The Dawn of Reckoning (15 page)

Nothing, she told herself, as she sat at the dinner-table, looking dimly
across the sparkling arena of silver and cut-glass, with the red-shaded lamps
sending their warm glow to illumine the faces of the men—nothing would
ever be the same again. She was aware, in a vague half-conscious way, that
decisive moments in her life were passing. The whole orderly routine of
dinner slipped past her like episodes in a crowded dream; miracles were
happening, and one of them was her own outward quietness, when inside her
such commotion was raging. She wondered what would happen if she were to
scream suddenly at the top of her voice. She pictured Philip’s startled face,
the gossip in the servants’ room afterwards, Venner perhaps dropping a tray
of liqueurs in his astonishment…and Ward, calm and statuesque, regarding
her outbreak as some new and interesting form of disease.

Conversation, never Ward’s strongest point, surprised her by its
occasional vividness. He was different; he
was
different; he was a
grown man now, touching a chord in her that had never been touched before and
that racked her with exquisite agony. He brought back to her mind those
childhood days in a far country; memories vast yet simple, clean and naked as
pain…And meanwhile Philip chattered politics and discussed his prospects
for the next election.

As she had guessed, Ward spoke hardly at all about his
experiences in the South. Philip, indeed, did not give him many chances of
doing so; he seemed immensely glad of the opportunity to discuss the tangled
intricacies of political tactics with one who, after so long abroad, might be
expected to thirst for them. “If the Government throws out the
amendment…then a dissolution…general election…If, on the other hand…”
This sort of thing made Philip as excited as it was ever possible for him to
be. He absently collected cutlery into a heap around his wine-glass as he
expounded, and every now and then he tapped the table lightly with one finger
in emphasis. A curious enthusiasm filled his eyes as he steered carefully
through the meshes of a somewhat technical argument; Venner kept filling up
his glass with port and he drank automatically.

At last Ward remarked, half-smiling: “I’m sure Mrs. Monsell can’t be
interested in all this, Philip. Don’t you think we’re boring her rather?”

Philip glanced round as one roused suddenly from an intoxicating dream.
“My wife is very interested in politics,” he said distantly. “Aren’t you,
Stella?”

She had been sitting there, not in the least bored (for she had not been
listening), but entranced by her own particular dream. Something prompted her
to reply: “Interested, yes, but not thrilled.”

Ward looked up suddenly and gave her a quick glance, half-puzzled,
half-sympathetic.

When they went into the drawing-room, it became apparent to
Stella, at any rate, that Philip had drunk more than was good for him Not
that he had drunk a great deal, but that alcohol, even in very small
quantities, had an immediate effect on him. It did not make him brilliant and
vivacious (or he would have been more of a success at public dinners) nor did
it make him noisy or boisterous; it merely afflicted him with an irresistible
and undignified tiredness. And now, as he painfully settled himself in an
arm-chair, he struggled hard to prevent the fuddled glaze from obscuring his
eyes.

Stella found conversation with Ward rather difficult, for he kept
appealing to Philip, as if unwilling to be dragged into a
tête-à-tête
with her; and Philip, after much laborious repetition, could be induced to
reply no more than vague affirmatives. His eyes were expressionless, and his
whole posture was one of limpness and stupefaction. Ward, seated a little to
the rear, would not be able to observe him so accurately, and Stella was glad
of this. Her chief aim now was to prevent him from realizing that Philip was
fuddled. She felt ashamed; and it was the first time in her life that she had
been ashamed of Philip. When he had broken down in the middle of the Loamport
speech years before, she had been passionately sorry for him; even at the
recent football-match fiasco she had been no more than disappointed. But now,
viewing his crumpled figure, more undignified than ever because of the
immaculateness of his evening clothes, she felt, not sorry, nor disappointed,
but bitterly, poignantly ashamed. She would have felt less shame if he had
come home roaring drunk in a taxi after a night at a cabaret, if his clothes
had been torn after a
mêllée
with a night-porter, or if, on the
threshold, he had begun to knock her about. She could have forgiven
boisterous animal spirits, however objectionable; it was this harmless placid
tippling, this refined domestic half-drunkenness, that forced on her the
deepest sense of personal humiliation.

