Chapter I: Introducing a Lady of No Importance and a Gentleman of Even Less

There was, and (by the grace of God) there still is, a lovely woman whom it once pleased a young man to call Shelmerdene, because, he said, though it is not her real name, it becomes her better than any real name could. And about Shelmerdene books have been written and for her men have died, which just shows you the sort of woman she was. Now it happened one day that Shelmerdene returned to England after a long absence abroad in Persia, but I can tell you nothing about that because I know nothing of Persia, except that it is rather inadequately governed by a Shah who is a pretty fat young man and wears a diamond in his hat.

Among other entertainments that we, her friends, contrived for Shelmerdene, as a welcome and a token of our enduring affection, a great house-party was arranged by Aubrey Carlyle; whereby, on a week-end in May, a great company of agreeable people was gathered together at Malmanor Park, a vast Elizabethan sort of place in ancient red that lies on a velvet plain between a brooding hill and the peculiar wood of Carmion; for it is said of Carmion Wood that only foreigners may hear the singing of the birds therein, whereas for Englishmen there is nothing but the sighing of the boughs and the rustling of the leaves. What truth there is in that legend I do not know, but I don’t suppose there is much.

Of all the company, only an intimate few stayed on at Malmanor after the Monday morning. Of the women, Mrs. Loyalty, the Lady Fay Paradise, Esther Carlyle (who kept house for her brother), Mrs. Avalon, and Shelmerdene. Of the men, Ralph Loyalty, George Tarlyon, John Avalon, myself, our host, and young Raymond Paris, the novelist, who spent his mornings in a secluded room writing.

One morning young Raymond Paris had sat long at the large table in his room--an upstairs room it was which Aubrey Carlyle had put at his disposal--but the paper before him was as white as a woman’s throat; nor is the likeness too unfair, as are most likenesses of this sort, for Raymond Paris had an extravagant taste in foolscap, being still young enough to enjoy the actual writing of his tales as much as the fame and fortune they might in due course bring him. Established writers used to ask him: “What, don’t you typewrite your stories straight away? Or don’t you dictate them? Well, you’ll soon get into the habit of it.” And that used to depress young Raymond Paris, for he did not want to get into the habit of it, he liked seeing his thoughts making patterns on the white paper.

But this morning the white paper before him remained far too white for his liking. The table at which he sat with a worried face was drawn across the bow of the wide windows; and through them the eyes were enticed by a long avenue of tall trees, which swept massively away from the gardens for many furlongs and was at last joined to the border of Carmion Wood; but, nearer, the eyes dropped from the windows to the upper garden, where--for the month was May--lay many beds of rare tulips, the whole drawn to an exquisite though, perhaps, intemperate design. Pink and purple, red and yellow, white and magenta, the carnival of gay tall tulips flamed in the sunlight and swayed to the lilt of the gentle wind, so that the young man’s brooding eyes likened them to glittering soldiers who every now and then stooped to the elegant distraction of a valse....

“So this is the way you work, Raymond Paris!” cried a soft, light voice behind him, and never was a young man with his way to make in the world more grateful for being disturbed.

“I am in great trouble, Shelmerdene. For here have I been offered an untold sum for a short-story, and I have not the glimmer of an idea! The editor wrote to me saying that he wanted something not only witty but serious, something earnest as well as gay, and with a point. Now isn’t that an unfair thing to ask of a man?” And the young writer looked up at Shelmerdene with a self-pitying smile, while she stood beside him, playing thoughtfully with the catch of an ancient pink shagreen cigarette-case, which had once been vanity-box in chief to Queen Marie Antoinette, so they said.

Now who shall describe Shelmerdene of the dark sleek hair, of the lips that smiled unaccountably, of the blue eyes that were gentle and witty and alight with understanding? She was lithe and dark-haired, and her face was white, and her eyes were as blue as night and as impersonal as the stars. She wore, this morning, a jumper of vermilion silk, and her skirt was thus and thus, and sweetly rakish on her head was a brown felt hat with a wide stiff brim, and on her feet were brown brogues of Russian leather, such as only men-servants can properly polish, women being what they are.

