She rang off. It was characteristic of her that she should be able to wait so many unnecessary hours to know what so immensely concerned her. To Bateman there was an admirable fortitude in her restraint.
At dinner, at which beside himself and Isabel no one was present but her father and mother, he watched her guide the conversation into the channels of an urbane small-talk, and it occurred to him that in just such a manner would a marquise under the shadow of the guillotine toy with the affairs of a day that would know no morrow. Her delicate features, the aristocratic shortness of her upper lip, and her wealth of fair hair suggested the marquise again, and it must have been obvious, even if it were not notorious, that in her veins flowed the best blood in Chicago. The dining-room was a fitting frame to her fragile beauty, for Isabel had caused the house, a replica of a palace on the Grand Canal at Venice, to be furnished by an English expert in the style of Louis XV; and the graceful decoration linked with the name of that amorous monarch enhanced her loveliness and at the same time acquired from it a more profound significance. For Isabel’s mind was richly stored, and her conversation, however light, was never flippant. She spoke now of the Musicale to which she and her mother had been in the afternoon, of the lectures which an English poet was giving at the Auditorium, of the political situation, and of the Old Master which her father had recently bought for fifty thousand dollars in New York. It comforted Bateman to hear her. He felt that he was once more in the civilised world, at the centre of culture and distinction; and certain voices, troubling and yet against his will refusing to still their clamour, were at last silent in his heart.
“Gee, but it’s good to be back in Chicago,” he said.
At last dinner was over, and when they went out of the dining-room Isabel said to her mother:
“I’m going to take Bateman along to my den. We have various things to talk about.”
“Very well, my dear,” said Mrs Longstaffe. “You’ll find your father and me in the Madame du Barry room when you’re through.”
Isabel led the young man upstairs and showed him into the room of which he had so many charming memories. Though he knew it so well he could not repress the exclamation of delight which it always wrung from him. She looked round with a smile.
“I think it’s a success,” she said. “The main thing is that it’s right. There’s not even an ashtray that isn’t of the period.”
“I suppose that’s what makes it so wonderful. Like all you do it’s so superlatively right.”
They sat down in front of a log fire and Isabel looked at him with calm grave eyes.
“Now what have you to say to me?” she asked.
“I hardly know how to begin.”
“Is Edward Barnard coming back?”
“No.”
There was a long silence before Bateman spoke again, and with each of them it was filled with many thoughts. It was a difficult story he had to tell, for there were things in it which were so offensive to her sensitive ears that he could not bear to tell them, and yet in justice to her, no less than in justice to himself, he must tell her the whole truth.
It had all begun long ago when he and Edward Barnard, still at college, had met Isabel Longstaffe at the tea-party given to introduce her to society. They had both known her when she was a child and they long-legged boys, but for two years she had been in Europe to finish her education and it was with a surprised delight that they renewed acquaintance with the lovely girl who returned. Both of them fell desperately in love with her, but Bateman saw quickly that she had eyes only for Edward, and, devoted to his friend, he resigned himself to the role of confidant. He passed bitter moments, but he could not deny that Edward was worthy of his good fortune, and, anxious that nothing should impair the friendship he so greatly valued, he took care never by a hint to disclose his own feelings. In six months the young couple were engaged. But they were very young and Isabel’s father decided that they should not marry at least till Edward graduated. They had to wait a year. Bateman remembered the winter at the end of which Isabel and Edward were to be married, a winter of dances and theatre-parties and of informal gaieties at which he, the constant third, was always present. He loved her no less because she would shortly be his friend’s wife; her smile, a gay word she flung him, the confidence of her affection, never ceased to delight him; and he congratulated himself, somewhat complacently, because he did not envy them their happiness. Then an accident happened. A great bank failed, there was a panic on the exchange, and Edward Barnard’s father found himself a ruined man. He came home one night, told his wife that he was penniless, and after dinner, going into his study, shot himself.
A week later, Edward Barnard, with a tired, white face, went to Isabel and asked her to release him. Her only answer was to throw her arms round his neck and burst into tears.
“Don’t make it harder for me, sweet,” he said.
“Do you think I can let you go now? I love you.”
“How can I ask you to marry me? The whole thing’s hopeless. Your father would never let you. I haven’t a cent.”
“What do I care? I love you.”
He told her his plans. He had to earn money at once, and George Braunschmidt, an old friend of his family, had offered to take him into his own business. He was a South Sea merchant, and he had agencies in many of the islands of the Pacific. He had suggested that Edward should go to Tahiti for a year or two, where under the best of his managers he could learn the details of that varied trade, and at the end of that time he promised the young man a position in Chicago. It was a wonderful opportunity, and when he had finished his explanations Isabel was once more all smiles.
