The Lonely Lady of Dulwich Page 8

  “Oh!” said Zita.

  “Yes, and he asked after you.”

  Zita smiled. Jean de Bosis seemed to her to belong to something infinitely far away, both in space and in time.

  “He’s not happy,” Amelia went on, “his wife’s friends bore him and his friends bore her. They can’t really live together and they can’t do without one another.”

  “She’s still fond of him?” asked Zita.

  “Oh yes, and desperately jealous. She has never looked at anyone else. He would have if he dared, but he doesn’t dare! She has a tremendous hold over him. She’s a wonderful woman, in a way. She’s not only a great artist – and she is, without doubt, a really great artist, and the best concert singer alive, I suppose, and that’s a rare thing – but she is a remarkable woman as well, and that’s rarer still.”

  “They never come to England,” said Zita.

  “No, she doesn’t like England, or rather the thought of it, because she doesn’t know it. He looks much older than he did. He is tired with all that writing, and all the wrangle of their domestic life, and all that travel.”

  “It must be very tiring,” said Zita.

  It was clear during all this conversation that she was only faintly interested in Jean de Bosis, but she was not entirely conscious of the fact. She was conscious of it two days later, when the manager of the hotel announced to her that Jean de Bosis was arriving.

  “Is Madame de Bosis coming too?” she asked.

  The manager said no; not at present, at any rate.

  He arrived the next night by himself.

  He went straight to Zita and asked if he might sit at her table. They dined together that night: Zita, the Legges, Jean de Bosis and Walter Price. Robert Harmer and Mrs Rylands had dined at the table d’hôte.

  He said that he had been ordered to take the waters. His wife was at the Mont Dore for her throat. She was with a party of musical friends.

  “They didn’t want me,” he said, “and I doubt whether I could have supported the Mont Dore and so many musicians for all that time. Anyhow, the matter was settled by the doctor, who said I was to come here.”

  He looked, indeed, as if he needed a cure somewhere; ten years older than he had looked the year before. After dinner they sat out in the garden until it was time to go to bed.

  The next day in the early afternoon Jean de Bosis walked into the park, expecting to find Zita at the usual place in her chair. She was there, but Walter Price was there too. He did not go away when Jean de Bosis came, but stayed until Zita went to fetch her husband, and talked incessantly.

  The evening was spent like the preceding one, except that they went to see a play in the Casino. Before they went to bed Jean managed to say to Zita:

  “I must have a talk with you alone some time tomorrow. Let us go for a little walk in the park after déjeuner.”

  Zita nodded. She had no wish to go for a walk with Jean. She realized this, but she did not know how to refuse. It was at that moment that the truth began to break upon her, but not wholly. She knew that she did not want to see Jean de Bosis. She did not want to see anyone but Walter Price, and she wanted to see him every day and every moment of the day, but yet she did not put the question to herself: ‘Am I in love with him?’ She only knew that nothing like this had happened to her before. She slept badly that night. She did not know what to do about Jean.

  ‘I suppose I must see him,’ she said to herself, ‘but what shall I say to him?’

  And at the same time she wondered how she could still manage to see Walter. The matter was settled for her. M. Carnot, the President of the Republic, was passing through Nancy for some ceremony or inauguration, and Price’s editor telegraphed to him to attend the ceremony, and if possible to obtain an interview with anyone of importance with regardto the relations of the Royalist and any other parties whohad been intriguing with General Boulanger, now utterly discredited. Price had to catch a train early in the morning. There was no escape for Zita. Jean found her in her usual place just after déjeuner.

  “I have been waiting for this moment the whole year,” he said.

  “Really?” said Zita. She wanted to appear as friendly as possible. “I am very glad to see you again.” This phrase, with its all too-friendly accent, its accent of a friendliness, that is to say, that could only mean indifference, was like a knell to Jean.

  “I see,” he said, “it is all over.”

  “What?”

  “All that used to be, and all that might have been.”

  “I did not know there was anything.”

  “You have forgotten last year?”

  Zita felt she might well have said that it was surely he who had shown least signs of remembrance, since she had only heard from him once or twice since the past year, but she did not wish to seem to have a grievance. He voiced her thoughts.

  “You think because I made so few signs of life that I had forgotten?” he said. “I have forgotten nothing. I could do nothing because of Emilia. She guessed at once, and was fearfully jealous. We had scenes and reconciliations, terrible scenes! and even more terrible reconciliations! over and over again. I once nearly killed her. I tried to kill myself. I know I was weak and despicable, and I do not deny she had real, complete power over me. She dominated me altogether, but now that is over…at least it might be over if you would help me. I could be free at last for the first time. She knows why I have come here. She knows the truth, that I hate her and thatI love you, and that I cannot live without you.”

  “Oh, don’t –” said Zita frightened.

  “Then it is all over?” said Jean, savagely, “and I know why – I knew why at once, directly I saw you, but I tried to deceive myself.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You are in love with that vulgar reporter, Price. But I warn you you’re making a mistake; he’s not a real person.”

