After the first six pages all his doubts fell away from him. There was nothing the matter with his play. As he read he could see it staged down to the very pattern of those important divan cushions. He had achieved another winner. Aggie’s face gaped at him, and he could see in it a whole dim theatreful of women, all Aggies in their own imagination, all of them dressed like Aggie, scented like Aggie and talking like Aggie. They craned up from the stalls, they leant down from the gallery, an entire audience responding as one woman to his infinitely skilful manipulations. Never had he managed his crescendo better, so nicely placed his climax or smashed the crockery at a more telling moment. He could do it every time. His light-hearted, tragic Irma was turning, before his eyes, into that Common Denominator which should identify her with every woman in the theatre. Aggie on the drawing-room sofa was all the audience he ever wanted, because she was thinking what he meant her to think, and feeling what he meant her to feel.
At the end of the first act she told him that it was terribly good, but that she feared it was going to be terribly tragic.
“Shall I go on?”
“Oh do.”
The crockery-smashing in the second act was not quite as effective as it ought to be, because these things should be seen rather than described. But it held her. She had left off smoking and was leaning forward with her mouth slightly open. He went on without a pause to the third act.
Marianne came in just when Irma was telling her great sacrificial lie. For the sake of the man she loved, this magnificent adumbration of Aggie was tarnishing a reputation which had remained spotless, in spite of all appearances, for an hour and a half. Aggie was nearly weeping. She knew she would have done just the same thing herself. In two more minutes she would have wept, had it not been for the incursion of Marianne.
Hugo became aware, as he read, of a slight movement behind the screen which hid the door. Something was being done there, and he could see, reflected in one of the long glasses, a tawny head and sunburnt neck bent over a bowl of roses. She made so little noise that Aggie never knew she was there at all. But the fact of her presence remained. Hugo, ever acutely sensitive to Them, knew that he now had two listeners: that he was reading to a composite animal and not merely to Aggie. Instinctively he raised his voice a little. As he turned the page he had time to think what a pity it was that Marianne should have missed so much of the crescendo. But that could not be helped, so he must forget it. If she had heard the beginning she would not be fidgeting with those flowers. She would be staring at him with her mouth open. He lifted up his voice and proclaimed:
“You’ve no right to ask me …”
What was she doing behind that screen? Was she standing enthralled, or was she still fussing about with those roses? He wished that she would either come in or go out.
“Is he your lover?”
Aggie’s eyes were like blue saucers. She guessed that the Noble Lie was coming.
“Does it matter so terribly?”
Did it matter so terribly? Of course it did. It had to, or there would never have been any third act.
“Do you want me to say that he is, Gerry? Do you want me to? I believe you … do.”
“I want the truth.”
“Oh, no, darling. You’ve never wanted that.”
“I’ve no proof … no evidence … if you tell me he isn’t I suppose I must …”
“Must what, Gerry?”
“Put up with it!”
“Put up? Oh my God. Oh … wait a minute … I shall be all right … in a minute … have you … have you got a match?”
“Irma … for God’s sake …”
“In a minute, darling. Just give me time.”
“Time to invent something?”
“Yes. Yes. It wouldn’t take a minute to tell the truth, would it? Only we don’t want the truth, do we, Gerry? It’s so ugly, isn’t it? Have you got a match?”
“No.”
“It doesn’t matter. Your mother thinks I smoke too much.”
“Irma!”
“All right. Don’t look so terrified. You’re not going to have to … to put up with it.”
“Then you …”
“Oh yes, Gerry. I’m his mistress.”
“I knew it!”
“Did you, darling?”
“Don’t call me that.”
“Sorry.”
“You swear it’s true?”
“Need I? When you knew it? But I’ll say it again if you like. I’m his mistress.”
But Marianne, behind the screen, would not know that this was a noble lie, because she had not heard the beginning. All the poignancy of it would be lost on her. In spite of himself he gave way to the temptation to drop her a hint. He broke off in order to explain:
“Each time she says it she looks at him in an awestruck way, like a person repeating a spell and not quite expecting it to work. They both know that it isn’t true, and yet, it works. You see?”
Aggie blinked and came out of her coma. She said that she saw.
“Where was I? Oh yes. How-long-has-this-been-going-on?”
At all costs he must not allow himself to read it in that tone of voice, as if it was absolute muck, dead as carrion. Marianne did not matter.
“I’ll—divorce—you …”
He shifted his chair a little so that he could see round the screen. But she was not there any more. She had finished her job with the roses and gone away. Perhaps she had even missed the little bit of explanation that had been aimed at her.
And Aggie’s eyes were no longer like saucers. It had been a bad moment for an interruption. She was glancing furtively at the clock and then she sketched a barely stifled yawn. This sight was the last straw. Yawns are catching and Hugo had repressed his for just twenty-four hours too long. Like a tidal wave his fate overtook him. The words that he would have uttered were strangled in his throat. He had to give up, put down his manuscript, and keep Aggie waiting until the paroxysm was over. He yawned and yawned and yawned and yawned.
“I’m terribly sorry,” he said at last.
“Go on,” said Aggie coldly.
He asked where he had got to, though he knew quite well. But he had to cover his embarrassment at beginning again.
“I don’t know,” said Aggie. “Somebody was telephoning.”
That had not happened since the beginning of the act. He found the place and was ill advised enough to apologise.
“I hope this doesn’t bore you frightfully.”
“Oh no,” said Aggie, with straying eyes.
“I’ll divorce you …”
“You’d got past there, I think,” said Aggie.
He finished the play, but she never went into a coma again. Towards the end he felt that she only listened to one word in three. She fidgeted, she yawned, she lighted cigarettes, she looked out of the window to grimace at Corny who had just come back from church. When it was over she said that it was too marvellous and that she couldn’t tell him what she felt about it. But he knew that her report to the others would be damning. And the news would spread like wildfire through the house.
“My dear, Hugo’s play is dull.”
“It’s not true.”
“The first two acts just possible, but it goes to pieces completely after that.”
“Darling, I can’t tell you how bad it is.”
“Corny says it won’t run a week.”
“Well, that kind of success doesn’t last for ever, does it?”
“I always did think he was dreadfully over-rated …”
“… and conceited …”
“… and after all, rather, rather …”
Nor was Syranwood gossip the end of it. On the contrary it was only the beginning. On Monday they would all go back to London and spread the tale. Hugo’s play is dull. Hugo himself is getting to be a bit of a bore. He was asked down to Syranwood to meet Aggie and she wasn’t amused. He won’t be asked again.
It was all Marianne’s fault. He could almost believe that she had done it on purpose.
The golfers had not returned, but voices in the garden and on the stairs told him that the church people were back. It was so nearly time for another meal that every one was waiting about. Through the window he could see Aggie strolling on the terrace with Corny. It had begun.
Not daring to join them he crossed the hall and slipped out of the front door. A blast of chilly air came up at him from the unwarmed turf. All that side of the house was still in shadow though the noonday sun was creeping up the drive. He shivered and strode on across the lawn, past the swimming pool, to the edge of the Syranwood shrubberies where trees and bushes could hide him and his humiliation in their sombre thickets.
After all, he was trying to remind himself, a failure here and there, an occasional rebuff, might do him a great deal of good in the long run. Unbroken success becomes monotonous, and he had to remember that cheerfulness in adversity was part of his public character. In the past it had indeed been so. He had enjoyed surmounting difficulties and his bouts of ill luck had been periods of great activity and stimulation. And he thought of his second play which ran for half a week. It had been so absolute a disaster that his agent had asked him if he really meant to write any more. And he had had great difficulty in getting anyone to look at the new one which came to him as he stood in the wings, that night, hearing a third act go to pieces and an audience get out of hand. His gallant cast, white-lipped and sweating, stood beside him, waiting for their entrances and avoiding his eye. Stoically they braced themselves to see it through, and he could do nothing to help them. He wanted to rush out himself upon the stage, to ring down the curtain, to do anything rather than see his helpless friends upon the rack. Their courage in the face of this common misfortune exalted him far beyond any petty sense of personal failure. He found himself excited, dominant, with all his powers awake and urgent. He had lived that moment intensely and in the weeks after, while he was writing his third, and best, play, he had been extraordinarily happy.
But he was not happy now. He felt no thrill, no renewed call to action, only a stifling melancholy. He had conquered Them and he was more afraid of Them than ever.
There was only one thing to be done. He must take them by surprise. He must do something quite, quite new. For he had got to the top of the ladder too soon, and to stay there, perching nervously for the rest of his life, would look absurd.
He would become a poet. He would write those poems of which he had already spoken to Adrian. He would listen to the music in the shell. He would hold up the train as it flashed out of the tunnel. He would dive down into the Other Life. In that existence, experienced momentarily inside his soul, all things hung together: they had some collective relationship. That was why horses against the skyline, or a memory of a tossed tamarisk hedge, would start an echo. They threw shadows which were not their own.
“Hugo’s poetry is marvellous.”
“It’s much better than his plays.”
“Extraordinary career that fellow has had.”
But poets were generally such dank people. They hid in the country or in basements and at luncheon parties they always looked a little unkempt. Or else they were very old and distinguished and got buried in Westminster Abbey. He did not want to be buried just yet. He wanted Aggie to think well of him. And he wanted to get out of the tunnel. Either one or the other, and, if possible, both.
For surely once, once, he had lived in the light: among the tamarisks, beside the chicken run, before he was born, perhaps. There had been a time when everything seen and heard, a dog barking in the street, the pattern of his aunt’s tea cups, the whole texture of life, had been full of mystery and excitement. Nothing had escaped him; every experience, however small, had fed his flame, had become part and parcel of his dream. He knew that it had been so once, just as he knew that the illumination had failed him. It had happened. To make it happen again might be, simply, a question of effort. Perhaps he had not tried quite hard enough. But he needed help. He wanted a call from somewhere, outside himself. He would have prayed for it, had he known of any God disposed to listen. And he was very nearly praying, for, as he walked this way and that among the trees and bushes, a prayer, long forgotten, came back into his mind.
“Renew …” he muttered. “… renew,” (because it had been there once) … “Renew Thy spirit within me.”