Julius (24 page)

Julius took not the slightest offence at this scolding; he considered the matter childish and beneath contempt. He was only aware of considerable amusement.

‘My dear Hartmann,’ he said, yawning, ‘Rachel Dreyfus is nearly twenty-five. Has she never heard of prostitutes?’

‘That is hardly the question,’ frowned the other. ‘Never mind if she passes them in the street every day of her life.These things are not mentioned. It isn’t done.’

‘Extraordinary,’ murmured Julius, ‘the hypocrisy that goes on amongst these people. Girls like Rachel Dreyfus marry and do exactly what the little girls in the Kasbah do - the only thing is that they don’t do it so well. I don’t understand all this secrecy and shame. When I was a child I slept in the same bed as my father and mother and watched them as a matter of course. I found it rather boring.’

‘Oh! you,’ said Hartmann. ‘I can believe any nauseating story about your childhood. But this is different, and I mean it seriously. English girls are brought up very strictly. Their parents believe in sheltering them from the rather coarser aspect of life.’ He laughed, amused in spite of his disapproval at Julius’s social blunder. ‘Wait till you have daughters of your own,’ he said. This struck a new line of thought in the mind of Julius Lévy.

‘I suppose,’ he said, ‘that a girl like Rachel Dreyfus - what is she? twenty-four, she told me - would never allow herself to be seduced?’

‘Good heavens above!’ Hartmann moved in the cab, seriously startled this time. ‘What the devil do you mean?’

‘I spoke plainly enough, didn’t I? By seduction I mean making love, lying with a woman - whatever you like to call it.’

‘For God’s sake don’t talk such utter nonsense,’ said Hartmann. ‘Don’t you realise that I’ve been trying to force into your obstinate unwilling brain the fact that girls of the Dreyfus class are different - one doesn’t make love to that sort of women; one marries ’em. Poor old Walter, he’d thank me for introducing you to his house. Don’t be a fool, Julius.’

‘That would be very unlikely. What a nuisance it all is. Makes things so much more complicated.’

‘Were you attracted by Walter’s girl?’ asked Hartmann, tapping on the ceiling as they drew up to the kerb. ‘Here you are - I won’t come in, it’s too late. Tell me, though - it seemed to me you scarcely took any notice of her; you were, if anything, abominably rude. She’s a nice-looking girl, intelligent too.’

Julius considered the fact a moment, the brim of his hat pulled down to his nose, his hands stuck in the pockets of his overcoat.

‘Didn’t worry over her intelligence,’ he said, putting one leg out of the cab. ‘She’s like any woman. Pretty enough, as you say - probably run to fat later on like her mother. Can’t take a joke at the moment, but she’ll have to learn. I’m going to marry her.’

Rupert Hartmann dropped his jaw in astonishment and fixed his eyeglass more firmly in his eye. Then he settled himself comfortably in the cab and folded his arms. ‘Good heavens!’ he said, and repeated it again: ‘Good heavens! Well,’ he added a second or so later, ‘all I can say is that you have made up your mind rather quickly. My congratulations. When is the wedding to be?’

‘September, I thought. That will give me time to fix up the Kensington deal.’

‘I see. Four months’ engagement. Rather short, perhaps, but quite correct. I am delighted to think of you settling down. Is she very much in love with you?’

He thought that all this was an absurd joke. He was chuck-ling to himself, but when he looked up and saw Julius standing on the steps of his house he could see by the smile on his face that he was serious.

‘Do you honestly mean it?’ he said. ‘My dear fellow, I doubt if she’ll have you.’

Julius laughed, feeling for his latch-key, the lamplight showing his face yellow and lined. He looked like a sinister and rather graceless fawn.

‘I haven’t asked her yet,’ he said, ‘but she’ll come to me, of course.’ And he waved his hand and went into the house.

 

The episode of wooing Rachel Dreyfus counted in the life of Julius Lévy as something of a relaxation. The fact that he had met her but once and that in all probability she actually disliked him was no deterrent to his scheme; it was a little matter easily overcome and perhaps on the strength of it rather amusing. Apparently she was not to be taken casually; according to Hartmann this was impossible, because of her birth and upbringing; so if he wanted her he must sacrifice to a certain extent his freedom and personal comfort and be prepared to marry her.

