The Jury (10 page)

“Well?” said Daphne quickly. “What does he say?”

“Tonight's impossible. He'll come tomorrow.”

“Tonight's impossible, is it?” she echoed. “Pray, why?”

Mark grew hot and uncomfortable under her cool accusing gaze. “How do I know, my dear?” He shrugged his shoulders.

“Where is he?” demanded Daphne.

Underneath this cool sophisticated exterior she is a purely primitive woman, said Mark to himself. She is civilized only in so far as it suits her. Civilization is just something to wear: in anger, in love, she would cast it off without thought, without scruple. In love, if she loved, she would be a savage … and what a savage!

After a feverish moment he found an answer. “What does it matter? The point is that he will come to see you tomorrow. And then you can talk the whole thing over.”

“I see,” said Daphne. “He is with that woman. Why do you try to make a fool of me, Mark?”

“I thought it was understood,” said Mark, ignoring the question, “that you were not to interfere with each other.”

“Am
I
interfering?” she asked quickly.

“It was understood,” said Mark, easily, “that you'd know nothing of each other's movements for a while, so that you'd both have time to see things in a proper perspective. That's why I was appointed go-between, wasn't it? You must remember that I didn't ask for the appointment.”

Daphne moved three paces towards the window. There was a distant look in her eyes, an odd smile on her lips. “It's funny,” she said at length. She turned to face him again. “You don't seem to understand things at all, Mark. I quite thought you would understand, but you don't, do you?”

He felt like a man cheated of his wages. Hitherto Daphne had never failed to say, from time to time: “You're so understanding, Mark. It's such a comfort to talk to you.” And such words had never failed to give him a double pleasure: the pleasure of caressed vanity, and the pleasure of observing and deriding that same vanity.

“What don't I understand?” he asked.

Leaving him derelict in the middle of the room, she moved over to the empty fire-place and stood staring down into it as though in hope of conjuring a flame into existence. “I thought you were
my
friend, as well as Roderick's.”

“You know I am,” said Mark, addressing her back. It
was a lovely back too, its cream and ivory luxuriously in contrast with the black gown environing it.

“You only see his side. You take his part all the time. You think I want to hold him against his will.” Mark was silent, and suddenly she wheeled round upon him with a kind of eagerness. “And there, Mark,” she said primly, “you're quite mistaken. I wouldn't for the world stand in the way of his happiness. I'm a great believer in people being free. A
great
believer. And when a marriage becomes tiresome to either husband or wife it's time it came to an end. Otherwise it's a mere mockery, a sham.” The thought of these sham marriages seemed to move Daphne to high indignation. “I know what you think, Mark, and you needn't suppose I don't. You think all women are jealous and possessive, and you think I'm like all the rest. But I'm not. I think jealousy's hateful and unreasonable, always have thought so. This isn't a question of jealousy. If you don't see that, it shows that what I said just now was true: you don't understand. You don't understand what marriage is, what a bond it is, living together and sharing everything. That's something beyond you. I'm not thinking of myself: I'm thinking of poor Rod. He can't just walk out like this. It's unmanly and unfair. He's got his duty to think of, hasn't he, the same as other men? What would happen if everyone behaved in that irresponsible way? We've built up a life together, Rod and I. For years we've been building up a life together. And now he tries to pull it all down in a moment. If you think that's right you've got very strange notions. But you're a bachelor: there are things in life you simply don't know about. It's not the fact of his leaving me: it's the way it's done, the lack of consideration, lack of common decency. He's always been free to go when he chose. He knows that well enough. I've told him a hundred times. We can part and be friends, I've said. Nothing need stop our being friends. Time and again I've told him that. But I never supposed he could behave really
shabbily,
Mark. That's what hurts so much. It's dreadful to see someone one's fond of behave
shabbily.
Even you will admit that. If he had found someone who'd be as faithful to him as I've been, someone I could trust to make him happy, I wouldn't raise a finger to keep him. I wouldn't think of myself. I'd let him go gladly,
even though my heart were breaking. And I'd be grateful to the woman, yes, grateful, for making him happy. And now he's gone off to this foreign chorus-girl, or whatever she is, with not a thought of me, and all that's been between us. And he won't even come and quietly talk things over. He treats me like a stranger and an enemy.”