Shelmerdene smiled down at Raymond Paris, the young writer who could not write a story.

“I will tell you a story,” she said. “I will tell it quite plainly, but afterwards you may decorate it with fine words and epigrams, and make it a story fit for an editor to read. No, I won’t sit down, but you may continue to. This story, my dear, begins with me. All my stories do, though they generally end with some one else; that is called making a mess of one’s life, Raymond. I was married very young, and an unhappy marriage it was, so that we parted rather grimly, that queer man and I. He would not divorce me and I could not divorce him, for he was a pure man. Somewhere in this world, Raymond, there is a stern man who is my husband, and you must always remember that in any conversation with me, for he is not at all the kind of man whom one can forget. I have tried to, and so I know. He was very good-looking in a naval sort of way--which was just as well, as he was in the navy--and his eyes had that bleary, bitten look which they tell you comes from being out on the high seas in all weathers, but you and I know that it comes from drinking gin-and-bitters at all hours, there being so little else to do on a battleship. Anyway, there he is and here am I; pride parted us once, and now the years part us, and God only knows what will happen, if indeed He’s at all interested in such silly people.

“I fell in love. ‘Fall’ is exactly the word in this context, and I did not rise quickly. That is called being a loose woman, Raymond, but you need not put this part into your story; I am just explaining myself to you out of affection and because it is a May morning.

“My story is about how I fell in love with a stone image; for women are sometimes like sea-birds, they sometimes worship stone images, men who are carved of the rocky stuff of life.... All men and women are in a conspiracy to hide a secret, and the secret that lies in the hearts of all men and women is that they want to be loved. It sounds almost too pathetic, Raymond, but it is true. I fell in love with this young man, and I wanted to be loved by him. But he would not--Raymond, do you understand, he would not love me! Those, of course, were not his exact words, but it came to that. Why is it always the wrong men who fall in love with one, Raymond? My lovely stone image told me that he didn’t deserve being loved by me, because, because--oh, how the poor boy hesitated!--he hadn’t it in him to love any one. He simply couldn’t love, he said--and he felt such a brute! And then he tried to weigh his words carefully. He liked me, he said, as much as he could like any one, but he didn’t _think_ he loved me--mark that glorious, arrogant _think_, Raymond! And also tell me when I am boring you....

“As he spoke, over luncheon it was, I watched the blue eyes which tried to look straight into mine but couldn’t, because he was shy. He was trying to be honest with me, you see, and trying to be honest with women makes men shy. He felt such a brute, he kept on saying, he ... yes, he did love me in his way, he suddenly admitted. But his way wasn’t, simply couldn’t be, mine. He simply couldn’t give himself wholly to any one--and he so frightfully wanted to, he felt he was missing such lovely things!

“I was a fool, of course--I mean, to believe what he said about not loving me. Oh, what an utter fool I was to believe him! But, all the same, I clung to my pathetic love-affair with both hands, ever so tight. I did indeed, Raymond. It is extraordinary how unattainable a woman can make a man she isn’t sure of! Maybe you have been unattainable to some woman, Raymond, or maybe you will be. It will be fun for you.

“If it hadn’t been that my husband would not divorce me I would have dragged that lovely stone image to the altar. It would have been better so, our lives would have been quite different and perhaps quite beautiful; but what actually happened was also quite beautiful, in an irregular kind of way.

“I had set out, you see, to make myself essential to him, mentally, physically, every way. If he couldn’t love me as a man loves a woman then he must love me as a tree loves the creepers that cling round it. Oh, dear, how extraordinarily silly one gets! I was terribly serious, Raymond. I always am, which is perhaps what keeps me young--but do I look young, youngish? Quick, tell me! Oh, you are sweet, Raymond!

