Nor Many Waters

by Alec Waugh

  Even now, however, he would not believe that this was final. It was another example, he told himself, of her thoughtless wilfulness; that, and no more than that. He pictured the scene when she had read his letter, pictured her worried and alarmed at the prospect of deserting the friends and habits among which she had grown up, pictured her searching desperately for some manner of escape, and in her desperation choosing divorce as the handiest and simplest. “I must somehow get out of this,” he imagined her thinking. “Anything but Australia.” And in such a mood the idea of divorce would have occurred naturally to her as the easiest form of escape from the situation. It was not so much that she wished to be rid of him as of a combination of circumstances that were driving her towards conditions she felt she would detest. He had received the legal document a fortnight after he had written. And it was natural that he should assume that the instigation of divorce proceedings was the direct result of that letter; and assuming that, it was natural also for him to assume that by the withdrawal of that letter he would be able to restore their relations at any rate to their previous position of at least neutrality.

  “I’d better go round to these lawyer chaps at once and get things put straight,” he thought.

  §

  James Merrick whistled when a card bearing the name of Herbert Eagar was brought up to him.

  “Well,” he said, “I wonder,” and tapped the pasteboard thoughtfully against his teeth. “Technically, I suppose,” he thought, “I ought not to see him.” But the instinct of curiosity was very strong. He wanted to know what manner of man Marian had married. “I expect,” was his reflection, “that he’ll be something pretty rough-hewn and stubborn.”

  In a way, of course, he was right. Herbert Eagar was not the kind of man that you could think of in terms of teacups and stiff-backed sofas; you pictured him lounging back in vast leather chairs, with a whisky and soda at his side. The club, not the drawing-room, was his setting. His clothes were well enough. If you were to see them suspended on hangers in a wardrobe you would think, “There’s a good suit, by Jove!” but you would not be bothered to look twice at them on Eagar’s shoulders. He had neither the defects nor the qualities of the lounge lizard. And his features were like his clothes. “All the same, I can understand a girl falling for him,” was Merrick’s comment. There was an agreeable straightforwardness about his manner, a straightforwardness that might possibly be changed into truculence, and his handshake was firm, without being more than firm. He was a man that one could go to the point with straight.

  “I won’t ask you,” said Merrick, “what you’ve come about. We both know that. I’m surprised, though, that you should have—if you’re going to fight it, that’s to say. And are you?”

  Eagar tilted back his chair aggressively.

  “I don’t think there’s going to be any question of fighting or not fighting it.”

  He spoke confidently in a manner that half pleased and half irritated Merrick.

  “No?”

  “I don’t think, so. I don’t know what Marian has told you or what she hasn’t told you, but there’s no need for this Australian business to worry her. She needn’t go there if she doesn’t want to. I just put it out as a suggestion, and if it doesn’t appeal to her, well there it is; I’ll just start thinking round for some other scheme. Tell her that, Mr. Merrick, will you?”

  “I’ll tell her.”

  “Because… oh well, I don’t know how to put it quite. I don’t know if you’re a married man. No? Well, even so, you’re not a kid; you know how a chap feels when it comes to settling down. With a girl it’s different. Marian was only a baby when I married her, isn’t really much more than a baby now, and of course life’s a pretty large adventure to her. It’s all in front of her. While for me, well, I’d got to the stage when a man begins to think of settling down, and when he’s got to that age, marriage is rather more than just an adventure to him. He backs quite heavily on it. He puts a good deal of himself into it. It would be a pity if all that went.”

  Merrick nodded. He could see the situation pretty clearly: could see how this ill-suited couple had met with such different views, asking such different things of marriage. To Eagar it had been a prelude to retirement, a withdrawing into stability; a making sure. To Marian it had been an opening doorway, through which she was to advance upon the countries of keener living. And he could see now how Marian had come to be attracted by such a man.

  He pictured that odd girlhood of hers: that drifting from one Riviera playground to another, that constant touch with a life of leisure and pleasure-seeking; all the time there had been the sounds of revelry and riot round her. While a father who, whatever he might be himself, had been resolved to shield his daughter, had kept that life closely barred from her, letting her see but never mingle with that sophisticated, disenchanted pleasure-seeking world. A father who had done his best but had not realized that there was no surer way of disturbing his daughter’s girlhood. Showers of gold would keep fluttering into her Danaeed tower: it was an upbringing that explained everything in Marian that had puzzled him. And it was only natural that the moment she was free, with an unfettered income of her own, she would have flung off the ties that had bound her, only natural that having done so she should stand in her inexperience dazed and bewildered on the threshold of adult life.

  And at such a time it would be to such stolid qualities as Eagar possessed that she would turn for safety. She would need to be reassured, set on her feet, established so that she could meet this new world on its own terms. That Eagar had done for her. And of course when he had done it, her need for him had passed. He had fulfilled his purpose in her life. “We use each other as stepping-stones,” thought Merrick. She had used Eagar as probably years earlier Eagar had used some older woman, not consciously, but with the instinctive sense of self-direction that is at the back of growth. A brutal business, possibly, but irremediable. One went on using and being used until, he supposed, one met with the ideal companion beside whom one could walk in step. And that Eagar had not been for Marian. It was a pity, but that was all there was to it. And he felt genuinely sorry for this really pretty decent fellow who had come to him in the hope of repairing what was, in the conditions of its own nature, irreparable.

