by Alec Waugh
One day this week it must have been. Saturday it could not have been, nor Thursday nor Tuesday, nor yet Monday. Either Friday or Wednesday, then. And Friday’s lunch was an appointment that never as long as she had known him had he missed.
A cold fear seized upon her heart. A cold fear that it had been on Wednesday, the day when he had refused to lunch with her, that Christopher Stirling had met him at Romano’s in the company of this strikingly-appearanced woman.
“Don’t be a fool!” she told herself. “Don’t be a jealous little fool! There’s some explanation. There must be. Of course there is. Aren’t you going to trust the man you love? The man who is going to swear before all his friends and yours to love only you throughout his life? You’re being a jealous little fool, Joan Faversham. For heaven’s sake, pull yourself together!”
“In Romano’s? Ah, yes, that would have been on Wednesday, wouldn’t it?”
She could not believe that it was herself that spoke the words, spoke them with a voice that did not tremble, and with hands that clasped each other only such a little bit more tightly behind her back. Could not believe that it was herself that was listening, with blood so calm apparently, for the devastating or reassuring answer.
“Wednesday? Now, let me see,” Christopher Stirling was answering. “Wednesday, was it, or was it Thursday? Thursday, I think. Yes, Thurs . . . no, you’re quite right, Wednesday it was.”
Joan Faversham did not flinch. In the soft velvet cheeks the colour neither flowed nor ebbed. For one long moment searchingly she looked across the room towards Gwen Lawrence.
Was this, she asked herself, the woman of whose coming she had been so frightened; the woman who was to create in Graham’s life the upheaval that he had made in hers? She was old. Older than herself; older, she noted with relief, than Graham. This, surely, could not be the woman. And yet, and yet . . . With curious appraising eyes Joan took stock of that firm, graceful figure; the delicately-flowing lines, the head’s proud carriage, the strong modelling of cheek and chin, the smooth, high-curving forehead, and more than anything of the light and animation in those golden amber-coloured eyes.
“She’s very lovely,” she thought. “And yet she must be at least four years older than Graham.” Surely, Graham could see, surely he must see. . . . But for all that she argued with herself, the hands of fear were cold about her heart. She had felt so sure of Graham until now, but in the presence of this other woman, with the memory behind her of Christopher Stirling’s picture . . . Until now Joan had scarcely realized that to many young men experience and beauty mean more than youth and prettiness: that too often it is a losing battle that youth and prettiness have to fight. Joan had not realized it ... up to this moment. Now, with a little stab she suspected it. She looked again and it came to her with a deeper stab.
“She’s lovely,” she thought, “abominably lovely.”
But the light in the blue eyes did not waver. Firm and straight she kept the line of her upper lip.
“Wednesday,” she said, “I thought it must be. I should like to meet her, I think. Will you introduce me, please.”
And with steady tread she walked across the room to stand beside her fiancé.
“Gwen,” Christopher Stirling was saying, “I want to introduce to you Miss Joan Faversham, Graham Moreton’s fiancée.”
With a brave, unquivering smile, Joan Faversham stretched out her hand.
“I’m so glad you’re here to-day,” she said. “I’m so interested, so keen on Graham’s business; I want to meet all his business friends.”
It was at that moment that there came to Christopher Stirling a sense of danger: a prescience of drama, a consciousness of some error, he knew not what, committed by himself. What that mistake was he did not know. He was in the dark as completely as was, he suspected, Gwen Lawrence also.
“I was telling Miss Faversham,” he explained hurriedly, “of my lucky meeting with you and her fiancé the other morning at Romano’s.”
A less subtle and less experienced woman than Mrs. Lawrence would at that point have stumbled irremediably: would have stumbled, and in the stumbling have created one of those “moments” whose absence Graham Moreton had acclaimed to be one of the chief qualities of Christopher’s parties; a moment that would, however, have perhaps saved herself and at least two others the occasion of much ultimate unhappiness.
