mere impulse of a smile moved the corners of her mouth. And Louis,
unmoving, said, “I have even more pleasure in giving them.”

Then Peter saw her look change, and she had taken one of the roses, and,
with a slow tenderness, her fingers were tearing off its petals.

She said, “They are _too_ . . . pretty.” She picked up another, her
fingers so white, her rings glittering. “. . . One must know . . .” a
fresh flutter of petals fell . . . “one must know—not only when to
exact roses” (did she look up at Louis?) “but when to destroy them.” She
took a third, a fourth, the petals heaping dark and fragrant in the
satin of her lap. The talk and laughter had stopped down the whole
table. . . . “There are few people, above all few women, who know the
moment to destroy them. . . .” Now her fingers, hovering over half a
dozen perfect, deep red, clawed off and held and crushed them slowly
. . . and let them fall. . . . “The moment . . .” (her eyes were shut
now; her eyelids dark, her lashes spiky black on her pallor. Now her
hands reached out again above the flowers) . . . “the precise and
exquisite moment,” her voice broke on a cadence that her fingers caught
and abandoned, before they swooped again and seized and tore and
scattered. . . .

The last storm of petals fell, the air loaded sweet and maddening with
their fragrance. Peter looked at Louis.

Louis’s tears streaked his face, and he was breathing hard and unevenly.

                 *        *        *        *        *

David Blyth’s pictures seemed to be painted with a palette of Neapolitan
ice—pale pinks, whites, pistachio green, raspberry red. They had the
gay, deliberately stilted prettiness of striped awnings, or window boxes
of geraniums.

In his picture of Moon’s Green, which he brought over to show Bianca,
the house was raspberry red, the window frames vanilla-ice white, the
lawn pistachio. It was a charming, faintly ironical statement about Wren
and English parks. There was a quality in it which made Bianca think
that Jane Austen might have painted it.

He said:—

“I should like sometime to do a sketch of your house if you’ll let me.
Peter’s asked me to stay again before we go back to Oxford.”

Bianca said she would like him to.

He said, when they were having tea in the garden, that he wished he
could paint her. But that his portraits never seemed to come off. He
said, “You have such nice pale colors, and it’s fun your eyes being so
dark and your hair much lighter.”

“Charmian says that my eyes are chocolate caramel and my hair coffee
caramel.”

He smiled, thinking that he liked her; and feeling that she was
physically exciting.

“How is Charmian getting on in New York?”

“Didn’t you know about her marriage?”

“Oh, yes. Peter told me. I remember now. The family don’t like him or
something.”

He wasn’t interested in Charmian, although he quite liked her. He said
that he was going to America when he left Oxford next year. He meant to
do pictures of houses there, and that there was a chance of his working
for _Vogue_, and that a German boy, Fritz von Lüneburg, who was a friend
of his, was going to New York too. Bianca said:—

“Don’t people still feel too much about Germans?” She added, “I don’t
myself.”

David quoted his brother Alan, who had been to Washington the year
before and was now in Geneva, and who said that the feeling at present
in America was against England and France; and in England against France
and America. David said, “Look at the way England and France were at war
for those two years after the War, backing Turkey and Greece! Look at
Chanak! And Alan says that we made it quite clear at the Washington
Conference that we looked on the whole parity arrangement as temporary.”
He added, “Fritz von Lüneburg says that in Germany they hate the French
because they always have. But that they hope somehow that _we’ll_ come
round and revise Versailles.”

“I rather hate the French myself,” said Bianca.

“How odd,” said David. “Because this morning Peter was saying how much
he likes them.”

Bianca said, “That’s only because he adores Louis Scheurer so!”

“I’ve only met him once last year, when he had the Dower House here. But
he is amusing.”

Bianca said, “Yes, amusing. But a hopeless sort of person, really.” She
took a cigarette and David leaned to light it for her.

He said, “Didn’t Scheurer leave the neighborhood after some sort of
unpleasant episode?”

“Didn’t you hear?” He found her sudden chuckling laughter charming; and
disturbing.

She told him why Louis had left.

He was faintly amused.

                 *        *        *        *        *

François was lying on the sofa when Zamorr came in and said, “Mistah
Louis’s sistah is heah, suh?” and his look stayed on François’s face,
puzzled, asking for a sign. François, starting up, let his notebook slip
on to the parquet.

“Monsieur Louis isn’t here,” he said to Zamorr.

When Marthe saw François she exclaimed, a troubled exclamation. But he
saw that the trouble was in her heart, and not for him. (He wondered if
she’d noticed his old kid-topped boots, which he was wearing to save his
good shoes.) She said:—

“Oh . . . Monsieur Dubar!” and came to him holding out her hand. Her
hand was cold and she was very nervous. “How are you, Monsieur?” She
glanced round. “Where’s Louis?”

Zamorr lingered in the doorway. François caught his eye.

“He is not here.”

Zamorr went out.

“Oh . . .” There was rain on her coat and on her cheeks and hair. She
said, “When will he be here? Do you know? I wanted so much to see him!”

He felt he must seem stupid answering that he didn’t know. He said that
he had no idea where Louis was or when he would come.

“But he will be in before dinner?”

He couldn’t stop thinking about the fair sweetness of her face and the
rain on her nose and eyelashes.

“No. He won’t. I know that.”

“But—but Zamorr told me he had people to dine.”

“Zamorr is an idiot. He never knows one day from another.”

She hesitated.

“Perhaps I’ll wait, for half an hour, anyway.”

He couldn’t prevent himself from urging her to stay for half an hour, in
his company. Zamorr took her coat. She took off her hat and took out a
handkerchief and wiped the rain off her face. He noticed that she didn’t
go to a mirror—she wasn’t preoccupied with herself.

She sat down and with a little gesture asked him to be seated. He
thought again of his boots; and sat down in the armchair that had its
back to the candelabra, so that the boots were in shadow.

She said, “It is two years almost since I saw you. Tell me what you have
been doing?”

He told her that he had been mostly in Italy.

“That must have been beautiful. I have been only once, to Rome, with my
father.”

They talked about Rome. He told her that he had been employed by an
editor to help compile a guidebook on Italian towns. While they talked
he realized that she was hiding her inward state of agitation. She asked
him if he had been writing. He said only some short poems and a few
newspaper articles. But that he had begun to write a play.

She asked him what it was about. He said that it was about a village
such as he had been brought up in. The young girl in the play wants to
become a nun, and renounces her vocation to marry the boy who is in love
with her, out of pity. He is very delicate in health and therefore
nervous and full of fears, but also stupid. In marrying him she will
have a poor and narrow life. She doesn’t even have children. Her life is
only for this man whom she has never loved, but in whom there exists a
necessity for her presence. . . .

“Then. . .?”

“She renounces the life of a nun as another woman would renounce her
lover— She will never forget the life in the convent which she will
never have.”

Marthe leaned forward on the sofa.

“But then—in the end. Is it worth while?”

“She thinks so. For her the supreme justification of the Faith (which
had made her wish to be a nun) is the fact that the same faith made her
strong enough to choose a small and sordid life with this man. . . .”

“A drama of—sacrifice? Of renunciation?”

François said, “There are only two dramas—the drama of success and the
drama of renunciation. The first is drama for the many. The second for
an—elite.”

“And what happens in your play?”

He smiled. “My play! . . . Which doesn’t exist . . . Well, if you like,
this girl achieves a spiritual success. The play itself—it’s very
‘realistic’—consists of scenes from her life with this man. Louis says,
‘It isn’t theatre.’ That I believe—”

“But what happens in the end?”

She was intent, troubled, and he realized suddenly that in some way her
own problem, whatever it was, seemed to her to link up with his theme.

“In the end—she goes to visit the Mother Superior of the convent—whom
she has visited in the first scene when she still believes that she is
going to take vows there—before she decides that she must marry. The
last scene is in a garden, as the first—the garden of the convent. She
speaks of her life with the Mother Superior. It is twenty years since
she saw her. But she seems still peaceful, blessed, flourishing; no more
changed than the plane tree under which they are sitting.”

“And she? The girl?”

“She has changed. She has aged.”

Marthe asked, “But she’s satisfied?”

He answered, preoccupied, “The water, colored with wine, which the nuns
drink. They call it _L’Abondance_—did you know that? I shall call the
play ‘_L’Abondance_.’”

Marthe said, “You mean—she’s satisfied with the life that God has given
her—”

He looked at her. “You understand everything, mademoiselle.”

She colored. “It is—very beautiful, your idea.”

“If you think so, I will try and realize it.”

“I hope so very much.” She started. The double doors leading through
into Louis’s bedroom opened from inside. François sprang up.

“_Louis!_”

He shut the doors behind him.

François went up to Louis, speaking quickly. “You must have come in very
quietly? Through your bedroom, I suppose. _Marthe has been here—waiting
for you!_ Both Zamorr and I had told her you were out!”

“How—stupid of him. Marthe, my darling!” He came and put his arms round
her. She was touched—and yet disconcerted. Louis seemed elated and very
gay. It wasn’t Louis, but something indefinable in François’s manner and
in the way his look followed Louis that disconcerted her.

“—To think that you, my own sister, should have been waiting to see
me— Why didn’t you telephone, darling? So that I shouldn’t make
any—other engagements.”

She said, “It was something—I wanted to talk to you about.”

“You shall talk to me all the evening. We’ll dine here—all of us.
François too—and Bengy and Nicky and Armorelle.”

She said quickly, “Oh no, Louis. I’d prefer to talk to you to-morrow.”

“But, my darling—”

François interrupted, “I can escort mademoiselle your sister back, since
you have people.”

Louis slipped a hand round his shoulder. “_Nonsense_, my dear François.”
He whispered something in François’s ear and laughed. He turned to
Marthe, still laughing, and she was struck by the bright pallor of his
eyes, the pupils like pinpoints. She said:—

“But I must go now, anyway, because Maman is expecting me to dine early
and go with her and Papa, and Edouard d’Arès, to the Ballet.”

As she said Edouard d’Arès’s name François could see the alternating
flashes of intuition and thought which caused Louis to break out,
seizing her hands, “You’d better, my dear. You really had _much_ better.
I know you, darling. Believe me. And I love you, very, very much. So do
what I say! Marry him, my dear. Marry his good heart, his property, his
well-born amiable features—marry his prestige, and his good sense, and
his charming family (for they _are_ charming!). Marry him!” He went on
excitably, “Make a _good_ marriage; and you will create, like a work of
art, like a picture, one of those broad, noble lives, a little touching,
a little sad, but so very becoming, that honest women make with good
men.” (It seemed to François he was like a blind marksman hitting the
centre of the target.) “I imagine exactly the noble group. You tranquil
in a high uncomfortable chair: Edouard, so blond and equally
uncomfortable, staring straight out with his beautiful fish-eyes over
the head of the beholder! In the distance the _château_; in the
foreground all your children, in white; and a greyhound.”

Marthe was half troubled, half diverted by his manner.

As François put her into the motor, which was waiting for her (he
couldn’t, she explained, escort her; Maman wouldn’t allow it), she
said:—

“My brother seems very nervous and excited?”

François said, “I think he is only a little overtired, mademoiselle. He
has been sleeping badly.”

When he’d watched her motor go he walked for some distance in the rain
without thinking where he was going. He found himself in the Boulevard
St.-Germain. He took a bus, standing on the platform, his head hunched
into his turned-up collar. He got off at the Opéra and went into the
Café de la Paix for a bock. He bought a _Paris-Soir_ and sat with it,
still folded, on the table. Suddenly he unfolded it. What time did the
Ballet begin?

When he arrived he was lucky to find that a _fauteuil_ in the fourth row
had been returned. (He decided that he must have a _fauteuil_, otherwise
he couldn’t be sure of seeing her.) The man in the _guichet_ glanced at
him, surprised and faintly amused at a man with his appearance paying
that price for his seat.

When he got in, most of the boxes were still empty. But soon women in
shimmering dresses began to come to the front of the boxes. And their
heads and white necks and arms set into attitudes that made them look
like figures on the dark background of a picture, the white shirt fronts
and cuffs of the men, behind them, echoing their lightness.

François kept staring upward and round the circle of boxes.

At last she came. In a box almost above him.

She was in a pale rose-pink dress of taffeta; the bodice laced tight
with some sort of creamy lace above; little black short gloves; a black
fan; a narrow black riband slotted upward through her curls and tied in
a bow. Her mother, who knew how to marry her, knew how to dress her!

She leaned a little forward, surveyed the crowd. But without any
sophisticated interest. She seemed to look, not for Madame —— there,
la Comtesse de —— here, but at a spectacle that interested but did not
charm her.

François saw Edouard d’Arès put his chair close at the back of hers and
bend forward to talk to her.

Yes. Her mother knew how to marry her. Arès had the features that had
been for five hundred years in his family. (Perhaps, François
conjectured, for the good reason that Nature, having coined this sort of
beauty, decided to keep on reissuing it.) The face deposited, for the
last thirty-five years, with Edouard d’Arès was aquiline and blond. A
fine, slightly narrow brow, level fair eyebrows, thick above lidded
eyes; nostrils cut high and close; a blond moustache; a sensual and
kindly lower lip; a long bony curve of the chin; the lower half of the
face hardly coarsened by the first thickening of flesh along the fine
jaw line.

A man fitted for Louis’s “noble group,” who would receive a wife with
the most careful courtesy, as if she were his guest; and protect her,
with a sort of feudal integrity, as if she were his property. A man most
fitted, by bone and character, to breed children.

The yellow lights faded below the boxes. The buzzing of talk subsided.

The Overture of _Petrouchka_. . . .

                 *        *        *        *        *

The little Italian came to the door of his shop, handed Charmian her bag
of coffee beans. “Good-bye, _signorina_.”

Charmian smiled at him, clutched the bag, hugged the coat round her, and
set off up McDougal Street against the north wind. As she crossed
Washington Square, her nose and lips stiff with cold, she thought in
quick succession that she would grind the coffee before Harry came in;
how much Bianca would enjoy the eighteenth-century façades of the houses
on the north of the Square; how long ago it seemed since she had watched
Peter and Bianca get smaller into black marks on the dock; how, lately,
Harry had been gentler, less often exasperated, and sometimes, in queer
little moments, affectionate, wanting her companionship, talking to her
about his childhood, asking her to go for walks with him. . . . And last
night, when he’d played to her and she’d lain still, listening hour
after hour, it had been almost like she’d imagined it, at the
beginning. . . . And afterwards he’d come and knelt by the sofa and
kissed her hand.

Yet this morning he’d been sulky, threatening to telephone to Mrs.
Goldstein and tell her he wouldn’t play at her party. And during
luncheon he’d begun again about the foolishness of his having allowed
her to choose a place like this one on Eighth Street. . . . What would
people think? No elevator, inconvenient. . . . His studio on a different
floor. . . . No room service, and their colored maid not there in the
evenings when his friends came.

She’d said, as always, that it was because they were poor. And he’d
taken the words as mockery at his recent lack of success. Then when he’d
seen how that hurt her, he’d become tender and teasing, and come out
with her as far as the street corner, and bought her violets.

She stopped at the tea-shop and bought a coffee cake. He liked that,
hot, at the time. And then he’d tell how he’d eaten it as a child in the
castle in Hungary (which she knew now didn’t exist). That castle which
had given her her first realization (which she clung to because it
helped her to explain him) of his essential “ashamedness” which was made
up of all his little secret shames. . . . His shame at being an
indifferent musician (as he knew, again so secretly, that he was); his
shame at being German; at being the child of a peasant; at being short
in stature, middle-aged, poor. She knew all these; guessed others.
Little poisoning hidden shames of things he’d done in mean or angry
attempts to alleviate his primary pain of inferiority. Ashamed too, with
her, of his deliberate degradations. And then hating her because he was
ashamed. And tormenting her because she forgave him. . . . And then, as
he’d been that day when she’d tried to leave him, so desperate at the
idea of being without her.

She went into the house; up the stairs past his studio to the third
floor. He wasn’t in yet. She went to put logs on the fire. It had been
the fireplace that had made her want these rooms. The steam heat of the
hotel had made her feel choked and stale. . . . And always that smell of
stale cigars. The log fire here, and the ludicrous bed from home, were
two things that made her remember herself of two years before.

She carried the bag of coffee beans through to the kitchen, thinking of
Harry’s accusations of this morning, that she had never been in love
with him, that it had all been a _Backfisch_ passion . . . a vision of
herself married to an artist . . . inspiring him.

She knew now that in a way this was true. And as far as it was true he
himself had played on that feeling.

But that was only half of it. . . . For it was less that she had seen a
“vision of herself” than that she’d so passionately wished that a man
who seemed, being an artist, so sensitive and (in a way she’d felt
without understanding it) so in need of love and pity should find in her
what he needed.

She took off her hat and coat, dropping them into an armchair. Was it so
counter to whatever “love” was (if love was anything she’d once believed
it) to want to be “needed”?

             . . . Half Angel and half Bird
             And all a wonder and a wild desire. . . .

She fumbled getting out the coffee machine, and tipping in the coffee
beans, and rubbed her eyes with the back of her hand.

                 *        *        *        *        *

In January 1923, Toby was given a Shetland pony by Peter. Bianca
“shingled” her hair. Monsieur Poincaré occupied the Ruhr. Mrs. van
Geldern discovered Coué. The Cables gave a ball at Moon’s Green for
Peter’s twenty-first birthday (at which Ruth became engaged to Harold
Platt-Eresby). And Mr. Baldwin, in Wales, said, “_The world is sitting
on an anxious seat_,” a phrase which was adapted by the Cables for
family use, and caused Louis (readmitted to Moon’s Green for the ball)
to write a ballade.

                 *        *        *        *        *

That spring Louis’s novel _Eugénie_ (written in French) was published by
the _Nouvelle Revue Française_. It was an interpretation, chiefly in
thought-sequence, of a woman of sixty alone for an evening reading over
the letters of her first lover.

Its success in France was immediate. The critics were excited by the
quality of Louis’s style: the public startled and moved by his
comprehension of the woman’s heart.

When it was translated into English, he refused to allow its translator,
a female novelist, to call it “How It Was Sweet.” He asked her why she
wished to. She quoted Browning, “How sad and bad and mad it was!” But
the book had little success in England or, later, in America.

(Louis described the female novelist to François in one word. François,
to whom England was still a legendary land in which there were no
manners and no _bidets_, replied that he could believe him. He added
that, in his experience, all women who wrote believed their books to be
a proof of their intelligence; whereas one had only to read the books
. . .)

One of François’s theories was that the intellectual standard of women
had declined ever since the aristocratic woman ceased to write letters
and the _bourgeoisie_ had begun to write books. . . .

                 *        *        *        *        *

Marthe was married to Edouard d’Arès in the Church of the Madeleine in
June 1923.

She drove to the church with her father and Louis. There was a tranquil
grey sky and the air was warm. The grass looked very green in the Avenue
Foch: the Arc de Triomphe very dark and stolid.

Marthe held Louis’s hand. She knew that Louis understood her sadness,
which wasn’t grief, but a sense of dedication. (She remembered the words
of her uncle du Plessis: “Marriage is not, like love, an egoism for
two—it is rather an abnegation for one. And in the most successful
marriages that _one_ is the woman.”)

The traffic was blocked below the Etoile and as they waited she watched
the crowds moving up and down the Champs-Elysées and noticed couples who
seemed to love each other.

As they passed the gardens and she saw a group of children standing
before the enchanted little theatre of Polichinelle she thought: “Is
to-day _real_? _Am_ I on my way to my wedding? (For _surely_ it was
yesterday afternoon that Louis and I were in that little crowd: and
Nannie said, ‘_Come along, dears, or we won’t get in our walk_’—And
there were the balloons on the stall under the trees. And Louis bought
one. A white one. Wasn’t it yesterday afternoon?)”

The motor moved faster across the Place de la Concorde: up the Rue
Royale.

“Edouard will not yet have arrived,” said her father.

She glanced toward the flower stalls beside the church—the baskets of
roses and violets and carnations banked high against the railings. She
wondered if her old friend Mélanie was there. The flowers looked very
brilliant and fresh in the sunless neutral air.

When Louis was helping her out she saw Mélanie’s walnut face in the
crowd waiting on either side of the red carpet. Mélanie nodded, holding
her black shawl across her bosom.

Marthe smiled at Mélanie and then let her veil fall over her face, and
took her father’s arm. They went up the wide flight of steps. Louis
followed them. Outside the church doors, between the columns, were many
friends of her parents, talking and greeting one another before they
went inside.

A crimson curtain was looped aside within the opened doors; and beyond
it down the vast vistas of the church she saw the tall candles on the
altar.

She went, a prayer flickering in her thought. . . . The prayer, which
was nervous, uncertain (yet a relief in its mere thinking), was for a
blessing on her new life . . . her new life that would begin here, among
these pillars and amber shadows and before those clear burning flowers
that were the candles.

She waited within the white shadow of her veil, half praying, half
thinking. . . . That God would give her courage and wisdom—always; and
gratitude. And there is Maman, how gracious, how elegant she is. And
good sense; one must have good sense, the Sisters said, since, they
said, the good God liked one to have “a well-poised soul.” (Will Edouard
be here soon? How good he was, sending her that little brooch of his
mother’s this morning, and that little note.) Special wisdom, for these
next weeks. That she might learn her new life; and arrive, too, at a
just and loving comprehension of this man who would be her husband.
(Only Louis would have foreseen last night, for her, and arranged to
stay in the house; and come in to her so early this morning . . . to be
with her . . . to go to _la Nursery_ pantry, and make tea, and find the
tin of little _biscottes_, and come back bringing it all on a tray; and
sit on the bed making her sip and nibble. . . .)

Now the music— Now more people coming in— Then a face in the crowd,
and her heart stopped. It couldn’t be—

Her father beside her whispered, “You’re trembling. Be calm, my child.”

It wasn’t—it wasn’t Peter— The face was Bianca Selwyn’s. . . .

Now Louis, beside her, said, “Edouard has arrived.”

                 *        *        *        *        *

Mademoiselle Zaza was French-Swiss. Her whole name (Toby read it on her
passport) was Zelide Anna Carrel. And her age was twenty-two.

She came when Toby was four and a half and he had kicked the placid
Austrian too often, enraged because she couldn’t make him obey.

Mademoiselle Zaza was pretty and a disciplinarian; and he liked her.
When he was disobedient or slow at meals she punished him by putting him
to bed. So he was seldom disobedient and stopped having rages.
Occasionally he made himself defy Mademoiselle Zaza, just to feel his
own moral muscles. But he never had the unnerving, rather frightening
experience of winning.

Mademoiselle Zaza knew no English at all. So within two months Toby
spoke French. He spoke it with a Swiss accent. At the same time he
acquired a patriotic feeling for _Le Suisse_. He longed to pick an
edelweiss off a mountain top. And to see Lac Léman. And Geneva, which
Mademoiselle Zaza said was so much cleaner and more beautiful than
London. And he admired Berne, where Mademoiselle Zaza came from; she had
postcards of it. And a framed colored picture of the Jungfrau at
sunrise.

She read him _Le Bon Petit Diable_, _Les Malheurs de Sophie_, and
_Pinocchio_ in French. She also read him _Heidi_, which moved him very
much.

In the summer she came with him and Mummie to Kingsgate. Mummie took a
little house there, just up the avenue from the cliffs. The house was
one in a row of white red-roofed dolls’ houses. The drawing room had
chintzes with bluish-pink roses that looked real on them; and a
summerhouse at the end of the garden, where he did his Froebel work in
the mornings. He and Mademoiselle Zaza and Mummie bathed every day. At
week-ends people came down and stayed; but only two at a time, because
there was only one spare room, and a dressing room. Peter came. And a
French lady whom Mademoiselle Zaza said was “_une femme très chic_,” and
her husband who was “_pas mal_.”

Every day, after luncheon, when Toby was put to rest for an hour,
Mademoiselle Zaza took her _bain de soleil_. She took it on the balcony
with the Japanese bedroom screens all round her. The balcony always
smelled of olive oil afterwards. Mummie said Mademoiselle Zaza was Swiss
and as thorough about “browning” as about everything. Mummie was always
worrying about getting her behind as brown as the rest of her; and she
envied Mademoiselle Zaza, who got so brown all over by never allowing
herself to get bored with every day lying so long on her tummy.

Toby said to Bianca:—

“But why do you _want_ your behind brown as well?”

“Because it’s not pretty to be piebald.”

“But nobody _sees_!”

Bianca said severely, “It’s like being _good_. You ought to be good even
if people _don’t_ see.”

Toby said, “I don’t think it is at all the same!”

“Oh, _well_,” said Bianca. And because he looked enchanting with his
linen hat flopping over his square, still baby-shaped face, she kissed
him.

                 *        *        *        *        *

Louis came back from six weeks in Venice with Nicky and Bengy. Nicky had
rented a house there from an American girl. Bengy had arrived to order
glass for his new decorating business. He was always taking the gondola
to go over to Murano to order still more glass, and leaving Nicky and
Louis without it.

The evening after Louis got back to Paris, he went to visit his parents.
Marthe and Edouard were still in the country. His mother told him that
Marthe wrote very happy letters and that she was going to have a baby.

His father asked him questions about the real opinion in Italy of Signer
Mussolini, and whether the intelligent Italian really believed the Corfu
incident was justified. Louis repeated Nicky’s account of a luncheon in
Rome when Mussolini was there.

Philippe Scheurer was invited to join a party of Ivan Benz’s for dinner.
He rang up Benz’s secretary and arranged to take Louis with him.

Benz was waiting for them in the foyer at the Ritz in a dinner jacket,
double-breasted waistcoat, and wearing a large pink carnation. Louis
knew that he always ate, if possible, in public. It was one of his
foibles to act as if he saw nobody, and to be conspicuous himself and
seen everywhere.

The party consisted of Louis and his father, Monsieur Tissot (his
moustache newly waxed), Monsieur Poincaré, and a youngish man called
Chauvigny who was in the Banque de France.

The talk at dinner was entirely political. Chauvigny, who had just
returned from Germany, asserted that the recent fall of Stresemann was
an excellent thing as it weakened the Germans’ powers of bargaining over
the debts. He agreed with Poincaré’s insistence on the importance of the
Ruhr occupation. Benz, becoming loquacious as he drank his champagne,
began talking about the return of Venizelos to power, and then branched
back and asserted that Venizelos had been useful to him in many ways in
his early days and he’d never forgotten this. . . . Then he checked
himself and began to talk of the present situation again . . . the
Reparations Problem . . . the essential futility of the Washington Naval
Treaties.

                 *        *        *        *        *

In the November Election of 1923, Peter, standing as Conservative
candidate for East Winford, was one of the seventy-nine Conservatives
returned against the Liberal Labour majority.

Peter won what was actually an extreme Labour seat by being, as one of
the women voters put it, “such a gentleman.”

Louis, who came over to experience an English Election, was enchanted by
an _opéra bouffe_ flavor in the whole campaign: Lady Cable whisking
affably in and out of cottages; Frany holding impromptu meetings at the
street corners; the crowd summoned by a bell borrowed from the servants’
hall. Yellow was the Conservative color; and Toby Selwyn was driven
about with a yellow rosette in his hat and waving a yellow flag with
VOTE FOR CABLE painted on in black by Bianca. Bianca herself, in a
yellow scarf and gloves, flirted conscientiously with any laborer or
postman or tradesman she met, and held women’s meetings in schoolrooms
and chapels where she made glib and charming speeches interlarded with
little anecdotes about Toby’s nursery life. . . . And on Election Eve,
Lord Cable, his Daimler streaming with yellow ribbons, drove from public
house to public house, to point out, as he took his whiskey and soda in
the bar and carefully had his joke with the barmaid, the dangers of
“Local Option” . . . always ending his, apparently, informal remarks
with the joke, “Between you and me, gentlemen, the real way to spell
Local Option is P-R-O-H-I-B-I-T-I-O-N.” . . . Meanwhile Peter himself
headed this troupe of Electioneering Artistes, sublimely detached from
them in mind; inspired by the conservatism of the Younger Pitt; fired by
the speeches of Burke; and dedicated, in his heart, to the extermination
of Jean Jacques Rousseau and Thomas Paine.

                 *        *        *        *        *

Toby clutched Frany’s hand when the Lion came in growling and throwing
back his head at the Lady in a pink satin skirt and a shining bodice.
But the nice man on Toby’s other side, called “Monsieur Scheurer,” said
that the Lion was perfectly tame and only _pretended_ to growl at the
Lady, whom he really liked very much.

The Lion got up on to a little platform and then it was funny because
the Lady shook her whip at him and he answered her questions by
“woofing” loudly. She asked him if he’d had a jolly Christmas and he
woofed “Yes”; and she asked him if he liked his lessons and he woofed
twice for “No.”

Then there were the Clowns who ran in, and there was a little one who
kept falling down and getting up again and falling down _again_. “_Most_
peculiar, _isn’t_ he?” said Toby to Monsieur Scheurer between fits of
helpless giggling. Monsieur Scheurer said he liked the little Clown the
best. But Frany said that she didn’t like the Clowns as much as the
Monkeys, who were coming next.

And the Monkeys, who were Chimpanzees, _were_ funny, riding round and
round on their little bicycles dressed in little suits and wearing caps
and blazers like big schoolboys, and Toby laughed so much that he
slipped half off his seat and Monsieur Scheurer pulled him back and then
kept hold of him by the belt of his tunic. And there were the twelve
performing Sea Lions who came lumbering and flippering into the ring at
a tremendous speed, and barking. And the man in the top hat and green
hunting coat and white trousers who was their Trainer made them all get
up, kneeling on their flippers on a circle of little platforms, and then
he threw them fish, and then they played ball with him, balancing a huge
blue ball on their noses; and then they got fish again; and then a tiny
little fat one flippered up on to a wooden platform in the middle of the
ring to a row of trumpets arranged on stands and he blew “God save the
King” on them, turning his flat head and soft bulgy eyes and sort of
smiling at the crowd between the lines as he blew it. And then when the
Band struck up a trumpeting lilting music, in cantered a huge White
Horse with a most Beautiful Young Lady all in white and silver standing
on his back with perfect ease and waving to the people like a princess.
In the end, when there’d been the Acrobats throwing themselves in and
out of trapezes so high up Toby and Frany and Monsieur Scheurer had to
bend their heads right back, and one of the Waltzing and High-Stepping
Ponies had made the clown spell out A HAPPY NEW YEAR (with black letters
on white cards), Toby still thought he’d liked Madame Lolotte the Famous
Bare-Back Rider best of all. And the Sea Lions second. And the
Chimpanzees third.

All the way in the taxi to Rumpelmayer’s Toby discussed exactly which
had been the best thing with Frany and Monsieur Scheurer. Monsieur
Scheurer’s favorite thing of all was the Sea Lions too. But Frany said
she always preferred the Chimpanzees.

“What do you do?” Toby asked Louis as they went into Rumpelmayer’s.

“I write books.”

“Oh! I like books extremely.”

“I don’t think you’d like mine.”

“Oh yes,” said Toby, very polite and earnest, “I am quite sure I
should.” He added, as they sat down on the gold chairs at a table
reserved by Frany, “You see I like many different sorts of books. What
are your books about?”

Frany was ordering tea. She “ordered” in the manner of an Empress whose
least caprice must be obeyed. This made her frightening to waiters and
waitresses who didn’t know her.

“I write about—people.”

“Oh. What do they do?”

“Rather foolish things.”

“Why do they? Do they end up all right?”

“Not usually.”

Toby went on considering Louis’s face with affectionate interest. Then
he said, “‘The Little Mermaid’ is your sort of story, I expect. I do
_read_ the end. But I don’t want to.”

“It’s almost my favorite story,” said Louis.

“But don’t you _always_ wish that it was going to come right even when
you know it _isn’t_?”

“Yes, I do.”

“Here are our ices,” said Frany.

When they’d taken Toby back to Portland Place and Mademoiselle Zaza had
taken him upstairs, Louis said, “I didn’t know a child _could_ be so
charming.”

“Some can,” said Frany. “Toby can.” She added, “Toby is a sahib.”

                 *        *        *        *        *

Bianca was having her breakfast. She was in the same bedroom that she’d
come back to six years ago, after she’d said good-bye to Richard. The
rosebud breakfast set was still the same.

Toby came in to talk to her. She asked him how he had enjoyed the
circus. He told her all about it, talking without stopping, except every
few minutes to gasp and swallow, and then talk on. Then he asked her if
she had ever known of a net breaking when a Trapeze artist fell into it.
Then he sat on the bed but kept sliding off the eiderdown. He said,
“Isn’t Monsieur Scheurer a nice man?”

“He’s a very amusing man.”

Toby glanced at her, troubled. “Do you mean you don’t like him?”

“Oh _no_!”

But Toby insisted.

“Why don’t you?”

“I didn’t say that I didn’t.”

Toby thought, and was still troubled.

“Is he clever?”

“_Very._”

“Is he good?”

“I—really don’t know, darling.”

“Well, he must be good or Frany wouldn’t like him.”

Bianca put down her coffee cup. Toby added:—

“I like him extremely.”

“I’m glad.”

“Are you _really_ glad, Mummie?” He looked so eager that she changed her
tone to a warmth which she suddenly managed to feel.

“I’m glad always when you like people, Toby. And they like you.”

“Well then, you _do_ like Monsieur Scheurer?”

“Yes, darling.”

Toby nodded. And she could see that this time he was satisfied.

Bianca foresaw herself having to accept Louis among that (yearly
increasing) company of heroes who stalked to and fro in Toby’s
imagination, and included Napoleon, Charles the First, and Brer
Rabbit. . . . Then the telephone bell rang. It was Herbert Langridge
(whom her aunt always referred to as “your nice American”) to remind her
that she was lunching with him.

He was leaving for Paris that afternoon to join General Dawes.

She was sorry.

She liked having him about.

                 *        *        *        *        *

It was just as incredible to Carteret Cable that a young man with a seat
in Parliament, and three thousand a year of his own, should wish to go
to the Byron Centenary Celebration at Missolonghi as it had been to his
wife that a girl with personal beauty and Eddie Sark at her feet should
have wanted to marry a pianist.

And just as Violet, taking a phrase from a generation before her,
referred to Charmian as a “great grief to us,” Carteret selected for
Peter the description, equally atavistic in his vocabulary, “something
of an enigma to us.” It was a phrase which relieved him from worrying
too much about Peter in the next three years.

Peter went to Missolonghi because Louis, Nicky Zatec, Kalla and Fritz
von Lüneburg, and François and Bengy were going.

The _Galère_, blowing where it listed, was usually given its first
impetus by Nicky or Louis. This expedition was initiated by Nicky, who
happened to be writing a monograph on Byron’s Venetian period. At
Missolonghi they met Sandy Fane, an Englishman who looked like Prince
Albert and could do imitations of Queen Victoria. He had come there with
the English Ambassador. Louis knew him already. Nicky and he immediately
liked each other. And Bengy dogged his footsteps all day trying to amuse
and interest him. It was inevitable that he should be assimilated by the
_Galère_.

When the Celebration was over, they all decided to go to Prague on the
way back. (They always thought of places to go on the way to or from
other places.)

In Prague Sandy Fane bought quantities of glass for his house in Savoy.
Louis bought another dressing gown. And Nicky seduced a very difficult
Scotch girl who worked in a travel agency. The last evening in Prague
they met Armorelle Ross in a night club. She was in tears, as she had
just fallen out of love, a situation calculated to excite the _Galère’s_
most profound sympathy.

She went on with them the next day to stay with the Lüneburgs in their
castle in the Austrian Tyrol, where Kalla promised to find her a new
lover.

Armorelle thought that Kalla, with her brown boy’s features, white
teeth, and long legs, was an enchanting and consoling person. But she
felt that if she ever fell in love again it might be with Peter Cable,
whom she hadn’t seen since they were both five years old and went to
Mrs. Wordsworth’s dancing class for “under-ten” at the Portman Rooms,
Baker Street.

Ruth was married to Harold Platt-Eresby in July 1924 in St. George’s,
Hanover Square. She wore a dress of white satin and a veil of Honiton
lace lent by her aunt, Mrs. van Geldern. She carried a bouquet of
Madonna lilies. The bridesmaids, the Misses Margaret and Joan
Platt-Eresby (nieces of the bridegroom), wore pale blue organdie with
crepe de Chine turbans to match, and the pages, Master George
Platt-Eresby (nephew of the bridegroom) and Master Toby Selwyn (cousin
of the bride), wore Kate Greenaway suits of pale blue crepe de Chine.

A reception was held afterwards at 71 Portland Place. . . . The house
was decorated with roses and sweet peas. . . . Later the bride and
bridegroom left for Frinton-on-Sea . . . a house lent by the
bridegroom’s mother, the Dowager Lady Platt-Eresby. The bride’s
going-away dress (by Reville) was a jersey coat and skirt in bois de
rose, and a cape of the same. With it she wore a brown cloche hat and
carried a brown lizard-skin handbag. . . .

Ruth and Harold stayed at Frinton-on-Sea for five weeks.

They played golf all the time.

When they came back to London, Ruth was pregnant.

                 *        *        *        *        *

Toby and Bianca and Mademoiselle Zaza drove down to Ebony after the
wedding. Toby talked nearly all the way, although Bianca was
inattentive, as the traffic was bad most of the way to Maidstone. But
Toby cared even more about talking than about being listened to. He was
in high spirits, glutted with strawberries, ices, and egg sandwiches,
and liberated from his Kate Greenaway suit whose “babyish” frilling
round the neck had filled him with resentful embarrassment. . . . Only
the fact that George Platt-Eresby (who would be six in August) wore his
suit with docility had prevented Toby from making a scene when they were
dressing. As it was Mademoiselle Zaza had to say twice, “_Voilà Toby_
_qui fait le bébé_,” before he would put on that little blouse and have
his vest pinned down with safety pins at the neck.

But the wedding itself had excited his imagination. The solemnity of the
service, the lovely delicious smell of the lilies, the vision of Cousin
Ruth (usually such an annoying person who said “Hello, _Chap_”)
transfigured, veiled like an Eastern Princess; and with that train,
marvelously embroidered with _real_ pearls and diamonds, that he and
George Platt-Eresby had clutched on to until The Peter turned round from
where he was standing beside Ruth and signaled to them to let go. And
all the people, and the singing, and the beautiful music . . . specially
the Wedding-March-by-Mendelssohn, which was somehow so glorious and
exciting that when he was marching down the aisle he’d felt a bursting
lump of joy inside him that made him want to cry. And then the
Reception. All the rooms at Aunty Violet’s London house looking quite
different, and a lot of extra servants, so that it was quite funny
suddenly to find that you were on a footstool you knew; or that when you
looked up it was Alice saying, “Here you are, Master Toby,” giving you
more strawberry ice. . . .

And Harvey stood nearly at the top of the stairs and shouted everybody’s
name in a loud clergyman voice. . . . “Mummie, did you hear him say ‘SIR
CHARLES AND LADY BILLET!’ . . . WA WA WA . . . WA WA WA . . . Mummie!
. . . and ‘The COUNTESS DOOPLESSEE . . .?’ and the butler from
Gunther’s—he said he was from Gunther’s, Mummie—behind the booffet.”

“. . . One says ‘bu-ffet,’ Toby!” said Mademoiselle Zaza from the back.

“. . . He said . . . Mummie, _Mummie_?”

“Yes, darling, I am listening, really . . .”

“He said I should sleep with a piece of the wedding cake under my pillow
for luck, you know. He said his wife’s got neuralgia very badly so he
would be very glad if the wedding—I mean the Reception, finished early
because he’d be able to get back to her. And there was a younger man
there, _quite_ a young man I should say, and he was also from Gunther’s
and he gave me two sandwiches at a time each time; I asked him if he
liked weddings when I was behind the . . . bu-ffet with him and the
other butler, and he said he did but he wasn’t going to marry,
himself. . . . I wonder why. I should like to myself. But someone
prettier than Cousin Ruth. I wouldn’t mind marrying Charmian, but then
she’ll be too old. Oh Mummie, _look_! There’s a hawthorn bush. Oh,
Mummie, _why_ didn’t you stop?”

“What for, Toby? Anyway it’s so far back already.”

“Oh Mummie, I feel there might be a gold-tailed moth caterpillar on it.”

Bianca drew up. As she did so five other cars whizzed by. She and Toby
got out and walked back a quarter of a mile.

“There’s the hawthorn.”

They searched, leaf under leaf. Just when Bianca was giving up hope and
Toby was red-faced with gloom, they found one. Toby rolled it off the
leaf and held it gingerly between two concave palms pressed
together. . . .

“. . . And if you wouldn’t _mind_, Mummie, bringing a few leaves for his
food on the journey?”

When they got back to the car Mademoiselle Zaza (who accepted the study
of Nature on principle, but not with pleasure) was reading the _Evening
Standard_. She showed Bianca the women’s page where there was a long
paragraph about Ruth and a description of her trousseau.

“. . . And _look_ at his _red spots_, Mamselle Zaza. . . . What shall we
call him, Mummie? He ought to be called something about red . . .
‘Reddy’ or . . .”

“Rufus,” said Bianca, letting in the clutch.

“I don’t think I like Rufus _very_ much . . . of course it might be
something to do with _gold_. . . . Would Goldilocks be all right?”

“I suppose so.”

“_Oh Mummie_ . . . he’s escaping . . . oh!”

Bianca slowed down. She took off her hat and laid it upside down on
Toby’s knee.

“Put him in there.”

“Oh Mummie, how _lovely_. What a grand house for him. He looks as if he
liked it . . . doesn’t he? . . . What is written on the sweet little
label inside? . . . R-e-b-oux. How funny.”

“Reboux,” said Bianca.

“I know, why not call him Reboux? . . . or _I know_ . . . call him
‘Redoux,’ and pretend the _b_’s been written backwards.”

“Darling,” said Bianca, “Redoux it is!”

. . . Toby was getting a small paper package out of his trouser pocket
. . . and opening it. . . . Bianca glanced sideways. She said, “Toby
. . . I will _gladly_ house Redoux in my only and best and newest hat
. . . and you can put in one or two hawthorn leaves if you like . . .
but I will _not_ have him fed on crumbled remains of egg sandwiches in
it . . . and anyway he won’t _like_ egg sandwiches.”

“But Mummie?”

“No . . . Toby darling.”

“Very well. . . . Mummie?”

“Yes.”

“I think Redoux might have a wedding to-morrow. We could make him an
extremely tiny wedding dress . . .”

Mademoiselle Zaza, leaning forward, said, “I see, madame, that madame
your cousin has gone to Frinton for her honeymoon. Where is it,
Frinton?”

“. . . and what about one of your evening hankies, Mummie, that are _so_
pretty and all lace, for his wedding dress?”

                 *        *        *        *        *

Anatole France died on October 13, the day after Bianca arrived in
Paris.

She lunched at the Scheurers’ that day in the Avenue Foch. Louis was
there and about fifteen other people. They were all talking about the
death of Anatole France, and telling anecdotes about him. One of them
said that Calmann-Levy, his publisher, would be rich now, as his
arrangement with France had been to pay his bills while he lived, and
take all posthumous royalties.

Louis sat next to Bianca at luncheon. He seemed really distressed. He
said that France had tended the “sacred flame of irony.” And went on,
arguing across Bianca, with a Monsieur Chauvigny, proving that the
Ironic Spirit was a sign that a civilization was reaching maturity; that
Germany lacked it utterly; and that it was beginning to develop in
America. Chauvigny asserted that irony was a symptom of decay, since its
effect was to produce a detached attitude and a decline of activity.

