The Second Shot (8 page)

‘There’s nothing I can do?’ I hesitated, feeling absurdly that there were probably a great number of things I could do, but not able to recognize exactly what.

‘No.’ Suddenly she turned her tear-stained face towards me and spoke with an intensity that I can only describe as ferocious. ‘Yes, there is though. Sit down and tell me how much you hate Eric. You do hate him, don’t you? I wonder if you hate him as much as I do.’

‘Armorel!’ I had to protest, but I sat down nevertheless.

Armorel gave me a rather watery smile. ‘You’re a good sort really, Pinkie,’ she went on in more normal tones, brushing the lingering tears from her eyes, ‘under all that prim stiff-and-starchiness. Most men when they see a girl howling think it a fine excuse to get their hands on her, you know.’

‘I trust,’ I said, perhaps a little stiffly, ‘that I should never take advantage of a woman’s distress to proceed to such unwarrantable liberties. Not indeed that I have the faintest wish to “get my hands”, as you term it, on any girl.’ But I could not help feeling that it might perhaps be not at all unattractive to play the rôle of manual comforter in some cases which I need not specify.

Fortunately Armorel did not perceive this unworthy reflection. ‘No,’ she replied, ‘I really don’t believe you have. And that’s probably why I want to let myself go at this moment and simply yowl on your shoulder. Could you bear it?’

It was a strange proposal for me to hear, and a bare twenty-four hours ago I should have condemned it out of hand as the suggestion of a forward minx. And yet I could perceive now that it was nothing of the sort. Had my earnest reflections of the small hours given me something of a deeper insight into the opposite sex? I hope I have none of that foolish pride which forbids a man to admit that he has been in the wrong, and I confess freely that some at any rate of my former opinions regarding women had been quite mistaken. Armorel herself, for instance, was taking on quite a different aspect. Instead of the hard, man-aping, frivolous-minded young woman I had fancied her, I realized suddenly now that these affectations were just the manifestations of an immature mind, realizing and ashamed (however unnecessarily) of its youth, and trying desperately to appear mature. I had mistaken the outward signs for the inward lack of grace. The lipstick, the paint, and the cigarettes were non-essentials, mere excrescences on a simple and quite possibly a not unpleasant nature. Her request of a moment ago was not a piece of calculated coquetry; it was just an appeal for sympathy and comfort.

These reflections passed through my mind instantaneously; yet though I recognized their truth, the situation seemed to lose nothing of its embarrassment. ‘If it would really afford you any relief, my dear girl,’ I said with unwonted diffidence, ‘I should be most pleased for you – er – to make use of me in any – that is – ’

But before I could bring this halting sentence to a conclusion Armorel’s head was already on my shoulder, and Armorel’s tears had broken out afresh. ‘It’s true,’ she sobbed. ‘It’s perfectly true, what that damned woman said. How the hell did she know? It’s supposed to be secret. Eric
is
going to sell Stukeleigh!’

‘No!’ I exclaimed, my stupefaction such that I actually forgot for the moment that I was holding, like any hero of a nineteenth-century novel, a weeping young woman in my arms. A Paladin in Pince-nez indeed!

‘Yes. And the way she said it seems to have brought it home to me worse than ever. Oh, Pinkie, it – it makes me feel too
awful
.’

We sat for a few moments in silence, as if under a common shock. In truth Armorel’s news had quite upset me. It distresses me, almost as if I had a personal interest in it, to hear of a fine old mansion passing out of the hands of the family that has owned it for centuries: and in this case… Stukeleigh, the Scott-Davies’ home, was a magnificent Tudor country house, one of the finest examples of Tudor domestic architecture (a period in which I am exceedingly interested) in the country.

‘And not only Stukeleigh,’ Armorel’s voice went on drearily, ‘but everything that belongs to it – the furniture, that lovely little village, the lands, and – and the pictures.’

So the rumours had been true. Eric Scott-Davies, last ignoble remnant of a proud house, was preparing to sell not only the portraits of his ancestors but their very home.

‘Can’t he be stopped?’ I muttered. ‘How could he possibly do such a thing?’

‘Oh, it means nothing to him. Less than nothing. That’s almost more awful, in a way. He was brought up there, every one of them’s been brought up there for hundreds of years, all their pictures hang on the walls they lived in – and it all means less than nothing to Eric.’

