At dinner he found himself placed between Marianne and Mrs. Comstock, the rector’s wife. Of course this was not accidental. It was another milestone on the road to ruin. He had only to compare it with his position last night, between Aggie and his hostess, to know how far he had sunk. And his anger stiffened into a black sulkiness which kept him as silent as either of his neighbours. Nothing should make him speak until they did, and if they began he would give them a bad time. He ate up his soup and his fish and looked straight in front of him.
After twenty minutes his silence had become conspicuous. Lady Geraldine threw him one or two disturbed glances, and he was aware that Laura had said something about him to Adrian. He was being inexcusable and they all knew it. He was dramatising his own failure. As, in prosperity, he had been swift to impersonate a darling of the gods, so now, in adversity, he gave them a very good imitation of a pariah. But never again would it be said that he put on no airs. His dissatisfaction with his neighbours was far too obvious. Yet, a fortnight ago, when he was still in his glory, this accident would have fallen to his greater credit. He would have been quite as charming to Mrs. Comstock as he had been to Aggie. And in the midst of his spontaneous good fellowship he would have been thinking:
“This isn’t insincere. I’m not doing this to make an impression. I’m nice to them because I like them.”
Now he did not like anybody, so it would be insincere to hide it. Marianne wanted to speak to him. He felt that she was trying to catch his eye. But he was not going to help. He was a celebrity and celebrities are sometimes difficult to entertain. They are fools if they do not, occasionally, claim some licence. All this pose of being simple and unspoilt—he had overdone it. He had cheapened himself by being too pleasant. If he had been rude, now and then, perhaps they might think more of him. Common sense told him that a waning star cannot afford a sudden change of policy, but he was past listening to common sense. He kept his eyes on his plate until he heard her voice, speaking low and clear under cover of a burst of laughter all round them.
“The lady on your right is very deaf. She never talks to people because she’s afraid of being a nuisance. But she loves it if they talk to her.”
“Oh?” said Hugo.
He had not expected this and he was taken aback. As soon as he could do so naturally he looked at Mrs. Comstock and saw what he ought to have seen long ago. It was a plain, elderly face, but the look of endurance upon it gave it a kind of grim beauty. She had just leant forward in the hopes of catching some joke that was passing at the other side of the table. Such as it was, she missed it. And he saw her sit back again, disappointed, into the solitude of her deafness. There was a terrible patience about the gesture. Every day, every hour of her life, she must resign herself to missing things. A twinge of sick compassion shook him. Perhaps she liked people.
“I see,” he said, turning to Marianne. “Thank you. I didn’t know. Er … what shall I talk to her about?”
“Flowers.”
“Flowers? Just my luck!”
Flowers were not his strong point. He knew a rose from a delphinium of course. But Mrs. Comstock looked as though she might be the sort of person who knows wild carrot from cow parsley. And after so long a silence he could think of no opening remark about flowers which would not sound silly, especially if he had to shout it. Already he was paying for his bad manners. A nervous lull seemed to have fallen upon the table. Everybody began to converse in undertones. He waited for two minutes and then braced himself. Valiantly crashing into the unpropitious quiet he asked Mrs. Comstock if the soil of Ullmer was good for roses—the soil, the soil of Ullmer was good for roses, Roses, ROSES. She said that it was on the whole, and waited, in pleased surprise, for more.
“I suppose you’re a great gardener?” bellowed Hugo.
He must forget that he was making himself ridiculous. Of course this sudden interest in horticulture after half an hour’s huff would do nothing to restore his lost credit. He was not trying to restore his lost credit. If Corny had really tittered at the other end of the table, so much the worse for Corny. He would concentrate upon his heavenly crown, and permit his own good nature to put him, for the first time in his life, at a disadvantage. Mrs. Comstock should be persuaded that her conversation was a pleasure: she should go away feeling, not that he had been kind, but that she had been interesting. So he persisted until dessert was put upon the table. And by that time he had made so complete an exhibition of himself that nothing worse could ever happen to him. There was almost a touch of æsthetic beauty in this rounding off of his disasters. It was so complete. The very completeness of it, together with the champagne he had drunk, made him feel rather better. He turned to Marianne almost cheerfully and perceived for the first time, that she had very beautiful eyes. They were fitting the heavenly crown on to his head as neatly as if it had been made to measure. She had the air of being in his debt. Perhaps the moment for coping with her had come. For he had been wanting to cope with her ever since his arrival and had never secured the opportunity. He took a sip of port and said jovially:
“Well, Mary … Ann …?”
“Have a gooseberry?”
“Thank you. I wanted to ask after that girl who used to live here. A mere child. But she used to be so nice.”
“Nice?”
“Oh, a darling. A pearl. What’s happened to her?”
Marianne opened her eyes very wide and frowned a little.
“You know,” she said, “I’m not very good at … at badinage. Is that a word?”
“Yes. I believe it’s a word. Though I never dare use it myself because my accent’s so good. Tell me about the other Marianne.”
“Have another gooseberry.”
