“Far too old. Far too stiff,” Denton growled. He reached for the walking stick, which (Gwen considered) he did not need but which he enjoyed flourishing; Denton liked to play the valetudinarian.
He straightened up. At that moment Constance appeared at his side, her silvery dress shimmering.
“Nonsense, Papa,” she said, with a winning smile, and leaned upon Denton’s arm. “Please, it’s been such a lovely evening. Won’t you give me one last dance before you retire?”
Denton, who never seemed to mind when Constance called him “Papa,” returned her smile in what seemed to Gwen his most foolish manner. He doddered a little and shifted his cane and rolled his eyes—how Gwen wished he would not roll his eyes!
“Can’t be done,” he said. “Can’t be done, I’m afraid. Not even for you, my dear. Like to dance with the belle of the ball again—would have done once, but not now. Too old. Gammy foot. Look here—maybe Stern will stand in for me.”
With which remark he took a firm grasp on Sir Montague’s arm, just above the elbow. He propelled him forwards with surprising strength.
Constance seemed amused by this; Stern seemed disconcerted. Possibly he resented this abrupt manhandling; possibly he had no inclination to dance with Constance. Either way, he recovered quickly.
“Constance,” he said, his manner urbane once more, “I am sure I am an imperfect substitute, but I am delighted if I will serve.”
“Oh, you will serve,” Constance replied in her light way. She permitted herself to be led onto the floor. They glided away, Constance looking very small and frail in Stern’s arms. Maud watched them with a benign, an approving smile. Both were accomplished dancers.
It was a Viennese waltz.
“How do you prefer to dance, Constance?” Stern remarked when they had made just one circuit, their pace graceful but somewhat slow. “We are decorous, but a fraction behind the rhythm, I think.”
“Oh, I like to dance fast,” Constance replied. “I like to be … danced off my feet.”
Stern smiled at this. His left hand gripped hers more tightly; there was a slight but perceptible increase in the pressure of his right hand against her spine. Their pace quickened. As it did so, a most curious thing began to happen. For the first of their new, faster circuits, Constance concentrated on the steps of the dance, on the guidance of Stern’s hands. With the second circuit, she began to concentrate upon him.
She had promised herself to select a husband, yet the ball was almost over and still the choice was not made. When they began on the third circuit, it occurred to her that perhaps it had been made after all—decided by a certain bias in her mind, before this evening began.
Constance liked to speculate. It was true that she had—just once or twice in the past—speculated on the question of Stern. A time, long before, when she had looked around the dining table at Winterscombe and understood that Denton had been usurped, that it was Stern who had become the unofficial patriarch of this family; that it was to Stern that Gwen turned when she needed advice or help; that it was Stern, the outsider, as she was, who had come to dominate this family.
Constance did not know that Denton had also turned to Stern for advice—although she discovered that later. She was never to know that both Acland and, later, Jane had consulted him. Such facts were immaterial. Constance’s instincts were acute; she recognized the smell of power.
They reached a corner of the ballroom; they spun, once, twice, three times. Constance gave Stern a considering glance.
She recalled her discussions with Gwen on the subject of this man. She recalled an episode from several months before when, at the end of one of the shopping expeditions with Maud, she was taken to meet Stern, who awaited them at a West End gallery.
He was in the act of purchasing a painting. Constance had no eye for art, no ear for music, a resistance to literature. Even so, as Maud said, she learned fast. She looked at the paintings on the gallery walls. They all looked much the same to her; she even found them dull. Constance liked paintings to be large and to contain people. Stern’s taste, clearly, was different. These paintings were of modest size, and all were landscapes. However, she could scent reverence and deference as acutely as she scented power. The man who guided Stern from painting to painting was deferential—she knew that at once. Yet he was not obsequious; it was to Stern’s judgment he deferred, not his bank balance.