I admit that I was surprised that it should mean quite so much to Armorel. Apparently I allowed my feelings to be divined, for she twisted suddenly away from me and burst out fiercely: ‘Oh, I know what you’re thinking. Just because I smoke, and use slang, and don’t behave like the nice girls you knew when you were a boy in the year dot, you think I’ve got no feelings. My God, Pinkie, if you knew! I tell you, I love every brick of Stukeleigh, and every blade of grass in the park, and every reed in the cottagers’ thatches, so much that it’s like a knife turning in my tummy to think of it being sold.’

‘It’s terrible,’ I agreed, deprecating this dramatic outburst, but well able in the circumstances to excuse it.

‘And it’s so unnecessary. If I were in Eric’s place I could manage perfectly on what’s left, even now. Stukeleigh does just pay for itself, run properly.’

‘And do I understand that on Eric’s death you inherit?’ I ventured.

Armorel sat, her arms round her knees, looking moodily at her toes. Her feet, I noticed for the first time, were small and particularly well-shaped. ‘Oh, yes, that woman got it all right. How the hell she knew I can’t imagine, but it’s true enough. According to Uncle’s will, if Eric dies unmarried I get Stukeleigh. Almost makes one wish he would, doesn’t it? And pretty quickly too. Oh, I know I’m a beast even to think of such a thing, but Pinkie, he doesn’t
deserve
Stukeleigh.’

‘He does not,’ I agreed fervently. I could not remonstrate with her for the terrible sentiment she had just expressed, for to my discomfort she was already crying again.

I touched her arm tentatively, with the intention of expressing my silent sympathy, and to my surprise she leaned towards me again and rested her head on my shoulder. It was the action of a child, I knew, so that I had no excuse at all for the unwarrantable action of my own which followed. I, who had only a few minutes ago repudiated with indignation the suggestion that I could ever take advantage of a woman’s distress – I, who had never done such a thing in my life before – well, something quite extraordinary seemed to go ‘Click!’ in my interior, and in the confusion of the moment I kissed Armorel.

She sat up abruptly, a faint flush on her cheeks, and looked at me. There was no need of upbraiding, for no one could have been more ashamed than I the next moment. Only too well I knew that I had betrayed the poor girl’s trust.

She was generous. She did not speak angrily. ‘Pinkie,’ she said slowly (and even in my shame I was able to notice that her tears at least had stopped flowing), ‘do you often do that sort of thing?’

‘No, Armorel,’ I assured her with all the earnestness at my command. ‘Indeed not. I assure you, I can’t understand it at all… I was carried away, in some inexplicable manner. I apologize most sincerely.’

‘Am I the first girl you’ve ever kissed?’

‘I fear so,’ I said, in futile endeavour to minimize my offence. ‘Yes, I’m quite sure of it. Yes, certainly you are. I don’t understand it at all. Really, I – ’

‘Well, next time, when a fool of a girl’s howling on your shoulder, she doesn’t
want
to be kissed on the forehead, remember.’

‘No,’ I stammered in confusion. This grave censure by a young woman so many years my junior, whom hitherto I had been unable to regard even with equanimity, let alone approval, was disconcerting in the extreme; and yet I could not say that I did not deserve it. ‘No, precisely. It was the action of a cad. If you could bring yourself to trust me again… That is – ’

I stopped in astonishment. Armorel was leaning towards me, and I saw now that, though her eyes were still full of tears, she was actually smiling. ‘No, Pinkie,’ she said softly, ‘she doesn’t want to be kissed on the forehead a bit. She wants to be kissed on the lips.’

As to what happened after that, I really cannot bring myself to put it on paper.

It was only a few minutes before twelve when we rose to leave the wood. And I had better admit at once that I did so with no little reluctance. I intend to set down in this narrative the precise truth, however ill it may reflect on myself.

And yet the reader cannot condemn me more severely than I condemned myself on our rather silent walk back to the house. Although my mind was still in considerable confusion, I did my best to apply my old methods of self-analysis, in an effort to realize how it had happened that I, of all people, should have come to such a pass. For even as early as that the most astonishing feature of the whole affair was plain to me: that I had so very much
enjoyed
kissing Armorel. It had really been a quite entrancing sensation. Incredible!

