The Edwardians (15 page)

“You are making an absurd fuss,” she said, trying to change the tone of the conversation; “to hear you talk, one would think you had spent all your life in a cathedral close. Don't you know how people live? Of course you do. You don't refuse to go to Chevron because you know that Harry Tremaine is Lucy's lover, or refuse to dine with . . .” but here again the name is so august that out of respect for the printer it must again pass unrecorded. “So why, when I'm concerned, behave as though we were living in eighteen-fifty? Because I'm your wife, I suppose,” she scoffed, feeling meanwhile as though she were squealing with terror in a trap.

Something in her imitation of his pompous manner provoked a physical anger in him, an exasperation such as is aroused by a blow on the elbow; he took her by the wrists and shook her backwards and forwards, casting her finally down upon her bed. Gasping, shaken, she gazed at him in speechless terror; violence was an element that had never entered into her conception of life. The luxurious room, the soft bed, the silken coverlet, all gave the lie to such primitive conduct. In a world where manners were everything, what was left to cling to, once manners had gone by the board? once men began to treat their women as women, not as ladies? George himself was almost immediately as horrified as she. He stood over her for a moment, trembling with passion and frightened by his desire to murder; then as his training reasserted itself he awoke to a sense of shame and astonishment that such a scene could occur between people like himself and Sylvia. “See what you've done,” he said; “you turn me into a beast, you make me forget the decencies of ordinary behaviour. But I won't apologise. This is probably the first time there has ever been any honesty between us. We lived on the surface, we never knew anything about each other. You were nice enough to me, and God knows I wasn't difficult to manage. Don't cry like that,” he said roughly, for Sylvia had broken down and was sobbing into her pillows; “I shan't take back a word I have said, for all your tears. You may be thankful that I spare you. I don't spare you for your own sake, or even for my own; you know my reasons. And there is Margaret. We must keep up the farce; we owe it to the child.”

He paused. His rage had sustained him, but now everything seemed to have become fiat.

“What would Clemmie say, if she knew!” he said, wretchedly and absurdly.

He looked at his watch.

“Sylvia, I am going now. Try to pull yourself together. Don't let Sheldon see that you have been crying. Sylvia!” he said, touching her on the shoulder.

He got no reply but an inarticulate murmur. “I shall expect you to be ready to leave London by the end of this week. Did you hear me?”

“I heard you,” she answered.

George had gone; she walked about her room, smiting herself with her fists on the forehead; she looked at the appointments of her dressing table, wishing that her hair-brushes might be made of wood, instead of chased silver, so that she herself, conformably, might be a woman of humble birth, able to run away with her lover, obscurely, without a gong of scandal reverberating through the drawing rooms of high society and echoing in a thousand suburban homes. She even paused in her pacing, to lift the hand glass; she considered it, as in moments of the acutest tension one concentrates on a material object irrelevant to the true preoccupation; it was of Queen Anne design, of octagonal back—she noted the obtuse angles (rubbed smooth by age)—chased with a pattern of Chinese pagodas; she cast it down on the ground in the desire to smash it; but it failed to break, by reason of the thickness of the pile carpet. Mechanically she stooped to pick it up and turned it over, more dismayed by its failure to break than another woman equally superstitious would have been by the shattering of a mirror on a harsher floor. The glass, the carpet, swelled themselves out into symbols of a life she could not escape. Their respective solidity and thickness conquered her. She sank down on her bed and took her head between her hands.

This is the end, she thought, rocking backwards and forwards—for, from the first moment when George had thrown the packet down upon her dressing table, she had known that the game was up. The lovely, delirious game played with Sebastian; in which her passions had been involved; and not only her passions, but also her last challenge to the encroaching years. She had loved Sebastian; she would never again have a lover. In those first moments after George's departure, she scarcely knew whether it was for Sebastian or her finished youth that she mourned. She had been beautiful since the age of seventeen. Since the age of seventeen she had been a Toast. Now for the first time she envisaged the years in which she would be merely Lord Roehampton's Wife. Norfolk, and the tenants' Christmas tree—her imagination, rushing, painted her future in the most, to her, repellent colours. But, as she sat rocking backwards and forwards, her clenched fists pressed against her head, everything reduced itself eventually to the fact that Sebastian was lost to her.

She picked up the letters and looked at them, putting them down again quickly as a few words here and there recalled the precious days and incidents of the past year. She wondered who was responsible for this disaster—what jealous or envious woman, rifling her writing table, bribing a servant perhaps, to get an impression of her keys? All the great scandals were familiar to her; the scandal of the Templecombes, of course, and other stories—stories of angry women risking all their reputation to explore the pockets of a coat thrown down in too great haste; stories of ruthlessness, and of broken liaisons; stories of illegitimacy brutally revealed; stories of terrible scenes between unfaithful lovers, or between husbands and wives. Everybody in society knew of these dark patches on brilliant lives; everybody knew of the sacrifices made in the sacred name of
tenue,
and of the smiles amiably exchanged in public between mortal enemies. They prided themselves upon a social if not a moral conscience. And now the same tragedy had befallen her, and she must meet it in the same way as others had met it.