Well, he was thirty-three and he had no ties, not even a mistress at the moment, love having been for the past few years neither very necessary nor very pressing. He supposed that by marrying Rachel Dreyfus she need not interfere largely with his life, but would make an effective background. It would mean a household, of course, and certain obligations, children probably, responsibilities that would have to be shouldered indefinitely. Rachel would want to be taken about; they would have to entertain. She would naturally be good at that, he imagined. She would fit in as hostess; she wore her clothes well too, and had that indefinable thing known as breeding which he considered important in a wife. Oh! yes, if he were going to do the thing, he believed in doing it well. No half measures in marriage. He would have her dress exquisitely and live in surroundings reflecting her taste; if luxury were demanded she must have it, anything in that nature she required, in fact. They would have to live a little more splendidly than other people in every way; their rooms must be larger; their food better cooked - when he came to think of it, this business of marriage made a big pattern in life.

Rachel Dreyfus should do. From the little he had seen of her he judged her brain to be just of that intelligence that would not jar - masculine and, thank God, Jewish enough to understand his preoccupation with business; but a good percentage of femininity that would allow her to be subservient and restful. Thinking it over, he did not see that she could be improved upon. Set in a suitable frame, adjusted here and there, her virginity taken from her and something of maturity, wisdom and a sense of balance developed in her, and Rachel Dreyfus should make the ideal wife.

At the moment she was disturbing in her fashion, and with initiation should prove satisfying and sufficient, but he knew that she would never cause him furiously to dream nor would she instil in his body that sense of hunger and thirst that was fever, and desire, and death. As Hartmann had said in most truthful sanity: ‘One doesn’t make love to that sort of women; one marries ’em.’

It was now April, considered Julius, and it would suit his plans well if they were married in mid-September. It gave him exactly five months. She, he supposed, would be happy to undertake the matter of finding and furnishing the house, of buying her own trousseau. Her mother would help her. Walter Dreyfus ought to be delighted at the whole affair. Daughters were expensive things, and this one was nearly twenty-five.The marriage would go well with the entire Dreyfus family. As things stood, he expected that they would be able to announce the engagement early in May.

He had, then, a bare four weeks, during which his business, of course, could not be neglected, in which to sweep Rachel off her feet.

He began, naturally enough, by finding out the usual movements of her day. Thus he learnt when she walked in the Park, when she drove shopping, where she went for her singing lessons, and what parties she was likely to attend. So it seemed to Rachel Dreyfus that she was always coming across that disagreeable Julius Lévy. It was quite surprising the way he seemed to turn up at dinner parties and functions; at the opera in the next stall to her, although he presumed to scoff at Wagner; and even when she walked with her maid across the Park to a singing lesson she would suddenly be aware of him coming towards her along the path, sweeping his hat from his head with a flourish, professing to be mightily astonished at the sight of her, and saying with his satanic smile:‘Hullo, Miss Dreyfus, do we meet again?’ hinting, in the most atrocious way, that she had walked that way on purpose with the hope of seeing him. He was, she thought, insufferably conceited, and he would take up a position at her side as though he assumed the right to walk beside her. He was interesting, though, Rachel had to admit that - and very amusing. He made her laugh at things she felt she shouldn’t, and then he had rather a fascinating manner of making out that she was clever and lovely, and nonsense like that in a new, original fashion, difficult to explain. Anyway, no other man had treated her quite in this way. Besides, when she got to know him better, and they were always meeting, it seemed, she couldn’t help feeling a little sorry for him. He wasn’t English and had few friends, and then living all alone like that - perhaps he was to be pitied. Of course he was terribly brilliant and slightly frightening, but he wasn’t very old; and then he had that way of looking at her that after all wasn’t really insulting but rather mysterious and sort of breathless as though, well . . . she didn’t quite know. Anyway, there it was, and she was beginning to think about him often. They kept on meeting, and first one thing and then another, it was all a little exciting and disturbing. She hoped that this was not going to affect her; it would be so ridiculous and degrading to lose her head about somebody like Julius Lévy, who was probably laughing at her behind her back, and kept mistresses and all that sort of thing - rather dreadful. He was that type of man, she felt it instinctively, but she supposed that the fact was he was clever and attractive, and this appealed to her. Then she had always been very bored with the usual young men and boys, friends of Walter and Andrew, that this was new to her and made life different from what it had been.

