Pentecost Alley Page 9
She glanced sideways and caught her eye as they crossed the hallway and entered the ornate withdrawing room, decorated with portraits of family ancestors posed against unreal rural scenery.
“Isn’t it ghastly?” the young woman whispered, raising her fan so her words were concealed from the ladies to their left.
“Fearful!” Emily whispered back. “I have never been more bored in my life. I feel as if I know what everyone is going to say before they say it.”
“That is because it is exactly what they said last time!” the young woman replied with a smile. “Oscar Wilde says it is the artist’s duty always to be surprising.”
“Then it must be the politician’s duty always to say and do precisely what is expected of him,” Emily returned. “That way no one is ever caught off guard.”
“And nothing is ever interesting, or funny! My name is Tallulah FitzJames. I know we haven’t been introduced, but we obviously know each other in spirit.”
“Emily Radley,” Emily replied.
“Oh, is Jack Radley your husband?” There was a spark of appreciation in her eye.
“Yes,” Emily acknowledged with satisfaction, then added honestly, “I wouldn’t be here otherwise.”
They walked over to a sofa just large enough for the two of them to sit side by side and be perfectly polite in including no one else.
“I can’t think why I’m here!” Tallulah sighed. “I am with my cousin, Gerald Allenby, because he wanted me to, so he could pay court to Miss … I forget the name. Her father’s got a huge place up in Yorkshire or somewhere. Glorious in the summer, and like the North Pole in winter.”
“I’m here to be decorative and smile at the right people,” Emily said ruefully.
Tallulah’s eyes brightened. “Are you allowed to glare and make faces at the wrong people?” she said hopefully.
Emily laughed. “Possibly, if I could only be sure who they were. The trouble is one day’s wrong people are another day’s right ones. And you can’t take back a glare.”
“No, you can’t, can you.” Tallulah was suddenly serious. “In fact, you can’t take back anything much. People remember, even if you don’t.”
Emily caught the note of pain underneath the light voice. Without warning, there was reality in the emotion. The rest of the room fell away from Emily’s consciousness, the polite chatter, the tinkle of appropriate laughter.
“Some people forget,” she said quietly. “It’s an art. If you want to go on loving someone, you have to learn it.”
“I don’t want to go on,” Tallulah said with a tight little smile of self-mockery. “I’d give a great deal to know how to stop.”
Emily asked the next and obvious question. “Is he married?”
That seemed to Tallulah to be funny, in a bitter way.
Emily did not want to pry, but she sensed that the other woman had a need to share something which obviously hurt her and which perhaps she could not speak of to her family. They might not know … or if they did, maybe they disapproved. If he were married, they could hardly do anything else.
“No, he’s not married,” Tallulah answered. “At least he wasn’t the last time I saw him. I don’t imagine he’ll ever marry. And if he does, it will be someone earnest and beautiful, with innocent eyes and hair which curls naturally, and a permanently sweet disposition.”
Emily thought about it for a moment. She did not want to make a clumsy remark, and it was not easy to read through the flippant words the true nature of Tallulah’s pain. She did not know whether to be witty in return, or to be noncommittal, or to show that she saw the depth if not the totality of the wound.
Over on the far side of the room a large woman with fair hair and magnolia skin tilted her head back and laughed daintily. The gaslight shone in a riot of beautiful colors, silk skirts spread out like poppy petals, oranges and plums and shot lavenders, a glory of gleam and shade. Beyond the windows the summer evening was barely dark, an afterglow still shooting shreds of apricot between the branches of the trees above the garden wall.
“I don’t think I should like to be married to someone with a permanently sweet disposition,” Emily said candidly. “I should feel intensely inferior. And I should also never be quite sure if they meant what they said.”
Tallulah stared at her long, slender hands resting on her skirt.
“Jago wouldn’t feel inferior,” she replied. “He’s the best man I’ve ever met.”
Emily was at a loss to answer that. Jago, whoever he was, sounded like a bore, and more than a little unreal. Or perhaps that was unjust? It could be only the way Tallulah saw him. But looking sideways at Tallulah’s unhappy face, it was hard to believe she would find someone she saw as so good of the slightest interest, except as a curiosity. Even deep in thought, her own face was full of vitality and daring. Her mouth was too wide, full of humor, her nose too strong and yet utterly feminine. Her eyes were lovely, wide and intelligent. It was the face of a rebel, unpredictable, far from wise, perhaps self-indulgent, but always brave.
“Best at what?” Emily asked before she thought clearly of her words.
Tallulah smiled in spite of herself.
“Best at honor, and caring for people, real people,” she answered. “And at working all the hours there are, at giving away his goods to feed the poor, at giving his whole life in service. If he sounds boring, or unlikely, that’s only because you don’t know him.”
“Are you sure you do?”
Tallulah looked up. “Oh, yes. He’s a parish priest in Whitechapel. I haven’t been there, of course. It’s the most fearful place. They say even the smell is enough to turn your stomach. Open middens everywhere. You can taste them in the air. All the people are dirty, and thin, and terribly poor.”
