Outbreak of Love (2 page)

CHAPTER ONE

Our minds are like those maps at the entrance to the Metro stations in Paris. They are full of unilluminated directions. But when we know where we want to go and press the right button, the route is illuminated before us in electric clarity. We may go through life with no light ever shining along the unused tracts of our minds; or something, the influence of our parents or our friends, our environment or our own stupidity may cause us to press the wrong button, so that instead of reaching stations of which the names glow with history and devotion, Sèvres Babylone, Cluny, Strasbourg St Denis, we arrive only at Monge. The right button is more often pressed by some accident than by our own choice, as when a line of poetry or a glimpse through a doorway may show us where we long to go.

Adolescents, whose tracts are most sensitive to illumination, are always pressing buttons, but they do not necessarily take the train. For one thing they can seldom afford the fare. When I was about eighteen I had one of these accidental illuminations. I was walking with my parents through a museum in Rome, when we came upon a sculptured group of a faun, who with a cheerful grin was grabbing a nymph round the waist. The nymph, struggling to free herself, had a handful of the faun's curls. Although this suggested that she had not lost her head, she had in fact lost it in the passage of the centuries, and remained only a lovely brainless body.

My parents glanced at the group and walked on. When they had turned a corner I hurried back to give it a closer inspection. It was even more candid than I had imagined, and the paganism, the innocent animalism that is in all of us, awoke with joy. The nymph had pressed the right button, and the resulting incandescence in my mind, although it faded, was never entirely extinguished, but would often glimmer, and from time to time shine with intoxicating radiance.

It was a few years later than this, that two or three people, a generation older than myself, experienced a similar illumination of the forgotten tracts of their minds. For them it was not pure joy, but almost painful, the searing light along the unused wires. It happened at a party in Melbourne towards the end of 1913. To understand why this happened we had better glance at the events which led up to this party, before we attend it.

My aunt Diana was now forty years old. She had married at seventeen Wolfie von Flugel, a musician, and she had spent twenty-three of her forty years in his moral and financial support. She did this because she loved him, but she excused herself by saying that he was an unrecognized genius. She had to support him, but she did all kinds of extra things for him, which he could easily have done for himself. On a morning a month or so before the party, she warned him at breakfast that if he ate some very hard toast he would probably break a tooth. He ate it and broke the tooth. He was very upset and said he must have it mended as soon as possible. Diana had to take his plate into the dentist in Collins Street the same afternoon. He could not take it himself as it would be embarrassing if he met a friend while he was without it. She supposed that the friends he was afraid of meeting were his young lady pupils.

Russell Lockwood was walking up Collins Street to the Melbourne Club, as Diana was coming down from the dentist's. He also was forty years of age. She had known him as a boy, as their parents had been neighbours in St Kilda, but for the last twenty years he had been in Europe, and had only returned to Melbourne a week earlier. He had come back partly out of curiosity, to see how much his imagination had distorted his memory of his native land, and partly because, although his European life had been as successful as he had hoped, at times he felt that it was too floating, and he longed for the comfort of old association. He was not exactly ambitious, but he did like people and things of the best quality, perhaps things rather more than people, and he was a little anxious about the quantity of quality obtainable in Melbourne. He was soon thought to be very smart and all the rich hostesses tried to lure him to their houses, though he would far rather have gone to the simplest cottage if he could have found there someone with his own appreciations. He was on the lookout for people of this kind. He would like them if possible to be in the fashionable world, as that made for greater pleasure and freedom, but it was not his first consideration, as people thought.

When he walked in the streets he glanced at the people he passed, looking for familiar faces, and also to see if the general ethos of the place was likely to be sympathetic to him. He saw Diana coming towards him and his attention was arrested, not so much by her looks, although at times she could look beautiful with her well-cut features and graceful bearing, as by her expression, which was patient and ironical, as she was thinking how absurd, and yet faintly amusing it was that she even had to take Wolfie's tooth to the dentist. She did not look rich or smart, but her shoes were good, and she had some fine pearls round her neck, and he thought: “That woman is somebody,” by which he did not mean someone who had money and went to the right houses, but someone who from childhood had been accustomed to certain ways of thinking and who knew the different modes of life, and above all, whose awareness was similar to his own. This impression was immediately followed by a vague feeling of familiarity, and as quickly by recognition. When he reached her he stopped, and she glanced at him.

“Diana Langton?” he said.

“Yes,” she replied, a little dazed, as she was still thinking of Wolfie. Then she exclaimed: “But it's Russell Lockwood.”

“You remember me?”

“Of course I do. But I thought you were in Italy or somewhere.”

“I came back a few weeks ago. I'm so glad that you remember me.”

“I'd be very foolish if I didn't. But I'm not Diana Langton. I'm married—von Flugel. Don't you remember Wolfie?”

“Yes, I knew you most as Langton. How is Mr von Flugel?”

“He's very well, but he's broken a tooth.”

“Oh, I'm sorry,” said Russell, and they laughed. “Look,” he went on after a pause, “are you doing anything now? This very minute I mean.”

“Only going home.”

“Why don't you come and have tea with me?”

“I will. That would be lovely. Where?”

“I'm at Menzies.”

“Oh, I'm not smart enough.”

“That's absurd.”

“There's a new little place in the Centreway. It's all yellow poppies. Couldn't we go there?”

They settled themselves on a sofa against the wall in the tea-room which was quiet and empty, as it was not yet widely known.

“I expect you've come back trailing clouds of civilization,” said Diana.

“It seems very civilized here—more so than when I left. There are some beautiful new houses.”

