“At last,” said Celia, looking at the fragments of broken glass on the dining-room floor.
Whenever her mother had said, “What is he?” or “Who was she?” or “I thought it rather peculiar,” or “Don’t be so hysterical,” whenever her father had spoken of those worthless, idle workers or of these ill-bred, ill-dressed, ill-mannered young men of to-day, or of his poor old brother Charles on a dirge-like note that buried him more deeply than could any sexton, then Celia had tasted in her mind the appeasing intoxication of lifting that massive and complacent bowl, that fat and bulging and spiky bowl, high above her head and crashing it down upon the floor.
For years and years this moment had been coming towards her and now it had come and gone and she had done what she had wished.
Nobody answered back, nobody blamed her. If you smash something on purpose you should not do it in an empty room.
She had broken her father’s favourite bowl and it had not even been her father who had made her angry.
“I couldn’t have done it,” she said aloud and wondered if it were an accident. But that was a lie bigger than any of the hypocrisies and conventions that she had wanted to smash along with that rounded swollen bloated huge glass bowl.
“I must have been mad,” she thought. “Perhaps I’m going mad. If only I could have a nervous breakdown, they would know I wasn’t myself when I did it.” She wondered how quickly she could develop a nervous breakdown and whether Lady Marshall would say it was on Ronny’s account—that would not do. Even suicide was debarred her.
Now another moment swam ahead of her, following inevitably in the other’s train, when she would have to tell Papa what she had done.
She caught a glimpse of something dark through the thick window-blind, someone had come up the front-door steps. It was Papa returning. He had left the house some little time ago with a man who had called this afternoon, with a cold shock she remembered that he was the dealer whom Papa had insisted on having in to value his collection with a view to selling some of it, for he had stuck obstinately to his idea of sacrifice. She looked in the sideboard cupboard to see if she could hide there, she looked at the window to see if she could crawl out of it as he came in.
The front-door bell rang. So it was only visitors after all. Now Gladys would be opening the door, taking them up to the drawing-room where her mother would receive them with her accustomed graciousness, showing no sign that she had of late been slightly ruffled and knowing not at all that beneath her in the dining-room lay a wreckage that would wreck the peace of the household for many days.
Poor Mamma, it was more likely that she would have a nervous breakdown than herself, and Celia suddenly saw that in breaking her father’s bowl she had chosen the surer method to revenge herself upon her mother. Consequently she began to shake and whisper, “I can’t face it.”
Here was Gladys just outside in the hall going to open the door. When she had opened it and taken the visitors upstairs she would creep out and up the stairs and put on her hat and coat and collect what money she had and creep down again past the drawing-room door where her mother’s and the visitors’ voices would mingle in polite harmony, and down into the hall again and out of the house.
But where should she go? Iris would laugh, she had broken with Ronny, Dicky had given no sign since that afternoon weeks ago, and indeed she had known then with the relentless knowledge of a premonition that she would never see him again. She would rather die or tell her father of the bowl than run the bare chance of seeing Dicky again, and it was in any case absurd that the only place which came into her mind as sanctuary was a lighted window looking into a room full of books and music down near the farther end of Rainbow Road.
“Can I see Miss Belamy?” said a voice outside, a voice that she had known she would never hear again.
“I’ll see if she’s in, sir. Won’t you come in?”
Whatever happened, Gladys must not take him up to the drawing-room. Celia flung open the door and confronted Dicky.
“How do you do?” she said coolly. “Will you come in here a minute? It’s all right, Gladys.”
She drew him into the dining-room and shut the door.
“Well? “she asked with the accumulated ice of several weeks.
“What do you mean by ’ well’? Why do you look at me like that? Aren’t you glad to see me? And in this suit too? Celia! “in tones of agonized delight,” can it be that you are angry with me for not trying to see you all this time?”
“Please don’t be funny. If I’m angry, as you call it, it is that you should assume that you can call and ask to see me like this.”
“Oh, Celia, for your sake don’t look and talk like that. It’s like a Saint of Society in a stained glass window and all Kensington shall rise up round you and call you blessed. Slang me if you like, say you’re sick of me or that you thought I was sick of you, swear at me, turn me out, but don’t, don’t, don’t turn into something else that never was nor will be you.”
She began to laugh helplessly.
“That’s better. What’s all this scrunching under my boots?”
“Broken glass.”
“I say! Had an accident?”
“No.”
Dicky stared at her, but hastily took up his own thread.
“Look here, Celia, I don’t care what you think of me or whether you believe me or not, but since that day, that glorious, amazing, all-important day, that day that was the turning-point of my life, I’ve worked and thought of one thing only and that is how to get on so that I should be able to call and ask to see you like this. And I have, the luck’s turned, I’m getting to know a whole crowd all at once and some of them quite useful. I’ve got a decent suit, I’ve got money—look at that, eight guineas in my pocket—I’ve got a story taken with cash on acceptance at eight guineas and the promise of two more. And one I wrote in a morning and another in a couple of hours, so that if I work six hours a day I shall make sixteen guineas a day and that is five thousand eight hundred and forty guineas a year. Don’t laugh, I’ve worked it out on paper.”
