*       *       *       *       *

Yes, that night I was engaged to Norah Thesiger.

I suppose it was our silence that made Viola and Jimmy aware of us at
last, for presently I saw Jimmy sit up on the floor and take Viola's hand
and squeeze it, and then they got up and very quietly and furtively they
left the room.

And the minute I found myself alone with Norah I proposed to her.

I don't know if even then I should have had the courage to do it if I
hadn't been driven to it by sheer terror. I forgot to say that I was in
Edwardes Square for the weekend and that Norah was not staying with her
sister this time, but with her uncle, General Thesiger, at Lancaster
Gate. And for three days, ever since her arrival at Lancaster Gate, I had
seen the possibility of losing her.

Otherwise you would have said that if ever there was a spontaneous and
unexpected performance, it was my proposal to Norah Thesiger.

But no; it seemed that it had been arranged for me by Jevons, planned
with his customary deliberation and calculation long ago. This may have
been the reason why Norah said she wouldn't tell Viola and Jimmy about it
herself; she'd rather I did.

I thought: I shan't have to tell them till to-morrow. I had to take Norah
to Lancaster Gate in a taxi, and I walked back across the Serpentine
between Kensington Gardens and Hyde Park, spinning out the time so that
Viola and Jimmy might be in bed when I got to Edwardes Square.

I found them sitting up for me in Jimmy's study.

I dreaded telling them more than I can say. I don't know with what
countenance a man can come and tell the woman he has loved (and proposed
to three times running) that he has consoled himself with her younger
sister. I wanted to avoid every appearance of a fatuous triumph in my
success with Norah. And after sticking for four years to my vow of
everlasting devotion to Mrs. Jevons I shrank from the confession of a new
allegiance. On the other hand, I owed it to Norah to declare myself
happy without any airs of deprecation and contrition. And I had certain
obligations to the Truth. Why I should have supposed that the Truth
should have been disagreeable to Mrs. Jevons Heaven only knows. I suppose
these scruples are the last illusions of our egoism. Still, I think that
only an impudent egoist like Jevons could have carried off such an
embarrassment with any brilliance.

As it happened it was taken out of my hands. Jimmy, who had foreseen the
thing itself, foresaw also my predicament and provided for it. As I came
into the room he said, "It's all right, old man. You haven't got to tell
us. We know all about it."

I looked at Viola. She was sitting on part of Jimmy's chair, with her arm
round his shoulder.

"Did Norah tell you, after all?" I said.

Viola pushed out her chin at me and shook her head.

"No, Furny dear, she didn't tell me a thing. It was your face."

"Don't you believe her," Jimmy said. "Your face hasn't anything to do
with it. Your face is a tomb of secrets--a beautiful, white tomb. And
_you_ are all rectitude and discretion. We knew it ages ago."

"How could you possibly know it, when I didn't?"

"Because it's one of those things" (he twinkled) "that other people
always do know."

"Were we as obvious as all that?"

"I didn't say _you_ were obvious. I said _It_ was."

I sat down facing them, and I suppose I must have looked supremely
foolish, for Viola began to laugh and Jevons went on twinkling, not in
the least as if he saw a joke, but with a thoughtful and complacent air,
as if he were turning over the result of some private speculation that
had come off entirely to his satisfaction.

Then she took pity on me.

"He means it was bound to happen. It was the heaven-appointed thing. The
first minute I saw you, Wally, I thought, 'What an adorable husband he'd
make for Norah!' And Jimmy's trying to tell you that we've been hoping it
would come and wanting it to come and waiting for it to come for the last
year."

"I'm trying to tell him," said Jimmy, "that we've been meaning it to
come, and trying to make it come, and seeing it come for the last three
years."

This was a blow at the attitude of romantic devotion, and I had to defend
it.

"Do you believe that, Viola?" I said.

"Of course I believe it if Jimmy says so."

I sent her a look that was meant to say, "You ought to know better;" but
it missed fire somehow. She went on swinging her feet and laughing softly
at me over Jimmy's shoulder. She seemed, like Jimmy, to be contemplating
some exquisite knowledge that she had. And at last she said:

"Aren't you glad now that you didn't marry me?"

I said, "What am I to say to that?"

Jimmy got up and clapped me on the shoulder. "Never mind her," he said.
"Tell the truth and shame the devil. Tell her you're thundering glad."

At that she slid down from her perch and came round to me and patted me
very gently on the head.

"_I_ am, Wally. Jimmy, you're a beast."

And she went out of the room. Jimmy said that nothing she had contributed
to the discussion became her like her leaving it.

She had left it to him.

He got into his chair again and sat down to it.

"Now, perhaps," he said, "you see how right I was."

"When?"

"The first time we ever spoke about it."

"My dear Jimmy, I haven't spoken to anybody about it till to-night."

"We spoke about it years ago," he said.

"We couldn't possibly have spoken about it years ago."

"At Bruges. Perhaps it was I who spoke. I tell you I saw it coming. Don't
you remember I gave you six months?"

"You were out there, anyhow. It's taken three and a half years."

"Because you were such a duffer. You behaved as if you expected the poor
child to propose to you herself. I've been trying to make you see it for
the last three and a half years, and you wouldn't. There never was such
a chap for not seeing what's under his nose."

"Norah isn't under my nose; she's miles above it, and if it comes to
that, I've _seen_ it for the last three years."

He had tripped me up by the heels.

"There you are--that brings it to the six months I gave you."

"I didn't mean I was thinking of it then. How could I be?"

