The Literary Lord Peter

 

CHAPTER XVI

 

Crown Matrimonial

 

 

Norbert: Explain not: let this be!

         This is life's height.

Constance: Yours, yours, yours!

Norbert: You and I—

       Why care by what meanders we are here

       I' the centre of the labyrinth? Men have died

       Trying to find this place, which we have found.

 

Robert Browning: In a Balcony

 

 

"Well, well, well!" said Peter. "Here we are again." He lifted his wife's cloak from her shoulders and gently saluted the nape of her neck.

 

"In the proud consciousness of duty done."

 

His eyes followed her as she crossed the room. "Wonderfully inspiring thing, doing one's duty. Gives one a sort of exalted sensation. I feel quite light-headed."

 

She dropped on to the couch, laying lazy arms along its back.

 

"I'm feeling slightly intoxicated, too. It couldn't possibly be the vicar's sherry?"

 

"No," he said firmly, "not possibly. Though I fancy I have drunk worse. Not much, and not more than once. No—it's just the stimulating effects of well-doing—or perhaps it's the country air—or something."

 

"Rather giddy-making, but nice."

 

"Oh, definitely." He unwound the scarf from his neck, hung it with the cloak over the settle and drifted irresolutely to a position behind the couch. "I mean to say—yes, definitely. Like champagne. Almost like being in love. But I don't think it could be that, do you?"

 

She tilted her face to smile at him, so that he saw it oddly and intriguingly inverted.

 

"Oh, surely not." She caught his roving hands, held them, dumbly protesting, away from her breast, brought them up under her chin and imprisoned them there.

 

"I thought not. Because, after all, we are married. Or aren't we? One can't be married and in love. Not with the same person, I mean. It isn't done."

 

"Absolutely not."

 

"Pity. Because I'm feeling rather youthful and foolish to-night. Tender and twining, like a very young pea. Positively romantic."

 

"That, my lord, is disgraceful in a gentleman of your condition."

 

"My mental condition is simply appalling. I want the violins to strike up in the orchestra and discourse soft music while the limelight merchant turns up the moon...."

 

"And the crooners are crooning in tune!"

 

"Damn it, why not? I will have my soft music! Unhand me, girl! Let's see what the B.B.C. can do for us."

 

She released him; and her eyes, in their turn, followed him to the radio cabinet.

 

"Stand there a moment, Peter. No—don't turn round."

 

"Why?" he said, standing obediently. "Has my unfortunate face begun to get on your nerves?"

 

"No—I was just admiring your spine, that's all. It has a kind of sort of springy line about it that pleases me. Completely enslaving."

 

"Really? I can't see it. But I must tell my tailor. He always gives me to understand that he invented my back for me."

 

"Does he also imagine he invented your ears and the back of your skull and the bridge of your nose?"

 

"No flattery can be too gross for my miserable sex. I am purring like a coffee-mill. But you might have picked a more responsive set of features. It's difficult to express devotion with the back of one's head."

 

"That's just it. I want the luxury of a hopeless passion. There, I can say to myself, there is the back of his adorable head, and nothing I can say will soften it."

 

"I'm not so sure of that. However, I'll try to live up to your requirements—my true love hath my heart, but my bones are my own. Just at the moment, though, the immortal bones obey control of dying flesh and dying soul. What the devil did I come over here for?"

 

"Soft music."

 

"So it was. Now, my little minstrels of Portland Place! Strike, you myrtle-crownéd boys, ivied maidens, strike together!"

 

"Arrch!" said the loud speaker, "...and the beds should be carefully made up beforehand with good, well-rotted horse-manure or..."

 

"Help!"

 

"That," said Peter, switching off, "is quite enough of that."

 

"The man has a dirty mind."

 

"Disgusting. I shall write a stiff letter to Sir John Reith. Isn't it an extraordinary thing that just when a fellow's bubbling over with the purest and most sacred emotions—when he's feeling like Galahad and Alexander and Clark Gable all rolled into one—when he, so to speak, bestrides the clouds and sits upon the bosom of the air——"

 

"Dearest! are you sure it's not the sherry?"

 

"Sherry!" His rocketing mood burst in a shower of spangles. "Lady, by yonder blesséd moon I swear..." He halted, gesturing into the shadows. "Hullo! they've put the moon on the wrong side."

 

"Very careless of the limelight merchant."

 

"Drunk again, drunk again.... Perhaps you're right about the sherry.... Curse this moon, it leaks. O more than moon, Draw not up seas to drown me in thy sphere!" He wrapped his handkerchief about the stem of the lamp, brought it across from the table and set it beside her, so that the red-orange of her dress shone in the pool of light like an oriflamme. "That's better. Now we begin all over again. Lady, by yonder blesséd moon I swear, That tips with silver all these fruit-tree tops.... Observe the fruit-trees. Malus aspidistriensis. Specially imported by the management at colossal expense...."

