Although Julia was in a pitiable state of anxiety, so that she could hardly get the words out of her mouth, she almost smiled at his fatuous irony. He was a silly little thing.
'But you can't imagine that I wanted to hurt your feelings. You surely know me well enough to know that's the last thing I should do.'
'That only makes it worse.' ('Damn and curse,' thought Julia.) 'I ought never to have let you make me those presents. I should never have let you lend me money.'
'I don't know what you mean. It's all some horrible misunderstanding. Come and fetch me after the play and we'll have it out. I know I can explain.'
'I'm going to dinner with my people and I shall sleep at home.'
'To-morrow then.'
'I'm engaged to-morrow.'
'I must see you, Tom. We've been too much to one another to part like this. You can't condemn me unheard. It's so unjust to punish me for no fault of mine.'
'I think it's much better that we shouldn't meet again.'
Julia was growing desperate.
'But I love you, Tom. I love you. Let me see you once more and then, if you're still angry with me, we'll call it a day.'
There was a long pause before he answered.
'All right. I'll come after the matinée on Wednesday.'
'Don't think unkindly of me, Tom.'
She put down the receiver. At all events he was coming. She wrapped up again the things he had returned to her, and hid them away where she was pretty sure Evie would not see them. She undressed, put on her old pink dressing-gown and began to make-up. She was out of humour: this was the first time she had ever told him that she loved him. It vexed her that she had been forced to humiliate herself by begging him to come and see her. Till then it had always been he who sought her company. She was not pleased to think that the situation between them now was openly reversed.
Julia gave a very poor performance at the matinée on Wednesday. The heat wave had affected business and the house was apathetic. Julia was indifferent. With that sickness of apprehension gnawing at her heart she could not care how the play went. ('What the hell do they want to come to the theatre for on a day like this anyway?') She was glad when it was over.
'I'm expecting Mr. Fennell,' she told Evie. 'While he's here I don't want to be disturbed.'
Evie did not answer. Julia gave her a glance and saw that she was looking grim.
('To hell with her. What do I care what she thinks!')
He ought to have been there by now. It was after five. He was bound to come; after all, he'd promised, hadn't he? She put on a dressing-gown, not the one she made up in, but a man's dressing-gown, in plum-coloured silk. Evie took an interminable time to put things straight.
'For God's sake don't fuss, Evie. Leave me alone.'
Evie did not speak. She went on methodically arranging the various objects on the dressing-table exactly as Julia always wanted them.
'Why the devil don't you answer when I speak to you?'
Evie turned round and looked at her. She thoughtfully rubbed her finger along her nostrils.
'Great actress you may be ...'
'Get the hell out of here.'
After taking off her stage make-up Julia had done nothing to her face except put the very faintest shading of blue under her eyes. She had a smooth, pale skin and without rouge on her cheeks or red on her lips she looked wan. The man's dressing-gown gave an effect at once helpless, fragile and gallant. Her heart was beating painfully and she was very anxious, but looking at herself in the glass she murmured: Mimi in the last act of Bohème. Almost without meaning to she coughed once or twice consumptively. She turned off the bright lights on her dressing-table and lay down on the sofa. Presently there was a knock at the door and Evie announced Mr. Fennell. Julia held out a white, thin hand.
'I'm lying down. I'm afraid I'm not very well. Find yourself a chair. It's nice of you to come.'
'I'm sorry. What's the matter?'
'Oh, nothing.' She forced a smile to her ashy lips. 'I haven't been sleeping very well the last two or three nights.'
She turned her beautiful eyes on him and for a while gazed at him in silence. His expression was sullen, but she had a notion that he was frightened.
'I'm waiting for you to tell me what you've got against me,' she said at last in a low voice.
It trembled a little, she noticed, but quite naturally. ('Christ, I believe I'm frightened too.')
