Authors: Elswyth Thane
“Evadne,
darling,
you’re not going to
drink
it!” said Hermione’s voice beside them, and instead of taking her firmly by the throat Stephen extended the remaining glass to her with his best smile.
“It’s a party,” he said sweetly.
“No, indeed,” said Hermione, and removed the glass from Evadne’s fingers and held it out to him.
“Give
me
that
d-daiquiri!”
said Evadne furiously, and although
some of it spilled when she snatched it back from Hermione, she drank the rest in one defiant gulp, choked once, and gave the empty glass to Stephen, who lifted his own to her with a congratulatory grin and drank it down.
And Jeff, watching warily from across the room, said, “Well, I’m blowed!” to nobody in particular, and emptied his own glass with a flourish.
It was only natural that Virginia should have seated Stephen next to Evadne at dinner—if she hadn’t she would have heard from him—and Oliver was on her other side. Stephen had not much opportunity for private conversation during the meal, and Evadne seemed to avoid it as usual, talking across him to Mona and encouraging Oliver to talk across her to Stephen. It was as though she had taken fright after the cocktail episode and retreated again into the troubled vacuum from which she had briefly emerged. She would not drink wine at table, and rose with visible relief when the ladies left the dining-room at the end of dinner.
The men never remained long over the port at Farthingale, and the gramophone was soon going in the drawing-room where the rugs were rolled back for dancing. Evadne danced first with Mark, with hardly a word exchanged between them the whole time, and then it was Stephen’s turn. She was stiff and cool in his arms, and he suddenly backed her out through, the doorway into the hall, which was dimly lighted and empty.
“I want to talk to you,” he said quietly, ignoring her startled upward glance, and led her by one hand towards the library.
“Stephen, really, we can’t just disappear like this—”
“Why can’t we? They all know we’ve got something to settle between us.” He opened the library door and pulled her through it, and closed it again behind them. A log fire was burning and the lights were shaded and kind. “Now,” said Stephen, “come and sit down and let’s get to the bottom of this.”
“Please, Stephen, I’d rather not discuss it now—”
“But you can’t do this to me, I’ve got to sail in a fortnight.
Until lately I’ve had some idea I might persuade you to go with me. As my wife, of course,” he added, smiling, into a rather awkward pause.
“Oh, Stephen, I didn’t want you to say it again.” She was still standing just inside the door, looking down at the red chiffon handkerchief stretched tight between her hands.
“That was plain enough. But I’ve said it. I don’t want you to have any doubts, Evadne. I want to marry you. Remember?”
“I can’t,” she said, looking down.
“Why?” said Stephen.
“It doesn’t matter why. I just can’t.”
“Of course it matters why. Because of Mark?”
She shook her head.
“You don’t mean to marry Mark, either?”
She shook her head.
“Well, that’s that, anyway. Is it Victor?”
She shook her head.
“Can you swear that you don’t mean to marry Victor? Assuming that he asks you, which he won’t.”
“I don’t think that’s fair, Stephen—”
“All right, then, he will ask you. Will you say Yes to him?”
“
No
, I—that is, you’ve no right to question me like this, Stephen, I—”
“I have the right, honey, because I’m fighting for my life, can’t you understand that? Something is wrong between us—something new. Because I love you I have the right to know what it is. If you’re in love with some other guy—well, I’ll shut up, I suppose, and go away. But I don’t think you are. I think you’re all muddled up about something, and I want to know if we can’t straighten it out and be happy together. Because we could be happy together. Couldn’t we.”
“N-not as things are, Stephen, I’ve promised—to go to Lausanne for the conference for one thing, so I can’t very well just drop that and start off with you instead, and—”
“Because you haven’t promised me anything.” He waited. “Who made you promise to go to Lausanne?”
“N-nobody made me, I
offered
to go. I can’t back out now.”
“Is that the only reason?”
She was silent and wretched, looking down, and he moved to take the handkerchief away from her, and she gave ground before him and found the closed door against her back. Stephen leaned one hand on it over her shoulder and she was trapped.
“How does Hermione come into this?” he asked quietly.
