Charley made a vague gesture of discouragement. He felt as if he were trying to talk with someone whose language he could not understand.
“How long are you going on at the Sérail?”
“I don’t know. Until I have done my share. Until the time comes when I feel in my bones that Robert is liberated not from his prison, but from his sin. At one time I used to address envelopes. There are hundreds and hundreds of them and you think you’ll never get them all done, you scribble and scribble interminably, and for a long time there seem to be as many to do as there ever were, and then suddenly, when you least expect it, you find you’ve done the last one. It’s such a curious sensation.”
“And then, will you go out to join Robert?”
“If he wants me.”
“Of course he’ll want you,” said Charley.
She gave him a look of infinite sadness.
“I don’t know.”
“How can you doubt it? He loves you. After all, think what your love must mean to him.”
“You heard what those men said to-day. He’s gay, he’s got a soft billet, he’s making the best of things. He was bound to. That’s what he’s like. He loved me, yes, I know, but I know also that he’s incapable of loving for very long. I couldn’t have held him indefinitely even if nothing had happened. I knew that always. And when the time comes for me to go, what hope have I that anything will be left of the love he once bore me?”
“But how, if you think that, can you still do what you’re doing?”
“It’s stupid, isn’t it? He’s cruel and selfish, unscrupulous and wicked. I don’t care. I don’t respect him, I don’t trust him, but I love him; I love him with my body, with my thoughts, with my feelings, with everything that’s me.” She changed her tone to one of light raillery. “And now that I’ve told you that, you must see that I’m a very disreputable woman who is quite unworthy of your interest or sympathy.”
Charley considered for a moment.
“Well, I don’t mind telling you that I’m rather out of my depth. But for all the hell he’s enduring I’m not sure if I wouldn’t rather be in his shoes than yours.”
“Why?”
“Well, to tell you the truth, because I can’t imagine anything more heart-rending than to love with all your soul someone that you know is worthless.”
Lydia gave him a thoughtful, rather surprised look, but did not answer.
x
CHARLEY’S TRAIN left at midday. Somewhat to his surprise Lydia told him that she would like to come and see him off. They breakfasted late and packed their bags. Before going downstairs to pay his bill Charley counted his money. He had plenty left.
“Will you do me a favour?” he asked.
“What is it?”
“Will you let me give you something to keep in case of emergency?”
“I don’t want your money,” she smiled. “If you like you can give me a thousand francs for Evgenia. It’ll be a godsend to her.”
“All right.”
They drove first to the Rue du Chateau d’Eau, where she lived, and there she left her bag with the concierge. Then they drove to the Gare du Nord. Lydia walked along the platform with him and he bought a number of English papers. He found his seat in the Pullman. Lydia, coming in with him, looked about her.
“D’you know, this is the first time I’ve ever been inside a first-class carriage in my life,” she said.
It gave Charley quite a turn. He had a sudden realization of a life completely devoid not only of the luxuries of the rich, but even of the comforts of the well-to-do. It caused him a sharp pang of discomfort to think of the sordid existence that had always been, and always would be, hers.
“Oh well, in England I generally go third,” he said apologetically, “but my father says that on the Continent one ought to travel like a gentleman.”
“It makes a good impression on the natives.”
Charley laughed and flushed.
“You have a peculiar gift for making me feel a fool.”
They walked up and down the platform, trying as people do on such occasions to think of something to say, but able to think of nothing that seemed worth saying. Charley wondered if it passed through her mind that in all probability they would never see one another again in all their lives. It was odd to think that for five days they had been almost inseparable and in an hour it would be as though they had never met. But the train was about to start. He put out his hand to say good-bye to her. She crossed her arms over her breast in a way she had which had always seemed to him strangely moving; she had had her arms so crossed when she wept in her sleep; and raised her face to his. To his amazement he saw that she was crying. He put his arms round her and for the first time kissed her on the mouth. She disengaged herself and, turning away from him, quickly hurried down the platform. Charley got into his compartment. He was singularly troubled. But a substantial luncheon, with half a bottle of indifferent Chablis, did something to restore his equanimity; and then he lit his pipe and began to read The Times. It soothed him. There was something solid in the feel of the substantial fabric on which it was printed that seemed to him grandly English. He looked at the picture papers. He was of a resilient temper. By the time they reached Calais he was in tearing spirits. Once on board he had a small Scotch and pacing the deck watched with satisfaction the waves that Britannia traditionally rules. It was grand to see the white cliffs of Dover. He gave a sigh of relief when he stepped on the stubborn English soil. He felt as though he had been away for ages. It was a treat to hear the voices of the English porters, and he laughed at the threatening uncouthness of the English customs officials who treated you as though you were a confirmed criminal. In another two hours he would be home again. That’s what his father always said:
“There’s only one thing I like better than getting out of England, and that’s getting back to it.”
