It did not even occur to Dulcie that this phrase might have been more skilfully turned.
She accepted it rapturously, as an earnest that her secret fancies might be translating themselves into fact.
“I’d like to be your little friend, Mr. Waller — ever so much — if you’d like to have me. I always feel,” said Dulcie wildly, “that you and I have quite a good lot in common, if you know what I mean. I mean, I think we like the same sort of things, kind of.”
“That’s very nice of you,” said Denis rather vaguely.
“Oh, but I really mean it, Mr. Waller.”
At this reiteration of his name, Denis filled Dulcie with delight by saying unexpectedly:
“I think you’d better call me by my name, hadn’t you, if we’re to be friends. That is, unless you dislike it.”
“Oh, Mr. Waller — I mean Denis — of course I don’t. I’d simply love to.”
She was breathless with excitement and happiness. Into the few phrases that had passed she read an amount of meaning far beyond their surface significance. To her starved affections and ill-regulated imagination, this meagre exchange of personalities actually stood for romance. She hardly dared to speak again, lest any further words should come as an anti-climax.
Moved by some prompting of schoolgirl sentimentality, she fumbled for a moment in the semi-darkness, and then caught and squeezed the hand of Denis between both her own.
(5)
Humiliated and made miserable by the fear that he had lost Chrissie’s short-lived kindness, Denis was in no mood to reject even such humble advances as those of Dulcie.
It was true that, as he often said of himself, he was naturally affectionate, and the sub-normal quality of his masculine virility was at all times apt to find expression in small pattings and pawings of the kind usually associated either with immaturity or extreme senility.
He therefore returned readily, and even with a certain feeling of satisfaction, the pressure of Dulcie’s fingers.
He had never liked her very much, but he was touched and flattered by her obvious adoration, and it came at a moment when he was feeling more insecure even than usual, and in more urgent need of something other than his own posturings to bolster up his tottering self-esteem.
An audience was always essential to Denis, for he could only believe in himself when he felt that others believed in him. His precarious self-confidence had already suffered severely at the hands of Mr. Bolham — had flared into sudden strength beneath the glow of Chrissie Challoner’s approval and suffered a proportionate eclipse at her withdrawal.
He piteously clutched, in his misery of insecurity, at the admiration even of Dulcie Courteney.
They talked in low tones, every now and then glancing at the heavily sleeping Mrs. Wolverton-Gush.
She did not stir.
“What makes you think I’ve not enjoyed myself to-day, Dulcie?”
“I was afraid you didn’t look frightfully happy. Of course, I only saw you outside the Casino for a minute, and then at dinner, but I think one can always tell, don’t you?”
“People don’t always trouble to notice.”
“Oh, Mr. Waller! — Denis, I mean — but I think one does if one likes anyone, don’t you? You know what I mean, if it’s a person one likes, one does.”
Dulcie giggled nervously as she spoke. Denis felt rather touched.
“Perhaps I haven’t found very many people who did like me enough to notice, where I was concerned. So that, you see, I value them when I do find them.”
He gave a little pressure to Dulcie’s fingers and relinquished them.
He had liked the physical contact at first, but it was making him feel self-conscious.
“You won’t say anything to anyone else, will you, about me? I’m afraid I’m a terribly reserved person. My instinct is never to show anyone what I’m feeling — just to keep on the surface.”
With a terrible pang he remembered as he spoke his first conversation with Chrissie Challoner, and the wonderful feeling it had brought him, of release.
“Of course I won’t say anything at all,” Dulcie asserted eagerly. “I do wish I could do anything to help you, Denis. I think it’s terribly nice of you to tell me.”
“But I’m afraid I can’t tell you very much, my dear. For one thing I’m not a person who finds it at all easy to talk about himself. And then I’ve got a very, very strong feeling about loyalty to other people.”
“Oh, of course,” said Dulcie, disappointed. “I think that’s frightfully nice of you, I do truly.”
