CHAPTER II
“Deb?—oh, she’ll be all right in December,” said Mrs Phillips to Beatrice, and Beatrice to Trudchen Redbury, and Herbert and Abe to Samson, and Samson to Grandmother Phillips, and Grandmother Phillips to Flo and Martha and Gwendolen. “All right in December....”
“Poor Deb!”
“I think Samson is simply too sweet with her. I’ve never seen anyone so devoted.”
“Of course it’s wonderful luck for Deb that he should be employed at the arsenal, so that he can get home every evening.”
“I don’t believe he’s missed a single evening since they were married—how long is it now? Eight months.”
“It’s such a pity she wasn’t well enough to come to Grandma’s birthday party, I can’t help thinking. You know, it’s important for Samson—Grandma’s so fond of him—always has been—the eldest ... and Deb’s rather extravagant. Well, of course, she’s not used to managing yet—she does her best.”
“I’m afraid you’re right, Beattie. Because if she helped in the garden, the gardener twice a week would have been sufficient. But they have Mills on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. I asked him. And snipping off dead blooms is nothing really ... if you care about flowers. My son’s favourite hobby, too ... one would have thought that Deb—of course, I’m always there to instruct her how I manage about my seeds, but—”
“Gwen and I have promised her to go in every morning for two hours’ sewing. I still have the patterns we had for little Fanny’s things.... Oh, she’ll be all right in December!”
This was early June.... In December Samson’s son was to be born. Samson’s son—no misgiving in the minds of the Phillips that Deb might be just the sort of girl to present him with a daughter instead.... They trusted her to do herbest for the family. “I believe that trusting people is half the battle,” said Beatrice brightly.
Samson had not yet recovered sufficiently from his bewilderment at the discovery that Deb was a liar but no sinner, to spread out the matter clearly in words before her, and ask for enlightenment. Instead, he brooded.... What could have been her possible object, wilfully to blacken her character in his sight? And at that crucial period of her life, too, while he was proposing to her?—“it might have put me right off....”
The magnanimous husband was uneasy whenever he thought about it all. He felt like Falstaff among the lobs and gnomes on midsummer night; a sensation of trickery somewhere; somewhere, somebody laughing; an elusive tweak at his nose....Whyhad Deb said: “I have not been good”?Why, as it was palpably not true?Whyhad she afterwards pleaded for his forgiveness?Why... Samson hated things he could not understand. He went about his home heavily, suspicious that at any instant another such perplexity might pop up to confront him.... He had taken Mab, Queen of the Pixies, for wife....
They had settled down in Hampstead, to be near the rest of the family. He had asked his family to see a lot of Deb, adjudging their influence to be of solid benefit. His “little girl” would have no time to fret after her clever (and immoral) Bohemian friends, if she had always someone with whom to chat; she would probably take to Flo most—Flo was so lively! Really, almost a Bohemian herself (only moral).
And every night they all dined with Mrs Phillips and the Phillips’ grandparents, or else with Hardy and Beatrice, or with Abe and Martha, or with Florence and Gwendolen, who were living together now their husbands were at the Front; or else Mrs Phillips and the Phillips’ grandparents and Hardy and Beatrice and Abe and Martha and Florence and Gwendolen came to dine with Deb and Samson.... “We’re a very united family, you know, Deb.”...
Deb, as hostess, used to combat boredom by a sinister little game especially invented by herself for those occasions. She used to pretend that one dish of the meal—only one dish—was poisoned, by her express orders. It was quite amusing to note which members of the family would eat of it, and which would escape; and which only partially escape by helping themselves very moderately.... Curious that Abe, her special aversion,by some twist of luck,alwayspassed over whatever dish it was that Deb had fixed as lethal.... She realised that it would be hard indeed to kill Abe!
If the Phillips were being particularly exasperating, then Deb’s fancy would carry on the drama through the subsequent stages of her sudden casual pronouncement of the impending doom: “I think it only right to tell you all—forgive me for interrupting you, Grandma—that the curry was poisoned, and you’ve none of you more than a quarter of an hour to live.”
Oh, it was a childish game! Deb, aged twenty-six, wife of Samson Phillips, prospective mother of a Phillips’ heir, mistress of a fair-sized house and garden and two well-trained servants and the gardener three times a week, Deb, anchored in harbour at last, ought to have known better than to divert herself thus idiotically. But—those Phillipses!
