No, it was not poor Harry who was to blame, nor even the senseless life they
led, nor the foolish escapades, nor their friends, nor the stifling atmosphere of a too
early summer falling upon the caked mud and dust of London, nor the silly chatter
in the playhouse, the froth, the frivolity, the bawdy nonsense Rockingham
whispered in her ear. It was herself who was at fault.
She had played too long a part unworthy of her. She had consented to be the
Dona her world had demanded-a superficial, lovely creature, who walked, and
talked, and laughed, accepting praise and admiration with a shrug of the shoulder as
natural homage to her beauty, careless, insolent, deliberately indifferent, and all the
while another Dona, a strange, phantom Dona, peered at her from a dark mirror and
was ashamed.
This other self knew that life need not be bitter, nor worthless, nor bounded
by a narrow casement, but could be limitless, infinite-that it meant suffering, and
love, and danger, and sweetness, and more than this even, much more. Yes, the full
force of her self-loathing had come upon coach, with the soft country air bathing
her face, she could conjure up once more the hot street smell that came up from the
London gutters, a smell of exhaustion and decay, that had merged in some
inexplicable way with the heavy, sultry sky, with Harry's yawn as he dusted the
skirt of his coat, with Rockingham's pointed smile-as though they all typified a
weary, dying world from which she must free herself and escape, before the sky
fell in upon her and she was trapped. She remembered the blind hawker at the
corner, his eyes pricked for the tinkle of a coin, and the apprentice boy from the
Haymarket who ambled along with his tray on his head, shouting his wares in a
shrill, disconsolate voice, and how he had fallen over some garbage in the gutter
and spilled the contents on the dusty cobbled stones. And oh, heaven-the crowded
playhouse, the stench of perfume upon heated bodies, the silly laughter and the
clatter, the party in the Royal box-the King himself present-the impatient crowd in
the cheap seats stamping and shouting for the play to begin while they threw
orange peel onto the stage. Then Harry, laughing at nothing in particular as was his
custom, became fuddled with the wit of the play, or possibly he had drunk too
much before they had set out. Anyway he had started snoring in his seat, and
Rockingham, seizing his chance to make a diversion, pressed against her with his
foot and whispered in her ear. Damn his impudence, his air of possession, of
familiarity, all because she had permitted him to kiss her once, in an idle moment,
because the night was fine. And they had proceeded to supper at the Swan, which
she had grown to detest, her amusement at its novelty having ceased-for it was no
longer a stimulant to be the only wife amonst a crowd of mistresses. Once it had
held a certain attraction, it had sharpened her sense of fun to sup with Harry in
these places where no other husband took his wife, to sit cheek by jowl with the
ladies of the town and to see Harry's friends first scandalised, then fascinated, and
finally whipped into a fever, like curious schoolboys who tread forbidden ground.
And yet even then, even at the beginning, she had felt a little prick of shame, a
curious sense of degradation, as though she had dressed up for a masquerade and
the clothes had not fitted her well.