“It’s nothing to do with her, I just—”
“Look at me, Evadne.” But she would not, and he raised her chin with his hand, so that her eyes, tragic and swimming, were forced to meet his. Very deliberately he bent and kissed her, and he was not quite prepared for her response. Her arms went round his neck in a sort of desperate humility, which asked his pardon for past withholdings even more than it promised future surrender. Stephen reacted as might be expected, and it left them both breathless and astonished. “That’s all I wanted to know,” he said unsteadily, after a moment. “You can leave the rest to me.”
“What are you going to do?” she asked apprehensively, and straightened away from him, still helpless between him and the door.
“Well, first I think I’ll have a little talk with Hermione,” he remarked with a certain relish, and she took fright at once.
“No, please, you can’t do that!
I’ll
do it. That is—I’ll try.”
“Let’s do it together, then.”
“Please let me handle this, Stephen, you must give me a little more time.” Her fingers were on his sleeve, tense and pleading.
“Time? I’m sailing in two weeks, and I’m not going to leave you like this. I’m going to find out what’s after you and put a stop to it.”
“Stephen.” She swallowed, and looked him straight in the eye. “You’re quite sure you wouldn’t rather just go back to America and forget you ever saw me?”
He gave an incredulous breath of laughter, as though trying to see a joke that wasn’t there.
“What do
you
think?” he asked in elaborate understatement.
“All right, then.” She seemed to make up her mind. “I’ll do the very best I can.”
“What does that mean?”
“Well—just give me a few more days on it, will you?”
“Is that a promise?”
“I promise to
try,”
she said, with her straight, honest look. “But you’ve got to let me do it my way. I can’t be happy if it means trampling people underfoot. I have to do this my own way. It may take a little time, but—it’s the only way I can see.”
“Will it take two weeks?”
“I don’t know. I can try.”
He was not satisfied, but he saw that she was almost beside herself with nerves and tension, and it would be wicked to crowd her further at the moment. He opened his arms.
“One more,” he said, and she kissed him again, willingly, but with more reserve, already preoccupied with whatever was before her.
She stood a moment, still in his arms, looking up at him, and he had an odd, uncomfortable premonition—it was the lingering, intimate look which goes with a farewell.
“I’m glad there’s somebody like you,” she murmured. “Anywhere.” She opened the door behind her into the hall. “We danced out here,” she added. “We’d better dance back in.
Jeff and Sylvia, waltzing together, saw them return and could make nothing of it. “But it looks to me as though she’s still holding out,” said Sylvia. “I’m glad I’m not deserting him. I could never have done that now. If he’s got to go back without her he’ll need a new show to put his mind on.”
The party did not break up till late, though the wedding was at noon the following day. But the time had to come at last when the door of their room closed behind them and Evadne was alone with Hermione. She undressed wearily while Hermione was in the bathroom, which she always occupied for a young eon, and when Hermione emerged snug and fragrant from her bath Evadne was lying motionless with her head buried in the pillow. Hermione moved about the room being tidy and picking up things, and finally snapped off all but one of the lights, saying, “Aren’t you going to clean your teeth?”
Sighing, Evadne rolled out of bed with her hair in her eyes and pattered off to the bathroom without dressing-gown or slippers. When she returned, Hermione was in bed, apparently asleep. Evadne, who so often of late had found herself thinking, What have I done
now?
in Hermione’s silences, stood a moment, slim and chilly in her silk pyjamas, and then got into her own bed, sitting up with her hands round her knees.
“Hermione,” she said quietly.
“Well?”
“I don’t think it’s fair to Stephen not to tell him why I—why I’ve got to go to Lausanne.”
“You’re going to Lausanne because you promised to go,” said Hermione, who always became excessively devoted to the Cause when it was to her advantage, “and everyone expects you to.”
“Yes, but I only offered to go in the first place because I thought I ought to leave London for a while. I thought everything would sort of blow over, and—”
“And won’t it?”
“No. I didn’t realize.”
“What am I supposed to say now?”
“Hermione, I want you to let me off.”
“Let you off? What are you talking about?” Hermione sat up too, and they looked at each other warily across the space that
divided the twin beds. “It was your idea to go to Lausanne,” said Hermione.