 

The voices came faintly to Aggie Twitterton, crouched shiveringly in the room overhead. She had meant to escape by the back stair; but at the bottom of it stood Mrs. Ruddle, engaged in a long expostulation with Bunter, whose replies from the kitchen were inaudible. Apparently on the point of departure, she kept on coming back to make some fresh remark. Any minute she might take herself off, and then——

 

Bunter came out so silently that Miss Twitterton did not hear him till his voice boomed suddenly from just below her:

 

"I have nothing more to say, Mrs. Ruddle. Good night to you."

 

The back door shut sharply and there was the noise of the drawing of bolts. One could not now escape unheard. In another moment, feet began to ascend the stair. Miss Twitterton withdrew hastily into Harriet's bedroom. The feet came on; they passed the branching of the stair; they were coming in. Miss Twitterton retired still further, shocked to find herself trapped in a gentleman's bedroom that smelt faintly of bay rum and Harris tweed. Next door she heard the crackle of a kindled fire, the rattle of curtain rings upon the rods, a subdued clink, the pouring of fresh water into the ewer. Then the door-latch lifted, and she fled breathless back into the darkness of the stairs.

 

 

"... Romeo was a green fool, and all his trees had green apples. Sit there, Aholibah, and play the queen, with a vine-leaf crown and a sceptre of pampas-grass. Lend me your cloak, and I will be the kings and all their horsemen. Speak the speech, I pray you, trippingly on the tongue. Speak it! My snow-white horses foam and fret—sorry, I've got into the wrong poem, but I'm pawing the ground like anything. Say on, lady of the golden voice. 'I am the Queen Aholibah——'"

 

She laughed; and let the magnificent nonsense roll out organ-mouthed:

 

"My lips kissed dumb the word of Ah

Sighed on strange lips grown sick thereby.

God wrought to me my royal bed;

The inner work thereof was red,

The outer work was ivory.

My mouth's heat was the heat of flame

With lust towards the kings that came

With horsemen riding royally——

 

Peter, you'll break that chair. You are a lunatic!"

 

"My dearest, I've got to be." He flung the cloak aside and stood before her. "When I try to be serious, I make such a bloody fool of myself. It's idiotic." His voice wavered with uncertain over-tones. "Think of it—laugh at it—a well-fed, well-groomed, well-off Englishman of forty-five in a boiled shirt and an eye-glass going down on his knees to his wife—to his own wife, which makes it so much funnier—and saying to her—and saying——"

 

"Tell me, Peter."

 

"I can't. I daren't."

 

She lifted his head between her hands, and what she saw in his face stopped her heart.

 

"Oh, my dear, don't.... Not all that.... It's terrifying to be so happy."

 

"Ah, no, it's not," he said quickly, taking courage from her fear.

 

"All other things to their destruction draw,

Only our love hath no decay;

This no to-morrow hath, nor yesterday;

Running it never runs from us away

But truly keeps his first, last, everlasting day."

 

"Peter——"

 

He shook his head, vexed at his own impotence.

 

"How can I find words? Poets have taken them all, and left me with nothing to say or do——"

 

"Except to teach me for the first time what they meant."

 

He found it hard to believe.

 

"Have I done that?"

 

"Oh, Peter——" Somehow she must make him believe it, because it mattered so much that he should. "All my life I have been wandering in the dark—but now I have found your heart—and am satisfied."

 

"And what do all the great words come to in the end, but that?—I love you—I am at rest with you—I have come home."

 

 

There was such a stillness in the room that Miss Twitterton thought it must be empty. She crept down softly, stair by stair, afraid lest Bunter should hear her. The door was ajar and she pushed it open inch by inch. The lamp had been moved, so that she found herself in darkness—but the room was not empty, after all. On the far side, framed in the glowing circle of the lamplight, the two figures were bright and motionless as a picture—the dark woman in a dress like flame, with her arms locked about the man's bowed shoulders and his golden head in her lap. They were so quiet that even the great ruby on her left hand shone steadily without a twinkle.

 

Miss Twitterton, turned to stone, dared neither advance nor retreat.

 

"Dear." The word was no more than a whisper, spoken without a movement. "My heart's heart. My own dear lover and husband." The locked hands must have tightened their hold, for the red stone flashed sudden fire. "You are mine, you are mine, all mine."

 

The head came up at that and his voice caught the triumph and sent it back in a mounting wave:

 

"Yours. Such as I am, yours. With all my faults, all my follies, yours utterly and for ever. While this poor, passionate, mountebank body has hands to hold you and lips to say, I love you——"

 

"Oh!" cried Miss Twitterton, with a great strangling sob, "I can't bear it! I can't bear it!"

 

The little scene broke like a bubble. The chief actor leapt to his feet and said very distinctly:

 

"Damn and blast!"

 

Harriet got up. The sudden shattering of her ecstatic mood and a swift, defensive anger for Peter's sake made her tone sharper than she knew:

 

"Who is it? What are you doing there?" She stepped out of the pool of light and peered into the dusk. "Miss Twitterton?"

 

Miss Twitterton, incapable of speech and terrified beyond conception, went on choking hysterically. A voice from the direction of the fireplace said grimly:

 

"I knew I should make a bloody fool of myself."

 

"Something's happened," said Harriet, more gently, putting out a reassuring hand. Miss Twitterton found her voice:

 

"Oh, forgive me—I didn't know—I never meant——" The remembrance of her own misery got the upper hand of her alarm. "Oh, I'm so dreadfully unhappy."

 

"I think," said Peter, "I had better see about decanting the port."

 

He retreated quickly and quietly, without waiting to shut the door. But the ominous words had penetrated to Miss Twitterton's consciousness. A new terror checked her tears in mid-flow.

 

"Oh, dear, oh, dear! The port wine! Now he'll be angry again."

 

"Good heavens!" exclaimed Harriet, completely bewildered. "What has gone wrong? What is it all about?"

 

Miss Twitterton shuddered. A cry of "Bunter!" in the passage warned her that the crisis was imminent.

 

"Mrs. Ruddle has done something dreadful to the port wine."

 

"Oh, my poor Peter!" said Harriet. She listened anxiously. Bunter's voice now, subdued to a long, explanatory mumble. "Oh, dear, oh, dear, oh, dear!" moaned Miss Twitterton.

 

"But what can the woman have done?"

 

Miss Twitterton really was not sure.

 

"I believe she's shaken the bottle," she faltered. "Oh!"

 

A loud yelp of anguish rent the air within. Peter's voice lifted to a wail:

 

"What! all my pretty chickens and their dam?"

 

The last word sounded to Miss Twitterton painfully like an oath.

 

"O-o-oh! I do hope he won't be violent."

 

"Violent?" said Harriet, half amused and half angry. "Oh, I shouldn't think so."

 

But alarm is infectious...and much-tried men have been known to vent their exasperation upon their[Pg 330] servants. The two women clung together, waiting for the explosion.

 

"Well," said the distant voice, "all I can say is, Bunter, don't let it happen again.... All right.... Good God, man, you needn't tell me that ...of course you didn't.... We'd better go and view the bodies."

 

The sounds died away, and the women breathed more freely. The dreadful menace of male violence lifted its shadow from the house.

 

"Well!" said Harriet, "that wasn't so bad after all.... My dear Miss Twitterton, what is the matter? You're trembling all over.... Surely, surely you didn't really think Peter was going to—to throw things about or anything, did you? Come and sit down by the fire. Your hands are like ice."

 

Miss Twitterton allowed herself to be led to the settle.

 

"I'm sorry—it was silly of me. But... I'm always so terrified of ...gentlemen being angry...and...and...after all, they're all men, aren't they?...and men are so horrible!"

 

The end of the sentence came out in a shuddering burst. Harriet realised that there was more here than poor Uncle William or a couple of dozen of port.

 

"Dear Miss Twitterton, what is the trouble? Can I help? Has somebody been horrible to you?"

 

Sympathy was too much for Miss Twitterton. She clutched at the kindly hands.

 

"Oh, my lady, my lady—I'm ashamed to tell you. He said such dreadful things to me. Oh, please forgive me!"

 

"Who did?" asked Harriet, sitting down beside her.

 

"Frank. Terrible things.... And I know I'm a little older than he is—and I suppose I've been very foolish—but he did say he was fond of me."

 

"Frank Crutchley?"

 

"Yes—and it wasn't my fault about Uncle's money. We were going to be married—only we were waiting for the forty pounds and my own little savings that Uncle borrowed. And they're all gone now and no money to come from Uncle—and now he says he hates the sight of me, and—and I do love him so!"

 

"I am so sorry," said Harriet, helplessly. What else was there to be said? The thing was ludicrous and abominable.

 

"He—he—he called me an old hen!" That was the almost unspeakable thing; and when it was out Miss Twitterton went on more easily. "He was so angry about my savings—but I never thought of asking Uncle for a receipt."

 

"Oh, my dear!"

