There you are,” said Dicky in a pleasantly triumphant voice as though he were a conjurer and Colonel Belamy a rabbit. He held open the hall door for her, but Celia could not go through it while her father stood and stared.
He stood leaning a little forward, which was unusual in him, his grey eyes were duller than their wont, either there was a change in him or else she suddenly saw how old he had grown. He had been so much younger than Uncle Charles but he had caught him up at last and gone beyond, for Charles, though eight years older at his death than Henry was now, had never shown the fatigue and isolation of age as did that grey, stooping figure in the doorway.
It would make no difference in those hostile eyes that they were young, that a moment since they had been desperately happy and were wanting desperately to be so again. That moment which had been eternal was now impossible. Celia saw it disappear behind her father’s head, saw the dining-room as it really was for all their kisses, its majestic solidity unperturbed by her futile attempt to wreck it; remembered that Dicky was a dago, a penniless adventurer, and a boy younger than herself ; knew that it was not merely a question of going with him to Gordon for dinner, but of linking her life to his for good.
She had been mad, the world revolved about her, grey now not golden, seen with her father’s eyes as they stared dully at Dicky from that massive and protruding head.
She waited for him to ask what was the crash of broken glass and replied instead to a question as to where she was going.
“To dinner with a Mr. Gordon,” and moved towards the door murmuring, “Good night, Papa.” The table at the Ivy hung in the air only just ahead of her. Could she reach it?
There was an astonished sound behind her, she turned and saw Mrs. Belamy at the top of the stairs ; she heard the same question as her father’s and gave the same answer.
“You were going out to dinner without letting anyone know?”
“Treating the house exactly like an hotel,” came the bass below, but monotonous, without conviction. He was not putting his heart into this.
“Are you mad, Celia?” from above.
Was she mad? She did not know. She could not explain now about the bowl, the thought of its fragments under Dicky’s arm made her feel sick and empty, and what must they think of that incongruously lumpy parcel? That he was carrying his boots about with him? It was terribly unfortunate. She began to mumble something about being late, she had meant to tell the maids but it had all been such a rush. Mrs. Belamy descended the stairs a little way and said : “I think you were brought to our house once for a dance, Mr. Ah——?” and the table at the Ivy floated away through the air, inaccessibly remote.
Colonel Belamy raised his head, snuffing battle. Ten years fell off his shoulders together with his air of morose dejection, for here was something to prove himself alive.
“Dictripoulyos,” said Dicky.
Familiar voices echoed in the minds of three people present.
“And his name!”
“What a name!”
“But his name!”
In accompaniment to these shrill and derisive cries there rose a chorus of accusations, dim now and indistinguishable, of a nameless nature, designated not so much by words as by shrugs and wry smiles and evasive phrases such as “rather peculiar,” and “a little curious,” and” really I don’t know, but.” These furtive and obscure furies now floated round Dicky’s head, gibing and sniggering at him. As if conscious of their presence, he turned sharply back to the door and pulled it wide for Celia.
“Come back, Celia,” roared Colonel Belamy.
“Don’t,” whispered Dicky, but Celia waited.
“Where are you going with this young man?”
“I’ve told you, Papa, to Mr. Gordon’s dinner party at the Ivy.”
“At this hour! “said Mrs. Belamy faintly, more overcome it seemed by the thought of an unduly early dinner than by any other irregularity of the evening.
“I have not heard of Mr. Gordon,” said Colonel Belamy. “Is he a friend of Mr. Dick—Ὄ?”
“Yes, sir, and an editor,” but Dicky was not allowed to impress Colonel Belamy with the full list of Gordon’s achievements.
“Understand, Celia, that I will not have you going with this young man to his friends’ dinner parties.”
“But, Papa, I met Mr. Gordon weeks ago and it was arranged then.”
“You can tell me about that when Mr. Di—when this young man has left.”
At Dicky’s protesting movement, something clanked and crackled under his arm.
“It’s no good,” muttered Celia to him, paralysed at the guilty noise so that Colonel Belamy, seeing himself faced with success, became twice as indignant.
Dicky’s voice glided into the heavy air as smoothly as a fish through a ruffled pond.
“I think I should let you know,” he said, “that I intend to try to persuade Celia to marry me.”
