So Lovers Dream

by Alec Waugh

‘You remember how you ended that story. The only way, you said, to take action against a suspected wife, is never to let her know she has been suspected. I was reading that story when I was depressed. I was worried. I felt very alone. No one understood me. Then I read your story. I thought to myself: he knows. He’ld understand.’

  As so often she had by no means made her meaning clear. She had missed the steps in an argument.

  ‘What kind of trouble were you in?’ he asked.

  ‘What kind of trouble is a woman usually in?’

  ‘You were in love?’

  ‘I thought I was.’

  ‘What was he like?’

  ‘He was the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.’ She spoke more slowly than usual. Her eyes had a distant, ruminative look. Her voice had the same note of cradling tenderness that hands have when they touch something precious. The same twinge of irritation that he had felt on that first evening when she said that she had quite liked Harlem, stung at Gordon.

  ‘In other ways what was he like?’ he asked.

  ‘I think he was probably a mucker.’

  ‘In that case. . . .’

  ‘One doesn’t mind that in a man. At least, a woman doesn’t. You’ve said yourself that women fall in love with cads in the same way that men fall in love with barmaids.’

  ‘You quote me against myself.’

  ‘Do I? I’ve thought of you for so long as the author of your books. I can’t tell you and the author apart now.’

  ‘You’ve no right to attribute to an author the opinions that he puts into the mouths of his characters.’

  ‘That’s what every author says, but you can always tell when an author’s speaking as himself.’

  ‘Can you? Yes, I suppose you can. But, anyhow, this trouble of yours. He was beautiful and he was a mucker. What else was he?’

  Faith missed the irritation in his voice. With her head turned away she was looking dreamily across the crowded room.

  ‘He did masterful and gentle things,’ she said. ‘Things that nobody else would have thought of doing. Have you noticed that I’m left-handed? No. Most people don’t. He did. My father would never let me use my left hand. As a result I’ve never been able to cut my meat up properly. The second time I met him I was struggling with a leg of chicken. It wasn’t going too well at all. Suddenly he leant over and changed plates. On his plate the meat had been cut up. It was done so quickly that no one could have seen. “I think you’ll find it easier that way,” he said, and then he smiled.’

  Quite clearly the picture stood before Gordon’s eye. Instinctively he disliked the man. It was the kind of thing that he himself neither would nor could have done. He could see how the man who could do such a thing would attract women; how his capacity to do it would make him disliked and distrusted by other men.

  ‘And what was the end of it?’ asked Gordon.

  ‘He went away.’

  Gordon thought a moment. It was about a year and a half since his jealousy story had come out. ‘That would be about fifteen months ago,’ he said.

  ‘About that.’

  Sleeplessly that night Gordon tossed from one side to the other of his bed.

  Faith had told him little enough about this man who had disturbed her peace of mind. He did not know the man’s age; his nationality; his profession. He did not even know if they had been lovers. It seemed from the lightness with which she had spoken of it that they could not have been. How few opportunities they could have had. Faith lived in crowds. She was never alone. Her life was not constructed to house an intrigue. Yet with what a tenderness she had spoken of him. Impatiently he flung back the bedclothes and began to pace backwards and forwards up and down the room. He tried to argue with himself. What did it matter if she had had lovers? They were not in love with one another, she and he. And even if they were, and if she had, what did it matter since for fifteen months the man had been out of her life? What right had he to complain about a woman’s past? The present was the culmination of the past. It was out of the past that the present that he loved had grown. What was he planning, anyway? To run away? To break up the home of a man who had honoured and entertained him? If he had been planning that, he might have had some reason for wanting to believe in the fidelity of a woman he hoped to marry. But if he were to be her friend and no more than her friend, what rights other than those of friendship would he have? While, if he were hoping to be her lover, should he not welcome the fact that she was vulnerable? If she were to yield to him it was only natural to suppose that at some past time she had yielded as in some future time she would yield again. Thus and thus he tried to argue with himself. But there was no peace for him in those arguments. As he strode backwards and forwards up and down the room there danced tantalizingly before his eyes the picture of her in that man’s arms. A man who was beautiful and perhaps a mucker, who did masterful and gentle things. Had she or hadn’t she been his lover?