“Have you seen Elsie Radcliffe's?”

“That is one I was thinking of.”

“I don't suppose you will stay here long, all the same.”

“I hope to. It's very lonely in Europe by oneself.”

“There are plenty of people there, aren't there?”

“Oh, millions, but I don't know them.”

“I believe I heard that you knew everybody.”

“Yes, but they don't know me. I mean we met and talked and all that, and I even became friendly with one or two, but they still didn't know me, because they had no conception of the way I had grown up, and when they learned I was Australian they always were surprised and said: ‘I should never have thought so,' intending a frightful insult to my country as a compliment to me.”

“Yes. I long to go to Europe again, all the same,” said Diana. “We may be able to now that the children are grown up.”

“How many children have you?”

“Three. Harry, who has left school and gone on to a station in Queensland. Daisy, who married one of the Bynghams and lives in incredible artistic discomfort in a cottage at Frankston, and Josie, who's just eighteen. She's my last hope of survival. I mean survival for at least one of my family. I would like you to meet her.”

“I'd very much like to. But I hope you're not off to Europe too soon.”

“Oh, no!” Diana laughed. This talk of going to Europe had been cropping up between herself and Wolfie for years past. They only half believed it would happen. Russell had enough money to move about the world as he chose, and imagined that others had the same freedom, as a rich man talking to a new but penniless acquaintance who has expressed his admiration for the paintings of Tiepolo may ask: “Have you many in your collection?”

“We should have to make a good many adjustments first,” said Diana. “Things are very different from when you were here last, at least for us. We were in Europe when the boom burst. If Mama had not transferred some money to the Bank of Australasia only a few days before the banks closed their doors, we should all have been starving in the south of France. When we came back we were dreadfully poor and we had the children to educate. The idea of travelling anywhere was fantastic. All we could do was to go to Tasmania for the holidays, and Mama paid for that. Since she died we have been better off, and now that the children are more or less settled, except Josie, we may think of enjoying ourselves, and I don't mind squandering a little money on Josie. It will be a pleasure. One gets awfully tired of forking out as a duty.”

“I was very sorry when I heard about Mrs Langton,” said Russell. “She was a wonderful woman. I owe a great deal to her. She was really responsible for my love of Italy. She loved it herself. I remember sitting with her in the garden on an autumn day while she described autumn in the Campagna, and the wonderful golden sense of timeless antiquity one has when looking from the Capitoline hill across the city on a late summer evening. She told me about the stone-pines and the fountains and the colour of the Alban Hills. So as soon as I was free I went there. I owe a great deal to your family.”

“That makes me feel rather responsible. I hope you don't regret it.”

“Not for a minute. I'm eternally grateful.”

“But you've come back again.”

“Yes, but I'm glad I went away. I'm like a cow that has plenty of cud to chew.”

Diana laughed. “I hope it will last a long time,” she said. “Then you won't go rushing off for more.”

“There seems to be a good deal of clover in Melbourne.”

“Yes, there is, of one sort.”

“Well, I shan't let it grow under my feet.”

They talked about different people they had known and what had happened to them. When she rose to leave he said: “May I call?” Diana, after a slight hesitation said: “Yes, do. But we live at Brighton, you know. It's rather far.”

“I have a motor car. At least I shall have it next week.”

“Oh, then that will be easy. Good-bye, and thank you for the tea. I enjoyed it very much, and I'm so glad you've come back.”

“This has been much the nicest meeting since I arrived,” he said. “I'm looking for the Melbourne I knew. The Langtons were the major part of it.”

“Have you met the Edward Langtons?”

“I'm dining there this evening.”

“With the twins?”

“I suppose so.”

“The sparks will fly.”

He smiled and she repeated her good-bye.

During the half-hour train journey to Brighton, she thought over this meeting, and the smile remained faintly on her lips. She remembered more about Russell as she had known him—the boy from next door who was rather like a cat about the place. He had attached himself to their family while remaining oddly detached. He preferred their fireside to his own, and appeared to be in a constant simmer of delight at their conversation, occasionally himself producing a quiet
mot
, which was received with slightly surprised appreciation. He had his meals indifferently in their house or his own, and it was usual for the parlourmaid, when asking how many there would be for luncheon, to add: “Will Master Russell be staying?” They all liked him, but they all thought him rather an odd boy, especially when he would come to tea alone with Mama. It was only now, twenty-three years later, that she learned what they had been talking about—the fountains of Rome.

Although they were the same age, she had regarded him as a younger brother, and she had been married when he was still a schoolboy, and doubtless she had thought herself incomparably more sophisticated than this quiet adolescent. It was curious to think that he had not only caught up to her in age, but had apparently far surpassed her in knowledge of the world.

She was very glad to have met him and she hoped that she would see him again soon. They had talked easily together, and had been amused with each other. Some accord or understanding, formed unconsciously in their childhood, must have survived. He was very lively and simple and pleasant, with all his grand European associations. She hoped very much that she would see him fairly often, but she expected that the Toorak ladies would lap him up.

She walked from the station to her house on the sea front. She could have come out by the new electric tram which ran along the esplanade, but it meant changing at St Kilda, and she had a prejudice against electric trams. As she opened her gate she saw a liner steaming down the bay. It was a frequent sight but it never failed to stir a nostalgia for Europe, a wish to be on board. She stood a moment to watch it, and today because of her conversation with Russell Lockwood, this feeling was stronger than ever. Then she turned through the sandy garden, on this side further impoverished by sea winds and a pine tree, into the house.