"Of course you weren't thinking of it. But _she_ was."

"Norah? Not she! A child of seventeen!"

"I don't mean Norah. I mean Viola."

"Viola?"

"Yes. You didn't see what the unscrupulous minx was after. She was
plotting it and planning it the first time you were at Canterbury. I got
a letter from her at Bruges--I can't show it you--telling me not to worry
about you--I _was_ worrying about you, though you were such a damn fool,
if you don't mind my saying so. She said you'd got over it all right. She
wouldn't be surprised if some day you married Norah.

"So you see," he said, "you needn't bother about Viola. She knew you
couldn't keep it up for ever."

"Keep what up?"

(I knew; but something in his tone or in his twinkle made me pretend I
didn't.)

"Your wonderful attitude," he said. "She meant you to marry Norah."

"Why--on earth--should she have wanted that?"

"Well--because I worried about you, and she wanted me to be happy. And
because she worried about you, and wanted you to be happy. And because
she worried about the Kid, and wanted her to be happy. And because she
wanted the rest of them to be happy too."

I said I didn't know what I'd done to be so happy.

"You've done nothing. You don't owe it to yourself that you're happy. My
dear fellow, you've been watched, and looked after, and protected for
three and a half years with an incessant care. If you'd been left to
yourself you'd have bungled the whole business. Either you wouldn't have
proposed to her at all, or you'd have proposed three times running when
it was too late."

I pointed out to him that I hadn't proposed three times running, neither
was I too late.

"All the same," he said, "you wouldn't have thought of it if she hadn't
gone to the Thesigers. And she wouldn't have gone to the Thesigers if
Viola hadn't got the Thesigers to ask her. It was a put-up job. I tell
you, my son, you've been guided and guarded. Why, you didn't even see
that the child was grown up till I drew your attention to it."

There was no use pretending I liked it. I didn't.

I said, "Thank you. If a thing comes off it's your doing, and if it
doesn't it's mine."

He said it looked like that.

When I saw Norah in the morning she asked me whether Jimmy had said he
knew it was coming?

I said he had.

"And I suppose he thinks he made it come?"

That, I said, was Jimmy's attitude.

"Well, then," she said, "he didn't. You don't believe him, do you?"

Did I? Not perhaps at the moment, and never at any time as Jimmy believed
it himself. But I do think he meant it to happen. It was one of the moves
in his difficult game. He couldn't afford to neglect any means of
strengthening his position in his wife's family. When it came to
acknowledging Jimmy his wife's family was divided. Portions of it,
strange cousins whom I never met till after my marriage, refused to
acknowledge him at all. At Lancaster Gate he was received coldly in
accordance with the discreet policy by which the Thesigers had avoided
the appearances of scandal. Down at Canterbury there were degrees and
shades of recognition. Norah openly loved him. The Canon had what he
called "a morbid liking for the fellow." Mildred and Victoria tolerated
him. Millicent endured him as an infliction. Mrs. Thesiger concealed
under the most beautiful manners and the most Christian charity an
inveterate repugnance.

I have forgotten Bertie. Bertie, who could generally be found at
Lancaster Gate when he wasn't in his chambers in the Temple, was
apathetic and amiably evasive. He took the line that Lancaster Gate took
when he referred to his brother-in-law as a clever little beast.

And to all these shades Jevons was acutely sensitive.

I have known men (they were of the confraternity of letters) who declared
that they could not understand why a man like Jevons, in Jevons's
position, should have bothered his head for two minutes about his wife's
family. They considered that Jevons's marriage was a disaster, not for
the Thesigers, but for Jevons, and that his only safe and proper course
was to leave the Thesigers alone. But it wasn't so easy to leave them
alone when he had married into them; and to have left them would have
been for Jevons a confession of failure. He might just as well have laid
down his arms or pulled down the shutters of his shop. From the very
beginning, ever since the day when he had met Reggie Thesiger, he
conceived that the whole world of Thesigers had challenged him to hold
his own in it, and he was too stubborn a fighter to retire on a
challenge. Besides, he couldn't have retracted without taking Viola with
him.

And you must remember that he was thirty-two when he married her, and
that he had behind him an unknown history of struggle and humiliation and
defeat. The Thesigers stood for the whole world of things that he had
missed, the world of admired refinements and beautiful amenities, that,
without abating one atom of its refinement and amenity, had persistently
kicked him out. Besides--and this was the pathetic part of it--he had an
irrepressible affection for the Canterbury Thesigers, and it hungered and
thirsted for recognition. It nourished itself in secret on any scraps
that came its way. He met tolerance with grace, and any sort of kindness
with passionate gratitude. I think he would have broken his neck to give
Norah or the Canon or even Mrs. Thesiger anything they wanted. And the
Canon and Mrs. Thesiger wanted Norah to marry me. It wouldn't become me
to say what Norah wanted.

Viola, in a serious moment, threw a light on it. (I had been dining in
Edwardes Square on the evening of the day I came back from Canterbury
after taking Norah down there.)

"I suppose you don't know," she said, "that Mummy and Daddy fell in love
with you first? Well, they did. They wanted you to marry me to keep me
out of mischief, but more than anything they wanted you to marry Norah.
You see, she's their favourite."

And it seemed there was even more in it than that. They wanted to keep
Norah out of mischief too. "Not," she said, "that Norah would ever have
run off to Belgium, even with you." But that little adventure of Viola's
had made them nervous. Norah was inclined to look down on the garrison;
like Viola, she had declared in the most decided manner that she meant to
strike out a line for herself; she wasn't going to follow Dorothy's and
Gwinny's lead (did I say that the two married sisters lived abroad at
their husbands' stations--Gwinny at Gibraltar, and Dorothy at Simla?),
and that for lack of originality Mildred's engagement to Charlie Thesiger
was "the limit."

"It's a good thing, Wally," she said. "It'll knit us all tighter
together. That's partly why we've wanted it so awfully. Do you know that
if it hadn't been for you Norah wouldn't have been allowed to come and
stay with us?"

I said I was sure she was mistaken. Canon Thesiger--

"Oh," she said, "it wasn't Daddy. He wouldn't have minded. It was Mummy.
She never _could_ bear poor Jimmy."

"But," she went on, "you're his friend. And he worked it for you. They
can't get over those two things."

I remember wondering whether deep down in her heart she meant that my
marriage would knit her and Jimmy closer?

I wondered whether Jimmy, in his wisdom, had calculated on that, too?

       *       *       *       *       *

At that time I didn't realize the innocence that went with Jimmy's
wisdom. I think I credited him with insight that I know now he never had.
I know now that, even afterwards--at the very worst--he had no
misgivings. All the Hampstead time, all through the Edwardes Square time
he was happy. And afterwards--well--happiness wasn't the word for it; he
lived in a sort of ecstasy. Which shows how little in those days she had
let him see.

It was in nineteen-ten, their last year in Edwardes Square, that the
tension began. Norah and I were married in the autumn of nineteen-nine,
and we were living in my flat in Brunswick Square. In what I made out
during this period I had Norah to help me, and she had wonderful lights.

I never could keep track of Jimmy's accelerating material progress, but
the Year-Books tell me that his fourth novel came out in the spring of
nineteen-nine, and his first successful play was produced in the summer
of that year, and ran for the whole season and on through the winter, and
I remember that in nineteen-ten he was attacking another novel and
another play, which--But it's the attack that is the important thing, the
thing that fixes nineteen-ten for me.

You cannot go on attacking, for years on end, with concentrated and
increasing violence, and not suffer for it. The first effects of Jimmy's
appalling travail may have been beneficent, but its later workings were
malign. There's no other word for it. In nineteen-ten Jimmy was beginning
to show signs of exhaustion. Not of his creative energy or anything
belonging to it, though he prophesied a falling off after Novel Three,
and declared that he could detect it. Nobody else could have detected it.
The exhaustion was in Jimmy himself, and more especially and fatally in
the Jimmy who struggled against what he called "the damnable tendency to
do the sort of thing your father does."

He couldn't keep it up. He couldn't stand for ever the double strain of
attacking and defending himself against his tendency. There's no doubt
that when he was tired he got careless. I have known him come upstairs
after dinner, entirely sober, but looking rather drunk, with his hair
curling over his forehead and his tie crooked and the buttons of his
irreproachable little waistcoat all undone. I have known him do the
oddest things with chairs and get into postures inconceivable to ordinary
men. I have known him drop his aitches for a whole evening because he was
too dead beat to hang on to them. And Norah, going home with me, would
say, "Poor Jimmy--he does get it very badly when he's tired."

And I have had to see Viola's face while these things were happening.
Sometimes, when he was too outrageous, she would look up and smile with
the queerest little half-frightened wonder, and I would be reminded of
the time when Jimmy had jaundice and she asked me if I thought he would
stay that funny yellow colour all his life? It was as if she were asking
me, Did I think he would keep on all his life doing these rather alarming
things? Sometimes he would catch himself doing them and say, "See me do
that? That's because I'm agitated." Or, "There's another aitch gone.
Collar it, somebody." Or, "I suppose that's what Norah would call one of
my sillysosms." Sometimes Viola would catch him at it and reprove him.
And then he would simply throw the responsibility on the poor old
Registrar down in Hertfordshire.

I have heard him say to her with extreme sweetness and docility: "My dear
child, if I'd had a father and mother like yours I shouldn't do these
things." And I have heard him say almost with bitterness: "Does _that_
shock you? Good Heavens, you should see my father!"

But he took good care she shouldn't see him. I used to think this wasn't
very nice of him. But what can a man do in a case so desperate? There
were risks that even Jevons couldn't take. I used to think that he salved
his conscience by making the Registrar an allowance that increased in
proportion to his income and by going down into Hertfordshire regularly
every three months to see him himself. I used to think that Jimmy's
father must have admirable tact, because he never seemed to have inquired
why Jimmy always came alone. But Jimmy said it wasn't tact. It was pure
haughtiness. The old bird, he said, was as proud as a peacock with his
tail up. I used to think it wasn't very nice of him to talk like that
about his father. And I used to think it wasn't very nice of Viola never
to go with Jimmy on his pilgrimages.

I was with them once when she was seeing him off at Euston, and I said to
her, "Do you never go with him to see the poor old man?"

She turned to me. (I hadn't seen her look stern and fiery before.)

"Wally," she said, "I suppose it's because you're so good that you always
think other people aren't. That _poor old man_ was a perfect devil to
Jimmy. I don't say that Jimmy always was an angel to him, but he's been
pretty decent, considering. He's told me things I couldn't tell you; and
there were things he couldn't tell me. He says he didn't believe in God
the Father when he was little, just because he wanted to believe in God.
He thought God couldn't be anything so frightful as a father.

"That's why he's so awfully fond of Daddy."

