Outbreak of Love (32 page)

The excitement which pervaded the streets was even more intense in the theatre. Just before the curtain went up the Governor-General and Lady Eileen with Miss Rockingham, Lord Francis Blake, the Wendales, Freddie Thorpe and Clara Bumpus, came in and filled two boxes. The orchestra, with a tremendous roll of drums began:
God Save the King
. A fruity contralto voice from a few rows behind us began to sing the words, other people took it up, and soon the whole theatre was singing, inflaming every breast except perhaps Miss Rockingham's and Wolfie's, with patriotic ardour. I could not look round to find who had started this burst of song, until our own National Anthem was over, but when the orchestra began to plough through those of France, Serbia, Belgium and Russia, I thought it permissible to steal a glance. Four rows back I saw Mrs Montaubyn, and it was evident from her flushed and smug appearance, and from the way that others were looking at her, that she was the leader of the demonstration of loyalty.

Diana also turned and saw her. She had been very quiet at dinner, and this was attributed to Wolfie's being a German. It certainly was a complication she had not foreseen, but her gentleness of manner was due to her realization that this might be the last meal she would have taken in the company of her closest relatives. When she saw Mrs Montaubyn behind her, at first she had a sharp reminder of the scene in the ballroom at Government House, and a touch of her anger with Wolfie returned. She thought it must be “meant” that she should see her now, to justify herself on the very eve of her departure. But as the evening wore on this feeling disappeared, and she became rather worried lest they should encounter her as they went out. For this reason she did not move from her seat at the intervals, nor did Wolfie, though Steven went out to talk in the foyer. Wolfie also was aware of Mrs Montaubyn's presence. He looked rather puffy and aloof, but neither guilty nor nervous, and Diana gathered that they must have parted.

We were seated in the front row of the dress circle, and at the first interval a Mr and Mrs Morris, people whom Diana knew quite well, but not intimately, made their way out across our feet. They apologized to Laura, Mildy and Cynthia, but their recognition of Diana and Wolfie was so slight as to amount to a “cut”. Diana thought for a moment that it was because they must have heard some gossip about her through Baba and Miss Bath. Then in a flash of illumination she realized it was because of Wolfie's German name and birth. She was angry and felt that protective impulse towards him which was so difficult to reconcile with her intention to leave him. She thought she ought to be glad that Mrs Montaubyn was there as a reminder, to prevent her feeling too sharp regrets at the last moment.

I had been sitting next to Mildy, but at the second interval we all changed places and I was between Diana and Cynthia. It seemed as if the opera itself, the plaintive melodies and aesthetic absurdities of
Patience
, provided curious intervals of unreality in the excitement that possessed the audience, and though when the last curtain fell they clapped and cheered again and again for Bunthorne and his love-sick maidens, it was merely to release their patriotic excitement and enthusiasm for the war.

At last the audience began to move out. Diana said to me quietly: “Don't hurry. That woman who was tipsy at Government House is behind us, and I don't want to run into her again.”

I dropped my programme and held up the exit of our party by groping for it under the seat.

“What are you doing?” asked Steven. “You're blocking the gangway.”

“I'm looking for my programme.”

“It doesn't matter. If you want one you can have mine.”

There was now no excuse for dawdling. I glanced apologetically at Diana and we moved out. Mrs Montaubyn had seen her and Wolfie, and she talked loudly in the intervals partly because she was elated at having started the whole theatre singing, and partly to let them know that she was there. She went out ahead of us and when we came into the foyer, she was half-way down the stairs. She was conspicuous enough with her brassy hyacinthine curls, but she wanted to draw attention to herself as a kind of goddess of patriotism, the splendid female embodiment of the spirit of the nation. She harangued any young men near her, inciting them to do various things to the Germans.

I was with Laura, and behind us Mildy, with one of those sudden sprouts of intelligence, which were so disconcerting to those who, like Cynthia, regarded her as mentally deficient, was saying: “Gilbert must have been attracted towards aestheticism, as we can only satirise those things which a part of us admires.”

