by Alec Waugh
She blinked, as one does when an electric torch is flashing suddenly into one’s eyes.
“M-married!” she stammered. “B-but you haven’t got that job yet, Graham?”
He shook his head.
“No, no, not yet, and I don’t know when I shall, and we’ve been waiting for thirty months now nearly, and I can’t go on waiting any more.” And, jumping from his chair, he turned, to fall on his knees beside her. “Joan darling,” he pleaded, “please!”
With soft caressing fingers she stroked his hair. Through eyes misted with happiness, the outlines of the room showed vaguely. “Darling!” she whispered, and pressed his head tightly against her knees.
“And you will, Joan, won’t you?” he was saying. “We’ve waited so long—too long. We’re missing so much, Jonakin! Why wait?”
They were the words she had so often hungered to hear him say. If only he would feel as I feel, she had thought. If only he wouldn’t put so many other things before our love. One has no right to be practical when one’s in love. But now that the words were unsaid no longer, now that he had witnessed by his saying of them to the extent of her power over him, it was for her, she felt, to be practical and worldly-wise, for her to save him from the unconsidered consequences of his love.
“It won’t be so very long, Graham,” she said quietly.
“We’ve been saying that,” he answered, “for two years. The days pass and nothing happens, and the weeks grow into months, and the strain is intolerable. If you knew, Jonakin, how hard it was! Over two years, and when one cares so much!”
So Christopher had been right. And a quiet, contented little sigh fluttered between her lips.
“I do understand, Graham,” she said softly, and her hand, as she spoke, did not cease to caress his hair. “I understand, and if it were only that, if it were the strain, if it were that strain only. Well; Graham, dear, you know that from the moment I said I loved you I belonged to you, and that I shan’t be made any the more yours by the few words that are to be said over us. If it were simply that . . . but I don’t think, Graham, it is just that. That’s only a part of it.”
“Yes, yes,” he said wretchedly. “But . . .”
“No, no, Graham, let me finish. That’s only a part of it. And we’ve got the whole of our lives in front of us. If I had known two years ago that we should have to wait as long as this I don’t think I should have been so ready to accept my father’s point of view. It’s been a long time and a hard time, and I haven’t found it easy. It might have been better very likely for us to have married then. But it would be silly when we have waited so long to lose heart now. It can’t be very much longer, Graham. And we don’t want to marry with the feeling that at any moment you may be rushed abroad.”
He waved his hands excitedly.
“That’s what we’ve so often said: that we’ve been so wrong to say. We’re sacrificing our best years; and for what? for comfort, ease, position. What are they to be set against our loving of each other?”
He spoke fiercely, hysterically. His hands were clasped tightly about her knees. His eyes were wild and bright.
“Graham,” she said, “Graham.”
“I know, I know,” and the words were almost shouted. “I know all the arguments that are to be brought forward. Haven’t I marshalled them myself a hundred times? And there’s nothing in them, nothing, nothing. Not in a single one of them.”
The tide of happiness in Joan’s heart was slightly ebbing. There was something curiously unreal in the intensity of his pleading. Alarm had taken the place of content. She had fixed again on him that look of intent and puzzled scrutiny.
“We mustn’t wait. It’ll be madness for us to wait any longer. We’re flinging away our happiness. For what, for nothing!”
Sentence after sentence, wildly, inconsequently, through its cycle of repetition, the storm of arguments poured on. And all the while softly, soothingly, Joan’s fingers passed and repassed through the tangles of Graham’s hair. Her eyes were no longer misted. Clearly enough showed through the room’s half darkness, the gleaming edge of cabinet and table.
“We mustn’t wait, Joan, it’ll be madness. Let’s get married at once. Let’s run away if need be, only don’t let’s wait!”
And as the heat and force of his talk quickened, sickeningly again the feet of fear trod round her. So he was in love, then, with another woman. It was not love that had loosed this torrent of avowals: it was not because he was half-wild with love of her, that he was at her feet now, pleading with her to marry him. It was fear of someone else that was driving him to this fury of protestation.
