The Jury (16 page)

“Aren't I myself?” asked Janet meekly.

“Mental poise,” said Blanche. “The right atmosphere. Your spirit will be able to bathe in harmony.”

Janet considered for a moment. “You know, don't you,” she said at length, “that I quite
like
Matron?”

Blanche laughed—a soft merry peal. “You funny child! Of course you like her. You see the truth of her. And yet … but let's have our lunch.”

“Is it time?” Janet glanced at the clock. “So it is.” She began laying the cloth.

“No, Janet, let me do it. I've brought some tomatoes for a treat.” She spread out her purchases on the table and invited Janet's admiration. And while Janet admired, Blanche watched. “You're in one of your starry moods, Janet.”

“Am I?” Janet averted her eyes, then swung away with something like a toss of the head.

“Yes, Janet.” Blanche Izeley spoke with all the emphasis of extreme quietness. “Am I to know why?”

“What is there to know?” asked Janet. “Perhaps I was happy. There doesn't need to be a reason, does there?”

“Doesn't there?”

“Anyhow I'm awfully hungry.”

So the reason for Janet's starriness was put on one side while the two women prepared and consumed their meal together. It was not, however, put out of mind. It presided at their feast, constraining them to a silence broken only by remarks of a painfully casual kind.

At last Blanche said, fixing her gaze on Janet with searching love: “My dear, you are not being quite open with me, are you?”

Janet was silent.

“When one loves, one can't help seeing,” continued the elder woman gently. “This has been going on for some time, this change in you. You want to shut me out, you want to shut my love out. Now why? What have you to fear?”

Janet made a gesture of protest. “Nothing. I'm not afraid. I don't understand you, Blanche.”

“I think you do,” said Blanche. “I've seen you changing, moving away from the Truth. I've seen you and I've watched you. Not pryingly. Never that. But with sympathy, and, yes, with sorrow. It's hard to stand by and see one's friend yielding to Error. But the spirit can only grow in freedom, so how could I interfere? That would have been quite against my principles. You know that, Janet.”

“Yes, I know one must be free,” agreed Janet.

“And now you're giving way to foolish fancies, aren't you, dear? Foolish fancies about Trevor Thaxted.”

Janet flushed. “Must we discuss Trevor?”

“Ah!” cried Blanche, “that's not like Janet. That's like some stranger. Janet was always frank and confiding, ready to be healed and helped. What's become of Janet now?”

Janet got up from the table. “Please don't talk like that. It's so unreal.”

“Listen, Janet. You must listen. It's natural and good that you should like Trevor. I like him too, the
true
Trevor, very much. But to entertain fancies about him, to give yourself up to girlish dreams, that can only lead to unhappiness for us all. You mustn't think because he is kind to you that it is you, you yourself, he's being kind to. He lives in a different world from you, a world where you'd be out of place, dear. Out of place and unhappy. You mustn't be hurt, Janet, if I speak plainly, for it's love that makes me speak. To Trevor, with his cleverness and knowledge, you must seem a mere child, dear. He and I have never let you
feel
that, because we thought it wasn't necessary. But that's only one side of the picture. For all his brains you're nearer the Truth than he is.”

Janet stared. “You mean,” she said, as if puzzling it out, “that I'm not good enough for him. And you mean,” she added, “that he's not good enough for me. … Do you know, Blanche, I'd really rather not talk about it.”

“Yes, nearer the Truth,” went on Blanche. “Much nearer. Trevor is full of mistaken ideas, and very stubborn about them. He mixes with very shallow people, the kind of people my poor mother would have called
fast,
bless her! Yes, indeed, Janet. We must face facts, dear. Trevor has the most
unspiritual
thoughts, for instance, about what the world calls sex.”

“I don't agree with you,” said Janet.

With quiet deliberation Blanche continued: “He'll amuse himself with any pretty woman. He admits it. He's proud of it.”

“That's not true,” said Janet.

“So you see what I meant, dear, when I said you don't belong to his world. Thank heaven you don't, for it's a world of shadows and self-indulgence and discontent.”