  It was a question that academically, in a different form, he had set himself a great many times. He knew so little of her, though he had seen so much. He had often wondered what passion stood for in her life. He had been long enough in the world to know that appearances were the last thing that one should judge by; that the woman who looked most like a Madonna was the most sensual; that the girl who looked at you from beneath half-lowered eyelids was as likely as not to be a virgin; that the married woman with the most admirers might be the faithfulest. And with American women it was so hard to tell. It was so easy for a foreigner to be mistaken; to take their independence for looseness, their freedom for licence. You just could not tell in a country where girls went hitchhiking across a continent; drank their liquor straight, went out on petting parties and meant nothing by it. Gordon had often wondered whether any of the men who made a background for Faith Sweden’s life meant more than friendship to her. He had wondered in a mood of careless curiosity, as one might wonder such a thing about any casually held acquaintance. Why, now that this curiosity had been given concrete shape, should he be striding backwards and forwards sleeplessly down a hotel bedroom, repeating argument after argument? ‘Of course she didn’t. She’s not a woman of that sort. She wouldn’t. Not, anyhow, with a man like that: a man she said was a mucker probably. And even if she had wanted to, how could she have. When would she have? She who was never alone for a moment. Of course she couldn’t. And anyhow, if she had, what did it matter? I’m not in love with her. I’m her husband’s friend. She’s American. I’m English. In a few weeks’ time I’ll be three thousand miles away. I’ll have said “goodbye” to her. I expect for ever.’ Phrase by phrase, his arguments beat like fists ineffectually against the barred gate of his uncertainty.

  On the following morning Gordon was dated to speak at one of Eve Stuart’s mornings at the Savoy Plaza. His publisher was responsible for his appearance there. ‘You’d better meet Eve Stuart,’ he had told him. ‘She’s about the most important person in the literary racket.’

  ‘What am I to take that to mean?’

  ‘You’ll soon find out.’

  Two mornings later at twenty minutes past eight Gordon’s telephone bell had gone. It was Eve Stuart speaking. She had just heard that Mr Carruthers was in town. She would be so pleased if Mr Carruthers would come to her ‘Novel and Poem’ lunch that morning at the Biltmore. And no, she wouldn’t call on him to speak; she would make a few remarks about him. He would come? She was delighted. She would expect him, then, at a little before one. She would see that he sat next to somebody amusing.

  ‘Now what,’ he asked his publisher two hours later, ‘is all this about?’

  ‘That’s O.K.,’ he had been told. ‘You’ll quite enjoy yourself.’

  He did. It was something completely new to him. In London he had been to Lyceum dinners and Forum Club debates. He had addressed the Tomorrow Club and a literary society in Hull. His audiences had been in the main feminine. But they had been nothing like this. The ‘Novel and Poem’ lunch was, he was told, on the nineteen
th floor. The passage leading to it was thronged with smartly-dressed women in the late thirties, forties and early fifties. They carried cards in their hands. In the centre of a large room at the end of a passage was standing a tall, thin, grey-haired woman, with a large corsage of gardenias over her left shoulder.

  ‘You’re Mr Gordon Carruthers. I am so glad you’ve been able to come. Be sure not to run away afterwards. I want to have a nice long talk with you.’

  As Gordon moved into the congested crowd beyond, a movement started towards the lunch-room.

  It was an imposing spectacle. Gordon had been in his time to a fair number of public functions. But he was unfamiliar with the experience of seating himself at a high table and being stared up at by some three hundred smartly dressed and opulent-looking women.

  ‘Now tell me, what is all this about?’ he said to the man next him.

