Chapter II: Fay Richmond (2)

"'I am coming to England for a week,' she wrote, 'to see mother in her new home in the country. But, if you don't mind, there are other folk I would like to see, too!... Carlo is getting more and more of a personage, and simply can't leave Vienna, so I won't be able to stay away more than a week, from next Thursday as ever is, Howard! But as I don't know what day I will be in London, you will please institute no inquiries about me until you hear from me. I will ring you up at about 10:30 on any of my seven nights, so that we can arrange to meet somewhere. Of course, I could write to you, but I want to wonder, as I take up the receiver, whether you will recognise my voice. But you won't dare not to, will you, Howard?' That is only a reason in a letter, I said to myself, for I can hear her adding, 'And so, my dear, if there's anything gay enough to keep you out after ten-thirty on any of those nights, then you will miss Fay--now won't you?'

"Thursday came. And then came those other days and nights, and passed! Each one tingling with hope, until half-past ten, and then--oh, it's a misery unlike any other, that waiting for a bell that doesn't ring! It is a cruel game to play upon a man, that exaltation of hope to hear a voice, and then that helpless misery, with no remedy but what he can find in cigarettes. I paced many miles of carpet those six evenings.

"Thursday again. I dined alone, and then, telling Briggs that he could take his evening out, opened a book, and read grimly. I can't remember anything in my life like the bitter, dismal anger of that night. It's a vivid sore even now, that last vigil by my fire with mind and heart telling me that I had been cruelly played with, like a beast in a cage. I didn't love the less, I couldn't; indeed it was my love that was measured by my bitter grievance.... And even if I do hear her voice to-night, I wasn't spared from realising, it will be too late to see her--'to arrange to meet somewhere,' she had written!--for she will be leaving to-morrow.

"One can act very well in one's own bitter company. Even as the clock in my little hall struck the half-hour after ten I pretended to read grimly on.... I've explained all this waiting to you because it seems to reflect quite importantly on my behaviour that night. It can't but account for it in a sort of way--and as for excusing it, well I don't care a button for that!

"I suppose it was about a quarter of an hour later that the door-bell rang. Briggs was out, as I've said, and I had not the faintest intention of answering it, for it could only be a casual caller wanting a drink. But the bell rang again, furiously--and this time, without a second's hesitation, I threw aside my book, strode into the hall, and flung open the door.

"'You beast!' I said with all my heart, quivering.

"There she was, in the half-darkness of the open doorway, a grey-hatted woman, with a little face thrown up to laugh, laughing at me! And I may have been laughable indeed, with face suited to that unrestrained outburst. I didn't wait for her to speak, I stretched out a hand and drew her by the arm into the hall, and kicked the door to. And she just smiled! with her head a little to one side, she stared up at me, as I still held her arm, and, I suppose, glowered down at her--like a child examining the giant who has caught her. And then, at last, she spoke:

"'I wondered what my welcome would be,' she said softly, 'but I never expected this particular one.'

"Her voice broke my impulses into pieces, as a silver hammer might break coarse grass. I let go of her arm.

"'And of all the welcomes I'd prepared for you, Fay,' I said humbly, 'this particular one never occurred to me. Please--'

"But she didn't seem to be listening, the large, serious eyes were still examining me, my face.

"'Why, Howard, you're quite changed!' she exclaimed. 'You aren't the same Howard at all, the one who used to come to Rutland Gate!'

"'Well, you see, that telephone call last century....' I explained vaguely.

"She nodded her head comprehendingly.

"'Ah, yes, that one that should simply never have happened!' she murmured.

"'I'm frightfully glad to see you again, Fay,' I said, as though irrelevantly, and gravely held out my hand. We shook hands.

"'I just thought I'd call and see you before I left England,' she said as gravely. 'And I might add that though I find your hall quite charming, it's very unsatisfactory as a reception-room.'

"But she didn't go straight in, she stopped on the threshold of the room to look round at me with a sudden, excited smile.