Mark bowed his head under her spate of words. The spell of her sensual charm was abruptly broken. He was no longer aware of her ripe lips and large deep eyes and soft animal grace: he was aware only of the tortuously twisting mind, intent on deceiving itself. His gorge rose at sight of so gross a feast of irony: he had looked for more romantic fare.

“But are you sure this young woman can't make Rod happy?” he asked nervously.

“Jealousy is something quite foreign to my nature,” went on Daphne. Her eyes assumed the fixed look of a victim of toothache engaged in denying the reality of pain. “I can't let Roderick spoil his life like this. It wouldn't be kind or right.”

“She isn't a chorus girl, you know,” said Mark. “She's a pianist. Rather a distinguished one, I understand.”

“Do you know, Mark, I sometimes wonder if poor Rod is quite sane. All this is so unlike him. That he should refuse to come and talk things over …”

“But he hasn't refused, my dear Daphne. On the contrary, he's promised. He's coming tomorrow.”

“He can't even leave that woman for a single night to come and see his wife. He's not himself: that's what it is. He's just being taken advantage of by an unscrupulous adventuress.” Daphne turned on him suddenly. “And you stand there and tell me to be patient and let it all go on. You want me to
desert
Roderick, just when he needs me most.”

“I want,” retorted Mark with a rather laboured jocularity, “nothing of the kind. I want you to stop talking and come out to dinner with me and drink a bottle of wine. It'll do you good.”

“I don't want to be done good,” said Daphne.

He was silent for a while, silent and baffled. Watching her out of the corner of his eye he saw her tiredness, her desolation, her writhing vanity, and something like anger took possession of him. He was angry with himself, angry with
Roderick, angry with the civilization that makes liars of us all (a good phrase, he thought; I must remember it). And angry, most of all, with Daphne herself for being so impregnably shut up in her ego, so cut off from all contact with reality. That she had turned her back on him again was suddenly more than he could put up with. His fear of her, his fear of himself, vanished. He seized her by the shoulders and jerked her round none too gently. Willy-nilly she fell into his arms and he kissed her mouth hungrily. She shut her eyes and submitted. He looked down at her, puzzled rather than exalted, though excitement ran in his veins. With eyes still closed she offered her mouth again, but even in the tumult of his senses he was visited by the nightmare conviction that it was Roderick she kissed. Roderick, Roderick, there was no getting away from the fellow. He experienced a moment's sick hatred of Roderick, followed by a spasm of self-disgust.

He quickly released her, retaining, for politeness' sake, only a hand.

“What did we do that for?” she asked coldly. She had the air of coming out of a trance.

He was obscurely grateful for that ‘we', but pride made him repudiate it. “You mean, why did
I
do it. Because you're a beautiful woman and I'm a man.”

She examined his face curiously. “You're not in love with me?”

Lay not that flattering unction to your soul, he thought … and mocked himself for being always the literary journalist. For answer he shrugged his shoulders. “Yes, I suppose so. In a fashion.” Hypocrisy is infectious. Clearly I'm not in love with her.

“I don't think I understand. You're Rod's friend, aren't you?”

“I don't expect you to understand,” said Mark savagely. “You live in a mist and understand nothing. Nothing.” She did not answer. “Moreover,” he added, “I rather think I was lying. I'm not in love with you. And I've no intention of trying to seduce you.”

“Why did you kiss me like that?” she asked, flushing.

“Not a very sensible question, Daphne.” He affected lightness. But in fact it was a question he couldn't answer.
Why had he kissed her? An impulse to shake her out of herself had begun it, and simple male desire had done the rest. He looked at the hypothesis squarely enough and thought that on the whole it would do. But who cares, anyhow? The moment was passed, the passion side-tracked by tedious self-analysis. A dreary conclusion, but since that momentary flicker of feeling was to be smothered in talk, let talk be given its head and made to carry him safely back to the
status quo.
“We've been friends a long time, haven't we, Daphne? No, that's not the opening gambit of a sentimental appeal. We've been friends a long time, and in the nature of the case it wasn't possible for me to think of you in what is so oddly called ‘that way'. Roderick was a very good reason why one's thoughts should keep at a sober pace. And in fact it never occurred to me to want to make love to you. Quite a speech, isn't it?”

