by Alec Waugh
“I have called,” he informed the large, liveried commissionaire, “for the lady who is lunching with Mr. Fortescue.”
There was a summoning of page-boys, a repetition of instructions, then a long pause.
“The lady,” a page-boy ultimately told him, “will be with you in a minute, sir.”
The minute was translated into a quarter of an hour. Then through the half-open doorway he saw Gwen saying good-bye to the man whom she had brought with her to Joan’s dance. And as Graham watched her smile up into his face a spasm of jealousy passed through him. Who was this man, with the infernally proprietary attitude, with whom she appeared to be spending so much of her time?
In another moment she was with him.
“I’m very sorry, Graham,” she was saying, “but I arrived here so disgracefully late that I couldn’t leave the poor pet too soon. Where are you taking me?”
“Where would you like to go?”
She shook her head.
“I don’t care: anywhere you like. I’m not in any hurry to be back.”
And so because as long as they were together it did not really matter where they went, because also neither of them had been there before, they agreed that Dorking would be as good a place as any for them to go to.
“There’s a place near there,” she said, “called Friday Street. I’m told it’s rather lovely.”
It is a good hour’s run to Dorking, and Friday Street is some six or seven miles beyond it. But they spoke hardly a word during their drive.
After the uneasy turmoil of the days during which they had not seen each other, the hours of repression and restraint, they were experiencing the relief of selfsurrender; with the consequences of that surrender, gay or calamitous as they might choose to be, still far distant.
“This is the first time,” he once remarked, “that we’ve ever been anywhere together; since that first day, at least, when we lunched together. It’s curious, you know.”
“But then,” she replied, “ours has only been a Business acquaintance.”
“Acquaintance, not more than that?”
“It’s always better,” she said, “to understate.”
There may be lovelier counties in the world than Surrey. There may be in Surrey even lovelier places, but on a tranquil July evening when the sky above the pine trees is a blurred mingling of lavender and lilac, when the long shadows and the declining sunlight lie softly on the waveless water and the wooded coverts that slope down to it, when over the fields that stretch to Wooton a golden haze is settling, Friday Street has something of the enchanted fabric of one of those dream places that the magicians of old time created for the gilding of a moment’s splendour, to destroy when the bright moment was at an end.
So calm, so still, so self-contained in the casket of its own beauty, you cannot believe that It exists on ordinary days, when the skies are grey and the trees leafless, that it is here to be viewed and passed by at any hour of the week by any casual loiterer. It exists, you feel, for you alone at this marvellous moment of the day’s suspension, and when you have gone it will vanish as dreams vanish.
At the edge of the lake there is a little inn, and in the narrow garden that is in front of it Graham and Gwen sat for a long time over the tea that had been prepared for them.
“It’s so lovely,” said Graham, “that one can scarcely believe it’s real.”
And because it seemed to be apart from the reality they knew, the reality of obligations and professions, and carefully nurtured plans, they felt themselves to be on a plane where the conditions that governed the practical ordering of their lives were without meaning, a plane where they could speak without reservations of what they felt, instead of what it was prudent for them to feel.
“You say it isn’t real,” she said, “but I’m not sure that the thing we take for real is real at all; that the thing we call reality isn’t a cloak we’re needing to be rid of; that these are not the real moments.”
She leant forward across the table, in that familiar pose of hers, with her chin rested on the bridge of her interlaced fingers.
“Isn’t this far more real,” she said, “than money and office and position? This beauty that we’re looking at may be transient, the effects of certain colours through a certain atmosphere on certain surfaces. Even as we look at it, it changes. But then, is there anything about us or within us that isn’t on its way to an ultimate dispersal? And don’t we spend the whole of our lives laboriously creating things——homes, reputations, businesses——that sooner or later the world will have no use for?”
She paused, and as they sat there side by side, through the mind of each of them the same thoughts passed.
Just for this moment, in the presence of supreme beauty, they were able to see that those things they set such store by——homes, reputations, businesses——did not matter; that there was in the perfection of this moment an eternal quality that careers and the allaying of ambition do not possess. And yet they both knew that, when they had got back again into the world they’d managed to escape, they would forget this moment. They would start considering again those other things to be more important. The enlargement of an office, the knowing of useful people, the avoidance of useless ones, the extent of a bank balance, the protection of one’s infirmity and age; promotion and influence and respect—those were the things that would seem reality to them to-morrow.
And clearly in that far-sighted moment it was possible for them to realize how here they could be friends, as in that world they could never be. Here they were free to say what they liked and do what they liked, because those other things had ceased to matter to them. But that when they were back again, where those things did matter, they could only be friends to one another by ceasing to be friends to other people.
In a practical world, friendship, like everything else, had to fit into a formula.
“We’re neither of us,” she said, “free, you know.”
It was a moment that at a later stage in a relationship must have been the prelude either to a torrent of enraptured kisses, or a long discussion of their exact position and of the steps to be taken for the disposal of it.