So they were right, after all. That moment in the dining-room was quite impossible. If Dicky could choose this absurd, this unnecessary, this preposterously flamboyant occasion to announce his intention, then he could be nothing to do with her.
“Really, I don’t think——” she began, and checked herself on hearing her mother say the same words in almost the same voice.
Colonel Belamy did not wait for what his wife did not think. He told the young man his opinion of him and his last remark in pleased and incisive tones, so that Celia at once understood why Dicky had done it. He had been ignored, and there he was in his new suit on his way to Gordon’s dinner, on the eve of success, and of course he wanted to show he was someone, that they must deal with him direct, not just suppose he would go like an errand-boy who had brought a parcel. It was a dreadful way to call attention to himself, it was always dreadful to call attention to oneself ; but what was Papa doing with those heavily polished sarcasms? “Showing off,” decided Celia with the cruelty of Goneril, “that’s all it is.”
Dicky knew that she had come round to him again, he did not care if he were a mountebank, he had drawn the Colonel’s fire on to himself and he was the master of the situation.
There was Celia, shimmering like a pearl inside her cloak, fluid and reflective as water, seeing everything that everybody thought, afraid of her father, anxious for her mother, and he would pull her away from them both, conquer them in front of her and carry her off. Busily he prepared his defence, taking all the Colonel’s points on his shield, but at the first gap Mrs. Belamy was there before him.
“Celia, you cannot possibly mean——”
“No, Mamma, we hadn’t even considered it. All I wanted was not to break an engagement for dinner to-night.”
“Impossible,” said Colonel Belamy.
“Even you, Celia,” came the treble echo, “can see that it is impossible now.”
Yes, she supposed it was. What a mess Dicky had made of it. Whatever you thought about it, he had rushed in with that idiotic announcement and spoilt everything.
“Celia!” he cried, amazed. “Aren’t you coming with me?”
“It’s no good now, Dicky, I can’t.”
She faded before his eyes. She was no longer a pearl; she was shrivelled, chilled by centuries of cold storage.
“And why not? Has Colonel Belamy so convinced you of my iniquity?”
“You know he hasn’t. But it’s no good, Dicky.”
“Come away, dear,” said her mother.
“Yes, go along upstairs,” came the deeper echo.
“You are nothing but an echo yourself,” said Dicky to Celia. “Nothing, and I thought you were alive, perhaps it was only because for a little time you echoed me.”
“Oh, Dicky, do go now.”
“Yes, I’m going.” But he would get in his answers to Colonel Belamy. “I’m going because I’m a foreigner as all the English have been at one time or another. At least I can claim to have become naturalized quicker than your Norman-French ancestors.
“You also accused me, sir, of being young, but this defect is one that some, I think, would be glad to share again with me.
“Your only charge that I protest against is that of poverty, since I shall shortly be earning a yearly income of five thousand eight hundred and forty guineas.”
“Of what?” exclaimed Colonel Belamy, startled by this unusual sum out of his victorious endurance of the fellow’s tub-thumping speech. Mrs. Belamy heard nothing but a creak on the kitchen stairs. If the door at the top were not closed, the servants were sure to be listening.
“Don’t, Dicky,” whispered Celia, but it was too late, there he was waving that cheque at her father.
“Eight guineas, sir, is what I get for two hours’ work.”
“And how many have you had of them?”
There was a brief pause.
“Exactly. I thought so. And so it is on a capital of eight guineas that you propose to marry my daughter.”
“Hush, Henry, the stairs,” came an agonized whisper from his wife.
“I wish you would speak out. What do you mean by the stairs?”
“He hasn’t proposed,” from Celia. “Dicky, do clear out.”
Dicky turned a look of hatred on her and deliberately let his parcel slide to the ground.
The moment had come round again, and staring into her father’s face she heard for the third time that evening the crash of broken glass.
Mrs. Belamy cried, “What’s that?”
She answered : “It was broken before.”
Nobody spoke.
She said, “Your big bowl, Papa. It’s been—I mean—I broke it. On purpose.”
It was no wonder that he looked at her dully as though he did not understand. But soon he would, he would begin to ask questions. She began again desperately, “It was because you wouldn’t let me go with Dicky. Oh no, that hadn’t happened then. But I knew it would, I knew you wouldn’t. What does it matter which happened first?”