“I’m a very ordinary sort of man,” said Denis, his habitual tone of quiet complacency reviving by degrees, “but I do flatter myself that I’ve always been completely loyal to the people who’ve trusted me.”
“Have you got heaps and heaps of friends?”
“Not a great many. I don’t make friends easily. And sometimes,” said Denis bitterly, “when I’ve done so, I’ve been very, very badly let down.”
“Oh, what a shame!”
The car swung round the last sharp curve of the road, and Dulcie was thrown against Denis Waller’s shoulder. He could feel that she made no attempt to regain her balance, but let herself drop heavily against him.
He put his arm round her, holding her as he might have held a child. In fact it was as a child that he thought of her, but his mind was obsessed with the situation between Chrissie and himself, and he was thinking far more about that than about Dulcie Courteney.
He was in an agony lest Chrissie should have gone straight to the Villa Mimosa, and meant to give him no further chance of speaking to her that night. He decided that if she had done so he would follow and ask to see her.
Then he remembered Mrs. Wolverton-Gush.
She roused herself as the car rushed up the drive, and Dulcie sat upright again, demurely.
“Did Miss Challoner mean to come to the Hotel?” Mrs. Wolverton-Gush demanded. “I must have had a doze, I fancy, or I should certainly have asked to be put down at our own door.”
“I’m so very sorry,” Denis apologised, “I really ought to have asked you.... I’m afraid it didn’t occur to me....”
“She may be here.”
But Miss Challoner was not at the Hôtel d’Azur.
She had stopped the car and got out at the villa, said Mrs. Romayne, who was drinking whisky-and-soda in the hall.
“Then,” said Denis, with trembling determination to Mrs. Wolverton-Gush, “you must allow me to escort you back. The car will take us.”
“Please don’t trouble.”
“It’s no trouble. A pleasure,” said Denis firmly. “Good-night, Dulcie.”
“Good-night, Denis,” quavered Dulcie.
He took her hand, gave her his favourite little bow, and smiled at her. The thought crossed his mind that Dulcie led a strange unnatural life for a girl of her age, and that it would be very easy, as well as desirable, to influence her for good.
Then he followed Mrs. Wolverton-Gush back into the car once more.
(6)
His conversation with Chrissie was unsatisfactory in the extreme.
They stood in the tiny loggia at the back of the villa, since Chrissie gave Denis no invitation to sit down, and said several times that it was late and he ought to go back to the Hotel.
Denis, with the curious spasmodic obstinacy of a weak man, declined to leave her until she had explained to him why she had avoided him nearly all day.
“Don’t you think you owe me an explanation, at least? If it’s just that you’re tired of me, and feel you made a mistake in suggesting that we should be friends, I’d much rather you said so,” repeated Denis, although in actual fact his dread lest she might say so was nearly overwhelming him.
Chrissie, to his horror, burst out laughing.
“I’m sorry, Denis; it’s not you I’m laughing at — it’s myself. Thinking how I’ve bullied you over not being honest or sincere with me, and then realising that if I had made a mistake, about you,
I should have too much vanity to admit it, even to myself. It’s so humiliating to have gone into heroics over an emotion and then to find out that it wasn’t a real one after all.”
Denis was intolerably hurt.
He could not understand Chrissie’s changes of mood, nor her flippant way of talking. He could only feel that she was no longer taking him seriously.
His strained, tragic expression was not without effect upon her.
“Don’t look so miserable, Denis. Am I being a beast to you? I get like that sometimes — you mustn’t mind. Look here — go, now, and we’ll meet to-morrow. I’ll come down to the plage.”
“I don’t know that I shall be there myself. You seem to forget that I have my work to do,” said Denis resentfully.
Chrissie laughed again.
“You haven’t remembered it yourself very often in the last few days, that I can see. Anyhow, I’ll see you sometime or somewhere. Good-night.”