“Look, Mum,” I said, taking Laura's arm. “Do you see that woman with yellow curls? She's the one I had to dance with, and who was so rude to Aunt Diana at Government House.”

“She looks strikingly handsome,” said Laura, “but excitable.”

She turned to discuss how everyone was going home. She and Steven were walking back to the hotel where they were staying for the night. A car had been ordered for Cynthia, and Mildy and I were to walk down to the Toorak tram. Diana said that she did not want to walk to the station through the crowds in the streets, and asked if I would fetch her a cab from the rank. I ran down the stairs, and dodged past Mrs Montaubyn without her seeing me, to perform this errand.

The rest of our party went slowly down to the entrance lobby. Mrs Montaubyn, reluctant to leave the scene of her success, had stayed at the bottom of the stairs, where she was giving in lurid language her opinion of the Germans, and receiving good-natured chaff from some men standing near. When Wolfie saw her he was disturbed, because he did not want Diana to be reminded of her, but he did not imagine that she would embarrass him by actually speaking to him, as she had refused him admission to her flat, and their friendship was ended.

He moved to the far side of the stairs, away from the wall against which Mrs Montaubyn was standing. He attempted to walk past as if he were occupied with his own sublime thoughts. Mrs Montaubyn saw him, and she saw too the opportunity of wiping out, backed by the whole weight of public approval, the humiliations which she believed he had put upon her. With the fury of a woman scorned and the vigour of a great patriot, she crossed over to him, and shouting: “Here's a dirty German!” she slapped his face.

Our party, including Wolfie himself, stood frozen with dismay. Diana could not immediately take in what had happened, because for her it had infinitely greater implications than for the others.

Cynthia was the first to move. At that moment I arrived with a hansom, and through the open door she saw it draw up at the kerb. She took Wolfie's arm, and in her high-powered voice, vibrant with kindness and indignation, she said:

“There is your cab, Cousin Wolfie. Let me take you to it.”

“He's a bloody German,” jeered Mrs Montaubyn, “and the only good German's a dead one.”

Some louts in the street looked in at them with curiosity, and one said: “There's a dirty German.”

Cynthia, with the arrogance of the English gentlewoman in which she had been trained by Cousin Sophie, which is so atrocious when informed by self-importance, and so splendid when used as now, in the fearless service of humanity and justice, said, as if declaring a fact which her mere statement was sufficient to establish: “You wicked and horrible woman.”

She led Wolfie to the cab, ignoring the menacing louts, who, quelled by the moral force of her personality, stood aside to let them pass. Diana came out of her trance and followed them. She touched Cynthia's hand in silent gratitude, and saying to me: “Thank Steven and Laura for us,” she entered the cab and they drove away.

Cynthia's car drew up as they left. She thanked Laura and Steven for a delightful evening, and with no reference to the incident in which she had played such an eminent part, she went home.

Mrs Montaubyn looked almost as bewildered and injured as Wolfie when she had struck him. She had believed that she was behaving virtuously, fulfilling the role for which nature had intended her, that of a daughter of Britannia, the Spirit of Victory, for how could a war be conducted without women of her heroic mould, who encourage the boys with raucous shouts and fruity songs, and reward them with their bodies at a reasonable charge? She had thought that at last she had broken through the barrier excluding her from human society, into a rich companionship; but the men who had been chaffing her, not yet brutalized by propaganda, drifted away disgusted, and she felt as wounded as when none of the swells would talk to her at Government House. She went out into the street with her woman companion, for she was no more anxious to be seen in public with the hall porter than Wolfie had been with herself.

Mildy and I walked along with my parents to the hotel.

“That was nice of Cynthia,” said Mildy, in a dreary, grudging voice.

