Return I Dare Not Read online

  “Hugo?”

  The flutterer was Philomena. He was not going to be let off.

  Hesitation had never been one of Hugo’s failings. In a crisis he did not waver. Bitterly though he might regret his moment of folly, that abortive, misguided gesture towards escape, he had no intention of retreat. That would have been too foolish. He must go on as he had begun. Philomena was obviously expecting some kind of demonstration. He made it.

  “Aggie,” she told him recklessly, “is waiting among the lilies.”

  “Like somebody in a Victorian poem?” He dismissed Aggie. “Lilies always give me hay fever. Come into the moonlight, Philomena. I want to look at you.”

  “I can’t stay now. I’ve got to play bridge. I just wanted to tell you that I’ve spoken to Gibbie.”

  “Oh?”

  He wanted to say:

  “Gawd’s teeth!”

  But he restrained himself, though he did think that she might have given him time to digest his dinner. As long as she was beside him, he could not find his position entirely regrettable.

  She was such a rest from Aggie.

  “And what did Gibbie say?” he asked, rather faintly.

  He liked Gibbie. He ought to have kept out of this, liking Gibbie as he did. Now they would have to avoid each other at their Club. It was absurd. But his boats were burned. Entwining Philomena’s waist more firmly, he asked what Gibbie had said.

  “I think he … understands.”

  “What?”

  “We’ve discussed it before, you know. And we both feel the same about these things. We don’t want to prevent each other from living as completely and beautifully as possible. I told him that I wouldn’t go with you unless he understood. I said I’d give you up if he hated it too much. Because you see, Hugo, I do put my home first. My home, and the children, and Gibbie. I’d have to go back to them eventually, you understand?”

  “You mean that Gibbie doesn’t …”

  “He did at first. But just now, when we came out into the garden, he said to me that he would try to understand, and not come between me and my happiness.”

  Extraordinary fellow, thought Hugo, resentfully. For often, in unregenerate moments, he had thought how nice it would be to make love to Philomena. But he had always regarded Gibbie as an obstacle.

  “Gibbie,” she explained, “is civilised. He doesn’t think he owns me. He’s liberal minded.”

  Too damned liberal by half, agreed Hugo to himself. But then he remembered how liberal he had always been himself. He had written a play about a wife who made a very successful experiment of this sort. Having said and implied so much, in his time, about sexual freedom, he was bound to believe in it, and he made a great effort to think all the better of Gibbie. But certain early impressions die hard, and he found that he was thinking the worse of Gibbie. A deceived husband is by tradition an object of ridicule, but a complaisant husband ranks even lower.

  He remained silent and meditative so long that Philomena began to feel uncomfortable. She grew oddly anxious to rectify any mistake that might have arisen about Gibbie’s manly spirit, and she explained that Gibbie had never been a person to stand any nonsense. He had his ideas of wifely duty and he expected her to live up to them. Hugo must not think that Gibbie would put up with anything.

  “If he thought I wasn’t pulling my weight,” she boasted, “he’d leave me. He isn’t one of those men who let themselves be made fools of.”

  Hugo gulped attentively. The situation was beyond him, so he left it alone. If he did nothing, and said nothing, but just went on pacing round the garden, something might happen to solve it all. He might wake up and find that he had dreamt it. Or Philomena might turn out to be pulling his leg. But her next words startled him.

  “We’ll go at once,” she said.

  “But darling …”

  “If you can get away.”

  “But darling … I can’t. I can’t possibly go away just now. Not right away. The rehearsals of Beggar My Neighbour begin next week.”

  “Oh Hugo!”

  She had forgotten that wretched play. Of course he could not go away. The whole thing would have to be postponed. And, now that she had spoken to Gibbie, postponement would be so uncomfortable.

  “What are we going to do?” she asked mournfully.

  He had skilfully guided her into the yew parlour, where the moon still lurked behind the black hedges and the distant hills were only the dimmest shadow against the sky. Turning to her, in the warm darkness, Hugo began to make the only possible reply. But she drew back.

  “Not now, Hugo! Not till we can go away. I wouldn’t feel it was right.”