But she could not stop laughing. How ridiculous it all was! Dicky, whom she was never to see again, stamping about their dining-room on broken glass, and all the cold, unhappy anger that she had had about him all these weeks crumbling away under his perfectly reasonable and really rather fine sentiments. She had mistaken a morbid fit of depression for prophecy, she could not even remember what had caused it. Something less than nothing had led to nothing, and nothing was what she had been worrying over all these weeks. That desolate fog rolled away, yet still there clung a faint, persistent breath of uneasiness somewhere in her mind ; perhaps it was nothing to do with Dicky, perhaps it was because somewhere in London her father was coming toward this house, coming nearer and nearer, bringing with him the moment when she would have to tell him of the broken bowl.
“And you will come, won’t you? Celia, say you will come?”
He was waving a note at her now instead of the cheque. She at last heard what he had ceased to say. He had been reminding her of Gordon’s invitation to dinner, telling her that it was for to-night. He began to repeat words like “wrong number,” “delay,” while she fought something chill, impalpable, that rose round her like a mist. Dicky seemed aware of it too, he was adding so many unnecessary items.
“He didn’t ask us before because he had ’flu. There’s a lot of it about. Leila’s had it.”
“Poor Leila! Who looked after her?” She held up the question as a shield.
“Oh, she was all right,” said Dicky evasively.
By the shifty glance he gave her she was sure that Ronny had been looking after Leila. She was annoyed, she had made up her mind that Ronny ought to marry someone very peaceful, with large, maternal arms, someone in fact entirely different from himself, but also entirely different from Leila. She tried to think she was really worried about it, but it was no use, not even jealousy could make her escape what was round her.
The fog had come down again. She looked at Dicky through it as though he had visibly changed shape and colour before her eyes. She said nothing. It was too horrible to say. But was it this note that had reminded him of her? He had used her once to help him show off before Gordon ; did he now seek her out again only for that object?
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I am engaged this evening,” and moved towards the door.
“You lie,” said Dicky furiously.
She heard a key being fitted into the front door lock. She stood still, leaning back against the door and Dicky started forward, thinking she was about to faint.
“It’s a lie,” he said, piteously now, and she knew that he had only just seen her suspicion which she had already forgotten, for her father was coming into the hall behind her.
“Will you——?” he began.
“Shut up,” she said in a sick whisper, and held up her hand for silence. He stood still in awed amazement, his mouth open, his hand outstretched in expostulation, while Colonel Belamy went through the hall into the study next door.
As the study door shut, Celia leaned against the dining-room door and held on to the handle with fingers that he saw were trembling.
“If you’re so frightened of being caught with me I’d better clear out,” said Dicky. “You won’t listen to me now anyway.”
“Oh, it isn’t you,” she just breathed.
And indeed she did not seem to be aware of him. He could not understand it at all. Her eyes were almost closed and he could see how white were their lids, how blue the veins on them. She was distressingly like porcelain, but no china figure was ever allowed to express an emotion comparable to that of her tortured lips.
“Celia,” he said meltingly, “won’t you listen to me? I’m not asking you now to come to Gordon’s. I was a fool to ask it, a vulgar fool if you like, but my folly was in trusting to your sweet generosity. Celia, when you go frozen like that before my eyes I don’t know what I shall do, stab you, I believe, in order to restore you to life. I know all you’re thinking——”
“You don’t. It’s not that. I——”
“There you go again, all lying denials in order to be dignified. What’s the use of it when I see you white and shaking?”
“Yes, but it’s not you, it’s——”
“There you go, putting on your insane pride again, as though it could hide you from me. It’s too late for pride now for either of us. I’ll admit anything. What do you want? That I’m a climber, using you as a rung of the ladder? Didn’t you want to be of use to me? Isn’t half the secret of your fascination for me that you are above me, and doesn’t that have some attraction for you too?”
“Oh! Do you mean——?”
“No, I don’t. You don’t patronize me, you could never do that, but you are sick of gentility and you don’t altogether hate me for being a bounder. Aren’t all motives mixed? It’s true that Gordon’s note brought me here, now, this moment, but it’s true also that I swore I wouldn’t see you again till I had something to show for myself. It’s all mixed up. How can I cut my ambition into a neat half, distinct from my love of you? How can I dissociate you from your clothes, your surroundings, your training, everything that makes you you?”
“How cleverly he talks,” thought Celia stupidly, but at that moment he fell silent, staring at her.
“It’s no good,” he said at last, slowly. “You’ll always believe of me what is perfectly true. You fool, can’t you see that everything is true, that you can make people what you think them?”
There was no doubting his sincerity ; he was groping not for his words but for his thoughts.
“I am somebody else too,” he said dispiritedly and looked round the room as if for something he had lost. Suddenly he flamed up again, passionately imploring.
“You know that, you more than anyone. Don’t let me lose it. There was a night on the leads long ago when I saw what success could mean, or perhaps it was failure. I’m not sure which. I don’t want to be smothered with roses till I’m blind and stupid and fat and beastly. For God’s sake, no, for my sake, stick to me, Celia, don’t see me like that, don’t, don’t.”