This was not the uncontrol of passion; it was the desperate attempt of a frightened man to save himself. It was the knowledge that, if he were married to her, he would be safe from the spell of that other woman. This it was that had driven him breathless and dishevelled to such wild-tongued courtship.
“Promise me, Joan darling,” he was saying, “promise me; you must, you must!”
And as she sat silent beside him there, while the strength of this rival passion lifted through every tortured sentence its increasing measure, slowly, insidiously, the temptation came to her to put to her own use this hour of unbalanced tempest. He was her man after all; the man she wanted. And what if she were to repeat now to him in his present mood that offer of herself made tentatively a few minutes earlier: what if she were to take advantage of this mad moment in this empty house: if she were to place on him that obligation which he would be unable ever to deny? That obligation against which this unknown rival could fight in vain? For a moment, insidiously, the temptation came to her. For a moment to be put away.
No, no, she told herself, it would not do; she could get him that way if she wanted, get him to keep him for her own. But if she did, she would despise herself for ever.
“I fight clean,” she thought, “whosoever it’s against.”
And so with cool hands and quiet words she soothed him back to reason.
“You mustn’t worry,” she said. “I’m yours, you know, whatever happens.”
The kiss with which they parted had little enough of passion in it. It was such a kiss as brothers might exchange who separate before a long, uncertain hazard. A kiss of comradeship and pity. And there was heavy dread and sorrow in Joan’s heart as she stood on the doorstep watching the car curve outwards out of sight. Where was he going? To what dark forest of adventure had she dismissed him?
And in his heart, too, was dread and sorrow.
“I’ve done my best,” he said. “I’ll go on doing it. Yet it may be that things are going to be too strong for me.”
Chapter XV
Christopher Intervenes
There were four roll sandwiches upon the plate at Geoffrey Brackenridge’s side. He had eaten already six, and was not feeling in the least hungry. Tea, moreover, he had long since recognized to be not a meal but an act of social courtesy. Were he, however, to eat the remaining sandwiches he would not need another meal till ten o’clock, so that by visiting the coffee stall at Hyde Park Corner he would be able to sup at the most for one and sixpence, which would be a saving of three shillings on the club dinner to which he would have had otherwise to resort. And these things had to be considered at a time when the margin of ten per cent on which he had based his calculations was proving woefully inadequate.
He had not calculated on Sybyl Marchant in his budget.
His fixed annual expenses left him with a balance of six hundred pounds, or twelve pounds a week for pocket-money. The type of entertainment to which he had accustomed Sybyl during their courtship rarely left him at the end of the evening with much change out of ten pounds. On four at least of the remaining six days of the week Sybyl would expect to be amused in some way or other, if not by him, then by some other man, and he dared not talk to her of economy.
He knew so exactly how she would behave.
She would not argue with him; she would not protest; she would stand still and straight
before him, listening to what he had to say. Her head, when he had finished, would be bent slowly forward. “You are very wise, Geoffrey,” she would say. “It would be stupid of you to spend money on me that you cannot afford.” She would not argue or protest, but in her eyes would be a reproach he dared not face. He would know what she was thinking.
“When you were uncertain of me,” she would be saying to herself, “you never considered the amount of money that you spent. Every night that I would come with you, you took me to a theatre and to supper afterwards. You spent very possibly during those months a great deal more money than you could afford. But it seemed worth it then: because you were uncertain of me. Now that you have got what you wanted, that expense seems to you no longer necessary: you have bought the article you set out to buy: as in one way or another that particular thing always is bought, in your case with dinners and dances and theatres. It is yours now, so you need not bother any longer.”
