Antic Hay

well,” Rosie answered, “he’s fair, and though he’s quite young he wears a beard.” With her two hands she indicated on her own unemphatic bosom the contours of Toto’s broad blond fan. “A beard! But, good heavens,” Mr. Mercaptan slapped his thigh, “it’s Coleman, it’s obviously and undoubtedly Coleman!” “Well, whoever it was,” said Rosie severely, “he played a very stupid sort of joke.” “For which I thank him. _De tout mon cœur._” Rosie smiled and looked sideways. “All the same,” she said, “I shall give him a piece of my mind.” Poor Aunt Aggie! Oh, poor Aunt Aggie, indeed! In the light of Mr. Mercaptan’s boudoir her hammered copper and her leadless glaze certainly did look a bit comical. After tea Mr. Mercaptan played cicerone in a tour of inspection round the room. They visited the papier mâché writing-desk, the Condor fans, the Marie Laurencin, the 1914 edition of _Du Côté de chez Swann_, the Madonna that probably was a fake, the nigger mask, the Chelsea figures, the Chinese object of art in sculptured crystal, the scale model of Queen Victoria in wax under a glass bell. Toto, it became clear, had been no more than a forerunner; the definitive revelation was Mr. Mercaptan’s. Yes, poor Aunt Aggie! And indeed, when Mr. Mercaptan began to read her his little middle on the “Droit du Seigneur,” it was poor everybody. Poor mother, with her absurd, old-fashioned, prudish views; poor, earnest father, with his Unitarianism, his _Hibbert Journal_, his letters to the papers about the necessity for a spiritual regeneration. “Bravo!” she cried from the depths of Crébillon. She was leaning back in one corner, languid, serpentine, and at ease, her feet in their mottled snake’s leather tucked up under her. “Bravo!” she cried as Mr. Mercaptan finished his reading and looked up for his applause. Mr. Mercaptan bowed. “You express so exquisitely what we——” and waving her hand in a comprehensive gesture, she pictured to herself all the other fastidious ladies, all the marchionesses of fable, reclining, as she herself at this moment reclined, on upholstery of white satin, “what we all only feel and aren’t clever enough to say.” Mr. Mercaptan was charmed. He got up from before his writing-desk, crossed the room and sat down beside her on Crébillon. “Feeling,” he said, “is the im_port_ant thing.” Rosie remembered that her father had once remarked, in blank verse: ‘The things that matter happen in the heart.’ “I quite agree,” she said. Like movable raisins in the suet of his snouty face, Mr. Mercaptan’s brown little eyes rolled amorous avowals. He took Rosie’s hand and kissed it. Crébillon creaked discreetly as he moved a little nearer. It was only the evening of the same day. Rosie lay on her sofa—a poor, hire-purchase thing indeed, compared with Mr. Mercaptan’s grand affair in white satin and carved and gilded wood, but still a sofa—lay with her feet on the arm of it and her long suave legs exposed, by the slipping of the kimono, to the top of her stretched stockings. She was reading the little vellum-jacketed volume of Crébillon, which Mr. Mercaptan had given her when he said ‘good-bye’ (or rather, ‘_À bientôt, mon amie_’); given, not lent, as he had less generously offered at the beginning of their afternoon; given with the most graceful of allusive dedications inscribed on the fly-leaf: To BY-NO-OTHER-NAME-AS-SWEET, WITH GRATITUDE, FROM CRÉBILLON DELIVERED. _À bientôt_—she had promised to come again very soon. She thought of the essay on the “Jus Primæ Noctis”—ah! what we’ve all been feeling and none of us clever enough to say. We on the sofas, ruthless, lovely and fastidious.... “I am proud to constitute myself”—Mr. Mercaptan had said of it—“_l’esprit d’escalier des dames galantes_.” Rosie was not quite sure what he meant; but it certainly sounded very witty indeed. She read the book slowly. Her French, indeed, wasn’t good enough to permit her to read it anyhow else. She wished it were better. Perhaps it if were better she wouldn’t be yawning like this. It was disgraceful: she pulled herself together. Mr. Mercaptan had said that, it was a masterpiece. In his study, Shearwater was trying to write his paper on the regulative functions of the kidneys. He was not succeeding. Why wouldn’t she see me yesterday? he kept wondering. With anguish he suspected other lovers; desired her, in consequence, the more. Gumbril had said something, he remembered, that night they had met her by the coffee-stall. What was it? He wished now that he had listened more attentively. She’s bored with me. Already. It was obvious. Perhaps he was too rustic for her. Shearwater looked at his hands. Yes, the nails _were_ dirty. He took an orange stick out of his waistcoat pocket and began to clean them. He had bought a whole packet of orange sticks that morning. Determinedly he took up his pen. “The hydrogen ion concentration in the blood ...” he began a new paragraph. But he got no further than the first seven words. If, he began thinking with a frightful confusion, if—if—if—— Past conditionals, hopelessly past. He might have been brought up more elegantly; his father, for example, might have been a barrister instead of a barrister’s clerk. He mightn’t have had to work so hard when he was young; might have been about more, danced more, seen more young women. If he had met her years ago—during the war, should one say, dressed in the uniform of a lieutenant in the Guards.... He had pretended that he wasn’t interested in women; that they had no effect on him; that, in fact, he was above that sort of thing. Imbecile! He might as well have said that he was above having a pair of kidneys. He had only consented to admit, graciously, that they were a physiological necessity. O God, what a fool he had