“How old?” He hesitated, as if puzzled, then gave a small wave of the hand. “Constance, I am ancient beyond belief. I am thirty-nine years old.”
Constance, who had consulted Gwen and who knew he was forty-three, was encouraged by this. She lowered her eyes, then looked up at him boldly.
“Oh, you are too young,” she said in a charming manner. “I feared you would be.”
“Too young? Constance, you flatter me. I think of myself as a graybeard, my dear, particularly when I am in the company of such a delightful young woman as yourself. Too young for what?”
“Do not tease me,” said Constance. “I am not fishing for compliments. I ask for good reason. I wondered, you see, if you might have known my mother. Her name was Jessica Mendl before her marriage. She was a Jew.”
This was one of her trumps, and the second it was played, Constance knew the trick of gaining attention had been won. In the first place, as she knew it would be, this information was unexpected. In the second, it raised a topic usually barred.
Stern might not practice his religion; on the other hand, he made no attempt to disguise he was a Jew. His race, however, was never discussed to his face. To Constance’s delight, Stern frowned.
“I am sorry, Constance. I do not understand.”
“It is very simple.” Constance leaned forward. “My mother was Austrian. Her family lived in Vienna, I believe. She came to London to study art at the Slade, and while she was there she met my father. They married. Of course her family were appalled. She had been living with cousins in London. They closed their doors to her. She never saw her parents again.” Constance paused. “I was born a year after the marriage. Not long after that, my mother died, as you probably know. It is foolish, perhaps, but I often feel I should like to know more of her.”
A reminder, just the most delicate hint, of her sad status as an orphan. Constance was careful not to overdo it, since Stern was not a sentimental man.
“Are you certain of this, Constance?” He was looking at her now with an expression of disbelief. “I always assumed … I certainly never heard—”
“Oh, no one knows,” Constance replied quickly. “Not even Gwen. My mother died long before my father ever went to Winterscombe, and I doubt he would have spoken of her there. He could have been ashamed—anyway, he was a secretive man.” Constance, now sure of Stern’s attention, lowered her eyes. “I was told by the woman who nursed me when I was a child. She had looked after my mother before she went to the sanitorium. She hated me, and I hated her. She said it to wound me, I think. She probably thought she could make me ashamed. But she didn’t. I was glad. I was proud.”
“Proud?” Stern gave her a sharp glance, as if he suspected insincerity.
“Yes, proud.” Constance looked up at him. “I should hate just to be English. The English are so smug, so pleased to be parochial. Parochialism is their chief religion, I think. I have always felt like an outsider—and glad of it. Do you ever feel like that? But no, of course you do not. Forgive me. That was both stupid and rude.”
There was a brief pause. Stern looked down at his hands. When he looked up at Constance once more, the expression in his eyes disconcerted her. For a moment she had the feeling that Stern knew what she was about, that her little tricks and ploys made him angry. He appeared to hesitate. Constance waited for some cutting reprimand. Yet it did not come. When he spoke, his manner was calm.
“My dear, you are intelligent. Do not pretend to a stupidity you do not possess. Look at these people.” He gestured behind him. “Look at me. I am everything these people loathe and distrust—can you doubt that? I am tolerated, occasionally even sought after, because I can be of use and I am not poor. My abilities are at these people’s disposal because I choose to make them so. If they wish to believe I act from the profit motive solely, why should I care? Their opinions are a matter of indifference to me. I
pass,
my dear Constance, no more than that—as you must certainly know. And no, Constance, I am not acquainted with any Mendls of Vienna. Perhaps I am too young, as you say. More likely, they and their London cousins moved in more exalted circles. The people I grew up with did not send daughters to study art at the Slade. I am a Whitechapel Jew, Constance. My father was a tailor. I cannot help you.”
Constance was silent. Stern’s words made her feel small; perhaps he had intended them to do just that. She hesitated. She decided it would be better not to pursue the matter of her mother. Her mother, in any case, did not greatly concern her—had she not always thought of herself as her father’s child? Constance swiftly decided to alter her line of attack.
“These people?” She turned to look back across the drawing room. She made the question sharp. “These people? Not all of them, surely? You can hardly mean to include Maud.”