For I must explain that I had been accustomed, in my ignorance, to regard the act of osculation as an unnecessary and degrading one, practically on a par with the savage habit of rubbing noses, certainly no more dignified or satisfactory. I perceived now that I had been exceedingly mistaken.

But did it mean that because I had enjoyed kissing Armorel, I was in love with her? Can one enjoy kissing a woman whom one does not love? It seemed highly improbable. And yet, if I was not in love with Elsa, I could not possibly be in love with Armorel, for I certainly wished to marry her no more than the other. Then why had I enjoyed kissing her? Why did I wish to kiss her again? It was all very disturbing and confusing. I wished that I knew more about these things.

Fortunately the others scarcely noticed our entrance, though I felt as if my guilt must be written in capital letters on my face. They were engaged in an altercation. Eric, it seemed, did not want to enact the scene which had been sketched out for himself and Mrs de Ravel. The others were insisting that he should. I could hardly blame Eric. The situation was exceedingly awkward for him.

Somewhat to my surprise Armorel at once threw the full weight of her persuasion into the scale. ‘Oh, come on, Eric. Don’t spoil the party. Why on earth shouldn’t we act it? You’re not the only one. I’ve got a scene with you too, remember. I’m madly in love with you. Oh, Eric, darling, how could you treat a poor maiden so? Give up all the others, and return to me!’ For it had been decided in the end that John’s original suggestion should be followed.

And so the comedy, thinly masking the drama underneath, began. Eric could hardly refuse to follow such a direct lead without giving something of the truth away to Miss Verity. Armorel practically forced him to play up to her. We others ranged ourselves on chairs at one end of the drawing room; the other end was tacitly adopted as the stage.

Dunderheaded in his own conceit though he was, Eric could not but realize that the atmosphere was electric. His nervousness found a disguise in wildly burlesquing the scene between himself and his cousin. I thought I understood, too, that there was the sound method in his foolery of setting up this precedent of burlesque in view of the next scene. But I could not laugh. Apprehension filled me, even to the extent of crowding the consideration of my own recent and upsetting experiences from my mind. What was Mrs de Ravel’s intention, as she sat there watching, a faint, inscrutable smile just lifting the corners of her expressive mouth?

One consolation at least I had, both for myself and for all of us. No engagement had yet been announced between Elsa and Eric.

With wide smiles the two were now protesting undying love in extravagant terms, agreeing with exaggerated grief that they could never belong to one another; in highly incongruous slang Armorel urged the pact of suicide, which Eric refused in the manner of a fourth-rate tragedian. Armorel made her exit from the stage sobbing loudly. There was no trace, either in her manner or her features, of her recent emotion. I was amazed at the feminine power of dissimulation.

Then Mrs de Ravel rose – and I for one drew a sharp breath.

From the very beginning it was clear that my worst fears were to be more than realized. With infinite care Sylvia de Ravel had made her opportunity; now she was going to use it. Everything, every single thing, was to be thrown into the scales before us all. It was, after all, the actress’ superb gesture.

A feeling of positive suffocation grew on me as I watched. This was no acting, magnificent actress though the woman might be. She loved him – really loved the fellow: that was only too plain. It was inconceivable that anyone could imagine it acting, even her witless husband, watching her too with almost painful concentration, the foolish jests dead on his lips. And poor little Elsa Verity, with white cheeks and bitten lip…

There was a breathlessly dead silence as she swept up to him and hurled her lovely form into arms. ‘Eric – my darling!’ she breathed.

In obvious discomfiture he attempted some silly joke, only to have it stifled against his mouth in a long and fierce kiss – a kiss so evidently real that it gave me acute embarrassment to observe.

And then a flood of words broke from her.

I will not attempt to give them. I could not if I wanted to do so. I only know that, amid the most shameless avowals of her passion, she cited chapter and verse, times, places even, of a string of their amorous interludes, detailing incidents of the most intimate description that could obviously never have been imagined, revealing brutally the subterfuges that had been adopted to deceive her husband, laying bare the relations between the two of them with a candour that in a few seconds had us all crimson with embarrassment. To all eyes it was a woman desperately in love, knowing herself in imminent danger of being cast off, striving with every means in her power, only too physical as well as vocal, to retain her lover’s affection – spending herself on the effort in a way that left her with neither dignity, modesty, nor self-respect. A terrible spectacle.