Short Story: Only a Silly Memory

Timaru Herald, Volume CXXXIX, Issue 20105, 11 May 1935, Page 9

Short Story: Only a Silly Memory

SHE wanted diamonds, but he dissuaded her. “No, not diamonds for you.” “Why not?” “They are so brilliant.” “Am I not brilliant?” "Yes, but not in that hard, passionless way. I want you to have emeralds. They suit your temperament.” She smiled at this a little vaguely. “Green for jealousy? Beware, Robert! ” “You know that it is not you who are likely to run risks on that score! I consider that I am a brave man to ! marry such a beautiful woman.” This pleased her. She felt sleek and well fed and purring. “Am I beautiful?” “Too beautiful for peace of mind. But, to return to the emeralds, they are your jewel without question. Like you, they are flawless, deeply lustrous, glowing with a thousnd hidden fires. Like you, too, a little inscrutable. They are not brazenly beautiful, like diamonds, nor intimate, like pearls. They have an air of mystery, as if they are guarding some deep, cen-turies-old secret. You also have that delicate air. Give me the delight of seeing you wearing emeralds, Flavia.” So, not unwillingly, she gave in.' They went to a big Bond Street jeweller’s together. The attendant, who looked like a blase young god in a frock-coat, brought out for them, with the air of one conferring an Olympian favour, trays of emerald rings. They looked wicked, winking up at Flavia in the softly-shaded light. She tried on rings set with stones of all shapes and sizes—square, oval, hoops, clusters. Robert would have none of them. He conferred with the Olympian young man, who brought forth from some mysterious hiding place a platinum ring set with one huge square emerald. She tried it on—it fitted perfectly. She laid her hand on the black velvet which covered the counter —the effect was ravishing. The big stone looked like a drop of creme de menthe split on the whiteness of her hand. “Do you like it, Robert?" “It is your ring without doubt.” He turned to the bored young god, who was watching them with his heavy lids drooping cynically over his pale eyes. “We will take it,” said Robert. She telegraphed him a glance which said:— “How generous you are!” But outwardly, of course, she showed no sign, beyond looking a trifle bored. In a shop where a juvenile Jupiter with slick hair stands behind the counter it seems almost sacrilege to betray any emotion. While Robert vanished into a little inner sanctum to write the cheque, the young man waxed confidential. “You have secured a little- masterpiece in its way, madam. That ring once belonged to an Archduchess.” “Really?” She lifted a blase eyebrow. Inwardly, she was conscious of a thrill of pleasure. Going over to examine a set of tortoise-shell-and-gold toilet things, she caught sight of herself in a long mirror. The emerald glowed wickedly on her pale hand. She wore a little green turban, and was snuggled in dark furs. She was looking her best—Robert had said so. For a second or two she thought of that old. far-distant life, seeihing as dim and unreal as a fairy tale, when her name had not been Flavia. What had it been? She had almost forgotten. Oh, yes. Fanny. That was it —of all things, Fanny. And she had gone fishing in Tiddler’s Brook—a tall, thin, gawky child in a faded print frock, with bare brown legs. Bare brown legs! She gave a little amused laugh as she glanced down at her slim Shepperson ankles and narrow feet, sleekly encased in the thinnest of flesh-pink silk, the most delicate of beautifully-cut green shoes. Robert came out of the inner office. “What’s amusing you, inscrutable one?”