       *       *       *       *       *

And so it went on. She swung between slight shocks and passionate
recoveries. One minute Jimmy's manners made her shudder all down her
spine, and the next he would do some adorable thing that brought her to
his feet. Half the time she pretended that things hadn't happened when
they had. And when her flesh crept she had memories that lashed it.

I used to wonder whether this oscillation would slacken or increase with
time. Would she swing on a longer and more dangerous rhythm? Would she be
flung backwards and forwards between fascination and repulsion?

And I would catch myself up and answer my own words, "Of course not. The
poor chap isn't as bad as all that."

Then early in nineteen-ten Reggie Thesiger came home on leave from India.

Looking back on it all now, I seem to see that until he came everything
was going well. The oscillations, even if I didn't exaggerate them,
couldn't have counted. Her heart was steady, and in her heart she adored
her husband. There could be no doubt about it, she adored him. It was
because she adored him that she suffered. Nobody can stand imperfection
in their god.

But then she adored Reggie too.

She hadn't a misgiving. When Norah rushed to her with the news that
Reggie had got his leave, she went wild and nearly strangled poor little
Jimmy in her joy. She counted the weeks, the days, the hours till he
landed. She argued with Norah as to which of them should have him first
and longest when he came to town. Norah told me she didn't think he would
stop long with _us_ if he could go to Viola. Viola was his favourite
sister.

Well, he didn't go to Viola at all. He went first to the Thesigers at
Lancaster Gate. Then he came on to us.

That was all right. We had to arrange our dates to suit the General.

On the Sunday we dined at Lancaster Gate; Viola and Jevons were not
there. Reggie had come up on the Friday for ten days, and he stayed with
the General for the weekend.

He said he could stay with us for the whole week if we could have him.

We were out in the hall saying good-bye, and he was getting Norah's cloak
for her. The hall was full of Thesigers and guests. I remember Norah
saying, "We'd love to have you. But--we promised Vee-Vee to divide you
with her."

And I remember seeing Reggie's face stiffen over the collar of the cloak
as he held it. He said he didn't want to be divided.

It was so startling, she told me afterwards, that she lost her head. She
said out loud, so that everybody heard her, "Not with Vee-Vee?" And
everybody heard his answer:

"Not with Jevons."

Then he laughed.

In spite of the laugh Norah was quite frightened. She asked me, going
home in the taxi, what I thought it meant. I said I thought it meant that
Reggie didn't particularly care about meeting Jimmy. She said, "Well,
he'll have to meet him to-morrow night. I'm jolly glad we've asked them."

She added pensively, "Reggie's quite changed. I suppose it's India."

I knew she didn't suppose anything of the sort. She thought the General
had been telling him things; and I must confess I thought so too. Here, I
may say at once, we did that kindly and honourable gentleman a wrong.

He came to us in great distress the next morning. He said Viola and
Jevons were to have dined with them last night, only Reggie had declared
he wouldn't have anything to do with Jevons. He didn't want to meet him
if he could help it. He said, Couldn't they ask Viola without him? And
they _had_ asked Viola without him, and Viola had refused to come.

"And do you know" (he stared at us in a sort of helpless horror) "he
hasn't been to see her yet."

The poor General went away quite depressed. He lingered with me on the
doorstep a moment. "I'm afraid, Furnival," he said, "Reggie's going to
make it very awkward for us."

He did make it awkward.

It might have been discreet to have put off our dinner. But I knew that
Norah wouldn't hear of it; all the more if Reggie was going to make it
awkward. You don't suppose one Thesiger was going to knuckle under to
another. It wasn't their way. They were loyal to the last degree, but
loyalty was another matter. And if it came to that she was loyal to her
sister.

I shall never forget that dinner. I shall never forget Viola's coming in
with Jevons behind her.

She was, as I think I've said, a beautifully-made woman, with long limbs
and superb shoulders, and a way of holding her small head high. Well, she
came in (they were a little late) with her head higher than ever, and
with a sweep of her limbs, as if her crushed draperies (she was all in
white) were blown backward by a wind; her gauze scarf billowed behind her
as if it were wings or sails and the wind filled it. She was like the
Victory of Samothrace; she was like a guardian and avenging angel; she
was like a ship in full sail breasting a sea. Up to her eyes she was
everything that was ever splendid and courageous and defiant.

But her eyes--there was a sort of scared grief in them.

I had seen fright in her face once before, the day when she came into the
room at Hampstead with Jevons behind her and saw Reggie there. I said to
myself, "She always was afraid of Reggie." But that, for the second that
it lasted, was sheer fright. This was different. There was anguish in it;
and it was only in her eyes.

And Jevons's entry, this time, was simultaneous. Little Jimmy came behind
her, holding himself rather absurdly straight and breathing hard.

And there was Reggie Thesiger waiting for them, standing by the hearth
between Norah and me.

Oh yes, India had changed him. Surely, I thought, it must be India that
had made him so lean and stiff and hard. But he was handsomer even than
he had been five years ago, and he looked taller, he was so formidably
upright and well-built. (As a competitive exhibition Jimmy's straightness
was pitiful. And yet, if his antagonist had been anybody but Reggie, it
might have had a certain dignity.)

I wondered, "_How_ is she going to greet him? Will she lower her flag and
kiss him, or what?"

She sailed up to Norah first and kissed her. She shook hands with me. She
smiled at me (I don't know how she managed it). Then she turned to
Reggie.

She didn't lower her flag. She said, "Well, Reggie," as if they had met
yesterday. There was no kissing or any anticipation of a kiss; they shook
hands, not at arm's length, not in the least as if they had had a
quarrel, but like well-bred people in the house of strangers. It was all
beautifully done.

