This shocked me, and also made me very curious; and when Estlin asked me, one day, to come to lunch with himself and the Wilsons, I needed no urging. We were to meet them at a little French place in Wardour Street—long since gone, I regret to say—and on our way thither we stopped at a pub for a glass of sherry. It was there that, by way of preface to the encounter, Estlin told me that there was something “queer” in the Wilson situation.
“Queer?” I said.
“Yes, queer. Nobody can make it out. You see, they lived together before they married—when they were both writing for The Times. For about three years. But then, all of a sudden, they married; and the minute they were properly married—presto!—they separated. She took a flat in Hampstead—and he took one in Bloomsbury. Once a week, they held a reception together at her flat—and they still do. But so far as anyone knows, they’ve never lived together from that day to this. He doesn’t seem to be in love with anyone else—and neither does she. They are perfectly friendly—even affectionate. But they live apart. And she always refers to him simply as ‘Wilson.’ She even calls him Wilson. Damned funny.”
I agreed with him, and I pondered. Was it—I asked—because she had a bad heart? too much of a strain for her?… Estlin thought not; though he wasn’t sure. He even thought that the bad heart had developed after the separation. He shook his head over it, and said, “Rum!” and we went to meet them. He added, inconsequentially, that he thought she would like me.
She did like me—and I liked her. At first sight. I find it difficult to describe the impression she made upon me—I think I was first struck by the astonishing frailty of her appearance, an other-world fragility, almost a transparent spiritual quality, as if she were already a disembodied soul. She was seated at a small table, behind a pot of ferns, which half concealed her face. Her brown eyes, under a straight bang of black hair, were round as a doll’s, and as intense.
“Isn’t it like meeting in a jungle?” she said. She made the tiniest of gestures toward the fern; and I was struck by the restraint with which she did this, and by the odd way in which her voice, though pitched very low, and very carefully controlled, nevertheless contrived to reveal a burning intensity of spirit such as I have never elsewhere encountered. There was something gingerly about her self-control; and also something profoundly terrifying. It seemed to me that I had never met anyone whose hold on life was so terribly conscious. It was as if she held it—this small, burning jewel—quite literally in her hands; as if she felt that at any instant it might escape her; or as if she felt that, if it didn’t escape, it might, if not firmly held, simply burn itself away in its own sheer aliveness. And to sit with her, to watch the intense restraint of all her gestures and expressions, and above all to listen to the feverish controlledness with which she spoke, was at once to share in this curious attitude toward life. Insensibly, one became an invalid. One felt that the flame of life was burning low—and burning low for everyone—but burning with all the more beauty and pure excellence for that; and one entered into a strange and secret conspiracy to guard that precious flame with all one’s power.
II.
I had little opportunity, during that luncheon-party, for any “private” talk with Reine; the conversation was general. Not only that, but it was, as was to be expected, pretty literary, and I, perforce, took an inconspicuous part in it. Wilson struck me as a rather opinionated person, rather loud-voiced, rather sprawling, and I felt myself somewhat affronted by the excessiveness of his “Oxford manner.” In fact, I disliked him, and thought him rather a fool. How on earth—I wondered—had he managed to attract so exquisite a creature as his wife? What on earth had she seen in him?… For there was something coarse in him, and also, I felt sure, something dishonest. He seemed to me hypocritical. He seemed to me to be merely posing as a literary man. And I thought that his loud enthusiasms were the effort of the insincere to make an impression, to carry conviction. Was it possible that Reine didn’t see through this? Or was it possible—and this idea really excited me—that she did see through him, and that it was for this reason that they had separated?…
I found myself setting myself in a kind of opposition to him: not by anything so obvious as contradiction, but, simply, by being very quiet. I quite definitely exaggerated my usual quietness and restraint of speech, endeavoring at the same time to make it very pungent and concise; simply because I felt that this was what she wanted and needed. And she rewarded me by being, in our few interchanges, extraordinarily nice to me. I remember, when Wilson had been declaiming against the enormous emptiness of Henry James, and his total lack of human significance, that I waited for a pause and then said, very gently, that I could not agree: that James seemed to me the most consummate analyst of the influence of character upon character, particularly in situations of a profound moral obliquity, that there had ever been. Reine looked at me, on this, as if I had been a kind of revelation to her; her eyes positively brimmed with light and joy.
“Isn’t he?” she whispered. She leaned forward, intently, with her small pointed chin resting upon her clasped hands; and then added: “No one else—no one—has made such beauty, and such intricate beauty, out of the iridescence of moral decay!”…
I don’t remember what I said in reply to this—I am not sure that I said anything; but I do remember that I felt, at this moment, as if an accolade had been bestowed upon me. It was as if, abruptly, Reine and I were alone together—as if her husband, “Wilson,” and my friend young Estlin, had somehow evaporated. I think I blushed; for I was conscious that suddenly she was looking at me in an extraordinary penetrating way—appraisingly, but also with unmistakable delight. We had discovered a bond—or she had discovered one—and we were going to be friends. Obviously. A subtle something-or-other at once took place between us, and it was as much “settled” as if we had said it in so many words. And when we got up to separate, after the lunch, it was almost as a matter of course that she invited me to come to tea with her on the following Sunday. She was, in fact, deliciously firm about it—as if she were determined to stand no nonsense. It was to me she turned and not to Estlin (Estlin was much amused), and it was to me she first put out her hand.
“You will come to tea, won’t you? Next Sunday? And bring Mr. Estlin with you?…”
I murmured that I would be delighted—we smiled—and then, taking Wilson’s arm for support (my heart ached when I saw this), she turned and went slowly out through the glass doors to Wardour Street.
Estlin was smiling to himself, and shaking his head.
“You’re a terrible fellow,” he said—“a terrible fellow!”
“Me?” I said. “Why?”
I knew perfectly well why, of course—but it pleased me to have Estlin say that I had made an unusual impression on Reine Wilson.
“And you may not know it,” he added, “but she’s damned hard to please. Damned hard to please. In fact, a good deal of an intellectual snob, and excessively cruel to those she dislikes. You just wait!… If she catches you admiring the wrong thing—!”
I laughed, a little discomfited—for I had already foreseen for myself that possibility. How could I, an amateur, keep it up? It was all very well to make one lucky shot about Henry James—but sooner or later I was bound to give myself away as, simply, not of her kin.… Or was I?… For I admit I was vain enough to hope that I might really be enough of a person, fine and rich and subtle enough, to attract her. How much was I presuming in hoping this? She had liked me—she had been excited by that remark—we had certainly met each other in a rather extraordinary way, of which she had shown herself to be thrillingly conscious. And I was myself, I must confess, very much excited by all this. She was, in every respect, the most remarkable woman I had ever met. I do not know how to explain this—for it was not that she had said, at lunch, anything especially remarkable; it was, rather, what she was, and how she said things. Her burning intensity of spirit, the sheer naked honesty with which she felt things, and the wonderful and terrible way in which she could appear so vividly and joyfully, and yet so precariously, alive—all this, together with her charming small oddity of appearance, the doll-like seriousness of face and doll-like eyes, combined to make a picture which was not merely enchanting. It was, for me, terribly disturbing. I was going to fall in love with her—and I was going to fall hard and deep.