I was glowing with love and admiration for Cynthia, and Mildy's half-intentional reduction of her action to the trivial, made me speechless with anger. My parents had something of the same feeling, as they ignored her remark beyond saying: “It was an unfortunate incident,” and they talked about the opera until we arrived at the hotel. I asked if we could have some supper, but they said it was too late. They looked very tired, with a tiredness which was not merely physical. Steven might not want the war to interfere with the enjoyment of a party, but he and Laura saw clearly how it would affect our lives. They had three sons of military age, and the assault on Wolfie had horrified them, and they could not listen to Mildy's fatuous comments after it had happened.

They said good night, and Laura asked me, expressing a little more hope than usual, if I was coming to Westhill for the weekend.

“Good night,” said Mildy. “Thank you for a lovely birthday party. But I'm not sure it wasn't a teeny bit naughty to have champagne.”

When we were walking down Collins Street she said: “What a dreadful thing to happen! How could that woman know that Wolfie was a German?”

“She is the one who let fly at Government House,” I said. “I think he knows her.”

“He couldn't possibly know anyone like that,” said Mildy. “She's not a nice woman. Some day you'll know what I mean.”

She evidently wanted me to ask her to explain, which even if it had been necessary, was the last thing I would have done, as, apart from everything else, it was all I could do to be civil to her.

We waited by the Town Hall for the Toorak tram. Across the street I saw the oriflamme of Mrs Montaubyn's curls. She had recovered her self-confidence and was again the centre of a small chaffing crowd, to which she was apparently preaching a recruiting sermon.

“There she is,” I said.

Mildy stared intently across at her. In her eyes was a strange expression, envious and evil.

When we arrived home, as usual after any outing, we sat down for our “cosy chat” over hot milk and biscuits. Mildy began to talk about the Germans in a way which would have made one expect her to approve Mrs Montaubyn's assault. I brought up the question of my going to the war.

“Oh no!” wailed Mildy angrily. “It's a ridiculous idea. Let those go who are fitted for it. You'd never make a soldier. You're much too used to comfort to sleep in a tent. You'd never stand it, the mud and the guns and everything.”

This outburst, apart from the insult to my manhood and the reminder of the comforts she had lavished on me, destroyed the last traces of my respect for her, as it showed that her love for me, if it could be so called, had no moral basis of any kind. At the age I then was it is possible to have great affection for older people who increase our understanding and show themselves eager to help us forward in our lives, or who simply amuse us with the extravagancies of their generation, like Arthur. But Mildy all the time was trying to hold me back from any move which, however necessary or beneficial to myself, would, she thought, make me less her possession. She did not want me to have wider friendships or the ordinary associates of a young man, not to know anyone more worldly-wise or cultivated than herself, nor even to advance in taste or knowledge, or to fulfil the obligations of honour.

“It is you who make me ridiculous,” I said brutally. “Everyone laughs about us.”

This began dreadful recriminations, which, although I poured out my resentment at the innumerable silken threads, the subtle blackmails with which she tried to hold me, brought Mildy some satisfaction. It was an acknowledgement of the existence of her infatuation. From now on, until I went to the war, which was not for some months as the family decided I must go to England where relatives in the War Office would get me a commission, I accepted Mildy as a phenomenon, and when I acquiesced in her sentimental arrangements, it was without the exhausting effort to display appropriate feelings, which after the flare-up of this evening, she did not seem to demand.

But when I went to bed I forgot Mildy, and I thought of Cynthia's lovely head in its fearless beauty, the nymph's head restored.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Diana and Wolfie drove in silence down Collins Street. When the cab turned towards the railway station she put her hand through his arm.

“I am a German,” he said, “and I love my country. But I do not love soldiers. It is sad.” His voice trembled a little.

The trains were crowded. They found seats in the same carriage but not together. From time to time he gave her anxious glances, but they were no longer those reproachful oglings, which originally had been spontaneous, but which later he affected deliberately, as a child will repeat an originally unconscious gesture which has made its elders laugh. But she did not know whether Wolfie was different, or whether she was seeing him in a different light, seeing him as he was instead of through the film of a hallucination in which she had been living for the past six months. That loud slap, as Mrs Montaubyn struck his face, had awakened her to reality.