"'You silly Howard, don't you realise that this is a wonderful adventure, because I've never, never been in your rooms before!' And once in the room she looked slowly round, until her eyes fixed on her own portrait on my writing table. She pointed a finger at the discovery.

"'Why, there's Fay Richmond!' she exclaimed.

"'A girl not unworthy to be put beside you, Madame la Marchesa,' I bowed gallantly.

"'Don't!' she almost screamed. 'I've been hearing that sort of stuff from Italians and Austrians for a year and a half--and I simply can't bear it from you, Howard, even in fun.'

"'Anyway, it's a wretched sort of compliment,' she added, 'because that girl wouldn't dare hold her head up beside me--would she now?' And she looked me intimidatingly full in the face.

"'Well, I suppose you have grown just a little,' I conceded. 'Though I can't possibly judge between your looks until you take off your hat--like a dear?'

"It was easily done, a light grey felt thing with a rakish brim--a travelling hat, I realised with a shock! My eyes followed it as she threw it on to the table, and my mind lost all the ease which I had managed to collect. She saw that, I suppose, for as she patted her hair she was looking at me with a queer, understanding, hopeless smile.

"'Fay, you're not going--just now?' I blurted out.

"'I called here on my way to the station,' she told me very evenly.

"I couldn't help it, I said again, 'You beast, Fay!'

"'But you don't understand, my dear' she protested quickly; and with an adorable gesture she stretched out a hand, three fingers of a gloved hand, and ran them thoughtfully down my arm. 'Won't you understand at all? Why I've come to see you on my last night in England instead of--instead of on my first?'

"She seemed to plead, a suppliant before me staring cruelly down at her. I didn't understand.

"'If I had seen you on my first night,' she tried to explain, 'why, I might have been tempted to go on seeing you, again and again, for ever and ever, Howard!... Oh, don't you understand?' And she asked that with a sort of breathless, childish pleading in her voice--illuminating even to my bitterness! But I couldn't, just then, let a pleading voice make me forgive so easily.

"'And so, in case you might be tempted,' I said, like any cad, 'you come to see me on your way to the train!'

"'But my train doesn't go until 7 o'clock in the morning,' she said.... A slave to that wonderful moment, I took her and kissed her lips.

"Those few hours explained Fay Richmond--the girl I had known so well, the woman I loved.... And who loved me! There lay the unforgivable wonder."

And for the first time, on that passionate regret, Howard Wentworth broke in on his tale. With elbows on his knees and hands clasped, he leant forward in his arm-chair (one of those creaking wicker things which only poor men and rich nursing-homes have) and earnestly pointed his haggard convalescent face at me.

"But it's simply impossible to carry on that explanation, the method and the conviction of it, to you," he said. "In fact, if you will look about you at methods of expression, you will find that it's just there that life takes its leave of literature--just at that point where, in this instance, one impulse kissed another! It is as though life and literature had been travelling companions a good way, both helping the other--until at a cross-road life, with a sudden realisation akin to contempt, goes off on its own different road, a boundless and secret road where men and women passionately tell God what, on that other cruder road, they can't tell their fellows.... Sex, of course, is generally the most convincing explanation of inconsistencies--but it's not, by an exquisite subtraction, quite enough! It is only people who cannot go one better who live and love and lie in terms of sex alone; because, after all, there are additions to it, not so definite, perhaps, but more satisfying--and more lasting! So, anyway, the memory of one night tells me.

"That night was, as you realise, an amazing inconsistency in the Fay Richmond I've told you about. But if you will look even at that photograph you will see that such sincerity couldn't really be consistently sincere without, just once, being inconsistent to itself. I know that that sounds rather like a remark made by a young man after a liqueur brandy, but somehow it's very true.

"Hours later, as though she had suddenly awoken to a memory, she asked me very seriously if I remembered how there had been no sugar or chocolate on any of the cakes she had thought about on a certain afternoon? 'And all my long self-conscious speech, which you listened to so brutally well that I almost hated you--even though I didn't know for certain then that I loved you! And when you were going away, d'you remember, I was smiling "all over my face" like Carlo wanted me to, and being a frightfully jolly person? But afterwards I cried, Oh, how I cried! I liked you so much, and I liked Carlo so much--but so differently!...

