The Poor Man by Stella Benson - HTML preview

CHAPTER NINE

Now I have nothing. Even the joy of loss—

Even the dreams I had I now am losing.

Only this thing I know; that you are using

My heart as a stone to bear your foot across....

I am glad—I am glad—the stone is of your choosing....

Edward thought of Emily waiting for him at Shanghai. He had her address from Tam. He had telegraphed to her. But surely she would know, even without telegrams, that he was coming now.

It was a dingy hotel in Shanghai. It had brown pillars painted to resemble marble. The resemblance was as faint as was that of the paper objects on the mantelpiece to flowers.

Edward waited and waited. He had not told Stone where he was going. Stone had gone to a movie. Edward hoped that he would never see him again. Edward still had most of Stone’s remaining money in his suitcase. Somehow if he never saw Stone again Edward felt that the money would not matter. If one were never reminded one need not remember. A crime of which one was never accused was no crime. Edward had no self-accuser on the subject of money. There were limits to his humility and to his humiliation.

Edward waited and waited.

Even when Emily came he found himself still waiting. For she came with a group of people.

Edward felt sick. His lips and his hands trembled. Emily did not look so incredible as he had expected. She looked quite human. He thought it was amazing that he should recognise her. How did he know she really was Emily? She was hidden in a crowd of foolish people. She was disguised by a calm rather stiff smile and faint blue shadows under her still eyes. Her body, usually nervous with life and mockery, moved staidly.

“Well, Edward ... I got your wire. I have been dreadfully excited since I got it. You darling, funny old Edward.... Now you must know all these nice people ... Mrs. Thompson, Mrs. Hoskins, Mr. Thompson, Captain Ross ... this is Edward Williams.”

How little her voice was. She had probably worn it away by crying.

“Isn’t it funny—I knew Mrs. Thompson when I first came out in India and she and I have been spinning round and round the world ever since without colliding—till now. They are all on their way back to India from here—much too soon for me....”

That accounted for them. They lived in India. They were all accustomed to supporting British prestige.

Mrs. Thompson and Mrs. Hoskins looked bright for a moment, noticing that Edward was a man. Their faces fell when they saw what a poor man he was, but they did not become spiteful as they would have, had he been a woman. Mrs. Thompson cringed intensely as she shook Edward’s hand; she peered with rigid sweetness into his eyes. The manner was automatic with her when a man was introduced. The hair of Mrs. Hoskins was brightly dyed and she had apparently been crushing cinders upon her eyelashes. So she did not trouble to don a laborious charm of manner; she relied upon her outside enchantments. Mr. Thompson was faded and supercilious; his withered tired face was set at an angle that directed his eyes far above anyone’s head. Captain Ross’ collar seemed too tight for him and his tiny moustache quivered as if he were not quite sure whether people really appreciated his importance.

Edward had been brought up as a child in India. All his mother’s friends had been of this type—at least the husbands had been his mother’s friends, the wives her enemies, this division being the basis of society in India.

A terrible thing was happening. Everyone was going away except Mrs. Thompson.

“Back soon, Edward,” said Emily. “I must take Toby Ross to the map and make him admit that New York is further west than Valparaiso.”

Two by two they went into another room, Emily and Captain Ross, Mrs. Hoskins and Mr. Thompson. Mrs. Thompson was unable to move since she could not, of course, cross the room unescorted by a man. She sat down tenderly beside Edward.

“It is so hot ...” she leaned forward with her face near his. The heat, he gathered, was a secret between him and her. “It is so hard on me to come into this heat. I suffer so from heat.”

“Emily looks thinner too,” said Edward. He felt ashamed because a face that was not Emily’s was so close to his.

Mrs. Thompson looked aggrieved. “No, but it is particularly difficult for me. People don’t seem to understand how acutely I suffer in this damp heat. I have had bronchitis twice in the last year. My husband is in despair.”

“She expects me to love her the more for her bronchitis,” thought Edward. He sat and perspired. “Why live in India, then?” it occurred to him presently to say fretfully. “Why live at all?” he might have said.

“My whole life is bound up in India. My dearest friends—you don’t happen to know J. L. Wilkinson of the Tea Commission, do you? Funny, I get on so much better with men than with women.... In India we know how to live and enjoy life.... One’s servants adore one—look how difficult the labor problem is in England—We had a house in St. Leonards when we were on leave.... I had to open the front door myself. I often thought how horrified my friends in India would have been ... a fragile person like me....”

Here was Emily coming, leading the procession. “I was right. Toby was wrong.”