Stern passed along the line of paintings slowly. Beiges, browns, duns, terra-cottas. Constance had never been to France; she had never heard of Cezanne. She looked at these images; she tried to puzzle them out. She wanted to yawn.
Stern stopped, finally, at one painting.
“Ah,” he said. “Now that—”
“Oh, yes.” The gallery assistant had also stopped. Like Stern, he sighed.
Reverence! Constance stared at the painting in question. She stared very hard. It might have been a mountain, she thought, and there were certain shapes that could possibly be trees, but on the whole it was an abstract and inconclusive affair. She could not like it. She suspected Maud did not like it either.
Stern bought the painting. The salesman congratulated him. Constance, looking quickly down at the price list she had been given when they entered, saw that none of these pictures were expensive, but the one Stern had selected had the highest price. Good things were always costly—Maud had taught her that. Constance at once revised her opinion of the painting. She also revised her opinion of Stern. He had not even consulted a price list: he had selected the best (it must be the best) on instinct. He saw something here, and she, Constance, was blind.
A mystery—and Constance was always attracted to mysteries. There were new areas of excellence here which Stern understood and she did not. She glimpsed them again, once or twice, on other occasions, when he selected wine, when he discussed books with Acland or Jane, when he took her with the rest of the family to the opera.
Occasionally, sitting to one side of Stern’s box, she had stolen a glance at him, this composed and influential man. His concentration upon the music was absolute. He leaned forward, his elbow on the edge of the box, his chin upon his hand. He heard something in these sequences of notes that Constance did not. Constance found that unbearable. She wanted to be admitted to the temple and its secrets, at once. And, on one occasion, she had waited for the intermission, then tapped him on the arm. She had asked some question—the wrong question, to judge from his expression.
With a patient air (the opera was The Magic Flute) he had explained the plot. It seemed to Constance quite ridiculous, a fantastical thing. She had had the wit to keep this to herself; even so, she could see that Stern was irritated.
She had tried harder after that. She had tried particularly hard on the occasion their party went to Rigoletto. She had asked Stern about Verdi; she had wanted him to see that she could be his pupil, that he might enjoy being her tutor.
Her tutor? The waltz was coming to an end. As the last notes faded, Constance decided. Not just a tutor—Stern could be far more than that. He could be a husband.
The obviousness of this choice—did he not fulfill every single one of her requirements?—dazed her a little. She found it difficult to believe she could have been so slow. He was single (Constance did not give Maud a second thought). He had authority, wealth, position, even wit. His appearance was striking; his discretion—his legendary discretion—was intriguing. He was old enough to be her father, of course, but age was immaterial, and—above all, best of all—she did not know him. He had been part of the family circle for six years of her life, yet she had not plumbed his depths. She had no idea why he was, who he was. He was still, after all that time, the considerate, the urbane, the polite, and the elusive stranger.
Constance hesitated no more—but then, she was always precipitate.
“No. One more dance. You dance so well,” she said when the waltz ended and Stern began to steer her from the floor.
Stern seemed surprised by this.
??
?Please. You cannot refuse me. No one can refuse me tonight.” Stern looked as if he doubted this. He looked as if he could refuse her easily, as if he had half a mind to do so, there and then.
Then his practiced manners reasserted themselves. He gave an inclination of the head.
Taking her arm in his, he led her back to the center of the floor.
In his arms, Constance concentrated. She believed implicitly in the transference of thoughts. She would imagine, and after a while Stern would imagine too.
She waited a short while; then, in a most convincing way, she missed a step. She stumbled, pressed a little closer to him, allowed her gloved hand to brush his throat.
She relied upon silence. Then—when she judged the moment was correct—she made some small remark, turning upon Stern as she did so her most deadly glance. A slow turn of the head, which might give him time to take in the polish of her features, to notice the provocation of her lips, before he registered the more subtle provocation of her eyes.