“But I hadn’t much time in which to make myself necessary to him--that young man who said he couldn’t give himself wholly to any woman, who sandwiched a woman between a dead salmon and a dead grouse! He was the eldest son of a great house, but in the meantime he was a soldier, and he had the frozen blue eyes which make a good soldier, as soldiers go--and he _was_ going, Raymond! under special orders for East Africa, where he would have to stay several months. Just a few weeks I had, then, to make him feel that he couldn’t bear life, in Africa or anywhere else, without me. And, my dear, the world didn’t hold a more perfect dream than that in which he would come to me and offer to risk his career for me! That is what is called being a cad, Raymond, and women are rather good at it. I wanted him to offer me his ambition, and then I would consider whether or not I would give it back to him. But he didn’t. I lost.

“And I had seemed so like winning, too! For, ten days before he was to sail, he had insisted on taking me away from London, saying that London was getting between us and that we must go away into the country, just to breathe and to love. That is not, of course, how he put it, Raymond, but that was his meaning, and very, very happy it made me. Imagine! Seven days we spent together in a funny sweet little inn under the shadows of those toy hills which are called mountains in Wales; but I will not tell you about those days, for they are a very intimate memory, and even if I did you could not put them into your story, for your editor would wonder if you were mad, saying that the British public will put up with much but not with as much as that. But, all the same, they were a wonderful seven days, and as we sat silently facing each other in the train back to London, silent because there was too much to talk about, I knew I had won. There were three days left.

“In London he dropped me at my house, and he was to return in the evening to take me out to dinner. But he was back within an hour, and when I went downstairs I found him pacing impatiently up and down the drawing-room. He told me that his orders had been changed; he had to go to Paris first, and then take ship at Marseilles.

“‘To Paris!’” I said, not understanding.

“‘Yes, to-night, in two hours,’” he said quickly, shyly. He was embarrassed at the idea of a possible scene. And, oh, those frozen blue eyes, those frozen blue eyes of pro-consular men! He must go at once, he said. He shook both my hands; and he held them a little while in that pathetic attempt at tenderness which sometimes overtakes Englishmen when they are eager to go and do something else. He would write to me, he said. He mumbled something about my being a darling, but I simply hadn’t a word. It was all just as though nothing had ever happened to us, as though we had never been to the little Welsh inn, or played and laughed and loved, as though he had never begged me to run my fingers through his hair because I had said his hair was a garden where golden flowers grew. Englishmen are very odd, Raymond. He was going away! But he would write to me, he said, and would be back in twelve months or so ... and he almost forgot to kiss me. But what are kisses?

“Now this is where, Raymond, in writing this story, your craftsmanship must come in. You must be very clever just here, Raymond. You must manage to convey that, though I was not a bad loser by nature, I was terribly wretched for a time: that I simply didn’t exist. You must fill in the gap with some fine prose and acute observation--the horrible gap between the time he went away and the time when I again began to take notice of life. You can’t both be loyal to me and true to life, Raymond, so you had better be romantic about it. You will find it quite easy to be romantic about other people’s troubles.

“I didn’t forget him. I have never forgotten him, that stone image which stood in my heart and then broke itself to pieces because of some law I did not, do not, understand. But there is a law I do understand, a cruel kind of law, and that is the law of reaction. He wrote me letters at long intervals; cold, honest bits of writing, strong-and-silent-backbone-of-Empire stuff, and rather pompous with their appreciations of me tacked on to descriptions of the desert and the natives. But I wrote to him only once, explaining myself, explaining him. Oh, it was a wonderful letter, the one wonderful letter of my life! I gave all I had to give in that letter, but it didn’t seem to warm him at all, and I hadn’t the heart or the energy to write again.

“He became a tender memory ... and I fell in love again, Raymond. But not as with my stone image, oh, no! This was the sort of man who didn’t count except in that I loved him, or thought I did. He was really no more than the servant of my reaction against the stone image, and to serve me well he had to help me demolish all the castles of sentiment I had built around him. And the stoutest and most beautiful castle of all I had built around that funny little Welsh inn! The memory of our days there haunted me: it made everything else seem not worth while, and so I told myself that something must be done about that, else it looked to be spoiling my whole life with regrets. Nothing in the world repeats itself except regret--and, of course, sardines. And so, Raymond, I set my horse to that last castle, to crash into it recklessly, gallantly, and to stride and laugh about its halls with another man, who was not a stone image, not so beautiful.