Captain Ross raised one eyebrow. The skin of his face looked so tight that one wondered how his eyebrow found leeway. Certainly he could not have moved both at once.

“Most ex-straw-dinary thing,” he said in a suffocated voice.

“Sure you won’t come to the Merriment for dinner, Emily?” asked Mr. Thompson. The faces of Mrs. Hoskins and Mrs. Thompson showed this plainly to be a man-like idiocy. It would have been impossible for either of them to tolerate a party at which there should be one woman too many.

“I’m dining with Edward tonight,” said Emily. “Another time, please, I’d love to.”

They were gone.

“Come up to my room,” said Emily.

Directly the door of her room was shut behind them, Emily’s face began to twitch. Her eyes looked twice as large as they had been; it was because they were full of tears.

“Oh, Edward,” she cried, running to him, “you have heard. You have heard. Isn’t this a terrible thing? Everything has been terrible that has happened to me. Edward ... I can’t ever stop crying. My eyes are tired of holding tears in....”

Edward had her at last in his arms. He sat on her bed and held her on his knee. She was rigid. She would not be comfortable. She pressed her face into his shoulder but her body was stiff and uncomforted. She cried, “Edward ... Edward ... Edward ... such a terrible thing....” Her crying sounded fantastically like laughter. She cried in a little weak downward scale, a little A-ha-ha-ha-ha ... and Oh Edward—with each upward breath.

Edward was trembling violently. He was racked with disgust because of his own dumbness. He stroked her hair with his shaking hand. He stroked the back of her neck, her twitching shoulder. He put his lips to her hair. She was murmuring something, but her mouth was against his shoulder. What was she saying? He was cursed. His ears shut from him small epoch-making sounds.

“Emily, what are you saying? Lift up your head.... I can’t hear.”

“Oh, you can’t hear, you can’t hear. Nobody can save me.”

She slipped her shoulder from under his hand. She stood up. “There is no comfort anywhere for me,” she said. She looked out of the window. She was more quiet but often her long upward breaths were sobs. “Go away, Edward. I can’t dine anywhere with you. With people looking on. I can’t stop crying any more.”

The time for touching her was perhaps over, but he stood beside her at the window and took her indifferent hand. “I can’t go away. I can’t leave you alone.”

“I can never be alone. That’s the dreadful part. I can’t get away from myself. I am horrible to myself.”

“You are perfect to me.”

Her hand in his trembled a little. What did she say? She spoke in such a shaking small voice.

“Yes ... after all my lovely life ... I am loved by you.”

Could she have said that?

There was a long silence but they were standing hand in hand all the time.

“I will order dinner to be sent up here,” said Edward.

“The waiter would see me crying. People would talk if I dined with a man in my bedroom.”

“Listen, Emily, lie down. I will go out and buy ... strawberries and cream ... and asparagus ... and cheese straws ... and champagne ... the most perfect things to eat and drink in the world. Couldn’t you laugh again, sitting picnicking cross-legged on the floor ... as we sat in the California forests?”

She gave a loud broken cry and threw up her hands.

“Oh, Tam ... Tam ... Tam ...”

“Lie down, Emily.”

“Tam ... Tam ... Tam ...”

“Lie down, Emily.”

She lay face downwards on her bed. He noticed that her face fitted into a depression in the pillow that was already there. So she had already spent hours in that attitude.

She was still in that attitude when he came in—laden. A laden Chinese from the shop was behind him outside the door. Edward had bought thin Chinese plates patterned with green dragons; he had bought two gold-colored Venetian glasses for the champagne. He had not even forgotten a corkscrew. He spread supper on a fine Swatow table-cloth on the floor. Emily took no notice. Edward thought, “Is this silly or is it just right—to have supper on the floor? Would another man have done it differently—bought a table or something?”

He touched Emily’s hair.

“Look ... darling little Emily.”

She was not crying when she lifted her face. She got up and put her arms round his neck. “Charming Edward, gentle, comforting, funny, Edward.”

His name sounded exquisite like that.

When she had drunk a glass of champagne her eyes were quite dry. Neither she nor Edward spoke for a long time. Emily ate a little of everything that he had bought. But she would not keep pace with him in drinking champagne. Now he was sure he would hear everything she said; she might say some tiny perfect thing that would otherwise have escaped him. But all she said was, “Toby Ross wants me to marry him.”

“Sensible feller,” said Edward. He was careful to be very calm, but secretly he was rigid with anger against Ross. Edward hoped that Ross was capable of feeling the pain that he deserved.