This sounds vain—and perhaps it was—but Constance’s own attitude toward her appearance was practical. To her, her features were weapons that she happened to have in her armory. Her skin was still unlined; her complexion had a porcelain finish. Her hair was abundant, wiry with life. Her nose had a useful symmetry. Her lips were naturally red. God—if there were a God, which she doubted—had given her expressive eyes, of ambiguous coloration. These gifts were not of her making; had they not been supplied she would have managed without. As it was, they produced a discernible effect upon men. She fully intended that they should do so then.
One thing she had perfected herself: the speaking glance. In this glance, Constance had confidence. So she rested her eyes upon Stern, summoned her will, and waited for the thoughts in her mind to pass into his.
She thought of touches and whispers; she considered sexual matters. She let herself imagine how Stern, the man of power, might behave when he was Stern the lover. She fixed Stern with these imaginings; she saw them as arrows piercing his skin. As many arrows as a Saint Sebastian! Stern, to her delight, met her eyes. To her consternation, he then looked away.
Constance was severely shaken. The look she had surprised in his eyes, before he could disguise it with his habitual charm, was an expression of tedium no woman could misconstrue.
He performed this task—dancing with a family friend, dancing with a child—from tact, from politeness. That was all. Her imaginings meant nothing. Constance was erased.
She said nothing. She completed the dance with an air of patient concentration, her face absorbed. That expression of hers always meant trouble.
The dance over, Stern escorted Constance to her next partner. He returned to Maud’s side. They conversed with evident affection; shortly afterward, they left.
Constance watched this quietly and patiently, as a cat watches a mouse or a bird. Stern was not easy prey, of course, and Constance knew this; the knowledge drew her on.
Constance was her father’s child. As with Shawcross, the easily accessible was never to attract her. Of course, her father had left her another legacy, too, one that would remain with her, influencing her, for the rest of her life.
The one thing Constance could not stomach from a man was indifference, even when veiled.
“Do you ever think about love?”
Steenie put this question to Wexton a few days after Constance’s ball. They had been visiting a small gallery in Chelsea where Steenie hoped to have an exhibition of his paintings. They were now having tea at the kind of cafè—steamy, busy, unsmart, with pert waitresses in neat black-and-white uniforms—that Wexton most liked. Steenie, who was nervous, refused anything to eat. Wexton, after great deliberation, had ordered a cream bun.
Wexton did not answer Steenie’s question. He gave him a cautious glance, then poked at the cream bun with the small fork provided.
“Are you meant to use this?” He held up the fork.
“You don’t have to.” Steenie’s voice came out in a squeak. He cleared his throat. Then, in a high voice, he asked the question again. “Do you ever think about love?”
It sounded ridiculous. Steenie colored. Wexton appeared to consider.
“Sometimes.” Wexton sounded doubtful. “There are so many different kinds.”
“Are there?” squeaked Steenie, who thought there was only one.
“Well. Children love their parents. Parents love their children. Then—you can love a friend. A man might love one woman, or several women. He might love them one after another, or he might love, say, two at the same time. He might be in love, or he might love. There’re lots of possibilities.”
Steenie was not interested in these possibilities, and the reference to men loving women made him feel slightly sick. A horrible possibility occurred to him: Could he have been wrong about Wexton?
He took a large gulp of tea. It scalded his mouth. He put the cup back in its saucer. He fixed his eyes on Wexton’s face, which was an extraordinary face, a lived-in face, its habitual expression one of sweet and slightly bewildered melancholy. Wexton, who looked much older, was in his early twenties. Steenie thought he was the wisest, as well as the kindest, man he had ever met.
Steenie felt that if he was going to say what he was going to say—and he would; they had reached the Rubicon—he could not do it and look at Wexton at the same time. He was too afraid. So he turned his gaze to a woman in a preposterous hat who sat at a table behind Wexton. He stared fixedly at her hat, from which protruded a pheasant’s tail feather.
“Also,” he began, his voice hitting high C. He cleared his throat again. “Also. I suppose, a man could … love another man.”