“Are you mad, Celia?” asked her mother.
Was she mad? She did not know. She was caught up in a monstrous vicious circle in which certain moments came round and round again dragging other moments in their train and no one could say which came first.
She stared at her father who stared, not at her, not at Dicky, not at anyone or anything. He seemed to have retreated so that he was back again where he was when he had stood in the study doorway, leaning a little forward, his head protruding, sunk.
“Quite right,” he said, “quite right. I’m glad it’s broken. Break all the glass, I don’t care ; I’d do it myself if it were worth while.” Suddenly he was looking at her. “Go with your young man, what does it matter?”
The study door shut behind him. Dicky seized Celia’s hand, pulled her through the front door, out on to the steps.
“Is he mad?” she gasped.
“What does it matter? We’ve got clear.”
Still holding her hand, he was running down the road.
“Dicky, I must go back. I must see what it was. I don’t believe he was just angry. Something is wrong. I must go back.”
He ran faster. The railings round the church whirled past them. The high heels of her evening shoes beat a frenzied tattoo on the pavement and tried to throw her over. One of the maids at number twelve was looking out of the window. She wrenched at her hand and could not get it free. She was dragged at the wheels of his triumphal chariot, breathless, struggling.
“Stop, Dicky. You are hurting my hand. I will stop.”
Suddenly he stopped ; he was handing her into a taxi just behind her. Now was her chance to break away, he could not make too much of a scene in front of the taxi driver. But she did not break away, she was in the taxi, she heard him give the order to the driver, she saw him lean forward and shut the door as they passed the policeman at the corner, and then she saw nothing but his face and then not that for she was in his arms and he was kissing her triumphantly, savagely, crushing out her fears and indignations, all her personal feelings, blotting out even the image of her father as he stood in the study doorway, leaning a little forward, his grey eyes duller than usual, his massive head protruding, sunk, beneath the fatigue and isolation of age.
The policeman said to himself : “So there’s a new one at number seven. And not a patch on the other. Foreigner, I should say. That young lady’s going downhill.” He decided he would drop round and have a word with Cook there this evening.
Mrs. Belamy found the study door locked. She was relieved for she did not know what to say to Henry, his behaviour had been so extraordinary.
As for Celia, she could not believe that she had really broken the bowl; she must have made it up. Everybody was behaving utterly unlike themselves. What could be the matter with them all? She remembered that she also had behaved unlike herself. Then she told herself that this was just one of those dreadful days when everything went wrong ; she went back to the drawing-room and looked out of the window and saw Celia and Dicky plunging into a taxi in full view of all The Borehams. She thought that after all what was the point of having children?
She rang up Iris who at any rate had never disappointed her. But Iris was in a hurry because a lot of people were coming to dinner and it was inconsiderate of people to ring up at that time when they hadn’t anything particular to say.
The door at the top of the kitchen stairs closed gently and Gladys went down to tell Cook all about it.
The taxi drove out of The Borehams, away from the dining-room and the hall which had ensnared them like flies caught in a narrow sticky jar, away from Mrs. Belamy’s plaintive protests and Colonel Belamy’s enigmatic anger, away from Gladys and Cook and the policeman’s lonely imaginings and the sequestered squares of South Kensington, up into crowded streets, into a traffic of cars and taxis and buses full of home-returning workers and early pleasure-seekers, into the Town.
On this day of sudden spring it was as flamboyant as a city in a Russian ballet.
The sun shone in their eyes, the buses blazed scarlet and green, rhododendrons flamed in the Park where they had appeared as swiftly as the magic gardens of a genie, the buildings rose huge and flushed with gold in majestic vulgarity equal to those of Imperial Rome, on the pavements slim girls like flames trooped past, intent on the one great business of being beautiful, the town revolved and roared and hummed, a gigantic kaleidoscopic top on which they made an infinitesimal speck of colour, even as their city made a transitory speck on the revolving world.
“God!” cried Dicky, kissing her again as they passed the Ritz. “I’ve never been alive before.”
The sun shone slantwise into Colonel Belamy’s study. He opened the study door again, took his hat and stick and went out. He glanced at the hall clock where it ticked between the Baxter prints, there was just time to take a short turn before he dressed for dinner. Only just time, although his days were filled full to overflowing with an endless empty leisure which now oppressed him so that he felt crushed by a vast weight of nothing.