But they had not got to that stage yet. They were in the mood neither to make love to one another nor to decide what course they were to follow. It was enough at this moment to realize the nature of their position. It was enough in this interval of unspoilt friendship to sit side by side leaning forward over the small wooden table of a village inn, and watch the lilac of the sky deepen into purple, to watch the mist from the fields rise towards the trees, till the faintly waving tops seemed to have been severed from their trunks, to stand suspended in the golden haze that, as the sun sank, slowly reddened; to watch the copper of the lake dull and darken into bronze.
“If we’d been free when we met,” he said at length, “we might not perhaps be meaning quite so much to one another now. There’d have been less to fight against.”
Slowly the air began to chill.
“It’s time we were going back,” she said, and with a little shiver she drew her cloak the tighter round her.
They had said little enough to one another on the journey down. They were even more silent on the journey back.
Gradually, as the spaces between the houses along the road diminished, as they drew nearer to the noise and lights of London, the realization came to them of the irrevocable nature of what had passed that afternoon between them.
Although so little actually had been said, although they had not even touched hands the whole day through, they had passed the most important perhaps of all stages in a personal relationship. The stage where two people, who have met hitherto as acquaintances casually, confess that they feel for one another emotions separate and distinct from those of any ordinary friendship, that what they mean to each other, be it much or little, is something that no other person in the world at that moment means to them.
Until now there had passed no word between them singling each ot
her out from the crowd of their acquaintance. But in the admission that they were not free, there had been, even if unstated, the suggestion that they could wish they were.
Chapter XVII
Too Late
‘Those, sir, are my final terms. It you are pre-pared to take over the use of that patent for twenty years, I will reduce the royalty as you suggest, but for a period of less than twenty years I cannot part with it.”
And with a smile, Elias Garlich leant back in his chair, crossing his hands comfortably across the curved expanses of his waistcoat.
The man opposite him hesitated.
“Those are hard terms, Mr. Garlich.”
The smile on Mr. Garlich’s face grew wider and more benign.
“You are,” he said, “under no obligation to accept them. It is to me a matter of complete indifference.
And he chuckled, wondering whether the hatchetfaced man beside him realized the irony of the situation; that they, in the last decade of their lives should be battling over royalties that would not be paid till they had been in their graves ten years. He was close on seventy himself, and out of these seventy years he’d had a good ninety years of living. The machinery must run down soon. While as for this thin rake of a creature opposite, no, he wasn’t the chap to get a second wind; he was the sort that went down suddenly before a chill that becomes pneumonia. And yet here they were, sowing for a harvest they would never reap.
“Well,” said Elias Garlich, “well?”
The thin, cadaverous agent of the Imperial Trust rose to his feet.
“You shall have a letter,” he said, “confirming our arrangement, by this evening’s post.”
With twinkling eyes Elias Garlich followed him towards the door. How pleasant became the playing of a game when you were indifferent to the result; when success or failure were no more than the brightly coloured counters of a nursery pastime.
Still, it had been good business. And to commemorate it he would buy that rather jolly seascape he had seen at the Jermyn Galleries, which would be the devil of a nice surprise for the wretch who’d painted it. Wonder what he’d say if he knew that the holiday he’d be taking in Liguria depended not on his own skill at all, but on the capacity of a worthless old philistine to dispose of a worthless enamel patent.
There was a tap upon the door.
“Mr. Graham Moreton,” his secretary informed him, “would like to see you.”
Mr. Garlich waved his podgy fingers in the air.
“He’s chosen his time well,” he said. “For once I’m in a capital temper.”
Graham’s entrance was abruptly diffident.
“I’ve been talking to Mr. Jeremy, sir,” he said, “about our Italian orders. He was inclined to agree with me that they did not compare too favourably with the ones we’re getting from France and Belgium and Germany.”
Elias Garlich was sitting back comfortably in his swivel chair. His hands were crossed upon his stomach. His knees were crossed. There was a twinkle in his eye.
“A fact, Moreton, that had not eluded my attention.”
“And it’s nearly three years, sir, since I went there. No one, except our ordinary travellers, has been there since. I’m not too certain that the railway companies are altogether satisfied with us. A few discreet little dinner parties would do a world of good.”
To the limited extent that his series of double chins permitted, Elias Garlich nodded his head.
“I agree,” he said.
“And I should think, sir,” Graham went on, “that it would be as well to make the trip at once, so that we can get our orders in before the autumn.”
“Perhaps.” There was a mischievous twinkle in his eye and the corners of his mouth were slightly lifted. “I dare say you’re right. I think we ought to send someone there.”
“Then I’d like to go at once, sir, if I may.”
From the depths of Elias Garlich’s immense obesity a long chuckle rumbled.
“But whoever said that it was you who would be going there?”
It was one of the most complete surprises that Graham had received.