Bianca felt that Louis was showing his usual indifference to her
opinions. But Chauvigny now began to talk to her. He asked her about her
life in England, her interests, her amusements. He was attractive. She
remembered Madame Scheurer telling her that he had something to do with
the Banque de France. Anyway, he made her feel that she was pretty and
diverting and desirable. Which Louis never did.

After luncheon, just as she was leaving, Louis came up and said that he
was going too. And could he drive her anywhere?

She said she was going to a fitting at Chanel’s, and then on to see
Marthe and her little girl.

As Louis drove her down the Champs-Elysées he told her that he’d had a
letter from Peter saying that he wasn’t going to stand again at the
Election, and that he was disillusioned by modern politics. Bianca said
that it was a pity as Peter had been the only glamorous figure at
Westminster and it had been such fun to sit in the Ladies’ Gallery and
see all the little maggot-like men running in and out; and then suddenly
to see Peter walk in in his lovely clothes and his orchid, and lounge
down into one of the Opposition Benches and lie back and tilt his silk
hat over his eyes. She said, “It’s the only thing I’ve ever seen Peter
‘pose’ about, and he did it so beautifully.”

Louis asked her if she had heard Peter’s “Maiden Speech” on Housing. She
said she had; and that it had been in such good English that half the
House hadn’t understood him. She said, as Louis pulled up the car, “I
think it’s a waste, his throwing it over. I wonder why, really.”

Louis helped her out.

“He says he wants to live abroad for a time.” He added, taking her hand
and kissing it regretfully, “I expect you disapprove—of that idea for
him.”

“I feel he may sink into just idling and traveling. He oughtn’t to do
that.”

Louis said, “I see that once more we are in danger of disagreeing,
madame.”

And left her.

She went into Chanel’s.

After her fitting she went on to Marthe’s apartment, which was on the
Ile St.-Louis.

When Bianca arrived her first impression was that Marthe had “grown up”
and that the tranquil innocence she’d had as a girl had changed, in the
two years of her marriage, to an early and exquisite maturity. She was
thinner; a little paler; and so poised that Bianca felt hoydenish beside
her.

Marthe embraced her. And introduced her to a woman in a black dress and
white hat, the wife of the Hellenist, St. Laurent. Madame St. Laurent
had topaz eyes, thick-fringed with black lashes, and such a beautiful
speaking voice that her “How d’you do, madame” lingered in the room and
became part of its charm, like the amaryllis and the white
chrysanthemums and the chandelier.

Marthe asked Bianca about herself. Was she still living in her little
house, that Louis had described, near the château of Lord Cable? How was
her little boy? Louis had described him too and said he was so friendly
and sweet. How was Charmian? . . . she turned to Madame St. Laurent. “I
think you told me you saw Madame . . . Kramer when you were in New
York.”

Madame St. Laurent said yes, she had met Madame Kramer at the house of a
Mrs. Goldstein when her husband was playing at a party there. Bianca
turned to her eagerly. How had she seemed? Had she talked much to her?
Did she look well? “. . . You see, madame, we were brought up so much
together we’re almost like sisters. And I haven’t seen her for _three
years_.”

Madame St. Laurent was interested by this sudden eagerness in Bianca,
who had struck her, on coming in, as a lovely woman without enough
animation.

She said that she had talked very little to Madame Kramer, who had gone
away early from the party, before her husband went. But that she had
seemed so young to be married to that man. There was something about
her, Madame St. Laurent said, at the same time touching and a little
defiant.

“She didn’t mention to you, madame, where she lived?”

“No.”

Bianca turned to Marthe. “My last two letters to her have been returned.
And so have Peter’s.”

Marthe said, “How strange.” And then, quickly, “How is he . . . Peter?”

“He’s been in politics.”

“I know. It is a long time since I’ve seen him. Not since he came once
to stay with Louis, the year before my wedding.”

Then the _nounou_ brought in Marthe’s little girl. She had pale golden
curls and a pale pink face and a pale pink dress. She sat on Marthe’s
knee and gazed at Bianca with the light blue eyes of the Arès family.

Madame St. Laurent said that she reminded her of Ronsard’s “_douce,
belle, amoureuse, et bienfleurante rose_.”

When Madame St. Laurent had departed Marthe spoke of her with
admiration. She said she was a woman who had been unhappy with her
husband but had “remade her life.” The phrase (_refaire sa vie_) made
Bianca reflect that the French had good ready-coined phrases for the
human conditions and crises, which English people didn’t like to admit
were real, admitting that the process of “remaking one’s life,” “forming
oneself,” “reëstablishing oneself in society” (_se ranger_), were as
usual as having the _matelassière_ regularly to remake all the
mattresses.

Bianca left, feeling that Marthe’s life had the quality of a beautiful
and traditional pattern carved in marble.

                 *        *        *        *        *

That evening she dined with Herbert Langridge at the _Tour d’Argent_.
She had realized from his one or two letters during the summer that he
was in love with her. But this evening when he asked her to marry him,
she felt that she never could, although she liked him so much. His large
protectiveness, his smile, his stubby nose, his clear mind, were all so
likable. And she thought, even while he talked to her, that he would be
the right man exactly for her to “remake her life” with.

But she wasn’t in love with him.

He said he knew that. That he only wanted to have a chance to try and
make her happy, and that he believed he could. He said, “Bianca, you’ve
got so much charm, and so little stability. You need someone. If you
don’t now, you will later.”

When he took her back to her hotel he made her promise that if she ever
needed his help in any way she’d write to him. He gave her his address
in Washington.

François was invited by Peter to come, with Louis, to spend Christmas at
Moon’s Green.

                 *        *        *        *        *

François sent a postcard to Nicky Zatec dated “Boxing Day,” 1925.
“Nothing is so easy as to be wrong about the English. The stuff of their
being is paradox. For the moment I am altogether in love with a people
that I have always disliked. And why? Above all because I have been
watching a rehearsal of ‘Scenes from _Macbeth_,’ in which Lady Cable
plays Lady Macbeth and Louis Macbeth. And no one laughs. And Milord
Cable directs them.”

                 *        *        *        *        *

The two Scenes from _Macbeth_ were Violet’s own idea because she had the
small part of the aunt in _Eliza Comes to Stay_.

She had ordered a wig with long auburn plaits from Clarkson and had them
copy the dress in the Sargent picture of Ellen Terry. She had insisted
that Louis should play Macbeth, as he was broad-shouldered and less
boyish-looking than Peter, and David Blyth, who was also coming for
Christmas, was a bad actor.

She sent Louis his part to Paris, typed out by Frany, together with the
usual list of trains down to Rye from London. (Neither she nor Frany
ever accepted the fact that Louis arrived at Croydon and always
motored.) When Violet heard that François had been invited by Peter she
sent him a telegram to Paris: =will you play butler in eliza comes
to stay please wire=

That telegram, pushed under the door by the _concierge_, “_M’sieur
Dubar, il y a un télégramme_,” was, for François, the threshold of
England.

At first François refused to play the butler on account of his accent.
So the butler was adapted, and made into a _valet de chambre_,
supposedly imported by the bachelor-hero (Peter) from France.

Louis and François arrived the day before Christmas Eve. And rehearsals
went on all through Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, interrupted by
other rites which Louis found equally strange and charming. The
Trimming-of-the-Tree in the drawing room. The-Servants’-Presents, on
Christmas morning, a ceremony in the inner hall when all the indoor
staff were summoned, and Lady Cable stood by an immense Empire table on
which were arranged long _gaufrette_-shaped paper parcels, and a series
of envelopes . . . Frany handing her the parcels, one after another,
muttering a name: Lady Cable repeating, “Mrs. Lane?” “Emily?” “Alice?”
. . . and, as each of the female servants came up to her, handing her a
parcel and saying, “A Merry Christmas, Mrs. Lane . . . Emily . . .
Alice” . . . and they, “Thank you, m’lady, and a very Merry Christmas to
you!” (These parcels, Bianca explained to Louis, contained lengths of
print stuffs for working dresses, and two pair of black woolen stockings
each.) The men-servants then received envelopes containing “tips.”
François studied the gait of Harvey, the butler, with a view to his own
performance the following night.

As for the Church-Going on Christmas morning, once in the festively
decorated church, the entire party seemed to shed the solemnity with
which they’d hung up stockings and bedizened the fir tree in the drawing
room, and sang the psalms and hymns with uproarious zest and glowing
faces, Lord Cable shouting “Hark! the herald angels sing” like a blond
bull serenading Heaven, and Bianca and Peter and Ruth and Frany and Mrs.
van Geldern and Lady Cable (all sables and pearls) and several others
whom François hadn’t placed standing shoulder to shoulder in the pew,
and chorusing “O come, all ye faithful,” with triumphant voices and
celebrating eyes. And the pagan spirit which possessed them in church
seemed to remain in them during luncheon, when they gorged themselves
with turkey and stuffing, and flaming platefuls of plum pudding, and
after that with mince pies, nuts, pineapple, tangerines, and port. . . .
And when François and Louis would have taken a siesta there were cries
of “Another rehearsal!” . . . and Lady Cable whisked Louis off up to her
boudoir, saying, “You must remember to be ready to come in on

                          “. . . . Had he not resembled
            My father as he slept, I had done it.”

And François was borne off by all the others to the library, where once
again he must announce, “Miss Elizabeth has come in, sir,” and Peter
repeat, “What am I to do?” and Bianca come in, from behind the sofa,
saying, “Here I am.”

Then, after one of those immense teas (which made François say to Louis
that he began to understand the influx of English to Vichy and
Aix-les-Bains), the Tree in the drawing room was lit (by Frany, who then
stood sentinel beside its candles holding a wet sponge on a stick). And
everyone went in and there were piles of presents. On sofas and chairs
and stools. Everyone undid their parcels and kept on shouting and
exclaiming and kissing and embracing, and the floor became littered with
paper and scarlet ribbons, and then they all pulled crackers piled up
round the foot of the Tree, and put on the paper caps and blew whistles
and wound up the gramophone and began dancing to “Sunny”; and more
people came in, and they, too, pulled crackers, and put caps on their
heads and danced, and sang the tunes they danced to, and Harvey brought
in a vast silver bowl (François stared) of flaming sultanas in brandy,
and someone switched off the lights and they all started playing
“Snapdragon.” And later François, dancing with a weather-beaten woman in
a pink and mauve paper crown, demanded of Louis, as they passed him
doing a minuet with Mrs. van Geldern, whether this was “their
_carnaval_.”

The question seemed to contort Louis with laughter. But when he passed
him again, he said, “No, _mon petit_, they don’t have a ‘fixed’
_carnaval_!”

Then, on (“Why _Boxing_?” François asked) Boxing Day, a few hours’
Hunting, snatched before the Dress Rehearsal, which began at two
o’clock, after a meal of cold turkey and fried plum pudding, and went on
until 6.30, when there was High Tea in the long paneled dining room
(which was Hogarth to François every time he went into it).

Half the actors were already dressed and made up. Louis ate his meal in
a shaggy wig and a kilt, and a sporran. Violet was already heavily made
up and wore her wig, the auburn plaits hanging richly over her turquoise
blue tweeds. The young man with the sweet mouth and hard green eyes
(whom François now knew was called David Blyth) wore a white wig and
white whiskers which fell into his tea. Everyone was nervous and
inclined to be cross. Bianca came in late, still “unmade up,” and Peter
accused her of having taken the prompter’s copy, and they bickered and
Frany calmed them. Then Lord Cable telephoned up from the Village Hall,
where he and the estate electrician and Harvey had been since four
o’clock to say that they had now got the lights working again but that
the blue bulbs hadn’t come for the _Macbeth_ moonlight. And the pretty
girl who came up from the village for rehearsals kept giggling and
shouting down the table at Louis, with whom she flirted all the time.
(She was, François had learned, the vicar’s daughter.) She was playing
the part of an actress in _Eliza_ and said at frequent intervals, “I
want to make myself up to look exactly like Marleen Deetrish!”

                 *        *        *        *        *

The _Macbeth_ scenes went magnificently. Violet Cable made a fine figure
with her amber plaits and her whitened face lifted towards the blue
limelight, moaning:—

                   “All the perfumes of Arabia.”

And Louis said:—

                        “. . . Witchcraft celebrates
                Pale Hecate’s offerings . . .”

with a creditable English accent.

And _Eliza_ “got” its audience from the beginning. Bianca as the plain
orphan in spectacles, unwanted ward of the elegant young man (Peter),
provoked delighted applause. Her metamorphosis in the third act
enchanted them. François gave an adequate if bewildered performance as
the _valet de chambre_; David Blyth’s side whiskers stayed on as the
uncle; Violet, after her triumph as Lady Macbeth, was content to be
herself, as the aunt; Carteret prompted loudly and clearly on the two
occasions when he was needed; and Harvey and the electrician flooded the
final moments of the play with pink light.

It was just at this final crisis when Bianca was saying, “_I don’t
believe you know what you want_,” and Peter was about to reply, “Yes
. . . _I do know what I want!!!_” that Bianca, waiting for Peter to
seize her in his arms, caught sight of Charmian . . . standing at the
end of the front row!

Peter caught her in his arms . . . the applause broke out. The curtain
jerked down . . . then up again. The applause grew louder and the cast
began to come on to the stage . . . the pink light switched back to
yellow . . .

Bianca bowed and smiled; accepted a bunch of roses, hardly knowing what
she was doing. Then she heard Peter, bowing too, exclaim. . . . And
then, suddenly, there was some curious change in the quality of the
applause and from the hubbub Bianca caught the phrase “. . . Miss
Charmian . . . _Why_, it’s Miss Charmian.”. . . And an excited and gay
old man called out, “Why ain’t we goin’ to ’ave a song from Miss
Charmian?”. . . And there was a stamping follow-up of delighted, “What
about one of Miss Charmian’s songs?”

The curtain dropped. Charmian had disappeared. The people began a
murmuring and exclaiming of disappointment . . . “Didn’t know she was at
’ome! . . . Had an idea she was settled in America. . . . Funny, her not
actin’ if she was ’ome!”

Then an eager “Oh?” as Peter came out, standing over the footlights, and
announced that his sister, who had just returned unexpectedly, would
give them “one of her songs.” . . . There was an outbreak of clapping
and cheering as Peter retired and Bianca came down from the side of the
stage and settled herself at the upright piano at the side of the hall,
banked round with pots of ferns.

Then there was a twitching of the curtains. She struck two chords. Then
the curtains went up, and in the centre of the stage stood Charmian
dressed in a man’s grey suit (belonging to Peter in Act I of _Eliza_), a
stiff collar, a bow tie, a yellow chrysanthemum in her buttonhole, her
hair tucked away in a bowler hat (belonging to Harvey) . . . gloves and
stick in her hand, and a burnt-cork moustache on her upper lip.

Bianca repeated the chords. The crowd gave a low roar of pleasure and
scraped their chairs. They knew what to expect. . . . They clapped and
shouted. . . . The old man rose to his feet and shouted, “Come on,
miss!”

Charmian squared back her shoulders, stuck out one knee, twisted her
stick, shot a side glance at Bianca. . . .

The crowd knew before she opened her mouth. . . . “Cow-cow,” they called
. . . “_Cow-cow!!!_”

Charmian stuck out her elbows. . . .

           “Oh, I _like_ a ke-up of ke-ohcoa,
             Ke-ohcoa! ke-ohcoa!
           _That’s_ the stuff to make you warm,
           You . . . can . . . go . . . _out_ . . .
           In _any_ old storm!
           Oh, I _like_ a ke-up of ke-ohcoa
           Before the tea-shop shuts!
           Since I’ve bin drinking ke-ohcoa they call me
           One of the Ke-ohcoa . . . _Knuts_!!!”

And the crowd roared “Oncore . . . _Oncore_,” and Charmian, forward now
over the footlights, her bowler tilted on one eye, her stick held out
over them like a conductor’s baton . . . “Come _on_ then,
_all_-to-gether!”

“Oh, I _like_ a ke-up . . . of ke-ohcoa . . .” shouted the crowd.
“_Ke-ohcoa_ . . . _Ke-ohcoa_.”

François, in the wings, muttered to Louis:—

“. . . But _who_? . . .”

“It’s the exiled daughter of our host.”

“But?!!” said François. . . .

Louis said, wiping the smudged mascara round his eyes:—

“One must not always try to explain things. One must try to accept
them.”

And Charmian, retilting Harvey’s bowler, was shouting back to the
singing, roaring crowd:—

         “. . . They call me one _of_ the Ke-ohcoa Knuts!”

At two o’clock the next morning, Frany came into Louis’s bedroom, and
shut the door carefully, and asked him if he could possibly arrange to
take Charmian over to Paris with him the next day. She said that she had
sent a telegram to her French governess, Mademoiselle Houville, who now
lived in Paris, and who would certainly have Charmian to stay for a
while.

She proceeded to explain, tersely, sitting on the edge of Louis’s bed in
her white flannel dressing gown, that after her song Charmian had
fainted. That when she, Frany, and Lord Cable had got her back to the
house and taken her to her own room, she began explaining that she’d got
to Southampton on Christmas Eve, and been ill and had to stay there.
Then this (Boxing Day) evening she’d arrived late about ten o’clock at
Ebony, at Bianca’s house . . . and then hadn’t been able to resist the
idea of seeing the Show in the Hall.

Frany said, “I suppose she was afraid of meeting her parents. Anyway,
the old man” . . . Frany so described Lord Cable when she felt approval
of him “. . . the old man was quite upset by the whole thing. And when
we got back he was sitting there holding her hand, and I think he felt
like crying. Then—I knew it would happen—in came Lady Cable and
started raging at Charmian and calling her names. The old man fairly
lost his temper and asked her if she didn’t see the child was ill? Well,
you can imagine, when Lady Cable’s in a temper, she doesn’t care _who’s_
ill. And she’s always been unkind to Charmian because she doesn’t
understand her. But Charmian, of course, hops up from the couch, and
tells her mother she can’t stay anyway, if she isn’t wanted: and a
regular dust-up went on for about half an hour, the old man threatening
to leave with Charmian, and Peter butting in and telling his mother that
he’d never understood why she had children at all. Well! _You_ know them
by now! Lady Cable ends up in hysterics. Peter looks fit to die with
misery over the whole thing. Charmian won’t stay another hour if she can
help it, and Lord Cable ends by saying he washes his hands of the whole
business and what do _I_ think he’d better do?”

“Well?” said Louis.

Frany crossed her arms.

“First of all I got her ladyship to bed with a sleeping draught. (That
red wig went to _her_ head, I’m afraid.) Then I telegraphed to Houville.
Then I got Lord Cable to write a check on his Paris bank for
Charmian. . . . Then I sent Alice down to the kitchen and got her to
cook a good underdone steak and bring up a bottle of Burgundy for
Charmian and Peter.” Frany jerked her head towards the door. “They’re in
Charmian’s room now, eating it up.” She added, “If you can be ready to
start to get the early boat at Folkestone to-morrow . . . I want to get
Charmian out of the house before her blessed parents start waking up and
raising Cain again.”

Louis said that he would be ready. But on condition that he, also, had a
steak, _now_. Frany heaved herself off the bed.

“It shall be done. I myself will cook it for you. Rise and follow me.”

As Louis was putting on his dressing gown Frany said, “What about your
friend Monsieur Dubar? Would he also like a steak?”

Louis, now belted into purple silk and brushing down his hair, said that
François, after his admirable performance as the _valet de chambre_,
deserved his rest.

                 *        *        *        *        *

Mademoiselle Houville lived in two little rooms, one of which overlooked
the Gardens of the Luxembourg. Here she did her work, translating books
and articles for a publishing firm; and here her books and pictures and
pieces of furniture were arranged.

She made up the divan for Charmian in the front room. (She was
accustomed to receive her mother and sister when they came to Paris, in
this way.)

And in the mornings she and Charmian drank their coffee there.
(Mademoiselle Houville made it in the little kitchen which even had a
bath behind the _toile cirée_ curtain.)

Usually they spent the mornings separately, Mademoiselle Houville doing
her work, and Charmian reading, or going out to walk in the gardens. At
midday they lunched at a little restaurant in the Rue de Vaugirard, and
then went to see some pictures or to a museum in the afternoon. And in
the evenings they talked and read, and Mademoiselle Houville worked
again, and they made a little supper in the kitchen and ate it over the
fire in the front room.

Twice they went to the theatre. But their quiet evenings when
Mademoiselle Houville took out a book here and there, and read from it,
or talked, were more than anything else a solace to Charmian: renewing
her, giving her back, in the quiet lamplight and among the worn yellow
books, with Paris distantly rattling in the rain outside, a sense that
she had a soul; and that there still existed, in the world, an
aristocracy of people whose equipoise of mind and spirit made them
civilized.

It was at the end of her third week there that Charmian said:—

“I wish I could stay here always. . . . I could take two rooms of my own
like this . . . and have a bath-kitchen and lots of books . . . and have
Bianca and Peter to stay.”

They had cleaned away the supper, and Mademoiselle Houville had been
reading aloud from the _Journal d’une Femme de Cinquante Ans_, and
pausing to talk about the French _émigrés_ in Philadelphia during the
Revolution. When Charmian spoke, Mademoiselle Houville didn’t
immediately answer. Then she said, folding her hands on her book,
holding her thin face at the angle that made her look so much like Emily
Brontë:—

“My child. I know you very well. And you know how much I love you. . . .
You have shown great confidence in me, in the things you have told me,
from time to time, in these last weeks. You know how much pity I have
for you, and how much sympathy.” She held out her thin hand. “You know
that, Charmian?”

“Yes.”

“And that good Frany sent you to me at such a moment in your life
because she understood, also, that, for me, you are a child that I
desire to help, and care for. But, you are also a woman now. And
although you were young when you made this marriage, in doing so you
asserted that you felt yourself a woman—capable of judging for herself,
and ready to take responsibilities.” She hesitated. “I _know_ . . . how
innocent you were. . . . I know also how brutal life itself can be to
those who are young, and too confident. That I understand, my child.
But, I want to ask you a question . . . more or less simple, but
essential.”

She bent forward and lifted a small log from the grate and laid it on
the fire.

“What?”

“Charmian, do you believe that life, for a woman, should consist in
giving or in demanding?”

“. . . But, Mademoiselle, I _did_ try.”

“I believe you.”

“. . . And the last months there seemed nothing, _nothing_ I could do
for him that helped at all. . . . And he was jealous . . . mad with
jealousy . . . for no reason. He even tore up all Peter and Bianca’s
letters so that I never got them. Once when a friend of Louis’s, an
actor called Jimmy Lothair, came in to see me he was like a madman. He
ordered him to go . . . and then . . . if he’d _loved_ me I could
understand.”

“But . . . he wants you to be there.”

“Yes.”

“And from what you have told me, he is not happy, or successful, or in
very good health.”

“. . . I know.”

“Then . . . isn’t it for you, Charmian, to try and consider if there is
some way in which, perhaps, you have failed to understand him?”

“Yes . . .”

“Believe me, my child, the problems in life which haunt you are not
those which one has _failed_ to solve; but those which one has _refused_
to solve. . . . You always had courage, Charmian . . . and charity.” She
added, “The first is the most elegant of the moral qualities; the second
the most beautiful.” Her voice was, as always, distinct and measured.
But Charmian, looking up, saw the tears in her eyes.

Charmian looked round the little room. The wallpaper was stained in the
corner from damp. And there were too many Medici prints hung in _passe
partout_. And the books were stacked untidily on the shelves. But it was
shelter, tranquillity . . . civilization.

She caught her two hands. “Oh, Mademoiselle, I shall be _sad_ to go.”

“I shall pray for you, my child, always. . . .”

                 *        *        *        *        *

Louis went back to New York that February to stay with Jimmy Lothair. He
found Jimmy nervous and drinking too much. And realized that it was
because he’d had one or two experiences that had frightened him. He’d
made two pictures that hadn’t been much good. And now, back in New York,
he’d been in a flop, and didn’t like the play he was rehearsing. And he
had an obsession that his fan mail wasn’t what it had been.

Louis could see that his charm was “going off.” The smile was there, and
the sort of daredevil swagger that was part of his mind and body. But he
wasn’t so svelte . . . his movements weren’t quite so lithe. His gay
noisiness at parties was forced sometimes. And he was getting through a
bottle of whiskey a day, easily.

                 *        *        *        *        *

It was Louis who somehow persuaded Kramer into believing that he wanted
Bianca to come and stay with them. He played on Kramer’s jealousy,
making him believe that, as he was going on a provincial concert tour,
he’d be wiser not to leave Charmian alone. “And Mrs. Selwyn,” Louis
affirmed, “was a most suitable person.”

Bianca arrived the day that Kramer had to leave for a concert tour of
Quebec, Ottawa, Montreal, Buffalo.

While he was away, Louis left Jimmy’s and came and stayed also with
Charmian. He was getting irritated by Jimmy’s speaking so slowly.

                 *        *        *        *        *

Bianca slept with Charmian in the big carved bed from Moon’s Green. It
seemed to her like spending the night on an island of their childhood.
(When the bed was in the mauve spare room Peter had had measles in it;
and on wet afternoons they had acted Royal Levees in it, and the Death
Scenes of Queen Elizabeth, played by Bianca, and of their hero Charles
II, played by Peter, with Bianca as Nell Gwyn weeping, and Charmian as
Henrietta Maria.)

In the morning Charmian woke and saw it was Bianca and lay still
thinking that Harry would be back this morning, and the bitterness and
jibing at her would begin all over again—unless he’d had any special
success, and then he’d be gay, and make her sit by him while he played
over his concert; and then he’d become sentimental, and then want to
make love to her, and then the awful scenes would begin again. . . . But
she couldn’t. . . . If he loved her . . . if it could all have been
different, from the beginning. But this elaborate, grossly thought-out
prostitution. . . .

But—here was still a whole morning! A whole day before he’d be back.
And Bianca was waking up. . . . And Louis was there.

Zamorr brought in their breakfasts on two trays. “And Mistah Louis
wanted to know if he could have his tray brought in here to make a
party?”

Louis came a few minutes later wearing his latest dressing gown,
pearl-grey foulard faced with black, and a black octopus on the pocket.
He sat on the end of their bed and drank his tea and told them about a
dream he’d had. Like most dreams it was dull, narrated. The only curious
thing was that he had dreamed about people among trees and so had
Bianca. They were discussing this when Zamorr came in and said that “a
Miss Prince” from the _Evening Telegram_ wanted to see Mistah Louis. She
said she had an appointment.

“So she had. She telephoned last night.”

“Shall I say you’ll be right along, suh?”

“Tell her to come in. You don’t mind, darlings?”

Zamorr went.

“I know! Let’s give her some copy! Move over, Bianca. Charmian, _move_,
darling.” Louis slipped into bed between them. “Young French Author at
Breakfast! . . . Hand me my tray, Charmian darling. Bianca, _don’t_
laugh! Here she comes. Lift your cup, Charmian. Can I offer you some of
my sugar, Bianca? Perhaps it’s sweeter. Sugar _varies_ so, doesn’t it?
. . . Ah-ha, Miss Prince, _good_ morning! I hope you will forgeeve zat I
am still . . . how do you say . . . in the _in_timity of my bedroom?
. . . It eez not long since I woke up. . . . Allow me to present you
. . . Mademoiselle Charmianne, and Mademoiselle Bianca.”

Miss Prince, dark, neat, spry, no age, avid for a story and almost
cross-eyed in her excited sense of getting one so much more startling
than she’d anticipated, managed a creditable series of “Pleased to meet
you’s” and whisked a notebook, a pencil, and a packet of Luckies out of
her bag. . . . “It’s verry good of you, Mr. Scheurer, to find the time
for me.”

“_Mais pas du tout_, Mademoiselle Prince. The pleasure is mine. There is
no moment when I am not _enchanté_ to see a charming woman.”

“May I _use_ that, Mr. Scheurer?”

“_Use?_ There is something you . . . wish to _use_, mademoiselle?”

“I only mean may I use what you said, Mr. Scheurer?” Charmian, contorted
sideways, her hair flopped over her face, seemed to be looking for a
hankie.

“Oh! Oh, _yes_! By all _means_! _Bien sûr._” Putting his teacup down on
his tray, he turned to Charmian. “_Qu’est-ce que tu as, ma petite, que
tu ne prends pas ton café, hein?_” And in the same rapid tone he began
teasing Bianca for not having put any butter on her toast . . . “_Ma
chérie_, do you think it is I that will mind if you are a little fatter,
_hein_? . . . Miss Prince, why is it that all ze women have ziss
_manie_—mania—to be so thin?”

“You surely don’t like women to be _fat_, Mr. Scheurer?”

“Ah! No . . . but . . . a little ‘poretees’ . . . a little _plump_ as
you say . . . it ees verrrry nice!”

“May I use that?”

“Oh . . . Oh, _yes_. Surely.”

She wrote. Then:—

“Do you . . . always breakfast in bed, Mr. Scheurer?”

“Ah, but _no_! Not when I am _alone_.”

Miss Prince wrote rapidly.

Bianca, who had been trying to lift her cup with nonchalance, chinked it
down suddenly. Louis turned to her with playful reproach. “You notty
girl. You are always laughing like this at my English!”

“And . . . and are you _all_ living here, Mr. Scheurer?”

“Oh, no. No! No! Ze ladies live here! I only ‘stay’! But in this matter
I must ask you to be discreet! _N’est-ce pas, mademoiselle?_ No names of
ze ladies? No addresses? Eh?”

“That’s all right, Mr. Scheurer. You can count on me! D’you mind if I
smoke, Mr. Scheurer? Thanks.”

Louis, flashing charm and almost obsequiously polite to Miss Prince,
kept up at the same time a series of little playful half-amorous
attentions towards Bianca and Charmian: dipping a lump of sugar in
coffee and tenderly placing it between Bianca’s lips; buttering a piece
of toast and making Charmian nibble at it.

“I wonder, Mr. Scheurer, do you have any special theories about life?”
Miss Prince, her pencil poised, still kept on staring from one to
another of the trio before her. “For instance, Mr. Scheurer, I’d like to
know if you think artists should be _different_, and all that?”

Louis said, “I ’ave no theories, Miss Prince. I am just a . . . how do
you say . . . a pagan. I _adore_ Life! I LOVE Beauty.” He turned to
Charmian and seized her glass of orange juice, and, raising it upward,
shouted, “_Viva la Beauté! Vive l’Amour!_” . . . On the word _amour_ the
door opened and Kramer came in. He was still buttoned into his overcoat,
and unshaved from a night on the train.

                 *        *        *        *        *

Within the next three minutes Kramer went mad, shuddering and shouting a
guttural obscenity. Miss Prince screamed, Bianca hurled herself out of
bed, flew at Kramer, and hit him in the mouth, Louis clutching her back
and shaking her as if she were a fighting bitch. . . . Charmian sat
rigid, absurdly clutching her breakfast tray; Zamorr loomed in the
doorway, shaking his fists and baring white teeth behind Kramer’s head;
and Louis’s first hysteria of laughter changed to a Gascon rage in which
he reviled Kramer in two languages and finally challenged him to a duel.

Kramer, spluttering, “_Yess_ . . . Monsieur Scheurer! _Yess_, nothing
will _delight_ me more!”

“Gee!” from Miss Prince.

“_Zamorr!_” shrieked Louis.

“To-morrow!” Kramer was repeating.

“Zamorr, don’t let the—lady go. I’m sorry, Miss Prince . . .”

“But . . .”

“I’m sorry, Miss Prince, but . . . Zamorr will care for you in—every
way. Zamorr, see that Miss Prince is very comfortable in—the studio.”
To Kramer, “I’m sure you would prefer to _not_ stay in your home until
after you have redeemed its honor! Zamorr, when you have seen that Miss
Prince is comfortable, call a taxi for Monsieur Kramer! And then get Mr.
Lothair on the telephone. You have a revolver, by the way, m’sieur? I
thought so. Mr. Lothair will supply me. _Au revoir_, then . . . until
seven o’clock . . . to-morrow? And where?”

Zamorr broke in:—

“Van Cortlandt Park, suh. That’d be a grand place, suh.”

“Zamorr is right. Unless you object, m’sieu?”

Kramer exploded into words, the first of which maintained that he didn’t
care where they met. Then he went. And Charmian cried, “But Louis . . .
Harry . . . you _can’t_! . . .” Bianca broke out savagely, “I’d like to
get at him myself.” But Louis ignored her, sprang on to the bed, and
began dancing to and fro across it, humming the “Indian Love Call.”

                 *        *        *        *        *

All the way up to Van Cortlandt Park in the raw six-thirty light Bianca,
sitting between Louis and Jimmy Lothair, kept arguing, saying, “Comic
opera can go _too_ far! . . . Yesterday in a rage it was different. Even
if _he’s_ as mad as a goaded bull.” Louis took his hand off the wheel to
light his fifth cigarette since they started and then accelerated again.

“I don’t believe you have ever seen a goaded bull.”

“Louis, why not stop this _now_! Mr. Lothair, can’t you _make_ him?”

But Jimmy, who had a hang-over, only repeated quickly that “death was
preferable to dishonor” and then smiled divinely at her. And Zamorr,
sitting in the back of the coupé, wearing his new Homburg hat and spats,
continued to give Louis driving directions in the blaring voice of a
sergeant on parade.

When they arrived at the appointed place Kramer hadn’t come and Bianca
hoped that Charmian’s mission had prevailed.

They all got out, and stamped to and fro under the trees. There was a
low steely sky and the biting wind made Louis’s face look mauve between
the slouched-down brim of his hat and his turned-up collar.

Zamorr followed Jimmy up and down, now and then making him turn and come
back. Jimmy took out his flask; Louis refused any liquor.

It began to snow.

Louis, swinging his arms, described Kramer in a French which Bianca
didn’t understand, and which delighted Zamorr, to whom it was familiar.

Bianca sneezed and shivered. And she was frightened. Until now it had
all seemed just another “Louis fantasia,” or a Charmian “White
Knightness, sliding down the poker and balancing very badly.” But when
Jimmy said, in a flash of perception, “Supposin’ the police get hold of
us,” she stared at Louis.

He said, “What the hell if they do. We’ll shoot them up too.”

This cheered Jimmy at once. “That’s it. We’ll shoot the police up too.
That’ll be _fine_!”

As he spoke Louis exclaimed and pointed.

Far off down the path a figure was running towards them through the
thick falling snow.

Charmian . . .

Bianca said afterwards that she had come so straight out of a Drury Lane
melodrama that the snow turned to paper as she came. When she got near
them they saw she was wearing Kramer’s black opera cloak, and breathing
hard. Louis shouted, “What is it?”

She stopped short of them. “He’s g-gone. . . . He went . . . he . . . he
ran away. . . . He was afraid. . . . He couldn’t even be . . .
_reckless_!”

She threw herself into Louis’s arms.

“Oh, darling,” said Louis, “I’m sorry. I’m desperate . . . I’m
_furious_. I’m insulted.”

Then he began laughing as helplessly as she was sobbing, but holding her
close and placing his left hand over her head to keep off the snow. “Oh,
darling . . . Oh, romantic Charmian . . . Oh, desperate and romantic
me!”

“_Oh_,” muttered Charmian, “a _handkerchief_?” and Jimmy was snatching
off his muffler, exclaiming, “Poor kid, poor kid! Here you are.”

Somehow the sight of Louis and Charmian clasped gasping in each other’s
arms, the snow falling on their mauve faces, and Charmian blindly
blowing her nose on Jimmy’s checked muffler, made Bianca feel angry.

She said, “_Hell!_ I want my breakfast. And my feet are cold.”

                 *        *        *        *        *

Louis “fixed” Miss Prince. After the first quarter of an hour she was
helpless against his deliberate onslaught of charm.

Finally he took her out to luncheon, and afterwards to Cartier’s, where
he ordered her a little diamond octopus copied from the one on the
pocket of his dressing gown. And he gave her a signed copy of his last
book, _Eugénie_.

                 *        *        *        *        *

They lay strewn about the beach, their bodies cinnamon-colored and
gleaming with oil, their eyes goggled with sun glasses.

Kalla von Lüneburg continued in her honey-thick voice:—

“It iss swe-eetness that makes _me_ fall in love—” (She always
pronounced love “loave” and on her deepest note.) She rolled over on to
her back. “It is the swe-eetness off Fritzl that makes me _loave_ him so
much!”

Fritzl lifted his drowsy yellow head, flung out an arm, and touched her
shoulder.

“Swe-eet Kalla,” he said, and dropped his head and drowsed again.

Sandy Fane said in a fidgety tone, “_Where_ has Zamorr put my mattress?
Nicky, I believe you’ve taken it!—I really will not have _every_body
using my mattress.” (Sandy’s sun-bronzing mattress was designed for him
by Lanvin. It was quilted, pale blue rubber one side and dark blue
sandproof-satin the other. On the dark blue side his initials were
embroidered in white.)

Louis called without turning his head:—

“Mr. Fane’s mattress, Zamorr?”

Zamorr rose from the shadow of a rock. “Ah don’t know, Mistah Louis. Ah
didn’ see de mattress.”

“Peter’s lying on it?” said Kalla.

“_No_,” said Peter.

“Nor I,” said Nicky.

“I’ve got my own!” trilled Bengy. (His own, in pink rubber and wine
satin, was copied from Sandy’s.)

Armorelle Ross stretched out a brown leg and prodded Sandy’s plump ribs
with her crimson toenails.

“You know quite well you told that _un_believable American girl with the
gilt hair who’s trying to convert you that _she_ could use your silly
mattress.”

Kalla murmured, “Let us go _on_ talking about _loave_— And let us also
_drink_ something?”

Louis said, “Nine Pernods, Zamorr,” and bent his head down in his arms
again.

“Yes, Mistah Louis.”

Kalla turned her charming boy’s face towards François.

“What makes _you_ fall in loave?”

“Beauty,” said François. He had kept on his parrot-green bathing bonnet.
He looked, with his beaked face yellowed with sun, and sun glasses on,
more than ever like a hunched exotic bird.

“And you, Armorelle?”

“Anyone being an exciting shape. I don’t mind so much about features.”

“Eyes and behinds get _me_,” cried Bengy excitedly.

Armorelle said, “People ought to make up their behinds to express their
personality.”

“Very engaging,” said Louis.

“I once _dreamed_—” began Bengy.

Peter threw three cushions at him one after another.

Sandy said, “Bengy _always_ has those _kitchen_maid dreams. I believe
you drink ‘cocoa’ first thing, Bengy?”

“He doesn’t,” said Kalla. “I know that because that night he slept with
me and sweeet Fritzl he drinkt brandy an’ so-ooda!”

A voice came from Fritzl’s blond and tousled head, “_My_ brandy an’
so-ooda!”

“The _only_ thing that makes _me_ fall in love,” said Sandy, “is someone
being _absolutely_ charming and _completely_ indifferent to me.”

“_I_ know!” said Armorelle. “That awful zero hour when you find the
person you adored absolutely hopelessly is falling in love with you!”

“For me—_Temperrament_!” said Nicky. “It must be somebody that I hate
and I desire at once. The moment I feel affection I care nothing.”

“Pernod, suh?”

“_Why_ did you order them, Louis? _No_body wants any.”

Louis said, “Empty them into the sea, Zamorr.”

“Yes, suh.”

“And bring nine champagne cocktails.”

“Yes, suh.”

Armorelle came and lay beside Peter. “What’s the matter?” She spoke in
an undertone.

“Nothing.”

“Something is?”

He shook his head.

“What makes _you_ fall in love, Peter?”

He stared at her for a moment and then said, “Love, I suppose.”

Bengy, who had been strolling round examining other people’s bathing
suits, came back and dropped to his knees in front of Louis.

“And you, Louis?”

Bengy looked like a squirrel interrogating a panther.

“Me what?”

“What’s your special aphrodisiac?”

Louis raised his head. His eyes opened for a moment. He said, with acrid
gentleness:—

“Go away, Bengy dear.”

Armorelle lay looking up into Peter’s face with her grey bright eyes.

“I really _am_ in love with you, Peter.”

He smiled. “Don’t be silly, Armorelle.”

Kalla rolled over. “_Ach_—there iss Armorelle _again_ making loave to
Peter.” She smiled first at Peter, then at Armorelle.

Louis said, “A drink, Kalla?”

She rolled over again, without a pause, on to her other side and looked
at Louis. She stopped smiling. Louis met her look.

Zamorr came.

“_Do_ stop ordering drinks, Louis,” said Armorelle.

“Sundowners,” said Louis.

“It isn’t sundown.”

“I didn’t say it was.”

Zamorr looked at his immense watch.

“It’s a quarter of four, suh.”

Louis said, “Put the tray beside me, Zamorr.” He turned to lean up on
his elbow. “Armorelle—a drink, dear.”

“No, thanks.”

“Peter!”

“No, thanks.” Peter thought that Louis’s mood had been getting queerer
all day. When they all bathed before luncheon he’d swum out alone to the
rocks. He’d come back late for luncheon. And at luncheon he hadn’t
spoken, and had eaten almost nothing. Peter’s nerves had kept on
reacting all day to this electrical condition in Louis so that he
already felt miserable and exhausted.

“Who will swim again?” asked Fritzl benignly.

Louis began drinking the cocktails one after another. “_Prière de ne
gaspiller_—”

A man in a yellow bathrobe came along the beach.

“Hello, Scheurer!”

Louis looked up, his fourth glass in his hand.

“_Hello!_— _You_, Best?”

Armorelle laid her hand on Peter’s shoulder and whispered, “Who’s the
canary-colored pimp?”

Louis introduced him to them all.

“The _Gräfin_ and I have met before,” said Brownlow Best. He bowed.

“Yes,” said Kalla. “Was it not in Berlin two years ago?”

“Yes, _Gräfin_.”

Louis said, “Sit down, Best, and have a drink.”

He sat down, refused a drink, and began asking a series of polite
questions. How long had Louis been here? Where was he staying?

Louis explained that they were all staying with Nicky Zatec at
Valescure.

“And you, Best?”

“I am with Sir Ivan, at Monte Carlo. But I am here for two or three
days.”

Peter saw Louis drinking his fifth and sixth glasses and going on
talking to Best. Gradually their voices dropped. Best was leaning
towards Louis. Peter wondered what they were talking about. Best’s look
was close on Louis’s face. But it was impossible to tell from Louis’s
mask, with his eyes slanted up and half closed and his underlip thrust
out, the effect either of the cocktails or of Best’s conversation.

Then, as Armorelle said, “Come and swim, Peter,” and Sandy said, “Come
and swim, Armorelle,” Peter saw Best lean close to Louis and whisper
something—and Louis’s eyes open, wide and dark for a second, and close
again.

A few minutes later Best got up. He nodded to each of them in turn. Then
he said to Louis:—

“At six o’clock to-morrow then?”—and was just turning to go when he
hesitated and added, “Of course, if Mr. Cable cares to come along too?”
His pale glance flickered round to Peter.

Louis looked up with one of his grimacing smiles that, for the second of
their duration, made him seem diabolic, evoking out of himself little
pretty flashes of evil. He said:—

“I’m afraid Peter isn’t at _all_ musical!”

                 *        *        *        *        *

The next night Louis came back late from his evening with Best.

He came into Peter’s room and found Armorelle and Kalla and Fritzl
there. (The others had gone to Cannes.)

They had all four dined off a special _bouillabaisse_ made by Nicky’s
chef and were apathetic and quarrelsome with surfeit.

But Louis came in radiant and affectionate. He sat down on the bed
between Kalla and Peter and began talking and asking them questions
about their day, exactly as if he’d returned from a long journey. Within
a few minutes—through a few chance turns of subject, and on the ground
of some episode involving Zamorr and the _maire of_ St.-Raphael—he
began building up, for their amusement, one of his absurd rococo
edifices of fancy, ornate with hyperbole, intricate similes, richly
elaborate and far-fetched metaphors, adorned with pretty and voluptuous
distortions of fact, and tricks of wit, and symbols at the same time
frivolous and curiously erudite.