It was not as though they disapproved of her. That would have been quite stimulating—to have been the object of violent disapproval, perpetual scoldings and perpetual defiance, hers the slightly supercilious attitude of the bomb which explodes sensationally in a cabbage field ... after all, under such conditions, the bomb is the centre of attention!
But the Phillipses took it so heartily for granted that Deb was one of them; that their cheerful intelligent interests were her interests; their alert and wholesome outlook, her outlook. They were so unaware that other interests or outlook existed; or, existing, that it could possibly claim a Phillips. For they had taken her to the Phillips’ bosom—no, worse, they had absorbed her into the Phillips’ bosom; wrapt her densely round with warm affection and inquisitive solicitude; what Deb did was right; and if it were not quite right yet, that did not matter either, because Deb was doing her best. Inconceivable to them that she should not be doing her best, trying hard, where Samson and the family and the household and the future heir were concerned. Even as they would believe to the end of all time that chocolate pudding was her favourite pudding, so not a doubt existed but that Deb was all right—except when it was natural she should not be all right—and that would be all right in December....
Therefore Deb poisoned them, one by one, and was not even sorry. It was a pity only that there was no one in whom to confide these illicit prancings of her imagination. Samson would certainly not have seen the joke. Besides, she wasrather afraid of Samson. He read the Faerie Queene aloud to her on Sunday afternoons, sitting in the garden, with a rug over her knees and cushions at her back; and sometimes he paused to interpret the more difficult parts of the allegory; and often, playfully, he called her Una—yes, he could do so now, because shewasa pure girl, though he still did not understand why....
There was compensation in her life when Ferdie came round towards six o’clock on dry evenings; exultantly dragged out the hose; and solemnly, but with a kind of red beam shining behind the solemnity, watered the two long flower-beds and the one short one which bounded their half-acre of garden; which was not at all unlike their old garden at Daisybanks, with its one shady tree over the tea-table, and the earwiggy arbour; only the Virginia creeper over the back of the house was lacking; the mat of dark polished ivy was not one-quarter as lovable as the clinging tendrils and late crimson she tenderly remembered.
“Richard is so happy nowadays,“ Ferdie would confide in his daughter, perhaps with a wistful plea for reassurance that he had not been the cause of Richard’s year of wretchedness. “He reads of military history and air tactics all day long.... I believe he thinks himself already a captain in the R.F.C.”
And this also was good to hear.
Of her previous gang of friends, Deb saw only Antonia. Cliffe was forbidden; Zoe—obviously one could never be quite sure what Zoe would say! Her blend of Palais Royale adventure and eighteenth-century interpretation thereof, was perilous, in the presence of Samson or Mrs Phillips or Martha.
And they had all heard of Gillian and her achievements in science, and had heard a vague report, too, that there was something “not quite nice” about her. Celebrities were often like that, of course, and one did not mind a bit; but then—one did not come in social contact with celebrities. They were both too good and not good enough for the Phillips’ standard. Perhaps anyway for the moment it was better that little Deb—“What do you think, Samson?” “I don’t want her to be lonely, but you see a lot of her, don’t you, Beattie? you and the girls and mother? I don’t want her to mope!”
“Oh, we’ll see that Deb isn’t much alone,” promised Beattie, laughing; “I expect she’ll almost wish us away sometimes....”
La llorraine was an impossible visitor. Manon, on the otherhand, as Mrs Dolph Carew, was welcomed by the Phillips, who thought her “quite a sweet little thing” and admired her demure manners and prim foreign enunciation; and chaffed her for her perfectly conventional point of view—for the Phillipses considered themselves too intelligent to be altogether conventional.Moralswere different ... morals could be taken for granted, like Deb’s allegiance to the family, and Synagogues on Saturday, and clean white kid gloves, and a joint on Sundays, and England through thick and thin, and the windows always a little open in the children’s nurseries, and other matters of unalterable standing.