"'It was all arranged that I should marry Carlo,' she said, 'and then you came along and just ruffled the surface of things--but ever so slightly! If you had kissed me you might have ruffled them too much, things might have been different, and now I would still be an honest woman instead of just a helpless creature in your arms, never, never wanting to leave them to go back to the world, where there's no passion for me....' Her voice was lower than a whisper, a murmur in my ears, and I would have preferred it to fade entirely into the silence it scarce left, for she was hurting us both with what she said.

"But the whisper went on, telling me how bitterly she had been hurt because I had been to see them so little in the weeks before the wedding--and how, missing me, she had found out her own secret.

"'If you had come to me then and said, "Fay, come away with me," I suppose I would have thrown over Carlo. Yes, I suppose I would, but I'm not sure, because it would have been so frightfully difficult to have hurt him, the dearest man in the world! He would have died.... But it doesn't matter what I would have done or not done in that wonderful moment, because it never came--it was quite hopeless to hope that it would! I felt that right in my bones, I felt that you were a hopeless person to love, and very, very far away. Oh, so far away you seemed to be, Howard! And getting farther and farther every day, a cold, friendly figure coming to see us now and again, like a character in a play who has nothing to do but watch and make a sensible sort of joke when the real people get over-excited. And so I let everything go on, quite terrified and miserable, wondering what to do. It wasn't the idea of marrying Carlo that made me terrified or miserable, it was the thought of losing all hope of you--the thought of putting a husband between me and all hope of ever being loved by you.... But I let those last days pass, one by one, full of prophecy about myself, like a tragic figure in the Bible; and I didn't lift my voice, I did nothing at all, I let each day pass. I suppose it was because I was so hopeless about you, and laziness must have had something to do with it, too! That special sort of laziness which tells you that one effort is easier to make than the other--it was easier not to hurt Carlo and mother. But I couldn't resist just telephoning to you at the last moment to let you know what a pig you were, and, if you liked me at all, to make you see that the whole thing served you jolly well right. But I suppose I didn't control my voice very well and so gave myself away--though I didn't mind, really, because I had it firmly fixed in my mind that it was too late, I was going to marry Carlo whatever happened. And something did happen on that telephone, vaguely--I found that you did like me quite a lot after all, you poor man! And all this time that I've been away, a respectable married woman, I've been building up the romance of my life on a break in your voice--growing more and more certain that you loved me, until I had to come back to England to find out. And when you opened the door I found out....

"'On my way to St. George's to marry Carlo,' she said, 'it seemed as though I had to wrap you up in a parcel, and go round by Westminster Bridge and drop you into the river. Yes ... and that's what I did, really, Howard dear. I have lost you, and you me, even though you are beside me now, a figure in a dream from which I shall wake up--just in time to catch my train! And that train is going to take me such a long way away from you, Howard, that we will be dead and buried and reincarnated before it can bring me back to see your beloved face again. It seems to be that sort of train, my dear....'

"Of course, I said things, I protested, I implored. It simply couldn't be that I was not to see her again!... There was misery enough, but there was no heart in my entreaties, for I knew all the time that what she said must be, and why it must be. It was the only right thing in a wrong business, that last cruelty. Oh, I knew, I knew! And there was a quality of fatalism about Fay's voice, which made its softness as hard to pierce as adamant. I was quite dull and flat, listening to her numbly, so that her words seemed to write themselves vividly in my mind, unalterable words never to be forgotten, each one like a fate in itself.

"It was more than martyrdom to an idea, it was a principle of living, that determined her to that course, the inevitable course; something in her much more human than can be found in such philandering with oneself as martyrdom, and that's why it was so inevitable, why I couldn't fight against it heartily and actively. It was simply that her whole being, the very insides and outsides, was in revolt against the treachery of any change in the road she had, however undecidedly once, set herself to travel; it was not possible for her to burn a single boat even on the certain chance of finding a palace in the romantic land--and so it was like a Roman Catholic marriage, as she had told me that afternoon, ages ago, when I had been so seriously concerned about her indecision to marry Carlo!... My dear old man, hers was an aristocrat among souls!