She led the way through the villa, and out into the front garden with the little plashing fountain that Denis had thought so romantic and beautiful.
An intolerable wave of misery went over him.
Everything was over. She didn’t really care for him at all; he had not, after all, found a friend who would understand, and help him, and believe in him.
A small, involuntary, wholly irrepressible sob shook him.
Chrissie, at the gate, paused and looked at him.
Denis was quite unable to speak, but his odd little formalities did not desert him.
He put out his hand, to shake hers.
“Poor Denis,” said Chrissie gently.
She leant forward and laid a butterfly kiss upon his forehead.
CHAPTER XIII
(1)
The drive from Monte Carlo lasted long enough to restore Hilary Moon to something approaching sobriety. He slept heavily for a little while, and woke with a headache, cross and depressed, but in command of his faculties.
He also woke to a violent feeling of resentment against Buckland for having won so much money when everybody else had lost. Besides, Buckland, he vaguely recollected, had insulted him, although he was unable to remember details. By the time the Hotel was reached, Hilary was in a mood of sullen fury, directed against everybody in the Hotel, but more particularly Buckland.
As he went up the steps and into the hall, thinking only of his grievance, he came face to face with Madame.
She wore her usual trim spotted black-and-white cotton dress, tightly belted with patent-leather, her thick greasy black hair was brushed closely to her head, and coiled neatly at the back. Without an instant’s pause, she asked Hilary to accord her the favour of a moment in the office.
He saw by her face that it would be useless to suggest a postponement until the morning.
With hard, unwavering black gaze fixed full upon Hilary, and with many politely-turned phrases, Madame explained that several telephone calls had come through from Cannes. The gentleman who had sold a motor-car to Monsieur Moon was most anxious to speak to him. It was a question of business, very important. The concierge, in despair, had at last come to Madame. She had herself spoken to the monsieur, had begged him to reassure himself, and promised that he should be called by telephone the very instant that the Monte Carlo party returned.
“It’s too late to-night,” said Hilary, sweating. “It’s all right, Madame. I know what my friend wants, and I’ll get a call put through first thing to-morrow morning. That’ll be all right.”
“Ah, mais non, c’est qu’il ne s’agit pas de ça.”
Madame explained that, if monsieur’s friend was not rung up to-night, he would suppose that she had broken faith with him. It was not to be thought of, not for one instant. She had passed her word of honour that he should be called by telephone that very night, without fail.
Her mouth tightened as she said it.
Hilary decided to bluff.
“Very well, have you got the number?”
“Here, Monsieur.”
With inconceivable rapidity, Madame snatched at the telephone receiver on her desk.
Hilary realised that she meant him to take the call in her office.
He wondered grimly how much English she understood. Anyhow, it didn’t matter much. He was quite certain that she knew he was being pressed for money.
“Voilà, monsieur. C’est lui.”
Hilary set his teeth and took the receiver.
Then he looked significantly from Madame to the door, and back again.
Smiling disagreeably, Madame walked to the door, tried the handle, and then set her back against it.
“Il n’entrera personne, monsieur, et moi, je comprends à peine un mot d’anglais.”
Hilary swore under his breath. He hadn’t the courage to defy her.
“Hullo ... hullo.... Yes, I know. Look here, I’m most frightfully sorry. I simply forgot to post the beastly thing, that’s all. It’s upstairs, made out and everything, in an envelope addressed to you.... I can’t think how I came to be such a fool. Of course I’ll post it first thing to-morrow. The car’s absolutely O.K.... I know.... I tell you it’s all right; don’t be such a bloody fool.... How could I ring you up before when I’ve only just got back?... No, absolutely foul.... Well, good-night and all that. Sorry you went off the deep-end about it.... Yes, to-morrow, surest thing you know.... ‘Bye.”
He hadn’t come out of that too badly, on the whole; anyway, he’d gained time.
The thought flashed through Hilary’s mind, as he turned round.
Then he saw Madame’s face.