Nell Redbury had entirely taken over Deb’s canteen job, so she was seldom available for companionship. The other Redburys came and went, linked by Beatrice to the Phillipses; Otto, still offended with Deb for her marriage, peevishly forbade Trudchen to instruct her in private succulent recipes for Samson’s delectation. Hedda was not very interesting—perhaps because she tried so hard to be interesting. She pronounced “temperament” with a far-away look and an accent on the last syllable; and lamented how wild and free a demi-maid she might have been had not Gustav Fürth unfortunately made her his wife before she had even time to get properly started. She capped conversation persistently with the two phrases “Je n’en vois pas la nécéssité,” and “Ça n’empêche pas les sentiments,” which really, uttered with the right air of esprit and diablerie, could be made to impart an indecent flavour to almost any subject. Hedda was ... rather superfluous. It was not as though she were definitely musical, like David, or definitely beautiful, like young Nell; or possessed the quaint wit of Hardy; or the charm and vitality of Con. Deb did not care about Hedda. Deb was becoming desperate with boredom ... her condition made boredom not lethargic but a restless agony; the poisoning game had lost any power to relieve those long family dinners, and appeared merely futile; the Phillipses were growing ever fonder and more fond of her. She felt her ego to be a tiny object lost inside an enormous parcel, to which everybody had wrapped round yet another layer, till the Phillipses had put on the final brown paper and string. And Samson abandoned the title of Una, and proudly took to calling her “little Mother.”...
This was an inadequate excuse for her visit to Blair Stevenson’s rooms. But.... “He might have waited atleast another six months ... till December. But Iknowthey are all going to be facetious about that baby!”
Her boredom was solely of the mind. Physically, she was feeling brilliantly well, abnormally vital. Her vitality was not allowed to be idle.... Samson, like so many rigid Puritans, was also a sensualist. And Deb, tired of the game itself reiterated, longed once more for the demi-game which was so much a play of the mind ... a play of two minds; entraining imagination and nimble fantasy and fear and danger ... all the fine shades. Promiscuous adventure had become with her too much a habit to break off with one wrench. The first thought of Blair was an inevitable reaction from “being good.” Inevitably, also, she englamoured her final experience before Samson acquired her as his legal possession, and forgot that Blair had not given great satisfaction, either, in the matter of ... well, ecstasy. Remembered only that he was her kindred in mind; that he had the light twist of humour she so missed; the faculty to play; and to play up ... sometimes a visionist, sometimes a kindly cynic, always the man of deep and great experience ... she was never dull with Blair. And if the missing thrill had been her fault, not his, then perhaps now she was married, things would be different....
Anyway, she was only going to look at his rooms, from the outside ... because he was still away, still in America. She was only going to steal from her cosy dug-out back again to No Man’s Land, so that at dinner with the Phillipses to-morrow, she might console herself deliciously by the thought that she was a secret rebel to that irksome old Phillips’ Illusion. Certainly Blair was still away, or—or Antonia would have mentioned it (would Antonia?). So the expedition on to forbidden territory had the merit of being also perfectly safe.
And yet she might not have gone ... had not general conditions grouped themselves in a way so absurdly conventional that she could not refuse to attend to her obvious stage directions. For duty obliged Samson to stay away for a night; and this fact he paraded with so much pomp and formality and vexation, made such vigilant arrangements for the disposal of his little wife’s loneliness, and reassured her so often as to his certain return the following night, that the comedy of the deceived husband suggested itself automatically—to anyone whose brain worked like Deb’s. And then Abe rang up from a call-office to say that Martha (whom Samson’scare had ensured as a companion for Deb that night) had a bilious attack, and did not want to go out, and would Deb come to her instead, or should they let Florence know to go round? Deb herself, being at that moment in the bath, did not answer the telephone, but received the information from a breathless housemaid, who thought the telephone “a nasty thing,” liable at any moment to explode, so that she never listened long enough to receive and deliver a message as it was given. Deb did not bother to turn off the taps, but called back carelessly through the rush and splutter, that she’d expect Florence and would run round to see how Martha fared in the morning. She repeated this twice; and turning off the water a moment later, heard afar off the voice of the housemaid explaining that Mrs Samson Phillips would go round to Mrs Abe Phillips, and expect to see Mrs Herbert Phillips in the morning....