“You foolish boy, why have you been trying to make me miserable?”
His face lit up at her words and his eyes flashed.
“Isabel, you don’t mean to say you’ll wait for me?”
“Don’t you think you’re worth it?” she smiled.
“Ah, don’t laugh at me now. I beseech you to be serious. It may be for two years.”
“Have no fear. I love you, Edward. When you come back I will marry you.”
Edward’s employer was a man who did not like delay and he had told him that if he took the post he offered he must sail that day week from San Francisco. Edward spent his last evening with Isabel. It was after dinner that Mr Longstaffe, saying he wanted a word with Edward, took him into the smoking-room. Mr Longstaffe had accepted good-naturedly the arrangement which his daughter had told him of and Edward could not imagine what mysterious communication he had now to make. He was not a little perplexed to see that his host was embarrassed. He faltered. He talked of trivial things. At last he blurted it out.
“I guess you’ve heard of Arnold Jackson,” he said, looking at Edward with a frown.
Edward hesitated. His natural truthfulness obliged him to admit a knowledge he would gladly have been able to deny.
“Yes, I have. But it’s a long time ago. I guess I didn’t pay very much attention.”
“There are not many people in Chicago who haven’t heard of Arnold Jackson,” said Mr Longstaffe bitterly, “and if there are they’ll have no difficulty in finding someone who’ll be glad to tell them. Did you know he was Mrs Longstaffe’s brother?”
“Yes, I knew that.”
“Of course we’ve had no communication with him for many years. He left the country as soon as he was able to, and I guess the country wasn’t sorry to see the last of him. We understand he lives in Tahiti. My advice to you is to give him a wide berth, but if you do hear anything about him Mrs Longstaffe and I would be very glad if you’d let us know.”
“Sure.”
“That was all I wanted to say to you. Now I daresay you’d like to join the ladies.”
There are few families that have not among their members one whom, if their neighbours permitted, they would willingly forget, and they are fortunate when the lapse of a generation or two has invested his vagaries with a romantic glamour. But when he is actually alive, if
his peculiarities are not of the kind that can be condoned by the phrase, “he is nobody’s enemy but his own,” a safe one when the culprit has no worse to answer for than alcoholism or wandering affections, the only possible course is silence. And it was this which the Longstaffes had adopted towards Arnold Jackson. They never talked of him. They would not even pass through the street in which he had lived. Too kind to make his wife and children suffer for his misdeeds, they had supported them for years, but on the understanding that they should live in Europe. They did everything they could to blot out all recollection of Arnold Jackson and yet were conscious that the story was as fresh in the public mind as when first the scandal burst upon a gaping world. Arnold Jackson was as black a sheep as any family could suffer from. A wealthy banker, prominent in his church, a philanthropist, a man respected by all, not only for his connections (in his veins ran the blue blood of Chicago), but also for his upright character, he was arrested one day on a charge of fraud; and the dishonesty which the trial brought to light was not of the sort which could be explained by a sudden temptation; it was deliberate and systematic. Arnold Jackson was a rogue. When he was sent to the penitentiary for seven years there were few who did not think he had escaped lightly.
When at the end of this last evening the lovers separated it was with many protestations of devotion. Isabel, all tears, was consoled a little by her certainty of Edward’s passionate love. It was a strange feeling that she had. It made her wretched to part from him and yet she was happy because he adored her.
This was more than two years ago.
He had written to her by every mail since then, twenty-four letters in all, for the mail went but once a month, and his letters had been all that a lover’s letters should be. They were intimate and charming, humorous sometimes, especially of late, and tender. At first they suggested that he was homesick, they were full of his desire to get back to Chicago and Isabel; and, a little anxiously, she wrote begging him to persevere. She was afraid that he might throw up his opportunity and come racing back. She did not want her lover to lack endurance and she quoted to him the lines:
“I could not love thee, dear, so much, Loved I not honour more.”
But presently he seemed to settle down and it made Isabel very happy to observe his growing enthusiasm to introduce American methods into that forgotten corner of the world. But she knew him, and at the end of the year, which was the shortest time he could possibly stay in Tahiti, she expected to have to use all her influence to dissuade him from coming home. It was much better that he should learn the business thoroughly, and if they had been able to wait a year there seemed no reason why they should not wait another. She talked it over with Bateman Hunter, always the most generous of friends (during those first few days after Edward went she did not know what she would have done without him), and they decided that Edward’s future must stand before everything. It was with relief that she found as the time passed that he made no suggestion of returning.
“He’s splendid, isn’t he?” she exclaimed to Bateman.