No alternative offered itself to her mind. She was too well-trained. People in their position—hers, Sebastian's, and George's—did not make an open scandal. It was, simply, unthinkable. Just as the populace knew nothing of the discreet, one-horse brougham that waited outside a certain door, just as the populace knew nothing of the breach that had existed for thirty years between Lord and Lady Templecombe, so must the populace know nothing of the triangular complication between Sebastian and Lord and Lady Roehampton. Each class was bound by different obligations. Sylvia, rocking on her bed and seeking to resolve the stone of desperation that had hardened until within the space of half an hour it petrified her whole mind, recollected the recent case of a man and a married woman who had plotted murder rather than escape together without sufficient financial provision. “Sufficient financial provision”—that was the phrase used by the prosecuting counsel. Sylvia was surprised to find herself laughing aloud. How paltry a thing was money! how could lovers let such a thing stand in their way? How gladly would she endure privations for Sebastian's sake (or so she thought at the moment; but privation to Sylvia meant three instead of fifty thousand a year). But she was bound by far more rigorous a necessity: the creed of her class, of her code. Even Sheldon—in spite of the special, the quite particular, intimacy that existed between mistress and personal maid—‘body-servant,' didn't they call it?—must not know that anything was amiss. She stood up, replaced the unbroken mirror on the dressing table, carefully repaired with powder and rouge any damage that her face had suffered, tidied her hair, and rang the bell.

Sheldon appeared; was informed that her mistress would not, after all, be going out till the evening; was dining early before the Opera and would dress at six; had a headache and would lie down till then; did not wish to be disturbed.

And if his Grace should call?

Lady Roehampton looked at Sheldon as though she had intended an impertinence; as indeed she had.

“I am not at home to anybody. Please draw the blinds. Turn down the bed. Put out a handkerchief dipped in eau de cologne. Take those lilies out of the room—they make my headache worse. Don't come back till six.”

Sheldon obeyed her instructions, then ran upstairs, jammed on her bonnet, and hurried off to Grosvenor Square, in the hopes of finding Miss Button at Chevron House. There had been a bust-up between her ladyship and his lordship; that was evident; and Sheldon meant to be the first in with the news.

At eight o'clock the curtain went up on
Tristan and Isolde,
before a house hushed into the proper frame of mind already by the Overture.

A house—the expression is inaccurate. Upper circles and gallery were full; the stalls and boxes but sparsely occupied. Into the stalls, people trickled in parties of two and four, tiptoeing in the semi-darkness; into the boxes, parties came with less circumspection, having no resentful feet to stumble over, no whispered apologies to make; they came in, with a gleam of light as the door opened, and took their places amid scarcely suppressed chatter and laughter. Sh-sh-sh, came from the circles and gallery, but the disturbers glanced round, although unseen, into the dim amphitheatre as though chidden by an intruder in their own home. As the first act wore on, these gleamings and rustlings diminished and subsided; the stalls filled up; and the house began to await the final chords of the orchestra and the turning-up of the lights, when the full splendour of Covent Garden in mid-season should be revealed.

How dark they were, those minutes filled by the rumble of impending tragedy! A doom-laden ship,—strange, accepted convention upon the stage—when everybody knew that the tiers around the house were filled by the galaxy of London fashion, light-hearted and carefree people who took this in the natural course of the things they had to do. Little clerks, putting aside half a crown out of a weekly wage of five-and-twenty shillings, felt no grievance; they merely awaited the turning up of the lights to admire a spectacle which was as much part of their evening's treat as the music itself. Dr. John Spedding, who had at last brought his wife Teresa to Covent Garden because she gave him no peace until he consented to do so, and who, being himself a sincere lover of music, had taken his seat full of prejudice against this elegant performance, now found himself infected by the general atmosphere of luxury and sophistication, and leant back in his seat definitely enjoying the sensation that around him were hundreds of spoilt, leisured people, soon to be on show like regal animals or plumaged birds, well-accustomed and seemingly indifferent to excited gaze.