The haphazards of the last few years had, however, acclimatized her to such difficulties. She knew no more than Christopher knew the significance of Joan’s welcome. She could not tell any more than Christopher what was being imagined to have passed that day at lunch between Graham and herself. This only she knew: that it was business that was believed to have been discussed there. What manner of business she did not know. But it was unlikely that this young girl’s knowledge of commerce was any greater than at that age her own had been.
After scarcely a moment’s pause she answered, with such an open and bright smile as had on many another previous occasion unarmed suspicion.
“A lucky meeting,” she laughed. “But I should think it was. It must be eight years at least since I met Christopher. We’d quite lost sight of one another. And I can’t say how grateful I am, Miss Faversham, to the small piece of business, those few pennies I was thinking of investing, about which I came to ask your fiancé’s advice.”
• • • • • • • •
It was nearly half-past one and the studio was emptying.
“I should be so grateful, Mr. Stirling,” said Sybyl Marchant, “if you would ask your man to ring me up a taxi. I’ve got to lunch on the other side of the park and I’m already seven minutes late.”
“And I shan’t see you again,” Geoffrey Brackenridge asked, “till when?”
“When shall we meet again? Well, let me see.” She screwed up her eyes and her brows were wrinkled thoughtfully.
“What about a show one evening?”
She smiled.
“That would be delightful.”
“When? Any night this week will suit me.”
She shook her head.
“I’m sorry, Geoffrey. I’m engaged every night this week.”
“Every night!” he exclaimed.
“’Fraid so,” she answered. “I usually am, you know, for ten days ahead or so.”
“A gay life,” was Christopher’s comment.
“Oh, I don’t know,” she answered. “I’ve a lot of friends and things mount up. One dines with one and dances with another and goes to a cinema with a third. I never seem to have an evening to myself. I’m sorry, Geoffrey, but there it is. What about the week after?”
But Brackenridge did not suggest a day.
“It’s absurd,” he said, “to waste your time like that on things you don’t really want to do.”
“I do want to do them, though,” she laughed. “I must enjoy myself. Don’t you agree with me, Mr. Stirling?”
Geoffrey did not leave him time to answer.
“If you can’t manage an evening, what about a matinée?” he asked.
She thought a moment before she replied.
“A matinée? Yes, I think that would be all right,” she said. “Saturday, I could.”
“I’m playing golf on Saturday.”
“What a pity. Saturday’s my only day. It’ll have to be the week after, then. It is funny, isn’t it, Mr. Stirling,” she said, “how hard it is to make one’s appointments fit. I’ve given up trying to arrange anything less than ten days ahead. It’s simply a waste of time. Life seems to go faster every year. I suppose it’s that one’s adding all the time to one’s acquaintance and with each new friend bringing along ten other friends, I simply can’t keep pace with it.”
She spoke unconcernedly with a smile hovering upon her lips, but all the time she watched the frown deepen upon Geoffrey’s face. He’s jealous, Christopher thought, jealous of her other friends and her other interests. Though he wants to be practical in love, though he wants to pigeon-hole romance, to keep it a
separate interest, he does not like the idea of himself fitting into a pigeon-hole in a woman’s life. They talked on, she and he, brightly and superficially of this and that, but they were scarcely listening to what they said. Their ears were strained for the first sound above their talk of Geoffrey’s inevitable interruption.
“Look here,” he said, “if you’ve no other time, we’ll make it Saturday.”
She raised her eyebrows interrogatively.
“But you were playing golf, I thought.”
“I was. I’ll put it off.”
She protested.
“No, really, no. You mustn’t. I can’t let you. You mustn’t give up things like that.”