She smiled: a welcome sight. “Yes, isn't it! Go on.”

“Our relationship was comfortable and settled. But this business of you and Rod has changed you, made you like a stranger, with all a stranger's mysterious attraction. It made you distant with me, and it's easier to leap across a distance than to advance from ordinary easygoing friendship to love-making. Now there's a nice tidy explanation for you. I shall probably work it up into a little article,” he added maliciously. “Boderline Friendships, or Should Wives be Kissed? It ought to be worth twenty guineas to me at least.”

“How absurd you are!” She looked at him in almost her old way.

“And now let's go and have a meal,” he said quickly. His pleasure in seeing her restored made him almost happy for a moment, and there was disinterested satisfaction in the thought that his self-exhibition had at least distracted her from herself for five minutes. “Go and powder your nose, if you must, while I phone for a taxi.”

He went to open the door for her, but before he reached it it was opened from the other side by Tucker. Tucker did his best to look like the perfect butler, but in the presence of Mark his performance was never quite convincing: humanity kept breaking in. Standing stiffly in the doorway, and looking with formal respect towards his mistress, he said: “Would you wish me to bring in the cocktails, madam?”

Daphne was surprised by the interruption. “Yes, Tucker, do.”

Tucker was not yet satisfied. “And when,” he asked, almost furtively, with an embarrassed sense of Mark's genial eye upon him, “when will madam take her egg?”

“I shall not be in to dinner,” she answered quickly.

“Very good, madam.” The door closed behind Tucker.

“What's this about an egg?” asked Mark. “Was that to have been your dinner?”

“If you must know, Mark, it was.”

“An egg,” repeated Mark. “A nice nourishing lightly boiled egg. And two thin slices of bread and butter perhaps? Or would that have been too gross?”

“Food chokes me,” said Daphne, going to the door. “Drink your cocktail, Mark, and mine too. I'll be ready in two minutes.”

While Daphne was getting ready to go out to dinner with Mark Perryman, a family party of four persons emerged from an underground station into the noise and sunshine of Oxford Street. Young Vincent was the first to reach the pavement, though his sister Marjorie was a good second: these two, in the posture of impatient adolescence, stood at the stairhead waiting for their parents to join them. “Where do we go next, I wonder?” asked Vincent Coates, rather contemptuously. He was fresh from his first shave and it seemed unlikely that the evening's outing would prove to be worth his while. “Don't know,” said Marjorie. She called: “Which way, Dad?” She did not address the question to her mother, for Mr Coates was in command, and it was important that he should be kept in a good temper. Mrs Coates, for the same reason, was careful to keep a pace or two behind her husband: Roger was so sensitive, and it would spoil his evening if he were allowed to notice that she, having a four years' advantage of him, and less fat to carry about, was untroubled either by the weather or by these few stairs. Forty-five's no age for a man, but poor Roger's as touchy about it as a woman. “All right, all right!” answered Mr Coates, confronting his daughter at last. “There's no such hurry, is there? We haven't got a train to catch? Where's Vincent?” Vincent, at his elbow, said: “Here I am, Dad. Where now?”

Mr Coates looked round for his wife. “Come along, Mother.” With his family collected, he stood for a moment taking his bearings.
“There!”
he said at last, in a tone of great decision. “That's our way. Now come along. Keep close to me, all of you.” He shepherded his flock across the road, and with a demeanour blending irritation and pride led them, by stages, to his objective. It was Mother's birthday, and Father had contrived this delightful surprise, a Supper in Soho. A colleague at the office had told him of a restaurant that was good, not too expensive if you chose your dishes carefully, and really quite respectable. “Well, here we are then,” said Mr Coates triumphantly. “A bit bohemian, you know. But people are more broadminded than they used to be.” He glanced round at wife and children; then, with an air of saying “No, don't thank me now!”, marched at their head into the restaurant, the door of which was held open by a bowing and brilliant commissionaire. He knew, none better, that it was very kind of him to be giving his family such a treat, and that gratitude could be reasonably expected. But his bearing was regal, his smile lofty. “So long as you're pleased,” that smile seemed to declare, “we'll say no more about it.”