  “You extraordinary woman!”

  “It wouldn’t be fair to Gibbie. We must just be friends till then. And after we come back. Do you see?”

  Hugo argued with her, and though he could not convince he came very near to overcoming her. Her feelings were stronger than her principles and Hugo was skilful at pressing his point. Indeed there is no knowing how far they might have got towards settling their difficulties had not Lady Geraldine appeared, drifted round the yew hedge, her lace veils catching on the branches. Peering without ceremony at the couple on the teak seat, she sank down beside them and asked if that was Mr. Usher?

  “It’s Hugo,” explained Philomena, composing herself.

  “Why do I want to call him … no, don’t move. There is plenty of room for three. Though I think poor Aggie is waiting for you, Mr. Swan. She has begun to pick all the lilies, and I’m afraid, if you don’t go soon, there won’t be one left. I said to her: ‘Aggie dear, why are you picking my lilies?’ And she said: ‘Well, why doesn’t he come? I want to rehearse with him.’ Poor Aggie is always so impatient, you know.”

  Hugo, half glad and half sorry at the interruption, said that he would go. He hurried gracefully away, and the two ladies waited until the sound of his departing feet had sunk into the silence of the night. And then Lady Geraldine asked:

  “What is that young man’s name?”

  “Pott. Hugo Pott.”

  “And I called him Edgar!”

  “No, Geraldine. You called him Swan.”

  “To remind myself that it isn’t Edgar. That man who wrote the House … the House of …”

  Geraldine’s silvery voice, tuned to the moonlit dusk and the nightingales, sank pensively. But presently it rose again.

  “Philomena. I don’t like to find people in compromising situations. Especially in the garden.”

  “But Geraldine!”

  “Kissing and cuddling, Philomena! I saw you. And you call yourself a respectable woman.”

  “We love each other,” said Philomena defensively.

  “I guessed as much. But that is no excuse.”

  Philomena bit her lip with vexation. Geraldine, of all people, had not the faintest right to talk in this censorious strain. The Rivaz collection, as her seven children were called, could never have been accumulated without a certain amount of kissing and cuddling, in the garden or elsewhere. For in the family circle Otho, the Tyrant, was only credited with two of them: Mathilde the eldest, the mother of Marianne, and Dominick the youngest, born after Geraldine had taken a protracted tour through Central Africa alone with Otho, and some negro porters. It was the only time that she had shot big game too, and it was unfortunate for Dominick, for he had inherited the paternal bull neck. Mathilde and Dominick were indubitably Otho’s children. Whereas Beata, Lionel, Charles, Julian and Laura were all as handsome as they were varied in type. So that it was perfectly ridiculous for Geraldine to sit there, happed up in wedding veils and talking like a district visitor. She had done all that Philomena was too modern and civilised to do. She had deceived her husband frequently under his own roof, deceived him with the most blatant and expensive consequences, and all she cared for was a cynical parade of appearances. Probably she had had dozens of lovers, and now she was shocked and disapproving because Philomena contemplated one.

  “Decorum,” she obser
ved, as though she had been following her young cousin’s thoughts. “As long as you don’t underrate the importance of decorum you can do whatever you please. You can recite the Black Mass in Canterbury Cathedral and nobody will think of protesting, if you do it in an evangelical manner. I remember, when I was a young girl I heard a parson asked to say grace at my father’s house. I’m afraid he was not a very religious man, or else he must have been a little tipsy, for he got up and said: To all which, Oh Lord, we most strongly object. But, my dear, he said it in the right way, and nobody thought it odd. It was a lesson which I have never forgotten.”

  “I don’t underrate decorum,” replied Philomena, with some spirit. “But I hate deception. I don’t intend to lie to my husband, even if it’s decorous. Gibbie knows everything. I daresay that may seem shocking to you. But at least it’s better than a life of furtive little intrigues.”

  “Oh, undoubtedly,” agreed Lady Geraldine at once. “But tell me, Philomena dear, I’ve always wanted to know, how do you manage?”

  “Manage?”