And seizing her hand he went down on his knees to her.
“Remember the glass!” she cried, and checked herself in terror lest the sound should have reached the study next door.
Dicky sprang up, saw and misinterpreted her agitation, caught her to him and kissed her, clumsily, recklessly, without a trace of his former cunning and deliberate reserve.
Memories, suspicions, accusations, protestations, what were they all but a fog of words? Now everything was clear. They fell back and stared at each other, amazed at the sudden light.
“What fools we’ve been!” said Celia or Dicky or both.
“Yes, what utter fools,” said the other or both, and kissed again, this time with a quiet intensity that lifted their embrace into a trance while their feet scrunched broken glass.
Dicky did not hear it, Celia did. Here was the complete and perfect moment of her life, and she had to remember the glass and the study wall and her father behind it.
She said, “What does anything matter after all? “and he answered in devout tones :
“Nothing.”
She said,” I’ll come with you to Gordon’s dinner, Dicky.”
He said,” Celia! “
They heard Colonel Belamy moving about in the study and their next kiss was suspended between two breathless mouths.
“Is he coming in here? “asked Dicky.
But Colonel Belamy was merely walking up and down the study as though he were on sentry-go.
“Very agitating for us. Does he often do that?”
“It isn’t you that matters most. Something worse has happened.”
And she told him about the bowl, though she kindly forbore to tell him that that and not his crimes had been the cause of her agony.
“But oh, Dicky, I can hardly believe I did it. It isn’t a bit like me, I who have never done anything but just keep quiet and let things drift along, and now I’ve done this.”
“Of course it’s like you. Didn’t you break something parental the first night you came to Rainbow Road and knocked four times for a man you didn’t know?”
“Yes ; but I’d never done anything like that before either.”
“You are always doing things you’ve never done before. That is your charm. Now with Leila, and I bet it’s the same with Iris, I should know with mathematical certainty what their next daring impulse will be. They won’t learn that people who are persistently surprising never surprise. But you are the courageous coward, the ingenuous woman of the world, the decorous dare-devil.”
“What lovely things you say to me! No one has ever seen me as interesting as that. Perhaps I’ve never been as interesting with anyone else.”
“Oh, let us,” cried Dicky,” always see each other as interesting as we can be.”
He laughed, his eyes shone, he irradiated life, perhaps created it, for something not there before had sprung up in the heavy dining-room among the solemn and self-righteous beauties of silver and cut glass.
At their last meeting he had heedlessly swaggered beside her—it was not the same person. Or else she was not.
“Dicky, I’ve been a fool. I know now.”
“When did you know?”
“When you kissed me.”
He repeated the source of her knowledge, then became stern and rigid, frowning over the top of her head at the wall which concealed Colonel Belamy.
“You must, of course, fly the house,” he said. “For this evening at any rate. What is the point of telling him? Let him find it out.”
“That would be cruel.”
“Not at all. It will give him a chance to slate everyone in turn instead of confining himself to one particular victim.”
“He’ll do that, anyway. You don’t know Papa.”
“I know that anything like a mystery will break the fall, so to speak. If you don’t like him to walk in on the broken pieces, let’s clear them up and hide them, then it will be ages before he notices the bowl isn’t there and when he does, he’ll think it’s been stolen ; he’ll have all the fun of ringing up the police, and so before you tell him you’ll have given him the varied and noble emotions of fear, hope, excitement, and pride-of-action-before-his-women-folk.
“Look here, Celia, you go upstairs and make the quickest change you’ve ever done in your life while I make a parcel of the scraps, and then we’ll slip out of the house together and drop it in the river if we can manage to persuade the policeman that it isn’t a baby.”
She was about to protest, but Colonel Belamy bumped into the table by the wall and she lost her nerve.
“I’ve never known him go on like this before,” she said, trembling at the ferocity of his stride.
It was as though he were angry beforehand, knowing by instinct what had happened to his possession, She opened the dining-room door and was nearly sick when it creaked. Dicky with a piece of brown paper from the sideboard cupboard was already collecting the pieces. “Silence and Speed,” he whispered hoarsely.
Celia sped upstairs to make the quickest change of her life. Everything went wrong. She put on her frock back to front, she could not find a single pair of stockings that would go with it, she upset all the powder, and she washed in cold water because it was too early for the maid to have brought the hot water and she could not wait to run down to the bathroom. But in less than seven minutes she was creeping downstairs again, past the drawing-room door where Mrs. Belamy sat in ignorance, down to where the study door and the dining-room door stood side by side.
Again she turned the handle, centimetre by centimetre, pushed back the door inch by inch, and Dicky slipped through with a brown paper parcel under his arm. Quickly and noiselessly they went to the hall door, both tried to open it together, and in the scuffle Dicky dropped the parcel. For the second time that evening Celia heard the crash of broken glass. So, as in a nightmare, the moment came round again, round and round again, and you knew it would continue to happen for ever.
“Quick, bolt,” said Dicky, snatching up the parcel.
But the study door had already opened and Colonel Belamy stood staring at them.