Once I imagined that I should be overjoyed, when that rasp of worry was conquered. I had looked forward to the day, ever since I began to struggle. It should have marked an epoch. Now it had come, and it was empty. She was not there. All that I had of her came in the thoughts of sleepless nights. On the white midsummer nights, those thoughts gave me no rest. The days were empty. My bit of success was the emptiest of all. Right to the last I had hoped that when it came she would be with me. This would have been the time for marriage. In fact, I had not the slightest word from her. I tried to accept that I might never see her again.
I went out, on the excuse of any invitation. Through the Marches and acquaintances at the Bar, my name was just finding a place on some hostesses’ lists. I was a young man from nowhere, but I was presumably unattached and well thought of at my job. I went to dances and parties, and sometimes a girl there seemed real and my love a nightmare from which I had woken. I liked being liked; I lapped up women’s flattery; often I half-resolved to find myself a wife. But I was not a man who could marry without the magic being there. Leaving someone who should have contented me, I was leaden with the memory of magic. With Sheila, I should have remembered each word and touch, whereas this — this was already gone.
One morning in September, soon after I had returned from a holiday, a letter stared from my breakfast tray. My heart pounded as I saw the postmark of her village; but the letter had been redirected from my Inn, and the handwriting was a man’s. It came from Mr Knight, and read:
My dear Eliot, Even one who hides himself in the seclusion of a remote life and simple duties cannot always avoid certain financial consultations. Much as I dislike coming to London I shall therefore be obliged to stay at the club for the nights of Monday and Tuesday next week. Owing to increasing age and disinclination, I know few people outside my immediate circle, and shall be free from all engagements during this enforced visit. It is, of course, too much to hope that you can disentangle yourself from your professional connexions, but if you should remember me and be available, I should be glad to give you the poor hospitality the club can offer at luncheon on either of those days.
The letter was signed with a flamboyant ‘Lawrence Knight’.
The ‘club’ was the Athenaeum. I knew that from private jokes with Sheila. He had devoted intense pertinacity to get himself elected, and then never visited it. It was like him to pick up the jargon, particularly the arrogant private-world jargon, of any institution, and become a trifle too slick with it.
He must want to talk of Sheila. He must be deeply troubled to get in touch with me — and he had done it without her knowledge, for she would have told him my address. Reading his elaborate approach again, I guessed that he was making a special journey. He was so proud and vain that only a desperate trouble would make him humble himself so. Was she ill? But if so, surely even he, for all his camouflage, would have told me.
In some ways I was as secretive as Mr Knight, but my instinct in the face of danger was not to lose a second in knowing the worst. When I entered the Athenaeum, I was on tenterhooks to have all my anxieties settled. How was she? What was the matter? Had she spoken of me? But Mr Knight was too adroit for me. I was shown into the smoking-room and he began at once ‘My dear fellow, before we do anything else, I insist on your drinking a glass of this very indifferent sherry. I cannot recommend it. I cannot recommend it. I expect you to resolve my ignorance upon the position of our poor old pound—’
He did not speak hurriedly, but he gave me no chance to break in. He appeared intent on not getting to the point. I listened with gnawing impatience. Of all the interviews at which I had been kept waiting for news, this was the most baffling. Mr Knight was not at home in the Athenaeum, and it was essential for him to prove that no one could be more so. He called waiters by their names, had our table changed, wondered why he kept up his subscription, described a long talk that morning with the secretary. He proceeded over lunch to speculate intricately about the gold standard. On which — though no talk had ever seemed so meaningless — he was far more detached than most of my acquaintances. ‘Of course we shall go off it,’ said Mr Knight, with surprising decision and energy. ‘They’re talking complete nonsense about staying on it. It’s an economic impossibility. At least I should have thought so, but I never think about these things. I gave up thinking long ago, Eliot. I’m just a poor simple country parson. No doubt this nonsense about the gold standard was convenient for removing our late lamented government, that is, if one had no high opinion of their merits.’
Mr Knight went on, with one of his sly darts, to wonder how warmly I regarded them. It was remarkable, in his view, how increased prosperity insensibly produced its own little effect, its own almost imperceptible effect, on one’s political attitude…‘But it’s not for me to attribute causes,’ said Mr Knight.
No talk had ever seemed so far away, as though I were going deaf. At last he took me upstairs for coffee, and we sat outside on one of the small balconies, looking over the corner of Waterloo Place and Pall Mall. The sunshine was hot. Buses gleamed in the afternoon light. The streets smelt of petrol and dust.
Suddenly Mr Knight remarked in an aside: ‘I suppose you haven’t had any experience of psychiatrists, professional or otherwise? They can’t have come your way?’
‘No, but…’
‘I was only asking because my daughter — you remember that she brought you to my house once or twice, perhaps? — my daughter happened to be treated by one recently.’
I was riven by fear, guilt, sheer animal concern.
‘Is she better?’ I cried out of it all.
‘She wouldn’t persevere,’ said Mr Knight. ‘She said that he was stupider than she was. I am inclined to think that these claims to heal the soul…’ He was taking refuge in a disquisition on psychology and medicine, but I had no politeness left.
‘How is she?’ I said roughly. ‘Tell me anything. How is she?’
Mr Knight had been surveying the street. For a moment he looked me in the face. His eyes were self-indulgent but sad.
‘I wish I knew,’ he said.
‘What can I do for her?’
‘Tell me,’ he said, ‘how well do you know my daughter?’
‘I have loved her ever since I met her. That is seven years ago. I have loved her without return.’
‘I am sorry for you,’ he said.
For the first time I had heard him speak without cover.
In an instant he was weaving his circumlocutions, glancing at me only from the corner of his eye.
‘I am an elderly man,’ he remarked, ‘and it is difficult to shoulder responsibility as one did once. There are times when one envies men like you, Eliot, in the prime of your youth. Even though one may seem favoured not to be bearing the heat and burden of the day. If my daughter should happen to live temporarily in London, which I believe she intends to, it would ease my mind that you should be in touch with her. I have heard her speak of you with respect, which is singular for my daughter. If she has no reliable friends here, I should find my responsibility too much of a burden.’