  Philomena winced at the word. It was the idiom of an older generation, and it recalled a number of uncomfortable episodes. It implied a discreet concealment of the indecorous. One managed when one took small children on a long railway journey. Her romance was being reduced to the level of the nursery.

  “I’m going away with Hugo,” she explained hastily. “Of course, there can be nothing between us while I am with Gibbie. And when we come back the whole thing will be over.”

  “Over? Oh I see. But how wonderful to be able to know that!”

  And Geraldine sighed. For she had a great admiration for women who knew when these things were over. Not to clutch, not to cling, to take lightly and to relinquish gracefully, how many tears had it not cost her to learn that!

  “You’ll forgive these questions, my dear. Things are so different nowadays. And so you go away? Where?”

  “I don’t know where yet,” said Philomena.

  Something warned her that Geraldine was going to ask where she generally went, and she did not want to admit that she had never done such a thing before. So she hurried on.

  “Don’t you feel that jealousy between husband and wife is a mistake?”

  “It shows very limited interests,” agreed Geraldine. “But when are you going, then?”

  “That depends. Hugo has a play coming on. I expect it will be about six weeks before he can get away.”

  “Oh, has he? I thought they never began new plays at that time of year.”

  “Most people don’t. But Hugo can. He says it will have settled nicely into its run by the autumn.”

  “Six weeks? Dear me! That runs you very near to the summer. What are you doing about the children’s holidays?”

  Philomena did not answer. For Geraldine knew as well as she did that the Greys were sharing a house in Skye with Beata. Philomena was to be there through August, in charge of both sets of children, while Beata was to take duty in September.

  “Of course, Beata might exchange,” calculated Geraldine.

  But her tone implied that everything would have to be explained to Beata before she would do it.

  “I haven’t really made my plans,” said Philomena evasively.

  Making plans, like managing, was another thing that the elderly did. Philomena hated making plans and thinking ahead. She had had so much of it, and of remembering not to ask anyone to dinner on a Thursday because it was cook’s night off, fixing September for Nannie’s holiday, and getting in enough food to last over Easter Monday. She would go mad unless she got away from it sometimes, and here she was, actually making plans in order to get away. She was thinking:

  “I might squeeze it in between Hugo’s play and Skye if I can manage to get a new parlour-maid by then.”

  Her holidays with Gibbie had always been snatched like that. They had been achieved in the face of obstacles, and liable to alteration if a boiler burst or a child came out in nettle rash. But to plan an unofficial honeymoon was monstrous.

  “Perhaps it would be better to wait for the autumn,” suggested Geraldine helpfully. “Often you get such nice weather in October.”

  Philomena jumped up and said that she was cold, and that Laura had said something about bridge. For if this went on five seconds longer she would lose heart.

  In spite of Gibbie’s goodness, his undeniable generosity she could not help feeling that things were still very unfair. It was not as if other people did not succeed in doing these things. They happened every day without any obvious orgy of planning. But some people can act upon impulse and others cannot.

  The flower garden was deserted. But as she passed the laurestinus hedge which veiled the kitchen wing she heard a frantic rattling and splashing. The unseen slaves were hurling themselves into the endless task of washing up. There was a whiff of steamy air and the impression of hot people working at break-neck speed. She hurried petulantly past, hating to be reminded of effort. There was too much effort everywhere. It was impossible, unless one had a lot of money, to pretend that life is a haphazard and impulsive thing. Even here, though carefully concealed behind laurestinus bushes, the basic effort was still present. And flowering shrubs are expensive. Gibbie could afford to pay servants, to transfer the real effort of his household to shoulders other than Philomena’s, but he could not afford to keep those shoulders out of sight. And the beautiful freedom upon which they had agreed was impracticable because it cost too much.

  12. Miss Wilson’s Room.

  The house was lying awake and empty. She went up the steps from the garden and all along the terrace, peering through the windows into hushed, shadowy rooms where lamps burned solitary. Nothing moved except the fluttering moths, and in the library she could see the top of Adrian’s head as he bent over an article on Paul Wrench. He seemed to be the only person indoors.

