by Alec Waugh
The moment would decide for her, she supposed. It depended on the spirit in which he came to her. For Gwen Lawrence was one of those women who can love only where they art loved. Or, rather, where they feel that they can be loved worthily. She had her pride, which would not allow her to fling herself away on a man who was unworthy of her. Fretfully, impatiently, she waited.
• • • • • • •
At last he came, an embarrassed, a wild-eyed figure at which she looked curiously, wonderingly: it was a Graham that she had not seen before; such a Graham as Joan Faversham had once seen dusty and soiled and travel-stained; a desperate and haunted creature, conscious of nothing but the need for flight.
In the centre of the room he shifted from one foot to another, while the fingers of his left hand fluttered nervously at the knot of his silk tie, and his right hand in his pocket rattled a few odd coins.
“It’s about the shares,” he blurted out. “Have you noticed that they’re down to eighty-two?”
It was the last thing of which she had expected him to speak. That excuse for conversation had been surely long ago dispensed with.
“My dear Graham,” she laughed, “you can’t think how tired of those shares I am. I thought they were going to be so romantic; I had pictured myself either a bankrupt or a millionairess. Instead of that there’s been the dull middle road of mediocrity, a hovering between eighty-one and eighty-five, and no excitement. I feel myself to have been considerably misused.”
There was no answering laugh in Graham’s eyes.
“It’s serious,” he said. “I’m frightened. I’m afraid they’re going down. I told you that there might be a real crash any time.”
“Why, has your broker warned you?”
He was about to nod his head, but his old inability to lie to her prevented him.
“No,” he said. “No, he hasn’t said anything to me.”
“Then till he does, Graham dear, let’s leave the matter as it is. For I can assure you that for a long time now I’ve ceased to take any interest in the shares at all. Let’s talk of something else.”
But he still hesitated from one foot to the other, and still at the knot of his tie his fingers fidgeted, and still in his pocket the coins were rattled one against the other.
“I assure you,” he said, “I do really beg you——”
“Please, my dear, please.”
Had she cared less for him, she would have been annoyed. And even as it was she was more than a bit impatient. She had had a trying day, for whose difficulties indirectly Graham was responsible. He owed it to her to make himself agreeable now.
But the worried, unhappy expression was not to be banished from his face.
“They’re going down,” he persisted. “I know they’re going down. Do, please, let me persuade you to sell the things.”
“Oh, Graham, Graham,” she protested wearily. “You can’t think how utterly this subject bores me.”
For a moment there was silence. He was looking on the ground now, and the fingers at his tie were still. When he spoke his voice was no longer high-pitched and agitated.
“I’m sorry,” he said quietly. “You see,” there was a pause; then, “I did what I thought was best. I’ve sold those shares.”
“What?”
“They were made out in my name. I felt certain they were going down. To protect you I sold them.”
“Without my permission?”
He nodded his head.
“And at what price?” she asked him.
“Eighty-two and a fifth.”
By a hurried process of mental arithmetic she decided that the transaction had cost her close upon a hundred pounds. It was really too ridiculous. He should never have sold the shares, her shares, without asking her. He could not conceivably have chosen a worse time. He was not to know, of course, that Guy Fortescue had made himself responsible for her losses, nor that the sale had come at a time when it would be imprudent to remind Guy of his debt. But it was really an infernal nuisance. She would have to sell something or other to pay for them. And at a time when she might stand in need of capital. That, of course, Graham could scarcely be blamed for not knowing. But he had had no right without warning her to sell her property. She was not going to make a fuss, however.
“Well, thank goodness,” she said, “that I bought my other Florida Asiatics through a less easily influenced medium.”
It was his turn to be surprised.
“What!” he exclaimed. “You’ve got others? You never told me that!”
“The arrangement of my finances is my own concern.”
“Of course, of course—only——” He hesitated. “Have you put much in?” he asked.
“Practically all I’ve got,” she answered negligently.
“I see.”
Again there was a pause—a pause on his side of embarrassment, on hers of irritation. It was so different, this, from the meeting she had anticipated.
“Well, as you’ve sold them,” she said, “you’ve sold them. The thing’s done and there’s no more to be said about it. I’m surprised, I must say, that you should have sold them without telling me. But there it is, and in the meantime how much do I owe you?”
“Owe me? How do you mean?”
In his eyes now there was a blank astonishment.
“The deficit, of course,” she replied impatiently. “Between the price at which we bought the shares, and at which we sold them. I’ve only worked it out roughly in my head, but it seems to me to be about a hundred pounds. I expect you’ve brought the exact figures with you. How much is it?”
He shook his head.
“You don’t owe me anything,” he said.
“Oh, come now, come, we bought at eighty-four——”
But he lifted a hand to stay her.
“Surely you don’t imagine,” he said, “that without asking your permission I should have involved you in a loss of something like a hundred pounds?”
“I was surprised, I will admit. But it’s what you have done, isn’t it?”