She stood up as she spoke. As she well knew, the reference to Maud was daring on the lips of a girl. It was rude, in that it implied reproof. And, most perfect of all, it brought out into the open that other aspect of Stern’s life which was never discussed to his face: his sexual relationship with a woman Constance addressed as Aunt Maud.
Constance now contrived to speak to Stern not just as a family friend, or a Jew, but as a man. Lest he should be in any doubt of that fact, she fixed her eyes upon his. She passed her tongue across her lips. She bit them so that they reddened.
An old trick. Stern had possibly been about to take offense. Slowly, his expression altered. He looked at Constance intently. He seemed amused, yet a certain speculation could be detected in his eyes.
Constance, feeling stronger now, met his gaze. She examined him: the beautifully shaped skull, the clean-shaven olive skin, the foxy tone of his hair, the narrow-set and watchful eyes, the mouth, which she judged sensual, and the strong nose. She liked that nose, she decided, and she approved that face. She liked the luxury and flamboyance of Stern’s clothes—so much more fun than the drab conventional suits of the Englishmen present. She liked the fact that he was born a tailor’s son in the East End and had made his own way in the world—for was not that just what she intended to do?
She liked, she found, everything about Sir Montague Stern: his sharp intelligence, his foreignness, his exoticism, the lingering scent of cigar smoke on his jacket, the whiteness of the exquisite handkerchief that protruded from his breast pocket, the flash of gold at his cuff.
She liked the richness of his voice and the anger she had glimpsed earlier in his eyes; she liked the fact that he did not belong, any more than she did, to this hidebound, narrow-spirited world in which they were both forced to operate.
Above all—no dupe, this man—she liked the fact that he was now making no attempt to disguise the quality of his interest in her. His gaze had become one of overt sexual appraisal—and that appraisal seemed to amuse him, for he began to smile.
That was good: The best flirtations, the best affairs, were tempered with humor, surely? Constance returned his stare and felt her mind skip. This course she had embarked upon—it was no longer just a challenge, a means to an end. It was amusing.
“I like you,” she announced suddenly, and was sincere. “I like you, and I think you are … splendid. This room is splendid too. And the paintings—especially the paintings. You chose them, didn’t you? I never saw paintings like these before.” She paused. “Won’t you show me them? Won’t you give me a guided tour?”
“The postimpressionists?” A lazy smile. “The ones in here, or the others? There are some on the stairs, and others in the main hall. The best ones are in the library upstairs.”
“Oh, the best ones first, obviously,” Constance replied.
“You like the best? That is your preference?”
“I am learning to make it so,” Constance said, and took his arm in hers.
“My dear,” Stern said in passing to Maud, who had looked up as they moved to the door, “Constance requires educating in matters of art. May I take her to inspect the Cézanne’s?”
“Of course, Monty,” Maud replied, and returned to her enjoyable conversation with Gwen. All the women present were by then deep in the byzantine love affairs of Lady Cunard.
In the library, with the door closed, Sir Montague looked at Constance closely.
“Do you want to see the Cézannes?”
“No.”
“I thought not.” He paused. “I am beginning to understand, Constance, that I have underestimated you.”
“Not underestimated. You simply did not look at me. Now you do.”
“Is that why you told me about your mother? To make me look at you?”
“Yes.”
“And why should you want me to look at you?”
“Because I intend to marry you. Mainly.”
At this, Stern smiled.
“Do you now? Have you not heard, Constance, how confirmed a bachelor I am?”
“I heard. And I did not believe it. That was before you met me.”
“Well, well, well.” Stern took a step forward. He looked down into Constance’s up-tilted face.
“You’re very direct, which is unusual in a woman. And very precise. ‘Mainly,’ you said. Was there an additional reason to make me look at you?”
“But of course. I should like you to make love to me.”
“Now?”
“We could make a beginning now.”
“And my position in this house? Your position? The people downstairs?”
“I do not give a fig for them—any more than you do.”
“And your reputation, Constance? You really should consider that.”
“My reputation is safe with you. You are a gentleman.”
“A gentleman would most certainly refuse you. He would send you packing with—at the least—a tactful reprimand; at worst, a smacked bottom.”
