by Alec Waugh
He shouldn’t have that minute, though. She would come down a little late, after her parents, so that it would be impossible for him to tell her before dinner, and for an hour or two hours he would have to sit, the news trembling on his lips, unable to tell her, because such news as that could be told only when they were alone together.
She laughed happily to herself at the picture of Graham fidgeting impatiently with his fork, unable to eat, leaving the food untouched upon his plate, exactly as he had done that evening when he had first kissed her, that interminable evening when she had thought that they would never be alone. She laughed to herself as she smoothed back softly with her forefinger the touch of carmine on her cheeks.
It was five minutes past eight before she reached the drawing-room.
“I believe, Joan,” her mother said, “you’re getting more unpunctual every day.”
“It’s she who’s got to pay for it,” her father laughed. “Her cocktail must be lukewarm by now.”
But she was in no mood to worry about a mother’s complaint or a spoilt cocktail. With that nervous expression upon Graham’s face that she had noticed at the other dramatic stage of their wooing, he was leaning back against the edge of the grand piano, his cocktail glass unemptied at his elbow. And as she noted the worried set of his features, her heart beat with a glad spasm of reassurance: so it was all right, then; he had been given that appointment; for she had not been before, now she came to think of it, quite certain. Christopher might easily have been mistaken. But there could be no mistaking that expression; something definite had happened.
“Hullo, Graham!” she said casually. “Now, I want you to tell me exactly what you thought of the dance.”
It was the first time she had seen him since a dance that had been given at a friend’s house, a few days before, and which Joan had to some extent helped to supervise, and she broke into an eager fusillade of questions.
“What about the champagne, Graham? Did you think it was too sweet?”
“No, no,” he said. “Just right.”
“And the quails, did you think they were a little dry?”
“No, no,” he said. “Just right.”
“I couldn’t help feeling that there was too much fizzy lemonade in the claret-cup.”
“No, no,” he said. “Just right.”
“But you say everything’s just right.” And she laughed happily, knowing how eager at any other time he would have been to discuss the details of the party.
A maid hovered in the doorway.
“Dinner is served, madam,” she announced.
Slowly they filed into the dining-room.
“It’s only a light dinner, I’m afraid,” said Mrs. Faversham.
At any other time Graham would have some courteous reference to the invariably high quality of their cook’s efficiency, but on this occasion he contented himself with a sound that was nearer to a grunt than any other vocalized form of articulation.
A pale pink soup in which floated the white-green flesh of turtle was set before him. He drank the soup, Joan noticed, instead of sipping it.
“Tell me, Graham,” she asked, “who do you think was the prettiest girl there?”
He looked up, blinked.
“Where?” he answered vaguely. She laughed.
“At the dance, of course.”
Again he blinked.
“Oh yes, of course,” he said, and lowered his spoon hurriedly into the soup.
To the original question he made no reply.
His soup plate was removed, another plate set before him. At his elbow a maid offered him a dish of grilled kidneys surrounded by a sage green bed of spinach. There were eight kidneys, and he took three.
With a twinkle in her eyes:
“Whose dress did you like the best?” she asked.
“Yes,” he answered, “yes.”
Across the table Mr. and Mrs. Faversham exchanged a puzzled glance.
And as Joan looked curiously and intently at her fiance’s bent, flushed face, a sudden and unaccountable dread seized her. There was something more in this strange abstraction than the mere impatience to impart good news.
In silence the course was finished, and a rum omelette flickering with transparent flame was brought on a large silver dish.
“It should be good, this,” Mr. Faversham remarked. “A rather special rum.”
“Nothing like army rum,” was Graham’s comment.
And abruptly and with a quick but unanimated and level-toned articulation, he began a rather long and not particularly pertinent description of a night in the line near Ypres, when the three men who had been sent to bring up rations had got stuck in the mud, had had to dump something in a shell hole, and had decided to leave the mail and the bread ration behind them and save the rum, with the result that the section was left with a full rum ration and only a few tins of bully beef between themselves and insobriety.
There was a weak but general laugh, and the omelette was taken away to be replaced by a savoury of bacon and olives and mushrooms.
A heavily oppressed atmosphere overhung the table. With narrowed and unhappy eyes Joan watched Graham smooth out on his plate the roll of bacon and cut away the fat from it. Then ignore both the lean and the fat portion, sever a section of the toast and mushroom, convey it to his mouth, place his knife and fork on the plate together, and with unlifted eyes toy with the long tapered stem of his wineglass.
Across the table Mr. and Mrs. Faversham made desultory and not too successful attempts at conversation. Something was wrong, they realized, between the young people. Well, it was not for them to interfere.
“You’re looking tired, Graham,” Mrs. Faversham remarked at last.
“Tired?” he retorted. “Oh no, really, no. I’m perfectly fit.”
“You mustn’t overwork.”
At the mention of the word work he gave a start that Joan did not fail to notice. So something had happened at the office, she told herself; and the dark suspicion came to her that it was not because he was impatient to tell her something, but because he was afraid to tell her something, that he was rude and indifferent and self-absorbed.
