Giant’s Bread · Book III · III · Chapter 3 3 2

II

At the end of April Abbots Puissants was let. Vernon came to Nell in some excitement.

“Nell, will you marry me now? We could just manage. It’s a bad let⁠—an awfully bad one⁠—but I simply had to take it. You see, there’s been the mortgage interest to pay and all the expenses of the upkeep while it’s been unlet. I’ve had to borrow for all that and now of course it’s got to be paid back. We’ll be pretty short for a year or two, but then it won’t be so bad.⁠ ⁠…”

He talked on, explaining the financial details.

“I’ve been into it all, Nell. I have really. Sensibly, I mean. We could afford a tiny flat and one maid and have a little left over to play with. Oh, Nell, you wouldn’t mind being poor with me, would you? You said once I didn’t know what it was to be poor, but you can’t say that now. I’ve lived on frightfully little since I came to London, and I haven’t minded a bit.”

No, Nell knew he hadn’t. The fact was in some way a vague reproach to her. And yet, though she couldn’t quite express it to herself, she felt that the two cases were not on a par. It made much more difference to women⁠—to be gay and pretty and admired and have a good time⁠—none of those things affected men. They hadn’t that everlasting problem of clothes⁠—nobody minded if they were shabby.

But how explain these things to Vernon? One couldn’t. He wasn’t like George Chetwynd. George understood things like that.

“Nell.”

She sat there, irresolute, his arm round her. She had got to decide. Visions floated before her eyes. Amelie⁠ ⁠… the hot little house, the wailing children⁠ ⁠… George Chetwynd and his car⁠ ⁠… a stuffy little flat, a dirty incompetent maid⁠ ⁠… dances⁠ ⁠… clothes⁠ ⁠… the money they owed dressmakers⁠ ⁠… the rent of the London house⁠—unpaid⁠ ⁠… herself at Ascot, smiling, chattering in a lovely model gown⁠ ⁠… then, with a sudden revulsion she was back at Ranelagh on the bridge over the water with Vernon.⁠ ⁠…

In almost the same voice as she had used that evening she said: “I don’t know. Oh! Vernon, I don’t know.”

“Oh! Nell, darling, do⁠ ⁠… do!”

She disengaged herself from him, got up.

“Please, Vernon⁠—I must think⁠ ⁠… yes, think. I⁠—I can’t when I’m with you.”

She wrote to him later that night:

Dearest Vernon:

Let us wait a little longer⁠—say six months. I don’t feel I want to be married now. Besides, something might have happened about your opera then. You think I’m afraid of being poor, but it’s not quite that. I’ve seen people⁠—people who loved each other, and they didn’t any more because of all the bothers and worries. I feel that if we wait and are patient everything will come right. Oh! Vernon, I know it will⁠—and then everything will be so lovely. If only we wait and have patience⁠ ⁠…”

Vernon was angry when he got this letter. He did not show the letter to Jane, but he broke out into sufficiently unguarded speech to let her see how the land lay. She said at once in her disconcerting fashion:

“You do think you’re sufficient prize for any girl, don’t you, Vernon?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, do you think it will be awfully jolly for a girl who has danced and been to parties and had lots of fun and people admiring her to be stuck down in a poky hole with no more fun?”

“We’d have each other.”

“You can’t make love to her for twenty-four hours on end. Whilst you’re working what is she to do?”

“Don’t you think a woman can be poor and happy?”

“Certainly, given the necessary qualifications.”

“Which are⁠—what? Love and trust?”

“No, you idiotic child. A sense of humour, a tough hide and the valuable quality of being sufficient unto oneself. You will insist on love in a cottage being a sentimental problem dependent on the amount of love concerned. It’s far more a problem of mental outlook. You’d be all right stuck down anywhere⁠—Buckingham Palace or the Sahara⁠—because you’ve got your mental preoccupation⁠—music. But Nell’s dependent on extraneous circumstances. Marrying you will cut her off from all her friends.”

“Why should it?”

“Because it’s the hardest thing in the world for people with different incomes to continue friends. They’re not all doing the same thing naturally.”

“You always put me in the wrong,” said Vernon savagely. “Or at any rate you try to.”