“Only a silly memory.” The young god opened the door for them, bowing gracefully from the waist. Robert's car was waiting outside, a long svelte, shining limousine. Flavia got in, and sank down into her own particular corner. Robert, after giving an order to the man, followed her. They glided away into the rushing swirl of the traffic. He picked up her hand, and complacently surveyed the ring; then looked at her with the air of one who has just bought a collar, engraved with his name and address, for his new dog. “Are you happy, Flavia?” “Very happy, Robert.” “The ring looks well on that slim hand of yours. Flavia, I can’t believe that you’re going to marry me. When I saw you act for the first time I thought, ‘By God, there’s the woman for me!’ But I never thought, somehow—you’re so remote, so rare. It seems so incredible that you’re going to marry me. D’you love me, Flavia?” She didn’t, but she was not an actress for nothing. “You know I do, Robert.” He kissed her fingers, and touched the big, square jewel with his lips. “You are bound to me by an emerald,” he said, lightly; “and emeralds are hard to break. Don’t forget that, Flavia.” The car was stopping again before a famous florist's. He jumped out, but was back again in a few minutes, carrying a great cluster of Parma violets, which he thrust into her hands. He said to the chauffeur:— “Drive to Rumpelmeyer’s, Meadows.” “Very good, m’lord.” The door slammed. They were alone again in the soft, intimate darkness, broken only by blurred lights flashing in on them as they threaded their way through the traffic, rather like the bright hair of an adventurous diver streaming athwart the shadowy depths of some sheltered pool. “Thank you for the violets, Robert.” “They were the last exquisite touch needed to complete your perfection. And they go with your eyes, Flavia, Do you know that your eyes are such a deep brown they have a sort of violet bloom over them? They remind me of moorland pools with a storm cloud brooding over their depths.” She was pleased. Robert said such nice things. She glanced sideways at him. They were passing a huge electric sign which juggled points of light up and down the towering grey side of a vast building, and the momentary glow cast his pale, monkish profile into strong relief. Robert was so kind, so chivalrous and thoughtful. He was not goodlooking. but he had a delicate, whimsical face, and the mouth of a dreamer. He treated her as if she were a fragile piece of Sevres 1 which he wanted to place under a glass cover. When she married him she would be shutting herself up under a glass

By MOLLIE PANTER-DOWNES.

cover for life, but she was not sure that she wouldn’t like it, away from

the dust and greedy, clumsy hands. Robert would be a delightful jailer, and the glass imprisoning her, moreover, was gilded glass . . . They passed her theatre, where, through the early winter twilight, her name shone out in electric lights. He leant forward to look at it, and a faint frown creased his blond brows. “I shall be glad when you give all that up, Flavia, and marry me. You don’t fit in with all that glare and publicity, somehow. I hate to see

your name flaring in electric lights for everyone to see. I want to write it in diamonds on ivory, and carry it over my heart, a sweet, guarded secret.” He gave a little laugh. “Oh, Flavia, you see what a jealous fool I have become! But I worship you—you’re a fever in my blood. I want to scour the world for the most lustrous, softly gleaming pearls to lie against the pale skin of your throat; for the softest chinchillas to swathe your loveliness in, the rarest, most delicate perfumes to intensify your sweetness. Flavia, sometimes in the night when I’m ill and cannot sleep I lie thinking of you, planning all the beauty I’m

going to buy with which to adorn you. Do you think I’m just a quixotic fool, Flavia, or do you care—just a little bit?” “A great deal, Robert dearest.” She sat waiting for him to take her into his arms, but he did not. Angry and resentful, she glanced at him curiously. He was gazing straight ahead of him with dreamy eyes, a little happy smile curling his irregular mouth. Her anger faded, leaving only a little half-wistful, half-bitter resentment. She wished that Robert’s love-mak-ing was not so delicate and idealistic. It never dawned upon him that his dainty bit of fragile Sevres china wanted anything more earthly than poetical phrasing and reverent worship. After all, she was not quite sure what she wanted herself—had not Robert raised up a neat little gilded pedestal for his goddess, and ought she not to be content to stand there looking beautiful and receive the burnt-offer-ings he offered up to her? At Rumpelmeyer’s there was a considerable amount of staring and discreet whispering as they threaded their way between the little tables. Flayia, pleasantly conscious of the stir they were creating, contrived to appear superbly unconscious of it. Robert, of course, had no eyes for anyone in the room but herself. Their table was in a little alcove, away from the stares of the curious. Robert lounged in his chair, and watched with a pleased smile Flavia’s delicate hands moving among the tea things. A man always takes a rather pathetic delight in seeing the woman he loves pouring out his taea. It sets him picturing her as the mistress of his house, or—and this is rather sad. I think—brooding over the little intimate, dear, everyday pleasures which he might share with her, but never will, alas, this side of Paradise . . . As she handed Robert his cup the big emerald flashed in the rose-sliaded light. He touched it gently. “I was right in saying that emeralds were your stone, Flavia. Once I think you must have been a young priestess in the courts of Isis, with golden bangles clinging round your slim tawny ankles, and a huge emerald hanging between your eyes. Do you remember the Egyptian sunshine hot on your sleek hair, and the warm marble paving-stones smooth beneath your naked feet?” “Dear Robert . . .” “You are so beautiful when you smile, Flavia, that I am afraid to lay a finger on you, in case you should shatter into fragments. You’re rather like something made of spun glass—delicately exquisite—or a cool, firm nectarine dropped into the long grass.” She lifted his violets to her lips—they smelt faintly of the sea. “You think I’m something too rare for this workaday world, Robert?” “So you are. You’re cool, and aloof,