In the drawing-room afterwards conversation was no livelier but less difficult. A cross-word puzzle saved them. As long as they could force their attention on some definite object they could ignore Graham’s brusque silences and vague replies. Whisky and soda was brought in. Slowly the clock ticked round towards eleven.
At last Graham and Joan were left alone together.
Steadily, in a desperate attempt to read the other’s thoughts, they looked into each other’s eyes. How much or how little, he asked himself, did she really know? She could not, in point of fact, know anything. But she had surprised him in the past more than once by her prescience of things that she could have learnt only by divination. When she fixed upon him those curious, intent, appraising eyes, he felt that he did not hold one thing in his life secret from her.
She could not know, for there were no means by which she could have learnt, that this morning the long-looked-for appointment had been granted. And yet there was that in her eyes that disarmed assurance.
“I’m afraid I’ve been very dull this evening,” he said lamely. “I’m rather tired.”
As though he had not spoken:
“We’re going away, you know,” she said, “on Monday.”
He nodded his head. It was the knowledge indeed, that by Monday she would be out of England and among the Italian lakes that had decided him to withhold his news from her. She would be away for six or seven weeks. And there was little chance of her learning the news from anybody else. Whom, after all, did she know that was in any way connected with his business? He needed so badly a pause to think in.
“Monday,” he repeated vaguely, “and to-day’s Friday, and this week-end I’ll be out of London. It doesn’t look, Jonakin——”
She finished the sentence.
“As though we should be meeting before I went. Ah
well, but it doesn’t matter. There are so many other days.”
She continued, for all the pain that was above her heart, to keep her voice bright and cheerful. She did not understand. She did not pretend to understand. She only knew that during the last few weeks a dark cloud had obscured their happiness. She was in a current that was carrying her, she knew not whither.
“I mustn’t keep you up,” she said. “Mother was right; you are tired, Graham.”
He agreed. Yes, he was a little tired.
“Don’t overwork,” she said.
And there was in her eyes such a smile of indulgent sadness as mothers use when a small child lies to them. “I suppose,” she went on, “things aren’t too easy at the office now.” But to that question he could make no response. He mumbled inaudibly, hesitated for a moment, then turned beside her towards the door. There was a constraint between them such as they had never known before.
In the porch, through the half-light, for a moment they looked each other in the eyes. And on the lips of each of them a question trembled; a question that they dared not utter; dared not utter for fear that it might end in explanations that would involve the loss permanently of one another; the loss that they could not face.
For a moment they stood looking at one another. Then suddenly, clumsily, and with no word said, he snatched her close into his arms, kissing her with a desperation in which fear and need were mingled. Then as suddenly and as clumsily, and with no word said, he released her and, turning, he ran down the steps of the house towards the car.
Motionless, her arms still aching from his fingers’ pressure, her lips tingling from his kiss, she stood there, watching him.
“He still loves me,” she told herself. “Whatever may have happened, whatever may be going to happen, with the half at least of himself, he’s still in love with me.”
Chapter XVIII
A Last Attempt
Guy Fortescue was growing restive. Gwen Lawrence, who had passed through such crises before, could recognize the symptoms. He was becoming jealous and suspicious and proprietary, nor was he being quite so lavish with presents as he once had been. He was reaching, in fact, the point when ultimatums get delivered.
It was an awkward and not particularly profitable period, and Gwen was wondering whether she might not be well advised to hasten on the moment of departure. It was what she had done in the case of Holdenstein, but then there had been Guy Fortescue to fall back upon. And at the present moment she could not see anyone who was ready to assume that privileged position. There were a number of people who took her out to dances and to dinners two or three times a month, and sent her occasional gifts of gloves and stockings. But she did not see who was to provide her, when Guy went, with the more substantial testimonies of masculine devotion.
And that he was going there could be no doubt. It was annoying, but there it was. She had not expected it to come anything like so soon. For eighteen months at the least she had meant to keep him dangling.
She had managed longer than that with Holdenstein, in days when her technique had been far less assured. It was not, therefore, without alarm that on a certain late August afternoon she sat examining her reflection; in the mirror. Were her looks proving a waning asset? It was so hard to tell, when you spent a great many hours every day before a glass. You got so used to yourself that you could scarcely be expected to notice any change. It was frightening to lose in seven months a man you had meant to keep for twenty.
She recalled, dismally, the incidents of the scene that had occasioned this series of reflections.
They had lunched at Boulestin’s together. She had been tired and her head was aching, and she had left him to entertain her, with the result that the greater part of the meal had been spent in silence.
“You can drive me back, Guy, if you like,” she had remarked afterwards, and though he had said to his chauffeur without comment, “17 Ciber Crescent,” she could see that he had meant to let her take a tube or taxi.
This was not the first time that had happened, and a feeling of fear, and in a way also of guilt, surprised her. For if your company is the only reward you give to a man it is prudent to make that company amusing.