  “One doesn’t,” Eagar was saying, “want to let all that go without making some sort of a fight to save it.”

  “Naturally, but…”

  “But what?”

  “Am I the right person to discuss it with?”

  Eagar hesitated; not out of embarrassment; he was apparently making up his mind, and he looked very directly into Merrick’s face.

  “Frankly,” he said at last, “I think you are. I didn’t know if you would be when I came round. I don’t know really what I was expecting when I came, don’t properly know why I came, in fact. But now I see you, I’m pretty sure that you could make things straight between us if you wanted.”

  Merrick smiled. “That’s an odd feeling,” he said, “to have about a man who’s no more than your wife’s legal adviser in a divorce suit. What am I to her, after all, but that? She comes to me as a lawyer, to ask for a divorce. She sets her evidence in front of me. She asks me if it is sufficient. I tell her that it is.” And Merrick spoke those six words very slowly, with his eyes fixed very searchingly on Eagar’s face, so searchingly that he noticed the slight jerking of an eyelid, the pressure of thin lips against white teeth.

  “I tell her that it is sufficient,” he repeated. “She asks me to act on it. I have proceeded to. I am no more than her agent in the case.”

  Eagar fidgeted impatiently.

  “Yes, yes, but you’re a man,” he said. “The only man, probably, that she’s discussed the case with. There must be occasions when she says to you, ‘What do you think about this?’ Times when you’ve got a chance of putting things to her from a man’s point of view; of explaining things. She’s such a baby, really.”

  He paused, then leant forward across the table. �
�Look here, Merrick,” he said, and his voice was surprisingly and movingly earnest. “You’re not married, but you’re not a kid. You know something about women. You won’t need my telling you that you can get into that sort of temper with a woman when it’s impossible to discuss things calmly. That’s the state Marian and I have got into. I know if I begin to talk to her I shall start quarrelling, and we shall be worse off than we were before. What we really need is a go-between, a diplomat, someone who can explain us to each other; who’ll smooth things out for us. And you’re the person to do it. Marian’s a wild thing. I don’t suppose she asked anyone’s advice before she came to you. I’d heard nothing about it till this morning. You’re the one person who could do anything practical towards bringing us together. She’s got no brothers or father, after all.”

  It was horse sense. And it was spoken with an earnestness that appealed to Merrick. Under ordinary conditions he would have felt nothing but approval for this husband who was anxious to save his marriage. As a solicitor he approved of it. As a solicitor he was concerned with the protection of property. Marriage was the cement of property. It was the object of every good solicitor to preserve a marriage wherever possible. At the same time as a man he could not help being slightly irritated. He could not think of Eagar except as Marian’s husband. And there were things about him that seemed inadequate in Marian’s huband. The overbearingly-masculine attitude that was symbolized by the sudden dropping of the ‘Mr.,’ the insensitiveness to her woman’s attitude in the assumption that infidelity and a blow were incidents that could be brushed aside.

  “After all,” he said a little testily, “you have given her very complete grounds for divorcing you.” And he felt a thrill of satisfaction as he noted again the flicker of the eyelid and the pressure of the mouth upon the teeth.

  Eagar made no show, however, of irritation. “Precisely,” he answered, “and that is just where you can help me. You’re a man. You can explain to her as I can’t, that that sort of thing is different for a man, that it doesn’t really mean anything to him. It didn’t to me, anyhow. That must be clear surely; otherwise I’ld have been wanting to run away with the woman; otherwise I’ld have been only too glad of an opportunity like this.”

  There it was again, the old insensitiveness: the attitude of the Victorian husband that the wise wife must shut her eyes, that things were different for men, that as long as a man preserved appearances he was doing his duty by his wife. And in a way it was the kind of attitude that Merrick would have been ready to approve. Things were different for men. It was idle to pretend that they were not. Plenty of men whom he looked on as quite admirable husbands were periodically unfaithful. One didn’t judge them. Who was he to judge any one, after all? But at this precise moment the attitude annoyed him. He did not feel that it should be Eagar’s attitude. Eagar was Marian’s husband. And if one was married to Marian, one should not feel like that.

  All the same Eagar was pleading very earnestly.

  “Surely you could do something about it?” he was saying. “Tell her not to worry about this Australian business. It was just a suggestion, no more than that. I’ll call it off. Never mention it again. I did think it a good idea. Do still. But if she doesn’t like it, well, tell her not to worry about it. And about the rest, do explain to her, Merrick. She’ld listen to you where she wouldn’t listen to me. You can explain to her; show her that that sort of thing doesn’t count, not really. She’s probably never had the matter put to her in the right way. She’s so young. And it would be such a shame to break up a marriage like ours thoughtlessly. We’ve not given it a fair run yet. And, well,” he added, after a pause, “I’m pretty fond of her, you know.”