They listened, turning towards him, their mood changing from apathy to
pleasure, and from pleasure to excitement: and their physical attitudes
changing as if they were wilted flowers put in fresh water.

Soon his talk, as it always did, had wakened theirs. And it was three
o’clock before Louis, abruptly sleepy, began to forget his English and
talk French. He got up, taking Armorelle’s hand, and pulled her to the
door.

“_Viens, ma petite_—”

Kalla said, “By the way, Louis, I forgot to ask you how was the musick
with Herr Best?”

“_Ah? Ça?_” Louis turned his blank, faintly grimacing mask to her.

“Exquisite,” he said, “_épatante! Que j’adore la musique!_ It gets into
your senses like a perfume; it possesses you like a passion; it calms
you—like a mother.” Without any change of expression he turned and
kissed Armorelle on the lips. Armorelle said:—

“Thank you, my sweet.” She glanced at Peter. But Kalla, in her scarlet
trousers and blue sweater, was standing between them.

                 *        *        *        *        *

Two days later Peter said to Louis:—

“Aren’t you going to see Best again to-night?”

“Yes. How did you know?”

“I couldn’t help hearing you telephone.”

Louis didn’t answer.

Peter said, “Let me come.”

Louis said:—

“Peter dear, you know what I feel about it.”

“But you _go_!”

“It’s different for me.”

“Why?”

He shrugged his shoulders. “I somehow get out of things. And if I don’t
. . .”

Peter’s diffident eagerness changed to obstinacy.

“I mean to, anyway. If I can’t come with you I shall get Armorelle to
take me, in Paris.”

Louis walked off to the edge of the terrace. Peter watched him standing
there with his shoulders hunched up and his hands in his pockets. Then
he came back, his head bent, looking at the ground. And then, still
without looking at him, said, “Very well. Come this evening.” Then he
suddenly looked Peter in the eyes. Peter didn’t understand his
expression. But his heart beat quickly.

Louis snapped out:—

“If you must go, you go with me!” and went to pace the balustrade again;
and stand with his hands in his pockets, his shoulders hunched, staring
at the sea.

                 *        *        *        *        *

The hotel room was close and shuttered, lit only by the lamp on the
bedside table. Colored mattresses and cushions on the tiled floor. Pale
walls. A dry coffee smell in the air. Best, in a dressing gown, letting
them in, locking the door when they were in, welcoming in undertones.
Nicky there, lying on the floor. Peter hadn’t expected Nicky. . . .
There was a lamp with a little flame on the floor beside him; and little
bottles. He had a long curious pipe in his hand. Two people on the bed:
two women, talking and moving, but half asleep; their eyes shining but
half asleep. One of them spoke to Best. But he was saying to Louis:—

“Make yourselves at home. We started an hour ago. Not sure if you were
coming.” To Peter, “So glad you changed your mind. Do make yourselves at
home.”

Nicky’s big face was over the dim upward light of the flame. Louis lay
down on the mattress opposite him, so that the flame was between them.

Nicky was filling the pipe, placing the little bottles back deftly on
the floor. He glanced up at Peter. Smiled. Said to Louis, “Here’s our
beginner.” Then to Best, “This is good stuff, Best. Better than the
last.”

Louis said, “Don’t make it strong for Peter . . . very little . . .” He
looked up at Peter, said, “Lie down. You needn’t smoke if you don’t want
to.” Best, silent-footed, hospitable, said, low-voiced, “There you are”
. . . pulled a divan next to Louis. . . . “Lie here, Cable.”. . .

Peter lay down. The two women on the bed were still talking, their arms
round each other. Best went over to them. One said, in French, “I’ll
have another later. It’s very strong, this time!”

Nicky was talking about some book on Russia . . . broke off . . . smiled
sharply at Peter. “This is so impromptu. . . . Our amiable friend has
lent his room here. . . . The real thing . . . more picturesque, more
memorable. You must come in Paris where I can make you more
comfortable. . . . Here, Louis, it’s ready.”

Louis bent forward, began sucking and drawing in the smoke evenly,
slowly. Peter, leaning on one elbow, lay watching his profile,
impassive, the eyes almost shut.

Best lay down the other side of Nicky. They were talking as Nicky
refilled the pipe, the radiance from the flame dimly on their faces and
bodies, their shadows huge and blooming behind them on the pale walls.

Now Louis put down the pipe, lay back, shutting his eyes. Then opened
them, turning to Peter.

“Do you want to? Really?”

Nicky said, “Of _course_ he does. Move, Louis; let him lie where you
are.” Now Nicky was filling it again. . . . Peter waited now, Louis’s
arm round his shoulder. . . . Louis saying gently to Nicky, “Not too
strong, Nicky . . . not much.” One of the women behind them was laughing
stupidly.

“Now,” said Nicky, precisely, “now, Peter . . . and remember draw in
. . . draw _in_ . . . try not to pause.” Peter took the pipe between his
lips. He felt Louis’s arm on his shoulder, and saw Nicky smile gently
and encouragingly, his black eyes glinting.

“. . . Draw in . . . don’t pause . . . _excellent!_ . . . Now . . . lie
back . . . don’t move . . . lie back . . .”

He lay back, his head on the cushions, Best saying, “How d’you like it?”

“Agreeable?” said Nicky . . . taking the pipe again . . . beginning to
fill it. Peter said, “Very agreeable.” He turned his head to look at
Louis. Then leaned up. . . . Louis said, “Don’t move. D’you like it?”

He lay back, his head on Louis’s shoulder. “Very agreeable,” he
repeated. Louis was saying, “You didn’t have much . . . anyway.”

Peter murmured, excited, half laughing, his limbs drowsy, “_J’adore la
musique_. . . .”

                 *        *        *        *        *

The thing that politicians referred to that autumn as the “spirit of
Locarno” had affected Bianca’s imagination to the extent of prompting
her to write to Lottie. She got her address from Frany. Part of this
self-appointed “business” was to “keep up” with people who seemed to her
to need either help or friendship. Frany informed Bianca that Lottie and
the child and her blinded husband were living in a house belonging to
her father, which was the only property that remained to them. She told
her that during the years of inflation Lottie had kept them all by some
accounting job in one of the steel works at Duisburg . . . because her
husband’s pension lost all value. But she believed that things were a
little better now as Carteret, hearing of this, had made over some
foreign shares to them.

Bianca remembered Lottie in the room which was now Toby’s nursery,
sitting by the fire and with the baby girl in her arms.

She wrote a short letter, telling her about the house, and the garden,
and Toby, who was six months younger than her Anna must be.

She had a letter back from Lottie asking her, if she ever had time, and
didn’t mind very simple living, to come and stay.

Bianca, for no reason she could define, was touched by the letter and
arranged to visit Lottie in February, on her way to stay with the St.
Laurents in Cannes.

Lottie’s house was in the serene suburbs of the noisy factory town. A
little square red house whose lack of eaves made it look like a cheerful
face with too little eyelash and brow to hope for beauty. Encircling it,
inside a low wall, were grass, gravel paths, a swing, a summerhouse,
and, usually, an Alsatian dog.

Inside the house the rooms were fresh and full of clean frilled curtains
and inherited furniture of the German nineteenth century, back even to
Beidermeier pieces of museum interest. But there were bulbs in pots and
in window boxes in every room; and a cuckoo clock in the hall, and
another in the _Kinderzimmer_, and a Dutch-doll girl of fourteen always
in a fresh brown overall and always smiling, who helped Lottie in the
house, took Anna to school, and guarded the house in the evenings with
the Alsatian dog when Lottie went to the clinic to be with her husband.
(Lottie’s husband, obsessed by his blindness, had gone through stages of
melancholia to a state of apparent insanity, and it was this tragedy,
hidden behind the bright gentle orderliness of Lottie’s life, which
seemed to Bianca later, in retrospect, to be almost a symbol of German
life in those years.)

Lottie herself had, since that time at Ebony, regained an appearance of
equilibrium. Her happiness in her little girl, her pride in her house,
her instinctive self-imposition of routine, had given her back a certain
capacity to enjoy the simple pleasures and little cherished festivities
which were so essentially the heritage of her race. Neither her sadness,
nor her poverty in the nightmare years of inflation, had prevented
Lottie from initiating her child in the joys which were also rites and
traditions; of _Weihnachtszeit_ (the tree with candles, the gingerbread
hearts covered with silver paper, the Christ-kind in white at the top of
the tree).

And little Anna seemed the child both of this ritualized tenderness and
jollity (snowmen in winter, wreaths of field flowers on your head in
summer) and of another heritage, of sadness, and poverty, accepting the
dumb fundamental despair that was everywhere, invisible, like a blight.
For Anna’s face, under its scarlet fur-trimmed cap, and between the dark
plaits, had the cheekbones too clearly marked, and her lips were always
pressed softly together. Her dark eyes had their inner vision of fairy
stories: her cuckoo clock in her _Kinderzimmer_ marked placid hours; her
dolls in their _Puppenecke_ absorbed her leisure. But her mind knew that
the _Märchen_ (fairy story) endings weren’t true; that her own little
room was gay and had a warm white stove, but that life outside was
frightening. Her dark eyes shone and laughed! But her lips, pressed
together, admitted: “Nothing is safe! One must be careful.”

In the mornings Bianca helped Lottie in the house and the kitchen. At
midday Anna came home and they all ate in the little red-papered dining
room. Then they slept for an hour. And then, if the afternoon was fine,
the three of them went for a walk through the pine woods and fields near
by (for the outskirts of the town met the country). Usually Lottie would
arrange a walk to some little wooden pavilion where they could stop and
go in and drink _Kaffee_ or _Schokolade_.

Sometimes, when Lottie had special shopping to do, or friends she wanted
to meet, they took a tram and went into the town and looked at the shops
on the dark clattering high street; and then had their _Kaffee_ or
_Schokolade_ and cakes in a shop.

Once, during the ten days that Bianca stayed, some friends came in in
the evening and Lottie offered them _Rheinwein_ and little cakes baked
by herself and sandwiches and smoked meats. They were mostly
heavy-bodied people, middle-aged in their thirties: the women dressed in
colored silk blouses and dark skirts; the men in suits or frock coats
with their hair shaved short at the back, and gallant manners, and shy
uncomfortable glances. But when they became at ease, and seemed to lay
off the drab heaviness and anxiety of their daily lives, and got used to
Bianca being there, one of them—a man (coloring and hitching his
trouser knees)—asked her if there was still much hate (_Hass_) of
Germany in England?

“Hate?” A dreadfully moving sense of how sad and beaten and diffident
they were gave her halting German a new impetus to explain that _indeed_
there was no hate! Hadn’t we all suffered so? And now, at least, we must
believe that that was all over forever!

A gentle-faced plain woman of about forty said that there could never
again be a war. Such horror. Such sorrow for all. The tears came into
her little blue eyes. She said, “We have all suffered because we have
had wicked rulers that made such things possible.”

And Lottie, who had been bringing in more _belegte Brötchen_ from the
kitchen, came and sat by Bianca and put her arm in hers. And then the
men talked about the difficulties also of trade and business, but they
agreed that since Locarno there was a real hope that things would get
better. And if only Germany was once a League Member—!

Then Lottie suggested they should have some music. And she went to the
piano, and she played and sang Schubert and Schumann, and Brahms. Then
they all had more wine, and talked, and were quite gay, and went home,
before twelve, in their rubber overshoes, thanking Lottie so many times,
and saying their good-byes to Bianca with such warmth and friendliness,
and yet with that hidden diffidence (because in their hearts they were
bewildered and guilty that somehow “they” had made the War).

                 *        *        *        *        *

Marie de Montcontour herself had stayed in the North this year, but lent
Louis her villa at Le Pradet, her idea and his being that he should
write his new book there tranquilly. But, inevitably, since he invited
Peter, he couldn’t refuse Nicky. And Sandy came, exhausted by a London
Season, and a year of jealousy. And Bengy came, following Sandy. And
Louis asked François because he couldn’t bear to think of him, underfed
and thoughtful, in his hot studio in Paris when they were all in the
South. And Armorelle came bringing a young man called Logan whom she
thought handsome. And Kalla and Fritzl came, arriving in canvas shorts
and huge boots and carrying rucksacks and refusing, at first, to eat
anything but _Studentenfutter_ (raisins and sultanas and various bits of
nut), which they brought with them in paper bags.

Inevitably the entire party became physically competitive about sunburn,
and spiritually restive about love. They lay about on the terraces and
on Marie’s private beach, and on the yacht, and on the rocks,
interminably confiding to each other the Odysseys of hearts and senses;
indefatigably exploring all the paths which might lead to their finding
“the One Perfect Person.” Their lesser, but as constant, desire to be
mahogany color was mystically associated with the greater quest. Since
all of them lived (like a sect awaiting the Second Coming) in constant
expectation that, if not this morning, then certainly to-night the
Beloved would appear—to find them duly bronzed, fragrant, and in
luxurious dressing gowns. (Sandy always traveled with his pale green
sheets, since this was the color he woke up best in. And Armorelle had
what she called a “bottom drawer” in her wardrobe trunk.)

But this summer Louis wanted to work. And as his desire for work gained
on him his affection for them all grew less. By the second week he was
working angrily at night, and they were so little real or necessary to
him that he began brooding on the fact that they were there at all, and
feeling tormented, and persecuted by their presence.

He was sufficiently aware in theory that his dislike of them was a thing
that would pass with his phase of work to telegraph to Frany asking her
if she would spend her summer holiday (which he happened to know was due
now) in being hostess for him?

Frany’s telegram was: “Understand. Coming.”

When he got it Louis was so relieved that he went out on to the lower
terrace where they were all having cocktails and was charming and
friendly to them so that they all adored him again, and felt secretly
uncomfortable that they’d confided to each other, in the last few days,
that he was “getting impossible” and that he’d become “thoroughly
spoiled.”

Frany arrived, in her tussore coat and shirt and a topi. Her luggage
consisted of a pigskin Gladstone bag and a sunshade strapped to a
shooting stick.

As soon as she arrived she went to her room and undressed and ordered
that the old Indian gauze underclothes in which she had traveled should
be burned. She then unpacked, refusing help from the _femme de chambre_,
and emerged to join Louis and the others on the beach wearing a bathing
costume of black alpaca with a navy-blue sailor collar and a lanyard.
She also wore black silk stockings and over them her white bathing shoes
laced up with white tape, and a navy-blue cotton handkerchief spotted
with white tied up into a butterfly bow over her rubber cap.

Louis introduced them all to her. François she knew already.

She asked Peter to go and fetch her shooting stick, and her parasol.
Frany never sat on sand, even on a rug, considering it to be “unclean.”

As Peter came back, she looked at him. When he gave her the parasol and
arranged her shooting stick, she glanced at him again. Later, after she
had had her swim, she said to Louis:—

“I haven’t seen Peter for some time. I don’t ask what’s the matter with
him. I know.”

Louis didn’t answer at the time.

But that evening before dinner he came into her room and said, “I don’t
know what to do about Peter. He began a year ago.”

“How?”

“Here in the Midi.”

“But you do. Yourself.”

“How did you know?”

“I’ve known since you began three years ago. Only you happen to be very
tough.”

“I don’t often. I can always stop.”

“Then you’re very extraordinary.”

“I—am.”

“Well, Peter isn’t. Nor is his body. He’s always been delicate.”

Louis flared nervously. “He’s perfectly strong. It happens that he’s
been smoking a _lot_. But, in fact, I’ve got him to promise that when we
get back he’ll give up the whole thing.”

“How?”

“Disintoxication.”

“D’you think he’ll stand that?”

“How?”

“Nervously.”

“Of course.”

Frany said, “I think you ought to take him at once then, to be cured.”

“I can’t _take_ him! I’m here to _work_! I’m TRYING to work! That’s why
I asked you to come. I’m being driven _mad_ by them all.”

“But what about Peter?”

Louis turned on her. “Why can’t he go alone? Why must I _take_ him? Why
can’t _you_ take him?”

Frany said, “You know why. Because you can persuade him. If anyone can.”

Louis began swearing at her. . . . What had she come for? To drive him
mad too? To interfere? To burden him with ridiculous responsibilities?
To try to make him feel that it was _he_ who had persuaded Peter to
smoke?

“Who was it, then?”

“If it was anyone, except himself, it was Best.”

“That man?”

“Yes.”

She said abruptly, “I’d no idea he was involved.”

“_Involved_ . . . You talk as if the whole thing was a conspiracy, a
plot, a dangerous crime.”

Frany went to her Gladstone bag, which was on a chair, and took out a
bottle of aspirin. Deliberately she shook out three tablets. Then she
fetched a glass of water from the _cabinet de toilette_.

“Take these.”

He began swearing at her again.

“Take these, Louis.”

“I won’t.”

“Please . . . take these.”

“I see no reason.”

She put the glass in his hand.

“Take them at once.”

He took them.

                 *        *        *        *        *

Toby was going to school.

He was going to a private school at Cobham. It had been Peter’s private
school. And Bianca had been again to see it. She had talked to Mr.
Lennox, the headmaster, and to Mrs. Lennox, and to the nice matron. And
she had arranged for Toby to come in September.

The day before he was to go, Bianca and he had a walking day, with
knapsacks. Toby chose that. They started very early and took a train to
Headcorn and walked back through the woods and over fresh stubble
fields, and ate their luncheon of hard-boiled eggs and peaches and cold
sausages (Toby chose these) sitting under an oak tree in a field just
outside Chilham. Toby had brought his fishing rod and after luncheon he
went down to the stream at the bottom of the field and fished, for an
hour, blissfully, catching nothing. (He had forgotten to bring any bait
and used a piece of sausage.)

Bianca lay on the bank and watched him. He was so intent, his bright
head bent forward, his brown eyes fixed on the water. His cheeks still
had a baby rosiness and roundness. It was such a lovely day; the air so
fresh, the sun so warm. (He was going to school, to-morrow.)

He said, “They don’t seem to like sausage much, do they?”

“Try a piece of bread,” she suggested. “It _shows_ up more.”

He nodded. “I will.”

“But in half an hour,” she said, “we must start off again.” (This time,
to-morrow, he would be there.)

When they were walking back he talked about plans for next holidays,
about his hunting, about “my friend Jock” (the postmistress’s little
boy), who had promised to look after his rabbits in the term.

As the sun got low in the sky and he was secretly getting tired, he
asked her to tell him a story. So she told him an installment of
“Liony,” a legend which had gone on since he was two. He asked for more.
And once or twice, towards sunset, as they were walking above the marsh
towards home, he took her hand.

When they got in at last, Peggotty rose from the lawn like a huge grey
affectionate chrysanthemum to greet them. The doves were sitting on the
roof in the sunset, in a rouged row. Toby asked if he could stay up to
dinner with her.

So they had hot baths and dined in their dressing gowns. He wore his new
school jaeger one. Bianca wore her blue satin one to please him, and a
blue riband in her hair. (He chose this.)

They had the candles lit on the table. And Mrs. Cobb made the chocolate
_soufflé_ he asked for. But when it came he couldn’t finish his helping.
So Bianca allowed him, “for this once,” to give it to Peggotty.

But after dinner she said he must go to bed. And went up with him.

She put out the light before tucking him in, so that there was only the
glow from the landing and he couldn’t see her face. He asked, in the
angry small voice that meant he was embarrassed, if she would mind if
the door leading to her room were opened? It was usually locked as he
hated to consider his bedroom being the dressing room of hers.

She unlocked it, and opened it. Then she said:—

“Sleep well,” and came and kissed him quickly, only holding him in her
arms for a second. And he said, “You sleep well too.”

At the door she said, “Good night, darling,” again. She heard him
whisper, “Good night, Mummie.”

At six in the morning she thought she heard him moving about. She
asked:—

“Toby?”

“Y—yes.”

“Toby, darling? What is it?”

He was silent. Then his voice came, choked but assertive.

“I . . . I just woke up.”

She sprang out of bed. “Oh, _Toby_ . . .” She ran to the doorway. He was
sitting up in bed, his eyes swollen, his hands pressed over his mouth.

She said, “Darling . . .” Then, quickly, “I’ll get you a glass of water.
Come into my bed.”

He nodded, his hands still over his mouth, but his pyjamaed body getting
slowly out of bed.

When she had him propped up against her pillows and had given him the
water, and a hot bottle at his feet, she managed to make him laugh by
one of those time-honored jokes about Liony climbing up the chain of the
plug and his Enemies “falling in.”

After breakfast she drove him over to Cobham and they got to the school
just before luncheon. As they went slowly up the drive and the grey
buildings came in sight between the beech trees, she said:—

“It’s only three week-ends before I’ll come and see you. We’ll take out
a picnic.”

His profile, in the strange purple cap, nodded.

“I’ll write to you . . . something every day.”

He didn’t answer. A moment later he touched her arm.

“Mummie?”

“Yes.”

“. . . I think it would be better, if you don’t mind, if you didn’t
write—quite every day.” He hesitated. “You see I must get used to it,
mustn’t I . . . and . . .”

“Of course.” She added, “You’re quite right.”

They got out of the car and she went into the hall with him. And Mrs.
Lennox came. And went again. And the place was full of little boys in
purple caps with neat overcoats and faces that were expressionless and
tense in the way that Toby’s was.

When she said, “I must go,” he looked up at her for one second. Then he
just nodded and said:—

“I expect you’d better.”

When she got back she found David there. She had forgotten that he’d
written and said he would come, because there hadn’t been anything in
her mind that was real except Toby’s going.

But she said, “Oh David, how _nice_ to see you,” and made him cocktails
and asked him how his _Vogue_ job was going, and told him
matter-of-factly that she had been over to Cobham to take Toby to his
school.

David looked at her with his charming unobserving glance and said, “I
expect you’ll miss him, won’t you?”

And then he saw her face and at once sprang up and came to her. “Bianca,
darling. I didn’t realize . . . I’m so sorry, my dear.” He touched her
shoulder, and at his touch she began crying and she turned and threw
herself into his arms.

He held her, troubled by the violence of her sobbing, and a little
startled and intoxicated by this sudden holding her in his arms. He held
her closer, laid his cheek against her hair, touched her forehead with
his lips. He said, “Darling . . . I wish there was anything I could do.”
And when she couldn’t speak or see for crying he said, “I can’t bear you
to be so unhappy,” kissing her salt cheek. He felt a long sob shake her
and leave her quite still in his arms. He could feel her heart beating.
Her hand was cold in his. He whispered, “Bianca, darling.” She didn’t
answer, or open her eyes. He bent and kissed her lips; and she didn’t
move.

                 *        *        *        *        *

There was a telephone message for Bianca from Moon’s Green saying that
Lady Platt-Eresby had arrived and wanted to know when she might come
over and see Mrs. Selwyn. Bianca telephoned to say that she was to come
any time.

Ruth came the next day for luncheon. She was in green tweed and five
months gone with a baby.

Ruth ate two helpings of everything. She said, “Nothing disagrees with
me at these times,” and giggled. She told Bianca about her life in
London, and Harold’s view that Locarno had been a blunder, before she
asked:—

“And now what about Peter?”

“What about him?”

“Tell me what you’ve heard.”

“I’ve heard nothing. Frany saw him in the South of France.”

“Ah! Was he there with Louis Scheurer?”

“Louis was the host.”

“I see. And what was Peter doing?”

“Bathing, I expect, and playing tennis.”

“Oh. Mother’s heard one or two queer rumors.”

“She likes queer rumors.”

Ruth snapped, “I meant about Peter. D’you mind if I smoke? I always
smoke at these times.”

“A good many people seem to have been staying with Louis.”

“I expect he asked a good many.”

“Yes.”

“I’ve never liked Louis.”

Bianca said at once, untruthfully, that she always had.

Ruth said, “I s’pose _you’re_ going to start liking peculiar people now,
too?” Then she reverted: “What’s the latest gossip about _him_?”

“I don’t know any.”

“Don’t be silly, dear. We all know that Louis Scheurer is surrounded
with gossip! Who’s he in love with now?”

“Louis doesn’t fall in love.”

“Whatever d’you mean?”

“He told Charmian so himself. He just doesn’t. He falls, but not into
_love_.”

“Oh. That sounds all very subtle.”

“It isn’t.”

“Well . . . D’you mind if I put my feet up on your sofa?”

And Ruth’s brogues, in the interest of the second little Platt-Eresby,
rested on a cushion of petit point.

“And what d’you hear from Charmian?”

“She’s had a secretarial job in New York since she divorced Kramer.”

“That’s one good thing over, anyway. Poor girl, she has made a mess of
her life. I wonder what she’ll do now. Of course next year she gets her
money from Grandpapa. I daresay she’ll make a pretty poor job of
spending that.”

Bianca, keeping her temper, asked Ruth conversationally if she hoped
that her baby was going to be a boy or a girl.

Ruth said, “Well, of course, we hope a boy. After the fiasco of a girl
last time. How’s Toby getting on at school?”

“Quite well.”

“Do him good, being at school,” said Ruth. “Knock any ideas out of their
heads.”

                 *        *        *        *        *

When Ruth said that Bianca “liked peculiar people,” she was really
defending the inherent prejudices of the sporting _bourgeoisie_ of
England.

In fact, as little as two years before, Bianca herself had, unthinkingly
and by tradition, shared with Ruth the assumption that people belonged
to three categories: the normal, the distinguished, and the “fishy”;
that “one’s friends” belonged to the first two categories; and that the
third category of people (which one didn’t want to know) included anyone
suspected of wit, debt, or unnatural vice. (Though what, as Louis had
once asked Lady Cable at dinner, is “_natural_ vice?” And what, if any,
are its advantages?)

Bianca was so little aware of her recent change of taste in people that
she had taken the trouble to refute Ruth’s remark, as though it were an
accusation.

And it was only later, soaking in her hot bath before dinner, that,
reflecting on the whole matter, she decided that she wanted people to be
amusing or funny or peculiar, as well as good—and that when they
couldn’t be both she’d rather they were amusing.

Drying herself, she thought that if she were ever to marry again she’d
rather have a man bad-amusing than simple-good. Frictioning with chypre,
she decided that a man who made you laugh was more desirable than a man
who made you comfortable. Dressing slowly, she thought of David; and
wondered if it was because he couldn’t make her laugh that she didn’t
want to marry him.

Or perhaps, really, she didn’t want to marry at all?

She put on her white velvet dressing gown, pleased by the sense that it
was for herself, and not for any man.

In the library the fire leaped and crackled. Her dinner was laid on the
low table by the sofa. The room smelled of wood smoke.

What she wanted out of life, she decided, eating roast pheasant,
drinking Burgundy, glancing now and then at the poems of André Chénier
open beside her plate,—

                _O Versailles, o bois, o portiques,_
                _Marbres vivants, berceaux antiques_,—

was to be charmed, diverted, and instructed; to enjoy an emotion one
day, a conversation another; to love places intimately and with
nostalgia as though they were people; and to discover new people as if
they were strange lands.

She wanted these things when Toby was away.

                 *        *        *        *        *

The next morning she had a telegram from Nathalie St. Laurent announcing
her arrival that afternoon, on her way to London.

Bianca met her at Croydon and brought her back to Ebony.

Nathalie said at once that the house explained all the things in Bianca
that she hadn’t understood—especially her respect for the past and her
lack of interest in anything labeled “modern.” She said it was the house
of a woman with “a serious soul and frivolous senses.”

Nathalie was an amateur of “lives.”

“How is your life, Bianca?”

“The same.”

“No romance?”

“Not—really romantic romance.”

“What about _ce beau_ David you told me of? You don’t love him?”

“N-no. I like love with him.”

“And he?”

“He likes love—he likes me, in his way, I suppose. And you, Nathalie?”

“I?” Nathalie lay down on the sofa, as if her long body had suddenly got
tired of carrying her head. “I am—very well.”

“Does your husband still adore you?”

“Yes.”

“And you?”

“I—am in love with him.”

“Then—?” said Bianca.

“Then!” Nathalie opened her eyes—extraordinary jeweled eyes
thick-fringed with black. “It sounds perfect, doesn’t it?” She looked
round the room. “And it’s like being ill—all the time. One’s
perpetually afraid, too—of others—of oneself growing older—”

“What do you mean?”

Nathalie said, “You have a kind of innocence not of sex, but of—the
passions themselves—of the illness of passion.”

Nathalie was flittering her hands for a cigarette. She lit one. After a
moment she said, “What’s the English expression? ‘The cure is worse than
the disease.’”

Bianca said, “I know what you mean really. About my innocence. You
see—what happened to me, nine years ago, was quite different from—a
‘grown-up passion.’ What happened to Richard and me was the beginning of
a fairy story that was never, never going to end. . . . And then it did
end.”

Nathalie was silent. A gust of rain drove against the windows. Bianca
went on:—

“That kind of incredible loveliness can’t happen again. It was like
being on snow mountains in the sun. You kept on breathing in to taste if
it was real, and every breath made you more and more alive.”

“Are you still unhappy?”

“No.” Bianca leaned forward and put a log on the fire. “But when I wake
up suddenly from sleep it’s always because I know that Richard’s back
again. . . . And then he isn’t.”

“Will you show me his photograph?”

Bianca got up and went to the writing table. Nathalie watched her, for
as she turned she had one of her moments of romantic beauty, her face
blocked out in light and shadow by the upward lamplight.

Nathalie looked at the photograph of a boy in uniform with a sweet mouth
and a stubby nose, and the eyes and brow of a child.

                 *        *        *        *        *

Jimmy was whimpering now and he caught hold of Charmian’s hand and
started saying in a thick, truculent way: “She’ll look after me, she’s
gonna take me home, she’s straight, she’s on the level. . . . She’s
gonna take me back an’ give me a decent breakfast. She’s _loyal_. She
ain’t like some of you!” While he went on he kept his head bent like a
bullock, but backing from the others and not looking at her. He looked
deathly green and his hand was clammy, and she began drawing him back
and back to the door, and somehow got him out. And out in the street the
snow was blowing, and people were going to work in arctics and with
their collars hunched above their ears.

When she got Jimmy into the flat at Eighth Street he was still clutching
her hand. She switched on the light (and on the table was a letter from
Bianca). She made him sit on the sofa and tried to unclasp his hand so
that she could go and make him coffee. But he clung so that she sat down
beside him, and he put his head on her shoulder and started sobbing. He
smelled of whiskey and his hair was soft against her neck like a
child’s: and she sat still holding him hard while he sobbed loudly, on
and on. At last she said, “_Don’t_, Jimmy darling—” and gradually she
got his arms off her and made him lie along the sofa, and his sobs got
quieter and she went off on tiptoe into the kitchen.

When she came back he was lying in the same position, head in his arms,
and daylight was coming in between the curtains. She said, “Drink this,
Jimmy,” and he lifted his head and saw the coffee and said, “You’re a
sweet girl. I s’pose you want me to vomit.”

She said, “Yes, I do. Sit up.” And she put one arm round his shoulders
and made him drink; and then got a basin and put it on a chair beside
him and left him vomiting and went to take off her crumpled frock and
put on a sweater and skirt. And all the time she was cleaning her face
and dabbing lotion on, she was crying but not knowing why (except
because of that old feeling of life getting her by the neck and pushing
her down).

And just when she had no make-up on, and tears pouring, in her
looking-glass she saw Jimmy coming in. But he didn’t seem to notice her
face. He came to her and she turned, and staggered on to his knees
beside her, saying:—

“You got to marry me, Charmian. You certainly got to marry me, girl!”

“I know,” she said.

                 *        *        *        *        *

The _Galère_ was in Venice.

As Bianca passed them crossing the Piazza with the St. Laurents,
François turned to Louis.

“Not bad—the little Selwyn!”

“She moves her knees smoothly when she walks,” said Bengy, “so that they
don’t disturb her skirts.”

“She has charming thighs,” said Nicky—“_charming_.”

“It’s true,” said Fritzl, smiling his welcome of a pleasing thought,
“they are most _ex_-cellent.”

“I think it’s her way of _looking_ at you that’s so moving and
attractive,” Armorelle said—“melting one moment, and yet _utterly_ not
caring if you were to die _on_ her plate at _dinner_.”

Kalla turned to Louis. “_Is_ she then so haard-boiled, that beautiful
Bianca?”

Louis shrugged his shoulders. “I know her very little.”

“But Louis,” insisted Kalla, “you have known her a long time?”

“But never well.”

“_Ach_—then you should _do_ so. Why _do_ you not fall in loave with
her, Louis? _Pour changer un peu?_ . . . Or _you_, Nicky—why do not
_you_? Or you, sweeet To-ony?”

Tony said, rapidly biting the ends of his moustache, “My dear Kalla, you
seem to think, like everybody else, that I have time for everything.”

“But, sweeet To-ony, you might have time to sleeep with her. Or mightn’t
you, my Fritzl?” She put her arm round Fritzl’s neck. “Often I think
that Fritzl resembles that poem:—

                   “_Jeune homme sans mélancolie_
                   _Blond comme un soleil d’Italie_
                   _Garde bien ta belle folie_—”

She leaned her brown, sweet-lipped, boyish face against Fritzl’s cheek.

Louis repeated idly, only half aware of them all— “_Ta belle folie_—
When _is_ that waiter coming?”

                 *        *        *        *        *

They had all three, Marthe, Louis, and Peter, been taking their siesta
as usual in the cool of the east loggia.

Marthe watched Peter as he put down his book and, still reclining,
turned his head to gaze down the sunlit formal vista of the gardens.
There, beside the fountain, her two little girls in pink were playing,
while their _Nounou_ in white sat bunched on the stone seat knitting.

“It’s a _Renoir_!” said Peter.

Marthe smiled. “You see Renoirs in France just as I see, all the time,
Zoffanys and—Morlands—in England.” She was thinking how thin he was,
and, especially to-day, apathetic in his movements. As if his eager
excited mind claimed all his physical strength.

Peter turned on her with a quick, “Oh, if one _only_ saw that!”

Louis opened his eyes.

“You’ve roused Peter’s worst nostalgia. He has one supreme wish for his
country—which is that its history should have come to an end in 1832.
For him—as for the Duke of Wellington, wasn’t it?—the passing of the
first Reform Bill was a sort of funeral!” He added, smiling at Peter: “I
remember you explaining this to me in the shadow of the Pyramids! I
remember you even said (and Nicky was so angry, d’you remember?) that it
was a shame that the Pyramids had survived and Regent Street hadn’t! And
when Nicky, pointing to the Pyramids with his fat arm, shouted in the
moonlight, ‘But _look_—_look_ at that miracle!’ and then with _immense_
solemnity, ‘There is the Sarcophagus of an entire civilization’—you
said, with the very English accent you had in those days, ‘Yes. But
Regent Street is _infinitely_ more elegant.’”

Peter smiled. “Nicky was really so angry with me on that journey because
he thought I was stealing his Arab love.”

“Weren’t you?”

“You know perfectly well.”

Louis shrugged his shoulders. “In any case—poor Nicky. He’s at Biarritz
at present. He and Bengy and Armorelle, I think—I had a letter from
Nicky yesterday, asking me if my book was done.”

“Is it?” asked Marthe.

“No. But almost.” He stretched his arms and yawned.

“It’s all wrong. It’s bad. It’s dull— And there are too many books
anyway. And everything I write is so successful with the kind of people
whom I like least. Englishwomen from the ‘smart sets’ of the Provinces
_still_ write to me saying that they think _Doves in Aspic_ is
brilliant, and asking for my photograph— And since _Eugénie_—I have
had at _least_ ten letters from unknown women proposing rendezvous in
obscure _garçonnières_ in Paris.”

Marthe said, “There were some lovely chapters in _Eugénie_. But what I
don’t like in your books, Louis, is that one feels all the time that
under the surface you are in such despair for the human race—”

Louis got up out of his chair. “I am.”

Marthe looked up at him as he stood there, stretching his arms out, his
mouth smiling, his eyes bright and dark and angry.

He said, “I’m as angry as God when he drowned them all. But God made one
mistake, which was to save Noah.” Then with one of his limber sudden
movements he knelt beside her. “Darling—I don’t want to hurt you. . . .
_Don’t_ look miserable. . . . Don’t look at me in such despair! Marthe,
my sweet darling . . .”

Marthe shook her head. “It isn’t despair—”

“It’s—pity then?” Still kneeling by his sister, he turned to Peter,
who, lying back, had been less aware of their talk than of the contrast
in their looks: Marthe so Norman in type, Louis so Gascon and spare and
lithe; Marthe so tranquil, Louis so moody—and his every gesture, as
much as his voice and features, inflected by those moods.

Louis said, “Even Peter reproached me yesterday for not writing a
_great_ book.” He sprang up and began pacing about and looking for
cigarettes, looking for matches, and saying in the half-tone that always
sounded as if he were keeping a wedge between his teeth:—

“I don’t want to write a _great_ book. I don’t want even to think _one_
little great thought—I don’t care much about any sort of
greatness—except that I want to have great, great, _GREAT FUN_—”

He turned to make a grimace like a gargoyle, first at Peter, and then at
Marthe, and strode out into the sun.

                 *        *        *        *        *

That evening Marthe said to her brother:—

“What’s the matter with Peter?”

“With Peter?” Louis took a cigarette out of the box on the piano.

“He looks ill.”

“Do you think so?” He put the cigarette down unlit.

“He’s changed very much since two years ago.”

“In what way?”

“You don’t see it?”

Louis threw himself on the sofa.

“He—he’s not very strong, perhaps. He looks tired. He smokes too much.”
Louis sprang up again, fetched his unlit cigarette off the piano and lit
it.

“He has a bad cough.”

“Smoker’s cough.”

Marthe watched her brother walk down the room, look at himself unseeing
in the dark glass between the doors, and turn to come back again. She
said:—

“He ought to stop smoking then.”

“Perhaps.”

“You should make him.” She added, “You could. You have a great influence
over him.”

“But—” Louis checked a conventional disclaiming. He stopped pacing and
stood in front of his sister, his arms crossed, his slanting eyes black,
his underlip truculent and awry.

“He loves you, Louis.”

For the space of a heartbeat he hesitated. Then he took this as, with
her deliberate and lovely simplicity, she had given it to him.

“I know.”

She said, “He’s so very sensitive,” her heart pleading for all weakness
that needs protection.

Louis turned on his heel, went to the window, swung back, paced to the
radio, switched it on. He said:—

“Luxembourg—Brussels—Let’s try London . . .”

The Savoy Orpheans playing “My Heart Stood Still.”

Louis whistled. Stopped whistling. Danced half across the room, his arms
wide. Still dancing, rapping out his words, he said, “What am I to do
for Peter?” His eyebrows peaked. (Only Marthe, in the world, knew that
meant near tears. That, and the hard-rapping-out voice.)

She didn’t look at him. He was near the sofa. She had seen him once
pitch over into blackness on that evening at Céligny, five years ago,
when his spaniel bitch had been run over, and he’d had to shoot her. She
said:—

“Probably Peter needs only good air and rest.”

She got up as the door opened at the far end of the room and Edouard
came in. He came and kissed his wife’s hand. He turned his agreeable
handsomeness to Louis.

“What a pity you didn’t come to-day. Quantities of birds and magnificent
weather. I am sorry you didn’t come. And at luncheon, an excellent
‘picnic’ organized by Madame Tissot. . . . Your father was there . . .
and Lord Cable.”

Louis repeated, “Lord Cable?”

Edouard stated, “Yes, they both came this morning. It appears there has
been some sort of difficulty in a business matter. They have had to
dismiss a trusted agent, for disagreeable reasons.”

“What was his name?”

“I forget.”

“It wasn’t Best—Brownlow Best?”

“I believe it was.”

                 *        *        *        *        *

Peter and Louis had been to see Marthe on her return from Arès.

They took a taxi at the end of the island. Louis said, “Let’s go and see
François. It’s too early to dine.” He gave the driver an address.

“What’s François doing now?”

“Articles for _Paris-Soir_. Writing a book on Surrealisme. Painting fans
with indecent pictures on them that his _petite-amie_ sells in the
_boîtes_ of Montparnasse. I wish he weren’t so poor.”

They passed Notre-Dame and crossed the river.

Peter asked, “How’s the novel going now?”

“Quite well. It began in French but it went better in English. So I
began it again.”

“What are you going to call it?”

“_Fresco_ . . . I think . . .”

“It’s a nice tidy title. . . . When will it be done?”

But Louis said, “Look at that old woman’s silhouette against the
bridge—how black she is, and then the bloom of the dusk behind her, and
the lights along the _quais_.”

Peter saw, and thought that whenever Louis said, “Look,” there was, for
him, this changing of what he “saw” to what he “felt”—an alchemy of
plain vision to a poet’s emotion in perceiving. So, under the spell of
Louis’s “Look, Peter,” he’d first seen the gardens at Versailles; the
hands of Marie de Montcontour; the façade of Azay-le-Rideau. And the
magic of such seeing was that it remained, printed clear across his
heart; whereas what he’d seen “on his own” (or at any rate before he got
the trick of seeing with Louis’s “Look!” in his mind) he remembered
inexpertly.

Pursuing these thoughts, Peter said, as they got out of the car in the
Rue Visconti:—

“When are we going to carry out our Greek plans?”

“What Greek plans? Oh yes, I remember.”

“Going to Greece with you would be so . . . awfully jolly.”

Louis colored, hesitated for a scarcely perceptible second, and then,
taking Peter’s arm as they went up the staircase, said, “We’ll go next
summer.”

As they got to the top of the stone staircase François, in a brown
dressing gown, rushed out of his own door, like a cuckoo out of a cuckoo
clock, and shouted three times, flapping his arms, “They have accepted
my play.”

                 *        *        *        *        *

François Dubar to Marthe d’Arès:—

                                                    8 RUE VISCONTI
                                                 _19 October 1927_

    DEAR PRINCESSE:—

    It is already three days since you received me; and I have
    thought often of our conversation. Not only of its charm, which
    I too constantly remember—but of its subject.

    I hardly dare to say to you what I felt when you asked me to
    come.

    That you should choose me! And that I should have been present,
    in your thoughts, to be chosen! I still don’t believe it. For
    though you have known me little, you must perceive me as I am; a
    sort of Punchinello—a Petrouchka whose few successes and many
    failures must, each, always contain an element of ridicule.

    I am so little deserving of the confidence of a woman like you;
    _so_ unaccustomed to the elegance of heart, the grace of
    understanding, the perfect ease of a disciplined conscience,
    which is your ambience.

    Did I seem awkward? At first I felt so. Until you, so simply,
    and without any awareness of doing so, made me share your own
    serenity. (That serenity returns to me as I write; but only for
    a second, like the intense, unreal memorization of a perfume.)

    But, to our subject, you can imagine how many times I have asked
    myself if the opinion I gave you was the right one. And each
    time I have, at least, come back to the same conclusion.

    You remember that I cited you, more or less ironically, David
    and Jonathan. And you said to me that theirs was a beneficent
    devotion; whereas the very fact that Louis has had a destructive
    influence on Peter Cable proves that the whole relationship is
    harmful.

    But I said that we could not judge whether Peter Cable was being
    “destroyed” or, in fact, “re-created.” One thing is certain,
    which is that it was a need to be remade which, from the first,
    caused his emotion for Louis.

    Nine years ago I saw Peter Cable at Louis’s apartment in the Rue
    de Grenelle; a schoolboy of sixteen, shy, naïve, more instructed
    than cultivated, and with the sort of beauty, at the same time
    romantic and rare to the point of degeneracy, which would always
    charm Louis. Himself so romantic, and so mistrustful of all that
    is praised for being wholesome and normal! To such a boy Louis
    was inevitably a hero. He was four years older and as much more
    apt in questions of taste and sophistication as France is to
    England, and, as we know, he was himself at that moment in that
    phase of nervous and calculated æstheticism that was his
    reaction after the War. Therefore he was, for young Cable,
    Culture, Knowledge—the art of life itself—And over and above
    that, Louis had then, as he has now, his famous “charm.” As for
    Louis, he was attracted not only by the boy’s beauty and
    devotion, but certainly by quite another thing; that is—by his
    need!

    There is, in Louis,—you yourself know it, hidden in his
    fantastic and conflicting nature,—a quality of tenderness; a
    need to protect, to love, to give happiness, which is profound
    and instinctive and, almost, feminine! I remember well, during
    December in 1918 when I was very ill with grippe and I was in
    the studio I had in the Montmartre, and Louis came to see me.
    When he realized that he could neither leave me nor find a nurse
    for me, he installed himself in the place and looked after me
    there for a week. I have never known such care. I don’t suppose
    he ever told you about it. . . . And a curious thing is that
    when I was better he said to me that he felt out of work, and
    lost; and that he had found the nursing itself so “satisfying.”
    . . . Then, I remember, he said, “Let’s go out and get drunk”
    . . . which we did.

    I repeat to you, therefore, that I am sure that if Louis has led
    him out of the English world that his family imagined suitable
    for him it was because that is what Peter wanted. And the more I
    think of it, the more I am convinced that their friendship was
    inevitable; and for my part, I believe that all relations which
    are based upon the exchange of love and intelligence are to be
    respected. For such relations are essentially civilized. More
    than that—I believe that great love, intense devotion, the
    mutual passion of complex and sensitive human beings, will
    create perhaps the only memorial of our civilization. And I
    imagine that in the end, when our world has been choked by its
    own greed, blinded by its own stupidity, and, finally, destroyed
    by its own Science; when there is no language left in which to
    speak the words of the poets; no hearing for music; no eyes to
    weep for destroyed beauty, there will remain (perhaps,
    Princesse), in a modest corner of eternity, a little Temple, of
    exquisite, of invisible, design built to commemorate the amorous
    grandeurs of the human race. And over the invisible portals of
    this intangible architecture will be written, without words,
    THEY LOVED ONE ANOTHER.

    . . . What foolishness! I began this letter with the intention
    of telling you, quite simply, that I am more than ever sure that
    Lord Cable’s idea that _you_ should persuade Louis “to see
    rather less of Peter” is impossible. It is also an idea that
    only an Englishman could conceive. For it is very English to
    wish to forbid what seems “unsatisfactory” without admitting its
    existence. Lord Cable, who “dislikes scenes,” finds it
    convenient to imagine that you, being a woman, will be able to
    solve the problem without recognizing it.

    In any case I hope that you will not let yourself be involved in
    all this. For there is a something in the letter of Lord Cable
    that you showed me which gives me a feeling that it is not only
    his fears for his son which actuate him—but some other fear,
    more recent and more precise.

    The more I have thought of this, the more I am sure about it.
    For, after all, Peter has been in the _Galère_ since that
    company of “extraverted” neurotics began! That is to say, five
    or six years ago. Then why does Lord Cable suddenly write this
    letter, and, on top of that, talk of coming to Paris?

    For myself, I ought to be grateful to any matter which renders
    me, even for half an hour, and in a page or two of writing, your
    “confederate.”

    Meanwhile, believe me, my dear Princesse,

             Yours devotedly,
                 FRANÇOIS DUBAR

When the divorce was over, Charmian came back from Reno to New York.
There she found three letters at the Eighth Street apartment (Louis had
insisted on renting these rooms six months in advance for her so that
she would be sure of a place of her own when she returned).

One letter was from Frany, advising her not to come back to England for
a time, if possible, as her mother was already “at loggerheads with
Peter because he was sharing an apartment in Paris with a Baron Zatec
about whom she has heard no good.” And, Frany added, “the atmosphere of
storm at Moon’s Green is already sufficiently severe.”

Another letter was from Louis, written from Céligny, giving her an
introduction to Aurelia Brent, the actress, who was a friend of his and
to whom he had suggested that Charmian might be a good secretary. He
told her that Peter was now sharing an apartment on the Quai de Conti
with Nicky Zatec; that Marthe had just had another baby, also a girl;
that everyone talked of the impending conference at Locarno; and that he
and his father had just spent two hours disputing Briand’s policy.

He added that “Miss Prince of the _Evening Telegram_” seemed to have
kept faith, as not a word of the breakfast drama or the duel seemed to
have reached anyone, but that he and Bianca had told Peter to make him
laugh.

The third letter was a note from Jimmy Lothair, in his big scrawling
backward-sloping writing, saying that he’d called up her apartment
several times and would she let him know when she returned.

Charmian wrote to Aurelia Brent. And, when she’d been too long alone in
the apartment (feeling so much less alive than its furniture, which
seemed to have gone on living a placid staring dusty life without her),
she called up Jimmy.

His voice was warm and welcoming. He came round at once to see her,
calling her “darling” and bringing her Parma violets, and standing about
the room in his familiar high-spirited swaggering attitudes. And when
he’d got her to admit that she’d been too depressed to eat all day, he
took her to the Blue Ribbon and made her eat _Wiener Schnitzel_ and
drink beer with him. And when she told him about Louis’s letter and
Aurelia Brent he said he’d take her round himself to see Aurelia, who
was one of his oldest pals.

He took her after his show that evening.

And Aurelia took on Charmian at once.

Charmian liked Aurelia Brent increasingly as she knew her. Once or twice
in the ensuing months she reflected that Bianca and Peter would have
described her as “rather hand-thrown.” She wore jade earrings in the
morning, and easily lapsed into producing _Eagerheart_ and _Everyman_.
But on the whole her manager (who was her husband) kept her talent in
the commercial theatre.

                 *        *        *        *        *

Brownlow Best came out of the offices of _Le Soir_ and took a taxi to
the Gare de l’Est to catch the twelve o’clock for Berlin.

Within two hours the press on both sides of the Atlantic was licking its
lips; within six hours the prying, lecherous-minded public that feeds,
day after day, on teasing headlines and tastily captioned paragraphs,
being at this moment starved of news (since for the last weeks no
demimondaine had revealed her love life; no female moron had been
violated; no child had been murdered)—the great public of America, of
England, of France, were avid enough for a scandal that had so much in
it—Opium, Immorality, Smartness, Money—to excite their appetite.

New York got its first lick in the evening papers—read: “Famous Author
Frenchman and English Aristocrat’s Son Drug Addicts,” while the London
morning papers came out at two o’clock with “Drug Scandal. Peer’s Son
and Famous French Novelist Discovered in Opium Den.”

    On the authority of an informant whom the French police have
    reason to trust, but whose name is being kept secret for certain
    political reasons, it was stated yesterday that Louis Scheurer,
    son of the M. Philippe Scheurer of Scheurer & Cie, and the Hon.
    Peter Cable, son of Baron Cable, director of Cable-Bensley, were
    involved eighteen months ago in a raid made by the Marseilles
    Police on the _Hôtel des Pins_, a small hotel situated on an
    island off the Côte d’Azur between Bandol and Tamaris.

    . . . According to the witness, he was staying in the hotel,
    having just arrived there, was uncertain of the different
    floors, and mistaking his floor tried the door of a room which
    he believed was his own. It was immediately opened from inside
    and he was admitted, as his identity was apparently mistaken,
    and found himself in a semi-darkness which he describes as
    “gradually revealing to him a scene of orgy impossible for him
    to describe.”

Next day “Fresh Scheurer-Cable Revelations” headlines. “Well-known
Pianist reveals Scheurer in Scandalous Scene with ex-wife in New York
apartment. Chivalry prevented Exposure. Frenchman Scheurer in Bed with
Wife and Another Woman, watched by Third Woman fully dressed. Duel
challenge.”

    Henry Kramer, Pianist, interviewed yesterday at the Hotel George
    V where he is living with his present wife, formerly Francine
    Knopf of Chicago, Ill., states that a year and a half ago, on
    returning from a highly successful Concert Tour, he entered his
    apartment after a night journey from Buffalo, and went up to his
    wife’s bedroom intending to inform her of his return. He opened
    the door of her room to discover his wife, who is the sister of
    the Hon. Peter Cable, yesterday revealed in Drug Scandal, lying
    in bed with Scheurer and another woman whose identity has not
    yet been revealed. All of them were naked, and a third woman,
    fully clothed and smoking a cigarette, was with them. Kramer,
    outraged, ordered Scheurer to quit, but the Frenchman challenged
    Kramer to a duel, which he accepted, but then left the United
    States to avoid breaking the law. Kramer, who then divorced his
    wife, states that it was well known that Scheurer had to do with
    certain powerful interests of the underworld who were associated
    with him in promoting the drug traffic as yesterday’s revelation
    seemed to confirm.

Philippe Scheurer received Carteret in a small salon overlooking the
gardens of the Avenue Foch.

“I hope you had a good journey.”

“Thanks. Yes. I got a special plane.”

“Excellent. There is no time to be lost. You have read the morning
papers?”

Carteret sat heavily on the gilt and brocade chair. “I have. Nothing in
the _Times_, of course, or the _Post_ or _Telegraph_. I saw to that at
once. But the other papers . . .”

Philippe Scheurer, pacing evenly, but not rapidly, up and down the
Aubusson carpet, said, “You foresaw something like this. I remember you
said in September at the Tissots’ that Best would be dangerous.”

Carteret said, “D’you mind if I smoke a pipe?”

“But of course.”

“. . . From what he said in that last interview,” Carteret went on, “I
had an impression there’d be some sort of blackmail. Couldn’t tell what,
of course. But he made it clear he had something up his sleeve.”

“He didn’t say then that he knew anything?”

“No. But I’d—er—had a slight—warning of that sort of thing from him
several years ago.”

“But you had no idea what he would say?”

“Any _idea_! I should say not. Never dreamt of such a thing. Don’t know
how to believe the thing now . . . if it’s even true.”

Philippe Scheurer, small, overelegant, subtle,—even obscurely
amused,—stopped pacing and stood still, regarding the Englishman. He
said softly:—

“But of course it’s true!”

Carteret’s blue angry gaze lifted, stared, harassed, through the smoke
of his pipe.

“Never supposed such a thing possible in a son of mine. I knew Peter was
gallivanting round a bit, and—er—not exactly in the company I’d have
chosen for him. . . . Always a bit of an enigma to us, y’ know. But
_this_! . . . Drugs . . . opium. And I don’t know what else.”

“But those things exist, my friend.”

“—Well, if they do, I don’t want to think about ’em.”

“But the question at the moment, my dear Cable, is one of an extremely
unpleasant scandal. The more complicated since it may at any moment
involve both our sons in various other—stories.”

Carteret broke out, his teeth on his pipestem, “I’ve sent a message to
Peter that he need never set foot in my house again.”

Philippe Scheurer sat down.

“That does not seem to me . . . altogether prudent.” He glanced down at
his nails, examining each hand in turn, and went on: “Allow me to
explain to you, my friend, what seems to me, after having reflected
well, the best course to pursue. . . . To forbid your son your house is
to avow to the world that you believe in his guilt. (That, in passing.)
But what I have to suggest is this. As for Best—the matter is simple.
He is to be bought. That is his end. For Kramer, who came to see me
here, at my request, two hours ago, the same is true. He can be paid and
dismissed from the scene, for a comparatively small sum.”

“But for the publicity itself, and the police, the matter is more
complicated . . .”

Carteret got up. “. . . Now the _Law_’s got hold of the matter.”

“Not so fast. The Law, here, as everywhere, is not altogether
disconnected from politics. . . . I have a certain influence. The
present _Préfet de Police_ happens to be obliged to me in connection
with his appointment.”

Carteret stood, taking in Scheurer’s words less quickly than they were
spoken. “When his comprehension had caught up he said:—

“. . . And the Press? The publicity? That’s gone too far now . . .?”

Scheurer folded his arms. “Even with the Press, there are means.” He
added, speaking slowly, “I can think of no group of papers, either here,
or in England, or in the United States, that would not be . . . sorry to
be deprived of the advertising of, for instance, the Bensley Soap and
Toilet Products . . . the Cable Motors . . .? And here there is also a
matter of shares. Tissot and I have, as you know, a considerable capital
distributed in various newspaper groups.”

After a moment Carteret said: “But the thing’s gone so far, my dear
fellow. You can’t just _drop_ a thing like this! An appalling scandal
like this!!! I dunno about—er—Louis, but as far as Peter’s concerned,
his whole future is _ruined_. No decent man or woman’s ever going to
speak to him again. And, by God, I’ve written to tell him so. He’ll be
an outcast! There isn’t a single Club in London that’ll have him. Every
decent house’ll be shut to him. He’ll be an _outcast_ and . . . a
_leper_!”

“_Tiens?_” said Philippe Scheurer.

                 *        *        *        *        *

The Press by one means and another was gagged. Kramer was easily stifled
with a check and an intimation that certain records of his own habits
and history existed and could, if necessary, be used against him.

But incidental echoes of the scandal lingered, haunted talk, diverted
dinner tables, their eventual effect being Peter’s virtual banishment
from England and the success, out of all proportion to its “popular”
qualities, of Louis’s book, _Fresco_.

The book was published in France within six weeks of the scandal, and
called _Fresques_, and in England and America (under the title of
_Fresco_) three months after. The publishers made no direct references.
But they freshened up Louis’s notoriety by such phrases as “well-known
in Bohemian circles of Paris and New York.” In Paris the critics
referred to him as Leader of a “New Decadence” in the hope that he would
ask them to luncheon at his new apartment in the Rue de Rivoli
(decorated by Bengy and photographed in _Vogue_, in _Harper’s Bazaar_).

In London they were either archly insinuating (“Mr. Scheurer has given
us exactly the book we should expect” . . . “certain sensational
chapters” . . . “a daring wit”) or ponderously and angrily they
condemned the book as “a record of post-War frivolity and vice in every
capital”; “a young Frenchman whose former two novels have already placed
him as one of those dilettanti who consider novel-writing a change from
a round of night clubs and gaming tables.” In New York the “blurbs”
about it were: “Flaming Youth again” . . . “Study of passion, vice,
despair, by Louis Scheurer.”

Anyway the book sold fifty thousand copies in France in six months. By
July it had sold twenty-five thousand copies in England. And on the same
date eighty thousand copies in America. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer bought the
film rights. Aurelia Brent cabled to Louis her desire that the book
should be dramatized and she should play “Suzanne.”

In this riot of more or less fortuitous success and publicity it was
Marie de Montcontour who remarked that the book was well constructed;
Nicky Zatec who said it was written with an admirable conciseness of
style; and Frany who wrote to Louis that “she had been amused to see his
photograph in the _Daily Bulletin_, but she thought it was ‘a good book
all the same.’”

                 *        *        *        *        *

They had an aromatic and delicious dinner under the vine arbor, the
fountain bubbling and splashing beside them and the sky the color of
marigolds. A Georgian peasant, imported by the _hôtelier_, waited on
them, a fresh white kerchief tied over her head. She still served David
first.

They drank a bottle of Beaune, and a Grand Marnier each with their
coffee. Then they walked about the garden in the suddenly cool and dusk
air, the sky like grape bloom now, with curled golden feathers trailed
above the horizon of black mountains.

They picked some more figs and ate them. The figs were still warm from
the day. When night came, between the eating of one fig and another,
they lowered their voices. They could hear the fountain in the
courtyard, and the chink of Madame and the Georgian washing up behind
the lit-up window.

David went in to fetch some cigarettes; and Bianca felt suddenly alone
in this huge and too lovely night.

She was glad that David was coming back and that she was going to sleep
with him. When she saw the glow of his cigarette coming, and then heard
his steps she said, “Darling”—holding out her hand in the dark. And
when he was close and put his arm round her she said, “Perhaps people
want each other, more than anything, for comfort against space and
endlessness.”

But he didn’t answer this, partly because he didn’t understand what she
meant, and partly because he wanted her and was wondering if she would
come to bed yet (and whether Madame would notice if they went up so
early).

But when he’d kissed her he threw away his cigarette and said, “Darling,
I want you so much.” She didn’t answer at all, but he could feel her
trembling and heard her quick breathing. He put his arm round her and
she came back with him into the house.

On the wooden stairs they met Madame and David said quickly:—

“_Madame est un peu fatiguée après sa voyage._”

Madame Foyot burst out in staccato understanding of madame’s fatigue,
and went on downstairs, calling back her wish that they would sleep
well.

When they got into Bianca’s room she laughed and said, “It’s _‘le’
voyage_, darling.” He said, “I don’t care _which_ it is.” He took her
hand and kissed it; and she said, “Go to your room, my sweet.” He went,
but with a worried look, not knowing whether she meant him to come back.

But when he came back to her door, and knocked, and came in, rather
diffidently, she was in a ruffly pale blue dressing gown and her hair
pushed back behind a riband, and looked very white and lovelier than
he’d ever seen her.

She went to the window and looked out. But with her head turned away
from him she held out her hand; and he heard her say, “Darling, you do
look so absurdly sweet!”

                 *        *        *        *        *

When they were still awake but drowsy, she said, “That was heavenly,
darling.” His arm shifted under her shoulder and he kissed her mouth
again. He said, “Are you warm enough, darling? Have you got any of the
blanket?”

“Yes, thank you. Have you?”

“Yes, thank you.”

“What are you smiling at, David?”

“I wasn’t smiling. I was thinking what a lovely shape you are.”

“So are you.”

“And your skin feels like a flower.”

“Oh, David, you are sweet. . . . And I love you, in lots of ways. . . .”

The heavenly sleepiness got thicker. She got her forehead pressed
against his cheek. She muttered, “What a peculiar but good arrangement
love-making is.”

“Mm . . .” He was even sleepier.

She sighed the word “darling” instead of saying good-night.

                 *        *        *        *        *

Peter to Bianca (forwarded to her at Buis-les-Baronnies from Ebony):—

                                                            ATHENS
                                                  _Sept. 17, 1928_

    MY DEAR BIANCA,—

    Your letter consulting me about my godson’s future just missed
    me in Taormina and has reached me here.

    I suppose you realized that it would be somewhat of a red rag to
    me or you wouldn’t have started off in that defiant manner by
    saying that you were going to ask my opinion, but that you
    weren’t likely to take it. Which means that you know what I,
    personally, think about the value of Public Schools. But that
    you don’t want me to influence Toby against them. Actually, you
    know, I wouldn’t dream of it. On the other hand you are going to
    get my advice, because I can’t resist giving it you. Firstly, I
    do agree that anything is better than cranky and progressive
    schools, and that coeducation is frouzy. Also, I agree about the
    Elizabethans being right to be _men_ at sixteen. But I utterly
    disagree with your perfect _non sequitur_; which is that Public
    Schools are at least an “evil.” And you make me _rage_ when you
    say that, after all, there is “something rather sane” about the
    Public School type.

    It is a curious thing—this belief in the Public School type. It
    appears to be a fetish that the middle-class English have
    imposed on their essentially middle-class Empire. And it is,
    naturally, a belief dear to those timid yet arrogant androgynes,
    the Public School Masters.

    In their simple assumption that it is the Public School System
    that has made England a remarkable country, they do not pause to
    consider that English culture has become steadily less
    remarkable since that “system” began to evolve, a hundred years
    ago. The decline of taste, together with any real respect for
    learning, coincided with the rise of Public Schools. Burke
    foretold their epoch.

    In fact, not a single Englishman who has in any real sense made
    England’s real greatness has been of “the Public School type.”
    Take them at random—Shakespeare, Johnson, Byron, Chaucer,
    Marlowe, Donne, Shelley, Blake; take Bacon, or Charles Fox, or
    Swift; or any first-rate painter or architect, Wren or Reynolds,
    Nash or Gainsborough—which of that magnificent company, of
    rakes and drunks and homosexuals, can one imagine “playing
    up—playing up and playing the game”!!! thinking “only of the
    team,” “keeping a straight bat”? Who’d have written the
    _Sonnets_ if Shakespeare had had a cold bath and gone out for a
    brisk walk whenever he found himself thinking about sex?

    God, how I hate English Public Schools and what they “stand
    for.”

    For, even on their ground, they’re indefensible. Their “ground”
    is that they don’t care about learning or taste so much as
    turning out quality (you see I’ve stopped carping here and am
    going to defeat you by being _just_). What they claim is that
    they turn out courage, integrity, an ability to hold on in
    difficulties and to be cool and reliable in a crisis.

    But my contention is that all these are _English qualities_.
    They aren’t got at school, but grow in any class, in some
    awfully odd way, out of our soil and solid food and I don’t know
    what else. . . . Louis says both our officers _and_ men had it
    in the War. And that the way that the English troops took the
    1918 retreat was so grand and grim and cool as to be absolutely
    unbelievable. But it wasn’t just Public School types! It was
    Tommies and N.C.O.’s and officers who’d never had to take on any
    responsibility in their lives! Louis says that it’s English
    humor too, when you find yourself in the hottest bit of hell, to
    put up a placard with “Piccadilly Circus” on it.

    Well, this is somewhat of a tirade! But you must forgive me on
    the grounds that I’m Toby’s godfather; and it makes me sorry to
    think of such a jolly little boy being put into one of those
    sanctimonious sausage machines! I repeat, if you must send him
    to Public School, then send him to Eton, which at least is not a
    school, but a club, where you can indulge in first-rate learning
    or first-rate idling, as you like. It even protected me from
    Father, and his attempts to make me into an English
    Gentleman. . . . He tells me frequently that his “whole mistake”
    was in not sending me to Harrow. I suspect that he thinks that
    was the real cause of the whole disaster,—and my “public
    disgrace”!!!—last spring.

    When shall I see _you_? We leave here on Monday and return,
    coming slowly up the Adriatic coast; then Venice, where François
    joins us. After that there’s going to be a battle!—as Louis
    wants to do a Baroque Tour ending up in Würzburg with the
    Tiepolos, and François has planned a _gothique_ travel, working
    northwest from Venice, through Germany, and, I believe, ending
    up in York Minster!!! I shall be torn between the two, wanting
    to see it all; and not to hurt either of their feelings. Louis
    has begun already here, on the steps of the Parthenon, what our
    Nannie used to call “going on nohow” about Gothic. He says it’s
    the “architecture of bigotry”; that he prefers the Invalides to
    Notre-Dame and Selfridge’s to Westminster Abbey; so you see what
    kind of tussle I shall have. Incidentally, he wants to go on to
    Berlin and meet Stresemann. He thinks Germany has the only
    enlightened government in Europe and has an article in his head
    on Germany and why the Dawes Plan won’t work. His attitude about
    political and economic questions is curious. He keeps up a pose
    that they don’t interest him. But he’ll cross the map to sniff
    at a conference, or sit up all night to get an article written
    (like those three on “After Locarno” for Gringore that I
    translated afterwards for syndication in America). He says that
    isn’t interest in _la politique_ but an attempt to help on the
    hopeless _Kampf gegen der Dummheit_. I must say I am as
    uncertain as Louis himself that that’s any use. He said last
    night at dinner that the one certain thing about the human race
    is that its stupidity always gets the better of its cleverness.
    This depressed me horribly; or else I was in a depressed state
    already (sight-seeing in this heat is fairly tiring). But Louis
    got gay later and left me about ten and went off into the
    picturesque slums of the town, and came in about four A.M.
    rather tight, covered with flea bites, and singing what he swore
    was a Greek song.

    He has just come in. He says he kisses your hands very
    respectfully.

    Love to Toby

             Yours, PETER

There was a postscript in Louis’s writing:—

    We saw your friend Madame St. Laurent in Taormina. She said she
    had seen you at the opera in July with orchids round your
    forehead instead of hair! You must have looked like a Medusa!
    But _orchids_! Do you remember what you said to me years ago
    about “orchids” and “rippling one’s hips”?

She came in, followed by David Blyth. She came and took his hand. She
said, indifferently, her lips smiling:—

“Don’t we kiss each other?”

“I hope so.”

He kissed her on both cheeks; and saw David Blyth take a swift pose of
complaisance. She said, “How are you, Louis darling? After the Greek
adventure? And the Baroque Tour?”

He replied with a series of slick comments, proffering cigarettes, a
chair, whiskey and soda.

“How are you, David? And you, of course, Bianca? When did you come to
Paris?”

“Two days ago.”

“How’s Toby?”

“He’s still at his private school.” (Her words came out just too quickly
and easily.)

“How are the Cables?”

She said, “They were shocked by _Fresco_.”

David Blyth began saying, “What are you writing now?”—but Louis managed
to stop him by, “Is that too weak? Let me add some more whiskey! Where
have you come from, David?”

“From Provence.”

(They’ve been in Provence together.)

“Painting?”

“Yes.”

(How did she like that? Interesting how she’s slightly changed. Paler,
gayer; less of a “lady”; more character.)

“Very pretty, Provence. Isn’t it? Very ‘pictural.’ Have you ever been to
Provence, Bianca?”

“_Never._ I long to go.”

“You should. The land is bone-white and the rivers ice-green . . .
aren’t they, David? Or am I wrong?”

“I should call it a very good description,” said David.

“The Poster-Eye,” said Bianca.

(Was her voice a little sharp? How good would she and David be
together?)

“When you’ve _been_ there, Bianca darling, you’ll see I’m right.”

He caught her look. (Was there a flicker of amusement?)

“It’s essentially a painter’s country,” said David. “In many ways it
reminds me of Spain.”

“Did that annoy you? I don’t like a place to remind me of another place.
I don’t like one summer to remind me of another summer.”

“Or one love of another?” said Bianca.

“You take the words out of my mouth.”

David said, “Naturally, I don’t like one place to be _exactly_ like
another, but—”

“Do you do portraits?”

Bianca said, “He doesn’t do very good portraits. Is Peter still in
Paris?”

“Yes. . . . He’s lunching with Marthe. She’s just come back from Arès.”

“How is he?”

Louis hesitated. “I think he found the last part of the journey rather
tiring. Marthe, the most maternal of women, insists that he must have a
tonic.”

Bianca said, “Well, tell him that I shall be at Ebony all the autumn. If
he wants to see me . . . I’m leaving by the five o’clock.”

Louis noticed that, like all people unused to deceiving, Bianca said too
much.

When she’d gone he wondered why she didn’t marry David.

                 *        *        *        *        *

Later, when Bianca was having luncheon at Fouguet’s with David, he
said:—

“How clever and amusing Louis Scheurer is!”

“He produces himself very well,” said Bianca. She was irritated because
Louis had made her feel that David was dull. And ashamed of herself for
feeling this, and angry with David; and at the same time sentimental
about David because she felt critical. She put down her knife and
touched his hand. As soon as she did this, she remembered how sweet and
comforting it was making love with him. And this remembering made her
forget that he was dull.

                 *        *        *        *        *

François went to New York in October 1928, for the production of
_Vocation_. Louis went with him, partly to escape the _Galère_ in Paris,
who were getting on his nerves. Partly because staying anywhere for long
got on his nerves. Also, because Marthe spoke to him again about Peter’s
health and made him feel miserable and afraid.

He persuaded himself that if Peter came with him and François to New
York he would then take him on to the coast, or to Florida for the
winter. By the time they all three sailed, he’d made himself believe
that they were only to be in New York “a few weeks” before going on to
California to join Charmian and Jimmy Lothair at Hollywood: although he
knew that he meant to stay until January. Actually he didn’t know _why_
he meant to stay until January. But he had said so once, to François,
and the notion had become a fixed purpose. He was always making
decisions out of chance impulse so as to feel that his life had some
direction. What mattered to him was to feel rushed, without working, and
to feel emotional without allowing himself any real feeling. He could
only do this by what François called “non-stop living.”

                 *        *        *        *        *

Peter dreaded every day in New York as a nervous child dreads an express
train coming through a station.

Its noise shattered him. Its pace terrified him. Its relentlessness
appalled him. Its clanging vitality that so excited and stimulated
Louis, and made François curious, was like a nightmare round him. He
felt as if he had been thrown out of civilization into a dungeon, and
though he knew that this horror of the place was chiefly a vibration of
his own nerves he couldn’t control it. So that he would spend hours
alone in their hotel suite when François and Louis were out, or at the
theatre, trying to make up his mind to go out and face the streets, and
then fail to go. He slept badly at night, or when he slept, exhausted,
he stirred and talked in his sleep. And once he came into Louis’s room
and woke him saying that his dreams were making him go mad. And Louis,
touched and troubled, talked to him, and calmed him as if he’d been a
child, inwardly determining to take him, next day, to the country.

But they stayed in New York.

                 *        *        *        *        *

By January he couldn’t bear it any longer. Even with Louis there. And he
knew now that Louis wouldn’t leave. For Louis was in one of his secret,
hostile, brutal states, utterly absorbed in “getting someone,” as if
“they” were the legitimate prey of his sharp, and delighted, hunger.

Peter knew this. And, as always, tried not to make his knowledge real by
his imagination.

One day when Louis was with him (François had been badgered into going
to a public luncheon to speak about the success of his own play) Peter
said that he was going back to Paris.

Louis was surprised.

“Why?”

Peter had been lying on one of the yellow hotel divans. Suddenly he sat
up and began explaining his hatred of New York, his horror of everything
it stood for.

He said it wasn’t even grand or impressive, “just section after section
of dead cliff full of eyes.”

He said, “It’s like a mausoleum built over the spirit of civilization.
Inside it a Canaletto here, a Hepplewhite chair there, an uncut edition
of Montaigne, show you that once upon a time there was something which
was taste—culture—whatever you like to call it. Cut a section through
one of those colossal chunks of cement, maggot-ridden with ‘beings,’ and
you come on an Ingres—in a maggot’s bathroom! A Gobelin tapestry, a
mirror, a piece of sculpture of ravishing workmanship—which remind you
that there was a time when people had a sense of Beauty as violent as
their present sense of _success_!”

Louis watched him as he talked. He didn’t really take in what he said,
preoccupied by a curious impression that, although Peter was in full
harsh sunlight from the window, he seemed to be standing in shadow.

But the effect was so momentary that Louis forgot it, saying:—

“But why don’t you go to the country, or to Florida, or Bermuda for a
week or so; and then I’ll come and join you.”

Peter looked at him. Then turned away to pick up a paper, saying
curtly:—

“You know you won’t.”

“Why shouldn’t I?”

Peter stared unseeing at the headlines. He said:—

“I think I want to go back to France . . . anyway.”

“But Peter, my dear, then I’ll come too.”

Peter started. “There’s the telephone. I expect it’s for you.” Louis
went through to the bedroom.

When he came back from a long conversation he was preoccupied and seemed
to have forgotten what they had been talking about.

                 *        *        *        *        *

Marthe d’Arès to Bianca Selwyn:—

                                                 17 QUAI D’ORLÉANS
                                                _January 13, 1929_


    MY DEAR BIANCA: A week ago I heard that Peter Cable had returned
    from New York, where he went in November with Louis and François
    Dubar, and that he was at the apartment of a Baron Zatec in the
    Quai de Conti. I telephoned and heard that he was ill. I went
    there to visit him and found him in a condition which so
    frightened me that I immediately sent for our doctor to come and
    see him.

    Forgive me, since I must tell you the truth, and ask for your
    help.

    The doctor saw Peter and then came straight to see me. Briefly,
    he says that Peter must go to Davos immediately. That that is
    his only hope. He says that although Peter denies it, he has
    been taking opium again, and that the effects of that, and a
    neurotic condition, and lack of food and sleep, must have
    affected his lungs, already some time ago. I spare you any more
    details. What remains is that he is very ill. That his parents,
    since the scandal of two years ago, refuse to see him, and he
    will not write to them. That his sister is in California, and he
    will not allow me to inform her, and Louis, that he must go to
    Davos. (Even though he himself has no idea how ill he is.)

    I myself shall go with him there, to-morrow, and I can stay for
    a few days. Then I must return here. The doctor says that if
    anyone he is fond of can be with him that will help him
    psychologically, and therefore physically. Is it possible for
    you to go?

             MARTHE D’ARÈS

Telegram from Bianca Selwyn to Marthe d’Arès:—

    LEAVING FOR DAVOS MONDAY PLEASE TELEGRAPH THE ADDRESS BIANCA

The nurse got up when she came in. The lamp in the far corner of the
room was shaded. A dark cloth scarf had been thrown over it. He was
asleep.

The nurse went out. Bianca sat down on her chair by the open windows,
and looked out at the snow mountains and valleys under the moon.

She tried only to think that Peter was sleeping peacefully and getting
well. And that the shining mountains were lovely.

But she felt in her heart that he wasn’t getting well. And the mountains
made her more afraid.

Peter woke up, saying, “Louis! Louis! . . .”

He sat straight up—“_Louis!_” Then his dark bright stare woke; and he
saw Bianca. He shivered and clutched his arms round his knees to keep
himself sitting up. And then, uncertainly, he smiled at her.

“Oh! You? . . . Bianca?”

She went to him: relieved that the lamp was in the corner behind her, so
that he couldn’t see her face. She said:—

“Lie back, Peter darling.”

He lay back. He let her arrange the sheets. He let her give him water,
sip by sip. He said, hardly using his voice:—

“Wipe my forehead, Bianca. It’s hot.”

He shut his eyes; and then opened them wide and dark again.

“Where’s Charmian?”

“She’s in Hollywood—with Jimmy.”

“Of course—” Now he kept his glance on her face tenderly, as though she
pleased him, but vaguely too, as if he felt that somewhere in the mists
of his exhaustion there was something to be puzzled about.

She got a chair and brought it close to the bed. She saw that he liked
that. But he knew she didn’t want him to speak. He shut his eyes.

Then, speaking again without his voice, he said, “I was dreaming—”

A nurse looked round the white screen. Her lips made “He’s asleep?”

Bianca nodded.

For the nurse, and for her too, he slept: and his inner wakefulness, the
quiver of his nostrils, the deeper flush of his skin, the heart-breaking
quiver of his mouth, were for his dream. . . .

                 *        *        *        *        *

He was better. The last X-ray was encouraging, the doctors said. He lay
out on the balcony in the sun and they talked and laughed, and played
bezique and mah jongg, and Bianca read to him when he was tired.

She read their schoolroom favorite stones; Kipling mostly—“The Maltese
Cat” and the _Jungle Books_. Frany had sent these books from Moon’s
Green. They read “They,” too, and “The Brushwood Boy,” though these two
stories always choked them with tears. Peter said, “Of course Kipling’s
just stuffed with complexes.” Bianca said, “Their complexes are what
make people interesting. Why take out all your psychological innards to
make a surrealiste museum for an expensive analyst?” And “All great or
creative people must have had complexes which probably make a good rich
poison in your system, and it’s worked off in art or activity.” Peter
said he supposed Louis had a good many. Bianca said, “Almost too many,”
and went back to reading the “King’s Ankus.”

That night she wrote to Marthe and to Frany telling them that the
doctors were more hopeful; and that Peter himself was in better spirits.

Ten days later, as she came across the terrace in the morning from the
visitor’s _annexe_, one of the doctors came out and said he wanted to
speak with her for a few minutes. He was a big man in a white coat, and
had a beard and _pince-nez_. He said, “I am afraid your cousin is not so
well this morning.”

She looked at the _pince-nez_. Their surface reflected, in miniature, an
angle of the terrace with its balustrade and the mimosa tree. “Last
night, or rather this morning, at one o’clock, he had a hemorrhage.”

He went on speaking for a few minutes, his sentences pressing with soft
sickening power on her comprehension, though her eyes went on seeing the
mimosa in his _pince-nez_ and her face and bare arms felt the marvelous
chill sparkle of the morning light.

When she got to Peter’s room the nurse said, “He’s asleep, madame. . . .
If only we can get him to sleep.”. . . Bianca saw him not moving, his
face turned away. The nurse came out into the corridor and said, “He has
something on his mind. He kept talking last night, saying he must see
someone called Louis. . . . Perhaps it’s his brother? It is terribly on
his mind.”

Bianca said, “It isn’t his brother. But it’s someone he loves very
much.”

“Could he come?”

Bianca hesitated. (Louis here!—Louis, whose influence had made this
whole unbelievable thing possible.) The nurse added:—

“I think he should come, madame, if it’s possible.”

Bianca said, “Where can I telephone?”

“The first floor, on the right, by the _ascenseur_.”

                 *        *        *        *        *

The party went on so late in Louis’s suite that Aurelia, who had been in
a corner earnest in deep talk with François, getting up and going to the
window, exclaimed:—

“I can feel the _dawn_ coming, darlings!”

François, released, hurried over to Gloria, whom he’d been waiting to
talk to all the evening, to tell her what a wonderful performance she’d
given, and that he believed the success of his evening had been due to
her playing the nun’s little sister.

She greeted him with, “Hello, Francy,” and kissed him and made room for
him on the side of her that hadn’t got Eddie there.

Aurelia, at the window, beckoned Louis to look out.

Louis was drunk enough not to mind her putting her arm round him.
(Ordinarily, he disliked her proximity, for she smelled like that
overrated English invention, smoked haddock cooked in milk.)

He agreed, “Darling, isn’t it wonderful?” though he had seen this view
of New York at night so many times that he couldn’t feel it any more.

“Makes one feel sort of small, doesn’t it?” she said.

He agreed, staring amiably down over tracks of stars. And she went on
saying some more about needing to have “extensive panoramas” and then
beginning to talk again about the play . . . the audience . . . critics
at supper . . . what John Anderson had said to her. . . . While someone
in the room behind them—it was Allister—was playing a ukulele and
singing:—

           “I’ll take her back if she wants to come back,
           That girl that was stolen from me. . . .”

“. . . There ought to be little white streaks of dawn any minute now!”
Aurelia said.

                  “She’s just a child,
                  Didn’t mean to be wild
                  Fell for someone’s flatteree-e.”

“. . . Another drink?” said Gloria’s voice. . . . “Bessie was there in a
box . . .” said Allister . . . “plastered,” he said, “by the time she
got to see me.”. . . “Mavis and Tommy sent that jasmin and lily
basket.”. . . “Sweet old George cabling all the way from Melbourne.”

“. . . I’m going out on the balcony,” said Aurelia . . . “air in my
lungs . . .”

“No,” said Louis, “don’t do that, dear . . . the temperature is only
twenty-four. . . . You’ll get cold, dear. . . . Besides, you might fall
over and that always gives a hotel such a bad name . . . ‘Famous actress
falling thirty stories.’ . . . One should always try to avoid disaster.
Disaster is such bad taste . . . so extreme . . .”

Gloria said, “For heaven’s sake answer that darned telephone, Eddie.”

“_Hello?_ . . . Hello? Hello?” said Eddie.

“Ah!” Aurelia breathed, “ah, my _dearrr_ . . . look at that sky now!”

“Yes?” said Eddie. . . . “Yes! . . . Oh yes, . . . Louis?”

“Yes.”

“Thisiss for you . . . A call for you . . . Louis.”

DAVOS OPERATOR. _Zurich? Zurich? Service américain, s’il vous plaît._

ZURICH OPERATOR. _Londres, voulez-vous me donner le service américain?_

LONDON OPERATOR. _Je vous le donne._

LONDON RADIO OPERATOR (in charge of radio circuit to New York). _Service
américain._

ZURICH OPERATOR. _J’ai un appel pour New York au départ de Davos, je
vous le passe. C’est au départ de Davos deux cent, virgule, cinq cent
soixante-sept, Madame Selwyn, pour dix-neuf heures. On demande New York,
Plaza 3-9521, Monsieur Louis Scheurer._

LONDON RADIO OPERATOR. _C’est pour le numéro de série vingt-deux. Je
vous rappellerai._

LONDON RADIO OPERATOR. I have a new ticket, New York. Wanted at 19 hours
from Davos, Switzerland, 200567, Mrs. Selwyn, calling Plaza 3-9521, Mr.
Louis Scheurer, serial double two.

NEW YORK OPERATOR. O.K., London.

LONDON RADIO OPERATOR. Will you assign serial double two, New York?

NEW YORK OPERATOR. Yes, London.

LONDON RADIO OPERATOR (to Zurich Operator). _Service américain._

ZURICH OPERATOR. _Oui, Londres._

LONDON RADIO OPERATOR (to Zurich Operator). _Je vous donne votre série
vingt-deux._

ZURICH OPERATOR. _Oui, je la prends. Davos? Service américain, Davos?_

LONDON RADIO OPERATOR. _C’est Madame Selwyn? Voici Monsieur Scheurer de
New York._

NEW YORK OPERATOR. Serial double two waiting, London.

LONDON RADIO OPERATOR (to New York). Ready on serial double two. Go
ahead, please.

“Louis?”

“Yes.”

“This is Bianca.”

“Yes.”

“I’m speaking from Davos.”

“Davos?”

“Peter’s here at Davos. He’s very ill.”

“_Peter?_”

“He’s worse. . . . He had another hemorrhage yesterday. . . . He wants
you. . . . He wants you to come.”

                 *        *        *        *        *

Louis stayed with Peter all night.

Most of the night he lay still. But towards morning he turned his head
and looked at Louis. Then he held out his hand.

Louis came beside him and put his arm under his shoulders, propping him.

“Look, Louis!”

The sunrise was beginning. Peter said:—

“Isn’t it unbelievably lovely?”

He laid his head back on Louis’s shoulder and shut his eyes. When he
opened them again he said, “Louis.”

“Yes?”

“Do you remember that last day at Athens?”

“Yes.”

“. . . and Vicenza? And that morning in the gardens at Nymphenburg? Do
you remember?”

“Yes.”

He was quiet now. Light was coming into the room. Louis said:—

“When we have . . . more time . . .”

Did he imagine the fingers held his harder?

Peter said: “I don’t think living’s made in time. It’s made in your
heart. . . . What you keep always is what was most lovely . . . moments
. . . places.”

Now the risen sun unfurled a flaming banner across the walls.

A nurse looked in and went again.

“. . . And Valescure . . . what fun that was! How gay that was. . . .
And that night, do you remember . . . ages ago, at Marie’s . . . that
supper in the garden?”

“Yes.”

“When she destroyed the roses?”

“Yes.”

“Louis, I . . .” He shut his eyes again.

“Rest now.”

He whispered, “You’ll stay?”

“Yes.”

                 *        *        *        *        *

Bianca woke. There still was the striped blue-and-rose wallpaper. And
Peter was dying.

And Louis was there.

Louis was with him. Louis: evil and white-masked in his own terror;
Louis going down that long tiled corridor to Peter’s room; Louis going
past her, past the nurse, in at the door to Peter.

When he arrived, getting out of the car, his eyes black slits, the sweat
on his forehead, “Is he alive?” . . . Then that one sentence, straight
at her, his mouth tortured, “I could have saved him a year ago.”

So that he knew . . . felt some sort of futile hysterical remorse.
Uselessly.

She turned, sickened, to hide her eyes from the light.

She lay thinking about Peter. Remembering him back through his whole
life, scene after scene—with a visual clarity that was frightening in
its obliteration of Time, evoking even texture, so that she saw the
weave of his aertex shirt that afternoon when he was twelve years old
and they were all on the raft, pushing out from under the willow
branches that caught their hair so that he called, “Look out for your
plaits, Bianca!” Saw him that summer when they went, with Frany and
Mademoiselle, to Sheringham, racing his donkey ahead of her, his bare
legs kicking in his white sand shoes, the sand pink-gold, and salt, sun,
air, like heaven round them, and, just before he got to the breakwater
ahead, turning to shout to her, “You’ve got a rotten donkey . . . try
mine next!”

She saw him in the nursery at Moon’s Green sitting opposite her on the
big floor, the sleeves of his white jersey rolled up, his cheeks red,
his lips pursed on the stem of a clay pipe and the bubble getting larger
and larger, the nursery window in miniature bent round its
surface. . . . A garden path, beside it the high jungle of flowers
(hollyhocks towering, michaelmas daisies shoulder high), and next to a
swinging skirt—a tussore skirt (Frany’s dark face high above)—Peter
stamping gravely, his hand in Frany’s, his face bent down to watch his
new buckle shoes—the buckles square and gold, the shoes brown.

And always, from the very beginning, there was so vivid in him (and as
close to her now as the aertex shirt under the willow branches) his
quality of being so ready for delight, so eager to be enchanted, so
grateful for each new enchantment.

This eagerness, the more endearing because it had always been
constrained by a sort of courtesy to life itself, fearing to seize too
much, this readiness for delight Louis had satisfied: and then
destroyed.

It seemed to her now that there was only one thing that mattered: to get
at Louis. To make him feel the wanton and brutal quality of his
destruction. Go to him now, while he was shocked into grief, and find
some way to scar his memory; that, at least, he shouldn’t let himself
slip again the strong tides of living that he rode so easily, so
insolently—before she’d got him, and found a phrase to deepen, somehow,
the scar of these hours, probing them into the tissue of his imagination
so that some ache, or intermittent torment, should remain.

The nurse came.

“Madame . . .”

She knew.

“He had a hemorrhage just before six o’clock. He died an hour later.
Monsieur Scheurer was with him.”

“Thank you.”

Later. “Do you wish to see him, madame?”

“Yes.”

She followed the nurse down the corridors, where orderlies in cotton
coats were bearing trays to and fro, nurses sped up and down carrying
thermometers and towels, doors swung, letting in a rush of moving light
and glimpses of white rooms. When they got to the door of Peter’s room,
the nurse made a gesture to Bianca to wait, and opened the door.

As she did so Louis came out.

Bianca saw his expression.

And stepped back against the wall to let him pass.




                                 PART V


Louis had written letters to his mother at intervals, giving her the
descriptions that would please her of India, Malay, China, Japan;
stressing the curious and picturesque; dealing lightly yet sharply with
political trends and industrial phenomena. They might have been the
travel letters of any intelligent young man. Even as he wrote, building
up his concise descriptions, he was aware of how perfectly they faked
his four-year Odyssey. His mother, and then his father and Marthe, would
read in them that he’d seen so much. Whereas it seemed to him, as he lay
in his _wagon-lit_ on the way back from Marseilles to Paris, that
everything he’d seen had only been an iridescence on the surface of what
he’d had to feel. And when, at last, on that March morning of 1933, he
went into his mother’s boudoir and she held his hands and looked at him,
her “Well! You have made a magnificent journey,” seemed to set the final
seal of unreality upon the last four years.

He had made a “magnificent journey.” And the little log fire still
burned on the brass dogs; and the gilt and marble clock still stood back
to back with itself in the mirror on the chimneypiece (its fragile hands
intimating, rather than asserting, that it was now twenty minutes to
ten).

She said he was very sunburned, and “a little thin”; and she must hear,
and so must his father, so much that he must still have to tell! It was
all so exactly as it should be. And she would neither probe nor
perceive; or if she ever perceived, she would never seem to. There had
always been, for him, something mysterious in her equanimity. Even the
fact that her hair remained _blanc-cendré_ added to her effect of being
blandly impervious to the small hostilities of fate.

He knew exactly the tone of cool pleasure in which she would say to his
father, and later to her friends when they came on her _jour_
(Tuesdays), that Louis had returned “sunburned and a little too thin
from his magnificent voyage.” And she would never be troubled by the
least disagreeable suspicion that, for her sunburned and traveled son,
each new journey had only been shifting the ground on which he lived the
day through somehow, and lay awake at night.

                 *        *        *        *        *

He went to the Rue Visconti. The _concierge_ said, “But M’sieu Dubar
left here three years ago. He has a house at Versailles.” She gave Louis
the address. But she didn’t remember him.

He drove out to Versailles. There was a wall, wrought-iron gates. A
two-storied house, grey-shuttered, in a garden.

A manservant opened the door. Yes, Monsieur Dubar was at home. Whom was
he to announce?

A moment later the double doors were flung open. François rushed
out—“_Louis! My dear Louis!_” clasped both his hands, and stood gazing
at him, up and down.

Louis looked too; and saw the same hawk eyes and beak nose. But a
plumping out of face and neck and body. A tame hawk, the plumage glossy!

François seized his arm, led him into a long library, the windows on one
side opening on a vista of garden. He said:—

“It is time you came back! You never wrote . . . I had no address . . .
So I have just waited. You’ll stay for luncheon.” (He used the English
word.) He said to the servant, “Monsieur Scheurer will lunch here.”

Louis said, “You seem to have done more than _wait_!”

The room was furnished with “club” armchairs and sofas in dark red
leather and a Turkey carpet. Looking once more at François, Louis saw
that he was dressed in riding breeches and looked like a stud groom.

François said: “I won’t demand any traveler’s tales. Firstly they’re
boring to tell. Secondly, unlike the T.S.F., they are impossible for the
listener to switch off. You’ve noticed my T.S.F. apparatus? I had it
arranged like that in the left side of my desk and then I can switch it
off, or change the stations with my left hand and continue to write with
my right.”

“I’m astonished you don’t have a dictaphone on the right side.”

“I do! But I use it only for giving orders to my secretary. She is a
woman who displeases me physically, but is excellent at her work. Every
morning before eight o’clock I record what I wish done in the day. Then
when I am out riding she comes and types down my remarks.”

They sat down in opposite armchairs and the servant brought whiskies and
sodas.

                 *        *        *        *        *

“You have a horse then?” Louis asked.

“Two, _mon vieux_! Excellent horses! Both I bought at ‘Tattèresalle.’
Lord Cable has been all that is most amiable in helping me. I already
remarked on that first occasion at Christmas that I went to Moon’s Green
that he was a man of excellent judgment.”

Louis reflected that no one could discern which events were finally to
shape their character. He asked if François had recently seen the
Cables.

“I stayed there for a week-end in the autumn. My last play was given in
London—in French—at that time.”

Louis said, “Tell me about it. Forgive me for knowing nothing.”

“It’s a very light piece. But it’s amusing. Bengy has done a ravishing
_mise en scène_ for it. It’s at the Edouard VII now! Didn’t you see?”

“I only arrived yesterday at Marseilles.”

“Ah! Of course. Then I must give you some tickets, or take you. Now tell
me . . . how d’you find Europe? Ill enough! Isn’t it? Everywhere
_crisis, depression_! How does it all strike you?”

“I only arrived . . .”

“. . . But of _course_! Of course! Well then, it’ll amuse you if I give
you some of my impressions, above all since I am making Europe the
‘heroine’ of my new play that I’m in the middle of doing. . . . And
after that, I must show you my little garden out there. You see I have a
quantity of bulbs out already. I have them sent from a firm in Holland.
. . . Ruth—Ruth Platt-Eresby, you know—gave me the address.”

                 *        *        *        *        *

“The name, monsieur?”

“Scheurer.”

“Ah. _Pardon_, monsieur. Yes, monsieur. Madame la Princesse is in the
children’s room, I believe. I will tell her, monsieur.”

“I’ll come up.”

“Ah, _Louis_!” said Marthe. “Louis, my _dear_.” She came, carrying a
plump blond baby on her hip.

The baby stared, its eyes growing rounder, and a fat, dark little girl
stood unsteadily in the middle of the floor and stared.

Marthe turned from embracing him to say, “That’s Louise! She is supposed
to be like you. And you don’t _even_ know Solange! Poor Louis. What a
nursery! Isn’t it? Solange, come here.” A three-year-old with red-gold
plaits rode in from the next room, on a grey-skin horse. “Solange, this
is your Uncle Louis.” Marthe called, “Nannie? Come and take this baby. I
want to go down and talk to monsieur my brother.”

The English Nannie appeared, bulky and friendly in white. Marthe said,
“This is the uncle of the children, Nannie.”

“How d’you do, sir. I’ve seen your picture as a little boy, sir. The
Princess showed it to me one day. We think Solange is the image of you
as you were then.” Then to the struggling jovial creature in Marthe’s
arms, “Come _here_, you Bad Boy . . . you Bundle of Mischief!”

As they went downstairs Marthe said, her arm round his shoulder:—

“I was _so_ happy when Maman telephoned that you had arrived. . . . It’s
been such a long time. It seems so many years.”

Downstairs the _salon_ was the same. Flowers everywhere, the light
refracted off the Seine below rippling on the ceiling.

Considering his sister, he thought that she had become a “personage”;
enriched in character by her responsibilities, subtilized by the daily
interaction of her sympathy and intelligence. And as they talked for the
next hour, sitting and holding hands, he observed that the same right
experiencing of small matters that had made her more subtle had given
her a new and delicious sense of humor. She had what the Americans call
an “angle” on trivial events and foibles. And could even (devout
daughter, and _croyante_ as she was) tell Louis that Maman severely
counted the children whenever she came, always fearing yet another;
since Maman believed that a woman owed her soul to the Church, but her
figure to her _couturière_.

Only when he was going he said, “You never see Charmian? Or Bianca?”

“I hear nothing of Charmian. I think she has been in America. I was told
Bianca is sometimes in Paris.” She said, after a moment, “Did you ever
get my letter? Four years ago?”

“Yes. You understood.”

She said, “I understood very well.” Then she said, “Another time. I
can’t now . . . it’s too new and a little strange to have you back. I
want to speak to you. But not now.”

She kissed him, saying quickly, “Where are you going? Where will you
live?”

He said, “To London, to-morrow. And then—I don’t know.”

                 *        *        *        *        *

Harvey said, “Good morning, sir! How are _you_, sir? We haven’t seen you
for some time, sir. . . . Miss Drake,” he said, “is up in the
housemaid’s pantry giving the little dogs their baths, I believe, sir.
Shall I take your hat, sir? . . . No, sir. Her ladyship is away and his
lordship is expected back to-night.”

Upstairs Frany held out a soapy left hand. “How are you? Excuse my
costume.” (She was in black oilskins.) “Stay _still_, Greta! . . . This
is Thunder’s niece . . . _Well._ Thanks for your postcards. . . . _Stay
still!_ Greta! . . . Hand me the soap, Louis? And the brush? The little
beast’s tail feathers need a good scrubbing! Don’t stand too near or
you’ll get splashed. She has a way of wriggling herself out of my hands
and _then_! . . . Did you get to the Fiji Islands?”

“Yes.”

“Good spot. Isn’t it?”

“Too much _tourisme_.”

“Oh well. It’s thirty years since I went. How did you find your mother
and father when you got back?”

“Thank you, in excellent health. Tell me your news.”

“Just pick up Douglas for me! He’s behind the bucket. I may as well
scrub him at the same time. They keep each other company.”

Louis caught the other tea-colored little Peke and delivered him,
yapping, to Frany. The two bulgy-eyed draggled little creatures stood,
awash with soapsuds, staring at Frany’s imperturbable features, and
meeting her black gaze with cringing appeal.

“_Our_ bulletin,” Frany continued, “runs thus. Lord Cable has been in
Monte Carlo with our friend Benz . . . he returns to-night. Off to
Moon’s Green to-morrow. He is never still these days. He does not wish
to have leisure to think. Lady Cable disports herself and her new
garments also at Monte Carlo. Her sister, Mrs. van Geldern, is with her,
practising a diet of grapes and fish, I understand.”

“And . . . Charmian?”

“Charmian there has been no word from, for two years. She is still
married to Lothair, I suppose. At any rate, she now has her own money
and cannot starve. Ruth thrives in her own fashion. Bianca (now,
Douglas, _still_ while I rinse you! _Still_, Greta!)—Bianca is at Ebony
part of the summer. And abroad the rest of the year. She travels much.
Her mother feels she will marry David Blyth. I think not. Her boy, Toby,
is at Eton, and doing well.” Frany lifted a dripping Peke in each hand,
and holding them wide she turned, looking like an immense fisherman
displaying his catch, and ordered Louis to fetch the two bath towels
warming on the fireguard in the housekeeper’s room.

                 *        *        *        *        *

The house at Céligny was empty. Louis went to stay there by himself.

The second week he was there he went into Geneva to lunch with Alan
Blyth and Pierre Cot. After luncheon, when he was walking along the Quai
du Montblanc head down against the wind, he saw Charmian sitting on a
bench looking like a waif in a ballet, with a black clown’s hat on. She
had a German newspaper on her knee and was staring at the lake.

When she saw Louis she sprang up, and seeing him lit her up so that at
first he didn’t see how peaky her face looked. She wasn’t made up at
all, and her eyes looked enormous, and the pointed hat hid her hair
except some limp curls at the back; and her thumb came through her
glove. She repeated, “Louis, I’m _glad_,” twice.

They began to walk arm in arm. He said:—

“What are you doing here?” but not liking to ask about Jimmy.

But she said, “Did you know I left Jimmy?”

“I heard.”

“I came here to have a look at the League working. I’ve been here ten
days. The whole thing’s sick with hope deferred. I’ve been to it all.
The Assembly, the Council—the Subcommittees on Armaments. . . . What do
they _think_ they’re doing here?”

“I’ve just been lunching with Cot.”

“He’s one of the few hopes! Only you French won’t back him up. And Eden
being so polite all round, and trying not to notice that everybody’s
obstructing, or shilly-shallying, or just plain literally _sleeping_
through the sessions! And no wonder when you look at that fly-blown
conservatory of a room—with no oxygen in it and inkpots and aspidistras
everywhere!!! It makes me want to scream! And the German delegates’ll
leave any minute. And _then_ where’ll we all be?” She stopped, holding
his arm. “Doesn’t it make _you_ want to cry, Louis?”

“Yes.”

They walked on. She said, “When you _think_ how we all felt—after
Locarno, eight years ago.”

“Yes. But even Locarno was really an admission of the League’s failure.”

“What a lot of smashed-up hopes!” She added, “And _now_? Are MacDonald
and Simon going to save the League?”

“And then rush on to Italy to betray its principles? Where are you
staying?” he asked. “Come back with me anyway and stay at the villa.
There’s no one there.”

She came.

And after dinner she sat on the big sofa hugging her knees, and went on
talking too fast about governments and famines and revolutions. Then she
was tired and asked him for a cigar.

He gave her one of his father’s special Coronas out of the chest.

She sat hunched up smoking it, looking like a shabby little girl that
had stolen in through the window. She said, “Play something!”

“I don’t any more.” But he went to the piano. He played a Chopin
Nocturne.

When he stopped she was quiet, her head turned away. He shut the piano.

“Would some cognac be nice for you?” she said.

He put a cushion on the floor by the sofa and sat on it. He took her
hand. She said suddenly:—

“Oh, Louis, some of the time since you went has been horrible.”

“Where’s Jimmy now?”

“In Paris.”

“Alone?”

“Yes.”

“Won’t he see you?”

“No.”

“How long since you’ve seen him?”

She hesitated. “Five months. But I’ve been living near him, in a small
hotel. So I’ve watched him go in and out.”

“Does he _do_ anything?”

“He turns down any offer he does get now. Because they’re small. He had
one. A year ago. It wasn’t much.”

“Does he see any people?”

She hesitated.

“Some sort of a crowd. They—prejudice him, against me.”

“D’you want to go back to him, Charmian?”

“I can’t leave him. I can’t.”

“What do you do all day in this ‘small hotel’?”

“I go out a little. I know the people in the neighborhood.”

“What people?”

“Well—the proprietor and his wife. And the people who have the _cafés_
near, and the little shops. And the other people in the hotel.”

“What are they like?”

“All right. Mostly.”

“And most of the time you watch Jimmy come in and out?”

“His place, his _appartement_, is just over the street.”

“What made you come here to Geneva?”

“I had to do something. I saw I had to make a change for a time.”

“What happened really?”

“Well, I tried to see Jimmy.”

“And he beat you up?”

She didn’t answer.

He said, “Are you going back?”

He knew she was. He said:—

“Will you do one thing for me, Charmian?”

“What?”

“Stay here for a fortnight’s rest.”

“A week.”

“A fortnight.”

“All right.”

He got himself a brandy. Then he sat down on the floor by her sofa
again. She said:—

“D’you remember how _alive_ Jimmy used to be? D’you remember when we
were still at Eighth Street, Bianca was staying and Jimmy came on from
the theatre that evening before the famous Breakfast Scene, and we had a
party until four in the morning?”

“Yes.”

“He ‘got’ you too. Didn’t he, Louis? He got everyone in those days.”
After a pause she said, “I don’t believe you’d know him in the street
now.”

Louis said quietly, to stop her telling about Jimmy, “How’s Bianca? Have
you seen her lately?”

“I see her when she’s in Paris. But she’s never anywhere for long. She
has a studio in New York, a flat in Paris, two rooms in Venice, and her
house at Ebony.”

“_Bianca_ has?”

“Yes. She calls it chain-living.”

“It sounds extremely unlike Bianca. . . . And how does she afford it?”

Charmian said, “Oh, she paints screens and things and Bengy sells them
for her. . . . I believe she’s in Venice now. We might telephone to
her.”

“All right. D’you know her number?”

When they got through to Venice, Bianca was out. But Nicky Zatec, who
was staying with her, answered. When he heard Louis was at Céligny he
said at once that he would come the next day and bring Bianca.

When Charmian rang off, Louis said, “_Nicky!_ With _Bianca_?”

Charmian, who was incapable of detached amusement at the shiftings of
the human scene, stated that Bianca had taken on the _Galère_.

                 *        *        *        *        *

Louis had been to Geneva and back by boat. He came up from the lake
preoccupied by a chance meeting with Politis, who, as the strength of
the Disarmament Conference ebbed, reiterated, with reason, that after
the next war there might be some possibility of peace.

He went round by the garden and in by the upper terrace through one of
the French windows, and found Charmian talking to Nicky Zatec. Nicky
turned round.

“Ah! The Globe Trotter!”

Nicky seemed larger than ever. He was effusive. But Louis’s pleasure in
seeing him was tempered by critical surprise that Nicky’s expression
should be so explicit of his character. (Did people always grow to look
like themselves?)

Charmian said, “They’ve only just arrived.”

Nicky said, “I suppose there isn’t a drink? Bianca’s just putting the
car away.”

As he said this Bianca came in. She was wearing a grey sweater and
skirt, and a dark blue clown’s hat with a diamond elephant walking up it
and clumsy dark blue leather gloves.

She came smiling—with perhaps even too much ease in the way she greeted
Louis. She had heard of his “_beau voyage_” from so many people. Had he
brought back a lot of films? And sometime he must tell her about the
temples in China, the tea houses in Japan, and the dancing boys in Bali.
She was sure that he had thought of something new to say about all the
things.

He said, “But I like your elephant best.”

“It’s Babar.” She went over to Charmian and kissed her. “What _luck_
your telephoning, darling. We were just getting restive and thinking of
going to Tunis. Where have you come from? Where are you going?”

Louis watched her. And listened to her. She was amusing enough. But she
was talking a language he didn’t associate with her; a sort of _patois_
caused by imaginative accents in unexpected places, and a mind versed in
the absurd or peculiar. She gave the talk so much of her own flavor that
he was baffled, at first, in detecting it as the ordinary speech of the
_Galère_. But now he caught it. The nun who fell over in Parma and had
eleven petticoats on . . . The slot machine crowning the Brenner Pass
. . . The man in the hotel at Innsbruck who whipped the lady every night
until her earrings came off . . . All this was in the taste of the
_Galère_.

Nicky went out on to the terrace. Bianca said, when he’d gone, that he
was in a bad mood because he had quarreled with Sandy Fane over a table
that Nicky had bought from Bengy for fifteen pounds, and tried to resell
to Sandy for seventeen. Sandy had been so angry at discovering this fact
that he’d revenged himself by going to Nicky’s apartment in the Quai de
Conti while Nicky was away, bribing the _concierge_ to let him in, and
taking away all Nicky’s first editions of Firbank. Bianca said that
Nicky was so angry he’d written Sandy’s name on a piece of paper and
shut it in a drawer (a measure of magic which the _Galère_ used in
serious hatreds to destroy their enemy-of-the-moment).

From outside they heard Nicky calling her. “Bianca! . . . Come here,
darling, and look at these goldfish making each other a scene.”

Louis turned to Charmian.

“It’s _incredible_! She isn’t the same person.”

“She’s been twenty different people since you saw her.”

As he spoke Bianca looked in from the terrace.

“Darlings, you _must_ see the way the fishes are behaving.”

Louis said, “Even your voice has changed.” Charmian said, “Louis says
you’re different.”

Bianca stopped in the middle of a sentence about fishes and voyeurs. The
vivacity of her expression blanked out and for a moment she looked
truculent. Then she began to smile again. And as they followed her out
she went on stringing little remarks together to make a chain of
curiously pretty nonsense.

                 *        *        *        *        *

As Bianca lay in bed that evening, not reading, she remembered Louis’s
comment on her being changed.

She began to think about herself. But not with the voluptuous ease of
people addicted to introspection. She thought about herself
incompetently, and with the irritation of a person who is unused to
focusing a pair of field glasses.

How was she so “different”? She did her hair differently, of course; and
had different clothes. And a more amusing life than when he’d first
known her. She saw more people. Traveled. She had, by now, some sort of
technique of enjoying herself.

If you didn’t enjoy life, it got you down.

After Peter died she’d found that if you only made yourself go round and
round fast enough you could stop thinking, or feeling anything.

Even seeing Louis hadn’t mattered now. Because she didn’t think about
him any more as the villain of Peter’s tragedy. . . . She knew now that
things just “happened.” Where had she read, “Life isn’t cruel. It is
indifferent”?

She snatched up a book from beside the bed. Anyway, if she was different
it could only be for the better. For years she’d been absurdly naïve.
She took up her cigarette case. She felt that somehow the shining
surface of her existence had been rippled by Louis’s remark.

She read until the print blurred and made her drowsy.

                 *        *        *        *        *

She awoke in the dark, crying.

Sometimes another self in her awakened, like this, in tears. Sometimes
because of a dream. She never remembered the dream. But the tears she
found on her face and in her mouth always seemed to be appropriate for
the first thing she waked to think of. And this was always sad—or
poignant; or seemed so.

This night she was thinking back to her first years at Ebony, when Toby
was a little boy . . . when he was a baby. And with him she saw herself
in her early twenties, seeming strange in her simplicity and
seriousness—and ingenuous; and because so ingenuous, and prejudiced and
arrogantly sensitive, rather touching. She saw herself still immature
the year that Toby had gone to school. Even then her long sick sadness
for Richard had isolated but not matured her. Her tenderness for Toby
had given her gravity, but not experience. The years between Richard’s
death and Toby’s going to school had been a long flickering dream, in
which each sensation had a quality of rareness rather than of reality;
and out of which she’d awoken.

And then?

But she couldn’t tell in which year, or by what process of will, or lack
of will, on her part, her way of life had begun to be modified. Then
Peter dying. And her need of something that was new and strange.

So that her world that had once been so ordered and circumspect, yet
with a melancholy beauty like a formal garden in November, was changed
to a flowering wilderness that, like some territory of Beckford’s
fantasy, had been made yet more richly disordered, with tortuous paths,
grottoes, dark boscage, startling springs and hidden streams, its sweet
yet humid air haunted by sounds, charms, voices. Sounds bewitching her
suddenly into the darkness of a wood. Charms that drew her, against her
will, but strong and sweet and then stronger, into caverns half lit,
curious, and sensual. Voices that murmured from here, from there:
“Come,” and she went, her fancy pleased, her thoughts dancing, her heart
always between dreaming and waking; went, followed, was caught—and
broke loose again.

And again, waiting, poised lazily, there were new sounds, more
voices. . . .

But as she went (there is no horizon . . . the little paths wind and
return; the flowers are always in bloom and have no names; the willows
never dry their tears) . . . as she went, and came again, the Voices
that had once called her said, “She has no heart”; the Charms that had
held her muttered, “She has no body”; the Sounds in shadow murmured,
“She cannot fear; she is indifferent to sorrow; she is incurious,
elusive—asleep.”

                 *        *        *        *        *

Bianca and Nicky vanished towards North Africa or Spain or Madeira.

Louis took Charmian back to Paris because she insisted on going. She
said she was always afraid when she’d left Jimmy in a place for long.
She never knew what he might do. And that was why she tracked him.

She persuaded Louis to promise to see Jimmy. She went back to her sordid
little hotel off the Avenue des Ternes. She refused Louis’s suggestion
that she should stay with Marthe. She said she didn’t know Marthe. That
they hadn’t met since they were schoolgirls years ago, and that anyway
her clothes were too shabby to stay with anyone.

Louis could have laughed and cried when she said this. There was a
melodramatic shabbiness about her clothes which was revealed to him day
by day, as she appeared either in a shrunken grey jersey dress with a
cracked red patent belt, or in a stained mackintosh (which she wore for
the journey back to Paris), or a black dress which she had bought in a
sale at the Printemps and which had ten out of the eighteen little satin
buttons missing down the back.

Actually he made no comment, but heard that Armorelle was working in
Schiaparelli’s, went to see her, and she found a suit and scarf in the
_solde_ which seemed to be Charmian’s size. Louis took the box with him.
Armorelle said, “_Very_ strange, Louis darling. Rip van Winkle buying up
old morsels for _unknown_ girl friend!”

Charmian kissed him when he brought the suit. And obediently put it on.
But she hardly looked in the glass. And its chief effect was to make the
room with its greasy mauve and gold striped wallpaper and velvet
curtains look still more squalid. She said, “When will you try and see
Jimmy?” and went to the window and looked along the narrow street and
said, “I know he hasn’t been out yet to-day.”

So Louis went across the street in the rain and into a cobbled courtyard
and found Jimmy in bed in a room on the ground floor. He was still drunk
from the night before and wasn’t surprised to see Louis after eight
years, but grumbled at him and welcomed him by turns, and demanded that
he should get him a drink of water. Louis went into a sort of
pantry-kitchen full of dirty dishes and scraps of food and empty bottles
and Jimmy’s soiled clothes lying on the floor. He rinsed out a cup and
brought him the water.

Jimmy sat up and started thanking him profusely over and over again,
looking livid and tousled like a comedian that had just taken off his
make-up; and his breath stinking.

But when Louis began to talk about Charmian, a secret angry expression
came on Jimmy’s features and he seized Louis’s wrist and told him that
Charmian had left him for a man who’d got hold of her for her money, and
that she was living with him here in Paris, and one of these days, he,
Jimmy, was going to surprise them suddenly and shoot them both up. And
then he started telling Louis about a big offer he’d just had from New
York in a new play, but he couldn’t make up his mind whether to accept
it or not.

Louis left him falling asleep again and went back to Charmian and told
her that it would be hopeless for her to see Jimmy, who was hardly sane.
He said, “Charmian, you must cut loose from him. He isn’t the same
person any more.”

But she said, “You can’t love people less because they’ve been messed up
by life.”

He said, impatient but affectionate, “Then the whole world needs
helping.”

She said, half smiling, “Sometimes I go and see my old governess,
Mademoiselle Houville. She still lives here, in Paris. When I said to
her one day just that,—that the whole world needs helping,—she said
that reformers were like the English King Canute, and made themselves
ridiculous. That our business was one’s own little _coin_. I remember
her words. She said, ‘_On a toujours ses pauvres._’”

“That’s Catholic,” said Louis; “that’s how my sister Marthe feels.”

“Aren’t they right, though?”

He said, nervously, that he didn’t know. And noticed that already her
Schiaparelli suit looked as if she’d been climbing trees in it.

                 *        *        *        *        *

Bianca sat alone at a little table at the Colisée under the edge of the
red and white awning. All round her people were having their
_apéritifs_. People she knew. People she didn’t know. They were all
unreal, and equally indifferent to her.

For she was alone, enchantingly alone. Alone and intoxicated, sipping
nothing more than an _orange pressée_; listening enraptured to her own
heart which kept up its melting lyrical little waltz that had begun this
morning, about the spring having come! There was very little else to it,
the words varying only enough to include a few phrases about sunshine
and lilac and love. . . . But the melody, banal as it was, alternately
set her pulses racing and turned her bones to water, and had induced in
her, as the day had grown hour by hour more maddeningly lovely, her
yearly belief that no spring had ever been like this before.

She felt quite pale with bliss. If an ambulance had stopped by the
pavement and had come to her and laid her, a victim of spring, upon a
stretcher, she would have given in. Since none came she stayed sipping
her _orange pressée_ and wondering dreamily how she could avoid dining
this evening with Chauvigny; or anyone else. For she feared the least
human contact, holding her brilliant and fragile sensation of pleasure
like a butterfly on a pin.

She saw Sandy and three other people she knew coming across from
Fouquet’s, and bent her head so that they shouldn’t see her. She saw
Nathalie St. Laurent arrive with two men; and Bengy, frolicking round
the three of them. A few minutes later she had a glimpse of Marthe
d’Arès driving past in an open carriage with the old Princesse, her
mother-in-law, and two little girls in white sitting with their backs to
the coachman. Now Armorelle arrived a few tables off, with Markoff the
dancer and an American girl with a flower-face like a marguerite and
long legs like stilts. And a little later François was driven up in his
black coupé. He joined Armorelle and the girl and bought them
_boutonnières_ of lilies of the valley from the old woman who came past
selling them.

Bianca bought herself a bunch, giving the woman ten francs (on account
of the spring). At the next table the man in the grey waistcoat bought
some for his _petite amie_, who cried, “_Que j’adore le muguet!_”

Bianca pinned hers on the lapel of her jacket. And the little waltz that
went on inside her, as if she were a music box, took up the refrain,
“_Que j’adore le muguet . . . que j’adore le printemps . . . que j’adore
la vie_.”

                 *        *        *        *        *

Louis went with François, after his play, to the Bœuf.

They went downstairs, since Louis wasn’t, as François pointed out, “_en_
smoking.” (As François himself was.) There were still the same people,
the same waiters, the same dim lights. Or too much the same to seem
different.

A young man with a pale cherub mouth was singing. He had slight
beautiful gestures, a languorous waist, small eyes.

François nodded to various people. Ordered bacon and eggs. Louis thought
that François’s play had been exquisite—dry yet full of flavor. And
said so to François, who agreed.

“Night and Day,” sang the young man with the cherub lips.

                   “Night and Day
                   You are the one.
                   Only you
                   Beneath the Moon
                   And . . . under the Sun . . .”

“But there is only one thing,” François said, speaking through the
singing, and the chords of the piano, “which one pursues always, and
never finds—it is the person whose love satisfies your imagination but
never altogether your senses . . . It is the most common of modern
errors to imagine that the perfection of physical love is a base for
happiness. The most that it can give you is contentment.”

“That’s already something,” said Louis.

“_Night and Da-a-a-ay_,” sang the young man.

“There is Marie de Montcontour!” exclaimed François.

Louis sprang up. Went to her. She was in black—a black hat, black tulle
across her eyes and twisted round her throat.

“Louis!”

Her black-gloved hand in his. Her eyes like jewels in the tulle shadow.

“My _dear_ Marie.”

It was five years since he’d seen her. She said, “And the other side of
the world? It’s even more bizarre, more strange, than this?”

“_Less_ bizarre,” said Louis.

Later, as they sat in a corner (and the young man sang “Brother, can you
spare a dime?”), Marie asked him what he was going to do now.

He said, “A tour of the West: Europe and America, with a little
notebook.”

“Ah . . . and then a book?”

“Perhaps. But not a novel.”

“What then?”

“A few notes. A collection of impressions.”

“Accusing?” she asked.

“Rather a statement. Modest enough. And which no one will read.”

“But, my dear Louis, people will read anything by you.”

He said, “If I write ‘witty novels about modern life,’ yes—as François
has learned to write ‘witty comedies.’ But he needed to be rich!”

Marie considered Louis. He looked older. There was a tense but perfectly
suppressed nervousness in every inflection of his voice; and his poise
had the same quality of deliberately controlled unrest. She asked him:—

“What do _you_ need?”

“Nothing. Except work.”

That autumn the _Galère_ went to New York because Bianca was going.
Bianca went because the loveliness of the October weather at Ebony made
her sad. Louis went partly because he wanted to see the Brain Trust at
work; partly to find out what an epidemic of poverty had done to the
spiritual constitution of the American people.

The _Galère_ had scarcely changed. Or changed, Louis thought, only in
the manner in which wax flowers, once glossy and new under glass,
become, in time, inexplicably wan and sordid.

Peter’s death, François’s accession to a prosperous and a philosophical
leisure, his own secession, had left the company smaller, but unchanged.
Still they longed for happiness in love. Still they sprawled, exposing
their middle-aged bodies to the indifferent sun. Still, chronically
romantic, deliberately gullible, they wandered through the years,
exchanging old lamps for new at every opportunity; saddened by each new
deception, resentful of each fresh self-betrayal; juggling with
responsibilities but never carrying them; conjuring with facts but never
pausing to examine them; and increasingly afflicted by their own
awareness of essential failure.

In Paris they still clustered round Nicky at the Quai de Conti. And
Nicky, monstrous, witty, and obscene, still embroidered for them his
Thousand and One Nights. In Venice, in Bengy’s _palazzo_, lotus-eating
and conscientiously lascivious, they enjoyed yearly a quarrel or a love
affair that made their season. In Savoy, Sandy (who, prudent with
advancing years, had given up his car, but kept his chauffeur)
entertained them all once a year for the “grape cure” in his vineyards.

Kalla, unchanged, still recommended passion and wore flowers in her hair
and red trousers; Fritzl was still blond and still endearing; Armorelle,
a little pinched in feature, her nails blacker red, her grey eyes
brighter and more unappy, still longed to be adored for qualities, such
as sympathy and integrity, which she did not possess.

Only Bianca’s affiliation with them was new. And disconcerting. What she
gave them was obvious enough: her beauty; her zest for pleasure; the
waltzing quality of her friendship—so intimate, so intoxicating, yet so
unreal.

But what she got from them Louis didn’t make out. He asked her one day
what it was. (He had come to her studio in New York on his return from a
visit to Washington.)

She said, “Oh, because they’re all like heraldic animals. If they have
one sort of head they have another sort of body. And that’s amusing. And
then you never know if it’s the dragon’s tail or the ram’s head that’s
going to work next.”

“If you stay with them you’ll become a heraldic animal yourself.”

She laughed. “What shall I be?”

“I suggest a fish’s head, bat’s wings, and a rabbit’s hindquarters.”

“Signifying?”

“Coldness. Blind speed . . . and . . .”

“You’re odious. Now concentrate and look at my work. How d’you like the
screens?”

“Not much.”

She was annoyed. “Aren’t they pretty?”

“Very.”

“Aren’t they amusing?”

“Too amusing.”

“What’s wrong, then?”

He poured himself out a Scotch and soda.

“I think it’s mediocre work for big prices.”

“I like the money. It gets me new places. And buys Toby horses.”

“You could do good work and still get the money.”

“I’m afraid I haven’t your self-important feeling about ‘good work.’”

He poured out her White Rock. “It isn’t self-importance.”

She went up to the “Tennis” screen and turned it so that its three white
and green panels were towards the light. She said:—

“Well, I think this is gay and funny. So’s the bathroom screen with the
Lobster Ladies.”

“You’ll end up by doing witty decorations for the _toilettes_ of night
clubs!”

“If I’d painted the Mona Lisa you’d say I’d given her a vulgar smirk.”

Louis was surprised.

“Nonsense, my dear.”

“Nobody else says ‘nonsense’ to me.”

“Only because you’re always with the _Galère_, who adore you.”

“I don’t care if I’m adored or not.”

“Only because you _are_! The reason you’re annoyed _now_ is that I don’t
say ‘lovely Bianca’ or ‘Bianca, _je te désire_’ every two minutes. And
_where_, by the way, is Chauvigny?”

Her expression flashed from hostility to laughter.

“He’s leaving to-night. By the _Ile de France_.”

She began to laugh. She had, in certain moods, a quick deep excitable
laugh that darkened her eyes and lit a soft flare of color under her
skin. It was in this mood (and it had caught her now), when she seemed
possessed by her own laughter, and her spirits sent her reason spinning,
that she reminded him of Peter. Peter’s laughter used to begin like
that, with that deep slightly hysterical chuckle, and then get away with
him. Peter’s thin oval face and dark eyes were lit like hers, and now,
when she flung herself back in a chair, her “_Oh, Louis_”—it might have
been Peter’s voice.

So that he said, looking at her with an acrid tenderness, “What are you
laughing at?”

“Chauvigny. He . . .”

“I could have told you exactly.”

“He thought I was going to be _une petite femme_ . . .”

“I know! _Bien vicieuse!_”

“Yes . . .!”

“And instead he discovered that you’re at least mentally chaste; and so
romantic at heart that every man you meet is a disappointment.”

She stopped laughing. “I wonder if you’re right . . .” when the door
rattled open and Jimmy Lothair banged in, swayed to crash the door shut
again, and stood with both hands in his topcoat pockets, his shoulders
hunched, staring at Louis.

“So this is where y’are. I thought so! I thought as much, you great
. . .! Here’s the man that stole ’er from me, you great filthy son of a
bitch. I thought I should find you here. I’m not so down-an’-out I can’t
get around an’ get to know things. I get to _know_ things all right.”

Louis said in French to Bianca, “Please go now. Go to my apartment.
Here’s the key.” He handed it to her, stretching his arm back and not
taking his eyes off Jimmy. “Go at once and wait until I telephone.”

“But—”

Jimmy swayed and steadied himself by leaning back against the door. “If
you ’magine talkin’ your bloody language is goin’ to be any use—”

“Take the key,” said Louis to Bianca. “And go.” Jimmy stared, then
realized his move and started forward, extricating his right hand from
his pocket.

Louis’s voice: “Go, Bianca.”

She moved halfway to the door. She saw the pistol, saw Jimmy’s hand
raised—“First you get my woman an’ get her money. You bet she didn’
have any—starvin’—”

“_Go_, Bianca,” Louis said.

“I heard you were here. I heard what you said about me in 1929 over that
play . . . that dam’ French play. I know it was you that kep’ me out of
that theatre. ‘You tell Louis,’ I said, ‘you tell him I’m here!’ But if
they didn’ come back: ‘Mr. Scheurer he don’t have anything t’ do with
drunks’— With _drunks_, by God!”

Louis said, watching Jimmy’s face, watching the waving end of the
revolver, “Sit down and let’s have this out, Jimmy. _Please go,
Bianca._”

“That’s right, you get that dame t’ clear out, we don’t want any dames
in this business.”

“Bianca!”

She said, “I’m not going.”

Jimmy seemed to hear this, for he swung round, then leaned back looking
at her face under his eyelids as if he were trying to focus her, his
right arm still describing little uncertain circles in the air with the
barrel of the revolver. Then he snarled out:—

“Did you say you wasn’ goin’? Our friend Louis here, he mayn’t be
accustomed to bein’ obeyed, but I _am_! I certainly am—I don’t have any
_dames_—”

Bianca saw Louis spring, seize Jimmy from behind, crushing an arm round
his throat and grasping his right arm. She saw Jimmy turn in the same
second that the revolver went off. She saw them both struggle, lurch
across the studio, heard Jimmy’s cursing, heard the revolver rattle on
to the floor, and saw Louis fall.

                 *        *        *        *        *

Bianca’s colored maid had run out for some cream. As she came in she saw
the big gentleman that she’d let in before come out of the studio, and
as he got past her she saw he was drunk as anything and as he got in the
elevator the elevator man looked at her with a grin, for he could see,
too, that the gentleman was plastered.

    WELL-KNOWN ACTOR’S SUSPECTED SUICIDE

    The body of the drowned man found by the police has been
    identified as that of James H. Lothair, actor, aged forty-seven,
    of 223 East 57th Street. Suicide is suspected. A policeman
    passing by the docks of the Furness Line, two nights ago, saw a
    man walking on to the dock. It is known that Lothair, who
    divorced an English wife four years ago, had been out of work
    for some time.

Louis stayed in Bianca’s studio to avoid publicity. He was badly enough
wounded in the left shoulder to keep him lying up for a fortnight.

The doctor that Bianca’s colored maid fetched in seemed unsurprised at
finding a man shot through the shoulder. It was he who suggested that
Louis (whose name he never asked for) had had an accident while shooting
over the week-end, and been brought back to New York.

Bianca didn’t show Louis the newspapers until his temperature was
steady. Then she told him about Jimmy. The news shocked him and made him
miserable. He asked her if she had let Charmian know. Bianca said she
had. He said:—

“She’ll be unhappy. She really loved him.” He made Bianca bring him
paper and a pen and wrote to Charmian.

Later that same day he said, “What a ridiculous thing. That I should
have failed to shoot Charmian’s first husband. And been shot up by the
second one.”

He was silent all that evening. She saw, too, that his shoulder was
hurting him.

Only Louis’s dislike of trained nurses made him endure the ministering
of Bianca. He said that she couldn’t make a pillow less smooth if she
were inside it.

Bianca was a bad nurse. She was anxious and unmethodical. She hadn’t
enough force of will to control her patient, and too little gentleness
to persuade him.

Her only sick-room talents were arranging flowers and making Benger’s
Food. Whenever she made it she boasted of its smooth consistency. But
Louis disliked Benger’s and protested that it wouldn’t help a shoulder
wound to heal. But Bianca always said, “The doctor wants you to have a
light diet.”

Actually a trained nurse came to Bianca’s apartment twice a day and
dressed his wound and what she called “fixed him up.” She was a placid
but coy woman, who always referred to Bianca as “Madame Scheurer,” with
a slightly malicious intonation, to show that she knew she wasn’t. Just
as she intimated by a sidelong smirk her doubt of Louis’s story that he
had been in a shooting accident in South Carolina.

Louis was relieved when, in response to a cable, Zamorr arrived from
Paris. By the time he came Louis was well enough to be moved out of
Bianca’s studio, and back to the Waldorf.

But once Louis was settled there he felt that he had been ungrateful and
ungracious to Bianca, and sent Zamorr down to the hotel flower shop to
order red roses to be sent to her every day. But without any card
enclosed.

Bianca thought that it was characteristic of Herbert Langridge to send
her red roses every day anonymously, remembering that she had said to
him once that they were such exciting flowers. And their coming
coincided with a mood, partly of boredom, partly of resentment, that
settled over her when Louis had gone. She resented his going because she
had been interested and occupied and amused by his being there.

And now Nicky had gone back to Paris. Bengy was in Chicago. Armorelle
was somewhere in the South with someone.

Bianca couldn’t settle down to work. Her painting seemed almost as
futile as Louis said it was.

She felt sorry for herself. And then Herbert’s roses came, day after
day. She began to think that he was curiously understanding; and at the
same time touching, because he didn’t make her feel she had to see him.
At the end of the week (during which the studio seemed so little
endurable that she longed even to have Louis back there, lying on the
sofa, being preoccupied) she wrote to Herbert, saying that she was
depressed in New York and thought of coming down to Washington. He
called her up that evening saying that he was coming up to New York to
fetch her, and had planned to take her on a little trip up to
Massachusetts to stay with his mother.

                 *        *        *        *        *

As Bianca and Langridge got out of New York and up towards Westchester
she said, sighing and leaning back, what a joy it was to smell country
again.

He put his hand for a moment on her knee, and his comforting voice (so
deep and low that it had almost a negro’s tones) said, “That’s what you
need, Bianca. You don’t want to go on staying around New York and seeing
a crowd of people you don’t get anything from.” He added, benign and
authoritative, “And a man like Louis Scheurer isn’t the right friend for
you, my dear.” Soothed by his tones, charmed by that mixture of
sweetness and obstinacy in his stubby profile, she felt that he was
right. Louis “gave” her nothing. He made her feel disconcerted by life.

Langridge seemed to read her thoughts. “Scheurer’s one of those
disillusioned sort of men that just end by cluttering up God’s good
earth. I don’t mean I don’t like him personally. He’s got so _much_!
That’s just the tragic part of the whole thing. I remember when I first
met him as a boy, at his parents’ house in the fall of 1918, I hoped
great things from that boy. He seemed to me brilliant. But he got in the
wrong set, the way a lot of young fellows did in those years. And those
books of his were bright enough. But they didn’t mean anything! They
didn’t carry any weight.”

She listened, her mind adjusting itself to the comfortable rhythm of his
sentences. How sane he was. And just, without ever being condemnatory.

“As for that group that I saw you with a few weeks ago,—Zatec and all
that lot,—I don’t think you should be seen around with them, my dear!
They’re pretty rotten, you take my word for it. I don’t have to go into
unpleasant details; and I wouldn’t care to. But that ‘Lady’ Armorelle’s
pretty notorious, isn’t she? And as for Fane, he isn’t exactly the
friend I’d choose for you. They’re Louis Scheurer’s sort, not yours.”

She explained that Louis avoided them now. But Langridge, whose patterns
of thought, once fixed, were unalterable, and who’d first known of the
_Galère_ in 1926, only repeated that they were just the crowd Louis
Scheurer would run around with.

Bianca didn’t protest any more. On the whole she found Langridge’s
uninflected judgments restful. The whole drive was like sinking into a
perfectly upholstered armchair. As they got farther the air grew still
clearer and colder, and the country changed to a piebald scenery of
brown steep woods and rolling slopes of snow, and ranges of dark blue
mountains in the distance.

They passed through villages whose white wooden houses with green or
pale blue shutters stood among the trunks of vast trees, and little
white churches whose spires looked as if they had been designed by Wren.
Langridge talked of the countryside, and of his life there as a boy. He
pointed out a lake where he and some friends had camped two summers, and
a high ridge of woods where he used to go shooting.

He had just pointed out to her the sunset, beginning above the inky
hills, when they left the main road to drive, climbing a lane, towards a
white house with a four-pillared portico, a typical New England house of
the late eighteenth century. “That’s home!” he said. He added, “That’s
always been my home, and it’s sort of thrilling to me to show it to
you.”

Bianca was as enchanted as he wanted her to be. And when they got in,
the pine-paneled rooms were delightful, and she said so. And he beamed
like a big schoolboy when he presented her to an old lady with fine
features, wearing a purple cardigan, and said, “Mother, this is Mrs.
Bianca Selwyn. I want you to know one another!”

                 *        *        *        *        *

Those days at the Langridge home were tranquil; and as charming to
Bianca as the house in which they passed; as gracious and simple as her
hostess; as profoundly reassuring as Herbert Langridge himself.

Every day he planned some pleasant expedition by car, or a hike up one
of the trails through the woods, or a friendly visit to agreeable
neighbors. But part of the day he always left her alone, saying that he
knew she needed “to get into her own rhythm” that had been destroyed by
New York.

Usually, after six-o’clock tea in the library, she sat talking with Mrs.
Langridge, who would ask about Toby or about country life in England; or
recount, in detail, without wit, but with a large cool humor, the lives
of her various neighbors. Bianca liked her. Her outlook was sane, her
disposition cheerful. Her New England puritanism was greatly modified by
superb health, which made her cheerful; fond of good food, and able to
digest it. Living with her and her son, Bianca was increasingly
convinced that their equanimity, their white teeth and serene brows and
candid eyes and general wholesomeness, were due to a state of physical
grace.

And this—after Louis’s nerve-ridden moods and indigestion; and the
eternal tummy-aches, boils, diets, and colonic irrigations of the
_Galère_—seemed most agreeable.

The last evening, when Mrs. Langridge had retired to bed and Bianca and
Herbert stayed talking comfortably, he didn’t force the warm undefined
friendliness of the situation.

Only, when she rose to go up to her room, he took both her hands in his,
and looked down into her eyes and said:—

“You know, don’t you, Bianca, that whenever you’re ready for me, I’ll be
there.”

                 *        *        *        *        *

Bianca had spent a day at Eton with Toby. When she got back to her
mother’s flat, where she was staying, she found a message from Victor
Finch (a friend, long ago, of Charmian’s) asking her to telephone to
him, to say whether she could dine with him. She was glad of anything to
do. And Victor was sweet and amusing. And she could drink enough to make
her stop thinking about Toby.

They went to _Conversation Piece_. There they saw Frany and Louis
Scheurer in a box. Bianca was surprised, as she didn’t know Louis was in
England. She hadn’t seen him since he left her apartment in New York
with Zamorr to go to the Waldorf for his convalescence.

She and Victor went to see them in the _entr’acte_. Louis said he had
been in Hollywood, where M.G.M. were making a picture of François’s last
play. He described Hollywood in two sentences, in French. He looked
bronzed and well. Frany was wearing her yellowed ermine cape and new
shoulder-length white kid gloves. (One of the mystically luxurious
tenets in her austere creed was that she never wore a pair of evening
gloves twice.) Frany asked if Toby had gone back to Eton. Bianca said
that she had motored him down in the morning. Louis, who had been
talking to Victor, turned round suddenly and asked her if she would
lunch with him the next day, as he was going back to Paris on the
four-o’clock plane. She said she would like to very much.

After the play Victor took her to the Embassy. There they saw Louis and
Frany again, three tables off. (Frany, for one of her inscrutable
reasons, had been an original member.) Frany had taken off her ermine
and looked regal but exiled in her old black dress.

Bianca ate oysters and drank a lot of champagne. Victor said, “You do
look lovely to-night, Bianca. You always make all the other women look
ordinary.”

She thought about Toby.

Victor was saying, “I wish you weren’t leaving England again so soon.”

She said, “I don’t like England in January and February.”

“Will you dance?”

They got up and packed themselves into the crowd. Victor said:—

“What a heavenly scent you’ve got on.”

They passed Frany and Louis. Victor held her closer.

Looking at women round her, smooth-haired, smooth-skinned, and, like
herself, seductive, not by profession (but by habit? fashion?
instinct?), she thought, “How these women exploit themselves!” And then,
“Do I?”

She said to Victor, “Let’s stop. The crowd’s frightful.”

They got back to their table. Victor kept his hand on her arm. The band
was playing “I’ll Follow My Secret Heart,” out of the play. She said:—

“Yes, some coffee, please.”

She glanced across at Louis. He looked back at her for a second, and
went on talking to Frany.

Victor said, his words just audible on the surface of the music:—

“I’m awfully in love with you, Bianca.”

She drew back her hand.

“No, Victor. You aren’t—I really _know_ you aren’t!”

He was white over his cheekbones. “Why d’you say that?”

“Oh, Victor—” She looked round as if an invisible door out of the
situation might be near their table. “Well—because I _know_.”

“You mean you don’t want me to be.” He was quicker than she’d thought.

“I mean it isn’t real; it’s—exaggerated.”

He stared at her, then he said, “How odd you are. If I _feel_ it’s real,
then it _is_.” An inflexion in his voice was so young and startled that
she exclaimed:—

“I _am_ sorry,” shamed by her own insensitiveness; and feeling guilty
towards him just as she’d felt once towards Toby when she’d let the
gardener uproot his sunflower.

He said, “You mean you don’t love me. Well—I didn’t even imagine you
would.”

She said, troubled and unhappy, “It isn’t a question of love.”

“It is with _me_.”

“Victor dear—it’s a friendship—a flirtation—anything you _like_.”

He looked at her without speaking. Then he said, “Don’t you believe in
love?”

Her immediate reaction was to take his question as a naïve confirmation
of his immaturity.

She said, “I don’t think about it very much.” And then she said that she
had to get up early the next morning, and would he take her home?

When he said good-night to her he said:—

“When shall I see you again?”

“Often, I expect.”

“. . . You don’t care anyway.”

She protested, kissing him without passion.

“Yes, my dear. I do care, as much as I can.”

When she was alone in her room, she went to the window and looked out at
the London roofs, and the silhouettes of trees between them.

She leaned on the window sill thinking of Victor; and then of David
. . . of Nicky . . . of Chauvigny; and others who’d come to her saying
“I love you . . . I want you” . . . saying, blindly, “How sweet you are”
. . . and then, troubled, “How strange you are.”

But she wasn’t strange. She wasn’t, in any sense that they could
understand, positively “anything.”. . . She simply “wasn’t there”!

She was shut in her own indifference, which was like a glass wall that
neither they nor she herself could break. Shut in. And waiting.

But for what? For whom?

                 *        *        *        *        *

That luncheon next day with Louis was somehow like children playing
parties.

They made a conversation which bored them both: until they’d drunk a
bottle of hock; and then their talk became more amusing. (During the
first part of luncheon, Bianca came to the conclusion that she must be
being shy; or that Louis was hostile; or shy himself.)

They began talking about life in America, and in Europe. Bianca said she
used to like America because it felt so fantastic and abroad. But that
she’d lost that feeling now. And didn’t even notice the butter being in
squares and her shoes never cleaned.

Louis said, “I don’t think I feel abroad anywhere.”

Bianca said, “I feel abroad with certain people. But never with places.”

He said, “You like places. And people less? Don’t you?”

She admitted this.

He said, “People used to matter to me more than anything.”

“What do you like them for?”

He hesitated. “Sometimes for reasons . . . sometimes for no
reasons. . . . For being gay . . . for being interesting . . . for being
beautiful.”

They talked desultorily about what made you most enjoy certain periods
of your life. How much was climate? Health? Nervous adjustment? They got
into the subject of using time: and wasting it.

Bianca said, “Of all the waste I think it’s the little _gaspillages_ I
regret most. All the small tantalizing might-have-dones and
might-have-beens.”

“_How_ I know! That enormous scrap basket full of thrown-away, empty
opportunities. The books one didn’t read, the places one didn’t stop at.
The person one just failed to meet. The emotion one left only half
enjoyed, like a _croissant_ at breakfast. . . .”

She said: “And the strawberries one didn’t eat and the Mozart opera that
was just too much trouble to get to, and the sunny days one stayed
indoors, and the puppy one didn’t buy!”

“. . . The oysters one allowed to remain uneaten—or to linger in the
depths of the ocean manufacturing pearls for the wives of businessmen to
wear on their froglike bosoms. . . .”

She said, “D’you remember about the ‘Unrighteous’ in the Apocrypha who
‘let no flower of the spring pass by them’?”

He seemed to be amused by this.

He said, “It’s _so much_ ‘you’ to know the Apocrypha better than the
Bible!” He leaned across the table and looked into her face, as if, she
thought, she were something in a museum case whose detail had arrested
his attention. He said, “You have a flair for things that are a little
‘phony’ . . . that are off the line of tradition!” He went on, half
amused, half thoughtful: “The situations in which you live yourself are
never normal. And your ideas on these situations are even less normal
than the situations themselves. . . . You transform sentimental
situations into the cynical, almost brutal episodes; and those
situations which seem to lack all possibility of sentiment you make into
romantic, elusive, mystical dramas. . . . It’s a kind of genius. Even
with your clothes it’s the same. Your dresses, your sports clothes, your
hats, acquire an unexpected emphasis when you put them on. The most
sophisticated evening dress acquires on you the quality, even more
sophisticated than its own nature, which is informality—indifference—
The most wholesome sports sweater, designed for osseous Englishwomen to
play golf in, develops a faint, but disturbing accent.”

For a long moment he continued to look at her. Then he looked at his
watch.

He said, “It is time I left for Croydon.”. . . Then, casually, “Come
with me? To Paris?”

She didn’t know why she said, “No. I’m going to Wiltshire to-night, to
stay with Armorelle . . .” for her usual instinct was to go on doing
whatever seemed amusing with the person she happened to be with.

He said, “I’m sorry,” but without distinct sincerity.

                 *        *        *        *        *

When he’d left her on the hot pavement of Berkeley Street she felt
deprived of his company. So she bought a gardenia from the man outside
the grill-room entrance, and thought of all the people she could go to
see. And decided that none of them would do.

She walked down Piccadilly feeling an indistinct, but persistent
emotion, like the sort of physical appetite that desires some taste that
it can’t define.

She ended by going into Christie’s. There she saw a lacquer cabinet that
she wanted, and couldn’t afford; and a de Hooch which made her decide to
go to Holland the next day.

                 *        *        *        *        *

She didn’t go to Holland.

She went to Majorca, where David had a house.

She hadn’t seen David for two years because she had got into the habit
of loving him enough to be jealous of other women, but never enough to
marry him, which was what he wanted.

But the effect of that luncheon with Louis was, for no reason, to shake
her out of her habitual state of enjoyment into one of vague, irritable
unrest.

And the effect of unrest on her was always to make her want to feel
sentimental. She could feel sentimental easily about David, partly
because they had been happy together and charmed by each other so often;
partly because she had a real affection for him; partly, too, because
she knew that he was incapable of imposing his will on hers, or of
perceiving how easily he could have tethered her by adroit use of his
power over her senses. On the whole he was a person exactly suited to
her emotional waywardness and essential indifference. Her safety, as far
as he was concerned, was that she couldn’t really love him, even when
she wanted to. Simple but not frank, impressionable but not too
sensitive, amorous and sybaritic, but never gay or mad or desperate, he
had never been a person who could endanger her heart.

Only, from time to time, she wished that he could. And all the way, on
the journey to Majorca, she deliberately remembered all the sweet and
friendly times they’d had together, working up a nostalgia for him that
had become real by the time she reached Barcelona.

She remembered most vividly three weeks at Buis—that August when they
used to dine out of doors under the vine arbor by the fountain, and
she’d had her blue-frilly dressing gown, and it was fun finding each
other there in the mornings, in the white room with the flowering
curtains.

She didn’t sleep well on the boat. She kept waking and thinking about
him. And knowing that it would be delicious when he put his arms round
her and said so very little, and kissed her lips with so much charm and
pleasure.

She got up very early and saw the harbor as they approached, and
wondered if David would be there to meet her.

She watched Palma getting clearer through the mist, and thought of the
hot coffee she would have, and a hot bath, and David kissing her, and
her new pale pink velvet dressing gown; and superimposed on these
anticipations she saw Louis looking at his watch and saying that he must
go to Croydon, and she wondered why that whole luncheon, which had on
the whole been fun, should annoy her in retrospect.

In September Armorelle had brought a husband from St. Louis back to
London and implored Bianca to come with them, at any rate part of the
time, on their motor trip through Europe. They were going in October
through Germany to Austria.

Bianca decided that she would go as far as Munich with them, and see
Lottie, who had been living there since her husband died. She and Bianca
had exchanged postcards and one or two letters since Bianca’s visit in
1926. Bianca had meant to go and see her several times. But her
increasingly strong instinct to preserve her own gayety of mind made her
avoid all possible contacts with misfortune or injustice. On the other
hand, she had a respectful eye on the finger of fate, and when it seemed
to point insistently at a particular place, person, or opportunity, she
obeyed.

And Fate, having involved her with Armorelle as far as Luxembourg,
relieved her there of her company. For in Luxembourg her husband
declared that Europeans were dirty and that when he ordered sparkling
Burgundy they brought it to him “flat.” He was too chivalrous to add
that marriage with the daughter of a lord was equally disappointing.

Bianca was sorry for him. He had a doughy face. And his plight made her
think of Tom in the _Water-Babies_, when he’d put Mrs.
Bedonebyasyoudid’s stone lollipop in his mouth. But Armorelle explained
that it couldn’t be long at this rate “until the alimony.”

Anyway, the husband insisted on leaving Bianca their hired touring car
and its imperturbable English chauffeur, as, he repeated, he “never
disappointed a lady.” He took Armorelle on the next train to Le Havre.

Bianca reached the frontier next day, where two polite officials
examined the car papers and flipped up their right hands in a “_Heil
Hitler_” of greeting and farewell. She went on through a rainy day, the
Saar country hung with wet banners that, in anticipation of the
plebiscite, urged and threatened people with the fact that the Saar was
German. On every wall, tormented by the rain, were pictures of the
_Führer_, staring out, innocently criminal (his lock of hair adapted
from the coiffure Bonaparte, achieving the same effect of anticlimax as
a Berlin beauty in a Paris hat).

Twice, where men were repairing the road, a banner in white and red hung
above them in an archway declaring that they must “thank the _Führer_
for bread and work.” Bianca asked the taciturn chauffeur (whose name was
Atkins, pronounced by himself “Hatkins”) what he thought of one of the
Hitler posters. Atkins admitted, talking out of the corner of his mouth,
that he wouldn’t like to be governed by a man like that himself. Three
miles later he half turned his head, stiffly, to remark that he had been
in Italy last year and Mussolini didn’t strike him as much better. Five
miles after that he said, “Mosley ain’t a menace. Went with my wife to
’ear him speak. ‘That chap dictator of Hengland,’ she said. ‘Why, he’s
like a Black Beetle hollerin’ through a megaphone.’”

That night she stayed in Heidelberg. She walked about the streets before
dinner. She wondered if it was the rain that made her feel that everyone
she met was poor, nervous, and troubled in mind. All the clothes and
stuffs she saw in the shop windows looked shoddy in the bright lights;
and there was a feeling of shoddiness everywhere.

But by the time they got to Nuremberg the sun was in a high blue sky and
south of Augsburg they drove into a series of full-page colored
illustrations of a German story book. White roads bordered with fruit
trees, running over rich tranquil-looking country. Friendly villages
with deep-eaved little houses whose walls seemed of mauve or yellow,
pale blue or pink sugar; little white churches whose spires stuck up
like witches’ hats; purple-shuttered inns with garlands of flowers
painted on their walls; telegraph poles on which were built miniature
colored pigeon houses with eaves and shutters. In the distance the long
blue ranges of the mountains. . . . To the south the dark legend-haunted
forests.

Even the sunshine was the gold bloom of a fairy story. Bianca thought
she had never seen so much rich peace, so much evidence of simple
happiness in living. . . . Only, as Atkins drove on (committing himself
only once to admiration of the fruit trees bordering their route), she
perceived that in all the villages the children were drilling; men were
marching in brown uniforms; schoolgirls were drilling in green meadows;
little boys lay prone in rows on the ground shooting targets . . . that
young men gathered in the sunshine to impale rows of sandbags with
bayonets; that the old men in their round black hats and blue shirts
meeting on the warm cobbles of the _Platz_ outside one of the steepled
churches ludicrously moved their stiff arms upward (_Guten Tag, Heil
Hitler_).

At an inn in Bavaria a woman bobbed “_Grüss Gott_,” corrected herself,
“_Heil Hitler_,” hastily, with that quick glancing over her
shoulder—right, then left—that Bianca had begun to realize. In another
village where the walls of the little gardens seemed unable to keep in
their orchards from the cobbled streets, they stopped for petrol and to
see an old woman in a shawl running into her house pursued by a group of
boys and men. When she had gone in they stood outside, threw stones at
her windows, and chalked up on the wall, “We want no Jews here.”

As they approached Munich Bianca consulted the map and told Atkins to
take a detour off the main road, across an expanse of flat land that
Atkins described, as they progressed across its wastes, as “something
like a marsh.” His nearest admission of a fact was always a comment that
it “seemed” like itself. Thus, for him, it “seemed” to be getting cold,
or dark, or late. The same caution (to be found daily, in a more erudite
form, in any leader of the _Times_) made him describe a year in his own
life when he’d been on the dole as “not doing so well.”

They came in sight of what looked at a distance like a walled town on
the deserted flat horizon. It was the internment camp of Dachau. As they
got nearer Bianca saw that the high stone walls were surmounted by
barbed wire. Close to, there was a sentry in an iron helmet carrying a
gun. She told Atkins to drive round the walls pretending they had lost
their way. The sentry stared suspiciously. There were similar sentries
at intervals round the walls. On top of the wall, among the barbed wire,
was an electric cable, marked “Dangerous.”

When they came to the gates of the camp there were guards in iron
helmets with expressions of unbelievable stolid brutality. Bianca caught
a glimpse through the gates of some pallid men in grey overalls marching
in military formation and carrying tin bowls in their hands. Atkins
drove past imperturbably. But when they were at a distance from the camp
he said that that place didn’t look exactly a little bit of Heaven.

Bianca went to Lottie’s apartment in Munich about five o’clock.

A girl opened the door. She had short dark curling hair like a boy’s and
big eyes. It was Anna. She was grave and polite and escorted Bianca into
a long, rather cluttered-up room where Lottie was sewing.

Lottie started up with an exclamation. She hadn’t expected her until
Saturday. When Bianca said she had written a week before, Lottie said
that of course the letter must have been stopped. They often didn’t get
foreign letters until a week late, if at all. She lowered her voice,
went to the door, and looked out for a moment into the hall, and then
came back and said that things were particularly difficult for them just
now as they had been friends with a young musician, discovered to be
partly a Jew, who had recently been “taken away.”

Bianca began to say something about Dachau, but Lottie said, “Please. Be
careful . . . Our maid . . . One never knows!” She whispered, “Such
things have happened. So often these girls are paid . . . They tell
something . . . and then come the men. . . . A friend of Anna’s, a boy
of twenty,—such a good boy, the son of my friends,—last week they took
him. Yesterday he returned. They had beaten his head. And he is deaf.
And he cries all the time like a child. . . . But now . . .” The hostess
in Lottie reasserted itself, “now you will have a glass of wine, won’t
you? Is it English tea? . . . Or perhaps a cup of chocolate?”

She told Anna to go and tell the girl there was a visitor. Then sat down
with Bianca to ask her about Toby and about her life. But in the face of
what Lottie didn’t admit, about her own life,—but which was only too
pitifully asserted by the dark whole atmosphere of the cramped
apartment, by Lottie’s own nervousness of manner, by Anna’s
expression,—Bianca couldn’t speak of hers. For here her own security
seemed like driving through a slum in a Rolls-Royce, her pleasures
seemed vulgar, her clothes ostentatious, her carefully cared-for looks
impertinent. And every glance and gesture of Anna’s that showed her
oversensitive, too mature, disinherited of her own youth, made Toby’s
English heritage unreal in its cheerful safeness.

                 *        *        *        *        *

While Bianca was abroad she had lent François her house in England.

In November Louis, who had just come back from Russia, went to stay with
him there, and found him living a highly organized county life: hunting
twice a week, dining out and playing bridge, driving to point-to-points
with Lord Cable, helping Ruth Platt-Eresby organize a bazaar for the
Primrose League, and shooting with Harold Platt-Eresby at week-ends.

Louis had liked the idea of staying with François here. He had supposed
that he would find three weeks’ peace, in which to arrange and summarize
his Russian notes, before going on to Austria. He had an impression,
too, that Bianca’s house would be agreeable; remembering it full of
books, and large fires and well-upholstered armchairs; for she had a
masculine capacity for making herself comfortable.

The house was even more pleasant than he dimly remembered; but the
incessant coming and going of people in tweeds and leather coats
maddened him; and yet, since François was the object of all their
bleating friendliness, amused him too.

But he himself was adamant. And when the women said, “Any day next week
or the week after?” and the men (who must have forgotten the elephant)
promised to bring up a special claret or port from their cellars, he
still steadily refused. An attitude which only sharpened their greed for
his company.

And in the evenings when François had gone out to dinner and bridge and
he was left to dine by the fire, he got a sense of what a certain kind
of country peacefulness might be: and in these hours, whose quiet was
only broken by the shifting of a log, or the breathing of Peggotty
(Bianca’s sheep dog), he could imagine a life whose days were spent out
of doors and whose evenings were good food, wine, and, instead of the
unchosen company of fools, books, tranquil thinking; and, finally,
sleep, until the good day began again.

                 *        *        *        *        *

The question of “fools” obsessed him. François said, “One must accept
them.” To which Louis replied that François hadn’t himself when he was
poor.

“Then,” said François, “I was wrong. In the fashion in which all those
who lack material essentials to happiness are apt to be wrong. That is
to say, their point of view is vinegared by their own deprivation.”

Louis pointed out that he himself had never lacked money.

“No,” said François, “but you are probably poor in another fashion. You
lack some essential which isn’t money.”

“What?”

François said that he thought it was the thing for which most people
found compensations—romantic love.

Louis, annoyed, pointed out that he was the least romantic person in the
world.

“Through defiance,” François said. “You have all the symptoms of an
unsatisfied romantic; you are ironical, restless, unhappy; by turns too
kind and too indifferent; self-critical and too critical of others;
obsessed by a need to be tranquil, and altogether incapable of being so;
above all you have become as mistrustful of love as an old fox of a
trap.”

Louis said, “I notice the simile.” He added, wondering as he spoke if he
believed his own thoughts, “The most perfect and romantic love in the
world is only a sexual urge affecting the brain.”

“The best painting, the best architecture in the world, is also caused
by an instinct affecting the brain.”

“There must be paint . . . a stone.”

“Understood! There must always be a medium.”

Louis leaned down to pat Peggotty. “I shall become an Englishman and
love my dog.”

                 *        *        *        *        *

Louis talked to François about his plans for his book. He said that he
would spend another two years collecting material. That he was doing a
kind of house-to-house investigation of ordinary human lives in every
Western country: noting interest, habits, values; how people lived, and
why; and with how much satisfaction. The ratio of prosperity to
happiness. Religious belief to happiness; sexual and social customs to
happiness. The uses of youth. The effects of age in different societies.
He said he was going to compile it in the manner of an English _Blue
Book_—a report on evidence. That he would call it _West Again_, and
that its purpose was a “_Kampf gegen der Dummheit_.”

François said, “A purpose? That seems hardly ‘you.’”

“The least of my ambitions,” said Louis, “is to be ‘me.’”

                 *        *        *        *        *

Once Louis went to London with François to a Literary Party; a form of
Sociability which he found exasperating, though he tried to think of it
as pleasantly naïve.

These assemblies, under the stimulus of sweet champagne and small
sausages impaled on nail cleaners, where he conversed with the
_Haute-Scribblerie_ of England. Their members impressed Louis as halibut
parading in the unaffected conviction they were salmon trout, cod roes
curveting as caviare, and ox-eyed literary daisies making orchidaceous
remarks. For François’s custom had staled the variety of silliness to be
studied in authors on show and authoresses on a kind of literary heat.
These latter dressed in irreproachably British notions of the current
fashion, presented themselves to every comer, at first, so it seemed to
Louis, with a certain shyness, yet bright-eyed and dribbling little
thoughts; then, as conversational approaches grew closer and the
responses of wit more daring or more profound, with little gurgles of
critical pleasure and sharp cries of satisfied vanity.

Louis, after rising from an encounter with an authoress in a monocle,
was attacked by a grey-haired military-looking man carrying a cat, who
talked to him about the importance of giving rein to one’s lusts. Louis,
accustomed by now to the incessant preoccupation of the middle-aged
English with sexual problems settled by other races at sixteen, was
respectful about the lusts.

“After all,” said the little man, “one must concede something to
Nature!” The ginger cat shifted in his arms. Someone said to Louis,
“That is Colonel Maynard, the author of _Contrary Mary_. He sold ninety
thousand copies.”

“To whom?” said Louis.

His informant didn’t know. “But there,” he said, “is Laura Twigge, who
wrote _Dreams Fade Quickly_, and there is Irene Threnody, who wrote
_Brightness Falls from the Skies_, and there is Borealis Jenkins; she
wrote _Hearts, Homes, and Horizons_.”

When Louis and François left they went to the Café Royal. But it seemed
even gloomier in its fly-blown Bohemianism than usual. Louis rejected
the Savoy, where they would be certain to meet all François’s Hunting
Phyllidas wearing gardenias, and all the people he himself didn’t want
to see; because he’d seen them so very often before in his younger life.

So they ended by going back to François’s rooms in Dover Street, still
analyzing, with morbid amusement, the celebrities they had fled from.

“Intellectually,” said Louis, “England is divided into two sects. The
highbrows, who are trying to use their brains; and the rest, who are
trying not to.”

                 *        *        *        *        *

Now that Violet was mostly in London at Portland Place and kept Frany
there, Carteret at Moon’s Green took the dogs for their walk. He went
every afternoon; sometimes to the post office and back; sometimes over
to Ebony and round by Bird’s Farm, followed by the old cocker, Diana,
his own water spaniel Patrick, and Peter’s fox terrier.

He always walked at the same brisk pace, carrying a stick, usually
staring in front of him, his eyebrows drawn a little together above his
blue eyes, but sometimes darting his gaze towards a bird there, or a
tree or plant, or a rabbit starting suddenly across a field.

He walked with his shoulders squared and his toes slightly turned out in
their age-darkened shoes. But several people in the village had agreed
with Mrs. Wrench, the postmistress, that his lordship had changed very
much and got older looking since poor Mr. Peter’s death.

Perhaps that winter of ’35 was a particularly wet one. He himself
realized that he felt rheumatic and that his back was stiffer when he
bent down to fasten Diana’s lead before they passed a farmyard with
chickens. Frany saw this on the few occasions when she came down and
gave him a rub with Elliman’s embrocation. (He would allow no one else
to do so, having a mistrust of anything that might be “massage.”) He
admitted to himself that he was “out of sorts” and therefore “a bit
depressed.” It didn’t occur to him that there was any need to define,
even in his own thoughts, the incessant sadness that was getting worse,
instead of better, with years. The same code which prevented his
complaining in physical pain stopped him from trying to find a narcotic
to help him endure his mental unhappiness.

For his trouble, which never entirely left him, even in sleep, was
simply a knowledge that he’d been wrong with his two elder children.

He was too brave a man to refute this fact, once he’d found it; and too
stupid to find theories to allay it.

So he went about, not telling anyone. He would go along the road to
Wittersham, thinking about both of them. About Peter. And about
Charmian, who never came any more. He would sit down to dinner by
himself and drink his wine, and come to some new conclusion which went
to make him more certain of his wrongness. Over and over again (perhaps
it was in the car on the way to a board meeting, or as he drove over to
an occasional meet) he realized that all Charmian had done was to show a
lot of grit from the beginning, and stick to her guns; and that Peter
had chosen to “sow a few wild oats.”

Perhaps it was this sense of his own inexpert understanding of human
situations that had created, by a chance talk here and there, his
philosophical friendship with François Dubar—whom he thought of as “the
little French playwright fellow,” who came down now and then to consult
him about horses and stayed to talk to him about human beings. Carteret
had never thought about human beings in a general way before; except to
put the ones he came across in the categories he knew about. But,
somehow, this business of character began to fascinate him. He took to
watching people, thinking out why they did things just as he used to
study birds as a boy. “Queer birds” was what he said in one of his talks
with Dubar, “queer birds we are.” And that started Dubar off again
arguing away about the “human soul” . . . conditioning it . . . and
environment and what not. But it was all so astoundingly interesting
that Carteret started getting one or two books on the subject. Dubar
advised him. He found them stiff, especially at first. Descartes,
Spinoza, Bergson . . . moderns too. . . . Jung seemed to have some sense
in him. . . . Carteret read here and there, hovering and burrowing like
a persistent but rheumatic bumblebee.

He made many reflections, but few deductions. But he got a cumulative
feeling that there was something, referred to as Man, and by Dubar as
the “individual,” which needed to be understood.

But he never reached any clear perception that this new interest of his
could be described as philosophical. For he came to it through some
instinctive need; snuffing about for wisdom as a dog searches for
purgative grass.

                 *        *        *        *        *

One afternoon he came in late from his walk, for he had been a longer
round than usual, and when he came in, whistling the dogs after him, it
was already dusk; and the façade of the house was dark, with the window
shutters closed.

There had been an east wind blowing all day, and his walk hadn’t warmed
him up. He felt chilly and glad to get indoors. As he took off his coat,
he wondered if he had better have agreed to go with Violet to Cannes
next week. He hated the Riviera. But the dark bitter weather of the last
few days here was getting on his mind. He went into the library slowly,
oppressed with the sense of the long evening before him, preoccupied
with the notion that he might, of course, telephone to the Platt-Eresbys
and suggest their coming round.

As he came into the room the blaze from the big logs was so bright that
he didn’t realize that he had forgotten to switch on any lights. He was
just turning back to the door to do this when he started; and choked out
an exclamation.

Charmian was sitting on the fender stool in the firelight. She had on
some sort of dark dress, and her hair was pushed back behind her ears,
and her face, turned towards him, was grave, but to his startled sense
most childish and lovely and unchanged. He had a strange moment of
believing that he had walked in out of the hall into a vivid dream; or
that the bleak afternoon, and before it so many weeks and months, had
been a dream! And here was Charmian, her voice sweet and familiar in the
firelight, saying:—

“I’ve been waiting for you . . .”

But then she got up, and stood uncertainly; and he saw, in the leap of a
flame, that her face was marked with exhaustion, and her glance
troubled, frightened almost.

Carteret held out his hand, because he couldn’t speak.

                 *        *        *        *        *

Frany came into the drawing room at Portland Place.

“Mrs. Lothair is telephoning from Moon’s Green and wishes to know if she
may come and see you—here, in London.”

Violet put down the sketch.

“I _wish_ you would speak more clearly, Frany. Your speech is getting
very indistinct. I’ve noticed it several times lately.”

Frany advanced six steps and repeated, “Mrs. Lothair.”

“Mrs. Lo-thair? Who’s she? I’ve never heard of her.”

“Mrs. James Lothair,” said Frany, distinctly but without emphasis.

Violet said impatiently:—

“I wish you didn’t always make mysteries.”

“No mystery,” said Frany, “but you have informed me on several occasions
that you did not wish me to refer to your elder daughter in your
presence by her Christian name.”

“Charmian? . . . At . . . did you say Moon’s Green?”

“I did. It appears she is now reconciled with her father. And is invited
to stay there. She will, in fact, live there! I understand that she
wishes to make her peace with you.”

Violet’s first slight emotional agitation, caused by surprise, was
transitory. Her next feeling was anger at having been surprised in such
a way.

“What an extraordinary thing to do! I can’t think . . . after all this
time.” Violet hesitated, then broke out, her anger becoming defensive,
“_No_. . . . I dislike scenes. I don’t want to have a scene.”

Frany began a remark. Then checked herself.

“Why should she come back now, completely _déclassée_, entirely out of
touch with everybody. . . . I fail to see how it will help any of us. Of
course . . . I shall see her sometime . . . but I must say I don’t feel
inclined to this week—when I’m dining out (four evenings) and going to
a play to-morrow. _No._ I can’t be _worried_. I can’t be _upset_! And
scenes always upset me.”

This time Frany spoke:—

“That was what you said when Peter wrote to you in 1928 and asked if you
would see him.”

Frany waited. Her tone, as she said this, had been impersonal—the words
presented as a statement. And Violet’s features, drawn and
over-powdered, but that had still a sort of pinched elegance, showed by
no precise change of expression that Frany’s words had hurt, or even
disturbed her imagination. Only, for a second, as she glanced up to meet
Frany’s inexpressive look, there was a momentary flicker out of her
attention, a quick painful blankness in her stare as if for a tentative
second it had amused the gods to make her blind.

Then she said, “Very well. If you think she can be fitted in . . . tell
her she can come to-morrow.”

                 *        *        *        *        *

Ten minutes later Harvey announced, “Mrs. van Geldern, m’lady,” and
Josephine came in, fresh and vital in grey squirrel coat and a bunch of
violets pinned to its lapel. She kissed her sister, sat down briskly on
the sofa, asked if Harvey could bring her a glass of orange and lemon
juice mixed, “not iced but not too warm,” and said that she had had to
come as she was so worried about Bianca. She had had a letter from
Bianca, from Cannes, where she was staying with “her nice French friends
the St. Laurents,” saying that Herbert Langridge had arrived suddenly
. . . and that she had got engaged to him for a week, and had now
decided to “throw him over.”

“I will read what she says,” exclaimed Josephine. To Violet, preoccupied
and irritated by the prospect of seeing Charmian, her sister seemed, as
usual, luckier than herself. “At least,” she said, “Bianca hasn’t made
two impossible marriages.” But Josephine read out Bianca’s letter:—

    “I know you will be sorry about this. But I must tell you in
    case you hear of the engagement before its undoing. He _is_
    ‘suitable’ and all the things you want for me. But he speaks and
    thinks too slowly. I can change the varnish on my fingernails
    between one of his words and the next. . . .”

Violet said, “Idiotic,” perfunctorily.

Josephine said with vivacious anger that it all came of poor Richard
having been killed like that, and it was a real mistake to marry so
young, because you could never tell what the future held for you.

Harvey brought the orange and lemon juice. When he had gone out of the
room Violet sighed. “Ruth is the only one of those children who has made
a life for herself. I was staying there only last week. Delightful
people. And the children looking splendid and seeing a lot of the St.
John children, who share Ruth’s governess for lessons. And Harold has
just been made a director of Cable-Bensley . . . and such an excellent
host, so good-natured.”

Josephine put down her glass, and wiped her lips with a lace-edged
handkerchief and said:—

“Such a pity his teeth stick out.”

                 *        *        *        *        *

That September Bianca took a house near Toulon at Carqueiranne, and she
and Toby spent week after absurdly blissful week, bathing and sailing;
and getting browner and more friendly with each other and more contented
with being simply alive. Their cook Jeanne served them aromatic
Provençal meals; and Jeanne’s moustached and handsome husband Frédéric,
who was the gardener, brought them in grapes and discoursed on life in
general, and food, marriage, and women in particular. Among his
observations he offered to Bianca the statement that women in the
costumes now worn on the _plage_ were no longer _troublantes_. These
women almost naked, he said, have no mystery. His dark eyes rolled in
marital approval at Jeanne returning from the _marché_, mysterious in an
overall, three or four petticoats, black stockings, and a black kerchief
round her head below her straw hat.

When he had gone off to water the flowers Toby said, “What’s
_troublante_ exactly?”

“Sexually disturbing . . . exciting.”

“Y-yes.”

She glanced at him, realizing suddenly that her companion of these last
weeks wasn’t only a bronzed, deliciously intimate habit who shared her
bathing and her jokes; but what the textbooks called an “adolescent.”

“Would you consider,” he asked suddenly in his judicial manner, “that
sex appeal is what makes people fall in love with each other?”

“Sometimes.”

“What is it, do you think? Sex appeal, I mean?”

She hesitated. “I suppose it’s a sort of promise.”

He looked at her with the intense eager interest that he’d shown at six
years old over caterpillars; and then said, “Have you got it, Mummie?”

“Y-yes.”

“Does it make people fall in love with you?”

“Sometimes.”

“And . . .” he hesitated. She saw him color, but he was altogether too
interested now to stop. “And do you ever feel like falling in love with
them—_back_, I mean? Or are you rather . . . past that sort of thing?”

“Oh _Toby_,” she said, and began to laugh, “I’m not _Elizabeth_ in the
Bible.”

He said, “I don’t think that’s an answer. After all she had John the
Baptist.”

“I should hate to have had John the Baptist.”

He smiled, but remarked for at least the fiftieth time in his life,
“Mummie, you’re _never_ serious!” and went indoors to fetch _War and
Peace_, which he was reading because his tutor had recommended it. He
made himself read ten pages every day, before he started on a detective
novel. But even when he came out again and settled himself on a deck
chair Bianca realized that he was still pursuing his same train of
thought.

“I suppose,” he said, “it might be a good thing if you were to . . . to
settle down sometime. . . . I mean with a companionable person, of
course.”

“Of course,” said Bianca, noncommittal, and surprised almost to
annoyance.

                 *        *        *        *        *

Back in London her mother, resting between a morning’s golf on Wimbledon
Common and an afternoon’s croquet at Ranelagh (“Exercise or Relax” was
written by her on an envelope stuck in her mirror), took up the same
theme.

“My dear child, it is time you settled.”

“Why should I settle, Mummie? My egg is laid, the chicken is hatched.”

“All the same, your life is _very_ extraordinary. No continuity. No
proper background.”

“I don’t want a background. All I need is a playground.”

“Very foolish, dear. It will end by no nice man wanting to marry you and
your looks will not last forever. Do not make my mistake and go on being
a widow indefinitely.”

Her mother always put labels on individuals, making them social species:
“young girls,” “young married women,” “middle-aged men,” “nice men.”
Bianca looked at herself with her mother’s categorical eye—and saw a
“widow no longer so very young” who “must make the best of her chances.”

“Why do you laugh so, child?”

And a week later, when Kalla, on her way from Berlin to Dublin (where
she had a Poet), was staying at Ebony, she caught up the same motif:—

“And now that Toby will be a man, Bianca, what do you do with yourself?”

“Just the same,” said Bianca.

“And what is ‘just the same’?”

“Just as I like. I’m still looking for exactly _the life_. I believe
really the perfect life is not to have any fixed one. I think I shall
give this house to Toby and go and naturalize _Balinese_, like my father
did.”

“But you would not like to give up this house, would you, Bianca?”

They were in the garden.

Bianca looked at it.

“No,” she said. “It would break my heart. Perhaps just _Bali-by-the-Sea_
for the holidays.”

“But, Bianca, you cannot go on so, always—such a life, of a child
always on holidays.”

“N-no?” said Bianca. “Sometimes I think that too.”

“And, _sweet_ Bianca,” said Kalla, rolling out her deep tones between
her white teeth, “you must fall in loave!”

“I can’t,” said Bianca. “And why should I?”

“Or you must live for your Arrt?”

“But I don’t _want_ to, Kalla darling. Nobody can live to paint
shellfish and orchids on screens and wastepaper baskets.”

“Bianca, you are sweet, but you are not se-erious!”

“Why should I be?”

Kalla bent down, put her hands on the grass, and did two cartwheels.
When she was upright again she put her hands in her trouser pockets and
said, “One should be at least serious about oneself.”

“Least of all about oneself,” said Bianca. “But I wish I could do
cartwheels!”

                 *        *        *        *        *

In October she went to Dublin with Kalla, left her there, and went on to
New York.

In New York she came across Armorelle in Saks’s, buying silk stockings.
Armorelle had divorced her St. Louis husband in the spring and was now
very rich.

She told Bianca that she and Sandy Fane were engaged, and were being
married in London in December. She said it was such a good idea really
because Sandy had two heavenly houses now that his father was dead; and
that he needed her money, and she adored the idea of having a husband
like Sandy who really knew everything about Chinese porcelain, and they
would never interfere with each other’s lives. Bianca said, “I can’t
think why I didn’t try and marry Sandy myself.” Armorelle said, “Sweet,
you aren’t nearly rich enough.”

                 *        *        *        *        *

Bianca returned from New York to find a letter from Germany in a
handwriting she didn’t know.

It was from Anna, telling that Lottie had died of pneumonia following on
bronchitis. Anna’s letter was terse. She added that she no longer had
any reason for staying in Germany and was going to leave, with the
journey money she was allowed, and try to get a job in Vienna, where she
had friends.

Bianca telegraphed to her at once asking her to come and stay. Anna
replied that she would come for a month. Bianca arranged for Toby to go
and meet her in Paris, since she herself had to be in London for Sandy
and Armorelle’s wedding.

Bianca realized that this arrangement showed a curiously Edwardian
notion in herself about “young girls” not crossing Paris alone. And then
she remembered, the shutter of memory opening with one of its queer
little clicks, that years ago she had sat in a hotel bedroom with a blue
and white spotted wallpaper in Ascona, writing to Louis Scheurer that
Peter was arriving in Paris and would he meet him.

                 *        *        *        *        *

Toby went anxiously up and down the platform, but at last he saw a girl
in black with no hat on and her hair cut like a boy’s. (Mummie had said,
“She looks like the infant Samuel in your nursery picture.”) This girl
looked thinner and angrier than the infant Samuel. But then Mummie
always saw things looking prettier or queerer than they were so that
sometimes her descriptions made them disappointing.

But Toby went up to her and asked her in a carefully prepared phrase of
German if she were, by chance, Fräulein Anna?

Her pale face colored.