  At the far end of the terrace something unusual struck her eye. Just down below, by the south wall, she looked at a void blank where, an hour ago, there had been whiteness. The lily bed had completely disappeared. She stood staring at where it should have been as if she expected to see those fantastic silvery spikes come back again. When Corny emerged from the bushes she could only point and gasp:

  “Aggie?”

  Corny said that several people had expostulated, but when Aggie was impatient she did not seem to know what she was doing. And afterwards she had gone and stood with the lilies in her arms for a long time, lost in thought, under the lamp in the hall. Fletcher, the butler, coming out of the service door, had got quite a turn. A scene not unlike the Annunciation, said Corny: Aggie, amid a haystack of lilies and the modest, virginal Fletcher, recoiling against his green baize door. But it had all been Hugo’s fault for not coming.

  “Not coming?” echoed Philomena. “He did come, surely. A long time ago. He went especially to find her.”

  “He never arrived.”

  “Then where is he?”

  Corny eyed the façade of the house. He was the only person in it who could have said straight off where each guest was sleeping. He always knew those things five minutes after arriving anywhere.

  “There’s no light in his room,” he said.

  And he looked thoughtful, for he liked to know what everybody was doing, all the time. He knew that the girls were practising music again, that Aggie was pacing from room to room in a fury, that Gibbie and Alec were playing billiards, and that Laura was keeping Ford in order until Bechstrader should arrive. The whole of Corny’s evening was spent in trotting about from one group to another like a conscientious little sheep dog.

  He took Philomena through the garden door into the hall, which still smelt strongly of Aggie’s lilies. They passed out on to the drive in front, where there was a noise of singing. The girls had left off practising and were amusing themselves.

  “Perhaps he’s in Miss Wilson’s room?”

  Philomena looked doubtful. But then she remembered that Hugo had been asking for information about the modern
girl. He seemed to be harping on the subject.

  “We might look,” she agreed.

  He had been there for about twenty minutes, and was lying on an old sofa in the corner. It was not a very comfortable sofa, for the springs were all gone. Laura and her sisters, Marianne and her cousins, had all lain on it in turn, to rest their growing backs, while their governesses read aloud Motley’s Rise of the Dutch Republic or Prescott’s Conquest of Mexico. But he found himself at ease upon it. Repose began to steal over him and his muscles loosened. The girls had pleasant voices and they took no notice of him whatever when he came in. They did not mind an audience as long as they could ignore it.

  Philomena and Corny looked about them for a moment and then sank on to chairs amid all the scattered music and untidy, girlish possessions. Marianne’s tapestry, bright and intricate, sprawled over half the table, but had been pushed aside to make room for a microscope that Solange had brought. The floor was covered with pins, relics of their hurried dressmaking in the morning, and great trays of drying lavender stood in a corner.

  “There’s Hugo,” whispered Corny, suddenly perceiving the sofa in the corner.

  Hugo opened one eye, smiled at them, and shut it again. For the moment he was feeling very safe, like a ship that has drifted into harbour. Marianne’s voice, gentle as the moonlight, wafted him on. Like a benevolent and propitious wind it filled his drooping sails.

  How nice it would be, he thought, to go to sleep hearing this music, and then, after a hundred years of repose, to wake up and find it still there. He was nearly asleep already and for a timeless instant he dreamed his old dream of the High Road and the Low Road. Miss Wilson’s room had melted into Oxford Street and you were driving along it in a car, consumed by a dreadful, craving anxiety. Because somewhere just after the Marble Arch there were two roads, the High Road and the Low Road. And if you took the first it led you into Oxford Circus. But if you took the second you went down and down and down, till the houses stood on high cliffs on either side, down through a gorge to the sea. And the Low Road ran out along a shore towards mountains and lakes full of vivid, clear colours, more beautiful than anything seen in the waking world. But it was hard to find. He had been there once, but he could never find it again. He knew how the bay curved round into a long peninsula. He could have drawn it. He must have seen it, at some time, though it was difficult to believe that anything so lovely could be seen and forgotten. The High Road and the Low Road … the Low Road…. He was awake again, and Marianne’s voice still sang on: