Return I Dare Not Read online

  “I don’t know. She didn’t say. I should think so. It sounded exactly the sort of thing she would like. Of course I didn’t hear much of it …”

  “You only heard about three words. Not enough to judge.”

  “I know. But it sounded …”

  “How did it sound, Marianne? Tell me! How did it sound?”

  “Oh, I can’t talk. I don’t know enough.”

  “Yes, you do. Tell me. I’m interested. I shan’t be annoyed. Really I shan’t. I want to get your point of view.”

  “Well, I only mean that Aggie, and people of that age, what they really like is a great fuss about nothing. I mean that when a woman has a … a lover … they still call it ‘granting him everything.’ At least they mayn’t call it that, but they think it’s that. But it isn’t, is it, Hugo? It’s only granting him one thing. But so often it’s the only thing they’ve got, so they like to feel it’s frightfully important. And they like plays and books that make a fuss about it.”

  “But it is important,” said Hugo gravely.

  “Always?”

  “You don’t understand. When you’re older …”

  “There! You see!”

  “What?”

  “You’ve said it yourself. I told you. We belong to different generations.”

  “If you could see the letters I get from girls no older than you!”

  “And you think they’re silly?”

  “Well, yes, I do. Most of them. But for all that, it isn’t, as you seem to think, a great fuss about nothing. And some day you’ll know that it isn’t.”

  “But isn’t it very often a great fuss about nothing, Hugo? I know that it can be tremendously important. It can mean a great deal in two people’s lives. But not always. And there’s a kind of insincerity in pretending that it has meant more than it has. When you’re my age, you take it for granted that some time or other there is going to be this great thing in your life. But perhaps you’re unlucky and it never comes to you. So you pretend that it has, and the less important that you really in your heart know it’s been, the more fuss you make. But if you’re lucky …”

  “How do you know all this?”

  “But if you’re lucky you don’t need to make a fuss. I don’t know it. But I suspect it. You think that’s all wrong?”

  “No, I don’t. But you know, Marianne, very few people are … lucky as you call it.”

  “Oh. Lots are. They must be.”

  “Really? I’d like to see them. Tell me where to find them.”

  “Oh … in the Underground, and … and shopping at the Stores and places.”

  “And where are the unlucky ones, then?”

  “Listening to your plays.”

  “At least I console them, poor things. By the time you’re forty-five, my dear, you may be very grateful to me.”

  “Probably,” said Marianne.

  “You don’t really think it’s in the least probable. You mean to be lucky, don’t you?”

  “There’s my grandmother getting up.”

  “Don’t you?”

  “I wasn’t talking about myself,” said Marianne, getting up.

  “No. But I was. And I’m obliged to you for telling me so much.”

  She gave him a startled look. But she was out in the hall before she had really begun to blush and Solange was the only person who noticed her agitation.

  “How red your face is, Marianne.”

  “It was so hot in the dining-room.”

  “You’re blushing at something.”

  “Well. I can’t help that.”

  “I know. We shall have outgrown it by the time we’re twenty-one. It’s something to do with our circulations. I read that in a book called the Psychology of Adolescence.”

  The night was hotter than ever and they all went straight into the garden. Geraldine wanted to cut some roses for Philomena to take to London in the morning. She called to the girls to bring her basket, gloves and scissors.

  “Only the buds,” she said. “They can be in water all night and then they’ll travel better.”

  “I can’t see which are buds,” said Marianne, peering into the dusky bushes. “We ought to wait till the moon rises.”

  “No, but you can feel them,” said Solange. “All hard and firm.”

  She pulled at one, scattering the dew over her hands, and she laughed. Her spirits were so high that she hardly knew what she was doing. But she tugged at the rose again, humming:

  Rosen brach ich nachts mir am dunklen Hage …

  “That’s a silly song,” grumbled Marianne. “I think it’s the silliest song anybody ever wrote. I’m sure it can’t be good poetry, even in German. ‘Also of the kisses the perfume me as never before drive mad which I by night from the stalk of your lips plucked.’ ”

  “Come a little further down the path, Marianne. I want to tell you something. Listen. My father has climbed down.”

