“La Belle Dame Sans Merci—that’s how I see Constance. Perhaps …” He paused magnificently. “Perhaps you are not acquainted with the poem?”
“I’ve read the poem. Everyone’s read the poem. Perhaps you ought to print it next to the picture—just in case anyone misses the point.”
“My dears!” Vickers sighed a deep sigh. “I couldn’t. I wouldn’t. I simple loathe the obvious, don’t you?”
Constance turned away from this bickering. She glanced down at the small jeweled watch she wore pinned to the breast of her jacket—almost four; would Montague Stern never come?—and forced herself to look around her, to examine the drawing room in which she sat.
This drawing room, she felt, could assist her. Maud might lay claim to it, but Constance doubted that. Stern had certainly paid for these things. Perhaps chosen them. In this room, and in these objects, there could be a key to the man she sought.
The drawing room was already, in its way, famous. Its modernity, its eclecticism, had already been celebrated at length in numerous periodicals, all of which Constance had read. It was not, perhaps, to Constance’s own taste, for it was an understated room—arresting, in the first instance, because of its absence of clutter.
It was a room some of Gwen’s friends might have judged vulgar, for—with a peculiarly English snobbishness—they held that a room should look a little shabby, that anything too perfect or too obviously expensive declared itself as nouveau riche.
Perhaps this room was a little too careful, a little too rich, but Constance did not mind. She looked at it, she listened to its stream of coded messages, and she understood: The person who created this room was a paradox, an ascetic who could not resist beautiful things.
For beautiful things—and rare things—lay all around her, displayed with a museum’s care: sangde boeuf porcelain, ranked upon a French commode; a rug beneath her feet which was as complex and delightful as a flower garden. And then the pictures! These paintings, which Constance had previously never liked, now sang to her.
Looking at them, and at their jeweled colors, she knew beyond a doubt that it was not Maud who had selected the objects here. Maud might boast of these paintings—and indeed did—but she would never understand them.
No, this room was Stern’s. He paid for it; he chose it; he assembled it. Stern, the collector of rare things.
And I chose him, Constance said to herself. In that moment, when she felt she might understand him, that she might dwell in his mind, that she might work on him—just then, Stern came into the room.
One of his fleeting visits, although Stern gave no indication of this. He gave the impression, as he always did, that he had all the time in the world. He greeted Maud. He greeted the twenty or so assembled guests. He appeared delighted to see them. As soon as he judged they were engaged once more, he extricated himself from the conversation. He withdrew, as was often his custom, to the other end of the room.
Constance bided her time. This meeting, every detail of which she had carefully planned in her mind, must not be rushed.
She waited, therefore, while Maud addressed the company at large. She saw Stern wince when Maud explained he had been that afternoon at the War Office and could not now stay long, for he was going on to Downing Street that evening. Stern, who was almost always negligent and modest about his access and his powers, disliked these fond boasts, Constance thought.
She watched the skill with which he extricated himself. She noted the slight sigh of relief he gave as he withdrew. She watched him choose a seat with its back to the rest of the room. She watched him pick up a newspaper.
None of the other guests seemed to find this withdrawal odd. They had been well trained by Maud. Stern was an important man; they accepted that he had weightier matters on his mind. Besides, his withdrawal left them free to gossip. When it came to scandal and innuendo and revelation, Stern’s excellent manners sometimes failed. He was known to be a source of information, naturally; that information, however, was filtered through Maud.
This assisted Stern’s useful reputation for discretion. That reputation Maud guarded fiercely. She might be a great gossip, but she gossiped with care. No gaffes; and—since Maud revealed so much—people were inclined to make revelations in their turn. These, Constance had no doubt, were then repeated to Stern when Maud was alone with him.
She looked at Stern appraisingly. She considered whether he might actually love Maud, or whether Maud was merely useful to him. She was not sure, and because she was uncertain, she was all the more determined to proceed with care.
Constance could spot tedium in the eyes at twenty paces—and what did Stern find most tedious? Why, the blandishments of women—that she had begun to observe.
For Stern, she had decided, most women were mere gadflies. It was power that interested him, and most women had no power. So, charmingly, politely, he brushed them aside. She had learned her lesson the night of the ball: With Stern it would be useless to employ the flirtatious tactics usual to young girls.
Other strategies were required. Since these were already decided upon—it was too late to go back—Constance felt herself grow calm. Time for first strike. She allowed a few more seconds to pass; then, detaching herself from the group of young men, she stood up.
Her most beautiful dress, selected for this occasion: silk the color of Parma violets, a plain black ribbon wound tight about her throat. On her fingers, just one ring: a black opal, given by Maud, which superstitious Gwen had tried to persuade her not to wear.
Constance looked down at this ring: lightning imprisoned in jet. She liked the unpredictability of opals. She was not superstitious and never would be.