Then it was Jimmy's turn. Reggie looked at him as if he wasn't there.

If I could have run away with any decency I'd have run rather than face
what came then. But the women--Heavens, how they stood to their guns!

Norah said, "Reggie, I think you know your brother-in-law?" with an air
of stating a platitude rather than of recalling him to a courtesy he had
forgotten.

"I don't think so," said Reggie.

But he bowed. And Jimmy bowed. There was no handshaking, at arm's length
or otherwise.

Viola said, "You _do_ know him. You met him four years ago in my rooms at
Hampstead."

"Did I? I'm afraid I've forgotten."

"You did meet, didn't you, Jimmy?"

"I believe so," said Jimmy, with a quite admirable indifference.

"Anyhow," said Norah sweetly, "you can't say you haven't _heard_ of him."

She meant well, poor darling, but it was a bad shot. It missed its mark
completely, and it drew down the enemy's fire.

"I _have_ heard of Mr. Jevons," said Reggie, and he looked at Jimmy as if
he realized for the first time that he was there, and resented it.

Norah turned positively white. It was Viola who saved us.

"Please don't, Norah. It's really awful for poor Jimmy now he's on all
the buses and in the Tube?"

She referred to the monstrous posters that advertised his play in black
letters eighteen inches high on a scarlet ground.

"How do you feel when you're in the Tube?" said Norah.

"You feel," said Jimmy--he was sitting in one of his worst attitudes,
with his legs stretched straight out before him and his feet tilted toes
upwards. I noticed that Reggie couldn't bear to look at him--"you feel
first of all as if everybody was looking at you; you feel a silly ass;
then you feel as if everybody was looking at the posters; then you know
they aren't looking at them. Then you leave off looking at them yourself.
And if one does hit you in the eye you feel as if it referred to somebody
else, and after that you don't feel anything more."

It wasn't brilliant, but the wonder was he found anything to say at all.

I was thankful when Pavitt came in to tell us that dinner was served. It
delivered us from Jimmy's attitudes.

When it came to dining at our small round table we saw how badly we had
erred in not asking anybody else but Viola and Jimmy. A sixth, a woman
(almost any woman would have done in the circumstances), a woman to talk
to Reggie might have pulled us through. But with Reggie sitting beside
Viola, with Jimmy opposite them by himself between me and Norah (the only
possible arrangement) it was terrible.

Reggie persisted in talking to Viola like a well-bred stranger. He
persisted in ignoring Jevons.

And Jimmy retaliated by ignoring _him_. There was nothing else for him
to do. Only it wasn't one of the things he did well. Beside Reggie's
accomplishment he looked mean and pitiful and a little vulgar. God
forgive me for putting it down, but that is how he looked.

And once or twice, under the strain of it, he dropped an aitch with the
most disconcerting effect.

I often wonder what Pavitt thought of that family party. He certainly
served Viola as if he loved her, and Jimmy as if he was sorry for him,
calling his attention to a dish or a wine which, he seemed to say, it
would be a pity for him to miss--it might prove a consolation to him.

Our agony became so unbearable that the women ended it when they could by
leaving us at the stage of coffee and cigarettes. Then, with us three men
the position became untenable, and Reggie found that he'd have to go out
at nine; he had an appointment with a fellow. And at nine he went.

Viola and Jimmy left us very soon after.

She said, "It was dear of you to have us," not in the least humbly, but
as if they had enjoyed it.

Up to the very last she was magnificent, and even Jimmy played up well.
In fact, when Reggie's perfection was no longer there to damage him he
was rather fine.

It was poor little Norah who broke down. I found her crying all by
herself on the couch in my study when they'd gone.

She said, "Wally, this is awful. It's _the_ most awful thing that could
have happened."

I said, "Oh, come--" and she persisted. "But it _is_. She adored Reggie.
He used to adore her--and--you've seen him, how he was to-night. It'll
kill her if he keeps it up."

I said, "He won't keep it up."

"Oh, won't he! You don't know Reggie."

I said, "It's odd. He didn't seem to mind Jimmy so much the first day he
met him."

"Oh, my dear--he didn't mind, because he never could have dreamed she'd
marry him."

"He'll come round all right when he knows him," I said.

She shook her head and made little dabs at her face with her
pocket-handkerchief.

"That's just it. He thinks he does know him. I mean he thinks he knows
something. I'm sure he thinks it."

"My dear child, however could he? He couldn't even have heard. If you
mean that Belgian business, it was all over and done with four years ago.
Have we any of us thought of it since?"

"No--but I think he had an idea then. He guessed that there must be
something. You see--we never told Vee-Vee, but--he thought it was awfully
queer of her to go off--anywhere--just when he was sailing."

"Well," I said, "it _was_ a bit odd. She must have been awfully gone on
Jimmy."

"She was."

"Poor dear. She said she meant to burn her boats."

"Don't you see--that was part of the burning. She had to break the hold
that Reggie had on her. You don't know what it was like, Wally. She had
to break it or she could never have married Jimmy at all. It was a
toss-up between them; and Jimmy won."

"Is it going to be a toss-up between them all over again, d'you think?" I
said.

"No. It's going to be war to the knife. They won't either of them give in
as long as Reggie's got that idea in his head."

"We must get it out of his head. Surely," I said, "we can do something."

"No, we can't. There's no way of getting it out. It's no good trying to
make a joke of it. You can't joke with Reggie past a certain point. And
it's not as if you could give him a hint. You can't hint at these
things."