“You are an unusual kind of gentleman. Had I thought you likely to treat me as a child I should not have come up here.”
There was silence, during which they regarded each other somewhat warily. There was a brief knocking to be heard in the distance, the sound of servants and of conversations in low voices. Neither Stern nor Constance noticed this; they continued to look at each other, though there was a curious blindness in that stare.
After a while Stern stepped forward another pace. He lifted Constance’s chin in his hand. He turned her face, first this way, then that, as if he were a portraitist and she his model. At his touch, and for the first time, Constance displayed an agitation. She grasped his hand.
“Tell me,” she said with sudden vehemence. “Tell me what you see.”
“I see,” Stern answered slowly, “a woman. Not a beautiful woman, in the conventional sense. You have an interesting face, Constance—the face of someone who likes to rewrite the rules. I see … a very young woman, which deters me somewhat, for I distrust young women and I am not a seducer of little girls. A clever woman, though, and perhaps a predatory one—”
“Am I ugly?”
“No, Constance, you are not ugly.”
“My father always said I was ugly.”
“Your father was wrong. You are … striking. Probably unprincipled, and certainly tempting. Provocative, too, as I am sure you are aware. And so I think that—on consideration—yes.”
With which, Stern bent his head and kissed her on the lips. Possibly this kiss was intended to be a brief one, a seemly one. If so, the intentions were not fulfilled. It became protracted. It became an embrace; it became an intimate embrace, and the quality of that embrace startled both of them.
They broke apart, looked at each other, then reached out again. Constance’s arms locked around Stern’s neck; his arms tightened around her waist. Constance, who seemed greatly aroused, opened her lips; she gave a small moan, which might have been of pleasure or distress. She reached for his hand and pressed it against her breasts. Then, in a kind of angry ecstasy, she pressed herself close against him; feeling him harden, she gave a cry of triumph.
When, finally, they parted, neither was composed. They looked at each other with a cautious respect, like two combatants. Constance’s eyes glittered; her cheeks were flushed. She smiled, then began to laugh. Stepping forward, she took Stern’s hand.
“Tell me you did not expect this.”
“I did not expect it.” Amusement deepened in his eyes. “Why? Did you, Constance?”
“No. How could I have? I suspected … but I might have been wrong. It might have been … forgettable.”
“And it wasn’t?”
“Not in the least. It was … addictive.”
“Dangerously addictive, I should say. I must have lost my reason. However …”
He reached for her again, but before he could take her in his arms, there came the sound of footsteps on the landing outside, a discreet cough. Then the door opened upon the figure of Maud’s butler, an elderly man.
It was an intrusion of farce, Constance thought. She moved back and, with commendable presence of mind, began to speak. She was just praising the Cézannes, and requesting she now be shown the further paintings in the hall, when she registered the expression on the servant’s face. He appeared neither suspicious nor shocked. At first Constance took this for good training on his part; then she observed something else: The man’s face had an ashen look. In his hand, which was shaking, he held a silver salver. Upon the salver lay a telegram.
“It is for Lady Callendar, sir.” The man looked up at Stern and then away. “The boy took it to Park Street, and they sent him straight here. I was not sure, sir, if I should take it up directly. I thought it best to inquire of you. In the circumstances you might feel it more appropriate, I thought, to speak to Lady Callendar first.”
The man’s voice faded. Both Stern and Constance stared at the tray, and at the envelope, of unmistakably military origin. They knew these envelopes, and their implications, as everyone did. There was a silence; then Stern said in a crisp voice, “You did quite rightly. Constance, we must return to the others. I will speak to Gwen. Someone must be with her. Maud. And Freddie—yes, it had better be Freddie.”
Constance did as she was told. She watched everything happen at one remove. She saw Stern enter the drawing room and cross to Gwen. She saw Gwen’s face lift, and her smile falter. She heard the conversation in that corner dwindle and saw the sudden jerk with which Maud looked up, to catch the warning in Stern’s eyes. Gwen stood. The new tension in the room communicated itself to Freddie and to Steenie. They, too, rose; they followed their mother, Maud, and Stern from the room.