There he was on the shelf, he always had been ; he had never seen any real active service ; he was a man of action and he had never had a good chance to prove it. He had nothing to do but take a taxi and stroll in St. James’s Park.
It was his son who had had all the luck, a D.S.O. and a distinguished appointment in India, all for a young fool who couldn’t pass into Sandhurst, and with weak nerves too, he had had nightmares ever since that long time without leave in the trenches.
Still he had got something out of it, something to talk about for the rest of his life if he wanted to, he had got his chance, he had had a run for his money.
Whenever that phrase came into his mind there came also the memory of a Zulu chieftain in his warpaint running down a gulley between two lines of British fire, brandishing his shield and spear, uttering his long low thunderous war-cry, running at full speed for about a quarter of a mile with shots falling all round him before at last he was hit. They were the only shots Colonel Belamy had ever seen fired on active service. But it was nothing to tell, he could never make it go well with Iris and Dodo when they were children. They said, “Well, was that all?” and “That wasn’t a battle. Weren’t you ever in a real battle?” But occasionally, as now, he was haunted by this image of a man who had lived his idea of life to the fullest for five minutes before he died.
He ought to go back and dress for dinner. He was always going back to dress for dinner. In sudden reckless revolt he decided he would ring up from the club and say he was dining there to-night. Supported by his collection, he was accustomed to say there was no one there worth speaking to. But this evening he was unsupported and afraid of his own company.
A mild glow of sunset lingered over the lake, at its farther end the towers and minarets of Whitehall rose like an Eastern palace. He looked at the ducks and remembered that Charles used to throw bread to them to please Iris and Dodo when they were children, though it pleased nobody but Charles himself. He wished now he had old Charles to talk to, he was irritable, unreasonable, and eccentric ; he was always crossing him and contradicting him, but that was something to get his teeth into, to make him feel that he was there, alive. Nobody now either dared or bothered to contradict him.
Daisy was a good wife, but she had never brought him out, there were things in him she knew nothing of, things like—he was not sure what they were like, but whatever they were like she did not know them, they had never been discovered nor used.
Children asked him the time. He answered the first, ignored the second, swore at the third, and was annoyed when they scuttled off from him as timid as mice. They were straggling past him all the time, shouting to each other, pulling dead daisy-chains out of their pockets and dropping them on the paths.
Children shouldn’t be allowed in the parks, though of course he was fond of them in their proper place. There was Iris, his little girl, plucky little devil she was, never afraid of him even when he was angry with them and Dodo would creep away, but not Iris : she would storm the citadel, climb on his knee and pull his moustache, the cheeky little brat. It seemed like yesterday. There was a fine woman for you, she hadn’t a nerve in her body. She was fond of him too, made use of him, bullied him, but they understood each other all right, though it was little enough he saw of her now. That stupid fellow her husband wasn’t up to her, he gave in to her too much, what she needed was a man. Daisy had not needed that, he decided in a flash : but it did not occur to him to wonder what Daisy had needed.
There were more lovers again, you might think that all the parks were made for was children and lovers. They brushed past him without seeing him, they saw nothing, not even each other. Nobody existed in the park except themselves. Their egoism exasperated Colonel Belamy ; it was a relief, almost a delight, to see a vaguely familiar figure in the distance. Then he saw it was Ronny Haversham. That was awkward so soon after the engagement had been broken off, but he was walking with a girl; that was a good thing, there would be no need to speak to him. That was a good-looking girl with him, though too tall and flat-chested, and she looked ill, like most of these modern girls who stooped and had no stamina and strained their hair back till they looked like something coming out of a pond.
Leila and Ronny drifted past him, though they passed so close that Ronny’s arm touched his elbow. Colonel Belamy was outraged. He said to himself, “He’s consoled himself soon enough,” but he was angry because he himself as well as Celia had been pushed out of Ronny’s world ; he had been made to feel he was invisible, no, that he did not exist.
And by that he was reminded of all that he had been covering so resolutely in his mind that afternoon. He had discovered that he had nothing to hold on to, nothing to justify himself in his own mind ; himself, as he had thought himself, was gone.