Teresa, at his side, could scarcely sit still, such was her impatience. She wriggled herself against him like a kitten, and whispered to know how soon the act would be over. She was terribly bored by King Mark. Hush, said the people behind them, and she subsided, giving herself up again to the warmth and the mysterious presence of all those men and women, nonchalant in their boxes between the dim pink lights of the sconces, which just permitted them to be seen, quiet, silent, and attentive. Teresa Spedding was frankly and childishly fascinated by high life. She had quite a collection of photographs which she had cut out of the newspapers and stuck into an album, so that she was confident she would be able to recognise many of these celebrities although she had never yet seen them in the flesh. She spent a great deal of her time wondering about them; had they any feelings, she wondered? did husbands and wives ever quarrel? did they know how many servants they had, or was all that left to a secretary? did they call the King sir or sire? And were they all dreadfully wicked? It excited her beyond measure to know that she was actually within reach of them: would brush against some of them as they left the building when the opera was over. If only one of them would slip and twist an ankle, so that John might push his way forward professionally—“Allow me, Lady Warwick, I am a doctor—” and then a few weeks later would come an invitation on paper with a gilt embossed coronet, “Dear Mrs. Spedding, it would give me so much pleasure if you and your husband would spend the following weekend with us at Warwick Castle.” Thus Teresa's mind galloped along, until she became aware that the orchestra was playing the finale, and that in a few moments everyone would begin to clap and the lights would go up.

The music ceased, applause broke out, and the curtain came magnificently down, but it must be raised again, and the singers must bow, twice, three times. “Don't clap, John, don't clap,” implored Teresa, in agonies lest her husband's enthusiasm should swell the delaying noise; but like all evils it came to an end, the applause died away, the curtain remained finally lowered, and Covent Careen blazed suddenly into light. It was like the first day of Creation, let there be light, and there was light, thought Teresa, but hastily checked her irreverence. The whole house was full of movement; people were getting up in the stalls; conversation roared; the orchestra was creeping away through a trap-door. The great red velvet curtain alone hung motionless. But Teresa's eyes were devouring the boxes; she clutched John's arm, she pinched it; “Oh John, look, there's Princess Patricia in the Royal box, and Lord Chesterfield talking to her—they say he's the best dressed man in London—,” but Teresa had no time to linger over Lord Chesterfield; her eyes were roaming too greedily; like a child before a Christmas tree, she felt dazzled by the glitter and variety presented to her sight. Tier upon tier of boxes, those dark squares cut in a wall of light. Within them, visible to the waist, sat the queens of fashion and beauty—or so thought Teresa, undiscriminating between the rightful holder and the parvenue—dazzling in tiaras and
rivières,
resplendent in their satins and
décolletés,
they allowed their arms in long white gloves to repose on the velvet ledge, while a fan slowly waved, and their eyes slowly travelled over the house, to find and acknowledge a friend, many friends; and the well-bred minimum of attention was accorded to the men who with suitable gallantry leaned over the backs of their chairs. This, in truth, was the great world as Teresa had conceived it. She regretted only that the men were in ordinary evening dress; somehow she had imagined that they would all be in uniform. Still, the black and white was a good foil; and the ladies gave her no cause for complaint, so generously had they emptied the contents of their safes on to their persons: from head to waist they trickled in diamonds. But it was not so much the diamonds that dazzled Teresa, for those she had fully expected; what she had not foreseen was this coming and going, this interchange of groupings, this indication of familiarity; so that a young man but recently observed in one box appeared in another on the opposite side of the house, and lounged there in the same accepted way; and what delighted her almost beyond control was to see famous people stopping to chat together, Lord Curzon with Mr. Balfour down in the gangway, laughing together as they enjoyed a joke. Now her album of photographs served her well, for many were the personalities she could point out to John; “Do you see, John?” she said, still squeezing his arm, “there in the third box on the left, in the grand tier—there's Mrs. Asquith with the Duchess of Rutland—and in the next box there's Lady Savile and Sir Ernest Cassel,—look, they're talking to Mrs. Asquith now, across the partition—what do you think they're saying?—and there's the Marquis de Soveral with his little imperial—and oh John, look! in the box opposite them, that's Lady Roehampton surely? yes, it must be; I've seen her before, once in the Park—” and Teresa's excitement reached its height, as she contemplated the beauty through her opera glasses and thought that nothing could ever be more exquisite than this apparition of the renowned Lady Roehampton in the framing of a grand tier box. What self-possession, she thought, was expressed in the set of the magnificent shoulders, emerging from clouds of tulle! how divinely her head was poised, under its crown of diamonds! how royally she sat, surveying the house while a faint smile played about her lips! how much Teresa envied her, so calm and languorous and queenly, without a care in the world ! Even the impassive John agreed that she was a handsome woman. And now a young man entered the box, a dark, slim young man, and sat beside her for a moment, speaking to her, but she seemed scarcely to take any notice of him, but turned to another man instead, a foreigner evidently, who came in and bowed very low over her hand; and the dark, slim young man got up and went away.