“Thanks. I’m only trying to say that I feel we’re strangers, but I’m pleased to meet you.”
“Why?”
“Oh, you are bad at it!”
“I told you I was.”
“What are you good at?”
“Swimming.”
“So was the other Marianne.”
“And so was the other Hugo.”
“Ah! That’s just what I was coming to. There isn’t another Hugo. You’ve been misled.”
Marianne said nothing, and he was obliged to continue.
“Why do you disapprove of me, Marianne? You do, don’t you? Except when I’m talking about the ivy-leafed campanula at the top of my voice. Oh, I know you’re plying me with gooseberries now, but that’s merely a reward for elocution. You don’t really approve of me. Do you?”
“That is a thing,” said Marianne gravely, “which we have to guess for ourselves. Whether other people approve of us or not, I mean. It isn’t fair to ask, though one would often like to.”
“I am answered, Mademoiselle.”
He was deeply offended. The other slights which he had suffered were as nothing to this rebuff. Because he had really come to hope that Marianne’s good opinion was independent of the general judgment. After all, she had liked him when her mother mistook him for a Rhodes Scholar. It was a bitter blow to discover that Aggie’s writ ran here as everywhere else. Flushing resentfully he turned away from her and bit into a gooseberry, but even there he was betrayed, for the ripe fruit exploded and sprayed the table with little pips. In spite of himself he could not help glancing at her to see if she was laughing, and found that her face was as crimson as his own. She was not laughing. She was nearly crying.
“Marianne,” he exclaimed desperately. “What has happened to us? I think you might try to explain it. We used to be such friends.”
“I was very young then,” said Marianne.
“And now that you’re so frightfully mature you’ve crossed my name off. But why?”
She murmured something lamely about people in different generations never quite understanding one another. But this could not placate him.
“Different generations? What are you talking about? I’m not so awfully, awfully much older than you are, you know.”
“Not in years. But your mind is a lot older, Hugo. And all your friends are older.”
“My friends?” He paused and said quickly: “I doubt if I have any.”
Marianne did not contradict this, but she amended:
“Well, the people you go about with. And the people you write plays for. I mean, you go in for rather old-fashioned kinds of plays, don’t you?”
Hugo, the White Hope of the Moderns, nearly spilt his port.
“You’re the first person who’s ever suggested that,” he said.
“Oh, I know they’re frightfully good,” cried Marianne. “And they don’t sound old-fashioned. I meant more the point of view … the ideas … the sentiment … I should have thought it was the sort of thing that appeals to middle-aged people.”
“Would you? How? Give me an instance. Are you repeating something you’ve heard Aggie say?”
“Aggie? No, of course not. She likes that sort of thing.”
“Did she like that play I was reading to her this morning?”
“I don’t know. She didn’t say. I should think so. It sounded exactly the sort of thing she would like. Of course I didn’t hear much of it …”
“You only heard about three words. Not enough to judge.”
“I know. But it sounded …”
“How did it sound, Marianne? Tell me! How did it sound?”
“Oh, I can’t talk. I don’t know enough.”
“Yes, you do. Tell me. I’m interested. I shan’t be annoyed. Really I shan’t. I want to get your point of view.”
“Well, I only mean that Aggie, and people of that age, what they really like is a great fuss about nothing. I mean that when a woman has a … a lover … they still call it ‘granting him everything.’ At least they mayn’t call it that, but they think it’s that. But it isn’t, is it, Hugo? It’s only granting him one thing. But so often it’s the only thing they’ve got, so they like to feel it’s frightfully important. And they like plays and books that make a fuss about it.”
“But it is important,” said Hugo gravely.
“Always?”
“You don’t understand. When you’re older …”
“There! You see!”
“What?”
“You’ve said it yourself. I told you. We belong to different generations.”
“If you could see the letters I get from girls no older than you!”
“And you think they’re silly?”
“Well, yes, I do. Most of them. But for all that, it isn’t, as you seem to think, a great fuss about nothing. And some day you’ll know that it isn’t.”
“But isn’t it very often a great fuss about nothing, Hugo? I know that it can be tremendously important. It can mean a great deal in two people’s lives. But not always. And there’s a kind of insincerity in pretending that it has meant more than it has. When you’re my age, you take it for granted that some time or other there is going to be this great thing in your life. But perhaps you’re unlucky and it never comes to you. So you pretend that it has, and the less important that you really in your heart know it’s been, the more fuss you make. But if you’re lucky …”
“How do you know all this?”
“But if you’re lucky you don’t need to make a fuss. I don’t know it. But I suspect it. You think that’s all wrong?”
“No, I don’t. But you know, Marianne, very few people are … lucky as you call it.”
“Oh. Lots are. They must be.”
“Really? I’d like to see them. Tell me where to find them.”
“Oh … in the Underground, and … and shopping at the Stores and places.”
“And where are the unlucky ones, then?”
“Listening to your plays.”
“At least I console them, poor things. By the time you’re forty-five, my dear, you may be very grateful to me.”
“Probably,” said Marianne.
“You don’t really think it’s in the least probable. You mean to be lucky, don’t you?”