She talked almost frantically to Ward, for she knew that Philip’s
condition would not last long. She discussed the weather, politics, family
affairs, Hungary, anything she could think of to stave off a recognition by
Ward of what was the matter with Philip. And then, when she began to think
she would succeed, Ward leaned forward towards her, and said, lowering his
voice to a whisper: “I hope you won’t think me rude if, as Philip’s friend
and also a medical man, I ask a rather personal question. Why does Philip
take alcoholic drinks when he obviously can’t stand them?”

She flushed hotly, and for a second was in the mood to snub him as
crushingly as she could. Then, to her own infinite surprise, a feeling of
calm satisfaction came over her; she was glad he knew; it was so much easier
for her than if she were still trying to disguise the truth from him.

She answered, very calmly: “I don’t know. I suppose he doesn’t realize…”
She paused, and then found herself defending Philip almost instinctively. “He
doesn’t often take too much, and of course he’s never really—really
drunk…It was that argument he had with you—he got excited and didn’t
realize quite what he was drinking.”

Ward nodded understandingly. “He ought to be teetotal. Otherwise he’ll
make rather a fool of himself some time when it matters.”

She went on, in the way in which a fond mother describes the intricate
characteristics of her child’s minor ailments: “I don’t know why it is that a
few glasses of port affect him…Other people can drink twice as much. I can
myself. I was brought up on Hungarian wines that are nearly as strong as
whisky.”

He answered: “Were you! It’s a good job
I
wasn’t. I should have
murdered somebody by now if I had been. Do you know why I’m teetotal? It’s
not any faddist reason, I assure you. It’s because I’m afraid of what I
should do if I got drunk. I’ve got a hard enough job to keep myself properly
controlled as it is, without loosening my grip with alcohol. You don’t know
me, Mrs. Monsell. But take my advice, anyway—get Philip to knock off
strong drink.”

“I will if I can,” she answered. And she added, whimsically: “All the same
I can’t imagine Philip ever getting drunk enough to kill anybody.”

There was an almost regretful note in her voice. And at that moment, when
perhaps both of them were wondering what on earth they were going to talk
about, Philip slowly and rather ludicrously opened his eyes. “Ah, what was I
saying?” he began vaguely, blinking round him. “I forget…Anyway it doesn’t
matter…Suppose we have a little music? Stella, my dear, would you mind
singing something for us?”

And Ward added meaningly: “Yes, do.
Please
.”

She went to the piano and sat perfectly still for a moment, wondering what
she should sing. At last, smiling slightly, she began, not a Hungarian song,
but an English ballad of the sentimental drawing-room variety. She sang it
flagrantly, blatantly, emphasizing all its trite phraseology and equally
trite cadences. And at the conclusion she swung round on the piano-stool and
asked Philip what he thought about it.

“Rather pretty,” he replied vaguely.

“And you?” she went on, turning inquiringly to Ward.

He answered: “My opinion about music is of no value…But personally I
didn’t like it.”

“Neither did I.” She tossed her head and added defiantly: “I don’t know
what made me sing it. I don’t know what’s making anybody do anything
to-night…And…if Philip will only manage to keep awake I don’t very much
care…”

She looked at both of them, one after the other, and her lower lip began
to tremble as if she were going to cry. But on the very brink of disaster she
gave a sharp, hard little laugh and shrugged her shoulders. There was
something uncanny in the suddenness of it, as if she had summoned energy to
throw off fetters of wrought iron and had found them only gossamer.