She was finished at last. She had said her say, and now stood looking tenderly at Janet, ready to pour the healing balm of her kindness on the wounds that she had felt it her sad duty to inflict. All colour was drained from Janet's face, and she stood motionless, one hand resting lightly on a chairback, her gaze fixed dreamingly on the brightness of the world beyond this cottage window. The pathos of that young eager profile brought tears to Blanche's eyes; and other tears, tears of pride in her own goodness, hastened to join them.

Janet turned her head and looked at Blanche with steady, unsmiling eyes.

“It's your turn to listen now, Blanche.”

Blanche smiled benevolently. “I'm listening.”

“I happen to love Trevor,” said Janet. “And he happens to love me. We're going to be married.”

Blanche's eyes widened. She opened her mouth as if to speak, but the sound she emitted was faint and inarticulate. So without a word she turned on her heel and went out of the room, returning, however, two minutes later, with an anxious smile fastened on her face, and carrying in her hand a volume bound in limp black leather. “Look, Janet.” She opened the book, turning its pages quickly. “Here it is. The chapter on Animal Magnetism. Read it through quietly to yourself, dear.” She placed the open book on the table, within reach of Janet's hands and eyes. “Read it, dear,” she repeated. “I won't disturb you.” And, turning, she tiptoed out of the room, closing the door gently behind her. Trevor. Janet. If I can't lead her back to reason, I shall lose them both.

AT breakfast one morning, at the house in Merrion Square, Daphne remarked to her husband that she wouldn't after all be going to the theatre that evening. Roderick winced at the information but was outwardly unmoved. During these past weeks he had done a good deal of mental wincing, and he had acquired, by constant practice, an extraordinary command of his facial muscles. Having a secret to hide he resorted to this
wooden demeanour as his only defence, and that the secret was in fact an open secret, so far as Daphne was concerned, made its hiding the more imperative. Living with Daphne was nowadays very nervous work indeed. Nothing, he felt, could escape her unwinking vigilance: it was as if his very thoughts lay exposed to her. The tumult of their reconciliation had left them both a little exhausted. Each had brought to it a mingling of remorse and gratitude; each was resolved, resolved rather than eager, to make a new beginning. They renewed their vows of mutual toleration, though Daphne put Roderick at a moral disadvantage by making it clear that in no circumstances would she make use of such freedom as she was allowing to him. Freedom was reaffirmed, but it was Roderick's freedom only, she herself having no use for the commodity. She imposed but one condition: ‘Don't let me know anything about it.' A simple condition, a reasonable request; and Roderick, feeling a cad to be taking so much and giving nothing, was quick to pledge himself. So Roderick studied to deceive, and Daphne studied to be ignorant. But neither was a very good student. Daphne, despite herself, grew infinitely cunning in forcing him to try to account for every minute of his time; and though, true to his undertaking, he lied and prevaricated with all diligence, he did it unskilfully, feeling in his bones that he was failing her, that she did not believe him, that the situation was an impossible one. Impossible or not, he struggled to maintain it, lest something worse should befall. The failure of this compromise would mean the revival of his old dilemma, and he was as far as ever from being able to resolve that.

“Not going?” said Roderick. “But I thought Mark had fixed it. He's taking you, isn't he?”

“He was. But he isn't. I shall ask him to find someone else.”

Roderick's face expressed polite concern. His heart was racing with anxiety. “Nothing wrong, is there? Mark hasn't offended you, I mean, has he?”

Daphne laughed. “How absurd you are! As if Mark could offend anyone! No, Rod, I just don't feel like going out tonight. I thought it would be nice to have a quiet evening together for once.”

“An evening together?” said Roderick, helplessly.

“Just you and I.” She smiled winsomely across the table. “It's a long time since we had one, isn't it?”

“Is it?” He felt trapped. The old resentment began rising in him, but he managed to keep it out of his voice. “Not so long really, is it? Last night …”

“Last night we dined with the Savernakes. That's not my idea of a quiet evening by ourselves.”

“Well, the night before, then?”

“Oh, if you're going to argue——” She shrugged her shoulders.