But there was a glow in her face and in her eyes as she protested, a glow that deepened as he waved aside her protestations; a glow of gratitude and triumph. He had given up his golf for her. And in the smile that passed unhidden there between them, Christopher saw what before he had not seen, what before indeed he had hardly guessed at, that these two loved each other. That in spite of all their talk about exchange, in spite of their defensive bargaining, in spite even of the fact that this very smile had come as the barter price in an exchange; these two so practical and calculating persons loved each other. And in the presence of that smile the world seemed both to be a richer and a sorrier place: richer in that so tawdry a thing could reveal so strong a light: sorrier in that so rare and fair a thing should be so dingily apparelled, that the complicated, economic conditions of modern life should be imposed, that the barricades of caution should hedge round what for these two should have no value save in so far as it was theirs to give; sorrier in that the practical ordering of life should place the heart under the guidance of the head; that these two who in this moment of time so loved each other should not be free to surrender to that moment’s richness. What would you though?—the fearless soldier is he who has not been wounded. And when men and women have once put all their eggs into one basket and seen them smashed, when they have come to realize that a time will come when the liberty, the position, the advantage that their nature is now urging them to sacrifice for a moment’s heady pleasure, will seem of greater value than the emotion for whose sake they are prepared to make that sacrifice to-day; when they have come to realize that we outgrow our emotions more speedily than our tastes and friendships and ambitions, it is not perhaps surprising that they should seek to surrender as small a portion as is possible of those ambitions: that they should try to buy in the most advantageous market. It might well be, indeed, that those others who acted otherwise, who continued to believe in the permanence of emotions that they had already once outgrown were no wiser and no worthier than the youth who, having at one fair lost a year’s savings at the three card trick, proceeds in the following summer at another fair to embark on an equally ill-judged series of conjectures. It might well be so; but that did not make the affair any the less to be regretted.
“Till Saturday then, Geoffrey,” Sybyl Marchant was saying, and her eyes were bright and roguish. “Till Saturday, unless ...”
“Unless what?”
“I’ve just remembered. I’m free this evening, if you’d care for us to go anywhere.”
A smile flickered over Christopher’s mouth. So she was to reward then his surrender with a fresh compliance.
“Care ...!” Geoffrey began excitedly.
“Mrs. Marchant’s cab,” announced Robinson imperiously.
• • • • • • • •
Christopher Stirling followed them into the room, and as the door closed behind him, his brother turned with a smile to Mildred Atkinson.
“I had to stay to the last,” he explained, “as I’m half host.”
A little nervous, but happier now, and reassured; warmed, too, a little by the cool pink liquid that had tasted of grenadine, she stood rather self-conscious perhaps, in the beaded elegance of marocain, a look of uncertain interrogation in her face; a look that seemed to surrender into his keeping the responsibility of her future and herself. “I have come,” that look appeared to say, “the rest is in your hands”; a look though in which entreaty was mingled with surrender, entreaty not to misuse this fluttered moment of uncertainty.
Humphrey smiled to himself at her embarrassment. She should have trusted him, he thought, not to make love to her before lunch, surrounded by dirty glasses in an atmosphere of stale tobacco smoke.
“And now for lunch,” he said. “You can’t think, Mildred, how hungry I’ve been feeling ever since I ordered it this morning.”
• • • • • • • •
It was after four by the time Mildred and Humphrey had finished the slow stroll through the park that had followed a protracted lunch. And across the large low window of the main room in Humphrey’s flat, green damask curtains had been drawn. On the mantelpiece two altar candles had been lit; a high-heaped fire flung a rich and flickering radiance on the armchairs that had been drawn before it, and on the deep low divan with its pile of many-coloured cushions.
With a little sigh Mildred Atkinson let Humphrey lift her coat from her.
“My hat, Humphrey. May I take it off?”
“And a cigarette. You prefer Turkish?”
The hand that held the match for her seemed to shake, and she laughed happily that he, where he should be so calm, should tremble. With eyes half closed, she felt herself relaxing to the peace and reassurance of the place and moment. How at rest she was, soothed by soft colours, and quiet talk, warmed by rich food and wine.
“May I look round?” she said. “Your brother said that you had some very jolly pictures.”