“Oh, yes.” Wexton took a bite of cream bun. He chewed it with apparent contentment.
“This is very good,” he remarked.
Steenie knew he was about to die. Any second. He had at most one more minute to live. His heart had stopped beating, for one thing. His head was churning concrete. His lungs had collapsed. His ears were stopped up. There was definitely something wrong with his eyes. Even the pheasant feather was now invisible. Thirty seconds. Twenty. Ten.
“For instance,” Wexton went on, in a reasonable tone of voice. “I love you.”
“Oh, my God.”
“I hadn’t planned to mention it. Then I changed my mind.”
“I’m having a heart attack. Yes. That’s definitely it. Look, Wexton—my hands are shaking.”
“Is that a symptom of a heart attack?”
“I don’t know.”
“Neither do I. I don’t think it is.”
“Maybe it’s happiness.” Steenie’s voice was returning to normal. He risked a look into Wexton’s eyes. “I think it is. Extreme, sudden—happiness.” He paused. “Also a heart attack of a kind. Because of course I love you. I love you madly, Wexton. Totally. Irresistibly.” He leaned across the table and took Wexton’s hands in his. He looked into Wexton’s kind and melancholy eyes.
“I know what you must think.” Steenie began to speak very fast. “You must think I’m very affected. And frivolous. Featherbrained. Idiotic. Superficial. I expect you do think that, don’t you?”
“No.”
“I’m not like that really. I know I sound like it, but that’s mostly camouflage. Well, not entirely. I exaggerate—I know I do. But words are so approximate anyway that one might just as well, don’t you think? What did you just say?”
“I said ‘no.’”
“Oh, God. Would you mind saying it again?”
“No,” Wexton repeated in an obliging manner. He had finished the cream bun. He drank his tea, then poured more, a cup for Steenie, one for himself. Steenie watched him do this with delight.
“Wexton. That tea is far too strong. I’m sure they don’t drink tea like that in Virginia. You could stand up a spoon in it. It’s perfectly disgusting.”
“I like it.”
“I shall always love you, you know.” Steenie’s grip on Wexton’s hands—already attracting some a
ttention from neighboring tables—tightened.
“I shall love you, Wexton, forever and ever, world without end. Anything else is unthinkable. Oh. You don’t believe me. I can tell.”
“Let’s wait and see.”
“No. Absolutely not. You must believe me now.”
“Right now?” Wexton gave him a sad and yet benevolent smile.
“Right now.”
“Okay. I believe you now. Shall we get the check?”
“The check?”
“The bill.”
“Can I come back to your flat?”
“Sure.”
“Will you read me some more of your poems?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Will you tell me you love me again?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“I’ve said it once. Once is enough.”
“I might need reassuring.”
“Too bad.”
When they reached the street outside, Steenie capered. The sun shone. The streets were crowded. Steenie would not have cared had it poured with rain, but the fine weather pleased him nonetheless. The elements were on his side. They knew he was in love.
“Do you think,” he began, stopping dancing, taking Wexton’s arm, and falling into step beside him as they turned into the King’s Road. “Do you think other people are in love like us, Wexton? I’m sure they’re not. No one else could possibly be this happy—don’t you think?”
“I wouldn’t say that,” Wexton began cautiously. “We haven’t cornered the world’s supply. I guess there’s some left over.”
“Nonsense. Who?”
“Well.” Wexton considered. “Lots of people. Your mother and father, for instance. They love each other in their way. Your aunt Maud and that man Stern—she’s crazy about him—”
“Aunt Maud? She’s as tough as old boots. She couldn’t be crazy about anyone—”
“Then there’s Jane—”
“Jane? You’re mad.”
“She’s engaged, isn’t she?”
“Oh, God, yes. But she doesn’t love Boy. You’d know if you saw them together. She likes him, yes. And she used to be mad about Acland.”