and subtly remote from life. You wear a beautiful untouched air, as though earth's passions had passed you by. I understand you, Flavia, as other men wouldn’t. I know that ordinary love, with all its crudeness, is utterly alien to you—that it would only shatter your beautiful unstudied tranquillity . . .” He leant forward, and just touched her hand with his finger-tips. “Are you happy?” he asked again. “Very, very happy, Robert.” “I want to make you happy, Flavia. I want to gather all the beauty of the world into a footstool for your little feet. I mean to give you everything you can possibly want to make you happy and contented with a dull dog like me.”

She felt as if she were a cat being stroked the right way. In a stupor of sleek satisfaction she half-closed her eyes, and visioned the glad procession of the years to come trooping towards her, holding out welcoming arms. Herself as m’lady, feted and admired in Paris, London, Monte Carlo . . . herself with diamonds shafting points of scintillating white fire from hair and throat and arms . . . herself gowned by the art of Drecoll and Lanvin and Jenny . . . And somewhere in the background, of course, Robert—always kind, always chivalrous and gentle—acting as a sort of glorified property man and scene - shifter for the pageant of her beauty. She looked down at the emerald on her finger. It was glowing with subtle fires, like the green, inscrutable eyes of some vast sacred cat.

It had an air, she thought of promising everything, and yet withholding —something . . .

“Everything you can possibly want . . .”

The orchestra struck up in a haunting, lilting gipsy air that set the blood tingling and the foot tapping. As Flavia listened the years suddenly rolled back again . . .

She was a tall, thin, gawky girl in a print dress, and her name was Fanny. She was one of a number of boys and girls dancing and making merry in an old bam. What grotesque shadows the lanterns cast, flickering among the dark, cobwebbed rafters like ghostly, grasping fingers! How sweet the barn smelt of hay and dried clover, and how the stout oak boards rang to the scrape and shuffle of dancing feet! The fiddler, a little wizened brown man with a green patch over one eye, was perched on one of the lower beams, where he sat, his thin legs dangling, scraping away at that very tune —that swinging gipsy air.

Fanny was dancing with Ben Holt from Wither’s—a sturdy young giant with tanned skin and eyes black as sloes.

As they faced each other, pigging and whirling, he laughed down at her, and his teeth were white as split hazelnuts.

When they came together in the mazes of the dance he put his great arm round her waist, and swung her right off her feet. She smelt the faint, sweet, homely breath of the fields which hung about him, and the clean fragrance of the sprig of sweetbrier he wore in the but-ton-hole of his corduroy coat.

She grew flushed and adorable, with tumbled hair and starry eyes. As the music stopped he bent down and kissed her fairly and squarely on the mouth. Then he laughed, and drew her out of the soft lantern light into the blurred no-colour of the summer dusk.

A pale new moon, a fragile fairy bauble, hung in a faint hydrangea sky, against which the traceries of leaf and twig stood out like a delicate etching. The hedges were white with honeysuckle—ah, how long ago it seemed, and yet between her and that July night stood only the sum of a dozen years!

They sat on a stile, and listened to the music and laughter floating, from the lighted barn, remote as if they were dwelling in another world. Ben wound a blade of grass round her finger—a grass blade green as emeralds —and said: —

“Now you be tied to me by a blade o’ grass, liddle love.” She was so happy then—so happy! But as she moved her hand the fragile green blade snapped in half, and dropped from her finger . Flavia gave a little sharp, bitter sigh. Robert leant forward, his finely-cut face concerned and kindly. “What’s troubling you, dear?” “Only a silly memory, Robert.”

Her hands twisted together in her lap, and the big emerald bit into her flesh.