Slowly she walked along the walls. She did not examine the pictures in any detail. They existed, as they passed one by one before her, as symbols simply of this warm, swift-moving, richly-coloured world to which Humphrey Stirling held the key. How remote seemed now the drab, ill-furnished room at the summit of four flights of stairs, in which she had dressed that morning; with the worn linoleum that chilled her feet through her thin felt slippers, and the zinc, shallow bath in which shivering she had had to wash each limb separately. How remote and unbelievable.
He was standing beside her now, his hand was upon her arm above the elbow. Through the thin material of her frock she could feel the throbbing magnetism of his need of her. As she leant back against his shoulder, her hair rested on his cheek. He was taller than she was. He could make her feel, not big and awkward as had other and smaller men, but light and weak and graceful, as in those dreams when to a face that had bent over her she had lifted docile lips. The pressure of his arm was tightening; on legs that trembled a little she was letting herself be led to the warmth and glow of the high-heaped fire, to the many-coloured pile of cushions that shimmered in its diffused radiance. One day he would make his brother paint her, and men and women would pause before her portrait. “How wonderful,” they would whisper to each other, “she must have been!”
“Mildred, ah, Mildred dear,” the words in her ear were hoarse and husky, and the voice quivered that was uttering them. “So long I’ve wanted to be like this with you. So long I’ve been tantalized by all those other people.”
Soft, soft beneath her, the vast, the many-coloured pile of cushions. How distant, how unbelievable, that chill, narrow little room, with its faded wallpaper and sun-bleached curtains! How easy in this warmth and comfort, with soft colours and soft scents about you, to relax to the urgency of hungry fingers. As she turned pliant and submissive to meet the dark curtain of his kiss, before her eyes flickered for a brief moment a dazzled vision of gleaming roadways, of silent, low-bodied cars, of carpets soundless beneath her feet, of low music and low laughter, of silk and silver, and the caress of sables; of warm and perfumed water in which she sank and sank.
• • • • • • • •
That evening in a still corner of a Soho restaurant, Sybyl Marchant and Geoffrey Brackenridge are completing a Gourmet’s dinner. There is between them, at least on Geoffrey’s side, an embarrassed silence
. A mushroom savoury lies untouched upon his plate. He cannot eat it. He is not hungry. One hunger has replaced another. His fingers are fretting the hemmed edge of the table-cloth. He is nervous and unhappy. They must be said soon, those words that are to define and establish their relationship, those words that for fear of losing her he dare not say, those words whose consequences he cannot judge, that will lead him he knows not where. “Be careful,” the cautionary instincts murmur to him. “Aren’t you quite happy as you are? Haven’t you got this carefully mapped out life of yours? Surely that should be enough. You’re on dangerous ground, be careful.” He hesitates. Then from the pêche melba that she has preferred to a savoury she lifts her head, smiles once dazzlingly at him, then turns away. His blood thrills, the murmuring cautionary instincts are set at peace; emboldened by that swift smile’s magic he leans forward on his elbows across the table.
“Sybyl,” he says, “I don’t want you to misjudge me. I want you to understand. I’m not the marrying sort. I must be free.”
The silence between them deepens, isolating them in the midst of clattered plates and scurrying waiters and the rise and fall of innumerable conversations. They have been said now, those words, that he has been trying for the last six weeks to say. They have been said. They are a part of them. Nothing that may happen can erase them. She says nothing. She does not stir. Her head is bent forward above her plate. Her fingers rest upon the handle of the spoon. She does not eat. She does not speak. Her face is turned from him. What thoughts, he wonders, are passing behind that smooth, soft-coloured, scented mask.
She lifts her head, her fingers relinquish their hold upon the spoon. Her elbows are stretched forward upon the table, the plump white fingers are twined into a latticed bridge on which her face is rested sideways. She looks at him quizzically. And he has the uncomfortable sensation of being weighed and scrutinized, and taken count of.
