“Why don’t you, then, by all means, take this—this someone else? Roberts can drive you both—any time except tomorrow.”
It seemed reasonable, even generous, though the thought of driving in state with a uniformed chauffeur at the wheel of Rowden’s Rolls-Royce was completely unenticing. Besides, how did he know he would stay at Venton League as long as the following Sunday, and of course Sunday was her best day. He already wished he had been truculent enough to say at the outset: I’m sorry, I must go to Glendalough tomorrow, party or no party. But Rowden’s conciliatoriness had outmanoeuvred him, so that now he could only mutter: “Okay, I suppose that’s what it’ll have to be.” Deprived of power to be adamant, he could only take refuge in ungraciousness.
It was too late to communicate with Carey that night to explain matters; she would already have left the theatre and he did not know her home address. He would have to tell her when she arrived at Venton League in the morning, and though he guessed that she too would be disappointed, somehow that bothered him less than the thought of any possible meeting between her and Rowden, or even the chance that Rowden might see her driving up to the house in that ‘terribly old and shabby’ car. A half-realized awkwardness in the whole situation kept him awake to wonder how he could circumvent it; and in the morning, just before ten, he walked down the drive and past the lodge gates with the idea of intercepting her in the roadway outside. She was punctual, and immediately he told her what had happened. Because he was so chagrined he was rather testy and offhand, making almost no effort to seem blameless. She was not reproachful, assuring him that she fully understood and that naturally it would be impossible for him to miss the lunch party. They did not talk long, and after separating (with no plans for any future meeting) he began to wonder whether she had been too disappointed or not disappointed enough. Whichever it was had put him in no mood for meeting celebrities.
They came, a little later, some by tram, others in cars far more ancient and battered than the one Carey had been driving. Dublin in those days was like that. And Paul, unhappy at first, was soon swept into a livelier mood by such exciting contacts; once or twice during the lunch he felt a stab of regret that he was not where he had planned to be, but he killed it by self-derision—was it possible that he preferred naďve chatter with a girl of seventeen to an exchange of ideas with some of the brightest minds in such a captivating country? If so, then what on earth had happened to him? And all the discomforts of a long drive in a rattle-trap car with nothing but scenery at the end of it? For Paul did not enjoy travel for its own sake; art he loved, and a long way off and by no means next to it, nature. Moreover, he shared Dr. Johnson’s attitude towards mountains, partly because of an aversion to most physical effort; even the mountain view from Phoenix Park had impressed him only because he had seen it momentarily as a backdrop.
All this while he was listening to a very eminent poet recite some lines from one of his poems. Candidly, Paul did not think he recited very well, but since it was actually himself reciting himself, what more could one ask? And then the almost equally famous Mr. So-and-so, who was opposite Paul, engaged him in talk that soon veered to a subject that was one of the few on which Paul had no ideas of his own—that of co-operative creameries, and for the next ten minutes there ensued a fascinating monologue to which Paul listened in growing wonderment coupled with the ghost of a feeling that he was missing something more interesting elsewhere. But presently Rowden suggested an adjournment to the garden, and once out there it was possible to escape from co-operative creameries and switch to another group who were discussing the theatre.
Paul was capricious in conversation; his rare silences might indicate that he was either bored or entranced; but so might his talkativeness, for if he were bored he would take quick refuge in the pleasure of his own voice, and if entranced, there would be generated in him sooner or later a terrific desire to entrance the entrancer. This latter occurred during the talk in the garden when Paul, having silently worshipped a well-known literary critic during the latter’s eloquent opinion about the proper way to produce the plays of Synge, suddenly interrupted with an opinion of his own. It began modestly, soon acquired an eloquence fully equal to the critic’s, and grew to a quite brilliant exegesis that attracted several listeners from another group.
And in the thick of it, without a nod or a word, the well-known literary critic walked off.