For over six months they did not see Ward again, except once
when he was lecturing at the Orpheus Hall in Wigmore Street, and they were
among the audience. He had written to Philip enclosing a couple of tickets
and explaining that he had arranged to deliver a series of lectures on his
polar experiences. “I’m rather nervous about it,” he wrote, “because I’m
absolutely no good at public speaking. So I hope you’re not bored…” Philip
read this to Stella and suggested that they should take advantage of the
invitation. “Of course, it’s perfectly true, what he says, he’s no good at
public speaking. But still…”

They went to the lecture. The hall was packed, and hundreds could not gain
admittance. Stella hardly expected to be bored, but she did not expect the
extraordinary success that followed. It was true that Ward did not know the
art of public speaking. But then, he did not attempt to make a public speech.
He just talked—quietly, winsomely, without the merest pencil note, for
just over an hour and a quarter. The intimacy of it all was fascinating. At
the close a mob of enthusiasts waited to ask him questions and chat with him,
but Philip, contrary to Stella’s expectation, did not suggest waiting behind
at all. “He’ll be too busy to bother with us,” he said. “I suggest that we
get some tea and then catch the next train back.”

He seemed curiously discomfited about something.

That was the last time they saw him for many months. He did not write or
call, and Philip, apparently, did not ask him; Stella occasionally suggested
an invitation, but nothing came of it. She learned, however, that Ward had
taken up a private West-End practice in Manchester Square, and was fast
becoming fashionable. This development rather surprised her; she could not
imagine him in the rôle of the smart society medico. “Money,” was Philip’s
explanation. “When a man has such amazing luck as he’s had, he’s a fool if he
doesn’t make the most of it.”

Meanwhile at Chassingford nothing happened. Nothing, she felt, ever did
happen or ever could happen in such a place. Philip toiled on, speechmaking
and writing pamphlets that nobody, so far as she could gather, ever read; his
incessant activities and keen passionless enthusiasm stirred hardly a ripple
on the calm surface of the constituency. In the old days his political
ambitions had stirred her to enthusiasm merely because they had been his; now
she regarded them coldly merely because they were political.

The fact was, both she and he were changing. She was becoming
restless—intolerably and intolerantly restless. There were days when
the sombre routine of the Hall shrouded her in complete and ineffable
melancholy, and there were other days when the serene beauty of the
country-side gave her glimpses of a new world that beckoned her to leave the
old. Days came when she felt that she had so far hardly begun to live, and
nights followed when she felt that she was slowly and painfully dying. The
life of Chassingford had tamed her without her noticing it; now, when she did
notice it, she was more than tamed; she was a prisoner. More and more, as she
lived her life at Chassingford, there came to her the wistful sights and
echoes of childhood, until she almost lived on the shores of the Danube
again, amidst a riot of sounds and colours that gave miraculous ease to her
senses.

“Philip,” she told him once, “I’m simply starving for colour…”

“We’ll have the house painted,” he replied solemnly.

She thought he was joking, but in a few days the decorators came round
-and took possession of the house. His idea of colour was all sombre browns
and greys. Her idea, which she carried out in her own particular rooms, was
orange and black and gold and flaming red. When it was finished she asked him
what he thought about it. He said it hurt his eyes.

She replied quietly: “Do you think heaven would hurt your eyes,
Philip?”

He stared at her uncomprehendingly.

He also was changing. He was developing a pompous, almost a
formidable dignity. He looked out upon the world with calm and unflinching
eyes; in whatever he had set his mind upon he would not give way. “Well, at
any rate, he’s a sticker,” said a jovial political opponent to Stella. “You
can’t help admiring him.”

“Or fearing him,” Stella added to herself.

She did fear him. She feared him because he would not let even failure
fail. His failures now were no longer pathetic to her; they were grim,
sinister, terrible—almost, in a way,
successful
. He had not
conquered adverse fortune; he had wearied her. He was still a joke in
Chassingford, but because he was a stale joke people no longer laughed at
him. When Stella heard his quavering high-pitched voice shrill in the midst
of some village hall a tenth part filled, she did not feel sorry for him
because his audience was so small; she felt appalled by the significance of
the fact that even such an audience was giving him a vague but respectful
hearing. He was actually succeeding, without triumph and without even
dignity, but succeeding nevertheless. But his shrill impotent voice was a
symbol of a success which, if it should in the end come to him, she felt she
would not be able to endure, because the impulse of it was somehow sinister
and inhuman.