‘Rachel is always so serious,’ her mother was fond of saying. ‘She’s wrapped up in her music and her books, and doesn’t bother much with young people. Admirers are generally frightened off very quickly - she snubs them unmercifully.’ And there would be a general laugh at this. Rachel the blue-stocking with her sharp tongue, who would not smile and blush gracefully.

‘As it happens,’ thought Rachel, ‘I can laugh and chatter nonsense perfectly well when I choose, and as for frightening away admirers, well, I don’t know about that.’ And she smiled secretly to herself and looked in the glass. Funny - father said the other evening: ‘Child, you’re looking very handsome these days.’ She wondered if it was true and why - perhaps because of this new way of doing up her hair puffed out at the sides; and suddenly she remembered dining on Tuesday ‘with the Lewensteins and being aware of Julius - yes, first names by now, very unconventional and presumptuous of him to have suggested it - of Julius looking at her across the table and smiling, and how she had smiled back. No reason for it, but it just happened, and she could not help feeling furtive about it, as though they shared some secret; which was absurd, of course. How could they have any secrets? And yet she never mentioned to her family the flowers that arrived for her every morning, and were brought up to her room by her maid, with the card and his initials in the corner, nor the books with French titles that arrived so often, his handwriting on the flyleaf, and which she read in bed at night.They were very advanced, but then she was nearly twenty-five, and this showed he thought her intelligent enough to appreciate them. Perhaps, then, she admitted, there was something secretive in their friendship, because neither of them mentioned these things when he came to the house and the family were present. Father had taken a great liking for Julius, which she felt vaguely was rather a good thing; the boys liked him, and mother too, so that these smiles across dining-room tables were apt to make her feel not exactly guilty, but romantically concerned in some sort of intrigue.

Sometimes she would receive letters from him, written in great haste after some evening when he had seen her, or else scribbled for no apparent reason at midnight or in the middle of the day. Short letters, but extraordinarily vital and typical of him, making out that he hadn’t slept, and at three in the morning he was imagining something about her that he left her to guess - did she feel it and did it wake her up? Things like that which she supposed were rather improper and which ought to shock her, but they didn’t; they only made her dress with greater care that evening if she were going to meet him, and she would try to appear unconcerned when he came in at the door.

Then it happened one morning that Andrew at breakfast mentioned casually he ‘had seen Lévy at the theatre the night before with a very pretty woman,’ and Rachel was distressed to find that this stupid statement made her miserable for the day. She felt angry and hurt as though Julius being seen with some woman was a slight upon her personally. She knew she had no right to mind, and surely this wasn’t jealousy; but her heart was beating and her voice was cold when she said to Julius the following evening at Rupert Hartmann’s: ‘Andrew tells me you were at the theatre a night or so ago.’ And ‘Yes,’ he answered. ‘Couldn’t get out of it - I was so bored. Fellow asked me to dine - I thought it was for a business discussion - and then he developed indigestion after the fish, and I discovered I was expected to take his wife on to the Lyceum in his place. Silly little woman; bad teeth. Rachel, I wish you wouldn’t wear that red dress; I can’t concentrate on food or wine or the conversation of my next-door neighbour. How many men have made love to you since I saw you last? - because I shall strangle every one.’ And she was happy again, foolishly and ridiculously so, and she didn’t mind what he said to her; it was nonsense, perhaps, but it was he. How absurd of Andrew to have suggested for one moment that just because Julius should be seen at a theatre it would necessarily mean . . . really, she had to laugh, it was so absurd; and then she caught herself thinking what a lovely place London was in May, the beginning of the season and everything was going to be delightful. She was arranging the flowers in the drawing-room; her mother always said she did flowers well and nobody was in but her. Mother had gone off to see great-aunt Sarah at Kew, and she hummed the bars of the new song she was learning - a French song - all her latest songs were French. She wondered if Julius knew this one: