He surveyed himself in the glass. The reflection he saw was not entirely satisfactory. His face was intelligent and individual rather than handsome. No matter what he did with his hair it was always unruly. Of course a good barber could have cut several inches off it and helped a lot, but short hair made him uncomfortable, and he somehow never remembered to make time. His shirt collar was straight, for a change, if a little high, and its dazzling white was becoming to him. It would have to do.
He walked briskly to Bedford Square and caught a cab to the theatre in Shaftesbury Avenue. The street was milling with people, the somber black and white of gentlemen, the brilliant colors of women, the glitter of jewels. Laughter mixed with the sound of hooves and the rattle of harness as carriages fought for room to move. The gaslight was bright and the theatre front had huge posters advertising the performance, the actress’s name above the title of the play. Neither meant anything to Pitt, but he could not help being infected by the excitement. It was sharp and brittle in the air, like moonlight on a frosty night.
Everyone was surging forward, all pressing to get inside, to see and to be seen, call to people they knew, take their seats, anticipate the drama.
Pitt found Caroline and Joshua in the foyer. They saw him, perhaps because of his height, before he saw them. He heard Joshua’s voice, clear and carrying, with the perfect diction of an actor.
“Thomas! Over to your left, by the pillar.”
Pitt turned and saw him immediately. Joshua Fielding had the sort of face perfectly designed for conveying emotion: mobile features, heavy-lidded, dark eyes, a mouth quick to humor or as easily to tragedy. Now he was simply pleased to see a friend.
Beside him, Caroline looked remarkably well. She had the same warm coloring as Charlotte, hair with auburn lights in it touched with gray, the proud carriage of her head. Time had dealt kindly with her, but the mark of pain was there for anyone perceptive enough to see. She had not been unscathed by life, as Pitt knew very well.
He greeted them with real pleasure and then followed them up the steps and around the long, curving corridor to the box Joshua had reserved. It had an excellent view of the stage, quite uninterrupted by other people’s heads, and they were at a broad angle so they could see everyone except in the wings on their own side.
Joshua held a chair for Caroline, then both men seated themselves.
Pitt told them of Charlotte’s letter, omitting the part about the young man’s trial and the question of visiting places like the Moulin Rouge.
“I hope she is not going to come home with radical ideas,” Caroline said with a smile.
“The whole world is changing,” Joshua replied. “Ideas are in flux all the time. New generations want different things from life and expect happiness in new ways.”
Caroline turned toward him, looking puzzled. “Why do you say that?” she asked. “You made odd remarks at breakfast also.”
“I am wondering if I should have told you more about tonight’s play. Perhaps I should. It is very. . avant- garde.” He looked a little rueful, his face gentle and apologetic in the shadows from the box curtains and the glare of the chandeliers.
“It’s not by Mr. Ibsen, is it?” Caroline asked uncertainly.
Joshua smiled widely. “No, my dear, but it’s just as controversial. Cecily Antrim would not play in something by an unknown author unless it was fairly radical and espoused views she shared.” There was a warmth in his voice as he spoke and a humor in his eyes.
Pitt thought Caroline looked uncertain, but before either of them could pursue the subject their attention was caught by people they knew in one of the boxes opposite.
Pitt settled back in his seat and watched the color and excitement around him, the fashionable women parading, heads high, more conscious of each other than of any of the men. It was not romance which motivated them, but rivalry. He thought of Charlotte in Paris, and imagined how well she would have read them and understood the finer nuances he could only observe. He would try to describe it to her when she came back, if she stopped talking long enough to listen.
The lights dimmed and a hush fell over the auditorium. Everyone straightened up and looked towards the stage.
The curtain rose on a domestic scene in a beautiful withdrawing room. There were half a dozen people present, but the spotlight caught only one of them. The rest seemed drab compared with the almost luminous quality she possessed. She was unusually tall and extremely slender, but there was a grace in her even when motionless. Her fair hair caught the light, and the strong, clean bones of her face were ageless.
She spoke, and the drama began.
Pitt had expected to be entertained, perhaps as much by the occasion as by the play. That was not what happened. He found himself drawn in from the moment he saw Cecily Antrim. There was an emotional vitality in her which conveyed loneliness and a devastating sense of need, so that he ached for her. He became unaware of his own surroundings. For him reality was the withdrawing room on the stage. The people playing out their lives were of intense importance.
The character of Cecily Antrim was married to an older man, upright, honest, but incapable of passion. He loved her, within his own limits, and he was loyal and possessive. Certainly he did not ignore her, and it would have been beyond his comprehension to betray her. Yet he was slowly killing something inside her which, as they watched, was beginning to fight for life.
There was another man, younger, with more fire and imagination, more hunger of the soul. From the time they met their mutual attraction was inevitable. That issue was not what the playwright wished to explore, nor what would occupy the vast majority of the audience. The question was what would each of the characters do about it. The husband, the wife, the young man, his fiancee, her parents, all had fears and beliefs which governed their reactions, inhibitions which distorted the truth they might otherwise have spoken, expectations taught them by their lives and their society. Above all, was there any avenue of escape for the wife, who could not institute divorce, though the husband could have had he wanted?
As Pitt watched he found himself reconsidering his own assumptions about men and women, what each expected of the other and of the happiness marriage might afford-or deny. He had expected passion and fulfillment, and he had found it. Of course there were times of loneliness, misunderstanding, exasperation, but on the whole he could only feel a deep and abiding happiness. But how many others felt the same? Was it something one had the right to expect?
More urgently and far more painfully, had any man the right to expect a woman to conceal and endure his inadequacies as the character on stage demanded of his wife? The audience was intensely aware of her loneliness, of the weight of his inability which was crushing her, but no one else was, except the young lover, and he understood only a part of it. The flame that burned within her was too great for him also. In the end one feared he would be charred by it.
The wife had duties towards the husband, physical duties on the rare occasions he wished, duties of obedience, tact, domestic responsibility, and the need always to behave with discretion and decorum.
Legally he had no such duties toward her-what about morally? Unquestionably he had to provide her with a home, to be sober and honest and to take his pleasures, whatever they might be, with a corresponding discretion. But had he a duty of physical passion? Or was the need for it unbecoming in a decent woman? If he had given her children, should that be enough?
Cecily Antrim, in every movement of her body, inflection of her voice, showed that it was not enough. She was dying of an inner loneliness which consumed her being. Was she unreasonable, overdemanding, selfish, even indecent? Or was she only voicing what a million other silent women might feel?
It was a disquieting thought. As the curtains drew closed and the lights blazed up again, Pitt turned to look at Caroline.
Caroline herself was as deeply disturbed by the first act of the play as Pitt had been, but in different ways. It was not the questions of hunger and loyalty which disturbed her most, at least it was not the answer to them; it was the fact that they should be raised at all. Such matters were intensely private. They were the thoughts one had alone, in darker moments of confusion and self-doubt, and dismissed when common sense prevailed.
She did not even look across at Joshua, embarrassed to meet his eyes. Nor did she wish to look at Pitt. In showing her emotions so nakedly on the stage, Cecily Antrim had, in a very real sense, stripped the decent clothes of modesty and silence from all women. Caroline could not forgive her easily for that.
“Brilliant!” Joshua’s voice came softly beside her. “I’ve never seen anyone else who could combine such a
