Venus Over Lannery Read online

  Next day he worked hard at the office, taking only half an hour off for lunch. His head was extraordinarily clear: his mind fastened greedily on office work as an antidote to his troubles. Work kept them at bay: they were present to him only as a physical sensation, a cold white smart inside him. He would have liked to go—on working all day and all night in the secure limbo of the office. He had an absurd, irrational feeling that by working, working at column after column of figures, he would exorcise the evil spirit that stood waiting for him outside the office door. He dreaded the visit to Daphne in the evening. What was the good of going to see her? And yet how could he not go?

  And when the evening came he went. He rang, and, after an interval in which he seemed to feel all her unwillingness, Daphne opened the door.

  “O, it’s you,” she said in a cold, matter-of-fact voice, neither friendly nor hostile. She stood aside to let him in and then shut the door.

  “How are you, Daphne?” he asked, and the question and the tone of his voice sounded to him feeble and silly.

  She shrugged her shoulders. “Quite well, worse luck!”

  “I rang up a friend of mine last night,” he said, “a doctor, but he was away till Saturday.”

  “So you’ve come round to my way of thinking, Eric?” she said.

  He shook his head. “No! But there’s nothing else you’ll allow me to do. As soon as I’ve seen him I’ll let you know.”

  They stood in the hall, facing each other like strangers. “Right! Thank you!” she said.

  She did not seem to expect him to stay and he turned towards the door. “Perhaps I’d better go, then.”

  She made no reply, but went past him and opened the door. His eyes met hers, searching, begging for some response, but hers were cold and empty.

  “Will you tell me,” he asked, “what I can do about hearing how you are? It seems no use my coming here, does it?”

  “That’s for you to choose, Eric,” she replied indifferently.

  “No,” he said; “it’s for you to choose. If I could be of any help or comfort to you, you know I’d be only too glad. But I can’t, it seems; so where’s the use of my coming?”

  “If you want to come, come,” she said; “but don’t imagine I’m going to ask you to come if you don’t want to.”

  “How can I say if I want to come? It depends entirely on whether my coming means anything to you.”

  “I see,” she said coldly. “You have no feelings yourself either way.”

  “My dear Daphne,” he exclaimed, exasperated almost to tears, “need you make it any worse for me than it is already? Need you deliberately misunderstand every damned word I say? You know perfectly well that it’s horribly painful for me to come here and be treated worse than a complete stranger, whatever you may feel about it.”

  It seemed for a moment that she was going to relent. She made a vague movement with one hand; but next moment she had checked herself and turned away without a word, and Eric went out.

  “Good night, Daphne!”

  “Good night, Eric!”

  As he rounded the bend of the stairs he saw her still standing there, holding the door open, but when he waved his hand she made no sign.

  Chapter XVI

  Edna was pacing the platform of Sevenoaks station, waiting for her train back to London, when she felt a touch on her arm. It was Roy—Roy in a black sombrero and a coat with a fur collar, more handsome, more resplendent than ever. He stood before her, smiling and holding out his hand.

  “This is an unexpected pleasure, Edna,” he said. “I never see any of you people nowadays. You don’t live here, do you?”

  “No,” said Edna, “I came down an hour or two ago to see a case.”

  “And you’re going back to Town! May I travel with you?”

  “But of course!” she said. “I shall be delighted.” “Forgive my asking,” he said, “but are you travelling first or third?”

  “First?” she said. “Do you take me for a Harley Street specialist?”

  “Then I’ll just ... er . . .” He left her hurriedly and returned, as the train came in, with a ticket in his hand. “You mustn’t mind,” he said, as he opened the door of a first-class carriage and stood for her to get in. “You see,” he explained as they took their seats, “I’ve got to travel first nowadays.”

  “A matter of prestige?” Edna asked with an amused smile.

  “No!” he said. “A matter of peace and quietness! If I go third nowadays people begin to nudge one another and stare as if I were a fourteenthcentury cathedral.”

  “And the first-class people don’t?”

  He waved his hand. “As you see, there aren’t any. But tell me, how’s Roger; how are Mrs. Dryden and Cynthia and Joan and Norman? I daren’t go near any of them nowadays for fear of meeting Daphne.”

  “Is it as bad as all that?” said Edna.

  “It? You mean Daphne?”

  “Well, your quarrel with Daphne?”

  “O, if I was sure the quarrel would last, I wouldn’t mind. It’s a reconciliation that I’m frightened of. But seriously, Edna, you’ve no idea what a dance Daphne has led me.”

  Edna laughed. “It must be dreadful, Roy, to be so mercilessly pursued, what with Daphne and all the third-class passengers; but isn’t it just a little bit flattering?”

  “Not a bit,” he said with grim emphasis. Then, after a pause, he added: “Tell me, have you ever come to see me in any of my successful parts?”

  Edna shook her head. “To be truthful, I haven’t, Roy.”