Paul finished his sentence and stopped. He felt himself flushing to the roots of his hair, and the aboriginal in him responded with a mental and almost muttered: Why, the son of a bitch… He knew he had been snubbed, and though it was not the first time, the identity of the snubber made it perhaps the most devastating in his experience.
One of the group around him, an actor later to become world-famous, laughed and said: “Don’t mind him, boy. He’s just not used to being contradicted.”
“But I wasn’t contradicting him! I was merely explaining—”
They all laughed then as if the whole incident had been a supreme joke climaxed by his own declaration of innocence. A tall, thin, youngish playwright whose white hair made effective contrast with his bead-black eyes, remarked: “I imagine you must have found Moscow very interesting, Mr. Saffron.”
“Moscow? I’ve never been to Moscow.”
“Indeed? I thought you must be a disciple of Stanislavski.”
“Who?”
The playwright looked as if the question could be damnation either way: the revelation of Paul as an ignoramus, or cover for his appropriation of another person’s ideas.
Actually Paul had not caught the name, but the wine he had drunk increased the dismay he felt at having been snubbed by a man he admired and laughed at for a joke he couldn’t share. He exclaimed hotly: “So I never heard of somebody?… So what? You guys never heard of me till today, did you?”
Later it occurred to him that the name had been Stanislavski, and that he had behaved as if it were unknown to him. The gaucherie completed his mortification.
* * * * *
The party dispersed soon after that, and Paul, still troubled, found himself a couple of hours later in the library, staring at the Cézannes with his mind half elsewhere on a road that wandered disconcertingly between Moscow and Glendalough. The butler brought in a tray of tea-things, and Rowden entered soon afterwards. Paul noticed idly that he wore different clothes; must have an enormous wardrobe, changed for every meal, a fad maybe… and he recollected something that Roberts had told him with evident pride during one of their drives: “Mr. Rowden, sir, is very particular. Clean sheets and pillow-slips every time he goes to bed— even when he takes his little nap in the afternoon. Very particular, he is.” So he’s probably been taking his little nap, Paul reflected.
Rowden attended to the tea-making, a ritual he always performed himself, because it involved bringing the water exactly to a boil over the spirit kettle, mixing the leaves from separate caddies, heating the silver pot with a swill of boiling water and then rinsing it into a bowl; the result, no doubt, was an excellent brew, but Paul didn’t like tea anyway and only drank it from politeness.
Rowden said, handing Paul a cup: “What on earth did you do to our latter-day Coleridge? He went off in a considerable huff and somebody told me you’d insulted him.”
“_I_ insulted HIM? All I did was to beg to differ from a few things he said. He’d been laying the law down—it was time someone else put in a word.”
“I’m afraid you upset him.”
“I’m sorry if I did—I didn’t mean to. But he was talking about the function of the stage director and I’m just as entitled to an opinion about that as he is about books.”
“He directs plays too.”
“Then I don’t think he can be very good at it.”
Rowden laughed. “Confidentially, I rather agree.”
“Why confidentially?”
“Because if you criticize him in this town it means you’re agin the government, and as I’m not agin any government, provided it gov
erns, I keep my mouth shut. I’m afraid you’re too politically naďve to understand our local situation.”
“Probably. That’s why I was sent here to write about it.”
“It might interest you, though, to note what happens to a writer when some accident of history makes him a cultural pontiff over a nationalist literature. The first result is that he ceases to produce any literature himself. The next thing is a tremendous inflation of his ego.”
“I can see you don’t like him much.”
“Did you?”
Paul hadn’t liked him at all, yet he stirred uneasily at any sign of agreement with Rowden on such an issue. The important fact was that the literary critic, likeable or not, was indisputably an inhabitant of the world that Paul claimed as his own. He said: “I certainly didn’t intend any disrespect and I’d hate to think he was so put out by anything I said that he wouldn’t visit your house again. Maybe I should write him a note?”
“I wouldn’t bother. He’ll be here again, don’t worry. He’s on so many committees he couldn’t leave me alone for long. Whenever there’s money to be raised for one thing or another these people change their tune.”