'There's no object in going back to that. The only thing I wanted to say to you was this: I'm afraid I can't pay you the two hundred pounds I owe you right away, I simply haven't got it, but I'll pay you by degrees. I hate having to ask you to give me time, but I can't help myself.'
She sat up on the sofa and put both her hands to her breaking heart.
'I don't understand. I've lain awake for two whole nights turning it all over in my mind. I thought I should go mad. I've been trying to understand. I can't. I can't.'
('What play did I say that in?')
'Oh yes, you can, you understand perfectly. You were angry with me and you wanted to get back on me. And you did. You got back on me all right. You couldn't have shown your contempt for me more clearly.'
'But why should I want to get back on you? Why should I be angry with you?'
'Because I went to Maidenhead with Roger to that party and you wanted me to come home.'
'But I told you to go. I said I hoped you'd have a good time.'
'I know you did, but your eyes were blazing with passion. I didn't want to go, but Roger was keen on it. I told him I thought we ought to come back and dine with you and Michael, but he said you'd be glad to have us off your hands, and I didn't like to make a song and dance about it. And when I saw you were in a rage it was too late to get out of it.'
'I wasn't in a rage. I can't think how you got such an idea in your head. It was so natural that you should want to go to the party. You can't think I'm such a beast as to grudge you a little fun in your fortnight's holiday. My poor lamb, my only fear was that you would be bored. I so wanted you to have a good time.'
'Then why did you send me that money and write me that letter? It was so insulting.'
Julia's voice faltered. Her jaw began to tremble and the loss of control over her muscles was strangely moving. Tom looked away uneasily.
'I couldn't bear to think of you having to throw away your good money on tips. I know that you're not terribly rich and I knew you'd spent a lot on green fees. I hate women who go about with young men and let them pay for everything. It's so inconsiderate. I treated you just as I'd have treated Roger. I never thought it would hurt your feelings.'
'Will you swear that?'
'Of course I will. My God, is it possible that after all these months you don't know me better than that? If what you think were true, what a mean cruel, despicable woman I should be, what a cad, what a heartless, vulgar beast! Is that what you think I am?'
A poser.
'Anyhow it doesn't matter. I ought never to have accepted valuable presents from you and allowed you to lend me money. It's put me in a rotten position. Why I thought you despised me is that I can't help feeling that you've got a right to. The fact is I can't afford to run around with people who are so much richer than I am. I was a fool to think I could. It's been fun and I've had a grand time, but now I'm through. I'm not going to see you any more.'
She gave a deep sigh.
'You don't care two hoots for me. That's what that means.'
'That's not fair.'
'You're everything in the world to me. You know that. I'm so lonely and your friendship meant a great deal to me. I'm surrounded by hangers-on and parasites and I knew you were disinterested. I felt I could rely on you. I so loved being with you. You were the only person in the world with whom I could be entirely myself. Don't you know what a pleasure it was to me to help you a little? It wasn't for your sake I made you little presents, it was for my own; it made me so happy to see you using the things I'd given you. If you'd cared for me at
all they wouldn't have humiliated you, you'd have been touched to owe me something.'
She turned her eyes on him once more. She could always cry easily, and she was really so miserable now that she did not have to make even a small effort. He had never seen her cry before. She could cry, without sobbing, her wonderful dark eyes wide open, with a face that was almost rigid. Great heavy tears ran down it. And her quietness, the immobility of the tragic body, were terribly moving. She hadn't cried like that since she cried in 'The Stricken Heart.' Christ, how that play had shattered her. She was not looking at Tom, she was looking straight in front of her; she was really distracted with grief, but, what was it? another self within her knew what she was doing, a self that shared in her unhappiness and yet watched its expression. She felt him go white. She felt a sudden anguish wring his heartstrings, she felt that his flesh and blood could not support the intolerable pain of hers.
'Julia.'
His voice was broken. She slowly turned her liquid eyes on him. It was not a woman crying that he saw, it was all the woe of human kind, it was the immeasurable, the inconsolable grief that is the lot of man. He threw himself down on his knees and took her in his arms. He was shattered.
'Dearest, dearest.'
For a minute she did not move. It was as if she did not know that he was there. He kissed her streaming eyes and with his mouth sought hers. She gave it to him as though she were powerless, as though, scarcely conscious of what was befalling her, she had no will left. With a scarcely perceptible movement she pressed her body to his and gradually her arms found their way round his neck. She lay in his arms, not exactly inert, but as though all the strength, all the vitality, had gone out of her. In his mouth he tasted the saltness of her tears. At last, exhausted, clinging to him with soft arms she sank back on the sofa. His lips clung to hers.
You would never have thought had you seen her a quarter of an hour later, so quietly gay, flushed a little, that so short a while before she had passed through such a tempest of weeping. They each had a whisky and soda and a cigarette and looked at one another with fond eyes.
'He's a sweet little thing,' she thought.
It occurred to her that she would give him a treat.
'The Duke and Duchess of Rickaby are coming to the play to-night and we're going to have supper at the Savoy. I suppose you wouldn't come, would you? I want a man badly to make a fourth.'
'If you'd like me to, of course I will.'
The heightened colour on his cheeks told her how excited he was to meet such distinguished persons. She did not tell him that the Rickabys would go anywhere for a free meal. Tom took back the presents that he had returned to her rather shyly, but he took them. When he had gone she sat down at the dressing-table and had a good look at herself.
'How lucky I am that I can cry without my eyelids swelling,' she said. She massaged them a little. 'All the same, what mugs men are.'
She was happy. Everything would be all right now. She had got him back. But somewhere, at the back of her mind or in the bottom of her heart, was a feeling of ever so slight contempt for Tom because he was such a simple fool.
16
Their quarrel, destroying in some strange way the barrier between them, brought them closer together. Tom offered less resistance than she had expected when she mooted once more the question of the flat. It looked as though, after their reconciliation, having taken back her presents and consented to forget the loan, he had put aside his moral scruples. They had a lot of fun furnishing it. The chauffeur's wife kept it clean for him and cooked his breakfast. Julia had a key and would sometimes let herself in and sit by herself in the little sitting-room till he came back from his office. They supped together two or three times a week and danced, then drove back to the flat in a taxi. Julia enjoyed a happy autumn. The play they put on was a success. She felt alert and young. Roger was coming home at Christmas, but only for a fortnight, and was then going to Vienna. Julia expected him to monopolize Tom and she was determined not to mind. Youth naturally appealed to youth and she told herself that there was no reason for her to feel anxious if for a few days the two of them were so wrapped up in one another that Tom had no thought for her. She held him now. He was proud to be her lover, it gave him confidence in himself, and he was pleased to be on familiar terms with a large number of more or less distinguished persons whom after all he only knew through her. He was anxious now to join a good club and Julia was preparing the ground. Charles had never refused her anything, and with tact she was certain that she could wheedle him into proposing Tom for one of those to which he belonged. It was a new and delicious sensation for Tom to have money to spend; she encouraged him to be extravagant; she had a notion that he would get used to living in a certain way and then would realize that he could not do without her.
'Of course it can't last,' she told herself, 'but when it comes to an end it will have been a wonderful experience for him. It'll really have made a man of him.'
But though she told herself that it could not last she did not see really why it shouldn't. As the years went by and he grew older there wouldn't be any particular difference between them. He would no longer be so very young in ten or fifteen years and she would be just the same age as she was now. They were very comfortable together. Men were creatures of habit; that gave women such a hold on them. she did not feel a day older than he, and she was convinced that the disparity in their ages had never even occurred to him. It was true that on this point she had once had a moment's disquietude. She was lying on his bed. He was standing at the dressing-table, in his shirt sleeves, brushing his hair. She was stark naked and she lay in the position of a Venus by Titian that she remembered to have seen in a country house at which she had stayed. She felt that she made really a lovely picture, and in complete awareness of the charming sight she offered, held the pose. She was happy and satisfied.