Emily thought of her own experiences with poverty, the times she had helped Charlotte or Pitt and seen the reality of hunger: people crowded ten or twelve to a room, sleeping on the floor, always cold, without privacy even for the most intimate functions. She knew far better than Tallulah what they were speaking of. Perhaps this Jago really was good.
“How do you know him?” she said aloud. “He’s not exactly your circle. I can’t see him at something like this.” Her eye strayed to the giggling women, their corseted waists, their flowing skirts, their gleaming white shoulders and necks colored with gems. If anyone here had gone hungry, it would be for vanity’s sake. But to be fair, at least in the unmarried ones among them, beauty was survival.
“He used to be,” Tallulah responded. She looked at Emily frankly. “You think I’m seeing him through a romantic haze, don’t you? That I have no idea what the real person is like … that I only see his calling and his professional self.” She shook her head. “That’s not true. He’s the same age as my brother, Finlay, and they used to be friends. Finlay’s older than I am. Eight years. But I can remember Jago coming to the house often when I was about sixteen, just before I came out into society. He used to be awfully sweet to me then.”
“But he isn’t now?”
Tallulah looked at her with bitterness.
“Of course not. He’d be polite if we chanced to meet, naturally. He’s polite to everyone. But I can see the contempt in his eyes. The very fact that he speaks at me, through a glass wall of good manners, as if I’m not a real person to him at all, says just how he despises me.”
“Why should he despise you? Isn’t that pretty intolerant?”
Tallulah’s face set into misery again, losing all its brightness and courage.
“Not really. Perhaps ‘despise’ is too strong a word. He just has no time for me. I spend my life indulging myself. I go from one party to another. I eat wonderful food which I don’t work to buy; I don’t even cook it myself.” She lifted one elegant shoulder. “To be frank, I don’t even know where it comes from. I simply order it from the kitchen and it arrives, on the plate ready for me to eat. And when it’s finished someone removes it and does whatever they do. Wash it, put it away, I suppose.”
“And I wear gorgeous dresses, which I don’t make, and I wouldn’t begin to know how to care for,” she went on. “I even have a maid to help me put them on and take them off. She sends them to the laundry maid, who washes them, except the best ones, like this, which she will do herself. I think some of them even have to be unpicked to be cleaned properly, I’m not sure.”
“Yes, they do,” Emily told her. “It’s a very long job.”
“You see?”
“No. Lots of people live like that. Don’t you like it?”
Tallulah’s head came up, her mouth pressed into a thin line, her eyes fixed on Emily’s.
“Yes, I do. I love it! Of course I love it. Don’t you? Don’t you want to dine and dance, look beautiful, spend your time in beautiful places, watch plays and laugh with witty people? Don’t you want to be outrageous at times, lead fashion, say shocking things and spend time with marvelous people?”
Emily knew exactly what she meant, but she could not help smiling and allowing her eyes to wander to the group of staid and very proper ladies a dozen feet away who were sitting upright—a necessity in whalebone corsets—and discussing in hushed voices the very minor improprieties of an acquaintance.
“Perhaps his idea of marvelous people is not the same as yours?” she suggested.
“Of course it isn’t,” Tallulah said sharply, although the flash of humor in her face betrayed that she took the point. “I think Oscar Wilde is marvelous. He is simply never, ever a bore, and never speaks down to one, except artistically, which is quite different. And he is sincerely insincere, if you know what I mean?”
“I’ve no idea,” Emily confessed, waiting for an explanation.
“I mean …” Tallulah searched for words. “I mean … he does not delude himself. There is no pomposity in him. He is so preposterous you know that he is laughing at everything, and yet it all matters intensely. He’s … he’s fun. He never goes around trying to improve other people or making moral judgments, and his gossip is always witty, and entertaining to repeat, and does no harm.” She looked around the room. “This is so … crashingly tedious. Not one person has said a single thing worth remembering, let alone recounting to anyone else.”
Emily was obliged to agree.
“So what is it about Jago that holds you? From what you say, he is as unlike Mr. Wilde as it would be possible to be.”
“I know,” Tallulah admitted. “But then I like to listen to Oscar Wilde. I wouldn’t ever want to marry him—that’s quite different.”
Perhaps she did not realize what she had said. Emily looked at her and saw the earnestness in her face, the self-mockery lying just beneath it, and realized whether she had intended to speak it aloud or not, it was what she meant.
“I don’t know why,” Tallulah went on. “I don’t think I want to know why.”
They were prevented from discussing the matter any further by the arrival of the gentlemen. Jack looked very serious. He came in, deep in conversation with a heavily whiskered man with a ruddy complexion and the scarlet ribbon of an order across his chest. He glanced at Emily, held her eyes, then continued on. That moment was intended to convey that he could not be interrupted, and she understood.
She also understood nearly an hour later when he came over and told her, with much apology, that he was obliged to leave the party early and go to the Home Office with the gentleman of the whiskers, and he would leave the carriage for her to return home when she wished. She should not wait up for him, as he could not say when his business might be concluded. It was just conceivable that it might last all night. He was very sorry indeed.
So it was that twenty minutes later, so bored that it was difficult for her to make sensible answers to trivial questions, she was delighted to see Tallulah FitzJames again.