"What do you think he'll do?"

"He won't do anything. He won't say anything. He'll just go on like this
all the time, and she won't be able to bear it. It'll break her heart."

Well, though I agreed with her, I still thought that something could be
done. I tried to do it when Reggie got back that night after Norah had
gone to bed. I couldn't of course assume that he had his idea. My plan
was to present Jevons to him in a light that was incompatible with his
idea. It was easy enough to say that Jevons might be rather startling,
but that he was awfully decent and the soul of honour. The soul of honour
covered it--absolutely ruled out his idea.

He didn't contradict me. He just sat there smoking amicably, just saying
every now and then that he couldn't stand him; he was sorry--I might be
perfectly right and Jevons might be everything I said--only he couldn't
stand him; and he wasn't going to. Nothing would induce him to stop with
Jevons. He didn't want to have anything to do with the little beast.

When I said, "I assure you, my dear fellow, it's all right," he only
threw the onus of suspicion on me by replying suavely, "My dear fellow, I
assure you I never said it wasn't."

It was as if he really knew it wasn't, knew something that we didn't
know, and was determined to keep his knowledge to himself.

And when I'd finished he said, "The whole thing's a mystery to _me_. I
thought she was going to marry you." And then--"How she can stick him I
can't think. D'you mind, old man, if I go to bed? No, I don't want any
whisky and soda, thanks."

It was Pavitt, of all people, who threw a light on it when he brought the
whisky.

"Beg your pardon, sir," said Pavitt, "but I believe I never told you that
the Captain called here one day when you was in Belgium."

"Are you quite sure, Pavitt? He called the day I left."

"Yes, sir, I remember his calling the day you left. It's only just come
back to me that he called again, three days after, I think it was. I
told him you was gone to Belgium, and he said that was all he wanted. He
didn't leave no message, else I should have remembered. It was the young
gentleman's likeness to Mrs. Jevons, sir, what fixed him in my mind."

I told Reggie this the next day as an instance of Pavitt's wonderful
memory. "Only," I said, "he forgot to tell me that you called."

He smiled rather bitterly as if he remembered the incident well.

"Oh, I called all right," he said. "I wanted to know where you were."

After that Norah and I made it out between us. Not all at once, but bit
by bit, as things occurred to us or as he suggested them.

He must have begun to suspect something when the time went on and Viola
didn't turn up. Only he thought it was I who was at the bottom of it.
Perhaps, so long as he thought it was I, he had made up his mind that
there could be no great harm in it. He had been all right with her down
at Canterbury those last few days. Anyhow, he hadn't said anything.

Then--when he heard that she had married Jevons--he had his idea. It
wasn't necessary for him to have heard anything else. And then, even if
he hadn't guessed it, there was Jimmy's book, the "Flemish Journal," to
tell him she had been in Belgium with him. And he knew she didn't marry
him till afterwards.

And so, he thought things. If he didn't think them of Viola he thought
them of Jevons. (Even on the most charitable assumption he would consider
his sister's passion for Jimmy a piece of morbid perversity.) And anyhow,
he was left with an appalling doubt.

And he wasn't going to forgive either of them, ever.




IX


That we had made out something very like the truth of it I realized when
I met Burton Withers. For eventually I did meet him. It was at the end of
June, nineteen-ten, in the green room of the Crown Theatre on the
hundredth night of Jimmy's play. That is what I remember it by.

Norah and I were with Viola and Jimmy. Withers had come in with a friend,
an important member of the cast, who was evidently under the impression
that we had never met before, for he introduced him to us all round.
Withers showed tact in not recognizing Viola or claiming the acquaintance
he certainly had with Jevons. He had, in fact, a most reassuring air of
starting again with a clean slate and no reminiscences. This was in the
interval between the First and Second Acts. When the curtain rose on Act
Two, I was alone in Jimmy's box. (Jimmy and Viola and Norah were trying
the effect of the play from the stalls.) And at the next interval Withers
came to me there. It was funny, he said, the way little Jevons had come
on. He didn't suppose any of us had thought of _this_ four years ago when
we had all met together in Bruges.

I said, "Did we all meet together in Bruges?"

"Well, if it wasn't in Ghent. Oh--of course it was at Ghent you and I
met. You hadn't joined the others then."

At first I was hopelessly mystified by these allusions. I couldn't think
what point he was making for or where he would come out. He seemed to be
trying uneasily to get somewhere. Then I saw that he had had it on his
mind that when we had last met he had made a defamatory statement to me
about the lady who had become my sister-in-law, and about a man who had
become a celebrity (I knew Withers's little weakness for celebrities).
And he was scared.

I must have seemed a bit lost among his allusions, for he blurted it out.

"D'you know, I've been most awfully sorry for chaffing you in that
idiotic way--about--your sister-in-law. Silly sort of thing one says, you
know. But of course you knew I was pulling your leg."

I said, "My dear Withers, of course I knew you were."

Of course I knew he was doing nothing of the sort, for Withers slandered
right and left when it wasn't worth his while to grovel, and I had no
doubt now that he believed his own dirty tale when he told it; but he had
been impressed and thoroughly frightened, even at the time, by the
calmness of my bluff, and the little beast was far more afraid of us than
we ever could have been of him now. We could henceforth dismiss Withers
from our minds. He was a "social climber" of the sort that would eat his
own words if he thought they would do the smallest damage to his
climbing.

As for the ladies, General Thesiger's friends, I rather think the General
had settled with them at the time.