  It was that last phrase that decided Merrick. Eagar might not be the right husband for Marian. He belonged to a different generation, to a different way of seeing things. He would never appreciate Marian fully. There were sides in her that he would never be able to develop. Anything that they might share together must be in the nature of a compromise. At the same time, they had tied their lives up together. Eagar was a pretty decent fellow, and in his way he was pretty fond of her. He was not the man she had deserved, perhaps, but there he was. She had taken him. And the poor fellow had the right to be given the best chance he could.

  “Very well,” said Merrick. “I’ll try. I’ll do my best.”

  §

  There was a gay laugh from the other end of the line when Merrick rang up Marian a few hours later.

  “And what,” she asked, “is the staid solicitor offering? That we should watch some cricket?”

  For it was a fortnight since they had made their pact, and more than once during that fortnight Merrick had rung up to suggest that they should dine together or go to a concert or theatre. And there had been happy, intimate, confidential talks; hours that made the other hours of the day seem shadowy. It was not that there was anything particularly exciting about those talks. There was no thrill of anticipation; no quiver of suspense. There was instead a feeling of very delightful sure-ness, a consciousness of being oneself. “Which one seldom is,” Merrick had thought as he had watched the door shut behind her the last time that he had seen her home. All his life he felt he had been posing, arranging himself in a certain light, acting before an audience, playing cards, working for effects. But now with Marian there was no need for that. He had not to keep that check upon himself, had not to be thinking all the time: “Am I playing my cards correctly? Am I producing the correct effect? The effect that will bring me what I want.” There was no need for that. He was not out for anything. He was not playing any game. He could lay his defences down. The two evenings they had spent together had a quality of happiness that he had never known before; a happiness to which they could admit freely, since there was between them none of the strategy of courtship.

  “I’ve been so happy,” he said. “We must have more evenings like this.”

  And she smiled back frankly and uncoquettishly. “Let’s,” she had replied.

  It was only natural that when he rang up she should assume that it was to make some invitation or other. And it was with more than a twinge of regret that Merrick told her that it was something far less frivolous than cricket he had to discuss with her. With more than a twinge of regret he realized how very possible it was that as a result of this talk with her he might never be ringing her up that way again. If divorce proceedings were to be withdrawn and she were to return to her husband, as likely as not he would never meet her more than casually again.

  “I’m afraid,” he said, “I’ve got to discuss something really serious with you.”

  “As serious as all that?”

  “As serious as all that.”

  “Then in that case I’d better put on a hat and come along.”

  As he sat waiting for her to come, Merrick wondered how best he could put before her Eagar’s arguments. They would require a tactful marshalling, he suspected, and he began to arrange mentally the stages by which he should present her husband’s defence, so that the strong points in it should be properly prepared and set forward in the most advantageous light. The moment she came into the room, however, he wondered how he could have embarked on such a deliberation. In connection with her he could never think of tact and strategy. You couldn’t with that kind of woman. You laid your cards face upwards on the table. You said straight out:

  “Your husband’s been to see me. He wants you to go back.”

  And she looked you very frankly in the face. And you knew that you could have no secrets from her. And “Hadn’t you better tell me all about it?” she said simply.

  In point of fact there wasn’t a great deal to tell.

  “He’s a pretty decent sort of fellow,” Merrick said.

  “I’d told you that.”

  “I know. But I hadn’t realized quite how decent. He’s genuinely cut up; he’s genuinely fond of you.” “In his way he is.”

  “And he’s quite sincere in his wanting to begin again. I
f you don’t want to go to Australia, there’s not the slightest reason why you should. He just thought that in a new country you stood more chance of beginning a new life.”

  “A new life! But, my dear,” she said, “how can one begin a new life with the same person? We should be repeating the old conditions somewhere else.”

  “Were they as bad as all that, then?”

  “You should know.”

  She looked at him with a sideways glance, half-mocking, half-affectionate. She was giving him, he knew, the opening for her husband’s defence.

  “Perhaps,” he said, “you’re making rather too much out of something that meant very little to your husband.”

  “Little!”

  “It can’t have meant much, can it? If it had, he’ld have wanted to run away with her, he’ld have been only too glad of the opportunity of a divorce so that he could be with her. It was just a casual attraction, a physical attraction.”

  “And you think that little; something one can make too much of?”

  She spoke slowly with her eyes fixed searchingly upon his face, so that he felt that he was being put on trust. And he wished that the question had been set differently, had not been made so directly personal. He was reluctant to make her husband’s defence an expression of his own opinion. All the same he had promised the fellow that he would do his best.

  “Aren’t you perhaps,” he suggested, “refusing to look at it from his point of view? A man looks at these things differently. An affair like that doesn’t mean anything to him. He was probably fearfully ashamed of it afterwards. It was a momentary weakness. You shouldn’t judge him too harshly.”

  “I don’t. I’m not blaming him. I’m merely saying that after a thing like that I don’t want to go on living with him. I’d put up with a lot one way and another. And I’ld have gone on putting up with it; as long as I could believe I really mattered to him. But how can I, after that? It was so squalid. If he’d really loved her, it would have been different. I’ld have preferred that.”