  Zita blushed scarlet, and, like a blinding flash, the truth came to her fully for the first time. She knew that this was true; that she loved Walter; that she had loved him from the first, from the moment she had first set eyes on him. She had, when she had first seen Walter, been struck with fatal lightning, which is always the herald of a real passion and never of a passing fancy, but which, unfortunately, so rarely happens at the same time to both parties concerned.

  “I think you are mad,” she stammered.

  “I am not mad, and you know I am not mad. Emilia’s instinct must have somehow told her this had happened, otherwise she would never have let me come here by myself. She was right. She had nothing to fear. I will go away tomorrow. I can’t stay here and see this going on.”

  “It is all too absurd,” said Zita. “I am almost old enough to be his mother.”

  “As if age had anything to do with those things,” said Jean.

  Zita knew that however vehemently she might deny and dispute what Jean was saying, she could not find the accents which would make her words sound true. She took refuge in tears, which came all too easily.

  Jean melted at the sight.

  “My poor child,” he said, “it’s not your fault that you love him; you can’t help it, but I wonder whether he loves you. Not as he ought to in any case; he will make you unhappy. There is nothing to do except for me to go away.”

  “Don’t go away,” she said, but there was no real conviction in her voice.

  Jean would have given worlds for her to deny the whole thing in accents that he would have believed, but this was just what she did not, what she could not, do.

  The band began to play a selection from Le Petit Duc.

  “I must go and wake Robert,” she said, “he told me to wake him directly the band started playing.”

  Walter Price stayed that night at Nancy, and the next morning Jean left Haréville for the Mont Dore.

  CHAPTER XI

  Watering-place life leads to intimacy, and Zita and Walter Price reached, during their stay at Haréville, a pitch of great intimacy, although they were seldom alone t
ogether. This did not seem to affect Walter. He was always busy; he always had somethingto do, and always seemed happy to be a part of the group. He appeared not to want more. Zita did want more, but she could not express her desire, nor do anything to bring it to pass.

  As the year before, they took an after-cure at Gérardmer, and then they went home in time for Scotland and the grouse shooting. Robert Harmer invited Price to shoot; he stayed in Scotland a week with them.

  After that the lives of the Harmers fell into the old rut; so did Walter’s, except that he was sent to Constantinople for several months towards the end of the year. The next year he was in London on and off, but constantly on the move. He managed, nevertheless, to find time to be at Wimbledon. He was getting on in his career, and was often sent on special missions to interview important people or to be on the spot where stirring things were happening. In spite of this, his name had not definitely emerged from the ruck; he was not known outside Fleet Street. Sometimes he would go as far afield as Lisbon or St Petersburg, and sometimes no further than Manchester or Plymouth.

  Between these journeys he would find time to go down to Wimbledon, and so a year passed. The following year the lease on which Harmer had let Wallington came to an end, and he made up his mind to live there again. He let the Wimbledon house, took one in Regent’s Park, and settled to spend his holidays at Wallington.

  Had anyone told Zita two years previously that when this should happen she would not only not mind it, but positively welcome the change, she would not have believed them. But such was the truth, and the cause of it was that she knew she would see more of Walter. She was blissfully, radiantly happy, and life seemed to begin again for her once more.

  When Robert Harmer told Mrs Rylands of the move, she said:

  “I am afraid it will be a dreadful blow to Zita to leave that beautiful garden, which is her creation.”

  “I am afraid it will,” said Robert, and he hardly dared broach the topic for a time; but when at last he did so, and stammered something about the garden, all that Zita said was:

  “Oh! the garden! We will make one at Wallington. I always thought we could make something wonderful there, but in those days I didn’t know enough. I know better now.”

  Robert Harmer was immensely relieved.

  They moved into their London house in the spring and stayed there all the summer. Robert did not go to Harévillethat year. Zita went to Wallington in July. She wished to get everything ready for the autumn. Walter Price happened to be in the neighbourhood ‘covering’ a by-election, and she saw something of him. Robert had given her carte blanche to do what she liked with the house, and she managed to improve it a little and to make it a little less gloomy and bleak, and she also set about introducing reforms in the garden, and silently undermining the obstinacy of the gardener. Altogether she was ecstatically happy.

  They did not go to Scotland that year, but they asked friends for the partridge shooting in September, and a party for the pheasant shooting in November that lasted a week. Mrs Rylands came, and Walter Price was there for a day and a night, which was all he could spare from his work.

  Zita stayed at Wallington all the autumn. They paid two visits and came home for Christmas, which the Legges, Mrs Rylands, the Suttons, and Walter Price spent with them.

  In January they went to London and stayed there till July, when Robert Harmer, who had not been so well, was told he must do a proper cure at Haréville this year; so they went there in July, accompanied, as usual, by Mrs Rylands, and meeting the Legges there, as usual, again. Walter Price was busy in London, but he hoped, he said, to be able to put in ten days at Haréville; the doctor had told him it would be unwise not to, and like Robert Harmer, he had missed a year and paid for so doing.

  They had been a week at Haréville.

  Zita was sitting in the park one morning near the band kiosk talking to Amelia Legge.