  “What? When?”

  “At dinner. Oh I had a lovely time at dinner. Did you see?”

  “No. I didn’t notice.”

  “Well, to begin with, he simply wouldn’t speak to me. He just sat there wishing that modern parents could give their children lettres de cachet. You see, I’d offered to see him on to the boat train and meet him on the way home. And he’s realised that he can’t go on leading a double life. After this he’ll never know what I mayn’t say or do unless he buys me off.”

  “You’re sure he doesn’t want to go?”

  “Of course he doesn’t. He hates travelling at his own expense, and he can’t afford it, anyhow. So at last I opened negotiations, I said how I envied him and how I wished that I could go instead. And I said that if anything should stop him at the last moment perhaps I might use his ticket. So he said: ‘Well, that wouldn’t be much use.’ And I said: ‘No, I should want some money as well.’ ‘Which I haven’t got,’ he said. So I told him that it wouldn’t mean very much, and all that Ford told me about the cost of living for a student at Freiburg. So then he said he’d think about it. And he said, very cautiously, that he wasn’t sure if he could go to East Prussia after all, because he’d just remembered an important appointment on Tuesday. So I said: ‘Well, then you’ll be able to think about me going all the sooner.’ I saw that he was debating it all in his mind, and wondering whether it would seem ridiculous or not, to say he was going and then not go. If he hadn’t been so terribly solemn and impressive about it to begin with, he wouldn’t be in such a hole. So he said: ‘Well.’ And after a bit, ‘Well’ again. And I really think it’s all right, Marianne darling. I can’t thank you enough for helping me to manage it. I’ve had a perfectly wonderful week-end, getting to know Ford and everything. I’m wildly happy. What did you talk to Hugo about at dinner? You seemed to be having a sticky time at first.”

  “Nothing in particular. I cheeked him rather.”

  “Good. He needs taking down a bit, as I told you before. Did you ever hear anything like the way he showed off to Mrs. Comstock? Pretending to be so keen on gardening. All at the very top of his voice.”

  “He had to. She’s deaf.”

  “Well, it sounded very silly. I’m sure everybody thought so. Corny said: ‘Hugo’s always so kind-hearted,’ in a very nasty voice. What happened? Did you catch a thorn?”

  “No.”

  Marianne straightened herself with a jerk and flung down her basket. She wanted to cry out. Solange was intolerable and so was everyone else who laughed at Hugo for being nice to Mrs. Comstock. She could not bear it for one moment longer nor could she ever look him in the face again, in case he had guessed. What had she said to him? Had she given herself away?

  “I’m going,” she said in a choked voice. “I’ve got a headache.”

  “Are you going to bed?”

  “No.”

  To shut herself up in a stuffy room would do her no good. She wanted to find some spacious and quiet place where she and her troubles would seem small. She would change her frock and shoes and slip up to the do
wns. Up on Chawton Beacon, where the wind whistled through the harebells, she would be able to cry as much as she liked. She would stay there all night and never see him again.

  Solange was offering eau-de-Cologne, and insisting that it all came from washing Tango on a hot afternoon. But they both knew that the headache was a myth. The image of Hugo hovered between them, beloved by the one and contemptible to the other. Solange thought, as Marianne left her:

  “It isn’t as if he’d really ever done anything to make up for being so affected. Only a few rubbishy plays. It isn’t as if he’d made a great discovery or anything like that.”

  She went on cutting roses and feeling for buds and singing so loudly that the three elder women beside the fountain said to one another:

  “How happy that child sounds!”