Yes. She was. She spoke sharply; but, close to, her angry expression
seemed more like distress.

“And you? You are Herr Toby Selwyn?”

“Yes.”

She put down a battered cane valise and held out her hand and said “How
d’you do,” in English. And then, “I am afraid my train is late.”

He said, relieved, “Oh, you do speak English then.”

She nodded. She was pale again. And her grey eyes were clear and very
beautiful. (Not a bit soupy and smug like Samuel.) She said, “Oh yes,
but not well. Where think you will my trunk be?” She seemed very
nervous, but controlling it. He reassured her at once and took her cane
valise. When he had ascertained that that and two rucksacks and an
umbrella were all her small luggage, he led her off to find the
registered baggage, saying eagerly and shyly he hoped she had had a good
journey, and wasn’t too tired. She shook her head and thanked him. He
felt a little afraid of her because she was in black and looked sad and
self-possessed and had awful little black fabric gloves on.

While they were getting her trunk through the customs he explained that
he had two reservations on the afternoon aeroplane to England, and she
said, “You are very kind, and so also is Frau Selwyn.” She looked at
him, as if she had only just realized that he was there, and began a
sentence; and then stopped, coloring again. He said, a little reassured
himself at seeing that she was in some embarrassment:—

“What is it?”

She shook her head. “I was only going to ask you a stupid thing.”

“What was it? I’m sure it isn’t stupid.”

She said, “_Ach_—only to ask how old you are. For the Frau Selwyn
seemed to be so young.”

“I’m sixteen and a half.”

She nodded gravely. “So? . . . And I seventeen. You are still in the
school?”

“Yes.”

“In London?”

“Oh no. I’m at Eton. A Public School.”

“Is that a State School?”

“No.” The porter wheeled her trunk before them. They got into their
taxi. Peter looked at his watch and said they would have just time to
drive straight to Le Bourget. As they drove through Paris he asked her
if she knew it at all. She said no, she had never been out of Germany
before.

Then she became silent and looked controlled and miserable, and Peter
looked out of the window and pretended he didn’t see how she felt and
wondered if he had better talk to her or leave her alone. He decided
that probably she would rather he didn’t speak. He thought how desolate
it must be for her to have left her country for the first time, in such
unhappiness about her mother’s death, with no one left that she cared
for, and no money. It made him think of the jolly traveling abroad he’d
done with his own mother—the excitement of starting out, the feeling of
adventure, the way she had of saying, “Now let’s take fifty pounds and
see where the car goes!” Or looking at a map, or reading a book and
saying, “Oh, Toby, Burgundy must be lovely; let’s go”; or “Georgia must
be curious, let’s go”; or, like last year, “Toby, neither of us has been
to Granada. Telephone to Cook’s at once.”

As they got near Le Bourget he said, “You don’t mind aeroplanes, do you?
They don’t make you ill?”

She started. Then saw him.

“Please?”

He repeated his question.

“Oh no, thank you. I am used to them when I went sometimes to Berlin to
stay.”

When they had started and were sitting opposite each other in the plane
Toby had an idea and called the steward and ordered tea. And when it
came she ate several pieces of buttered toast and said how good the
strawberry jam was. And he was quite hungry himself as he hadn’t eaten
much luncheon: because he was so nervous about not getting to the
station in time to meet her.

She talked a little after tea, and said that she was so pleased to be
going to England because her mother had said it was such a restful
place. She said, “Of course I will never love any country but Germany,
neither could my mother, but,” she paused and glanced round and leaned
across the table to say in an undertone, “the present government is
_not_ good for us. Even if it has made us the greatest nation once more.
It has _cost_ too much.” She checked herself, glancing round again.

Toby couldn’t help smiling. There was so obviously nobody in the plane
who could be a Nazi spy. He said so. But she answered, rigid and
troubled, that one never knew. Better to talk of other things. They
looked down and now they could see the white line of cliffs between the
lead-grey sea and the coast.

As they passed over the white line she said:—

“So that is England.”

And as Toby said “Yes,” his heart jumped and sent the blood coursing
warm through his body, and he felt proud that the green quilt below with
its brown patches was his country. He thought he would like to show it
to this German girl, and make her feel, as he did, that although there
were lovely places and beautiful scenery all over the world, England was
different; and better; and that its green grass and wet-fragrant woods
in the autumn, and the kindness and decency of the people in it, and the
friendliness of all the little villages, just did, somehow, make it the
place one would always want to come back to. He remembered coming across
a war poem in an old collection of poetry and he’d liked the lines about

            . . . there’s some corner of a foreign field
            That is for ever England.

He’d wondered, as he read it, if the man who wrote it had been
killed. . . . And if his father had felt like that.

Looking down now and seeing how the far-below land was darkening, and
little clusters of lights beginning where the villages were, he thought
that of course a war would be horrible and dreadful and something
everyone must try to prevent; but that, if it came, he would want to
fight for his country; and that somehow the greenness and the wet woods
and lanes, and the decent people and heavenly skies and jolly villages,
made up a whole which would be enormously worth dying for.

They had passed Lympne. Toby pointed westward, saying, “That’s Kent.
That’s where we live.”

The tone of his voice made her turn; and as she looked into his eager
face her expression softened, and her eyes smiled at him.

                 *        *        *        *        *

Anna wanted to work. And it was Ruth’s idea that she should come as
nursery governess to her children, Rosamund and Bobby.

Since the Hitler dictatorship had been established, Ruth and Harold
Platt-Eresby had felt less hostile to Germany. They themselves could not
have explained why, except by a vague intimation that there was
something sound about Hitlerism. At any rate, the nation which had
consisted of “horrible Germans” when it wasn’t paying Reparations
appeared to her increasingly sympathetic now that it was once more a
Militarist State.

Its language was consequently considered more tolerable.

Anna eagerly accepted the job and Bianca argued Ruth into paying her
twenty-five shillings a week, although Ruth pointed out that the money
had excessive value in marks, and could only make the girl imagine that
she was a lady of leisure. And her final concession of the sum was on
the condition that Anna paid her own laundry bills and would not expect
to have wine or beer.

Since 1930, when Ruth and Harold had had to cut down, they had let
Fayrings and leased the Dower House from Carteret, and used the Moon’s
Green stables. At the time Carteret had liked the plan less than Violet.
But she had pointed out that Harold would improve the place, and they
would also not be obliged to lend it to Carteret’s sister, who was ill
and had lost most of her money in 1929 in the American stock market.

Toby drove Anna over to the house (rechristened by Ruth “Moon’s Lodge”)
the day before he went back to Eton. He was sorry when he realized that
their companionship of the holidays was over. And was worried by the
idea of her working for Cousin Ruth. Anna herself was surprised by how
desolate she felt at leaving him. But she didn’t show her feelings and
said when he took her into the drawing room that it was a pretty house
(a false impression given by the Chinese wallpaper put in by Louis
Scheurer for his brief tenancy ten years before).

Ruth came in briskly at the same moment that the parlormaid brought in
tea.

“Well, Fräulein Anna. How d’you do. Glad to see you. Hello Toby,
_another_ new overcoat, I see!”

“It’s two years old,” said Toby. “Good-bye, Anna . . . and . . . I’ll
see you in Easter holidays.”

“Good-bye, Toby.”

“Anna won’t have Easter holidays like yours, Toby, my boy.”

“Good-bye, Cousin Ruth,” said Toby.

When he’d gone Ruth said, “Now we’ll have a quick tea and then I’ll take
you up to the nursery. Miss Jarrett, their last governess, left this
afternoon. Sit down, won’t you?”

Ruth had grown better looking in the last years. Her cheeks were a hard
healthy pink and she used a lipstick. Maternity, hunting, and bridge had
broadened her hips, and increased her satisfaction with her path of
life.

During tea she questioned Anna about Bianca’s housekeeping. Was it true
that Bianca had _pâté de foie gras_ sent over from Strasbourg by air?
And that she allowed her servants to eat Tiptree jam? “Anyway, no
Tiptree jam _here_, I’m afraid,” said Ruth, brisk and amiable. She said,
“And now before we go up I must just tell you about the children. You’ll
find Rosamund rather inclined to be sulky, I’m afraid. Bobby is more
straightforward and sensible, but he seems to be getting ideas into his
head lately. Their aunt, Mrs. Lothair (perhaps you’ve met her—she lives
with my father at the other house), gave them both a lot of books at
Christmas and it’s been difficult to make them play a sensible game
since.”

                 *        *        *        *        *

“Another guv!” said Bobby drearily.

“A German one will be worse still,” said Rosamund.

Miss Jarrett had gone, soppy at the last moment, kissing Bobby’s chin.
At any moment Mother would bring the new one up.

“Let’s do _something_,” said Rosamund. Their few bursts of intemperance
or imagination were always instigated by Rosamund. Bobby waited. Miss
Jarrett had left them sitting on the nursery window seat, and they were
still there. Rosamund’s round pink face and blue eyes acquired a look of
determination. (She was like Carteret, only with mouse-colored
pigtails.) She got off the window seat.

“Take off your clothes,” she ordered. Bobby obeyed. She took off hers,
and carrying them over her arm went across the landing to the bathroom,
Bobby, stolid but interested, padding after her.

She ran on the bath water. It was a big bath. She filled it quite full.
Then she got in and ordered Bobby to come in with her. Then she reached
out for the sponges. “Now we’ll have a sponge fight,” she said, with as
much elation as she could feel about anything. She threw a sponge at
Bobby’s head. This made her laugh, but not too loud, because Ellen, the
housemaid, was up in the attic floor above, changing to go out. Bobby
took the sponge and then, his eyes crinkling up joyfully in his square,
rather sad little face, began to suck it. “Oh _Bobby_!” This was _The_
Crime. Even Rosamund was shocked.

“It _does_ taste good.” He paused between bouts of sybaritic sucking.

Rosamund said, “I expect that’s why we’re not allowed to.”

“Try!” urged Bobby, quite carried away now, his eyes crinkled to dark
delighted slits that stared at his sister over the top of the sponge.

Rosamund hesitated. As she did so, she heard her mother’s voice on the
stairs; then another voice. Somehow she hadn’t thought they’d come up so
soon. “Botheration,” she whispered, more frightened than she wanted
Bobby to realize at the idea of Mother catching them. Bobby was climbing
gingerly out of the bath, tiptoeing to the door. He pushed the bolt.
Rosamund stared at him. Usually so slow to move, and cautious to think,
the sponge sucking seemed to have gone to his head. Now he stood
petrified, dripping. Mother’s footsteps were coming back from the
nursery.

“Bobby?” she asked. “Rosamund?” impatiently.

“I’m giving myself my bath,” said Bobby, in a smug loud tone. “I thought
it would be a help.”

“Oh . . . I see. Well . . . where’s Rosamund?”

“She’s gone out to see the new mare.”

Rosamund choked. Bobby was being inspired. The one thing Mother always
wanted them to do was to be interested in the horses. Actually they both
disliked horses, were bored by riding, and dreaded their
Saturday-morning hunting in the winters. They had never dared to tell
their parents this. But once when Bobby had begged not to go to meet his
mother had taken him up to her room and spanked him. This scene had
ended by her saying, “We shall hear you don’t like dogs next!” Goaded
out of his stubborn and silent habit, Bobby had screamed that dogs were
“extremely boring.” For which his mother, red-faced (and in some
terrifying way beside herself), had beaten him again.

Now the suggestion that Rosamund had gone to the stables had its effect.
There was a mollified “Oh” outside the door, and then, “Well, I shall
leave Fräulein in the nursery.” Then more voices.

They heard Mother’s steps going down the linoleum-covered stairs, and
vanish on the carpeted landing below; and new footsteps, light and
quick, go towards the nursery.

Quickly Bobby unlatched the door and peeped out. With each new governess
they always began by one scene of insubordination; and in the mood of
elation induced by nakedness and water they were inclined to have it
now.

Bobby shouted, “_Hello!_” after the lady disappearing into the nursery.
She turned. She smiled. She was pretty.

“Hello,” he said. “We’re _both_ in the bath.” She came. “What do you
do?” she said, interested and matter-of-fact. She came to the door and
smiled, but a little shyly, at Rosamund.

“We’re in the bath and we’re not allowed to,” said Rosamund, defiant.

“Do you never make a soap slide?” said the Fräulein. “You soap the back
of the bath and go in turns.”

She showed them. When the water slopped over she mopped it up. Then she
got paper and made boats. Then they all blew bubbles through their
hands. Then they played a game in which Rosamund was one of the Lorelei
and snared Bobby to a watery death.

When they were tired of these water games, she dried them and fetched
their pyjamas, and took out a bag of chestnuts that she had brought with
her. They roasted these at the nursery fire, and she told them, in her
funny English, a long, rather sad, but lovely story about a mermaid
Princess who fell in love with a human Prince.

                 *        *        *        *        *

In April the Platt-Eresby children had an Easter Egg Party. It was the
culmination of a long series of activities instigated by Anna, such as
their Christmas play, their carnival celebrations, and their
Saturday-night fancy-dress dinners which caused Ruth to say to Bianca
that if it weren’t that Anna was cheaper she wouldn’t keep her a week
longer; and that the children were getting thoroughly spoiled.

But to Bianca and Charmian, disposed, with Toby, in a row of garden
chairs to see the “Easter Dance” which had been prepared for the
visitors, the occasion was a charming demonstration of the fact that
Ruth would endure even her children’s corruption by the most Teutonic
traditions to save ten shillings a week on her governess’s salary.

While they were waiting Ruth talked about the garden to François, who
was staying at Moon’s Green and had walked over with Carteret and
Charmian. Then there was a faint twanging of strings behind the bedroom
screens arranged across the grass. Then the garden boy drew back the
screen; and Toby’s heart missed a beat as Anna, in a white slip with a
wreath of wood violets on her small dark head, appeared perched on
Frany’s shooting stick, plucking at a guitar. And plain absurd little
Rosamund Platt-Eresby came out from behind the rhododendron wearing a
wreath of primroses, and moved stiffly forward on the sward, her high
uncertain voice and Anna’s low sweet voice singing:—

                  “_Der Mai ist gekommen,_
                  _Die Bäume schlagen aus_. . . .”

and stolid little Bobby pranced out from behind the trunk of the copper
beach, dressed in a blue bathing suit, and carrying a sheaf of
bluebells.

Now both the children sang and, holding hands, danced with awkward
pretty feet and flushed cheeks and shining eyes:—

                   “_Der Mai ist gekommen_ . . .”

Anna’s profile was intent on the children, her voice subdued as they
sang louder.

Toby heard Bianca say, “Those children are transformed!” And his
enchanted heart danced with them and his look turned again to Anna. And
he thought he had never seen anyone so lovely or so good.

He didn’t hear Ruth say, “Well, I only hope it won’t start Rosamund
thinking she can dance.” Or Harold’s embarrassed “Rather pretty, what?”
He saw Anna get up and move, absorbed, half smiling, to stand in the
centre of the greensward and Rosamund and Bobby prancing round her,
singing louder and flatter in their delight. And Charmian, next to him,
said:—

“Anna looks like spring itself,” and saw his look, and caught his shy,
ardent “Yes.”

Yet, looking again at Anna’s face and the ingenuous crown of violets,
she saw Spring in shadow.

Then again saw how Toby was watching her, possessed by his wonder.

The sweet twanging chords quickened and beat: _Winter ade . . . Scheiden
tut weh_. And the stolid little Platt-Eresbys were whirling, hands
clasped, prancing like ponies, Rosamund’s wreath tipped back, Bobby’s
bluebells ungirdling.

The sun, the grass, the rosy children, the sentimental German spring
songs, the lyrical English garden, Anna’s young grace, and Toby’s
innocent heaven (its floor so dazzling and bright gold)—were all these
things to be destroyed—again?

                 *        *        *        *        *

By one of those chances that make fiction seem too probable, Bianca went
to Margate one day in September to see a possible “coach” for Toby (for
the following spring); spent half an hour with the old man, who took
snuff and cited ducal pupils; and, having lunched at Sam Isaac’s Fried
Fish Shop, came out again to find the sky overcast, a drizzle of rain,
and Louis Scheurer on the pavement opposite buying prawns off a barrow.

His silhouette in grey flannels and a faded blue cotton shirt against
the sands and the grey sea, and the yellow cave of clouds on the
horizon, was so unexpected that she checked an exclamation of his name,
and crossed the road, expecting to find the resemblance less astounding
close to.

But it _was_ Louis. The bag of prawns was in his hand now, and as he
gave the man a shilling he was saying, in his perfect English voice, one
of his American phrases:—

“Perfectly swell-looking prawns. I never saw better prawns . . .” and
the prawn man, who had a black eye, the peak of his cap pulled down over
it, was obviously reacting to the charm (which, for no reason called
into play for the prawn merchant, had lost none of its old glamour).
“Tell you what, guv’nor, if you’re partial to prawns and you come back
late to-morrer afternoon I’ll let you ’ave double the quantity for
tenpence. Eh? What abaht it? Make a tasty supper for you and your
missus.”

“Alas!” said Louis, the outer corners of his eyebrows dropping like two
seesaws, “I have no . . .” he stopped short— “Bianca! What are _you_
doing in Margate?”

As he spoke the wind, which for the last three minutes had merely been
idling up and down the promenade, freshening the meaty knees of
shopgirls on holiday in shorts, or lifting the hairs on the intrepid
chests of bathing businessmen trotting across the wet sands to the sea,
suddenly curveted, gathered speed, and in the same moment that it lifted
a wave of prawn smell into Bianca’s face gave her beret a push, then a
tug, and spun it across the road in front of a tram that was lumbering
to its stop, fifty yards on, by the Clock Tower.

“Hell!” said Bianca, shocking but exciting the prawn seller, while the
wind flicked her three and only Antoine-trained curls into a spiral
above her head, and Louis flung himself in front of the slowing tram,
seized the beret, and brought it back, rubbing the little diamond
elephant clipped on the front of it with the end of the spotted scarf
that was tied round his waist.

“Well! _That_ was a narrer squeak!” said the prawn seller, thrusting his
hands deep into his sagging pockets and considering Louis with
increasing admiration.

“I was an aviator in the last war,” said Louis. “Here, Bianca.”

“It’s no use trying to put it _on_,” said Bianca, and rolled up the
beret angrily.

“Will it go in your bag?” said Louis.

It did.

“Can’t offer you no prawns, I s’pose, lady?”

“Not just now, thank you,” said Bianca. “You see, I’m only here for the
day.”

“_That_ don’t matter, lady, ’undreds of my customers is only ’ere from
Lundin fer ther day. Takes a few back as a relish for supper when they
get ’ome.”

“Where are you going?” said Louis.

“_Je vais où le vent me mène_ . . . I don’t know. To the Pier, I
expect.”

“So am I,” said Louis.

They turned to go together.

“I’ll come back,” said Bianca to the prawn man.

“Rightcha, lady! Good day, lady! Good day, sir!”

“. . . But _what_ are you here for, Louis?”

“My book.”

“Your _book_?”

“I’m studying English conditions—at the moment. . . . I asked the man
who runs the coffee stall by the Albert Bridge in Chelsea, and who is my
friend, ‘Where do most English people get most happiness?’ He said, ‘At
the seaside.’ I asked, ‘Which seaside?’ He said, ‘Any old seaside.’ I
asked him where he went. He said once a year to Margate. So here I am.”

“But no one knows you’re in England?”

“I’m here to work.”

“Where are you staying?”

“In lodgings. The most perfectly English thing in the world. To exactly
such lodgings Maman allowed my Nannie once to bring me when I was a
little boy, and had been ill. . . . Only it was at Broadstairs, which is
near here. . . . I have a landlady from a _Punch_ of 1890 . . . her hair
in a pompadour. There is always an excellent fire in the sitting
room—which has a view of the beach and pink paper flowers on an
overmantel. And the bath water is never hot. But the shaving water
brought me in the morning is boiling. And at the same time she herself
brings my tea, the color of Tokay . . . and white thick bread and butter
with an indescribable rich delicious taste (that I remember also from my
visit with Nannie). And the bacon and eggs are a marvel. And every
morning she says, ‘Not such a bad day to-day, sir,’ or ‘I think you’ll
get your dip all right to-day, sir,’ although I have never shown the
least inclination to bathe in that glacial sea!”

He turned and pointed out where his “rooms” were, in the terrace of
little, early Victorian houses across the bay. “Very Dickens,” he said.

She said, yes, there were whole stretches of the sea front where,
sometimes when you were alone, you could hardly walk for the crinolines.
And on the beach the Bathing Machines would come around a loop of Time
like the cars at Brooklands.

They reached the Pier and followed in the drift of the crowd. Halfway
down the Pier they could see the band playing to a semicircle of serried
people in deck chairs with their collars turned up and umbrellas in
readiness. The wet wind blew splinters of music past them, but the waves
swirling below, and the talk and jostling round them, made the tune
itself a far-off thudding in the air.

“Come along! Come along!” shouted a shabbily dapper Jew behind a trestle
table set out with coins stuck down to be caught in wooden rings. “Come
on, ladies an’ gentlemen. Come an’ try. Have a try. You come in rags and
you go away in Rolls-Royces. You come in . . .”

Bianca spent ninepence, throwing the little hoops. The hoops always fell
a fraction of an inch wrong.

“Try again, lady?”

“Not again.”

He turned from her. “Come along, ladies and gentlemen. Come along . . .
come on . . . You come in rags and you go away in Rolls-Royces.”

She followed Louis into the covered hall. He shot five cardboard cats
off a wall, but the woman said the last cat hadn’t fallen in the right
place, so he’d just missed getting the box of chocolates. He said,
“Ski-Ball is a better game. Pure art. No prizes.”

The man at the Ski-Ball stand knew him. “Good day, sir. Good afternoon,
sir.”

They both played until Bianca was discouraged and went off to find out
her fortune in the Gipsy-Wheel machine. For a penny she got a verse
warning her against her mother-in-law. For another penny a picture,
tram-ticket size,—a cottage and a postman going in at the gate,—“A
letter from your Adorer.”

Then they went to a row of machines below a notice, PARIS NIGHTS.

Louis gave her some pennies. “You look in and turn the handle.”

She turned. A caption, “The Model’s Revenge.” A lady in a camisole and
corsets and her hair down, sitting on an iron bedstead. In comes a
wickedly smiling man with a pointed beard, and seizes her by the
shoulders. She takes a pistol out of the front of her camisole. Shoots.
Blank out.

The next, “The Sultan’s Favorite.” A lady all veils, yashmak, two dark
eyes. The yashmak off . . . the head veil off . . . more veils off.
Revelation of corsets, chemise, suspenders. The lady in a convulsion of
coyness turns her back, but looks over her shoulder, rolling her eyes.
The corsets fall off. The chemise begins to slip down her back. Blank
out.

“Very unwholesome,” said Bianca. “The mayor ought to do something.”

“On the contrary, I expect the mayor comes here alone at night, before
retiring with the mayoress.”

“Mayors don’t sleep with mayoresses,” said Bianca. “Let’s go up to the
other end of the Pier and do the try-your-strength, and the cricket and
football games.”

But halfway up the Pier was a red tent. “Flea Circus. Entrance Sixpence
Adults. Children Half Price.”

Inside the tent was dark and warm: a circle of light concentrated on a
miniature ring on a table; over it presiding, dim and godlike, a man in
a brown suit.

“Come in, come in, ladies an’ gentlemen . . . just in time to see Polly
do her balancing act.”

He held out a stick the size of a match. On the end of it a
loganberry-colored flea lay on its back, its legs in the air, and
balanced a minute fragment of wood, keeping on moving it from leg to
leg, keeping it going steadily, incessantly. “Good Polly,” he murmured
honeyed approval, and set her down at last. “It takes three hundred and
fifty times, putting back that bit of wood on her legs, to train her to
that! Now then, Polly, back in your bed, dear.” A box as long as a
thimble was padded with cotton wool. He laid her in.

“See,” he said to Bianca, “that piece of copper wire round her
body. . . . They all have that. Then they can’t hop too far!”

A darker flea, addressed as “Emperor,” pulled a tiny cart three times
round the ring. Then a ballet. Six smaller creatures, described as
“girls,” in infinitesimal paper ballet skirts, blue, pink, yellow. . . .
Their trainer applauded their activities.

“Do they practise every day?” Louis asked.

“Do they not? Reg’lar as clockwork . . . otherwise they’d forget, you
see. . . . Have to keep ’em training.” He laid them finally back in
their several “beds”!

“How d’you feed them?” asked Bianca.

The man rolled up his left sleeve. The inside of his arm from wrist to
elbow was speckled red, and “reg’lar as clockwork every morning before I
have me own breakfast,” he said.

On their way off the Pier they stopped at a shop whose dark small
windows were piled high with enamel pails, celluloid “hair tidies,”
calendars, shell boxes, and ring stands all inscribed “A Present from
Margate.” They went in; and Louis bought Bianca a small hand mirror set
in shells; and she bought him a little box decorated with shells and
lined with red velvet. Both had on them “A Present from Margate.”

They took the prawns back to Louis’s lodgings, and gave them to his
landlady to send up for tea. The landlady, Mrs. Peck, came up to the
sitting room and laid the best lace cloth over the green plush one on
the round table. The green one had green bobbles all round it.

There was a lovely glowing coal fire. The two windows draped in starched
lace curtains faced out over the promenade. It had begun to rain; and
the wind blew the rain against the windows and rattled them. Louis poked
the fire with the inexpert hand of the Latin. Bianca took the poker from
him and the flames danced up.

Mrs. Peck brought up their tea. She said, “I’ll leave the kettle on the
’ob and then you won’t have to ring for more ’ot water. I give the
prawns a good rinse, Mr. Shorer! And is there anythink more you want?”

There couldn’t have been.

They had so often been together. But it seemed to Bianca that until this
afternoon, this raining, rattling, blowy, prawn-smelling afternoon, they
had never met. And now they met head-on, with a crash of high spirits,
with an impact of delight, that set the aquatinted Victorian panorama of
Margate Harbor, outside the windows, quivering and shimmering, as if it
were reflected from a magic-lantern slide into the pearled concavity of
the lower sky.

They began to eat.

There were hot buttered toast and currant and plain bread and butter and
potted meat (chicken and ham) and two sorts of jam (strawberry and
apricot) in glass dishes, and macaroons and gingerbread and Chelsea buns
and seed cake. “Mr. Shorer is very partial to macaroons,” Mrs. Peck said
to Bianca. “I get them from Fasham’s in Cliftonville. Theirs are always
fresh.” Mrs. Peck went.

They sat opposite each other at the table and Bianca poured out tea; and
the buttered toast and the prawns tasted so good that Louis began to
feel that Bianca was the best company in the world; and Bianca felt that
she would like to go on indefinitely having tea with Louis like this in
a glow of irrational gayety and agreeable surfeit, with pink paper roses
on the overmantel and red silk shades on the lamps, and the kettle
whistling softly to itself by the fire—and outside, the rain and the
sands and the sea.

                 *        *        *        *        *

He saw her off at the station. A sudden chill. Bleary lamps.

“_Lundintrine! . . . Lundintrine!_”

She got into a carriage. She said:—

“It _has_ been fun.”

“Immense fun.” (Odd English word, “fun.” What did it mean? Not just
gayety. Something more intangible, but more mutual; as incalculable, as
irrational in its happening, as falling in love.)

“Shall you work—to-night?” (I wish I wasn’t going . . . I wish . . .)

“Probably.” (A pity she wasn’t staying . . . amusing to have had dinner
together . . .)

The guard’s whistle.

“Good-bye, Louis.”

“Good-bye, Bianca.”

The train moving out, slowly, faster. He almost said, “When shall I see
you again?” Somehow didn’t. And the train was moving out, and she wasn’t
looking out of the window any more.

                 *        *        *        *        *

Louis returned to Paris in October to settle down for a winter’s work.

Now that his material was collected, he could stay in one place and
organize his existence for work. In default of other sensations, there
was, he found, an excitement in this deliberate scientific
administration of his own time-plus-energy. His _masseur_ came at seven;
and left him exercised by eight, when he took a hot bath, a cold shower;
and then, in a dressing gown and slacks, paced about drinking his
coffee, brought by Celimène, and smoking his two cigarettes, rationed to
him by Zamorr. At nine he began writing. He wrote until one. At one he
lunched, Celimène always slippering in from the kitchen to see if he was
eating well the nourishing dishes she prepared for him. After luncheon,
and two more cigarettes, he dressed, perfunctorily; was shaved by Zamorr
and went out, to walk in the Tuileries for half an hour. He came back by
three-thirty and slept for an hour. Then his dressing gown again; more
coffee, and work until eight, when he dined. (No meat. Half a carafe of
red wine; more coffee; two more cigarettes.) Then, from nine until
midnight, or later, more work.

Yet even in this rhythm there were unreckoned pauses, and interrupting
moods. And in those pauses, when his thought simply failed to use his
material, he found himself wondering whether this artificial and
deliberate isolation for work wasn’t, obscurely, a defiance of his much
more real isolation in everyday life.

For it was just when he wasn’t at work, as during this last summer, that
he was increasingly aware of being alone. The very complexity of his
sympathy and comprehension that made him so many friends made him feel
alone among them; and the qualities that he loved in his friends, which
were simple qualities, courage, gayety, sensibility, made him aware of
tortuousness in himself. (And the incidental sorts of love which had
distracted and deliciously maddened him ten years before now left him
angry and embittered by the facility of the whole game.)

He felt that his life now was like going down a street alone on a raw
evening when the people in the houses had put on the lights and piled up
the fire; and their curtains weren’t yet drawn, so that he could see in.
He could see them talking, laughing and bickering, and eating inside
their little glowing theatres. They were safe against the dark out of
which he saw too clearly; cheerful in their denial of solitude,
complacent in their jolly, rather foolish “belonging”; their lives made
up of this belonging (of this cohesion of emotions and habits and
possessions) as prettily and naïvely as the little box Bianca had given
him that day at Margate was created by the sticking together of small
shiny shells and cardboard and red velvet.

Sometimes when he felt that this notion of being “different” was
becoming an obsession with him he knocked off work and spent an evening
with a crowd of friends. And, for a few hours, got a reassuring sense of
being _in_ life again; as if the surrounding pressure of their
cheerfulness and certainty solidified him.

But always, after a time, he felt himself disintegrating again in the
midst of their accepted realness. Or felt that they were somehow fake.

                 *        *        *        *        *

François, who was himself working hard on a play, attributed Louis’s
depression to overwork, and warned him to eat lightly. (Prolonged
success, and with it security, had had the effect of bringing out a
strain of peasant good sense in François.)

Marie de Montcontour was the only person Louis saw that winter who
understood that neither rest nor six months of light meals would cure
him.

He went to see her from time to time in her same apartment in the Avenue
Gabriel. She would receive him, always lying on her sofa, svelte and
moulded in white lace that reached up to her chin and swirled down over
her ankles, revealing her feet in slippers of emerald satin. And always
it was as if the renewal of their conversation were what she had been
waiting for.

Her old Paulette brought their tea herself, so as to sec “M’sieu Louis”
again; and set the tray on the low lacquer table beside madame, saying,
“_V’là_ M’sieu Louis again, who hasn’t changed at all!” and then,
“Madame equally—she hasn’t changed,” and would start gossiping to Louis
until Marie dismissed her.

Then Marie would pour out tea, as she began to talk about a book, or a
character or an occasion, which had diverted her. (François had said of
her once that there was “no flower, even an artificial one, in which she
didn’t discover honey.”) And Louis listened, his spirit anchored for an
hour or so in the familiar warmth and bric-a-brac of the room, among the
velvet chairs and leopard skins and Japanese embroidered cushions and
Chinese jade ornaments, and the inevitable freesia—a flower that he
disliked but always associated with Marie.

She only once spoke to him about himself that winter. It was a dark
February afternoon when he came in shivering and depressed, the back of
his neck and shoulders aching with the dank cold, his eyes hot from
working for two days in artificial light. And she was struck by his
appearance, asking him if he was ill. He denied it, annoyed. He said he
must try to get his old Swedish _masseur_ back again, who made him sleep
better.

Marie said that he was working too hard, and old Paulette waddled off to
make him a “grog.” And Marie, noticing the weariness of his movements
that had always been so swift and graceful, said, “Louis, you’ll wear
yourself out with work.” He pulled one of the cushions off a divan and
sank down cross-legged near the fire.

“Life isn’t so amusing.”

“It ought to be, at your age.”

“I’m not my age.”

She said, “That’s true also . . . but you were born so. That isn’t what
is wrong now.”

When Paulette had brought the grog and gone unwillingly away, he said:—

“No. That isn’t what’s wrong. But it’s probably the cause.”

She asked:—

“What is wrong then?”

She looked at him; the firelight lit him sitting there cross-legged and
his arms crossed, his features like a red-metaled idol. He said:—

“I’m alone. Or else I’m obsessed with the idea that I’m alone.” He
added, still staring long-eyed and immobile into the fire, “I used to
live on people for the excitement and emotion and charm they would give
me. One’s hell is made in one’s life, to measure! Mine fits me
perfectly.”

“Why?”

“Now I have a sort of terror of all human intimacy.”

“And yet it’s that that you need.”

His strange glance moved from the fire to her.

“And my little Inferno,” he said, “is precisely that paradox.”

                 *        *        *        *        *

Louis broke off work at the end of March. For as spring came his writing
seemed more and more irrelevant. The very early mornings began to come
in and wake him with their fresh sweetness, so that he would get up, and
go on to his balcony, high above the Tuileries, and see, far across the
Concorde, the first sun strike the golden statues on the Pont Alexandre
III. The lengthening days disturbed him with their warmth and blooming
light. The evenings plucked at his nerves.

He shut his manuscripts into a drawer: told Zamorr to pack for him, and
sent Charmian a telegram. Before he went he telephoned to Marie to say
that he was going to England for a week. She said, “I believe you are in
love with that Englishwoman.” He said, “I am never in love,” and he
heard her low disturbing laughter . . . “How arrogant you are.”

                 *        *        *        *        *

At Moon’s Green he found the explanation of François’s postcard, written
from there on his last visit. “Here is the New Madonna, with an Elder,
and a Saint. A sort of Triptych in which one sees, on the left, the
Elder holding up a glass of port in one hand and caressing a water
spaniel with the other; in the centre the Madonna clasping ten children
upon her fragile knees; on the right the Saint carrying a wand of suède
cerise and holding open on her knee a volume of the _Bibliothèque
Rose_.”

François’s picture was realized by the group which Louis, arriving after
tea, discovered in the library. In an armchair sat Carteret, rosy and
complacent, holding, not a glass of port, but a toy aeroplane which he
was about to launch across the room. Opposite him, in another armchair,
sat Mademoiselle Houville. On the fender stool sat Charmian, banked up
with little girls in pink smocks and little boys in blue ones.

She sprang up so that the children seemed to tumble off and from her,
and Mademoiselle Houville and Carteret began picking them up and setting
them on their plump legs again, as if they were the pawns in _Through
the Looking-Glass_.

Charmian said, “Did François tell you?”

Louis looked from her to the children and began again trying to count
how many there were. He said:—

“François referred to this. But more or less in images.”

“You know Mademoiselle Houville? She is the _directrice_.”

“How many?” said Louis.

“Twenty. Ten boys and ten girls. Adopted. The nurseries here were so
dreadfully unused.”

                 *        *        *        *        *

Later in the evening, when Carteret had gone for his “last turn” in the
garden, and Mademoiselle Houville had gone up to make her final round of
the nurseries, Charmian told him the whole story of what had been less a
deliberate project than a suddenly “good idea.” How on her return,
instead of having “nothing left” (for Lothair had lost all her money for
her), she had found that she had Peter’s money, and that her father was
going to leave Moon’s Green to her, and the London house to her mother.
She had, quite incidentally, invited Mademoiselle Houville to stay with
her, and they were discussing how she, Charmian, could now arrange her
life when Anna came in to see her, and joining in said that Charmian
ought to take Ruth’s children and bring them up. And so, somehow, the
“plan” had grown out of that chance remark of Anna’s. . . . It was easy
enough to adopt the children.

Louis said, “It’s all so incredibly Charmian.”

“Bianca says it’s just ‘highly organized Barrie.’”

Louis said a little sharply, “Bianca is always even a little
deliberately beside the point. She prefers it. When she wears a rose it
must be a green one.” He went on, “The truth is that you were always
most capable of loving where you were most needed. You were always
either a child or a mother.” He glanced at her, still, with her Madonna
face and absurdly coltish limbs. “You have, perhaps, that strange
English quality which makes you at the same time fantastic and
practical, but never altogether grown-up.”

She nodded; and then startled him by saying, “I know. Haunting their own
nurseries.”

It was the first time he had ever heard her ironical. But she changed
the direction of their talk, asking him, “But you, Louis? I chatter
about my ‘false family.’ Tell me what’s happening to you?”

He said, “Apparently my work. Essentially nothing. I see my friends. I
avoid my enemies.”

“But the future?”

“I suppose when I have finished this book I shall wait, and then, like a
reliable hen, I shall lay another.”

“Is that enough?”

“No, my dear. But that’s all.”

“But Louis. Where are you going? What are you going to make of your
life? You’re still young.”. . . In her voice was exactly the gesture
with which he had seen her turn to a stumbling two-year-old that had
fallen and, tortoise-like, couldn’t get on to its feet again. “What do
you want?” she insisted.

He answered her in the brittle voice and with an access of charm which,
by making him suddenly into a stranger, had always been his defense
against intimacy.

“I want, like everyone else, to be quite perfectly happy.”

                 *        *        *        *        *

Mademoiselle Houville hadn’t yet begun to undress, and was finishing a
letter to her sister in the Dordogne, when there was a knock at her
door.

“Come in!”

It was Bianca. Bianca was staying at Moon’s Green, having lent her own
house to Anna, as much to annoy Ruth as to give Anna a refuge—after
Ruth had dismissed her.

“May I come in? For ten minutes?”

“But of course. Come and sit by my lovely fire.”

Bianca said, “I don’t know why I should disturb you, Mademoiselle.”

“You don’t disturb me. You know that.” Mademoiselle Houville glanced at
her. She had been interested in her renewed meetings with Bianca, by the
way in which a girl who, though lively, had been so essentially
sensitive and serious had developed into a woman whose motive in living
seemed to be to avoid either feeling or thinking deeply. Watching her
from day to day, she had perceived both how charming and how
unsatisfactory such a woman must be, to others—and surely, in the end,
to herself? And a certain sparkling beguiling quality in her which came
from what seemed a deliberate shallowness in her nature—as if she had
deflected and widened the flow of her own life to ripple easily and
swirl and tumble prettily.

The result was, in effect, so pretty, so agreeable, that at first
Mademoiselle Houville herself had believed that Bianca’s problems had,
in contrast to most people’s, grown simpler with time. Then she had
perceived, not condemning, but surprised, that Bianca hadn’t solved any
problems, but simply eliminated them; and that she had, by some process
of self-detachment, freed herself of moral, practical, or emotional
problems altogether. So that she was startled when Bianca now lifted a
face marked by an inner conflict, the eyes shadowed, the usual bloom of
inconsequence wiped off her whole expression, and said:—

“Is Louis Scheurer in love with Charmian?”

“Louis Scheurer? . . . With Charmian? Why do you think so?” (And why
should Bianca care, with that man Langridge cabling and writing to her
incessantly?)

“I believe you know that she is?” Bianca said this, smiling.

“My dear child, I know nothing. That he saw her in Paris often, that I
know. And that he stayed here a few weeks ago.”

“She had a letter from him to-day—this evening.”

“My dear Bianca, I don’t look at Charmian’s letters.”

Bianca flushed. “Nor do I . . . but I couldn’t help seeing . . . the
stamp and the notepaper, and then the writing. And when she opened it, I
couldn’t help seeing her expression.”

Mademoiselle Houville looked at her.

“I know nothing. But whatever Charmian has, she deserves.”

“—Only why hasn’t she told me? . . . It seems so strange.”

“Perhaps she feels that you are so much occupied with your own life.”

She replied quickly enough, “Herbert Langridge isn’t my life.”

“What is he then? Isn’t everything you do ‘your life’?”

She defended, “The things you don’t feel don’t matter.”

“You make a mistake, Bianca. It seems to me, and has seemed so to many
wiser and greater than I, that everything matters. It is both one’s
misfortune and perhaps one’s salvation that one cannot eliminate any of
one’s acts and thoughts from the fabric of one’s existence.” She added,
following her own train of thought: “And the faults one confesses remain
in the fabric, even when their commission has been absolved. As I see
the thing there is a perpetual process in the creation of a character,
which helps either to create or to destroy. . . . And above all,” she
said, “it seems to me that the things that one wishes to believe ‘don’t
matter’ are the most insidious acts of self-destruction.”

“In that case,” said Bianca, with a sudden hostility, “I must be
altogether destroyed.” Yet almost as she finished the sentence her
expression changed, and she threw herself on her knees, saying, “I know
you’re right _really_—only . . .”

Mademoiselle Houville felt her hands, chill and nervous in hers.

“What is it really, my child?”

“I . . . don’t really know.”

“Then let us talk of other things. You have heard that Ruth and her
husband will now go abroad to Egypt and the children are to come here?
To add to Charmian’s family?”

                 *        *        *        *        *

Next morning Mademoiselle Houville came down to find Charmian, puzzled,
saying, “Bianca has gone off to Paris by early boat from Folkestone!”

                 *        *        *        *        *

Celimène’s voice:—

“There is the _masseur_ for m’sieu.”

Louis stirred. Turned over. Woke up.

“Tell him to wait . . .”

He had worked until three: mechanically; more under the nervous pressure
created by his fear of his own inactivity than through interest in the
work; which had seemed, for weeks now, stale and unprofitable.

He dragged himself out of bed.

“Zamorr!” He started taking his shower.

Zamorr came and rubbed him down: watching his face to catch the exact
inflection of his mood. Celimène was tidying the bed in the next room.

“It’s a beaootiful day, Mistah Louis,” said Zamorr, reassuring.

Celimène said as he came back into the bedroom, “There was a lady who
telephoned last night. But I said that monsieur was still in England.”

“What lady? Zamorr, tell the _masseur_ he can come.”

“I didn’t ask her name,” said Celimène. “It wasn’t worth while since I
told her that monsieur was away.”

When the _masseur_ had given his quick bow and gone Louis walked about
his bedroom, pausing to sip his coffee, to light another cigarette, to
look at the newspaper, which was mainly preoccupied with the coming
Coronation in London. It seemed a pity, since the majority of people get
such pleasure out of a Coronation, not to have them regularly in every
capital, instead of World Fairs and Expositions which cost as much and
did less for the hotel trade.

He was pouring out his second cup of coffee and looking for grains of
political news among chunks of anticipatory coronational description,
when Bianca came in, wearing a crimson evening coat, and said, “I knew
Celimène was lying. Give me some of that lovely smelling coffee. I’ve
been up all night and I feel very dissipated.”

He glanced at her face.

“You look it.” He rang for Zamorr and ordered coffee for her. “Why stay
out all night? Like a débutante.”

“Sentimentality.” She lay back on the chaise longue and put her feet up.

“How?” As she was arranging a cushion behind her head he realized that
he was pleased at her being suddenly here, with him. An odd, acute sort
of pleasure: that had in it a quality of relief; as though her coming in
like this (unexpected and unwanted) had changed some element in the
room, or in his mood, from ill to well. “How sentimentality?” he
repeated.

She said, “David reappeared yesterday. He seemed so sweet . . . We dined
together. And it was a lovely evening, and we drank a lot of armagnac
and David kept saying we ought to get married, and I knew we oughtn’t,
but I didn’t want to say so, so we stayed up and danced and motored out
to Versailles for the sunrise, and at last he felt sleepy—he gets
sleepy quite suddenly, so we came back and I left him at his hotel, but
the Quai de Conti (I’ve taken it from Nicky now) seemed gloomy, so I
came here.”