 

"I was so happy—thinking we were going to be married as soon as he could get the garage started—only we didn't tell anybody, because, you see, I was a little bit older than him, though of course I was in a better position. But he was working up and making himself quite superior——"

 

How fatal, thought Harriet, how fatal! Aloud she said:

 

"My dear, if he treats you like that he's not superior at all. He's not fit to clean your shoes."

 

Peter was singing:

 

"Que donneriez-vous, belle,

Pour avoir votre ami?

Que donneriez-vous, belle,

Pour avoir votre ami?"

 

(He seems to have got over it, thought Harriet.)

 

"And he's so handsome.... We used to meet in the churchyard—there's a nice seat there.... Nobody comes that way in the evenings.... I let him kiss me...."

 

"Je donnerais Versailles,

Paris et Saint Denis!"

 

"...and now he hates me.... I don't know what to do.... I shall go and drown myself.... Nobody knows what I've done for Frank...."

 

"Auprès de ma blonde

Qu'il fait bon, fait bon, fait bon,

Auprès de ma blonde

Qu'il fait bon dormi!"

 

"Oh, Peter!" said Harriet in an exasperated undertone. She rose and shut the door upon this heartless exhibition. Miss Twitterton, exhausted by her own emotions, sat weeping quietly in a corner of the settle. Harriet was conscious of a whole series of emotions, arranged in layers like a Neapolitan ice.

 

What on earth am I to do with her?...

He is singing songs in the French language....

And it must be nearly dinner-time....

Somebody called Polly....

Mrs. Ruddle will drive those men distracted....

Bonté d'âme....

Old Noakes dead in our cellar....

(Eructavit cor meum!)...

Poor Bunter!...

Sellon?...

(Qu'il fait bon dormi)....

If you know How, you know Who....

This house....

My true love hath my heart and I have his....

 

She came back and stood by the settle. "Listen! Don't cry so terribly. He isn't worth it. Honestly, he couldn't be. There isn't a man in ten million that's worth breaking your heart over." (No good to tell people that.) "Try to forget him. I know it sounds difficult...."

 

Miss Twitterton looked up.

 

"You wouldn't find it so easy?"

 

"To forget Peter?" (No; nor other things.) "Well, of course, Peter..."

 

"Yes," said Miss Twitterton, without rancour. "You're one of the lucky ones. I'm sure you deserve it."

 

"I'm quite sure I don't." (God's bodikins, man, much better.... Every man after his desert?)

 

"And what you must have thought of me!" cried Miss Twitterton, suddenly restored to a sense of the actual. "I hope he isn't too terribly angry. You see, I heard you coming in—just outside the door—and I simply couldn't face anybody—so I ran upstairs—and then I didn't hear anything so I thought you'd gone and came down—and seeing you so happy together..."

 

"It doesn't matter the very least bit," said Harriet, hastily. "Please don't think any more about it. He knows it was quite an accident. Now—don't cry any more."

 

"I must be going." Miss Twitterton made vague efforts to straighten her disordered hair and the jaunty little hat. "I'm afraid I look a sight."

 

"No, not a bit. Just a touch of powder's all you want. Where's my—oh! I left it in Peter's pocket. No, here it is on the what-not. That's Bunter. He always clears up after us. Poor Bunter and the port—it must have been a blow to him."

 

Miss Twitterton stood patiently to be tidied up, like a small child in the hands of a brisk nurse. "There—you look quite all right. See! No one would notice anything."

 

The mirror! Miss Twitterton shrank at the thought of it, but curiosity spurred her on. This was her own face, then—how strange!

 

"I've never had powder on before. It—it makes me feel quite fast."

 

She stared, fascinated.

 

"Well," said Harriet, cheerfully, "it's helpful sometimes. Let me tuck up this little curl behind——"

 

Her own dark, glowing face came into the mirror behind Miss Twitterton's and she saw with a shock that the trail of vine-leaves was still in her hair. "Goodness! how absurd I look! We were playing silly games——"

 

"You look lovely," said Miss Twitterton. "Oh, dear—I hope nobody will think——"

 

"Nobody will think anything. Now, promise me you won't make yourself miserable any more."

 

"No," said Miss Twitterton, mournfully, "I'll try not." Two large, lingering tears rolled slowly into her eyes, but she remembered the powder and removed them carefully. "You have been so kind. Now I must run."

 

"Good night." The opening of the door revealed Bunter, hovering with a tray in the background.

 

"I hope I haven't kept you from your supper."

 

"Not a bit," said Harriet, "it isn't time for it yet. Now good-bye and don't worry. Bunter, please show Miss Twitterton out."

 

She stood absently, gazing at her own face in the mirror, the vine-wreath trailing from her hand.

 

"Poor little soul!"