Vivian’s furniture was solid, handsome, heavy. It regarded you with the dull pride of immutability. You were transitory: it was permanent. Each piece had its place and would remain in it. There it stood—a symbol of its owner’s virtues.
Vivian regarded other people, not as individuals, but as types. To discover to which type a man belonged, all that was necessary was to know what he did. I was a writer. Very well, then! I was the “artist” type.
Now, with Vivian and his friends, art would have been dismissed as a piece of foolishness had it not been for the fact that certain pictures sold for stupendous sums of money, and certain writers made incomes which were not to be denied. Also, eccentric members of the aristocracy were genuinely interested in art and showed clearly that they did not regard it as ingenious tomfoolery. Vivian, therefore, feigned respect for it while privately regarding it as super-nonsense.
My opinion of him was wholly at variance with Rosalie’s, though I did not tell her so. She regarded him as kind, indulgent, unselfish. To me, he possessed none of those qualities. He was a man who was quite certain that certain things could never happen to him. They happened to others, of course—but not to him.
What convinced me of this was the manner in which he referred to Rosalie’s illnesses. His attitude implied that his wife ought not to have had nervous collapses. (He always referred to her as “my wife.”) He could find no explanation of these breakdowns. She had every comfort, every attention. They went away frequently and she did not lack amusement. Why, then, nervous collapses?
It was plain that he regarded them as disturbances in an otherwise satisfactory and well-organised life. They were the only contact he had ever had with Failure.
“On the second occasion, it was very painful, very painful indeed.” He paused and looked round in order to make certain that we were alone. “She used to scream—although she was in a first-class nursing home. The one in which Lady Mavers is interested, you probably know of it. I used to say to her—gently, of course—‘My dear, you really must control yourself.’ It was a most difficult time for me. And once—would you believe it?—when I went to see her in the home, she did not recognise me.”
I pointed out that she was a sensitive—but I got no further.
“Yes, yes! I know that argument, but it’s based on a fallacy. She’s deceptively frail-looking. I use the word ‘deceptively’ advisedly. You may not believe me, but, actually, she’s strongly built. Lithe—but strong. She looks far more frail in her clothes than she does—than she actually is.”
There he sat at the head of the table, a square, solid figure in old-fashioned evening clothes. He had a ponderous head, shrewd eyes, broad, capable hands. To see him was to know his friends. Everything I learned about Vivian only confirmed what I already knew. I never made a discovery.
Clockwork-regularity was his god. On Wednesday nights they dined at a restaurant, because the servants went out on Wednesday nights. Never did they enter a restaurant on any other night. On Saturday they went to the play, because Vivian did not mind being late on Saturdays as he did not have to go to the office the next day. On Saturday afternoons he had a Turkish bath, because the office was shut on Saturday afternoons. On Sunday from three to five he contemplated his coins. He had a remarkable collection and was very proud of it. He took the same house in the country every summer and went to it every week-end. His wife could stay there from May till September, if she chose. If not, she accompanied him every week-end. Every other year they went abroad for a month. Every morning he left the house at nine-thirty and returned at six o’clock. Every winter he suffered from bronchial trouble.
Rosalie was a prisoner among the prosaic.
On one occasion I referred to the amazing improvement in her health, adding that I took some credit for it as it coincided with our friendship.
“Oh yes, yes! She’s quite normal, really. All women have fads. But I always knew that a regular life must have an effect on her. One young fool of a doctor told me that she needed an outlet.”
He looked at me with heavy indignation.
“My wife needed an outlet! Did you ever hear such nonsense? Here she is, perfectly well again, and what outlet has she now which she had not then?”
I agreed that a regular life had had its effect on her.
My friendship with Rosalie did not disturb him in the least. In fact, in the winter, when his bronchial trouble asserted itself, he welcomed my presence, and frequently asked me to take Rosalie to the theatre on Saturday nights.
As to the question of possible infidelity, I am convinced it never crossed his mind. To him, she was not Rosalie. She was—his wife. Somebody else’s wife might be unfaithful to her husband, of course, but not his wife. Things like that did not happen to him.
I half believe that he thought it was my admiration for him which made me such a frequent visitor.
What would he do if he discovered? That was the only question relating to Vivian which I could not answer. Would he merely insist that she was never to see me again—then punish her in secret till the day one of them died? That would avoid scandal. Or would he divorce her, and bang the gates of his memory on her for ever? Would he commit suicide? Murder? It was impossible even to have an opinion. To discover that his wife had a lover would be a calamity so outside Vivian’s experience that his reaction to it was not to be imagined.
Rosalie believed that he loved her. I believed that he loved her as part of himself. I do not think he loved Rosalie. But I am quite certain he loved his wife.
I did not care whether he discovered or not. Danger has always fascinated me. It delivers me from that terrible interior weariness. It robs the days and nights of that fearful flat monotony in which everything is steeped in the leaden hue of mediocrity. Danger is the subtlest form of intoxication. It makes the most worthless life suddenly worth the living. It gives meaning to the meaningless. Boredom lies awake in a nightcap, but Danger sleeps with a sword by its side.
At any moment Rosalie might have told Vivian. She lived, moved, and had her being in a state of emotional tension. She had the irresistible impulses of a child. She had, too, a child’s craving to share its happiness. Her imagination tortured her by compelling her to regard that happiness as he would regard it. Above all, she had the dream that it was possible for Vivian to know we were lovers—and to share the innocence she felt in that relationship. And, for her, this was not only a dream, it was an objective. It was her belief in this fantasy which enabled her to continue to deceive him. This was why she wanted me to visit their flat. To be there together, the three of us, in a room—seemed to her to be prophetic of the fulfilment of her dream. The three of us—in physical proximity! To Rosalie, that fact foreshadowed a future intimacy in which all barriers would be down.
She was so far removed from Vivian that she could believe that about him! She was such worlds away from him that she could not believe he was what he seemed.
Whenever my telephone bell rang, whenever a wire came for me, or a ring at the door, my mind became a question mark. Often, I was certain she would tell him. I have seen the sentence quiver on her lips a dozen times.
Once she impulsively took his arm and mine simultaneously. I could see that her romanticism was regarding herself as a link between us. I burst out laughing, and thereby jarred her back to actuality.
To dominate her so that she would not tell him! That was my task, and success almost convinced me that I possessed the power in which she so wholly believed. To steel her with my will! To possess her psychic being! To still her remorse with a word! To rule her ever-active imagination!