She half believed in luck, from time to time; she had greater faith in willpower. Determination: that was the thing. When she was determined enough, she felt she could do anything. She advanced across the room. She looked at Stern’s back. As she did so, the most unlikely memory came into her mind. The day they brought her father back to Winterscombe on the stretcher. A black black day; everything about it was black. She could not see into the detail of the memory. Then someone took her arm; someone led her up the portico steps—and her way was blocked, by this man, by some garment. She could not remember the garment at all—only its color. It had been red. Her father’s blood had been red too. A red and black day, which made her mind twang and ache.
She stopped halfway across the room. Maud, looking up, made some passing remark to her. Constance answered it in an absent voice. Then, despising her own hesitation, she took up her position, her planned position, just behind Stern’s chair.
“How old are you?” Constance said. She said it without preamble, just as she had planned. All that had happened was that Stern had turned, risen, greeted her—“Ah, Constance my dear”—and drawn out a chair for her. He had then seated himself again with his back to the room, put down his newspaper with a certain reluctance, and smiled. He had not been paying attention. He was paying attention now.
“How old?” He hesitated, as if puzzled, then gave a small wave of the hand. “Constance, I am ancient beyond belief. I am thirty-nine years old.”
Constance, who had consulted Gwen and who knew he was forty-three, was encouraged by this. She lowered her eyes, then looked up at him boldly.
“Oh, you are too young,” she said in a charming manner. “I feared you would be.”
“Too young? Constance, you flatter me. I think of myself as a graybeard, my dear, particularly when I am in the company of such a delightful young woman as yourself. Too young for what?”
“Do not tease me,” said Constance. “I am not fishing for compliments. I ask for good reason. I wondered, you see, if you might have known my mother. Her name was Jessica Mendl before her marriage. She was a Jew.”
This was one of her trumps, and the second it was played, Constance knew the trick of gaining attention had been won. In the first place, as she knew it would be, this information was unexpected. In the second, it raised a topic usu
ally barred.
Stern might not practice his religion; on the other hand, he made no attempt to disguise he was a Jew. His race, however, was never discussed to his face. To Constance’s delight, Stern frowned.
“I am sorry, Constance. I do not understand.”
“It is very simple.” Constance leaned forward. “My mother was Austrian. Her family lived in Vienna, I believe. She came to London to study art at the Slade, and while she was there she met my father. They married. Of course her family were appalled. She had been living with cousins in London. They closed their doors to her. She never saw her parents again.” Constance paused. “I was born a year after the marriage. Not long after that, my mother died, as you probably know. It is foolish, perhaps, but I often feel I should like to know more of her.”
A reminder, just the most delicate hint, of her sad status as an orphan. Constance was careful not to overdo it, since Stern was not a sentimental man.
“Are you certain of this, Constance?” He was looking at her now with an expression of disbelief. “I always assumed … I certainly never heard—”
“Oh, no one knows,” Constance replied quickly. “Not even Gwen. My mother died long before my father ever went to Winterscombe, and I doubt he would have spoken of her there. He could have been ashamed—anyway, he was a secretive man.” Constance, now sure of Stern’s attention, lowered her eyes. “I was told by the woman who nursed me when I was a child. She had looked after my mother before she went to the sanitorium. She hated me, and I hated her. She said it to wound me, I think. She probably thought she could make me ashamed. But she didn’t. I was glad. I was proud.”
“Proud?” Stern gave her a sharp glance, as if he suspected insincerity.
“Yes, proud.” Constance looked up at him. “I should hate just to be English. The English are so smug, so pleased to be parochial. Parochialism is their chief religion, I think. I have always felt like an outsider—and glad of it. Do you ever feel like that? But no, of course you do not. Forgive me. That was both stupid and rude.”
There was a brief pause. Stern looked down at his hands. When he looked up at Constance once more, the expression in his eyes disconcerted her. For a moment she had the feeling that Stern knew what she was about, that her little tricks and ploys made him angry. He appeared to hesitate. Constance waited for some cutting reprimand. Yet it did not come. When he spoke, his manner was calm.
“My dear, you are intelligent. Do not pretend to a stupidity you do not possess. Look at these people.” He gestured behind him. “Look at me. I am everything these people loathe and distrust—can you doubt that? I am tolerated, occasionally even sought after, because I can be of use and I am not poor. My abilities are at these people’s disposal because I choose to make them so. If they wish to believe I act from the profit motive solely, why should I care? Their opinions are a matter of indifference to me. I pass, my dear Constance, no more than that—as you must certainly know. And no, Constance, I am not acquainted with any Mendls of Vienna. Perhaps I am too young, as you say. More likely, they and their London cousins moved in more exalted circles. The people I grew up with did not send daughters to study art at the Slade. I am a Whitechapel Jew, Constance. My father was a tailor. I cannot help you.”
Constance was silent. Stern’s words made her feel small; perhaps he had intended them to do just that. She hesitated. She decided it would be better not to pursue the matter of her mother. Her mother, in any case, did not greatly concern her—had she not always thought of herself as her father’s child? Constance swiftly decided to alter her line of attack.
“These people?” She turned to look back across the drawing room. She made the question sharp. “These people? Not all of them, surely? You can hardly mean to include Maud.”