“We went, my reaction and I. In an exceedingly fast car we went, going ever so fast, so that when I tumbled out of it at that inn I had had no time to think. Now the sweetest thing in that little inn was its miniature dining-room, which was entirely composed of a large bow window and three little tables; and the largest thing about it was the view of the hills all round, and a brown stream which tumbled about at the bottom of the garden and made more noise than you could believe possible for so little a thing. My stone image and I had sat at the table by the bow window, and now my reaction and I sat there again. I dreamed, he ate. My back was to the door, and I sat facing a large mirror, the stream and the hills on my right; he sat facing the window, adoring me, the adventure, the hills, the food. I wasn’t unhappy; perhaps I was a little absent-minded, but I am sure I wasn’t unhappy--until, in the mirror in front of me, I saw the great figure, the fair hair, the frozen blue eyes, at the open door. Our eyes met in the mirror, the eyes of statues, wondering, waiting....

“Shall I tell you I was afraid, or ashamed, or intolerably miserable? I don’t know what I felt, it is a dead moment. I don’t know how long he stood there, filling the doorway with his great figure, filling my life with his stern eyes. But it couldn’t have been for long, perhaps a few seconds; and once he took his eyes off mine and looked at the man beside me, who hadn’t seen him. I thought his lips twitched, but then something happened to my sight, and the mirror clouded over. When I could see again, the door was closed, the magic mirror was empty of all but my unbelieving eyes and the profile of the man beside me, who didn’t know and was never to know that I had lived a century while he ate a potato.

“All that he did know was that the next morning I begged him to observe but not, please, to comment on my movements, which were in the direction of a London train. I treated that man abominably, abominably. But he never had a chance.... When I got home I found a wire. I had given orders for nothing, not even wires, to be sent on to me. This one had come an hour after I had left for Wales. It was from Southampton. ‘Just arrived. Am going straight up to the little place in Wales. Will arrive there dinner-time. Shall we dine together by the window?’”

Shelmerdene was rather absent-minded as she finished her story; she forgot to smile. It was very careless of Shelmerdene to forget to smile, for it made Raymond Paris feel shy; he fiddled with his pen; he coughed.

“Well,” said Shelmerdene, at last, “won’t that story do for you, Raymond? Or is it not interesting enough? Not enough action?”

“Of course, it’s frightfully interesting,” Raymond Paris protested. “But--well, you see, editors are rather odd. It isn’t a story at all, really, don’t you see....”

“An episode, perhaps?”

The young man started at a certain quality in her voice; something seemed to have suddenly broken in Shelmerdene’s voice. Wondering, he stared at the lady who stood above him by the table, her fingers playing thoughtfully with the ancient pink shagreen cigarette-case, which had once been vanity-box in chief to Marie Antoinette, so they said. And he followed her eyes out of the window into the garden below, the garden brave with the gay tall tulips of many colours. A man was walking in the garden, not heeding the tulips, not heeding anything, the back of a great figure of a man with a golf-bag swung across it, a lounging man with hands stuck very deep into plus-fours and a pipe screwed into the corner of his mouth; and the tall man’s hair was extraordinarily fair in the sunlight. George Tarlyon was walking through the garden of tulips on his way to a morning round of golf.

“Yes, an episode, that’s all it is,” said Shelmerdene queerly, and still her face forgot to smile. “That’s how he would think of it now. He has had his lesson, you see--and many episodes! And so all the childishness has gone out of him.... He can’t be hurt by a face in a mirror now, Raymond! He would just laugh, and he has an eighteenth-century kind of laugh. Poor lamb, all the childishness has been spilled out of him.”

And Shelmerdene’s eyes softly followed the figure among the tall tulips, while young Raymond Paris murmured: “You see, what editors want is a story with some sort of point....”