Balefanio - tmp0

Yet Richard, also, was curiously without inti­mate friends. He was taken too much for granted. People found him uniformly pleasant, but colour­less and unexciting—a trifle dull. He never be­came involved in the little intrigues and antagon­isms of House politics, and so appeared rather aloof. He was often appealed to, at the end of some heated discussion during which he had sat listen­ing in placid silence, with an affectionate, faintly condescending tone: "Well, Uncle—and what do

you think about it?" It was as if they were address­ing an old favourite dog.

To Edward alone did Richard Vernon seem more than merely likeable. To Edward, Richard was a hero and a great man. In Richard's presence he felt genuine humility. Richard's strength and calm made him conscious of his own weakness. He envied his friend as he envied nobody else. Richard had no need to give proofs of his courage, to assert the strength of his will. He was sure of himself—therefore he did not have to fight and boast. He was brave—unnecessary for him to climb the chapel roof or swim the river in his clothes to win a shilling bet.

Never had Edward felt this more strongly than at the Hall, where he had often been invited to spend a week or two of the holidays. The Hall seemed the perfect background for Richard. The ordered quietness of the Vernons' life impressed Edward like a work of art. He was spellbound by the aged silence of the house, the garden and the woods. This, he felt, was the only place where he could have lived for ever, untormented by his restlessness and his ambitions.

And Mary, he had to admit, was all, or nearly all, that Richard's sister should be. It was only a pity that she'd been born a girl.

"But you'll be able to marry her, that's one thing"—had been a standard joke of Richard's, made always in Mary's presence.

Mary didn't seem embarrassed. She'd only laughed and said:

"Perhaps Edward won't have me."

How strange all that joking seemed now. Strange, almost prophetic. Well, it wasn't he who had deserted Mary, at any rate.

Edward hated to remember all that business. It had shaken, as nothing else could have shaken, his faith in Richard. It had come near to destroying it. He would never be able to understand how Richard could have behaved as he had. One could only dismiss it as pure cowardice—Richard's single act of cowardice—and blame Lily for everything.

And yet it was hard to blame Lily. Edward, when he first saw her, had been half dazzled, half amused. She was so absurdly pretty, she didn't seem quite real. And so childishly innocent. He remembered her one day at lunch saying that she'd read all Bernard Shaw's plays. "All of them?" some young man who was there had archly asked, thinking, evidently, that he was on rather daring ground. And, in an awkward silence, Lily had said quite seriously:

"Oh yes, the Unpleasant ones too. I think it's perfectly splendid of him to want to stop all those dreadful things. If I were a man, I should be proud to have written them."

Poor old Richard. He'd looked rather an ass trailing round after her, carrying her easel and paints. Edward hadn't been able, at first, to take

Richard's love seriously. It had seemed an essen­tially comic disease, like mumps. As for the fact that they'd presently get married and settle down and probably have a family—well, they simply couldn't. You can't have a family with a wax doll; not even the kind that opens its eyes very wide and says Papa and Mamma.

But the time passed like a dream; and soon they were preparing for the wedding. Nobody else, it seemed, regarded the affair as either monstrous or absurd. Except, perhaps, Mary. They never openly discussed Lily—they had too much loyalty for that—but sometimes their eyes met question­ingly. They exchanged vague smiles of dismay.

Edward, of course, was best man. He had carried out his duties on the day in a mood of slightly hysterical humour. Richard, his tower of strength, had frankly and comically collapsed. He appealed helplessly for Edward's support, from the top of his hat, which had been brushed the wrong way, to the toes of his shoes, which hadn't been properly cleaned. Edward was duly reassur­ing. No, no, they wouldn't be late, they'd find his gloves, they'd got the ring. For several hours they were all transported into the world of the comic picture post card, they belonged to the genre of hired horses, bad eggs, curates, mothers-in-law and accidents to bathing-machines. And Edward, because he recognised this, had a sense of leader­ship and power over the whole party. His speech

at the wedding breakfast was an enormous success. Funny, but in perfect taste.

And then, almost the next day it now seemed —although, of course, it must really have been months later, came this scarcely believable affair of Mary's. Unbelievable then as now, an accident without meaning, like something read in a news­paper. Of course, she must have been fond of him. But Richard's marriage, Edward could not help feeling, had had something to do with it as well.

A few weeks after the elopement he'd had a letter. She asked him to come and see her. They were alone together, and she'd cried when they met. Edward had never thought of Mary as being given to tears; it was the disappearance of one more familiar landmark in his changed world. For Mary was certainly changed. She seemed very determined and yet very submissive—ready, if necessary, to be defiant.

She wanted, naturally, to see Richard. And so Edward had gone almost direct from the untidy little house in Chelsea to the tidy little house in Earl's Court. From Mary closing the front door in an apron to a smart parlour-maid opening it in a cap. Richard, also, he'd seen alone. Edward had accepted his mission impulsively, sure of success. He expected Richard to be upset, of course; even, perhaps, conventionally shocked—as he himself

had been—even, perhaps, angry. What he hadn't expected was Richard's shamefaced attitude of helplessness. For he didn't condemn. He was only very uncomfortable. He didn't, he said, see how he could visit Mary "behind the Mater's back." He was incredible and absurd—absurd as everything to do with the new Richard, absurd as his cosy little smoking-room with its washy pictures, absurd as his embroidered slippers. "Behind Lily's back, you mean," Edward had been startled by anger into replying.

But Richard, as ever, wouldn't be roused:

"It'd put her in a very difficult position."

Edward asked fiercely how, and was told that he didn't quite understand. "Perhaps later on," Richard mumbled, things would be "easier." This was too much:

"You seem to have forgotten that Mary's your sister."

That was the end of their interview. They parted —Edward furious, Richard pained and clumsily repeating that they "must meet again soon."

Mary had to be told—though Edward glossed over what he could. She was bitterly wounded he could see, but she took it calmly:

"Very well. Dick must do just as he likes. I shan't bother him again."

For a time, Edward had stayed on in London.

He continued to visit Mary and sometimes met Scriven, who lolled about the house when he was at home, fingering a cheap cigar. Scriven was half-guarded, half-insolent—taking it for granted that he'd be disapproved of. His handsome, sulky face drew into a sneer when he spoke. He asked a great many questions about Mr. and Mrs. Vernon, obviously for Edward's benefit—particularly about Mrs. Vernon, to whom he referred as "my esteemed mother-in-law." "If ever I make a penny-piece we shall have your whole family round here within the day," was one of his favourite comments. It was plain how Mary hated all this, but she wouldn't show it. She laughed and went on with her sewing or got up with some casual joke and strolled into the kitchen to prepare food. She was developing, under the stress of her married life, a quite unfamiliar vein of humour, adapted partly from Scriven's sarcasm, partly from Richard's rarely made, dry, mild jokes. She was building up her fortifications. Even when Edward and she were alone together now, she avoided the per­sonal, warded off his tentative approaches and his unspoken sympathy with funny little stories about tradesmen's bills, people they'd met at parties, remarks she'd overheard at the green-grocer's, which baffled and finally rather bored him. He accepted her tactics and was funny, too. He could always, he now discovered, be funny. He wished he'd learnt the knack earlier, at school.