She stood up as she spoke. As she well knew, the reference to Maud was daring on the lips of a girl. It was rude, in that it implied reproof. And, most perfect of all, it brought out into the open that other aspect of Stern’s life which was never discussed to his face: his sexual relationship with a woman Constance addressed as Aunt Maud.
Constance now contrived to speak to Stern not just as a family friend, or a Jew, but as a man. Lest he should be in any doubt of that fact, she fixed her eyes upon his. She passed her tongue across her lips. She bit them so that they reddened.
An old trick. Stern had possibly been about to take offense. Slowly, his expression altered. He looked at Constance intently. He seemed amused, yet a certain speculation could be detected in his eyes.
Constance, feeling stronger now, met his gaze. She examined him: the beautifully shaped skull, the clean-shaven olive skin, the foxy tone of his hair, the narrow-set and watchful eyes, the mouth, which she judged sensual, and the strong nose. She liked that nose, she decided, and she approved that face. She liked the luxury and flamboyance of Stern’s clothes—so much more fun than the drab conventional suits of the Englishmen present. She liked the fact that he was born a tailor’s son in the East End and had made his own way in the world—for was not that just what she intended to do?
She liked, she found, everything about Sir Montague Stern: his sharp intelligence, his foreignness, his exoticism, the lingering scent of cigar smoke on his jacket, the whiteness of the exquisite handkerchief that protruded from his breast pocket, the flash of gold at his cuff.
She liked the richness of his voice and the anger she had glimpsed earlier in his eyes; she liked the fact that he did not belong, any more than she did, to this hidebound, narrow-spirited world in which they were both forced to operate.
Above all—no dupe, this man—she liked the fact that he was now making no attempt to disguise the quality of his interest in her. His gaze had become one of overt sexual appraisal—and that appraisal seemed to amuse him, for he began to smile.
That was good: The best flirtations, the best affairs, were tempered with humor, surely? Constance returned his stare and felt her mind skip. This course she had embarked upon—it was no longer just a challenge, a means to an end. It was amusing.
“I like you,” she announced suddenly, and was sincere. “I like you, and I think you are … splendid. This room is splendid too. And the paintings—especially the paintings. You chose them, didn’t you? I never saw paintings like these before.” She paused. “Won’t you show me them? Won’t you give me a guided tour?”
“The postimpressionists?” A lazy smile. “The ones in here, or the others? There are some on the stairs, and others in the main hall. The best ones are in the library upstairs.”
“Oh, the best ones first, obviously,” Constance replied.
“You like the best? That is your preference?”
“I am learning to make it so,” Constance said, and took his arm in hers.
“My dear,” Stern said in passing to Maud, who had looked up as they moved to the door, “Constance requires educating in matters of art. May I take her to inspect the Cézanne’s?”
“Of course, Monty,” Maud replied, and returned to her enjoyable conversation with Gwen. All the women present were by then deep in the byzantine love affairs of Lady Cunard.
In the library, with the door closed, Sir Montague looked at Constance closely.
“Do you want to see the Cézannes?”
“No.”
“I thought not.” He paused. “I am beginning to understand, Constance, that I have underestimated you.”
“Not underestimated. You simply did not look at me. Now you do.”
“Is that why you told me about your mother? To make me look at you?”
“Yes.”
“And why should you want me to look at you?”
“Because I intend to marry you. Mainly.”
At this, Stern smiled.
“Do you now? Have you not heard, Constance, how confirmed a bachelor I am?”
“I heard. And I did not believe it. That was before you met me.”
“Well, well, well.” Stern took a step forward. He looked down into Constance’s up-tilted face.
“You’re very direct, which is unusual in a woman. And very precise. ‘Mainly,’ you said. Was there an additional reason to make me look at you?”
“But of course. I should like you to make love to me.”
“Now?”
“We could make a beginning now.”
“And my position in this house? Your position? The people downstairs?”
“I do not give a fig for them—any more than you do.”
“And your reputation, Constance? You really should consider that.”
“My reputation is safe with you. You are a gentleman.”
“A gentleman would most certainly refuse you. He would send you packing with—at the least—a tactful reprimand; at worst, a smacked bottom.”
“You are an unusual kind of gentleman. Had I thought you likely to treat me as a child I should not have come up here.”
There was silence, during which they regarded each other somewhat warily. There was a brief knocking to be heard in the distance, the sound of servants and of conversations in low voices. Neither Stern nor Constance noticed this; they continued to look at each other, though there was a curious blindness in that stare.
After a while Stern stepped forward another pace. He lifted Constance’s chin in his hand. He turned her face, first this way, then that, as if he were a portraitist and she his model. At his touch, and for the first time, Constance displayed an agitation. She grasped his hand.
“Tell me,” she said with sudden vehemence. “Tell me what you see.”
“I see,” Stern answered slowly, “a woman. Not a beautiful woman, in the conventional sense. You have an interesting face, Constance—the face of someone who likes to rewrite the rules. I see … a very young woman, which deters me somewhat, for I distrust young women and I am not a seducer of little girls. A clever woman, though, and perhaps a predatory one—”
“Am I ugly?”
“No, Constance, you are not ugly.”
“My father always said I was ugly.”