  “Of course you haven’t,” he said; “because you know that the shows I’m playing in are perfect rot. I know that as well as you do. Don’t imagine, please, that I have any illusions about my success. But it’s very nice, I can assure you, Edna, to have a comfortable income instead of struggling along in absolute squalor. If I have no illusions about my success, I have no illusions about squalor either. If I had nobly insisted on sticking to first-rate stuff, I should have stuck to the squalor as well: I wouldn’t have been good enough to work my way out of it. One’s got to be practical in such matters; don’t you agree?”

  “Absolutely, Roy! I’m all for being practical. And you’re being practical about Daphne as well?”

  “I am indeed; and not merely selfishly so. We’re terribly bad for each other. You don’t go in for psycho-analysis, do you?”

  “No. Why do you ask?”

  “Because I wish you could analyse me out of Daphne’s system.”

  “And her out of yours?”

  “No, I can deal with that myself.” He stared at the pale-yellow gloves that lay on his lap, his thick black eyebrows drawn into a frown. “It’s extraordinary, you know, that mind and body should be so completely divided. If Daphne and I—you’re a doctor, so I can say these things to you—if Daphne and I were a couple of animals, we would be perfectly happy. In that way we’re completely in love with each other. But in every other way we’re disastrously incompatible. And yet, even when I make every conceivable allowance for Daphne, I can’t believe it’s my fault. You see, she doesn’t trust me. She’s full of the most fantastic suspicions, and when I try to allay them she tells me I’m a liar. She’s made up her mind that I’m a sort of romantic Don Juan, so that each time I try to prove to her that I’m not, it’s only another proof of my monstrous craftiness. So what can I do? It’s a vicious circle from which there’s no escape. Romantic! Good God, as if I didn’t get more than enough of that every blessed night on the stage. What’s the meaning of it, Edna?”

  “It looks as if she was the romantic one.”

  “Daphne? Romantic about me?”

  “Romantic about herself,” said Edna. “But that’s as far as I can get, Roy. If you ask me what she wants, I can’t tell you, and I’m sure she couldn’t.”

  “She wants to shut me up in the meat-safe, that’s what she wants,” he said indignantly, “to keep me under lock and key for her own uses.” He sighed wearily. “The thing’s a mystery to
me. What is it that drives her to make a hell of our life together? Is she mad or possessed of a devil?”

  “O, we’re most of us possessed of devils, if it comes to that,” said Edna. “I’m more and more amazed, in my job, at the number of people who, in spite of iron constitutions, are determined to be ill.”

  “Well, whatever my devil is,” said Roy, “it’s different from Daphne’s, and I see no reason why I should go and live in her hell, especially when it wouldn’t do her any good if I did. If I keep out of her way, perhaps she’ll get me out of her system in the end.”

  Edna considered. “She won’t do that,” she said at last. “If she’s determined to have her hell, she’ll simply make herself a little magic image of you to keep it going.”

  “Well, I’d rather it was the image than me; and, anyhow, it’ll keep her occupied.”

  “Yes,” said Edna thoughtfully, “terribly occupied. It makes it all the more necessary that you should keep out of her way. Fortunately,” she added, remembering Daphne and Eric at Lannery a few weeks ago, “she’s occupied with other things as well.”

  “Thank God for that!” said Roy, without showing the smallest curiosity ... .

  Sitting over a cup of tea the same afternoon, waiting for Roger to come home, Edna reflected on her talk with Roy. In his account of Daphne’s attitude to him it had struck her that he was describing, though in different terms and an aggravated form, Roger’s attitude to herself. Daphne, in Roy’s grim phrase, had wanted to lock him in the meatsafe. Roger wanted to enslave her intelligence. But at least he did not imagine things against her and then hate her for his imaginations. He dealt with facts: his fault was to attach a false significance to them. She really did prefer Chopin to Beethoven, but he failed to see that it didn’t matter. Or weren’t Chopin and Beethoven and all their other points of disagreement mere symbols of his wish to domineer over her? And now, or at least until Mrs. Dryden had made those sharply revealing remarks down at Lannery, she was determined to domineer over Roger. She had given herself away, as far as that was concerned, when she admitted that she had refused to go for a walk with him, although she really felt quite inclined to go. And Mrs. Dryden, of course—wise, penetrating old thing that she was—had spotted it at once. “Beware of acting on principle, Edna!” She blushed to herself now as she recalled that unpleasant little incident. It had been disgraceful of her to make their struggle a public matter. But, after all, it was Roger who had forced her to do that; he had tried to use the presence of Mrs. Dryden and Joan to compel her to give in; he had tried to exploit her sense of decent behaviour. But what would have been the right way out of the difficulty? Mrs. Dryden hadn’t told her that. She had given her some very enlightening hints, but she hadn’t given her a definite solution, and she herself, unfortunately, hadn’t thought of asking her for one. The old lady had been extraordinarily nice: she was one of those rare people who can say exactly what they think without causing the least offence. After her searching remarks about Roger and herself, she had been delightfully frank about her own difficulties with her husband. And yet that story had not been of much help: their two cases were so different. Mr. Dryden had obviously not been of the domineering sort; and so, when Mrs. Dryden had ceased to resist and had thrown her grievances overboard, the