  The man waved an arm airily. ‘A racket,’ he said. ‘It’s just another racket. Everything’s a racket in New York.’

  ‘I’ve gathered that. What kind of racket?’

  ‘You’ll see.’

  He did, or rather in the course of the next few weeks he did.

  Eve Stuart might be said to have harnessed the desire of rich and leisured people to meet, see and listen to prominent personalities with whom the ordinary current of their lives would not bring them into contact, with the readiness of those prominent personalities to be entertained and to receive publicity. Her activities were in the main literary. They consisted of weekly literary mornings at the Savoy Plaza and monthly ‘Novel and Poem’ luncheons at the Biltmore. At the weekly mornings Miss Stuart would address between half-past eleven and half-past twelve a group of some hundred fashionable women. She would discuss the newest books and the newest writers. Her summers she spent in Europe making contacts, finding out what authors would be in America during the spring and autumn; obtaining information about those that were not. She usually arranged to have a couple of visiting writers at her mornings. She would introduce them and they would speak on some self-selected topic for five to seven minutes. The members of the literary mornings subscribed to a series of lectures throughout the season. After the literary mornings one of the members of the group would arrange a luncheon party to which the visiting authors were invited. The luncheons that took place at the Biltmore were also subscribed for in advance for the season. At each lunch there were five to seven speakers and some half a dozen others on the platform. Usually some subject was chosen for discussion and each speaker would be introduced by Eve Stuart with reference to that discussion. On the occasion of Gordon’s first visit the subject under discussion was ‘Buried Treasure.’ There were speeches by a historian on the pirates of Tortuga; there was a dissertation by a female novelist on the treasures that are buried in the heart. There was a flippant speech by a contributor to the New Yorker on surprises pleasant and unpleasant. Miss Stuart made short and gracious references to the silent guests at the high table. The standard of speaking was very high. ‘And this,’ thought Gordon as he looked down on the row of upturned faces, ‘is the America I’ve heard about.’ Or rather, he was to decide later, the nearest approach to the America he had read about.

  After the luncheon, as he had promised, he stayed behind and talked to Eve Stuart. He liked her instinctively. She was generous-hearted. She cared for books and was anxious to do her best for writers. Three days later, she told him, she would be having one of her literary mornings at the Savoy Plaza. Would it interest him to come?

  ‘Does that mean a speech?’ he asked her.

  Miss Stuart twinkled back at him.

  ‘It would be nice if you did,’ she said.

  Next morning he was rung up to say that Mrs Fitzmorgan was giving a luncheon party after the morning and would be delighted if he would come.

  It was the nearest approach to the feting of a visiting Englishman of which he had heard so much in England. But it was different from what he had been led to expect. It was not indiscriminate; though it was abundant. It was, on the contrary, intimate and friendly.

  For Miss Stuart herself he was not long in feeling a quite personal affection. She did well a job that was well worth doing. She gave good value. Her lunches and her mornings were well stage-managed. The right foils were chosen for the right speakers. She called the attention of genuine book-buyers to work whose qualities they might otherwise have overlooked. For the authors whose assistance she requisitioned, she arranged pleasant parties under pleasant auspices. At the end of two months in New York, Gordon Carruthers felt that as regards valuable publicity he had received more help from Eve Stuart than from anyone else in the city; he had received directly and indirectly through his association with her a great deal of entertainment. He had also come to feel for her a very real personal regard.

  It was at one of her Savoy Plaza mornings that Gordon was to speak on the day after his long patrolling of the hotel bedroom. Faith had promised to be there. ‘You’ve always said that you can never understand a word I say,’ he had told her laughingly. ‘I think you ought to hear me make a speech so that you’ll realize that I am quite audible on my feet.’