That criticism he dared not face: the suggestion that during his days of courtship he had been buying Sybyl in the same way, if in a different market, that other men bought other women. To preserve his self-respect and the dignity of his love for her, it was essential for him to spend as much money on Sybyl now as he had ever done. As much money if not more.
“If ever I have a son,” he said, “I shall send him out into the world with this advice: Never spend more on a girl during the first two months of your acquaintance than you will be in a position to afford after you have known her a year.”
There had, moreover, been trouble about Sybyl’s flat. He couldn’t quite understand what had happened, but apparently her housekeeper had complained about the lateness and frequency of his visits. Sybyl had been in tears.
“It’s no good,” she had said. “I can’t face that sort of criticism. We can’t go on meeting here.”
And the trouble was that he didn’t quite know where else they were to meet. His own flat was out of the question. When he returned to London in the spring of 1919 he had been at particular pains to choose an establishment where it would be impossible for a companion to spend the night. It had proved a very wise precaution. One must not, if one was to have any peace, let oneself become involved, and if women stayed one night they might stay a hundred. One must never allow them to take root or one might just as well be married. One must protect oneself. And he had never had reason to regret his prescience. It did appear, however, at the moment to be forcing upon him the responsibility of establishing Sybyl Marchant in a place where complaints were unlikely to be made.
“I can’t afford,” she had said, “a larger place.”
It would be for him therefore to pay the difference. It was inevitable but awkward.
Unquestionably three shillings had become worth saving. He stretched out a hand towards the sandwiches.
As he did so, he became conscious from the other end of the room of Christopher Stirling’s amused and ironic glance.
“My dear Geoffrey,” Christopher murmured, “what an appetite! How much I would give to feel genuine hunger again. It’s a sensation I’ve quite outgrown. I overeat and take no exercise, whereas you spend your whole time playing golf. I suppose you’ve got your handicap into single figures now.”
Geoffrey flushed; in a rather embarrassed manner, Christopher thought.
“I’m not playing much golf nowadays.”
“No?”
“I’ve taken up tennis.”
“Ah, the royal game, and where? Prince’s or Queen’s or Lord’s?”
Geoffrey shook his head.
“Oh no, only lawn. Sybyl, you see,” he added lamely, “doesn’t much care for golf.”
Christopher raised his eyebrows. It was a curious admission from the man who was going to pigeon-hole love. But then, Christopher reflected, he had had no idea that an affair was going to develop into love. Still, it was none of his business.
“So I suppose,” he said, “that it’ll be at Wimbledon instead of St. Andrews that you’ll be taking prizes. How I envy you your leisure. I have no time for any of these things. I haven’t even time,” he added in a louder voice, seeing that his hostess was standing a few feet from him, “to stay a minute longer at this delightful party. While the light lasts I cannot be idle.”
And with a lazy smile he turned away to leave Geoffrey in unchallenged control of the remaining sandwiches.
• • • • • • • •
It was not, however, to Ralston Street but to Ciber Crescent that he turned the steering wheel of his Armstrong Siddeley. It was time, he felt, that he had a chat with Mrs. Lawrence.
It was the first time that he had called on her: the first time indeed that he had seen her since the morning of his cocktail party. She had not been since, and he had often wondered why she had come at all. Not to see him apparently. She had scarcely spoken a word to him the whole time. And she had made no effort during the intervening months to resume their friendship.
It had been a curious affair altogether; there had been too the awkward moment with Joan Faversham about that business lunch with Graham at Romano’s. What business could they have been discussing there? Unless it was for her that he had taken those shares and in his name. Oh, well, that point, at any rate, he could settle up.
It was a little before six that his long, low-bodied car drew up before Gwen’s flat.
“I felt suddenly thirsty,” he explained, “just as I was coming out of The Times Book Club, and I couldn’t think of any address nearer than yours where I should be likely to get a decent cocktail. I was also,” he added, “feeling a little lonely.”
She smiled.
“I wish you’d feel lonelyish more often.”
“Or that you’d feel thirsty occasionally on Sunday morning!”