been! And then, what about Rosie? What sort of a life had she been having while he was being above that sort of thing? Now he came to think of it, he really knew nothing about her, except that she had been quite incapable of learning correctly, even by heart, the simplest facts about the physiology of frogs. Having found that out, he had really given up exploring further. How could he have been so stupid? Rosie had been in love with him, he supposed. Had he been in love with her? No. He had taken care not to be. On principle. He had married her as a measure of intimate hygiene; out of protective affection, too, certainly out of affection; and a little for amusement, as one might buy a puppy. Mrs. Viveash had opened his eyes; seeing her, he had also begun to notice Rosie. It seemed to him that he had been a loutish cad as well as an imbecile. What should he do about it? He sat for a long time wondering. In the end he decided that the best thing would be to go and tell Rosie all about it, all about everything. About Mrs. Viveash too? Yes, about Mrs. Viveash too. He would get over Mrs. Viveash more easily and more rapidly if he did. And he would begin to try and find out about Rosie. He would explore her. He would discover all the other things besides an incapacity to learn physiology that were in her. He would discover her, he would quicken his affection for her into something livelier and more urgent. And they would begin again; more satisfactorily this time; with knowledge and understanding; wise from their experience. Shearwater got up from his chair before the writing-table, lurched pensively towards the door, bumping into the revolving bookcase and the arm-chair as he went, and walked down the passage to the drawing-room. Rosie did not turn her head as he came in, but went on reading without changing her position, her slippered feet still higher than her head, her legs still charmingly avowing themselves. Shearwater came to a halt in front of the empty fireplace. He stood there with his back to it, as though warming himself before an imaginary flame. It was, he felt, the safest, the most strategic point from which to talk. “What are you reading?” he asked. “_Le Sopha_,” said Rosie. “What’s that?” “What’s that?” Rosie scornfully echoed. “Why, it’s one of the great French classics.” “Who by?” “Crébillon the younger.” “Never heard of him,” said Shearwater. There was a silence. Rosie went on reading. “It just occurred to me,” Shearwater began again in his rather ponderous, infelicitous way, “that you mightn’t be very happy, Rosie.” Rosie looked up at him and laughed. “What put that into your head?” she asked. “_I_’m perfectly happy.” Shearwater was left a little at a loss. “Well, I’m very glad to hear it,” he said. “I only thought ... that perhaps _you_ might think ... that _I_ rather neglected you.” Rosie laughed again. “What is all this about?” she said. “I have it rather on my conscience,” said Shearwater. “I begin to see ... something has made me see ... that I’ve not.... I don’t treat you very well....” “But I don’t n—notice it, I assure you,” put in Rosie, still smiling. “I leave you out too much,” Shearwater went on with a kind of desperation, running his fingers through his thick brown hair. “We don’t share enough together. You’re too much outside my life.” “But after all,” said Rosie, “we are a civ—vilized couple. We don’t want to live in one another’s pockets, do we?” “No, but we’re really no more than strangers,” said Shearwater. “That isn’t right. And it’s my fault. I’ve never tried to get into touch with your life. But you did your best to understand mine ... at the beginning of our marriage.” “Oh, _then—n_!” said Rosie, laughing. “You found out what a little idiot I was.” “Don’t make a joke of it,” said Shearwater. “It isn’t a joke. It’s very serious. I tell you, I’ve come to see how stupid and inconsiderate and un-understanding I’ve been with you. I’ve come to see quite suddenly. The fact is,” he went on with a rush, like an uncorked fountain, “I’ve been seeing a woman recently whom I like very much, and who doesn’t like me.” Speaking of Mrs. Viveash, unconsciously he spoke her language. For Mrs. Viveash people always euphemistically ‘liked’ one another rather a lot, even when it was a case of the most frightful and excruciating passion, the most complete abandonments. “And somehow that’s made me see a lot of things which I’d been blind to before—blind deliberately, I suppose. It’s made me see, among other things, that I’ve really been to blame towards you, Rosie.” Rosie listened with an astonishment which she perfectly disguised. So James was embarking on his little affairs, was he? It seemed incredible, and also, as she looked at her husband’s face—the face behind its bristlingly manly mask of a harassed baby—also rather pathetically absurd. She wondered who it could be. But she displayed no curiosity. She would find out soon enough. “I’m sorry you should have been unhappy about it,” she said. “It’s finished now.” Shearwater made a decided little gesture. “Ah, no!” said Rosie. “You should persevere.” She looked at him, smiling. Shearwater was taken aback by this display of easy detachment. He had imagined the conversation so very differently, as something so serious, so painful and, at the same time, so healing and soothing, that he did not know how to go on. “But I thought,” he said hesitatingly, “that you ... that we ... after this experience ... I would try to get closer to you....” (Oh, it sounded ridiculous!) ... “We might start again, from a different place, so to speak.” “But, _cher ami_,” protested Rosie, with the inflection and in the preferred tongue of Mr. Mercaptan, “you can’t seriously expect us to do the Darby and Joan business,