“I know, but—”
“Stephen’s been making love to you again. I can always tell. Any man can wind you round his finger.”
“Hermione, that’s not true! But Stephen—”
“Stephen—Mark—Victor—that violinist from Andorra, or wherever it was—and the Danish tennis player—and the man from—”
“Really, you make it sound as though I—”
“Yes, doesn’t it!” said Hermione unpleasantly. “It just happens to be Stephen now, because he’s here, and he’s newer than Mark, and more amusing than Victor!”
“I don’t know what you mean by that,” cried Evadne, trying to keep her head, for her little conquests were truly innocent enough, and would never have happened at all if she had not tried to put her other associations before her dawning love for Stephen. Hermione’s interpretation of her rather lost and feckless behaviour shocked and angered her into futile speechlessness—she was never good at rebuttal—and the last vestiges of tolerance and affection between them were wearing away under this constant friction. “If you’re trying to imply that Victor and I—”
“I don’t have to imply. I know perfectly well that you’re having an affair with Victor at the same time you’re leading Stephen on, and if you’re not careful I’ll tell Stephen that, the first chance I get, if he can’t see it for himself.”
“But you
can’t!
It’s not
true!
”
Evadne was aghast. “He wouldn’t believe you!”
“Oh, wouldn’t he!”
“But, Hermione, that’s
blackmail!
”
“I’m not asking for hush money,” said Hermione.
“Then what do you want me to do?”
Hermione was silent, and Evadne sat there, shaking and cold in the middle of the bed, recognizing once more the beginnings of a Scene. If it went on, before very long she would begin to feel sick. And soon after that she would find herself giving in
again, saying anything, promising anything, just to end the Scene. Hermione didn’t mind Scenes, sometimes it seemed as though she rather enjoyed them, as though she emerged from them refreshed and strengthened, and of course triumphant because of course she always won.
To anyone who had not Evadne’s constitutional horror of seeing anyone beside themselves with anger or grief, her cowardice regarding Hermione’s Scenes would have been incomprehensible. But outbursts of any kind were not customary in Virginia’s household, and Evadne went in dread of Hermione’s violent tears and equally violent rages, which frightened her, and outraged her sense of the decencies, and she endowed them with far more importance than even Hermione realized.
Having learned that Evadne would crumble into acquiescence during the course of these emotional hurricanes, Hermione used them pitilessly whenever she needed to get her way. It was no trouble to her to work them up, and they always paid off in headaches which required massage with cologne and a light meal on a tray in bed, prepared by Evadne who had somewhere along the way been thoroughly sick in the bathroom and couldn’t bear the sight of food. Evadne felt now the familiar, inevitable surge of nausea in her shrinking midriff, and bit on panic. She had promised Stephen to try.
“There’s no need to hate me so,” she said miserably after a moment. “I didn’t mean any of this to happen. But I may as well tell you—Stephen wants me to go to America with him.” And as she said it the corners of the room wavered and leaned, and she shut her eyes.
Hermione sat very still for a long moment, not looking at her. When she spoke, her voice had gone pinched and small.
“Then he
has
asked you to marry him?”
“I didn’t mean to tell you. But it’s difficult to refuse a man and not be able to give him a reason.”
“So you want to tell him, I suppose, that I’m being a fool about him and you haven’t got the face to marry a man I—”
“Oh, no,
no
, not like that, I only meant—”
“You solemnly promised me never to tell him.”
“I won’t, truly, without your permission, but—”
“Well, I don’t give my permission,” said Hermione, and lay down and turned her back.
Evadne sat there, drooping, in the dim yellow glow of one lamp. It could end here, if she gave way to cowardice again. She could turn out the light and lie down in the dark, and eventually get some sleep, and in the morning they would dress during one of Hermione’s watchful silences, while she waited to see if the subject was going to be reopened, quite prepared to do battle again from a standing start right where they had left off. And if nothing more was said about it in the morning things would just go on as they were. Tomorrow was the wedding, and one didn’t want to look a fright at Sylvia’s wedding. It could end here…. But she had promised Stephen to try.