  “I had a letter from Madeleine this morning,” said Amelia. “She says that Jean de Bosis is dangerously ill. They are all anxious about him.”

  “What is it?” said Zita, frightened at her own indifference.

  “They don’t quite know. He seems to be wasting away – it’s a kind of fever.”

  “Is his wife with him?”

  “Oh, yes! Madeleine says she is distracted and nursing him wonderfully. His mother is there too. Poor Jean! They say he worries over his last book, which was not such a success as usual. He has come to think all his books were bad, in spite of his great fame.”

  “Do you know I have never read one of his books,” said Zita, “except that little book of poems, and not all of those.”

  “It’s impossible to get that book now, and not many people have ever heard of it,” said Amelia. “I’m sorry he is so unhappy,” she added, with a plaintive voice.

  “Has he been unhappy?” asked Zita, not looking up.

  “Yes, really unhappy. She made him unhappy. You see she was too like him, in a way. It was a case of Greek meeting Greek. He ought to have married a quiet, humdrum girl; someone gentle: but the last person he should have chosen was an artist, especially a singer. And Emilia has a terrible temper and Jean is a bundle of nerves. Still, what can one expect? Things so rarely go right. I often think I am not grateful enough having found such a perfect husband as Cyril. When I was younger I used to complain of having to live abroad and go from place to place, but now I know better. I shall never complain. I know how rare perfect husbands are, and I know that I shouldn’t have enjoyed a humdrum life in England nearly as much as I’ve enjoyed our life of travel and bustle and change and interest. I have loved all of it. And you, Zita dear, you ought to be thankful too. You are a happy woman and you have a perfect husband; you couldn’t have found a better one. I used to think when you first married that Robert wasn’t the right person for you. I know better now. You have a lot to be thankful for.”

  “Oh, yes,” said Zita. “I know I have, and I hope I am grateful.”

  That morning Zita received a telegram from Walter Price saying he was arriving the same evening. As she read the telegram her heart beat. She had not seen Walter for several months. He had been, on behalf of his newspaper, spending the spring and early summer months in Berlin. He wired from Paris. She would see him that evening. She had never felt so sharp a pang of joy in her life. She was conscious of never having loved him so much. Her whole being seemed to be rushing out towards him. She was ready for anything, any act of sacrifice: she wanted to give everything; to offer – to sacrifice – to surrender.

  He arrived before dinner and joined Zita and the Legges.

  “You have heard, I suppose,” were his first words, “that Jean de Bosis is dead.”

  They had not heard it.

  “Yes; he died early this morning, at four o’clock, of malarial fever, which he caught in Italy. I’ve got to write his biography, not only for my paper but for America, and I thought you might help me,” he said, looking at Zita and Mrs Legge. “I cabled a story this morning. The funeral is to be in the country, and quite quiet – only relations. They are making a big hullabaloo about him in Paris; and the Americans are cabling like hell; his name is popular in the States, he is one of the few European writers that are known there.”

  “You will be able to help Mr Price,” Zita said to Amelia.

  “I haven’t seen him lately,” said Amelia. “I hardly ever saw him after the last time he was here; that was three years ago, when he went away in such a hurry, called to Mont Dore by his wife, who never could leave him out of her sight for five minutes – a genius shouldn’t marry a genius. Be careful whom you marry, Mr Price. Don’t marry anyone who cares for journalism, or news, or newspapers, or Fleet Street. Find out your opposite.”

  Walter Price laughed.

  “I shall certainly make a wise choice,” he said.

  Zita quaked inwardly at the thought of his possibly marrying.

  “The Americans,” said Walter, “want personal stuff about his life. She is well-known in
America, too.”

  “Yes,” said Cyril, “they went for a long tour there, she sang, and he gave one or two lectures in English. He told me he hated it, but they made a lot of money, and people were kind to them.”

  “Yes,” said Price, “and they were personally popular. Madame de Bosis has, you see, the international touch; that’s what Americans like. They don’t like someone who is just all French or just all British – that freezes them.”

  “Do the Americans like his books?” asked Cyril.

  “They have never really read them; but he’s a popular personality, on account of his wife. And then some of his books were thought to be scandalous, and they were forbidden in some states, and that all helps from a news point of view.”

  “Do you think his books will live in France?” asked Cyril.

  “Oh, no!” said Walter, “but they are having a good innings and the top of the boom is now, and I am doing my best to boost it more. I’m sorry he’s dead, of course, but he has died just at the right moment for me; he couldn’t have chosen a better time.”

  “Poor Jean!” said Amelia.

  “He was a white man, and he’ll be missed. There was no pretension about him,” said Walter.

  The next day there were races in the neighbourhood, and Robert Harmer insisted on going. He wanted everyone to go: Mrs Rylands and the Legges consented, but Walter Price did not appear in the morning; he was too busy writing; and Zita said she had a headache. She did not come down in the morning. The others went by train to the races directly after déjeuner without her.

  After luncheon Zita felt better. She came down and sat in the shade in the park, which was deserted. She sat working, wondering at the fate of Jean de Bosis, and what Walter Price was doing. He answered her question by appearing in person and sitting down next to her.