  24. A Great Fuss About Nothing.

  The moon, wheeling up over the trees, turned the topmost drops of the fountain to silver, and gilded the head of the marble cupid with his dolphin. When Solange left off singing there was no sound in the night save the soft continuous whisper of the water. But Philomena’s thoughts were so restless and noisy that she could hardly believe they had not been spoken aloud. She stood on the path and watched Geraldine’s thoughtful clipping and wondered why nobody should have asked what was the matter with her. Rebellion flowed from her, but it was lost in the quiet and the darkness. She was sacrificing her youth and her happiness. But Geraldine went on cutting roses. Nobody would ever know. Hugo would never know, Gibbie would never know, the children would never know, what a martyrdom she was going through. It was unfair, and some time, some day, she would make somebody pay for it.

  Solange, that happy, happy girl, sang on and the fountain played and a sound of music drifted out of the drawing-room windows. Corny was playing his pieces. He did this so seldom that many people were unaware that he could do it at all. He liked taking them by surprise. Towards the end of a visit he would sit down nonchalantly on the piano stool and strum a little, picking out tunes with one finger. And then, suddenly, he would break into quite an impressively difficult piece. Nobody had ever heard him practising and there was no piano in his flat in Whitehall Court. But his agility and dash suggested a high level of accomplishment and an astonished group would always gather round him.

  Now he was executing a Liszt Rhapsodie and his hard, firm notes rang out into the night, breaking up its quiet like a shower of stones thrown into a pool. The rose-gatherers flocked into the house again and the Comstocks took their leave. Geraldine took Alec, Adrian and Laura into the library to play bridge, commanding the rest to play a round game in the drawing-room. But Solange had gone to put the roses in water, and Corny was determined to show how well he could play the Noveletten so that only Hugo and the Greys were left. It was the first time that the three of them had met at close quarters since Philomena talked to Gibbie. They none of them realised what was happening until too late. They were still standing and looking blankly at one another when Geraldine came back for her cigarette case. She said nothing but, as she went out again, her glance accused Philomena of managing very, very badly.

  Gibbie was the first to recover countenance. He muttered something about having manuscripts to read and disappeared into the hall. And Philomena said rather petulantly, under cover of Corny’s music:

  “I don’t think you’re very tactful, Hugo, I must say.”

  “I didn’t know I had to be tactful,” growled Hugo. “It’s you who’ve got to be tactful.”

  “Hush.”

  “Corny won’t hear us. Come over here and sit down on this sofa and let’s get it over.”

  “What do you mean?”

  His eyes were bright and angry. While Corny’s music filled the room he took her over to a sofa by the fireplace and forced her to explain herself.

  “You’re going to leave me cold, aren’t you?”

  “Oh, Hugo, I’m so sorry.”

  She explained to him that she was in a cage, and that she could never get out of it without hurting other people. One should not hurt other people. It was wrong. She reproached herself bitterly for having led him on, but maintained that being a wife and mother had turned out to be more of a whole-time job than she had thought. Not that she actually mentioned Ada or the children’s summer holiday, or even several other complications which had occurred to her during the day—a party for which she had already sent out invitations and the re-decoration of the drawing-room which would certainly be muddled if she were not there to supervise. But she went on saying vaguely that she was in a cage until Hugo said:

  “You weren’t in one yesterday.”

  “I hadn’t thought it out then.”

  “Is it Gibbie? Has he put his foot down or what?”

  Oh no, it was not fair to put the blame on poor Gibbie. As far as Gibbie was concerned it seemed that she might go off to-morrow.

  “But the world isn’t properly organised yet,” she said. “One can’t do these things.”

  “My dear Philomena! One can do these things perfectly well if one wants to. You talk as if no woman had ever done it before. Be reasonable!”

  Philomena gave him a surly look. She was being reasonable and he ought to have been trying to argue her out of it. He must have experience enough to know that he ought not to appeal to her reason in order to make her change her mind. But he did not, as she now began to understand, really want her to change her mind. He was making no great efforts to move her, though his vanity was clearly wounded by her defection. She had been sorry for him, but now she began to be offended. Each resented the other’s want of urgency.