  He had planned to talk about the technique of fiction, using Turgenev as an illustration of his thesis. He had meant to speak of Turgenev’s tenderness; of how love had coloured his life and work; of how he had written best when he had written of love; of how all his work had been the swinging of a censer before the shrine of love. That was how he had meant to speak. But when he saw Faith come into the screened-off room at the Savoy Plaza, cool and exquisite and self-composed, in a grey-green coat and skirt that suggested an eighteenth-century riding-habit; with a small worsted cap, rather like those that monkeys at the side of barrel-organs used to wear, with a little blobule on the top, pulled back on her head, a feeling of irritation at her made him change his mind. He felt resentful against her beauty, against her assumption of ownership, her acceptance of her right to have masterful and gentle things done for her. He was not going to talk about love in front of her; to minister to her woman’s vanity by encouraging in her that woman’s faith that love was a man’s exclusive preoccupation as it was a woman’s. He was not going to describe as the world’s greatest story-teller the man who had defined, analysed, dissected love. He would show her that men had other things to occupy their thoughts, and so, though it was of the technique of story-telling that he spoke, he illustrated his contention not with a discussion but with the relating of a short story he had himself written a few days earlier.

  It was the story related in the first person of a novelist whom Gordon described himself as having met in boyhood. He was one of the elegant precious novelists whose books are described in the weekly reviews as ‘another example of Mr Jenkins’ delicate and fastidious talent.’

  He had known Gordon’s father since he was a boy, and usually when he began work on a new book he would come to discuss the plot with his old friend. The problem that he presented was invariably the same, ‘What is going to happen next?’ he would ask. The plot over which he would be perplexed would usually be a fairly simple one. A woman with a past, for instance, would be wondering whether the confession of that past would ruin her married happiness, and Gordon’s father would suggest some such solution as seemed in keeping with that kind of plot, that the wife should confess in the last chapter and for the husband to say ‘I’m glad, my dear, you’ve told me, but I’ve known it all along.’

  The novelist would shake his head. That kind of thing, he said, only happened in third-rate novels. There were clichés of situation as there were clichés of phrase. You could not have people ‘knowing things all along’ any more than you could have the eleventh hour appearances of characters who had been assumed dead, or eloping husbands restored to virtue by the news that they were to be fathers. ‘Life didn’t go that way,’ he said. ‘Life worked itself out in compromise,’ and so he worked his novels out in a compromise: a compromise so vague that it was not at all clear what actually had happen
ed, with the result that the public, who liked to know what had happened, remained, in spite of the notices in the weekly reviews, indifferent to his work.

  He did not worry particularly. He drew a very comfortable income from Russian securities. His friends respected him. His books lay on fashionable drawing-room tables; the best writers were not appreciated in their life time. In 1914 he was as happy as any man in London.

  Then the war came and with it an entire reversal of that happiness. In the first year of the war he was badly gassed and invalided into staff employment. Two years later the Russian revolution destroyed his entire fortune. The future loomed grey for him on the Sunday afternoon in the last year of the war when he had visited Gordon’s father. It was hard to see how he was going to support life after the war. His books had never sold. They were less likely to now than they had been then. His health was grievously impaired. He asked the same question about his life that earlier he had asked about his work: ‘What’s going to happen next?’

  It had seemed one of the occasions when life would work itself out into a compromise. Probably it would not be as bad as he feared. There would be his war pension. His friends would arrange something for him from the civil list. He would go down to the Italian riviera and write an occasional article for the high-brow quarterlies attacking the modern school of novelists. That was what Gordon’s father had expected.

  It was, however, from an expensive address that in the first year after the war he had written to Gordon’s father; and it was in a long, low shining car that he had arrived on the following Sunday at St John’s Wood Park.

  ‘Now what does this mean?’ Gordon’s father asked.

  There was a twinkle in the novelist’s eye as he replied. He had an uncle in Australia, he said, whom he had never seen. Of whom he had scarcely heard. The uncle was enormously proud to have a nephew who wrote novels. He showed the novels to his friends when they came in from neighbouring stations and had insisted on their taking them to bed. They had returned them the following morning with shaken heads.