Again Paul felt the uneasiness; he could not allow Rowden to have that kind of last word. “If they do,” he retorted, “maybe it’s because they know so many tunes and changing them’s so easy. Don’t forget they have their opinion of you just as you have of them, and like you, they’re smart enough to keep it to themselves. When they ask for money you think they’re humbling themselves, and they let you think it because they figure they get more that way, but actually there’s something in them that your cheque-book couldn’t buy, and secretly you resent that, so you give it a nasty name—you call it an inflated ego.” Paul laughed to take away some of the sting. “Excuse me for being so personal. It’s all because I enjoyed meeting the people you had here today. They’re among the really important people in the world—a thousand times more so than all the politicians and gunmen —”
“Why don’t you add ‘and millionaires’?”
Paul laughed again. “That would be TOO personal, but it’s not a bad idea for my article.”
“I thought it was going to be about the little girl.”
“Oh, I start with her, that’s all. Then I work around to art and artists.”
“From what you said about her acting I shouldn’t have thought there was much connection.”
Paul felt that in a rather dangerous way a core of antagonism between them had been found and now needed only to be exploited. He said lightly: “The way I write, there don’t have to be connections. That’s the trick— anything’ll do that comes into my head.”
“So long as you keep a COOL head. Something I said just now seemed to rub you the wrong way.”
“No, but it made me realize what side I’m on.”
“Oh, come now, Paul, aren’t you rather deliberately misunderstanding me? You must know I’m not a philistine. I appreciate art and I respect artists as much as you do. If I don’t take them quite as seriously as some of them take themselves, that’s because I have a sense of humour.”
“No, sir, that’s because you have a million in the bank, or ten million, or whatever it is.”
Rowden flushed. “Please don’t call me ‘sir’. And believe me when I say I was far more amused than shocked by your gaffe this afternoon. It WAS funny —one of the really important people in the world—by your own estimate, not mine—and you send him scurrying off like a—like a spanked puppy!”
“I’ve said I’m sorry. What else can I do?”
“Not a thing—or you’d probably make it worse… Some more tea?”
“No, thanks.”
“When are you going to write the article?”
“Tomorrow, I think.”
“Fine. You can have the library here to yourself and I’ll tell Briggs you aren’t to be interrupted. Would you like a secretary for the typing?”
“Heavens, no—I do all that myself. What sort of life do you think I’m used to?”
“I was really only trying to be of service.”
Paul found himself suddenly touched. He was always sensitive to the hidden note in a voice, and in Rowden’s last sentence there had been such a note, of humility, almost of self-abasement. But after being touched, he was disturbed; the note came too uneasily from a man like Rowden and after such an argument. He knew then that what was happening between him and Rowden was a repetition of what had happened before in his life—the progress of a relationship to the point of chafing, as if there were something fundamentally raw in his personality that made friendship difficult and hostility almost welcome as a relief. He felt ashamed of his rudeness, yet at the same time he slightly resented having been out-generalled by Rowden’s better manners, and he silently upbraided himself in words he remembered because he had once spoken them aloud, after a similar incident with someone else: “I shouldn’t ever argue about art with people who aren’t artists —I really ought to keep off the subject—I get a chip on my shoulder, I don’t know why, I guess it’s the way I’m made.”
“Might I read the article before you send it off?” Rowden was asking.
“Why, sure, but it won’t be much in your line.”
“Perhaps not, but I’m interested… You see, I’ve done a little writing myself from time to time—though not commercially.” He went to one of the library shelves and took down a small morocco-bound volume; Paul was moving to inspect it when Rowden hastily put it back. “No, no—not now. There’s another copy on the shelf by your bed—I thought you might have noticed it.”
Paul said he hadn’t. “If I’d known it was something of yours… but I haven’t done much reading in bed while I’ve been here, I’ve been too sleepy… I certainly won’t miss it tonight, though.” And then, with an effect of release from stress, he remembered the copy of Martin Chuzzlewit he had borrowed from Carey. He hadn’t had time to look at that either.