“But——but——” he stammered.
“I had in mind,” Garlich continued, “someone like Ferguson or Evans.”
“Surely, sir,” Graham began to protest——then paused; a dark and uncomfortable suspicion striking him. “It’s always been me, sir,” he said, “who’s been sent on those expeditions.”
“Up to now,” his chief conceded.
The shadow of suspicion broadened and lengthened across the surface of Graham’s mind.
“Then——”
“Then what, young man?”
“Then you won’t be wanting me to do any more of them?” Graham blurted out.
Again the slow chuckle rumbled in that deep throat.
“That is perhaps the meaning I was attempting to convey. You see,” he went on—and the twinkle in his eye had deepened—” my fellow-directors and myself had come to the conclusion that you could be far more profitably employed in London. We had thought of opening a new department for the control of certain sections of our export trade. And it had seemed to us that you would probably be able to supervise it less ineffectively than the majority of our employees. There will be, of course,” he added, “some slight increase of salary to compensate for any loss in expenses that might be involved.”
The old man was laughing outright now. A great rumbling laugh that started somewhere beneath the fourth button of his waistcoat and echoed through winding cavities on its way towards the throat. The hands that were crossed upon his stomach rose and fell in uneven spasms. He had given that young fellow a shock all right. Thought he had been superseded; thought even that he was going to get the sack, perhaps. That was how he liked to make his promotions; without any parade of investiture, without speeches about duty, and gratitude, and recognition. In an off-hand way, as though one were asking a fellow out to lunch.
And there was that young rascal, now so overcome that he didn’t know what to say: just standing there speechless, with his mouth gaping and his eyes bulging. Eh, but it was amusing to have so much power. To be able with a word to make a man wretched with despair or delirious with joy.
“You can start making your arrangements with Coxon,” he went on, “as soon as you like; the sooner the better, really. Because I shouldn’t be surprised if in a month of two you weren’t coming again to me about another holiday.”
His eye was twinkling, and the slow chuckle was beginning again to rumble.
“They tell me,” he said, “that you’ve been waiting for a change in your position in the office to make at change in your position out of it. You won’t forget to invite me, will you?”
Graham was incapable of reply. The passage into which he stumbled wavered uncertainly before his tread. There was a fog over his eyes and over his mind. He did not know where he was, nor whither he was going. It was the last thing he had expected. On the night that he had driven back from Friday Sreet he had faced the issue squarely. The length of his engagement, the uncertainty of his future, the hunger, for adventure, for wider scope, the sense of something missing; it was by those things that he had allowed himself to imagine his nerves were being strained. But didn’t it all in the end come back to this: that he, engaged as he was to Joan, had fallen in love with another woman?
For a long time that night he had lain awake in bed. He was a practical person, and this was a practical question, to be dealt with practically. He had allowed himself to drift, up to now, because he had not realized that he was drifting. The time had come to take the rudder in his hand.
For curiously enough his infatuation did not in any way alter the feelings that he had for Joan. People would tell you that it was impossible to love two people at the same time, but he knew it was possible to love in different ways.
He saw Joan as his life’s companion; he saw her as he saw his career, a straight line through his life. They loved each other and understood each oth
er. They had in common a host of friends and interests and inclinations.
With Gwen he had, as far as he knew, nothing at all in common. He knew nothing of her, of her present or of her past. They did not belong to the same world. By no stretching of a drugged imagination could he conceive of them, he and she, forming any lasting partnership. She was a gleam of fire in a dull sky, a brief insanity. She came and went as meteors did. And like the meteor she dazzled. Even had he been free when he had met her, even had they both been free he could not believe that they would have considered marriage in relation to each other.
As clearly as he saw the problem he had seen the solution of it. Somehow or other, Gwen Lawrence must be transferred from the foreground to the background of his life, and how could that be done more easily than by one of the trips abroad that he would find it so easy to persuade his firm to arrange for him?
They said that love was independent of time and distance. But was it——this sort of love, at any rate? As an officer in France he had censored a great many letters from soldiers to their girls. And he remembered how, practically without exception, the long eight-page protestations that arrived in his dug-out nightly in the early days after a separation, dwindled, month by month, into a two-page bulletin of facts. They might still be thinking of their girls, they might still be loyal to them, they might still even be in love with them, but the acute need of them had gone. They had learnt to do without them. And for him, too, a few weeks and few hundred miles would distil in time that same numbing medicine.
“I must get away,” he had told himself. “Get right away, before I am involved beyond recall.”
There was a point, always, in every love affair, it was said, when you could extricate yourself from an entanglement. That point once past, you became powerless. And as day after day went by, day after day on which no sight of that pale face set in its helmet of dark hair would trouble him; day after day in which over the line of wire no sound of that deep, many-toned voice would be borne to him, little by little he would come to place her among those things of life that one was destined to have sight of and to lose: she would become, in his imagination, distant and unattainable.