“There’s my grandmother getting up.”
“Don’t you?”
“I wasn’t talking about myself,” said Marianne, getting up.
“No. But I was. And I’m obliged to you for telling me so much.”
She gave him a startled look. But she was out in the hall before she had really begun to blush and Solange was the only person who noticed her agitation.
“How red your face is, Marianne.”
“It was so hot in the dining-room.”
“You’re blushing at something.”
“Well. I can’t help that.”
“I know. We shall have outgrown it by the time we’re twenty-one. It’s something to do with our circulations. I read that in a book called the Psychology of Adolescence.”
The night was hotter than ever and they all went straight into the garden. Geraldine wanted to cut some roses for Philomena to take to London in the morning. She called to the girls to bring her basket, gloves and scissors.
“Only the buds,” she said. “They can be in water all night and then they’ll travel better.”
“I can’t see which are buds,” said Marianne, peering into the dusky bushes. “We ought to wait till the moon rises.”
“No, but you can feel them,” said Solange. “All hard and firm.”
She pulled at one, scattering the dew over her hands, and she laughed. Her spirits were so high that she hardly knew what she was doing. But she tugged at the rose again, humming:
Rosen brach ich nachts mir am dunklen Hage …
“That’s a silly song,” grumbled Marianne. “I think it’s the silliest song anybody ever wrote. I’m sure it can’t be good poetry, even in German. ‘Also of the kisses the perfume me as never before drive mad which I by night from the stalk of your lips plucked.’ ”
“Come a little further down the path, Marianne. I want to tell you something. Listen. My father has climbed down.”
“What? When?”
“At dinner. Oh I had a lovely time at dinner. Did you see?”
“No. I didn’t notice.”
“Well, to begin with, he simply wouldn’t speak to me. He just sat there wishing that modern parents could give their children lettres de cachet. You see, I’d offered to see him on to the boat train and meet him on the way home. And he’s realised that he can’t go on leading a double life. After this he’ll never know what I mayn’t say or do unless he buys me off.”
“You’re sure he doesn’t want to go?”
“Of course he doesn’t. He hates travelling at his own expense, and he can’t afford it, anyhow. So at last I opened negotiations, I said how I envied him and how I wished that I could go instead. And I said that if anything should stop him at the last moment perhaps I might use his ticket. So he said: ‘Well, that wouldn’t be much use.’ And I said: ‘No, I should want some money as well.’ ‘Which I haven’t got,’ he said. So I told him that it wouldn’t mean very much, and all that Ford told me about the cost of living for a student at Freiburg. So then he said he’d think about it. And he said, very cautiously, that he wasn’t sure if he could go to East Prussia after all, because he’d just remembered an important appointment on Tuesday. So I said: ‘Well, then you’ll be able to think about me going all the sooner.’ I saw that he was debating it all in his mind, and wondering whether it would seem ridiculous or not, to say he was going and then not go. If he hadn’t been so terribly solemn and impressive about it to begin with, he wouldn’t be in such a hole. So he said: ‘Well.’ And after a bit, ‘Well’ again. And I really think it’s all right, Marianne darling. I can’t thank you enough for helping me to manage it. I’ve had a perfectly wonderful week-end, getting to know Ford and everything. I’m wildly happy. What did you talk to Hugo about at dinner? You seemed to be having a sticky time at first.”
“Nothing in particular. I cheeked him rather.”
“Good. He needs taking down a bit, as I told you before. Did you ever hear anything like the way he showed off to Mrs. Comstock? Pretending to be so keen on gardening. All at the very top of his voice.”
“He had to. She’s deaf.”
“Well, it sounded very silly. I’m sure everybody thought so. Corny said: ‘Hugo’s always so kind-hearted,’ in a very nasty voice. What happened? Did you catch a thorn?”
“No.”
Marianne straightened herself with a jerk and flung down her basket. She wanted to cry out. Solange was intolerable and so was everyone else who laughed at Hugo for being nice to Mrs. Comstock. She could not bear it for one moment longer nor could she ever look him in the face again, in case he had guessed. What had she said to him? Had she given herself away?
“I’m going,” she said in a choked voice. “I’ve got a headache.”
“Are you going to bed?”
“No.”
To shut herself up in a stuffy room would do her no good. She wanted to find some spacious and quiet place where she and her troubles would seem small. She would change her frock and shoes and slip up to the downs. Up on Chawton Beacon, where the wind whistled through the harebells, she would be able to cry as much as she liked. She would stay there all night and never see him again.
Solange was offering eau-de-Cologne, and insisting that it all came from washing Tango on a hot afternoon. But they both knew that the headache was a myth. The image of Hugo hovered between them, beloved by the one and contemptible to the other. Solange thought, as Marianne left her:
“It isn’t as if he’d really ever done anything to make up for being so affected. Only a few rubbishy plays. It isn’t as if he’d made a great discovery or anything like that.”
She went on cutting roses and feeling for buds and singing so loudly that the three elder women beside the fountain said to one another:
“How happy that child sounds!”