He laughed.
“The shares were made out in my name,” he said, “It was on my recommendation that you bought them. I took the responsibility for the purchase. I take the responsibility for the sale.”
“Then you mean to say,” she paused and looked searchingly, uncomprehendingly at him. “You mean to say,” she went on, “that, although you are going to be married in a few weeks, although you have, you must have, a considerable number of obligations imminent, you allowed yourself to lose a hundred pounds, because—because why? Why did you do it, Graham?”
He averted his gaze from her.
“I thought the shares were going down; it seemed better to sell out now than later. I knew you wouldn’t agree with me. Naturally I couldn’t expect you to shoulder the responsibility of a loss you were not ready to incur. So I took it on myself.”
She watched him narrowly.
“That isn’t true, Graham,” she said quietly.
“What isn’t true?”
“What you’ve just told me. You didn’t sell those shares because you were afraid of their going down. You didn’t sell them because you wanted to save me money. That’s camouflage. And shall I tell you why you sold them? You sold them because you were afraid of me.”
The words were spoken quietly, but with a savage intensity that startled him.
“No, no,” he stammered; “you’re quite wrong. They’re going down. I’m—I’m sure they are.”
“You don’t know. How can you know? Your broker even doesn’t know. You were frightened of seeing me. You knew that as long as I held those shares, you could not help seeing me. And so, in order to save yourself, you sold them. So that there shall be no excuse any longer for our meeting. That’s why you sold them, Graham Moreton.”
He stammered a denial.
“No, no, really no.”
She would not listen.
“You were frightened. You didn’t dare face the respons
ibility of your behaviour. You ran away. You’re a coward and I’ve no use for cowards. That’s all there is to it.”
And turning away from him towards the mantelpiece she lifted the lid of a painted wooden box, took from it a cigarette, and tapped the tip slowly against the nail of her forefinger.
“There’s no more to be said, Graham,” she repeated quietly, “that’s all.”
Her back was turned on him. He could not see the expression of her face; how tender her eyes were nor how sad.
He heard only the intonation of the voice that she had steeled deliberately in self-protection. There was no more to be said. She was right. The last word between them had been uttered.
But still he hesitated.
“Well,” she said, “what are you waiting for?”
One last look he cast about the room: the room in which so much drama had been enacted for him: the room in which had flowered the strongest emotion that he might ever chance to meet. It was over and he would never be seeing her again. It was what he had wished. It was for this reason that he had sold the shares, and yet now that the point of parting had been reached——
“Good-bye, Gwen,” he said, and there was a tremble in his voice; a tremble that hurt her so much that she was forced to dig the nails of her fingers into her hand to prevent herself from turning round and flinging herself into his arms. If in that moment they had looked each other in the eyes, there is no power that would have withheld them from one another. But her face was turned from him, and the firm line of her shoulder was unshaken by any sob.
For a moment he looked at her, then quickly moved away and behind him, as a few hours earlier behind Guy Fortescue, the front door banged heavily. Even as it closed the bell of the telephone began to ring.
“That’s Guy,” she thought, “ringing up to apologize,” but she took no step towards the instrument.
Her head buried in her arm, Gwen Lawrence lay forward, a huddled heap along the mantelpiece, while in the box above the door the bell of the telephone rang itself to silence.
PART III
Chapter XIX
J’en Ai SoupÉ
“It’s charming, Mr. Stirling, but then all your portraits are.”
“It’s delightful of you to like it, Lady Heresy, but if you only knew what a relief it is to have a subject that, how shall I put it? is charming of itself without having to be made so.”
“I expect that is what you say to all your sitters.”
But she was smiling none the less as Christopher Stirling accompanied her to the car.
With a contented smile he walked back into the studio. A pleased client was even more gratifying than the cheque which would be the symbol of her satisfaction. She would say the right things about him; the things that would bring more commissions. And it was not, after all, too bad a picture.
For a moment he appraised it critically. He knew well enough what its fate would be. He had been at the game too long to expect surprises. It would be hung in the autumn exhibition of the Allied Independents, and would be referred to in the daily illustrated papers as “a further distinguished example of a distinguished art.” In the sixpenny weeklies it would either be ignored or serve as a peg for some bright debutant of letters to hang his analysis of popularity in art. He had read so many of those articles, and he knew the lines that this particular one would follow. “There must have been painted during the last twelve months,” the article would run, “at least forty portraits by other artists, neither worse nor better than Mr. Stirling’s. Why is it that fortune should have placed on his forehead rather than on that of any other of these forty painters the laurels of popular approval?”
And up to a point of course the argument would be sound. He was critic enough to realize that there were living, if not forty, at least a considerable number of painters who could have produced as good a portrait of Lady Heresy as he had, and for a tenth of his price. But the point that the critics consistently forgot was that he had produced in the past work of a sufficiently effective nature to lift him out of the rut of merely talented composition. It was true that much really good work was overlooked, but it was equally true that in no walk of life could success be achieved without a foundation of positive and effective work. He was able to sell now work that was no more than competent because he had produced pictures that were something more: a thing that the odd forty never had.
