Джеймс Хилтон - Morning Journey

And yet, looking at Wanda, Carey could not be sure. From the girl’s angle a liaison with Paul might easily seem desirable as a means of keeping him interested in her till he had given what he had to give—and if she were a good actress, let alone a great one, she would know how much that was. There was a composure about her that Carey could not interpret, but admired because she knew from stage experience how hard it was to simulate if it were not felt; so that in Wanda it must either be sincere or else a piece of acting equally to be envied. She wished she could see the rushes of the picture, not because she doubted Paul’s word about their merit, but to reach in her own heart that point at which envy must spill over into hate or love; for she had never hated anyone yet, and wondered if she could.

She decided then that she was not jealous, but mainly curious, with a curiosity disciplined by her own surmise as to what would happen if she were to ask Paul a plain question. Because, whatever his answer, she wouldn’t know whether to believe it. She could imagine him, in pride that was a sort of self-defence, assuring her that of course he and Wanda had had an affair —what did she think he was made of? (Once or twice in the past he had hinted at conquests which later she had found to be mere boasting.) Or she could imagine him answering no, with much indignation, merely to spare what he would assume to be her feelings—such an assumption being often no more than a reflection of his own high opinion of himself. “I didn’t want you to be hurt,” he would say when he would be hurt himself if she ever told him she hadn’t been.

And if she were to put the same plain question to Wanda there would be an equal impasse; something transfiguring would happen again, a glow on top of a glow, the look that could come to the same bashful terms with guilt or innocence, as Carey had seen already in the girl’s response to that deliberately testing phrase “my husband”. And there was nothing more to be learned.

Except one matter, which Carey held herself justified in probing at the first chance. It came when Paul left them at the table to buy a cigar. Carey said then, changing the subject abruptly: “I saw Malcolm Beringer in New York before I sailed. He gave me an impression that he and Paul had quarrelled while they were working on the picture.”

“Is Mr. Beringer a friend of yours, Mrs. Saffron?”

“No, I wouldn’t call him that. Why do you ask?”

And then a long cool silence, until the girl continued: “You see, it has been hard for me to exchange ideas with Paul, because of the language, but Mr. Beringer spoke German well—so he acted as interpreter amongst all of us.”

“Yes, I can understand that, but how did it affect the quarrel?”

Wanda smiled. “He was able to say things about Paul that were not true.”

“I see. And when you found out they weren’t true… ?”

“Yes, then there was the trouble.”

Paul was already returning with the cigar. There was no time to explore further, nor perhaps any need either. Carey said, deliberately gay for Paul’s benefit: “Paul’s quick enough at most other things, I wonder why he’s so slow at picking up languages?”

“I will tell you why,” Wanda answered, in the same key. “First, it is because he does not really listen when others are talking. And second, it is because he feels the whole world has no right not to know English.”

Paul sat down and lit his cigar, pleasantly aware that they were having some joke at his expense; he did not know enough French to enjoy it with them, but he was sure it must be harmless.

Carey stayed at Riesbach for a week, and in many ways it was a very pleasant time. All the things she had long wished that Paul would care for, he now apparently did care for—hours of sheer laziness in deck chairs, rowing placidly on the lake, picnics in the woods, even walking, if it were not too athletic. Wanda was wise enough not to persuade him to do other things that she herself enjoyed; she used her power, if it existed, with a sparing scrupulousness. So when she felt in a mood to climb a mountain or play tennis or take part in the impromptu dances that often sprang up at the hotel after dinner, she made no attempt to drag Paul along; and of course there were always young men anxious to fill the gap. Paul seemed to have no jealousy when he saw her in the arms of some handsome ski-instructor; he and Carey would sit watching, Paul relishing the spectacle theatrically and passing frequent remarks on Wanda’s beauty and accomplishments.

Carey did not need to be told that Paul was happy. He gave every sign of it, and the loss of weight and healthier life had added a new kind of vigour —more physical, less nervous. In a sort of way Carey found him less like himself, which could also be called in some ways a change for the better. She noticed that he ate, drank, and smoked less, that he would choose fruit as a dessert instead of chocolate pudding, that he did not smoke his first cigar till after lunch. Little things. Once as the three of them were returning from an afternoon on the lake, wind-blown and sun-brown, they passed a large mirror in the hotel lobby, and Paul, in the middle, drew them both to a standstill with encircling arms. “Don’t we look wonderful?” he exclaimed, and it was true that they did. But at the very moment of joining in a laughing assent, Carey caught Wanda’s eye in the mirror and saw in it something so friendly, yet at the same time so inquisitive, that she felt Paul’s question was being repeated rather than answered. Carey said: “Well, we ought to, with the kind of life we’re leading. Sunshine and fresh air and no work.”

Paul said: “One of these days I shall make a picture about children, and when I do I shall remember Riesbach.”

He drew them away from the mirror, but the look in Wanda’s eyes which Carey intercepted before they left it was less inquisitive now, had more of shared awareness, as if she were saying: We both know that cryptic kind of remark, don’t we?… And Carey returned the look, as if to answer: Of course we do, it’s his way of clinching something in his mind by a dramatic attitude, as he would have an actor do the thing on the stage… and just to prove it isn’t as silly as it sounds, he probably WILL make a picture about children some day and it’ll be so good that people will think what a lovely childhood he must have had himself to understand it so well, but the truth is, Wanda, his own real childhood wasn’t lovely at all—he hated his father, he was miserable and lonely and insufferably precocious… this Riesbach interlude is a dream of his and we are the playmates he never had before—he’s seeing us now, with his arms round both of us, symbolically as well as actually, in a mirror…

One morning the Riesbach interlude came to a sudden end. She had cabled her address to Bill Michaelson, her New York agent, merely as routine, but on the breakfast-table there was a cabled reply saying that the new play was now finished, should he mail it over, or was she likely to be returning soon? Had this come alone she might have wondered whether to ignore it, at least for the time being; but for Paul also there was a message, summoning him to Berlin to complete the picture, new money having at last been raised. As they sat, the three of them, drinking coffee on the terrace in the mountain sunshine and exchanging these items of news, it seemed quite providential that so much had happened simultaneously, thus cancelling out blame, remorse, and responsibility. They packed that morning and took the lake steamer to Interlaken in the afternoon. The spell was over, and Paul was more normally nervous and excitable, fidgeting over trifles and almost absent-mindedly enquiring about the New York play. Carey told him what she knew, which wasn’t much, except that it was another comedy guaranteed to be a winner like the last one. He said moodily: “It’s about time you were bored with comedy,” which she knew was his oblique way of telling her that he was, or rather that he was so interested in something else that the idea of coming back to New York to direct the play wasn’t touching even remotely the fringe of his mind. Towards dusk at Interlaken station they boarded two trains that left, again by coincidence, almost at the same moment and in opposite directions— Wanda and Paul to Germany via Lucerne, Carey by the express to Paris. Two days later she was on the Berengaria.