“You’ll come in, won’t you?” she said, as the car drew up outside her flat.
He hesitated.
“I really ought——” he began, but she interrupted him.
“Please,” she said, and in her eyes was that look so sparingly employed, which never failed to draw him back to her: that look which seemed to say: “Ah, but, however wayward I may be, I do, I really do care for you, and had things only been different——”
“All right,” he said, “for a little while.”
It was unfortunate that there should have happened to be lying open on the table the account for forty-seven pounds that she had received that morning from her hairdresser’s. It was the last moment she would have chosen for showing him a bill. As it was, not unnaturally, he picked it up,
“Good heavens!” he said. “Forty-seven pounds. You must spend a lot of time at this hairdresser’s of yours!”
“That,” she smiled, “would have, I should have hoped, been obvious.”
But he did not answer her smile, nor did he, as he had on so many previous occasions, pocket the bills with some such remark as, “Oh well, I suppose I had better look after it.” He had merely tossed the account back upon the table.
“You’re ridiculously extravagant,” he said.
And it would be, of course, at such a moment that Graham should choose to ring up with the request that he might come round and talk to her that evening.
She was not, indeed, too certain that in Graham was not to be found the secret cause of all her troubles. Guy’s exasperation was far more likely to be due to the lack of interest she had taken in his management than to any loss of attraction in herself. A man might fall in love with you for your looks, but the loss or retention of your looks had very little to do with the loss or retention of his love. It was far more likely to be because she had not bothered sufficiently about him that he was beginning to consider the attraction of her company alone an insufficient return for a certainly considerable outlay of time and capital.
And it was only since Graham had come into her life that she had ceased to bother, because his presence there had made so wearisome for her the game that she had set herself to play. And it was because of Graham that she had not set herself to find with the necessary assiduity the second string which was to take Guy’s place. It was Graham who had disorganized her life by occupying too much of her thoughts, and by shaking her faith in the worth of the life that she was leading. Whatever your mode of life might be, you could only carry it on successfully when you could fling conviction into it.
In the old days, when she had felt herself to be taking her revenge for her husband’s treachery, in her exploitation of other men, she had been confident enough in the virtue of her campaign. But through Graham she had come to see that there were things in life of genuine worth that she was missing. Graham had undermined her faith, Graham was the cause of the alarming position in which she found herself. Graham had precipitated her quarrel with Guy.
“That man again,” Guy had remarked angrily. “You seem to spend your whole time with him nowadays. He calls for you at Ciro’s in his car. He takes cocktails with you every evening. He’s young, of course, and I’m old. I’m not surprised; it’s the way of things, the way of nature; I don’t complain. You’ve had your choice and made it. I know when to stand aside.”
She had made no attempt to answer him. She was not going to demean herself by squabbling. She waited quietly till he had finished. Then:
“You’ve said quite enough, Guy, and what you have said is quite unworthy of you. But we’ll not discuss it now. I’m going out this afternoon, and I am going to change my frock.”
And without another word she had turned and walked out of the room into her bedroom. After a pause of a few minutes she had heard th
e heavy sound of Guy’s feet in the passage, and the bang of the front door.
“In half an hour’s time,” she thought, “he’ll be ringing up to apologize. Or else there’ll be a special messenger with a crate of flowers. And next time we meet he’ll be pitifully abject.”
But it would, she knew too well, only be a delaying of an inevitable conclusion. She was familiar enough with the geography of the road that she was travelling. With such men as Fortescue one had two quarrels. There was the first one, when he discovered that you were not the type of woman for which he had taken you, when to keep him you had to appeal to his sense of chivalry, his better nature. And the second quarrel, when the fabric of that second nature had begun to wear, when he had begun to feel that he could make a compromise with less exacting duties. When that second quarrel began there was nothing to be done but to let him go. His patience was exhausted. The game was finished.
In a day or two or a week or two, in a month or two even it might be, if she were very clever, that break would come. It behoved her to look round for some other man who would pay her rent and bills, and give her presents that could be converted subsequently into honest cash. It was time she started looking round.
But she was too tired at the moment, too sated with the personal ignominy of her calling. In a couple of hours Graham would be with her. That was all that mattered at the moment.
Since that afternoon at Friday Street she had not seen him. But for scarcely an hour on end had he been absent from her thoughts. It was absurd of her and she knew it. This impractical infatuation could lead to nothing. It was filling her life with irksome and useless complications. There was nothing but wretchedness in it for him as well as for her. It would be a good thing for both of them when he was married.
In the meantime, however, while he was in the foreground of her life, it was impossible for her to consider against what background it was that she must arrange for him to move.
In what temper, she wondered, would he come to her? Pleading or apologetic? Would he come with words of passion or excuse? Would he be practical with suggestions for the ordering of their future, or would he be head-strong and self-willed? And in what spirit was she to respond to him? She who had sworn never to complicate her life again with love of any man.