“Will Monsieur settle his week’s account at the same time as he sends the cheque for his new motor-car?” she demanded, her tone undisguisedly insolent.
“Of course if you wish it. Though it could perfectly well wait till the end of our visit.”
“Is Monsieur thinking of soon leaving the Hôtel d’Azur, then?”
“It depends,” said Hilary, going to the door.
“Because I naturally have many enquiries for rooms,” said Madame meaningly. “The end of the season approaches, and one can afford to neglect no possible opportunities these days. Only this morning, an American lady wrote to me from London....”
Her voice went on, pursuing him. If only, thought Hilary, this damned buzzing in his head would stop, he could tell her exactly where she got off, the hag.
“Then to-morrow morning, it is understood, we settle the account.”
“Yes,” said Hilary viciously, and strode into the hall, his hands and forehead damp.
He had been in similar predicaments before: sometimes he had found money, more often he had evaded his obligations by the perpetration of some minor form of fraud. Once or twice there had been no way out, except flight.
Hilary felt very certain that there was no chance of a flight from Madame and the Hôtel d’Azur.
Somehow, he had got to find money, and not only money for his bill, but money to pay for the car as well. It scarcely even occurred to him that he might have to relinquish the car. He still regarded it as a potential financial asset — and as such it was essential that he should retain possession of it. Why the devil hadn’t he won money at Monte Carlo this afternoon, instead of that swine Buckland?
He saw Buckland sitting at the open window, with a large whiskey-and-soda in front of him.
An overpowering thirst immediately seized upon Hilary. He went forward languidly.
“Still celebrating, Buck? Where’s the crowd?”
“Someone started a hare that there were fireworks going on in the village, or something. Most people are up on the roof. What’s yours?”
“Oh — thanks. The same as yours.”
Buckland gave the order.
Hilary leant back in his wicker chair, and scrutinised the tips of his fingers, holding his hand some ten inches away from his half-closed eyes, and slightly tilting his head backwards, as though to obtain a better view. When his drink arrived he swallowed it thirstily.
Looking up, he saw that Buckland’s eyes were fixed thoughtfully upon him.
Hilary, breathing rather hard through his nose, decided to make another attempt. He had a curious conviction, based upon no reasonable grounds, that Buckland was actually waiting for him to do something of the kind.
“What about that car, Buck? You said something about it this afternoon, and I’m open to a good offer. Of course, you’d sell her again — easy — when you leave. At a profit, quite as like as not. Cars are always changing hands, out here.”
“Why are you in such a hurry to get rid of her?”
Hilary drew a long breath.
“Oh, just financial pressure, as they say. I was badly let down over that motor-boat business, as you know, and some money I was expecting from England hasn’t turned up yet. It’s only a temporary nuisance, of course, but you know how beastly suspicious these French people are, and I don’t want to give Madame any excuse for saying she’s been kept waiting for her money, or any bunk of that sort. So Angie and I decided that we might as well sell the car.”
“Yeah,” said Buckland.
Hilary’s hopes began to rise. Apparently Buck had been thinking over the question, and was not surprised at having it reopened.
Hilary abandoned the effort that he had made towards coherence, alien alike to his irresponsible temperament and to his instinctive preference for the laconic style of his generation.
“What about it?”
“Nothing doing.”
“She’s a bargain. I’ll let her go cheap.”
“What does Angie say about it?”
“What the hell’s Angie got to do with you?” asked Hilary without heat.
“If it was Angie that was going cheap, I might have something to say to it.”
“That’s in damned bad taste, Buckland.”
“Bad taste doesn’t matter to me, or to you either, I should imagine. Have another drink?”
“This one’s on me,” said Hilary automatically.
They were silent until the drinks had come.
Then Buckland spoke again, casually.
“When are you clearing out of here?”
“The first minute I can. I loathe the beastly place.”
“Angie doesn’t.”
Collected Works of E M Delafield Page 404