  “The fact is you’ve weakened,” he told her. “If you wanted to come you’d come. But you’re glad of an excuse, because you mean to drop me and I know why.”

  “You know why, Hugo?”

  “Yes. I do know why.”

  “Not so loud. Corny’ll hear you.”

  He was trying to light a cigarette but his hand shook so much that he could not manage it. Suddenly his brain seemed to go molten with anger. He felt all power of self-control sliding and slipping away from him. The blood in his ears began to hum and his voice, high and shaking, rose above the noise of Corny’s piano.

  “I don’t care if he does hear. I don’t care if anybody hears. I’m not saying anything that they don’t all know already. Oh yes, I know why. Oh yes, I know why. I know why. I know …”

  “Hugo!”

  “I’m not such a feather in your cap as you thought I was. This week-end’s been a flop and so you find you’re in a cage. You needn’t think I don’t know. You needn’t think I don’t know. If Aggie hadn’t gone we shouldn’t hear so much about cages …”

  “Hugo! Be quiet! Don’t make such an exhibition …”

  “I suppose you all think she knows a good play from a bad one. I didn’t want to read the thing to her. But as it was written to amuse a lot of frustrated old women I thought I might as well try it out on her. I don’t know what she’s been saying about it. I only know you’ve all dropped me as if I had the plague.”

  “You must be mad. Nobody’s been saying anything about you that I know of. You’re so eaten up with vanity, your head’s so turned, you’ll soon be quite impossible.”

  “You didn’t think so yesterday.”

  “Going off to lunch with a lot of reporters! I didn’t believe it, at first, when I heard about it.”

  “Who told you?”

  “Corny. And let me tell you, Hugo, that you can’t do that sort of thing here. You may as well know that we had some difficulty to persuade Geraldine to invite you. She was afraid you’d bring your publicity manager with you. ‘Isn’t he rather a shallow little arriviste?’ she said. We told her you were very amusing. But the only time you’ve been amusing was when you were shouting at Mrs. Comstock and that was in very bad taste.”

  “So you ‘find you’re in a cage!’ Thank you.”

  “Thank heaven I did. I don’t like hysterics.”

  “Yes, you ought
to be thankful, oughtn’t you? My God, yes. I’m no catch now …”

  “How dare you talk like that! I thought I loved you!”

  “You certainly behaved as if you did. But how far did you mean to go? And when did you change your mind?”

  “I’d have given you all you wanted … everything … if …”

  “Everything! Don’t make me laugh.”

  “Don’t be more of a cad than you can help.”

  “When women like you talk of giving everything …”

  “Hush!”

  Corny, at last aware that something exciting was going forward at the other end of the room, had left off playing. Hugo’s voice rang through an attentive silence as, ignoring her gesture, he shouted on:

  “It means you’ve only got one thing to offer. And if I want that I can get it elsewhere without having to ask Gibbie’s leave.”

  Philomena did not reply. She was looking at Corny on the piano stool and to him she said:

  “Please go on playing. Hugo is having a nerve storm.”

  Corny played middle C very softly and shook his head.

  “I’ve played all my pieces,” he said.

  He was smiling to himself and Philomena had a suspicion that he might have heard a very great deal. She looked at Hugo in despair, wondering what else he might be going to say. But he was beginning to recover. Her gesture of appeal was not lost on him.

  “All right,” he said. “I’ve finished.”

  “Shall I go?” asked Corny, getting up.

  “Wait a minute,” said Hugo.

  Something must be done to keep Corny’s mouth shut, and his brain cleared rapidly as he came to this conclusion. He left off shaking. He made up his mind.

  “Tell them this,” he said.

  Crossing the room he pulled Corny’s nose very hard indeed. Then he nodded reassuringly at Philomena and walked slowly out through the French windows on to the terrace. For a few minutes he stood waiting just beyond the circle of light thrown out on to the stones. He wondered whether Corny would choose swords or pistols, or if a simple apology would suffice. He would be quite ready to apologise, for he was certain that his end was gained and that there would be no talk.