“Not very coherent. Here’s your coffee. All the same, why not marry
David?”

Zamorr put the tray on a table beside her.

“. . . Because I shall probably marry Herbert Langridge.”

“_What?_”

“Why not?”

“That male _cow_?”

“Louis _dear_! A male cow is an ox, anyway.”

“Wrong again. Your insult is worse than mine.”

She pushed back her hair with a familiar gesture that again, simply in
itself, gave him that feeling of pleasure . . . that queer sudden
feeling of relief.

“I’m too sleepy anyway for these subtleties.”

He said, “Why did you telephone last night, anyway? What can I do for
you?”

She shut her eyes and yawned. “I just wanted someone to play with.”

“I see. Well, I’m afraid I’m hard at work.”

She didn’t make any comment. She didn’t look at him and drank her coffee
as if she had abruptly forgotten that he was in the room. Then she said,
“What a pity”; and then, after another interval of detachment or
sleepiness, he couldn’t make out which, she said, “And you were _such_
fun at Margate!”

He said, “That is probably the virtue of Margate. The _élan_ of the Pier
deserts me in Paris.” He added, “When David wakes up he will play with
you . . . or the legitimate or _almost_ legitimate Langridge.”

She got up, sighed, thanked him for the coffee, and went.

When she had gone Zamorr, coming in to take the tray, said:—

“Mrs. Selwyn is certainly lookin’ beautiful, Mistah Louis.”

Louis didn’t answer. But at luncheon Celimène came in, on a pretext of
finding out if the duck pleased him, and remarked that Madame Selwyn was
very much changed. He said, sharply, that she hadn’t slept last night.

“_Tiens!_” said Celimène. And added, “So much the worse for her.”

He had just settled to work in the afternoon when Bianca came back. She
was smiling and fresh with sleep. She said that she was hiding from
David and Herbert, and meant to spend the afternoon reading quietly on
his sofa and not disturbing him.

He said, “Very well. If that amuses you.”

She chose three books out of the shelves. He sat down at his desk,
turning his back on her, deliberately focusing his mind on to his work;
but an awareness of her growing on his senses as if she had been a fire
lighted in a cold room.

He went on writing for nearly two hours. (It was the “English section,”
and his thought wrote itself into satisfactory patterns on the page.)
Then, without intention, he turned round and glanced at her. The three
books were lying on the floor beside her: and she was looking at him. He
felt a black-out (as in a flash of danger too swift to be realized).
Then, as his voice said, “I thought you were asleep,” he felt his heart
beating in thick syncopation.

He saw her color and grow pale again.

Then she was getting up and saying she must go. Just as she was going he
asked her if she wanted to come to breakfast again to-morrow morning.
She answered noncommittally, putting on her veil in front of the glass
and looking at her own reflection as if she had never seen her face and
her hat before.

When she had gone he picked the three books up off the floor and took
them to the shelves to put them back. Then he hesitated, and turning
away from the shelves put them on his desk beside his manuscript; and,
sitting down with the idea of working, still kept his hand on them.

                 *        *        *        *        *

That evening he went to see Marthe.

He began to talk about Bianca, indifferently but with analytical
persistence. He was surprised when Marthe said that only yesterday
Bianca had been to see her, after several years. She had come with
Nathalie. “She is beautiful,” Marthe said, “but it is true, what
Nathalie said of her . . . there is at the same time something childish
. . . a sort of freshness in her expression, and an exhaustion.”

“She is both restless and asleep,” Louis said. “She is incurious as if
her eyes didn’t see what other people see. . . . She is elusive,
escaping the things that hold others.”

“Yes. She is asleep,” Marthe said. “But if she were to love . . .”

“She is incapable of love.”

“No one who has loved is incapable of love. On the contrary I think it
is the one thing they desire always to find again . . . the thing that
has an absolute value which makes everything else in life relative,
comparatively inessential.”

He was silent.

“. . . And what matters in love isn’t what one gets but what one feels.
Perhaps to love most completely is simply to know with one’s whole heart
that the other person exists.” When she spoke again she said, “So Peter
loved you.” Louis started. Looked at her. She met his look.

He said, “And so you loved him . . .”

“Yes.”

“And so, just in that, I failed.”

She said swiftly, touching his hand, “But you were . . . almost unreal
all those years. . . . You saw so much, yet only half saw . . . half
realized. . . . You were so brilliant—and so stupid, so gay, and so
unhappy. . . . You were incapable of love . . . then.”

“Elusive? . . . incurious? . . . asleep?”

She took his hand.

“Yes. Then. But not now.”

As he got up she said with a sudden simplicity, “Sometimes one forgets
that happiness is possible; that it is a natural thing, that can be
found—and kept.” She added, kissing him good-night, “Think of that, my
dear. . . .”

                 *        *        *        *        *

Bianca came the next morning, too elaborately dressed and in that state
of tiresome gayety which she had learned from the _Galère_: its tricks
of speech being chiefly Bengy; its malice derived from Sandy Fane; its
perfunctory indecencies imitations of Nicky. During the half hour in
which she stayed, partly in the _salon_, then out on the balcony, then
in again, she gave a long, rambling, not really amusing account of the
evening before, which she had spent with Herbert Langridge at the
Tabarin.

Louis said, “It will be very suitable.”

“What will?”

“Your marriage to Langridge.”

“So will yours, to Charmian.”

He stared. “What an insipid joke.”

“It isn’t.”

“My dear Bianca!”

“It would be _very_ suitable.”

“But, my dear, there isn’t any question.”

She hesitated, watching him; then dismissed the matter with an abrupt,
“People always say that,” and began talking very fast about Bengy’s new
plan that he and she should go into partnership and go round staying
with only very rich people and making them realize that if they didn’t
have their whole houses redecorated she and Bengy would tell, on their
visit to the next people, how appalling their taste was.

“Interior Decoration through Blackmail?” said Louis. This talk was pure
Bengy and came rippling from her lips irrelevant to the expression in
her eyes. She went on about Bengy’s new bed, which was two locked in
one, pink sheets on one half, blue on the other, and he changed sides
according to his mood and called it _le lit androgyne_. . . . This went
on, Louis watching her face. Suddenly she stopped.

“I’m boring you.”

“Not at all. I am very interested.”

She said, speaking in her own voice now, in her own hesitant sweet
tones, “That isn’t true. I can feel that. The truth is that you find me
tiresome. You always have . . . or, nearly always.”

He said, “Do you really believe that, Bianca?”

“I—feel it. I’ve so often felt you were hostile. . . . Not always. That
was exaggerated.”

“Not nearly always . . . but you have twenty masks, and a good many of
them seem to be designed by someone like Bengy. They have a sort of
chic, but . . .” His tone was impersonal, nervous, a little impatient.
“I prefer you unmasked.”

“Nobody in the least adult or civilized goes about ‘unmasked’ . . . and
most people are infinitely better with cardboard faces painted to match
their conversation.”

“Not you,” he said.

She began some light easy protest.

He said, “So many people are unconsciously fools. But you are a fool on
purpose. You organize and perfect your own foolishness.” He spoke with a
sort of tranquil bitterness now, not looking at her, but going to the
window and looking out at the hard white sky. “You could be the most
heavenly woman in the world . . . but you’re too selfish. . . . You
could feel and know and understand . . . only you’re too lazy. . . . You
could be perfect in friendship, if you weren’t always, all the time,
either amused, or dreaming, or obsessed by some profound impulse, that I
don’t understand, to _escape_! . . . Escape what? Escape feeling? Escape
living?” He added, after a pause, “If you weren’t always in this sort of
silly dancing flight you might have been the woman whom all men desire;
the woman who doesn’t exist . . . whose possessing is an unbelievable
and ultimate peace.”

Still he looked out. Paris below like a map; cold grey and white;
squares of dull green.

She couldn’t speak.

He said, with the same quiet indifferent bitterness, “We might even have
loved each other.”

She heard herself saying:—

“I’m sorry. I think I must go. I’m lunching.”

He said, “Don’t let me keep you.” (_She’s hurt. She’s in pain._)

“I’m not sure what the time is.” (_I’ve never liked him._)

“It’s half-past twelve.” (_I’m glad she’s hurt._)

“Half-past twelve?” (_Only he’s been there . . . he’s been there, for a
long time, now._) “How long will it take me to get to Bougival?”

“About half an hour, if you’re going by car.” (_She’s going now._)

“I shall go in a taxi.” (_But since when has he been there? Since
Margate? Since the Embassy? Since Céligny?_)

“If you go in a taxi it will probably take you about forty minutes.”
(_In forty minutes she’ll be ten miles away: she’s hurt; she’s angry;
she’s afraid; she won’t come back._)

“Then I shan’t be very late. I told them one o’clock.”

“Then you’ll only be ten minutes late.”

“They’ll probably be later than I.” (_He hates me. I’m going away. Once
I’m away, in a taxi going to Bougival, I shall forget. And so will he.
But he was there . . . even at Céligny. . . . And even in that white and
blinding sun, and the hatred and shining terror spinning round us both,
at Davos . . . he was there._)

                 *        *        *        *        *

Herbert was waiting for her at Bougival.

The warmth of the spring weather had caused the proprietor of the little
restaurant to set out a few of the tables on the gravel above the slope
of the river. And Herbert, getting up to welcome her, looked seasonable,
and rather endearingly portly, in his light flannel suit and an
extraordinarily American Panama hat.

He had ordered the luncheon already, and remarked, indulgently, that he
had called up to find out if she was awake yet.

She said, brusquely, that she had been out before ten, and had been
shopping with a friend. Herbert had a way of assuming that she was a
late riser because many of her friends were. She repeatedly told him
that she breakfasted at eight whatever time she went to bed. But it was
one of the facts, like her distaste for champagne, that he simply didn’t
bother to believe. Thus if he ever called her up before nine and found
her awake he said, “What! Awake already?” And whenever he ordered
champagne and she refused it he said that he knew she was really just as
moderate in her tastes as he was: and never observed that when he
ordered a wine she liked she drank several glasses and laughed more, and
was more affectionate.

They sat down opposite each other at the little table and he laid his
hand over hers, and asked her if she’d had a successful morning
shopping? He added that she looked “a little weary” (a word she hated)
and that he was afraid that she wasn’t taking enough care of herself.

But when he realized she was getting nervy and cross he just seized both
her hands and burst into one of his long friendly chuckling laughs at
her, and said, “_You’ll_ be all right _soon_! Wait till you’ve had some
of your beloved garlic-sausage!” and rocked again, looking so large and
sane, his white teeth and brown nose shining and a certain oaflike
heartiness about his chuckle, that the little bouts of emotional pain
she’d been having in the taxi all the way out from Paris began to seem
unreal, and that last ten minutes with Louis lost dimension and became
like a picture seen fleetingly in the corridor of a strange house.

The proprietor himself brought the _hors d’œuvre_ and Herbert told him
that madame liked “salamis,” but he (Herbert) didn’t. The proprietor, an
adroit and gentle little man in a black suit and an apron, appreciated
both these facts with polite smiles. His manner towards them made Bianca
imagine a scientifically trained keeper attending to Monsieur the Bear
and Madame his lady friend the Marmoset. But she only said, “What a
French type that is!” For she knew Herbert well enough by now to realize
that that sort of fancy would annoy his sense of the dignity of man.
Whereas any conversation that admitted, however obliquely, the
magnificence of the Human Spirit elated him; and, whether its actual
matter were love or disease or arctic exploration, caused him to say,
sooner or later, “An astonishing creature, Man!”

“Well, and how long are you going to stop in Paris _now_?” he asked,
smilingly, but she thought, her perceptions keyed as they were, that she
felt a dim but wide purposefulness behind his question.

“I don’t know. Not long.”

“Gone with the wind—as usual,” he said. He chose out some olives for
her himself, and put them on her plate. He had beautiful hands, strong
and clean-looking. She had once told him that he was physically
appetizing and he had started straight off on an interminable exposition
of his theory that there was a “wonderful something” that got certain
people attracted to each other and it was a mistake to suppose that it
was a “purely physical thing”; on the other hand it was equally
erroneous to suppose that the perfect relationship shouldn’t contain
_both_ elements, and so forth; and _da capo_.

Herbert’s conversation was usually a process of wrapping a fragment of
truth, which had been visible to all, in layers of cotton until it was
unrecognizable. Sometimes this endeared him to her (as Toby’s
six-year-old conjuring of “Indians” out of hazel twigs and rags used
to). But at other times it had been exactly these bouts of synthetic
philosophizing that had steadied her resolution not to marry him.

These two conflicting views she had of the same trait in him were
typical of her attitude to him altogether. And it was her uncertainty of
her own reactions to him which made her wary, as if he had been
dangerous (instead of supremely safe), and subtle in her dealing with
him, as if he himself had been subtle (instead of simple, sound, and
only moderately shrewd).

She felt, with him, that she might at any moment let herself slip into a
yawning safeness. But she also tried to get so near slipping that she
wouldn’t be able to save herself.

She knew that to-day she was in danger of making herself slip. She
didn’t want to go on thinking and feeling, as she had in the taxi. She
wanted to impose Herbert’s broadness and sanity on her too clear,
strange remembering of Louis when she left him an hour ago. She wanted
Herbert’s kindly tones to boom away, drowning the brittle echoes of
Louis’s words (. . . _We might even have loved each other_). She wanted
Herbert to proceed, stage by stage, from friendliness to sentiment, from
sentiment to a comfortable tenderness, from tenderness to a protective,
solemn, obscurely sensual insistence on her need of him. And these
stages must go slowly, exactly as they were going now; for already he
was full of grave sentiment and they were eating filet mignon. But they
must go on, possibly the whole afternoon, be set at a tempo that would
last the whole day (ending, perhaps, with a proposal at the Vert Galant
or Larue this evening). So that between now and the proposal there
couldn’t be a long enough time for her to think, or feel.

Herbert Langridge was sufficiently satisfied with the situation to enjoy
his breakfast. First his cornflakes and cream; then his bacon and eggs,
rolls, coffee, and marmalade. They knew him by now, here at the Ritz
(hadn’t he been here every time he was in Paris since 1918?), and always
sent up his same breakfast. The bacon was almost as good as at home.

Last evening she had as good as promised to marry him. For a wayward
creature like Bianca it was certainly a big step towards a promise.
“Give me until to-morrow to make up my mind and black its eyelashes.”
Sweet and whimsical she was! But he liked her that way, and didn’t want
her to be different. That was where love came in. He could understand
her because he loved her. “_Tout pardonner c’est tout comprendre._”
There was something very sweet about the way she’d waited for him last
evening to kiss her good-night. Sort of childlike.

It was this childlike side of her nature perhaps that he loved most. He
could imagine how she would come in this morning—perhaps in one of her
little phases of stand-offishness, playing him up a little. Very
feminine she was, too. Woman and child, both.

After breakfast he smoked his pipe. Then, methodically, he read his
mail. Then sat down to answer each letter in order of its importance.
There was one from his mother. A very sweet letter. She inquired if he
had seen “that delightful Mrs. Selwyn.” There had been something very
beautiful in the way the two women had taken a liking to each other. He
had watched that. But made no comment to either of them, very careful
not to bruise what promised to be a rare sweet flower of friendship. His
ensuing thoughts brought a smile of faintly conscious tenderness to his
brown face.

By the time he had finished his letters it was almost half-past eleven.
She’d said she’d come soon after eleven. Again he smiled to himself. “O
woman! in our hours of ease!” He got up and went to the wide mirror set
in the paneling above the chimneypiece. He met his own level serious
glance levelly, and seriously. He adjusted his tie. Then he went to the
telephone and called down to the desk that when a visitor arrived for
him she was to be shown right up. Then he went back to the glass and
looked at himself.

He was still considering his own reflection when there was a knock on
the door. “Yes. Come in.” He moved quickly enough to be sitting in the
armchair, book in hand, when the door opened.

And Louis Scheurer came in.

Even as Langridge was jolted from an attitude of supreme receptiveness
to one of rather forced cordiality, he reflected that Louis was
typically dressed: svelte, perfectly tailored, suède shoes, gloves, and
cane, and a green orchid in his buttonhole.

“I thought I might find Bianca here,” Louis said.

“What did you want to see her about?” he asked, courteous and benign.

“I want her to lunch with me!”

Langridge smiled with infinite, almost jocose good nature. “Sorry, my
boy. I’m afraid she’s lunching with me.”

Louis asked, casual, looking at himself in the glass, “Did she say she
would?”

“Well, you know I rather expect it. As she happens to be going to be my
wife!” He beamed gently. “So I don’t expect her to lunch without me.”

Louis went to the glass, took the orchid out of his buttonhole, and put
it in again at a slightly different angle. “Your wife, yes. But not your
Siamese twin.”

Langridge smiled tolerantly. “Well, Louis. You never could consider
seriously the things that matter to most of us.”

“And what are they?” asked Louis. “Forgive me, but I am forgetting my
American.”

“Well,” drawled Langridge, “love, for one thing.”

“Ah yes!” said Louis. “Love.” He turned slowly from the mirror. “Well, I
should have liked to show Bianca this shirt. A new sort of silk. A
heavenly texture. It’s called _cul-de-fée_.”

“Very pretty,” said Langridge benevolently, his glance on the clock.
“She ought to be here any minute. She said she’d be here at eleven. But
. . . well, we all know what women are!”

“Some of us do,” said Louis archly, yet with a note of
self-depreciation, and Langridge preened himself, gave Louis a faintly
patronizing smile.

“Well. The world’s a strange place,” he said.

“And,” said Louis, “it takes, as the English say, all sorts to make a
world.”

“That’s very true,” said Langridge.

“Also,” said Louis, “I sometimes ask myself if life would be so
interesting if everyone were alike!”

“It certainly would not,” said Langridge.

Louis waited for him to add, “Variety is the spice of life,” which he
did, thoughtfully. And glanced at the clock again.

Louis said:—

“Bianca always was desperately unreliable.”

“Yes . . . wayward,” said Langridge, smiling to himself. “But all she
needs is a little direction. A very light ‘bit.’” He looked at the floor
again.

Louis said, “Wouldn’t it be heaven if we had a drink?”

“As you like. But it’s this drinking at all hours, you know, that makes
you all the way you are. . . . But just call down for what you want.”
Louis went to the telephone and with a little just audible giggle of
diffidence ordered two champagne cocktails. Langridge ignored this and
reverted to the topic of Bianca by saying that her real trouble was that
she was always around with “the wrong set.” For instance, that terrible
_déclassée_ Charmian Cable. Louis explained in a series of concise
sentences that Charmian was probably the only really good human being
they had either of them ever known; he said, “Her goodness makes her
seem like a clown. She always falls down where other people are wary
enough to stand up.”

“. . . _Déclassée_,” repeated Langridge as if Louis hadn’t spoken. He
added abruptly, “Do you happen to remember a certain Miss Prince in New
York?”

“Miss Prince?”

“Yes, a newspaper woman.”

[. . . A door opening . . . Kramer in a too tight top coat buttoned
across him . . .]

“I don’t think I do,” Louis said, arranging himself in an attitude on
the sofa.

Langridge kept his stare intently on him. “Curious—very curious.
Because she happened to describe a certain scene to me that she came in
on—a very peculiar scene. And she happened to remember that there was a
young Frenchman involved in—in, well I’m no prude, but . . .”

“Oh,” said Louis, “_that_!” He looked at his nails.

“. . . and from what she _said_ there was a blonde girl in the case who
couldn’t have been any other than Charmian.”

Louis shrugged his shoulder and looked up at Langridge from under his
lashes.

“_But_,” Langridge insisted, now obviously upset, “what I really _want_
to know is—who was the other girl? D’you know, now and again, I’ve
allowed myself to have the most terrible suspicions.”

“I don’t understand.”

“That one . . . she described the other girl to me. A brunette—and
English . . .” He jumped up. “If I was _ever_ to believe _that_, Louis
. . .”

Louis murmured, “I don’t quite understand?”

“Certain things,” said Langridge abruptly, out of breath from the effect
of some wave of prejudice, or imagination, “certain things I can
tolerate. There may be a time perhaps when a woman, deeply in love,
gives herself, without fully realizing. But an . . . orgy!”

“Here are the cocktails at _last_!” said Louis.

And when the waiter had gone he asked, “Won’t you have one too?” and
“How _did_ you come across this newspaper woman?”

“Oh—in Atlantic City.”

“And is she still a newspaper woman?”

Langridge replied, rather shortly, that she wasn’t.

                 *        *        *        *        *

By twelve, when Bianca still hadn’t come, they telephoned to the Quai de
Conti. But there was no reply.

Langridge said, “We’d better go round there. I daresay she hasn’t waked
up yet.”

They went, in a taxi.

When they got there they rang several times.

At last the door was opened by a woman with a feather broom in her hand,
who was the _femme de ménage_.

She said that madame had gone early in the morning. She had gone by a
day train to the Midi; to Toulon, madame had said. When she had already
gone she had come back in a great hurry because she had forgotten a
little mirror, a very pretty little mirror, and when she was taking it
she had said to tell Monsieur Langridge if he telephoned that she would
write to him.

Whatever Langridge felt, his attitude was untroubled. He even managed
his warm slow chuckle as he said:—

“We-ell. The bird’s still fluttering.” He looked round the high room
full of filtered light. “You know, Louis, _this_ isn’t a place for a
woman like Bianca to be in—damp, depressing. I guess she felt a sort of
need of the sun suddenly.”

“. . . A little mirror with shells on it?” Louis asked the _femme de
ménage_.

“But yes, monsieur.”

“Well, Langridge. What are you going to do about it—pursue the bride?
Or leave her still unravished on the _Côte d’Azur_?”

Langridge’s expression was all comprehending tender good-nature. But
Louis thought he divined a hesitation (indicating what?) between his
smile and his remark that he “just meant to sit and wait for her to come
back to him.”

“She’ll come all right,” he added.

“Will she?”

Langridge said in a deep-throated masculine murmur, “Oh yes. She’ll come
all right.”

“Well,” said Louis, “I only hope for Bianca’s sake you’re right. But you
know how—‘wayward’ she is!”

Again he could just feel hesitation, a slight inflection of discomfort
in, “Of course I know it, Louis.”

“Well,” Louis spoke casually, taking up his hat and gloves and cane, “if
I were in your position I’d go after her. And now, my dear, I _must_ go!
I have my manicurist at twelve-thirty and she’s always _terrifying_ if
I’m late!”

Langridge didn’t answer, but he nodded good-bye, his teeth showing very
white in the healthy glow of his face.

                 *        *        *        *        *

Bianca sat under the awning of the Café de la Rade and ordered a
Vermouth sec and kept on telling herself how gay the harbor looked, how
sparkling the sea was, how picturesque the people were, but feeling so
sick with pain and longing for she didn’t know whom or what that she was
quite stupid, and didn’t understand when the waiter said, “_A l’eau?_”
so that he had to repeat it and she saw his black-eyed face impatient
above her.

Then she remembered that she hadn’t sent a telegram to Nathalie, whom
she’d meant to stay with, but who might be away. But then where? Stay
here? Stay at the Hôtel du Port? If only she hadn’t let Nicky take her
boat, she could have got away along the coast somewhere. But anyway
she’d better, soon, go and send Herbert a telegram to say she was here.
Ask him definitely to come. She could foresee exactly how he would take
her in his arms; and say something infinitely beside the point but sort
of beautifully reassuring; and that would be one sort of abandon and
relief (and peace?).

But then he might not come at once. He wouldn’t come without
deliberating. Only when he did come, he’d have a plan all ready for her.
Perhaps he’d take her away? Perhaps he’d take her back to America to the
white wooden house and paneled rooms. And she’d be soothed and
hypnotized into forgetting about the shadow in the corner of her mind
where she wouldn’t look; and the voice in the shadow saying over and
over again, “_Might have loved . . . might have been_.” Over and over
again.

The waiter’s arm put down the glass of Vermouth, the little saucer, the
pail of ice. Then she heard, “_Bianca_.”

She looked up. . . . The next thing her voice coherently said was:—

“But what are you doing in an orchid after all these years—” and he was
laughing, saying, “There’s absolutely _no_ time to lose! We have lost
years and years; and now there’s Langridge; so come at once and don’t
scream or I shall ring for the butler.” And, holding her arm, “Here,” he
said to the _garçon_, “fifty francs for Madame’s bill and you are lucky
to get it, for Madame is extremely wayward.” And now, taking her arm,
“We shall go straight to the hotel. I’m sorry to be so sudden but
perhaps after all these years it is well to be sudden. This hotel, as
you know, though simple, is neither modest nor clean, but _Madame_ is a
friend. And here we are. This way in—and never mind the palms—they
have been dead for years, killed by the smell of onions.”

“Madame?” he called. And here was Understanding encased in an agreeable
plump personage with black eyes.

“Madame?”

“_Tiens!! Mais . . . c’est M’sieu Louis!_”

He kept Bianca’s arm clutched in his while he smiled blandly.

“Madame,” he said, “there is no time to lose. A _monsieur_ will come
here. A _monsieur américain_. He will ask for,” he turned his head to
indicate Bianca beside him, “for Madame here. You will say ‘Yes, Madame
is here. She is staying here.’ And you will add that I spent last night
here with Madame.”

“But _M’sieu Louis_!”

“You will say,” Louis repeated, distributing force and charm evenly,
“that last night I spent with Madame. You understand.”

The woman glanced at Bianca. Then back at Louis. She nodded. For a
second there was a whiteness of her teeth, a dimple in her brown cheek.

“Perfectly, Monsieur Louis. It is understood, monsieur.”

“Now the _ascenseur_,” said Louis. “And find us a room . . . Bianca, if
you speak I shall send you up in this _ascenseur_ and you will stick at
the top like Nicky did once in it.”

The _ascenseur_, a grey cage of clanging antiquity, mounted slowly as
the sigh of an old woman. At a high floor it stopped. Madame preceded
them, unlocked a room, and they passed from the dark dank landing into a
room that had an immense yellow-covered bed, but was more than anything
a magnificent view of the port with nothing but two looped red velvet
curtains and a scrolled iron balcony by Matisse between the eye of the
occupant and three French cruisers on a blue-black glittering sea.

Louis locked the door and put the key in his pocket, and at this
picaresque gesture Bianca stopped being angry, and sat on the edge of
the bed saying “_Darling_” helplessly, and then laughing again. Louis
went to the balcony and put his head out, carefully, to look down. “Of
course he can get in the back street entrance. If he takes a taxi from
the station he probably will.”

“All the same,” said Bianca, “I _still_ don’t understand.”

“_Darling_, don’t make the _imbécile_. Langridge comes here—to claim
you. Your telegram said, ‘Awaiting you at the Hotel of the Port and of
the Negotiators.’”

“_Oh_,” moaned Bianca, “my eyelashes are running.”

“He will arrive more or less a bridegroom. And will find you here—with
me. Madame will convince him in two words. Nothing convinces so much as
hotel evidence. The whole Nordic abuse of that excellent institution,
marriage, is caused by it! Langridge, _cocu_, but nevertheless
determined to behave magnificently, will come up here.”

“By that _ascenseur_!” gasped Bianca.

“If you show any sign of feeling his moral persuasion—which _can_
happen to you,” said Louis, “since you aren’t, my poor child, altogether
like other people . . . if, I repeat to you, you should give way to some
outmoded vision of yourself as Madame Langridge, I shall cite to him an
old story, which by chance I discover he has learned, of an episode in
New York ten years ago—not only a blonde, but a brunette, with young
French author . . .”

“_How_ did he—”

“Our little friend Miss Prince wasn’t so discreet as we’d hoped. Anyway
he used the word ‘orgy.’ (But I like to figure to myself Langridge in
Atlantic City.)”

As he spoke there was a clang and rattle of the _ascenseur_ out on the
landing. Then Madame’s voice, “Yes, monsieur, number sixteen, monsieur.”

Louis went to the door and unlocked it. “Stop laughing, Bianca.”

“I can’t think of anything else to do.”

Louis opened the door.

Now that they had both worked themselves into an _opéra bouffe_
situation they were startled and resentful to see that Langridge was
really in a rage. He banged the door behind him, faced them both (he was
still wearing his dark grey gloves from the train), and swore at Louis
for ten minutes and then showed signs of wanting to fight, his eye
rolling a little, his breath coming fast, his gloved hands gradually
raised into a pugilistic attitude.

Louis said, edging round the bed, “I warn you I shall not fight fair. I
shall throw the _pot de chambre_ at you and jump out of the window. Then
the police will come and it will all be in the _New York Herald_ and
your mother will read it.”

“_Coward!_” said Langridge.

Bianca had got on to the bed, and, like Tweedledee, wrapped an eiderdown
round herself. She laid her head on her wadded knees. By now her
laughter was sufficiently hysterical for Langridge to mistake it for
tears. He turned to her, and his tone changed from genuine rage to a
controlled and sentimentalized anger.

“Bianca? I don’t know what to say. What to _think_.”

She didn’t lift her head.

“Bianca?” He ignored Louis now. The impulse to fight seemed to have
spent itself. He went and stood at the end of the bed, gazing down on
the nape of Bianca’s neck. “How could you . . . knowing how I love you
. . . and knowing that you love me, in your heart? It’s not possible you
could have done this thing in your right mind. There must have been
some—some nerve strain, that just wiped out all of your
individuality. . . . Bianca?” His speech began getting hold of his
imagination, and gradually soothing his vanity. “Bianca, what am I to
say to you? Two days ago, when I heard that you’d gone away, I trusted
you completely. It never even entered my head there could be any reason
for your going but the one you gave—that you just wanted a little time.
As for Louis here—well—perhaps the less I say the better. But you, my
dear. You didn’t ever care for him. Why, you’ve said to me yourself that
he was an eccentric, hopeless sort of person . . .” He paused.
“Nevertheless,” he said, “Bianca, my dear, perhaps I’ll have to try and
see the thing this way. Perhaps it’s been a lesson to me . . . To us
both.”

Still she didn’t move. Langridge, ignoring Louis, sat down on the edge
of the bed and said with a sudden gentleness, “Bianca.”

She raised her head, her eyelashes smudged under each eye, and her
features set in an expression of precarious gravity.

Langridge was touched by the smallness and smudginess of her face. “You
poor child. Why, you’ve been crying.”

Louis said, “No she hasn’t. She’s been laughing.”

A silence.

Then Langridge, “Is that true, Bianca?”

“I—’m afraid so . . .”

Langridge got up.

“In that case,” he remarked, putting on the glove that he had taken off
so as to lay his hand on her shoulder, “in that case I have nothing more
to say.”

He went.

                 *        *        *        *        *

“Well,” said Bianca, “and now . . .” For “now,” in its abrupt quiet
after the delirium of Herbert’s incursion, seemed utterly unreal; so
that at any moment she might wake up from sitting much too hot hugged
into a yellow eiderdown with Louis standing at the end of the bed,
looking at her.

“Well,” he said, “I am now going back to Paris . . . to finish my book.
And you are coming with me. Or aren’t you? I have a car, ready to take
us back.”

“But Louis . . .”

“On the way back we can—talk.”

“Very well.”

She got up. Went to the basin and washed her face. But what had
happened? Had he simply had a mood—a madness—a fantasy? He said,
behind her:—

“When you let him go, Bianca, just now, was it just another
mood?—another _folie_?—another fantasy?”

                 *        *        *        *        *

They went northward towards Paris.

But they were like people standing still with the country slipping past
them as they talked.

France slipping past them: Aix . . . Vaison . . . Macon . . . Sens . . .
Paris. . . .


                           _Aix-en-Provence_

The chiming bells. The _Moyen Age_. The avenue with the motors hooting
down the green shade under the limes. _Omelette fines herbes_; flavor of
garlic; coffee; the shadows of leaves on the sun-white cloth.

“It _isn’t_ true, Louis. But what a lovely picture . . . what an
enchanting, rather upsetting game.”

“Listen, Bianca. Don’t smile at me and hold my hand because the moment
is such a pretty shape and lit up in every corner by the sun. _But
listen to me._ I’m not going to say ‘I love you’—however much I want
to. It’s too pretty; too easy to say. And it’s been said too often. But
if this, for you, is only another holiday from life, then, after Paris,
we won’t see each other again.”

She said, her elation that so disquieted him bewitching her own spirits,
“But when it’s all so heavenly, why not be pleased?”

“Pleased . . . Heavenly?”

“What’s the matter?”

“You don’t really feel.”

“But Louis—I love you.”

He wanted to believe her. He said, “But am I real to you; as you are to
me?”

“But of _course_.”

He said, “If I were to get up now, and go, and not come back . . . At
first you’d feel lost, then sad, then puzzled. . . . But soon when
people said to you, ‘Didn’t you love Louis in the avenue at
Aix-en-Provence, Bianca?’ you’d remember quite well that you were at
Aix. But you’d say, ‘Louis? Oh yes—poor Louis,’ amiable and regretful,
trying to remember exactly what I was like.”

“How unjust you are.”


                                _Vaison_

The Café de l’Univers, at night. Rickety iron tables outside on the
_Place_; under trees and stars. Madame in a pink blouse, black shawl,
bringing their cognacs.

“What made you begin even to like me, Bianca? Was it the flea circus?
Was it the prawns? Was it the slot machines?”

“The slot machines more than anything. I couldn’t love a man who wasn’t
fond of slot machines. They began my thinking of you as a person one
could go on the Pier with.”

Men in blue blouses came out of the narrow shadowy streets and sat at
the neighboring tables, arguing in honey-thick voices, discussing their
game of _boule_.

She said, “And you?”

He said, “It was like having a temperature for quite a long time before
you think of taking it.”

“You didn’t like me that day at Céligny when Nicky and I came back from
Venice.”

“No. Not a bit. But I was surprised by you.”

“And that evening, at the Embassy, when you were with Frany.”

“And you with Victor Finch.”

“Yes. You didn’t care then.”

He said, not looking at her now, but looking back into the past:
“Something happened that evening . . . I looked up, and saw you dancing
with Victor. You looked at me, but only for a second, as you
passed. . . . It was a curious moment because it didn’t feel as if it
mattered, at the time. Only, afterwards I thought of it, and felt it
again. . . .”

“And that next day, at luncheon . . . were we, almost, shy, at the
beginning? Or did I imagine that?”

“I wasn’t shy. I was in a bad temper. I didn’t know why. But I think it
was that I believed you had spent the night with Victor.”

“Poor Victor . . . I spent most of that night leaning romantically on my
window sill and wondering if I should ever fall in love.”

“D’you remember, at the end of that luncheon, I suggested that you
should come back to Paris with me? The idea amused you. Why didn’t you
come?”

“I thought you would think I came because of you.”

“So you said you were going to stay with Armorelle in Wiltshire. But she
was in Paris when I arrived.” He tasted the brandy. “It’s Marr, do you
mind?”

She didn’t move. But turned her head and looked at him.

She said, “I don’t mind or know or care about anything. Except you.”

He crushed the end of his cigarette out on the saucer marked “3f.”

A cracked record inside the _café_ was playing “_Parlez-moi d’Amour_.”

His profile was silhouetted against the lit interior of the _café_.


                                _Macon_

They stood about in the yard of the garage in the heat. It _had_ been
the carburetor. When they had taken everything else to pieces it had
been the carburetor after all. Louis and the mechanic talked like two
midwives. Bianca sat on a crate. She watched Louis. How could she not
have loved him, before? When he moved or spoke her heart gave a little
lurch and she felt faintly, deliciously seasick. When he came to say in
ten minutes they could start again, she said, “Shall we be clever, I
wonder, about living? So dangerous, everydayness is.”

“Isn’t that crate you’re sitting on full of splinters?”

She said: “Do let’s be careful about all the trivial things. Let’s avoid
each other a lot; as if we were lovers separated by insuperable
difficulties. I believe it isn’t the things you do, but the things you
_don’t_ do, that keep people in love. For instance, don’t let’s ever
share anything that we can possibly have separately. Don’t let’s ever
share a bedroom, or a telephone, or spend each other’s money, or read
the envelopes of each other’s letters, or breakfast together.”

“. . . Or lunch together? Or dine together? How right you are! Let us
avoid all gross mutuality! Only, from time to time, and with extreme
consideration, I shall make love to you by telephone.”


                                 _Sens_

She was awake.

“It’s so much too lovely.”

“This is only the beginning.”

“If we ever _stopped_ loving each other.”

He said, “We shan’t. There’s too much of life already gone, and wasted.”
For, at the end (this was his old bad dream again), there was a
narrowing tunnel which was old age; and at the end of that not a door,
or a threshold, neither a stepping out nor a passing over; but, where
the tunnel ended, a sudden and sickening and impenetrable fog. He turned
and took her in his arms. . . . Her quick breathing; her embrace
starting to his.

And later in the grey early light and clock-ticking silence, her smile
and her drowsy murmur as she fell asleep were a forgetting of fear—a
defiance of mortality.

She slept.

He watched her; surprised that his mere contentment could be such a
sharp emotion; troubled by an ache that no intimacy and no possession
could allay. For, as he saw her with his imagination and felt her with
his heart, she was his first love; and her beauty disturbed not his
senses, but his soul. . . .

                 *        *        *        *        *

Toby waited in the early garden.

Last night there had been the pear blossoms bright white and the dark
grass, and her face very small and pale-glowing; and she didn’t speak;
and her arms were smooth and cool.

Now she came out into the morning, her grey eyes clear in her brown
face, her mouth scarlet, her hands thrust in the pockets of her white
slacks.

She stopped and turned to stare up at the doves on the roof of the house
and said “Darling.”

He said, “I think you look even lovelier in the morning.”

“I told Lily to bring our breakfast out here . . .” She swung round,
facing him, and drew in a quick breath. “Oh . . . _Toby_.”

“What is it?”

She stood, feeling the sharp sweetness of seeing him again; seeing,
again, that his eyes were hazel-brown and black-lashed under plump
childlike eyelids; that his chin was funnily square.

“Toby—darling.”

“You’re not crying, Anna?”

“Not outside my eyes.” She pulled a handkerchief from the pocket of her
shirt.

They held hands.

“Anna, I love you so much.”

Lily came out carrying a tray and set it on the table under the quince
tree.

“Breakfast is ready, Mr. Toby.”

“Thanks, Lily. What a lovely morning.”

Lily nodded “Ain’t it?” and went beaming indoors.

Toby sniffed:—

“Coffee—and bacon and eggs _and_ mushrooms. _Heaven_, isn’t it? I
couldn’t be more hungry.”

Anna said, “I also”—enchanted by the way Toby took off the dish cover;
picked up a knife and fork; helped himself to butter.

She poured out the coffee. She knew that he took sugar with coffee, and
none with tea. Toby filled his mouth with bacon and egg, saying, “_God_,
what a lovely morning! D’ you _really_ not like bacon and eggs? Even out
of _doors_?”

“I like them at night.”

“Yes, but _I_ like them all round the clock.”

She laughed at him, and then was silent. And then breathed deep because
her chest felt breaking with too much happiness. She said, “I wish we
had known each other always.”

Toby nodded, his eyes grave, his mouth full.

“More coffee?”

“Not yet.”

“Such _good_ coffee! At home we never tasted good coffee, Mutti and me.
It was always that _Ersatz Kaffee_; made of those nuts. Only on
Christmas we had it real. That was _splendid_! I always took my first
breakfast in Mutti’s room. And on Christmas we also—” she broke
off—“Oh, _Toby_, it’s so _lovely_ here, so _beautiful_ . . .” She
paused, looking at the house, old and tranquil and thick-grown with
blossoming pear. “Isn’t it strange, too, that at the end, that dreadful
winter in München, Mutti spoke so very often of this little house. She
said ‘_Das ist die Rube, Anna_,’ and she described to me how that pear
tree climbed outside the window of the bedroom.” She stopped speaking.
When she spoke again she said, “At least how happy would she be to think
of me as I am now.”

He said, “Anna—my sweetheart. . . . I _will_ try to make you happy
. . .”

“You won’t have to try.”

He said, “Look at me, Anna.”

“I look, Toby.”

“Anna, I—I want to tell you something.”

“What is it? You haven’t drunk your _schönen Kaffee_!”

“Damn my coffee. My dearest love—” She watched the sunlight coming
through the leaves and dappling his hair and his white smooth brow.
“It’s this—that I want you to realize that I’ve never, never loved
anyone else. And I never shall. I want you to know this, my
darling—because sometimes you’re such a funny creature and sort of
cynical . . .”

“Toby, I—love you.”

He reached out and took her hand.

“Don’t just say that, Anna. Say, ‘Toby, I shall _always_ love you!’”

She bent down her head and laid her forehead on his arm.

“That isn’t sensible . . .” Her voice was muffled. “How can we be
certain—nothing is certain beforehand. _Liebling_ . . .” She stayed
quiet for a long moment. Then she lifted her head and looked at him
again. She was pale under her tan, and her eyes were dark with the
shadows that had come when she was a child, and remained to haunt her.
She said:—

“Toby—_mein Liebling_. We love each other, and Life is beautiful for us
now, more than it’s possible to believe! . . . That I will always love
you, so I _feel_—” She put her thin brown hand to her heart. “And you,
too, feel that. . . . But Toby, _mein Herz_—we have not been born into
a world where sensible people like you and me should even try to look
forward. For nothing is safe—not love, or beauty. We cannot say
‘always’ or even ‘to-morrow.’ We can only say ‘to-day’—But there is
_one_ thing certain, for us, Toby. If we were to live for a hundred
years nothing can ever be more lovely than these last days.”

He shook his head. His eyes were unshadowed, his smile very gay and
certain. “All the same,” he said, “I shall love you always. . . .”


                                _Paris_

Bianca said: “Shall we love each other always?”

“_Ce goût distingué pour l’éternité!_ . . . I shall love you always.”

“How can you say that?”

“Because I feel it.”

She said: “But in the years, you may not feel it?”

“Then I shan’t say it.”

“Louis, you’re laughing.”

“No, my dear.”

She said: “It’s terrifying. Every minute is the edge of a precipice.”

“All happiness is the edge of a precipice.”

She said, “Do you know it’s only a week since I was here, that morning,
lying on this sofa? And you stood by the window over there looking out
at the Eiffel Tower and being ironical to me.”

“And you went off to lunch with Langridge at Bougival—looking so much
too lovely. And the room was empty. And Zamorr, who knew better than I
did what was the matter, brought me quantities of whiskey, which I
didn’t want.”

“And I kept thinking about you, all day. And yet the day
before—Tuesday—you hadn’t really seemed to matter. One doesn’t expect
to fall in love . . . madly, like this, with a person one’s known for
years.”

                 *        *        *        *        *

The light was ebbing out of the room, drawn back into the sky.

He said, “You mustn’t cry so much.”

But she said, “Let me cry. . . . I’m coming alive, after so long. . . .
You’re making me alive. I haven’t cried for years, except at movies.”

Later she said, “It’s like thawing.”

In the half-dark he smiled, handing her his handkerchief. “It’s a very
salt thawing.” He bent over her.

“Your voice makes me begin crying again.” She put her hand up and
touched his forehead. “I can’t believe _yet_ you’re here. . . . And that
you love me. . . . And that I love you so much.”

He put his arm round her now; and stayed still, holding her; his quiet
gradually making her quiet; and the dusk and the stillness in the room
possessing them both.




                           TRANSCRIBER NOTES

Misspelled words and printer errors have been corrected. Where multiple
spellings occur, majority use has been employed.

Punctuation has been maintained except where obvious printer errors
occur.

          [The end of _Recapture the Moon_ by Sylvia Thompson]