You might say we had nothing to fear from Reggie, if Reggie's
silence--and his deafness--hadn't been more terrible than anything
he could have heard or said.

I suppose nineteen-ten ought to stand as the year of Tasker Jevons's
great Play, the play that ran for a whole year after the hundredth night,
that ran on and on as if it would never stop, that, when it was taken off
the Crown stage to make room for its successor, still careered through
the provinces and the United States. It seemed the year of Jimmy's utmost
affluence. If he kept it up, we said, he'd be a millionaire before he
died of it. But it wasn't conceivable that he could keep it up for long.
We thought he'd never write another play like this one. There never would
be another year like nineteen-ten.

I believe that even Jimmy thought there'd never be another year like it,
so far had he surpassed his own calculations, as it was.

But for me nineteen-ten is the year of other things, the things that
happened in the family, the year of Reggie's return and all the misery
that came from it, the year of Viola's struggle--the agony of which we,
Norah and I, were the helpless spectators. _She_ never said a word to us.
It was Norah who conveyed to me the secret, intimate shock of it.

That year Jimmy rained boxes and stalls and theatre-parties for his play
on all the Thesigers (except Reggie) and on all their friends, and on
Dorothy and Gwinny and their husbands when they came back from Simla and
Gibraltar (it was the year of their return too); but we stood behind the
scenes of a tragedy that mercifully was hidden from Jimmy's eyes. It was
the year when Mildred broke off her engagement to Charlie Thesiger. It
was the year when our little girl, Viola, was born; the year when we
moved from our Bloomsbury flat into the little house in Edwardes Square,
taking over the end of the lease and all the fixtures and some of the
furniture from Jimmy. Jimmy hadn't a child, and he had sworn that he
never would have one; he was so afraid (and this fear was the only thing
that disturbed his optimism), so horribly afraid that Viola might die.
But he had outgrown the house in Edwardes Square. It was the year of his
first really startling expansion.

It was the year when he moved into the house in Mayfair.

Why Mayfair we really couldn't think. He said he liked the sound of
it; it made him feel as if he was in the country when he wasn't, and as
if it was the month of May, when there never was any month of May in
England; as if there were a maypole where the fountain is in Park Lane;
and as if processions, and processions of horses, splendid stallions and
brood-mares and thoroughbreds and hacks and great Suffolk punches with
their manes and tails tied up with ribbons were coming past his house to
the fair.

He may have felt like that about it. I put no limits to Jimmy's
imagination; but I suspected him of throwing out these airy fancies as a
veil to cover the preposterous nature of his ambition.

It was also the year when he began to talk about motor-cars and think
about motor-cars and dream about motor-cars at night.

And it was the year in which he and Viola went to the Riviera while the
plumbers and painters were at work on the house in Green Street, Mayfair.
They stayed away all autumn, and at the end of November they settled in.
And at Christmas they gave their house-warming.

It wasn't a large party--only a few friends of Viola's, and Jimmy's
lawyer and his doctor and his agent, and a few picked members of the
confraternity; the rest were Thesigers. If Jimmy had meant to give a
demonstration proving that he could gather the whole of his wife's family
round him at a pinch, he had all but succeeded. I suppose every available
member had turned up that night, except Reggie. The General and his wife
and daughters were there; and Charlie Thesiger and Bertie; and Canon and
Mrs. Thesiger (they had come up from Canterbury on purpose, and were
staying with the General); and Dorothy and Gwinny and their husbands; and
Victoria and Mildred, who stayed with Viola; and Millicent, who came to
us; and a whole crowd of miscellaneous aunts and cousins; perhaps sixty
altogether, counting outsiders.

Norah and I had been away for weeks in the country and had only got back
that afternoon, so we had not seen the house in Green Street since it had
been furnished. It burst, it literally burst, on us, without the smallest
warning or preparation.

Like Jimmy's first novel, it was designed to startle and arrest, hitting
you in the eye as you came in. The actual reception was held in the large
hall, which had been formed by turning what had once been the dining-room
loose into the passage and the stair-place.

So far the architect had done his work well. After that he had been left
to struggle with and interpret as he best could the baronial idea that
had been imposed on him. The hall was panelled half-way in dark oak, and
above the oak the walls were hung with a rough papering of old gold. But
what hit you in the eye as you came in was the oak staircase that went up
royally along the bottom wall. It had scarlet-and-gold Tudor roses on the
flank of the balustrade, and at every third banister there was a shield
picked out in scarlet and gold. And at the bottom of the balustrade and
at the turn a little oak lion sat on his haunches and held up yet another
shield (picked out in scarlet and gold) in his fore-paws. The bare oak
planks of the upper floor made the ceiling, and there was an enormous
Tudor rose in the middle of it, where other people might have had a
chandelier, and little Tudor roses blazed at intervals all along the
cornice. And there was a great stone hearth and chimney-piece, a Tudor
chimney-piece, mullioned, with a shield carved in the centre and the
motto: "_Dominus Defensor Domi_," and on either side the rose and the
grill, the rose and the grill, alternately. There were andirons on the
hearth and an immense log burning, and swords and daggers and suits of
armour hung on the gold walls above the panelling.

And I swear to you that the curtains and upholstery were in tapestry
cloth, the lilies of France in gold on a crimson ground. It was as if
Jimmy had wanted to say to the Thesigers that if it came to being Tudor,
he could be as Tudor as any of them, and more so. Thus deeply had he
absorbed the Canterbury atmosphere.

When she saw the suits of armour Norah squeezed my arm and breathed
"Oh--my _darling_ Wally!"--in an ecstasy that was anguish. Poor Mildred's
plump face turned as scarlet as the Tudor roses with an emotion that we
could not fathom, but judged to be painful.

We had come early with the idea of making ourselves useful, if necessary;
but there was hardly anybody there yet, only two or three guests drinking
coffee or champagne-cup at the long table under the windows, and Jimmy,
who stood in the middle of his Tudor hall, talking to one of the
confraternity, and rocking himself gently from his toes to his heels and
from his heels to his toes again, as a sign that he was not in the least
elated, but only at his ease.

He was delighted to see us, and for quite three seconds he ceased his
rocking and began to twinkle in a most natural and reassuring manner.
Then I remember him scuttling away to greet another guest, and the
_confrГЁre_ gazing after him with affection and turning to us in a sort
of grave enjoyment of the scene. I remember Viola coming up to us and her
little baffling smile and her look--the look she was to have for long
enough--of detachment from Jimmy and his Tudor hall. I remember the dark
blue, half-transparent gown she wore that was certainly not Tudor, and
her general air of being an uninvited and inappropriate guest, and how
she conveyed us to the table to get drinks "all comfy" before the others
came. And when Viola had drifted away, I remember Charlie Thesiger
strolling up to us. The supercilious youth had been, getting a drink "all
comfy" on his own account, and his little stiff moustache was still wet
with Jimmy's champagne-cup above the atrocious smile he met us with.

He asked us if we'd seen the drawing-room.

We said we hadn't, and he advised us to go up and look at it at once,
before anybody else did. "You can't see it properly," he said, "unless
you're alone with it."

I suppose we ought to have been grateful to Charlie for not letting us
miss it, and it was perfectly true that the way to see it was to be alone
with it; there would, indeed, have been a positive indecency in seeing it
in any other way. He had spared our decency. And yet I think we hated him
for having sent us there. It was as if he had sent us to look at
something horrible, at an outrage, at violence done to shrinking,
delicate things.

We looked at it, and we looked at each other. We didn't speak, and I
don't think either of us smiled. I remember Norah going behind me and
closing the door swiftly, as she might have closed it on some horror that
she and I had to deal with alone. I remember her saying then, "This is
_too_ awful!" not in the least as if she meant what we were looking at,
but as if she saw something invisible that lurked and loomed behind it,
so that I asked her what she thought it meant.

"It means," she said, "that Jimmy's done it all himself. He's had to do
it all himself. She hasn't _cared_."

I said, it looked as if _he_ hadn't cared.

She moaned, "Oh, but he did--he did. He's cared so awfully. That's the
dreadful part of it. You can see he has. Just look at those vases and
those cabinets and things. And think of the money the poor thing must
have spent on it!"

"But," I said, "it's so unlike him. His taste for furniture's impeccable.
The old house was perfect. So, in its way, was the cottage."

"I'm afraid that wasn't Jimmy's taste--it was Vee-Vee's. She did
everything."

"She told us _he_ did."

"Poor darling--she wanted us to think he did."

"He appreciated it, anyhow."

"He'd appreciate anything if she did it."

"Then," I said, "why should he break loose like this now?"

"Because she hasn't cared. She hasn't cared a hang. She's left everything
to him. And you can see, poor dear, how he's spread himself."

Oh, yes, you could see. It was as if he had never had scope before, and
now, with no limit to his opportunity, he had simply run amok. It wasn't
that the things he had gathered round him in his orgy were not fine
things. It was the awful way he'd mixed them, yielding incontinently to
each solicitation as it came along. Dealers had been on the look-out for
Jimmy to exploit his fury.

In his Tudor hall he had been constrained to unity by a great idea. But
not here. And reminiscences of the Canterbury drawing-room had suggested
to him that you _could_ mix things. So, using a satinwood suite with
tinted marqueterie and old rose upholsterings (he had succumbed to it in
the first freshness of his innocence) as a base, he had added Boule
cabinets and modern Indian tables in carved open-work to Adams cabinets
and Renaissance tables in ebony inlaid with engraved ivory, and
eighteenth-century gilded bergГЁre chairs to old oak and Chippendale.
CloisonnГ© and SГЁvres stood side by side on the same shelf. He had an
Aubusson carpet in the middle of the floor, and his Bokhara rugs at
intervals down the sides. Norah was sitting on the emerald-green brocade
of an Empire sofa, clutching the gilt sphinx head of the arm-end. It was
a double room, and emerald-green curtains hung at the tall windows in the
front and at the large stained-glass window at the back, and at the wide
archway between. And an Algerian lamp swung from the back ceiling, and an
Early Victorian glass chandelier from the front.

"And the awfullest thing of all is," Norah was saying, "that he's done it
to please her."

"Don't believe her. That's the beautiful part of it."

Viola had come in by the door of the back room and she was smiling at us.

Yet, even as she smiled, she had that look of being detached, of not
caring.

We couldn't say anything--we were too miserable. She looked round the
dreadful rooms as if she were trying to see them for the first time, as
if some reverberation of the horror we had felt did penetrate to her in
her remoteness. She smiled faintly.

"What _does_ it matter," she said, "so long as it makes him happy? It
would be sweet if you'd come down and help us now."

We went down, and the house-warming began.

It was Jimmy who told us what our business was. We were to stand by
visitors, he said, as they came in and break the shock (he had observed
it) of the Tudor hall. If we couldn't break it we must do what we could
to help recovery. He had seen desperate cases yield to champagne-cup
administered during the first paroxysm.