“I can’t bear this anymore,” Tallulah said in a whisper. “My cousin is apparently succeeding with Miss Whatever-her-name-is and I can safely leave him to enjoy his victory.” Her tone suggested how little she thought that was worth. “Reggie Howard has invited me to go to a party he knows of in Chelsea. The sort of people we were talking about will be there, artists and poets, people of ideas. They’ll discuss all manner of things.” Now she was full of enthusiasm. “Some of them have been to Paris and met the writers there. Indeed, I heard that Arthur Symons is just back, a month or two ago, and could tell us of his meeting with the great Verlaine. It has to be immeasurably more interesting than this!”
It was clearly an invitation, and Emily hesitated. She ought simply to excuse herself and take her own carriage home. She had acquitted her duty and it would be acceptable.
But she was weary of doing her duty to those who expected it and were barely aware of her. She was not needed by Jack or her children. The house ran itself; her decisions were merely a matter of form. She was asked only out of politeness. The cook, the butler and the housekeeper would all do precisely the same whether she was there or not. Her mother was remarried and far too absorbed in her own happiness to need either company or counseling.
Even Charlotte had not needed or wanted her help lately. Pitt had not had a case in which they could assist. She did not even know what he was involved with at the moment.
But Tallulah FitzJames had a grief to which she might offer some very good advice. It was there on the edge of her tongue as she thought about it. The answer was a matter of priorities and inner honesty. No one could have everything, and somehow choices needed to be made. One should make them with candor and courage, and then have the sense to see that one accepted the decision and realized the consequences.
And it might be great fun to hear what was going on in Paris, in the way of outrageous ideas.
“How exciting,” she said with decision. “I should love to come.”
“Reggie will take us,” Tallulah said instantly. “Come on, Reggie. Do you know Mrs. Radley? The Honorable Reginald Howard.” And without waiting for them to do more than nod to each other, she led the way to their hostess to say their farewells, and Emily sent her own carriage home without her.
The party in Chelsea was as different from the event they had left as it was possible to conceive. It was held in several rooms, all of them large, filled with books and comfortable chairs and chaise longues. The air was hazy with smoke, some of which had the peculiar sweetness of incense, quite unfamiliar to Emily. Everywhere people, a far greater preponderance of men than women, were engaged in intense conversation.
The first man Emily noticed individually had a dreaming face, large nose, humorous eyes and small, delicate mouth. His hair seemed fair in the gaslight, and he wore it long enough to touch the white, lace-edged collar of his velvet jacket.
“I think that’s Richard Le Gallienne,” Tallulah whispered. “The writer.” She looked ahead to where another earnest young man, wavy hair parted in the center, rich mustache decorating a full upper lip, was describing something to his audience to their entranced delight. “And that’s Arthur Symons,” she went on, her voice rising eagerly. “He must be telling them about Paris. I hear he met simply everyone there!”
They were welcomed very casually by a middle-aged woman with powerful features, dressed in garb which could have come straight from an artist’s impression of an Eastern traveler. It was flattering, but highly eccentric. She held a cigar in one long-fingered hand and seemed to know Tallulah, and therefore to be happy to accommodate anyone who accompanied her.
Emily thanked her, then gazed around with interest and a touch of apprehension. A large potted palm nearly obscured a corner of the room, where two young men sat so close to each other they were all but touching. One of them appeared to be reading to the other out of a very thin, leather-bound volume. They were oblivious of everyone else.
On a chaise longue near the farther wall a middle-aged man with a florid face was either asleep or insensible.
Arthur Symons was holdi
ng forth about his recent trip to Paris, where he had indeed visited Paul Verlaine.
“We went to his home,” he said excitedly, gazing at his audience, “where we were most cordially received … Havelock Ellis and myself. I wish I could describe to you the atmosphere, everything I saw and heard. He entertained us with the last wine, all the while he smoked like a bonfire. I swear I shall never smell smoke again without it bringing to my mind that evening. Imagine it!” He held up his hands as if grasping a whole world, precious and complete.
Everyone within earshot was staring at him. No one made the slightest move to leave.
His face glowed with the rapture of the moment, although Emily wondered whether it was memory which burned so hotly in him or delight at being so absolutely the center of interest and the envy of his peers.
“Havelock and I sitting in the home of Verlaine himself. How we talked! We spoke of all manner of things, of philosophy and arts and poetry and what it is to be alive. It was as if we had always known each other.”
There was a murmur around the small circle, a sigh of admiration, perhaps of longing. One young man seemed almost intoxicated by the very thought of such an experience. His fair face was brightly flushed and he leaned forward as if by being in such close proximity he could touch or feel it for himself.
“He invited us to return the following day,” Symons continued.
“And of course you did!” the young man said urgently.
“Of course,” Symons agreed. Then a curious expression crossed his features, anger, laughter, sorrow. “Unfortunately, he was not in.”
Beside Emily someone drew in her breath sharply.
“We left in the utmost dejection,” Symons went on, looking even now as if some tragedy had just struck him. “It was appalling! Our dreams crashed to the ground, the cup broken the very instant it was at our lips.” He hesitated dramatically. “Then at the very moment we were leaving … we encountered him returning with a friend.”