“Muddler!” reflected Deb. And then she smiled ... all the banal mechanism was so absurdly in her favour—husband away—a muddle on the telephone—suppose she assumed that her bath-water had run on a minute or two longer, swamping all sound, then she would apparently be justified in her late appearance at Martha’s by an after explanation that she had remained at home waiting for Flo, according to arrangement. It seemed a pity to waste all this most excellent clockwork on an appointment with last year’s shadows in Jermyn Street. But still, even Blair’s wraith might be more amusing than a surfeit of Abe or Flo.... Deb never bothered to resist the guidance of external circumstances....
Straight to Jermyn Street ... the servants would believe she had gone round to Martha.... Then an hour later she would appear at Martha’s, saying reproachfully that she had been waiting all the time for Flo.... Nobody would bother to verify the discrepancy in time; the loss of an hour....
So—straight to Jermyn Street ... just for the fun of it! Just for the fun of huddling herself in a disguising cloak, and once again creeping with awed feet along that silent, mysterious avenue where “men of the world” abode ... for the fun of gazing wistfully up at the imperturbable stone frontage behind which playtime lay forgotten ... for the fun of being once more in mischief, dreading discovery, thrilling at her own daring ... for the fun of flouting the Phillips’ Illusion!
“Heisstill in America,” for his windows showed sombre. But she remembered that in these days of air-raids, the erringwoman, creeping back to her past, could no longer expect to see the welcoming gleam from her lover’s lamp—or candle—or electric light.... It was still possible that Blair was at home....
But of course he was in America!
Crouching against the pillar at the foot of the steps, it struck her how in picture she resembled her private and particular horror as she had once described it to Gillian—the wanton always and inevitably “left,” outcast in the rain and the cold, while inside husband and wife contentedly read aloud the Faerie Queene....
“I only need the baby under my shawl....”
And suddenly she flushed crimson, there to herself in the dusk; and in secret shame sprang quickly to her feet, “I’m going home—to Flo, I mean—”
And banality, stage-manager till the end, at that moment smartly brought up Blair Stevenson to the foot of the steps; and suggested he should switch on his torch to aid his search for the keyhole—the flare of light swept across Deb’s face.
Deb arrived at Martha’s, wondering if anyone so virtuous as herself had ever inhabited Hampstead or the universe. The scene with Blair had been a most astonishing one. Not only did he subtly convey to her his refusal to meet her on the old terms of play, but he rather more directly than usual put to her the choice of being extremely good or—or extremely bad. Blair—who of all men had seemed to acquiesce in the demi-game for the demi-maid! Blair, who was practically the inventor of fine shades.... “Quite so, my dear—but now—” he lightly touched the wedding ring on her finger.
“Doesthatmake a difference?”
The slice from the cut loaf....
Almost crude, from Blair!
“Don’t look so taken aback, child.... Deb, what did you expect? Come, let’s talk it out, you and I.”
So they sat on the narrow stone balcony jutting over the street—and side by side, without a touch between them, had talked ... about touch, and about play, and marriage, and good old times, and loaves, and the demi-game, and the point of view of the man....
“You can’t go all the way, and then half way back, Deb. Nor will you find a partner to step that dance with you. Our old instinctive obeisance before the maiden doesn’t hold good before the wife, so why should I—or any man—be content with half?”
“I thought you had enjoyed it ...” whispered Deb.
“You were always ... quite charming, dear. But—put it like this: supposing there had been no one else for me, during our friendship, do you think then, that our friendship as it was would have been enough?”
“For me!”
“For me?”
“Then there was—someone all the time?”
“Indeed there was ...” his smile entered her into his confidence.
“I don’t mind ...” said Deb uncertainly.
“Of course you don’t. But—now, there’s no reason, is there, why you shouldn’t be that somebody yourself?”
She shook a doubtful head.
“I love your mop of hair, Deb—I’m glad you cut it.”
“I wanted to look like a boy—”
“You look the most girlish creature that ever plagued a man with promises.”
She interrupted with a quick: “I never promised anything.”
“Not with your mouth, Deb. Not with speech, rather.... How am I now to wind the thick black tresses round your throat, Deborah?”
“You’ll have to abandon that pretty old-world pastime—” flippantly. “Or take the bell-rope.”
“Will I have to abandon pastime altogether?”
“It’s for you to say.”
“For you to choose—all or nothing ... dearest.”