"It was past six o'clock, and I was in an arm-chair watching her do her hair at the dressing-table, when she suddenly let it fall again over her shoulders, and came and knelt by the arm of my chair, and said: 'I'm not a very tiresome woman, really, because I know quite well that often in your life you will be saying beautiful things to beautiful women--but you will think it awfully bad luck if they believe you, won't you, Howard?

"'I had to come to see if you loved me,' she said, 'and to make you my lover, all mine, for once and always. Always ... just like that! It's a long word to repeat, always, but I do make it sound convincing, don't I, dear? Please, I want you to believe that I'll love you always.... Of course, I know that one day you will sit up and take notice of the thrill in a woman's eyes, you won't be able to help it, and it's only right that you shouldn't. But it won't be like this. She won't have all of you, simply because you can't help always being mostly mine, the girl whom you once took no notice of except to give her advice. It will be no good your trying, Howard. I can hear you saying one day soon, when you want to see me very much, "My God, I must end this damnable wizardry"--damnable wizardry is exactly how you will put it, but even swearing won't help you at all. You will try to worship strange gods, but it will be a self-conscious business, perhaps good for your vanity but not for your soul. You can't ever love again like this, my Howard, you simply can't help loving Fay all your life. Those, roughly, are my orders, anyway ...' she whispered into my ear, her fair hair tumbling over my face, punishing me.

"I had ordered a cab earlier in the night. Her maid, to whom she had made some excuse, was to meet her at the station. But Fay wouldn't even let me accompany her part of the way, she insisted on saying good-bye at the open door, the door which I had opened so fiercely so long before. Two lives, after all, had been lived since then. She stood there, in the open doorway, her eyes sad and remote, and touched with something as old as this earth of ours is old, and a smile was crucified on her face; and she whispered:

"'_Pour un plaisir mille douleurs. L'amour est mort, vive l'amour!_'

"And then she went away.... I know no more of Fay Richmond."

Howard's tale ended, I think, not too soon, for he had already talked too much for his returning strength. He lay back with closed eyes, perhaps he was asleep, as I stealthily left the room.

It so happened that I did not see him again. As I have said, although he was convalescent at that time, he had a relapse, and died about ten days later. I rang up frequently to inquire, but more than a week passed before I had time to call at Beaumont Street. My young brother, for whom I was entirely responsible, had fallen ill in the meanwhile, and my time was anxiously spent, first in helping to nurse him, for nurses were not easy to find, and then in helping to find a nursing-home with a vacant bed, for nursing-homes were full; one had to die and vacate his bed before another could fight the wretched plague in it.

When at last I called at Howard's nursing-home and asked for him, the maid said she would ask the matron. But I said I would go up to see the matron myself, and was going upstairs to her room when I met her descending. As she saw me she shook her head gently and told me that Mr. Wentworth was not allowed to see any one, he was very ill. The crisis had not passed yet.... She was a sweet, white-haired old woman, on whose kind face grief had never been disciplined into that geniality which makes matrons sometimes horrible.

"I'm afraid for him...." she added inconclusively, sadly. And then she said: "I have spent most of my life among sick and ailing people, Mr. Arlen, but this has been the saddest time of all. Terribly sad it's been! Only this morning a dear sweet lady, who only came in two days ago.... An English lady married to an Italian, and she was just spending a day in London on her way to Tonbridge where her mother lives, when...." I am almost certain that there were tears, repressed rebellious tears in the kind eyes. "I think her dying has affected me most of all," she added apologetically. "She was such a sweet, beautiful lady!"

As I put up my umbrella against the rain outside I thought to myself that it was like the end of a tale by a sentimentalist, for he had compromised with the angels and brought together in the end, a Juliet unaware of Romeo, the bodies of a man and woman who had loved so unhappily and so incompletely. I heard a tired voice saying bitterly, "I know no more of Fay Richmond."

III: CONSUELO