Already the events of his stay in Paris seemed a trifle dim. It was like a nightmare which left you shaken when with a start you awoke from it, but as the day wore on faded in your recollection, so that after a while you remembered nothing but that you had had a bad dream. He wondered if anyone would come to meet him; it would be nice to see a friendly face on the platform. When he got out of the Pullman at Victoria almost the first person he saw was his mother. She threw her arms round his neck and kissed him as though he had been gone for months.
“I told your father that as he’d seen you off I was going to meet you. Patsy wanted to come too, but I wouldn’t let her. I wanted to have you all to myself for a few minutes.”
Oh, how good it was to be enveloped in that safe affection!
“You are an old fool, mummy. It’s idiotic of you to risk catching your death of cold on a draughty platform on a bitter night like this.”
They walked, arm in arm and happy, to the car. They drove to Portchester Close. Leslie Mason heard the front door open and came out into the hall, and then Patsy tore down the stairs and flung herself into Charley’s arms.
“Come into my study and have a tiddly. The whiskey’s there. You must be perished with the cold.”
Charley fished out of his great-coat pocket the two bottles of scent he had brought for his mother and Patsy. Lydia had chosen them.
“I smuggled ‘em,” he said triumphantly.
“Now those two women will stink like a brothel,” said Leslie Mason, beaming.
“I’ve brought you a tie from Charvet, daddy.”
“Is it loud?”
“Very.”
“Good.”
They were all so pleased with one another that they burst out laughing. Leslie Mason poured out the whiskey and insisted that his wife should have some to prevent her from catching cold.
“Have you had any adventures, Charley?” asked Patsy.
“None.”
“Liar.”
“Well, you must tell us all about everything later,” said Mrs. Mason. “Now you’d better go and have a nice hot bath and dress for dinner.”
“It’s all ready for you,” said Patsy. “I’ve put in half a bottle of bath salts.”
They treated him as though he had just come back from the North Pole after a journey of incredible hardship. It warmed the cockles of his heart.
“Is it good to be home again?” asked his mother, her eyes tender with love.
“Grand.”
But when Leslie, partly dressed, went into his wife’s room to have a chat with her while she did her face, she turned to him with a somewhat anxious look.
“He’s looking awfully pale, Leslie,” she said.
“A bit washed out. I noticed that myself.”
“His face is so drawn. It struck me the moment he got out of the Pullman, but I couldn’t see very well till we got here. And he’s as white as a ghost.”
“He’ll be all right in a day or two. I expect he’s been racketing about a bit. By the look of him I suspect he’s helped quite a number of pretty ladies to provide for their respectable old age.”
Mrs. Mason was sitting at her dressing-table, in a Chinese jacket trimmed with white fur, carefully doing her eye-brows, but now, the pencil in her hand, she suddenly turned round.
“What do you mean, Leslie? You don’t mean to say you think he’s been having a lot of horrid foreign women.”
“Come off it, Venetia. What d’you suppose he went to Paris for?”
“To see the pictures and Simon, and well, go to the Français. He’s only a boy.”
“Don’t be so silly, Venetia. He’s twenty-three. You don’t suppose he’s a virgin, do you?”
“I do think men are disgusting.”
Her voice broke, and Leslie, seeing she was really upset, put his hand kindly on her shoulder.
“Darling, you wouldn’t like your only son to be a eunuch, would you now?”
Mrs. Mason didn’t quite know whether she wanted to laugh or cry.
“I don’t suppose I would really,” she giggled.
It was with a sense of peculiar satisfaction that Charley, half an hour later, in his second-best dinner-jacket, seated himself with his father in a velvet coat, his mother in a tea-gown of mauve silk and Patsy maidenly in rose chiffon, at the Chippendale table. The Georgian silver, the shaded candles, the lace doyleys which Mrs. Mason had bought in Florence, the cut glass—it was all pretty, but above all it was familiar. The pictures on the walls, each with its own strip-lighting, were meritorious; and the two maids, in their neat brown uniforms, added a nice touch. You had a feeling of security, and the world outside was comfortably distant. The good, plain food was designed to satisfy a healthy appetite without being fattening. In the hearth an electric fire very satisfactorily imitated burning logs. Leslie Mason looked at the menu.
“I see we’ve killed the fatted calf for the prodigal son,” he said, with an arch look at his wife.
“Did you have any good food in Paris, Charley?” asked Mrs. Mason.
“All right. I didn’t go to any of the smart restaurants, you know. We used to have our meals at little places in the Quarter.”
“Oh. Who’s we?”
Charley hesitated an instant and flushed.
“I dined with Simon, you know.”
This was a fact. His answer neatly concealed the truth without actually telling a lie. Mrs. Mason was aware that her husband was giving her a meaning look, but she paid no attention to it; she continued to gaze on her son with tenderly affectionate eyes, and he was much too ingenuous to suspect that they were groping deep into his soul to discover whatever secrets he might be hiding there.
“And did you see any pictures?” she asked kindly.
“I went to the Louvre. I was rather taken with the Chardins.”
“Were you?” said Leslie Mason. “I can’t say he’s ever appealed to me very much. I always thought him on the dull side.” His eyes twinkled with the jest that had occurred to him. “Between you and me and the gatepost I prefer Charvet to Chardin. At least he is modern.”