She said petulantly: “I didn’t come here for these ponderous life-or-death choosings—I came for ... for Japanese lanterns dancing in the tree-tops.”
“That sort of thing. Yes—
‘A tinkering with the lute of loveBy a nervous hand in a padded glove.’”
‘A tinkering with the lute of loveBy a nervous hand in a padded glove.’”
‘A tinkering with the lute of loveBy a nervous hand in a padded glove.’”
‘A tinkering with the lute of love
By a nervous hand in a padded glove.’”
He broke off, shrugged his shoulders, gesture which conveyed without insult: “Ça ennui, à la fin....”
Then still without touching her: “Well—is it to be the faithful wife?”
“I think so,” said Deb, and added politely: “But thank you very much indeed for having been so kind to me in the past.”
“—Or may I have the privilege of loving you as much as I have never dared to love you?” he continued, unheeding her reply.
Deb slowly turned her head to look at him. A very wan moon shivering through the darkness, helped her scrutiny.... She laughed softly: “You don’t love me one bit, Blair. Nor are you likely to.”
“If I told you how much,” murmured the diplomat, “I should influence your choice unfairly.”
“That’s exactly what Samson said when he wouldn’t take my hand before proposing to me. Oh dear—I suppose it will have to be Samson—and everlasting virtue—and dinner with my mother-in-law to-morrow. There is no choice, Blair—as things are ...” and she sighed, thinking of December. “If it weren’t for family claims, I might ask you to be godfather, Blair....”
“I see.”
Abruptly he stood up.
“If you don’t intend to burn your boats—then it’s too late and too dark for you to be sitting alone with me here. Run home, little mother—silly child, you need a lot of looking after, don’t you?”
He thrust such whimsical tenderness into the inflexion “silly child” that she forgave him “little mother,” as she would never forgive Samson. But she wished she had been the first to think of going home....
“We part good friends, Deb?”
And she, demurely: “My At Home day is on second Sundays.”
And they laughed into each other’s eyes—excellent friends.
So perhaps for the first time in her life, Deb had definitely underlined a previous decision, instead of cancelling it. In marrying Samson, she was “being good”; in her refusal tolapse from fidelity, she was still “being good”.... Incredible! Her pleased and proud astonishment had hardly subsided, when her husband returned late the following afternoon.
“I rang up last night, trunk call, just to see if the little woman was all right without me,” he remarked fondly, over the fish; “it was about nine o’clock, but the line must have been out of order—I couldn’t get a reply.”
“I daresay the line was all right, but cook was out, and I simply can’t get Annie to realise that the ’phone isn’t a wild beast. She was probably cowering under the kitchen table, while it rang.”
“But you would have answered it if it had rung?”
“No—I was at Marty’s.”
“Not at nine o’clock. I dropped in just now to see Abe on business, and he said you didn’t turn up till twenty-five minutes past ten, because of some mistake in a message. If you were at home and didn’t hear the ’phone bell yourself, you shouldn’t be so quick to blame Annie. I believe in beingjustwith servants, Deb. Or—weren’t you at home?”
She lost her bearings. “Oh ... I don’t know....”
The phrase irritated him—reminded him of a previous occasion when she had used it ... a dialogue on their wedding night.... If Deb were altogether to be trusted ... he was not the man to ask questions when once he trusted his wife. But Deb—Deb had not been like other girls. So Deb was not like other wives. And now, the minute he left her—
Stale type of suspicious husband, Samson glowered, pulled his moustache, meditated, decided to pass over the incident, changed his mind—and broke out:
“Look here, Deborah—I’m sick of all this shifting about. It all goes back further than last night. I’m going to get to the bottom of the matter. You’ve got to give me a plain answer to a plain question. Why did you tell me a year before I married you, that you weren’t a good girl?”