“Heaven forbid,” said Roderick. “But the trouble is, I'm fixed up for tonight. I understood Mark was taking you to a show, and … well, I'm fixed up.”

“I see.” She saw too much. “What are you doing? Anything important?” The question was desperately casual.

“I shall be in about midnight,” said Roderick quickly. “Now if you go out with Mark——”

“I'm not going out with Mark. Didn't you hear me say so? I suppose you couldn't put off your engagement, whatever it is? And I'm sure I don't want to know what it is, not in the least. You couldn't put it off?”

“But really——”

“I see you don't intend to, so that's all right. I'm sure I shall have a very happy time alone. Very happy indeed.” “If only you'd listen——”

Daphne smiled. “Well, I
am
listening. Go ahead.”

Checkmate. He had in fact nothing to say. There was nothing that he dared to say. He was carrying out the terms of an impossible agreement, and the agreement was impossible because there was something in Daphne that was resolved to wreck it, with or without the consent of her conscious will.

“I'm waiting,” said Daphne. Her smile was full of malice. She was enjoying his embarrassment.

The sight of that smile made him cold. She was a stranger: he could feel nothing for her. “Never mind,” he answered. “On reflection I find I've nothing to say.”

A diversion was created by the entry of Mrs Tucker. A lean, straw-coloured woman, her face screwed up into an expression of indomitable anxiety, the expression of one who expects the worst and is not to be put off with anything less.

“You rang, 'um?”

“Yes, Milly. Some more coffee, please. This is cold.”

“Hot enough when I brought it in.” Gathering up the coffee-pot and the milk-jug with an air of resentful resignation, Mrs Tucker made for the door. Before she reached it she was called back.

“Mrs Tucker!” A spasm of fury took hold of Roderick.

“Yes, sir?”

“Are you having the insolence to complain?”

Without answering, the woman went out of the room. Roderick felt himself blushing. His outburst was without precedent, and it was profoundly unlike him. Yet he was glad he had been able for once to throw off his accursed mildness. It was time that woman was taught her place. But as he met Daphne's eye his anger changed to confusion, for he knew, and he thought she knew, that Mrs Tucker had been the excuse rather than the cause of that anger.

“Why don't you get rid of that woman?” he asked irritably.

“And lose Tucker?” said Daphne coldly. “What should we do without little Tucker?”

“Well, where
is
Tucker, anyhow? It's not her job to serve at table.”

“He's in bed with a temperature, if you must know, darling. New for you to interfere with the servants.”

Roderick stared at his plate like a guilty schoolboy. “Can't have her speaking to you in that tone.”

“Sweet of you, Rod. But it's late in the day, isn't it, for you to start protecting me?” After waiting in vain for an answer she added, with an irony far from subtle: “It's a man you're meeting tonight, of course?”

He answered in the same spirit. “That goes without saying, doesn't it?”

“I should ask him to play the piano to you, if I were you,” said Daphne. “I believe he's rather talented in that way.”

“Really?”

“And no doubt in other ways too.”

He did not answer, and she was content to leave it at that for a moment. But before the silence had had time to establish itself in his mind, she spoke again, and in a different voice.

“Rod, don't let's quarrel any more. Why can't we be friends?”

He smiled a little bitterly. “I thought you'd made up your mind to prevent our being so.”

“Yes, I deserve that,” she answered, with a chastened air. “But you know I don't mean all I say.”

He seemed to deprecate the implied apology. “Oh, let's forget it. Anything in the paper this morning?” Glancing towards the door, he said: “I wonder why Mrs Tucker always leaves the door open?”

He guessed that Daphne was working up for an emotional reconciliation, and he resolved that he could not, again, lend himself to that self-deception.

“You must make allowances, Rod,” she persisted. “You will, won't you?”

“Of course,” he said gruffly. He forced a laugh. “The subject's hardly worth pursuing, is it?”

“But I had rather a special reason for wanting you at home tonight.” She laughed nervously. “Perhaps you'll think it sentimental, but there it is. I suppose a woman
is
sentimental at a time like this.”