“Well, it annoys me to see you put yourself on a pedestal and stand admiring yourself for nothing at all,” said Jane calmly. “You expect Nell to sacrifice her friends and life to you, but you wouldn’t make your sacrifice for her.”

“What sacrifice? I’d do anything.”

“Except sell Abbots Puissants!”

“You don’t understand.”

Jane looked at him gently.

“Perhaps I do. Oh! yes, my dear, I do very well. But don’t be noble. It always annoys me to see people being noble! Let’s talk about The Princess in the Tower. I want you to show it to Radmaager.”

“Oh, it’s so rotten. I couldn’t. You know, I didn’t realize myself, Jane, how rotten it was until I had finished it.”

“No,” said Jane. “Nobody ever does. Fortunately⁠—or nothing ever would be finished. Show it to Radmaager. What he says will be interesting, at all events.”

Vernon yielded rather grudgingly.

“He’ll think it such awful cheek.”

“No, he won’t. He’s a very high opinion of what Sebastian says, and Sebastian has always believed in you. Radmaager says that for so young a man, Sebastian’s judgment is amazing.”

“Good old Sebastian! He’s wonderful,” said Vernon warmly. “Nearly everything he’s done has been a success. Shekels are rolling in. God! how I envy him sometimes.”

“You needn’t. He’s not such a very happy person, really.”

“You mean Joe? Oh, that will all come right.”

“I wonder. Vernon, do you see much of Joe?”

“A fair amount. Not as much as I used to. I can’t stand that queer artistic set she’s drifted into⁠—their hair’s all wrong and they look unwashed and they talk what seems to me the most arrant drivel. They’re not a bit like your crowd⁠—the people who really do things.”

“We’re what Sebastian would call the successful commercial propositions. All the same, I’m worried about Joe. I’m afraid she’s going to do something foolish.”

“That bounder La Marre, you mean?”

“Yes, I mean that bounder, La Marre. He’s clever with women, you know, Vernon. Some men are.”

“You think she’d go off with him or something? Of course Joe is a damned fool in some ways.” He looked curiously at Jane. “But I should have thought you⁠—”

He stopped, suddenly crimson. Jane looked very faintly amused.

“You really needn’t be embarrassed by my morals.”

“I wasn’t. I mean⁠—I’ve always wondered⁠—oh! I’ve wondered such an awful lot.⁠ ⁠…”

His voice died away. There was silence. Jane sat very upright. She did not look at Vernon. She looked straight ahead of her. Presently, in a quiet even voice, she began to speak. She spoke quite unemotionally and evenly, as though recounting something that had happened to someone else. It was a cold concise recital of horror, and to Vernon the most dreadful thing about it was her own detached calm. She spoke as a scientist might speak, impersonally.

He buried his face in his hands.

Jane brought her recital to an end. Her quiet voice ceased.

Vernon said in a low shuddering voice:

“And you lived through that? I⁠—I didn’t know that such things were.”

Jane said calmly: “He was a Russian and a degenerate. It’s hard for an Anglo-Saxon to understand that peculiar refined lust of cruelty. You understand brutality. You don’t understand anything else.”

Vernon said, feeling childish and awkward as he put the question: “You⁠—you loved him very much?”

She shook her head slowly, began to speak, and then stopped.

“Why dissect the past?” she said, after a minute or two. “He did some fine work. There’s a thing of his in the South Kensington. It’s macabre, but it’s good.”

Then she began once more to talk of The Princess in the Tower.

Vernon went to the South Kensington two days later. He found the solitary representation of Boris Androv’s work easily enough. A drowned woman⁠—the face was horrible, puffed, bloated, decomposed, but the body was beautiful⁠ ⁠… a lovely body. Vernon knew instinctively that it was Jane’s body.

He stood looking down on the bronze nude figure, with arms spread wide and long lank hair reaching out mournfully⁠ ⁠…

Such a beautiful body⁠ ⁠… Jane’s body. Androv had modelled that nude body from her.

For the first time for years a queer remembrance of the Beast came over him. He felt afraid.

He turned quickly away from the beautiful bronze figure and left the building hurriedly, almost running.