Beat back through all that undergrowth? back and back—tangled motive, and reaction, and example, the example of Jenny Carew, once—but that was all over ... a word read at a critical moment ... moods, and the love of whirlwind disguises ... mischief—boredom.... Yes, yes, further back still ... influence, of course—the influence of Cliffe Kennedy, of Gillian.... Well, but that was recent—andbehind that? The undergrowth thicker, thickening ... her innate recoil from stinginess; the girl who will not give.... To and fro her mind rushed and stumbled with a snapping of twigs in the undergrowth ... trying, obediently trying, to find outwhyhad she told that silly senseless lie ... the Phillips family—fear of being sucked into respectability—fear of the fate of the wanton—fear of wasting, of not being wanted.... Aunt Stella.... And the scene with Ferdie.... If they did not believe her good, she would at least be bad.... That look in Blair’s eyes when he thought—no, that was afterwards.... Women, everywhere women ... and chastity which was endless vigil.... Richard crying with his head in her lap.... So she married Samson, yes, and meant to be decent to him—if she could not be bad, she would as least be good—good—good.... So she married Samson, now confronting her in the attitude of fanatic orthodoxy, waiting to “get to the bottom of it”—of what? Of all her life, and the lives stretching behind her, and the Cosmos that had shaped her—the entire matted web of cause and effect? All this? How could she hope to drag his understanding in her wake? His understanding that was such a thoroughly awkward shape—unpliable, granite-hewn, rigid corners and lumps, bits of lichen in all the crannies.... Why, she could not even push through the labyrinth herself, with all her squirrel facility....
“Give me plain answer—”
Plainanswer? And suddenly Deb realised the impossibility of even trying; she was too weary; weary of muddle, weary of herself. There was no plain answer to anything—in her language; no answer that was not plain—in Samson’s. So again she just said, replying to his question: “I—don’t—know.”
“But you must know.”
“I mean—you wouldn’t understand, even if I told you.”
“There ought not to be anything to tell. A good wife has nothing to tell her husband....”
Deb laughed ironically—“Well, and I’ve nothing to tell you, so it’s all right.”
“And we had such a jolly talk—and laughed—and sat side by side—and no harm at all,” she whispered to her memory of the half-hour on the balcony with Blair. “And I meant to be so nice to Samson ever afterwards.”... But how wouldSamson interpret a confession that she had not heard him telephoning, because she was at that moment visiting Blair Stevenson? It would be rather fun to hear him thunder the inevitable accusations. And yet—and yet—Deb was conscious that she had rather outgrown this sort of cheap fun—outgrown masquerade—outgrown rebellion. She wanted her child, Samson’s child, to be born in this harbourage of comfort and tenderness and soft wrappings and people to make things easy—yes, even the Phillips family. After all, it would be a Phillips’ infant; and they were kind—always kind. She could not face the shawl-and-cold-stone-step business, with a baby to be born in December. Deb looked at Samson, her eyes very dark and grave.... Should she propitiate him? If this time—then for always. Can you do it, Deb? Kick away indecision and folly and petulance, little passions and the big passion?... “Suppose I went to Blair altogether, as he has asked me to come?”... And for the kiddie—what? No Man’s Land again, a thousand times worse than her own experience of the between-region; the outer edge of things; no established identity.... What was the old game they used to play at Daisybanks? She and Richard and the Rothenburg children?—Touch Wood ... Touch Wood ... and (triumphantly) “Home!”... But oh, the awful dogged exhaustion of being chased without a blessed knowledge of “home” to be gained at a dash.
Deb made up her mind.
Then she crossed the room to her husband, and put both her arms round his neck—he was looking more than ever like Oliver Cromwell, with his features set into those harsh lines—and propitiated him. Whispered futile childish explanations of her conduct the night before ... dawdling about in her room till late—knewshe was naughty to dawdle—didn’t care!—heard the ’phone bell and was too lazy to go down to answer it.... “Didn’t know it was you, Samson ... please! Thought it was Marty being cross at the other end ’cos I was keeping them all waiting.... Sorry! very sorry.... Oh, do pull out those furrows on each side of your mouth—one could grow potatoes in them.... Samson, don’t you believe me?” Head snuggling and rubbing his cheek——
It was so much less bother this way—the way of least resistance. And anyhow, she had started all wrong, years ago, from the very beginning. Let others beat out the pioneer track—hers to make “home” for the little daughter. “TouchWood,” “Touch Wood”—and already Samson was smiling at her, fondling her ear.... He did not quite believe her; he would recur to his suspicions later on; but for the moment Deb’s sweet ways had placated him. He thought: “She is growing ever so much more tractable, with happiness....”