Rowden’s uneasiness had now reached a point of evident urgency. “Please don’t take any trouble about it. I’ve inscribed the book to you—I would be happy for you to have it. Just a few verses I wrote years ago —trivial, one reviewer said—the only reviewer, in fact. Another word he used was ‘unpleasant’.”
“Unpleasant? How did he make that out?”
“Perhaps he was a little prim. Today that kind of attitude is rare among sophisticated people—almost as rare as scholarship. Some of the verses, by the way, are in Latin and Greek.”
“Without a translation? Not much good to me, then. I know Latin slightly, but no Greek at all.”
“They have their uses, the classical tongues. One can sometimes put thoughts into them that are—shall I say?—appropriately hidden from the casual reader. Gibbon, no doubt, did the same with his footnotes… You’ve read Gibbon? You should… a great stylist… but to get back to my own small foray into the literary arena—you’ve no idea how completely it was ignored—even by the few—the very few—who might have been expected to catch the mood of it.”
“Classical scholars, you mean?”
“Not entirely… But I bear no grudge. The book’s utter failure may have been merited. Certainly that one word ‘unpleasant’ was the only ripple it stirred.”
Paul was uncomfortable again; he felt that Rowden was trying to make some tortuous amends, to heal a rift that had developed between them, yet that in so doing he might soon be creating other stresses even less endurable.
Rowden went on: “I suppose you’re surprised I should confess all this?”
Paul laughed nervously. “No, because I think you’re as proud of it in your own way as other people are proud of success.”
“You’re very shrewd. I—I admire your intelligence, Paul—in fact, I hope you’ll always remember me as one of your earliest admirers.”
“Well, thanks. I appreciate that. I’m sure you’re a pretty good judge. I’ll bet all those Picassos and Cézannes you have were bought at the beginning, before the prices
went up.”
“Some of them were, though I don’t brag about it.”
“I know you don’t. I just guessed. And I also guess if you admire me it means I’ll go sky-high too one of these days.”
“I think you will, and you’ll enjoy it, because you worship success far more than you should… But tell me, Paul, what IS the barrier between us? I think there must be one—you seem unwilling to become as close a friend to me as I could be to you. To take a trivial example—absurdly trivial—I call you Paul, my own name’s Michael, but you’ve never called me that… it’s true you don’t call me Mister Rowden—you never give me any name at all, I’ve noticed. I think it symbolizes that barrier… And another thing—also absurdly trivial. You never told me you’d seen that little actress, had MET her, I mean—the child who was the leprechaun in that rather dreadful play.”
“Yes, I did meet her one afternoon. We took a walk in Phoenix Park. How did you know?”
“Pure chance—Roberts happened to be driving through and saw you together. It’s of no importance at all—except that it seems strange you didn’t mention it.”
“I didn’t think you were interested in her.”
“I’m not. But YOU evidently were… Are you still?”
Paul answered musingly: “Yes, in a sort of way. She’s my kind if I had a kind.”
“You mean if you were to have a girl?”
“No… not exactly.”
“Then I don’t quite know what you mean by saying she’s your kind if you had a kind.”
“I don’t quite know either… And she’s not a child, by the way. She’s seventeen.”
There followed a considerable silence which was broken (and Paul was glad of it) by the entrance of Briggs, carrying an envelope on a tray. “For you, Mr. Saffron. It just came.”
Paul opened it: a cablegram from Boston as follows:
“PLEASE DROP IRISH ASSIGNMENT AND PROCEED LONDON AND ROME IMMEDIATELY STOP WOULD LIKE YOU TO INTERVIEW ITALIAN POLITICIAN NAMED BENITO MUSSOLINI SAID TO BE COMING MAN STOP AWAIT FURTHER INSTRUCTIONS BY CABLE AT LONDON OFFICE (SIGNED) MERRYWEATHER.”