  difficulty had been solved. But if she herself were to cease to resist Roger they would simply be back again at where they had started: he would take complete control of her again. And yet she didn’t want to dominate Roger for the mere sake of domination. She didn’t in the least want to turn him into another Edna: Mrs. Dryden had been wrong if she really thought that. All she wanted was to stop his attempts to dominate her. How was it to be done? Opposition on principle would not only make him more stubborn still, it would spoil their whole life. She saw that now. She loved Roger and was quite ready to give in to him as far as she honestly could. Mrs. Dryden had quoted St. Paul: “Love suffereth long, and is kind.” She too believed that, but she didn’t believe that love required that one should falsify one’s own nature. She couldn’t consent—to take again their ridiculous symbolical bone of contention—to pretend that she liked Beethoven better than Chopin. That would simply be dishonesty. Love couldn’t stoop to that, and love, real love, couldn’t demand it. She didn’t in the least want Roger to like Chopin better than Beethoven, so there, anyhow, Roger, not she, was in the wrong. She glanced at her watch and, as she did so, she heard his latchkey in the lock, and next moment he came in, alert, smiling, glad to be home. She was filled with self-reproach. She felt as if she had been speaking ill of him behind his back.

  Chapter XVII

  On a Saturday afternoon, after a miserable fortnight during which he had visited Daphne every other day and found her always inexorably hostile, Eric called again at the flat. The door was opened by Juliet and, as it opened, a cheerful laugh came from the sitting-room—Daphne’s laugh, and then her voice: “My good Bill, you simply don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  His heart leapt. Surely everything must be all right again. Juliet’s friendly face had broken into a smile at the sight of him. “O, it’s you, Eric. Do come in. Bill’s here.”

  He hesitated. “I just called to ask how Daphne was, and whether there was any news.”

  Juliet, of course, had been in the secret from the first. “No, Eric,” she said; “I’m afraid there isn’t.”

  His face fell. “Then I don’t think I’ll stay. You’ll tell her, won’t you, that I called?” He turned to go. “She sounds pretty cheerful,” he said bitterly.

  “O, she’s cheerful enough most of the time,” said Juliet. “You’d much better come in.”

  He hesitated and then reluctantly consented. Perhaps, after all, she might feel more kindly towards him to-day; and even if she didn’t, his going away without seeing her might give her the impression that he was co-operating in their estrangement. She would certainly seize on any excuse for a grievance against him.

  As he went into the sitting-room Bill hailed him. “Thank God, it’s Eric! Here, Eric! You know how to manage Daphne, don’t you?”

  Eric did his best to appear cheerful. “Well,” he said, “I’m not sure that I can guarantee . . .” He turned to Daphne.

  But Daphne was not going to help him. She met his eyes with a stony gaze, a gaze which warned him at once that she was not going to countenance even a pretence of friendship between them. He glanced anxiously at the others, fearing that they had noticed, but they were talking together with their backs to him and Daphne. They could have seen nothing. But what a fool he had been to come in! He might have known that it would do no good. His instinct had told him, at the first sound of Daphne’s laugh, that he was overhearing something from which he was excluded. He stood there embarrassed, forlorn and deeply wounded. He dared not look at her again: there was no one for him to talk to, nothing for him to do. Unable to endure the situation any longer, he went to the door.

  Bill saw him. “Hi there, Eric! You’re not going?”

  “I must,” said Eric. “I only looked in for a moment”; and before they could stop him he went out.

  As he let himself out of the front door he heard Daphne’s voice again: “There’s no good talking to me, Bill. I know”; and then her laugh, gay, irresponsible as in the days when they had laughed so often together.

  As he stood waiting for his bus he changed his mind and decided to walk. A walk would shake him up and do him good. Thoughts were less painful when you were engaged in the business of walking, and he set off, taking short cuts down by-streets and through little squalid squares that he had never seen before. So she was cheerful most of the time, was she? Obviously, then, the terrible change in her, the invariable dejection and moroseness, was reserved for him alone. Was it because the sight of him so inevitably reminded her of her anxiety, that she couldn’t help treating him as she did, or was she deliberately trying to make his burden as heavy as possible? Who could tell? It was impossible to believe that, behind the gay, aff
ectionate, sweettempered girl who had made life so enchanting for him, there had existed all the time this grim, cruel, inexplicable creature, impervious to any appeal of reason or affection, whose one desire seemed to be to wound him. The change was worse than death. For not only had the old Daphne died, but the memory of their love and all the happiness they had shared was being poisoned by the new Daphne.

  Even if she were to change back again into the old Daphne, it would restore nothing now. The horrible secret was out: he would know that the Daphne he loved was only one half of the real Daphne. Then, quite suddenly, through the weary tangle of his thoughts a sharp, amazing fact emerged, the fact that his love was dead, that he hated her. The discovery was a relief to him: nothing that she said or did could wound him any more. If he could have followed his natural impulse he would have gone away there and then, run from her as from something sinister and dangerous. But how could he leave her in her present predicament? He must at least see her through that, whatever his feelings towards her might be.