He walked across to the corner of the studio, and drew back the strip of blue brocade that covered the picture with which he had made his name. There it stood as vivid and as vital as when he had painted it twenty years before.
“They couldn’t have done that,” he thought, “not many of them.” And a slow reassuring smile flickered across his mouth. “I’ve done it once and I’ll be able to do it again,” he said, “when something happens that makes me really care. All this,” and he pointed a little scornfully towards the portrait of Lady Heresy, “is only a keeping of one’s hand in.”
It was consequently in no bad humour that he drove some twenty minutes later along the Embankment to the lunch that he had ordered at Sherry’s for Geoffrey Brackenridge and himself.
The lunch proved as admirable as Christopher had anticipated, and it was well after three before they walked out into the rich September sunlight.
“And now?” asked Christopher.
“Anything but work,” said Geoffrey. “I’ve got a quite drinkable bottle of port back at my flat.”
“Like the old days at Lille,” laughed Christopher, “drinking away an afternoon.”
“And is there any better way?”
They never, however, had a chance of putting this contention to the test. They returned to find Sybyl awaiting them in the larger of the two armchairs, a huddled, dismal figure. She was not reading; she was not smoking; her hat was pulled forward over her eyes. Her arms were flung sideways along the chair, and from her wrist dangled, a symbol of dejection on its chain of tortoiseshell, a black silk moiré bag. She did not rise to welcome them. Her head, as they came into the room, was turned listlessly in their direction.
“What, not alone?” she said.
“It’s only Christopher.”
“I can see quite well who it is. I’m not blind,” she snapped.
“Should I go?” asked Christopher.
“Oh, no,” she said. “You might as well stay now that you’re here. Geoffrey would be sure to tell you. You might as well know now as later.”
Her voice was dead, toneless and colourless, and her head was once more bent forward, so that only the white extremity of her chin could be seen beneath the low drawn rimming of her hat.
Indecisively Geoffrey hovered on the rug in front of her.
“What is it, Sybyl?” he began.” Not bad news I——?”
Savagely and abruptly her reply was flung at him.
“Bad news? Oh no, not bad news, when the whole of one’s business, the business one’s spent six years building up, one’s business along with all the capital one’s put into it—oh, not bad news when one finds that one’s lost the whole of it within three hours. Not bad news!” And she laughed in a high-pitched, hysterical, disdainful laugh. “Bad news,” she continued, “oh, not bad news: at least, I don’t know what it may be to you, though as you’ve been telling me for the last six months that my good’s your good, I am justified in assuming, I suppose, that my bad’s your bad as well.” And again there came that irritated high-pitched laugh. Christopher felt slightly uncomfortable, as one does in a theatre, when an actress exaggerates her part.
“Your business? But what business?” This from Geoffrey. “Your typewriting agency?”
“What other business is it likely to be?” And she shook her arm impatiently so that the tortoiseshell chain of her bag was rattled. “And for heaven’s sake, Geoffrey,” she added, “don’t stand stupidly like that. Do sit down. I can’t talk to you up there.”
Her voice was quick and coloured now, and angry. But her head was still bent forward, and wi
th a sudden jerk of the hand her hat was pulled the farther downwards upon her eyes.
Anxiously Geoffrey tip-toed across the rug to the other chair, arranged himself upon the extreme edge of it, and leant forward, his hands clasped upon his knees.
“I don’t understand,” he said timidly, apologetically.
“And what, Geoffrey,” this with extreme bitterness, “eludes your comprehension?”
“Everything. What has happened to your business?”
It was what Christopher, too, was anxious to discover. He could not understand how so seemingly capable a woman as Sybyl Marchant should have come so unexpectedly to disaster.
“I thought everything was going so well,” Geoffrey added.
“So did I.”
“Then how——?”
But she did not let him finish.
“Why must you worry me with all this? I’m tired of explanations. For the last fifteen hours there’s been nothing else. It was my manager, if you must know. She had passed bad debts and mortgaged future profits, and she’d got overdrafts from the bank on unsound securities. There’s nothing left of the business now, but debts and the goodwill, for whatever that may be worth. I may get someone to take it over. Otherwise it’ll be Carey Street, I suppose,” and she laughed wearily, mirthlessly.
“I see,” he said.
It was a great deal more than Christopher did. His knowledge of the interior economy of typing agencies, or, indeed, of any business house, was by no means great. But he had on occasions interviewed bank managers, and he had found them in his days of struggle irritatingly reluctant to allow overdrafts or accept promissory notes. Neither could he see what future profits there might be in a typing agency to mortgage, nor how a manager could come to mortgage them. He was also mystified by this proposed purchase of goodwill.
Geoffrey, however, was too concerned with the facts of the disaster to be troubled by its machinery.