'This is romance,' she thought, and a light, quick smile hovered over her lips.
He caught sight of her in the mirror, turned round and without a word, twitched the sheet over her. Though she smiled at him affectionately, it gave her quite a turn. Was he afraid that she would catch cold or was it that his English modesty was shocked at her nakedness? Or could it be that, his boyish lust satisfied, he was a trifle disgusted at the sight of her ageing body? When she got home she again took all her clothes off and examined herself in the looking-glass. She determined not to spare herself. She looked at her neck, there was no sign of age there, especially when she held her chin up; and her breasts were small and firm; they might have been a girl's. Her belly was flat, her hips were small, there was a very small roll of fat there, like a long sausage, but everyone had that, and anyhow Miss Phillips could have a go at it. No one could say that her legs weren't good, they were long and slim and comely; she passed her hands over her body, her skin was as soft as velvet and there wasn't a blemish on it. Of course there were a few wrinkles under her eyes, but you had to peer to see them; they said there was an operation now by which you could get rid of them, it might be worth while to inquire into that; it was lucky that her hair had retained its colour; however well hair was dyed, to dye hardened the face; hers remained a rich, deep brown. Her teeth were all right too.
'Prudishness, that's all it was.'
She had a moment's recollection of the Spaniard with the beard in the wagon-lit and she smiled roguishly at herself in the glass.
'No damned modesty about him.'
But all the same from that day on she took care to act up to Tom's standards of decency.
Julia's reputation was so good that she felt she need not hesitate to show herself with Tom in public places. It was a new experience for her to go to night-clubs, she enjoyed it, and though no one could have been better aware than she that she could go nowhere without being stared at, it never entered her head that such a change in her habits must excite comment. With twenty years of fidelity behind her, for of course she did not count the Spaniard, an accident that might happen to any woman, J
ulia was confident that no one would imagine for a moment that she was having an affair with a boy young enough to be her son. It never occurred to her that perhaps Tom was not always so discreet as he might have been. It never occurred to her that the look in her eyes when they danced together betrayed her. She looked upon her position as so privileged that it never occurred to her that people at last were beginning to gossip.
When this gossip reached the ears of Dolly de Vries she laughed. At Julia's request she had invited Tom to parties and once or twice had him down for a week-end in the country, but she had never paid any attention to him. He seemed a nice little thing, a useful escort for Julia when Michael was busy, but perfectly insignificant. He was one of those persons who everywhere pass unnoticed, and even after you had met him you could not remember what he was like. He was the extra man you invited to dinner to make an odd number even. Julia talked of him gaily as 'me boy friend' or as 'my young man'; she could hardly have been so cool about it, so open, if there were anything in it. Besides Dolly knew very well that the only two men there had ever been in Julia's life were Michael and Charles Tamerley. But it was funny of Julia, after taking so much care of herself for years, suddenly to start going to night clubs three or four times a week. Dolly had seen little of her of late and indeed had been somewhat piqued by her neglect. She had many friends in theatrical circles and she began to make enquiries. She did not at all like what she heard. She did not know what to think. One thing was evident, Julia couldn't know what was being said about her, and someone must tell her. Not she; she hadn't the courage. Even after all these years she was a little frightened of Julia. Julia was a very good-tempered woman, and though her language was often brusque it was hard to ruffle her; but there was something about her that prevented you from taking liberties with her; you had a feeling that if once you went too far you would regret it. But something must be done. Dolly turned the matter over in her mind for a fortnight, anxiously; she tried to put her own wounded feelings aside and look at it only from the point of view of Julia's career, and at last she came to the conclusion that Michael must speak to her. She had never liked Michael, but after all he was Julia's husband and it was her duty to tell him at least enough to make him put a stop to whatever was going on.