“Ah, Christopher, those cocktail parties! But that’s not my world, you know, any longer.”
“And what is your world?”
She shrugged her shoulders.
“This, I suppose,” and she made a sweeping inclusive gesture with her hand. “This, and all this stands for. Your cocktail, though,” she asked, “what is it to be, or will you mix it?”
“Anything you like, and you mix it. You understand your shaker and I don’t. They’re all different, you know, like golf clubs and motor-cars. They look alike enough in shops: but by the time you’ve had them a month they’ve become a part of you.”
She looked at him, and as their eyes met she smiled; an affectionate, rather wistful smile.
“You’re the old Chris,” she said. “I don’t know that vou’ve altered much.”
“No?”
“Not as I have, anyhow!” and, turning aside, she bent down to open the sideboard.
“Would you think it rude,” he asked, “if I took one glance at that copy of the paper which I see lying across your sofa? I’ve just bought some shares and I quite forgot to look and see what they were standing at this morning.”
“Gambling?”
“Not seriously, just a few pennies in Florida.”
“Florida!” she exclaimed. “I’ve just bought some things in Florida.”
“Then that,” he said, “is another thing we have in common.”
There was no need for him to look at the paper now. He rustled the pages casually, then laid them down, and, leaning back in the velvet-covered chair beside the fireplace, he watched Gwen Lawrence peel away the inch or so of lemon on whose flavour the martini relies for its success. Her back was turned towards him, and he wondered if he had ever seen anything lovelier than the curve of her neck and shoulder as she bent forward above the glasses.
Altered? But had she altered, after all, so much? Her figure was perhaps a little fuller; the dark mane of hair a little darker, but her eyes, the piercing amber eyes, the smooth white surface of her cheek, the soft, full, damson-coloured mouth, they were what they had always been. It was within, not without, that the change was working.
“There you are,” she said. “Here’s to all of us!” and
turning she held out to him the small frosted glass; it was cold, but not so cold that you could not taste the flavour of lemon through it.
“Perfect,” he said. “Most people’s cocktails are either warm like syrup, or so frozen that you are only aware of ice and alcohol. I must come more often.”
“I’m usually here,” she told him, “about this time.”
There was a moment’s silence. A silence though in which there was no embarrassment, from which it was easy to pass at will.
“And is life amusing you?” he asked.
She shrugged her shoulders.
“Amusing me?” she said. “I don’t know what you mean by that. It doesn’t disappoint me any longer. I don’t ask enough of it for that.”
He looked round the room; at its thick carpet, its heavy curtains, its deeply-sprung cushioned divan.
“At any rate, you look pretty comfortable,” he said.
“Comfortable, oh yes. All the material things. And, short of a revolution, I’m pretty safe, I suppose. I get given a good deal, you know, one way and another.”
“But——”
“I don’t know if there is a ‘but.’ You’ll say, perhaps, that it’s spoiling me for the big thing. But what is that big thing? And when does it come? People talk about affinities. But who’s met their affinity? Have you or I or any of us? Occasionally one gets excited, but that isn’t love. And about once in a lifetime one cares fearfully and gets hurt. One gives so much then that one hasn’t any more to give.”
She shrugged her shoulders.
“No, no, Chris,” she said, “it’s a myth that big thing they talk about. To keep one’s lip stiff and not to whine: not to let life get on top of you, and if it does, to go down against it fighting: that’s all there is to it. That’s all, anyhow, I see in it for myself.”
The dead pallor of her cheek was unmoved by any flush; but in her eyes the changing amber lights were shaken. And in her throat falteringly the small pulse throbbed. “You’re brave,” Christopher thought. “Whatever they may say against you, that they can’t deny you. Life’s hit you and you’ve hit back; blow for blow. If you haven’t given pity, you haven’t asked for it.” A big woman, in her way, and probably life hadn’t finished with her yet.