“Your father’s impossible,” Mrs. Mason smiled indulgently. “Chardin was a very conscientious artist, one of the minor masters of the eighteenth century, but of course he wasn’t Great.”
In point of fact, however, they were much more anxious to tell him about their doings than to listen to his. The party at Cousin Wilfred’s had been a riot, and they had come back so exhausted that they’d all gone to bed immediately after dinner on the night of their return. That showed you how they’d enjoyed themselves.
“Patsy had a proposal of marriage,” said Leslie Mason.
“Thrilling, wasn’t it?” cried Patsy. “Unfortunately the poor boy was only sixteen, so I told him that, bad woman as I was, I hadn’t sunk so low as to snatch a baby from his cradle, and I gave him a chaste kiss on the brow and told him I would be a sister to him.”
Patsy rattled on. Charley, smiling, listened to her, and Mrs. Mason took the opportunity to look at him closely. He was really very good-looking and his pallor suited him. It gave her an odd little feeling in her heart to think how much those women in Paris must have liked him; she supposed he’d gone to one of those horrible houses; what a success he must have had, so young and fresh and charming, after the fat, bald, beastly old men they were used to! She wondered what sort of girl he had been attracted by, she so hoped she was young and pretty, they said men were attracted by the same type as their mother belonged to. She was sure he’d be an enchanting lover; she couldn’t help feeling proud of him; after all, he was her son and she’d carried him in her womb. The dear; and he looked so white and tired. Mrs. Mason had strange thoughts, thoughts that she wouldn’t have had anybody know for anything in the world; she was sad, and a little envious, yes, envious of the girls he had slept with, but at the same time proud, oh, so proud, because he was strong and handsome and virile.
Leslie interrupted Patsy’s nonsense and her own thoughts.
“Shall we tell him the great secret, Venetia?”
“Of course.”
“But mind, Charley, keep it under your hat. Cousin Wilfred’s worked it. There’s an ex-Indian governor that the party want to find a safe seat for, so Wilfred’s giving up his and in recognition he’s to get a peerage. What d’you think of that?”
“It’s grand.”
“Of course he pretends it means nothing to him, but he’s as pleased as Punch really. And you know, it’s nice for all of us. I mean, having a peer in the family adds to one’s prestige. Well, it gives one a sort of position. And when you think how we started …”
“That’ll do, Leslie,” said Mrs. Mason, with a glance at the servants. “We needn’t go into that.” And when they left the room immediately afterwards, she added: “Your father’s got a mania for telling everyone about his origins. I really think the time has now arrived when we can let bygones be bygones. It’s not so bad when we’re with people of our own class, they think it’s rather chic to have a grandfather who was a gardener and a grandmother who was a cook, but there’s no need to tell the servants. It only makes them think you’re no better than they are.”
“I’m not ashamed of it. After all the greatest families in England started just as humbly as we did. And we’ve worked the oracle in less than a century.”
Mrs. Mason and Patsy got up from the table and Charley was left with his father to drink a glass of port. Leslie Mason told him of the discussions they had had about the title Cousin Wilfred should assume. It wasn’t so easy as you might think to find a name which didn’t belong to somebody else, which had some kind of connection with you, and which sounded well.
“I suppose we’d better join the ladies,” he said, when he had exhausted the subject. “I expect your mother will want a rubber before we go to bed.”
But as they were at the door and about to go out, he put his hand on his son’s shoulder.
“You look a bit washed out, old boy. I expect you’ve been going the pace a bit in Paris. Well, you’re young and that’s to be expected.” He suddenly felt a trifle embarrassed. “Anyhow, tha
t’s no business of mine, and I think there are things a father and son needn’t go into. But accidents will happen in the best regulated families, and well, what I want to say is, if you find you’ve got anything the matter with you, don’t hesitate but go and see a doctor right away. Old Sinnery brought you into the world and so you needn’t be shy of him. He’s discretion itself and he’ll put you right in no time; the bill will be paid and no questions asked. That’s all I wanted to tell you; now let’s go and join your poor mother.”
Charley had blushed scarlet when he understood what his father was talking about. He felt he ought to say something, but could think of nothing to say.
When they came into the drawing-room Patsy was playing a waltz of Chopin’s and after she had finished his mother asked Charley to play something.
“I suppose you haven’t played since you left?”
“One afternoon I played a little on the hotel piano, but it was a very poor one.”
He sat down and played again that piece of Scriabin’s that Lydia thought he played so badly, and as he began he had a sudden recollection of that stuffy, smoky cellar to which she had taken him, of those roughs he had made such friends with, and of the Russian woman, gaunt and gipsy-skinned, with her enormous eyes, who had sung those wild, barbaric songs with such a tragic abandon. Through the notes he struck he seemed to hear her raucous, harsh and yet deeply moving voice. Leslie Mason had a sensitive ear.
“You play that thing differently from the way you used,” he said when Charley got up from the piano.