“I suppose that would seem to you the last degradation. To become a memsahib. To paint one’s face and talk malevolently about ‘people not quite of our class.’ To play bridge very well and have ‘absolutely no time to read, my dear.’ To spend all one’s energies on scoring off other women. It would certainly be a ... flat end to all high adventurousness. I met Toby in India—it seems a hundred years ago, really six years ago. (Was I alive six years ago? I wonder how I used my thoughts up—six years ago.) What do you think of Toby, Edward? Somehow I can’t compare him with other people. He hates highbrows. He is even a little ashamed of reading Charles Lever. When he says something that is not so stupid, I think proudly ‘that’s darn good for Toby.’... I don’t know why I feel like that. About nine out of ten things he says prove that he has missed the whole point; the tenth thing, well, perhaps I put the cleverness into it myself ... kind of defensively ... anyway I pretend to myself that it is a tiny bit clever. I have been so much ... afraid of Tam all these three years that I thought a great deal about Toby ... and about you, Edward, lately. A sort of safety. I thought, ‘Well, even if he despises me, Toby and Edward don’t ... and sometimes they are perhaps a little bit wonderful too.’ I often think of something you said about Elijah’s cloak dropped by mistake from the flaming aeroplane and then I think, ‘Why ... why, Tam, there’s a waiting list of clever men for me.’ If you are despised you build walls round the last little stronghold of your vanity. Mine were weak walls. They fell down altogether at Chungking. I don’t know why things have happened to me this way. I’m the sort of person, Edward, who is always said to be charming—by people who don’t love me. Elderly men and kind women seem to think I’m everywhere beloved. Perhaps I swagger a bit ... not in so many words, of course. One thing I can never swagger about, the only perfect thing in my life ... that the most darling and wonderful man in the world ... loved me for an hour or two....”

After a pause she said, “I suppose Tam is right. I am too conscious, too watchful of what is happening to me.”

And then presently, “But you do love me—Edward, say quickly—you do love me, don’t you?”

“I’m a very dumb person,” said Edward. “It is great pain to me to be so ... shut away from the hope of really telling you how much I love you. Emily, would you—but, please, you must—you must marry me tomorrow?”

What was she saying? Her head was on his shoulder. She spoke softly but now he could hear. He was listening and planning just as though he were a real man—not Edward. Adequate at last.

“If you leave me alone,” she said, “I shall never stop crying. Can’t we go to some happier place? This minute? Edward, don’t leave me alone for a minute here.”

He would never leave her alone again. Everything was perfectly easy at last. He had money. Stone’s money. Nothing could be more easy or fortunate.

“But she is pretending I am Tam. Never mind, I can pretend too. I have always been good at pretending. I can pretend that she wants me at last.”

From minute to minute he could pretend. Not for longer. It was very dangerous. He would not face the coming minute. He could not hold the frenzied minutes. They were mad. They were frantic, thundering towards the fearful edge of the world.

Was this the happier place she had spoken of? It was the “best suite” in the happier hotel. There were Emily’s two suitcases on the floor. One was leaning against Edward’s suitcase. The room was panelled in pale blue. This was only the sitting-room. The bedroom opened from it.

Time was doing its best. One minute gave him Emily’s—“Oh, Edward, darling ... isn’t it all lovely....” Another—“Let me look at you, Edward, at least you have nice heavy eyes. What would happen if you opened your eyes wide?”

Then she pushed him angrily. She put her two thin, cruel hands upon his chest. She was crying again. “Go away ... go away. You are nothing.... Oh, Tam ... Tam....”

She had gone into the inner room and locked the door.

He was nothing. She was right. He could see himself now, sagging, disordered, his forehead against her locked door. She was speaking. What was she saying? Was she saying, “Wait, Edward, wait only a little minute ... darling Edward, I love you ... at last.”

No, he could not hear what she was saying. He was on his knees to her locked door. “Emily ... Emily....”

She would not answer.

Yes, she answered. She opened the door. She ran past him into the middle of the outer room. She turned and faced him.... Her cheeks were very red and her eyes excited.

“Leave me alone,” she shouted harshly and hideously. “Can’t you leave me alone? I can’t bear you. I couldn’t bear to touch you—you poor sickly thing....”

That was nothing. What she had said was nothing. Silence had covered it up now. If he could put his arms about her again....

She hit him on the face. She hit him again and again.

She was crying again. She would not let him reach a rock of silence in this wild sea in which he was drowning. She was crying loudly. And whose voice was that, beseeching against her crying? “Emily ... Emily ... Emily....” Was it his own voice?

“You must believe it now,” she sobbed. “You—poor—thing....”

She was gone. The seas were still. A desert ... a continent of silence....