“He’s white, through and through.”
“Reading between the lines of his letter I know he hates it over there, but he’s sticking it out because….”
She blushed a little and Bateman, with the grave smile which was so attractive in him, finished the sentence for her.
“Because he loves you.”
“It makes me feel so humble,” she said.
“You’re wonderful, Isabel, you’re perfectly wonderful.”
But the second year passed and every month Isabel continued to receive a letter from Edward, and presently it began to seem a little strange that he did not speak of coming back. He wrote as though he were settled definitely in Tahiti, and what was more, comfortably settled. She was surprised. Then she read his letters again, all of them, several times; and now, reading between the lines indeed, she was puzzled to notice a change which had escaped her. The later letters were as tender and as delightful as the first, but the tone was different. She was vaguely suspicious of their humour, she had the instinctive mistrust of her sex for that unaccountable quality, and she discerned in them now a flippancy which perplexed her. She was not quite certain that the Edward who wrote to her now was the same Edward that she had known. One afternoon, the day after a mail had arrived from Tahiti, when she was driving with Bateman he said to her:
“Did Edward tell you when he was sailing?”
“No, he didn’t mention it. I thought he might have said something to you about it.”
“Not a word.”
“You know what Edward is,” she laughed in reply, “he has no sense of time. If it occurs to you next time you write you might ask him when he’s thinking of coming.”
Her manner was so unconcerned that only Bateman’s acute sensitiveness could have discerned in her request a very urgent desire. He laughed lightly.
“Yes. I’ll ask him. I can’t imagine what he’s thinking about.”
A few days later, meeting him again, she noticed that something troubled him. They had been much together since Edward left Chicago; they were both devoted to him and each in his desire to talk of the absent one found a willing listener; the consequence was that Isabel knew every expression of Bateman’s face, and his denials now were useless against her keen instinct. Something told her that his harassed look had to do with Edward and she did not rest till she had made him confess.
“The fact is,” he said at last, “I heard in a round-about way that Edward was no longer working for Braunschmidt and Co., and yesterday I took the opportunity to ask Mr Braunschmidt himself.”
“Well?”
“Edward left his employment with them nearly a year ago.”
“How strange he should have said nothing about it!”
Bateman hesitated, but he had gone so far now that he was obliged to tell the rest. It made him feel dreadfully embarrassed.
“He was fired.”
“In heaven’s name what for?”
“It appears they warned him once or twice, and at last they told him to get out. They say he was lazy and incompetent.”
“Edward?”
They were silent for a while, and then he saw that Isabel was crying. Instinctively he seized her hand.
“Oh, my dear, don’t, don’t,” he said. “I can’t bear to see it.”
She was so unstrung that she let her hand rest in his. He tried to console her.
“It’s incomprehensible, isn’t it? It’s so unlike Edward. I can’t help feeling there must be some mistake.”
She did not say anything for a while, and when she spoke it was hesitatingly.
“Has it struck you that there was anything queer in his letters lately?” she asked, looking away, her eyes all bright with tears.
He did not quite know how to answer.
“I have noticed a change in them,” he admitted. “He seems to have lost that high seriousness which I admired so much in him. One would almost think that the things that matter—well, don’t matter.”
Isabel did not reply. She was vaguely uneasy.
“Perhaps in his answer to your letter he’ll say when he’s coming home. All we can do is to wait for that.”
Another letter came from Edward for each of them, and still he made no mention of his return; but when he wrote he could not have received Bateman’s enquiry. The next mail would bring them an answer to that. The next mail came, and Bateman brought Isabel the letter he had just received; but the first glance of his face was enough to tell her that he was disconcerted. She read it through carefully and then, with slightly tightened lips, read it again.
“It’s a very strange letter,” she said. “I don’t quite understand it.”
“One might almost think that he was joshing me,” said Bateman, flushing.
“It reads like that, but it must be unintentional. That’s so unlike Edward.”
“He says nothing about coming back.”
“If I weren’t so confident of his love I s
hould think…. I hardly know what I should think.”
It was then that Bateman had broached the scheme which during the afternoon had formed itself in his brain. The firm, founded by his father, in which he was now a partner, a firm which manufactured all manner of motor vehicles, was about to establish agencies in Honolulu, Sidney, and Wellington; and Bateman proposed that himself should go instead of the manager who had been suggested. He could return by Tahiti; in fact, travelling from Wellington, it was inevitable to do so; and he could see Edward.
“There’s some mystery and I’m going to clear it up. That’s the only way to do it.”
“Oh, Bateman, how can you be so good and kind?” she exclaimed.
“You know there’s nothing in the world I want more than your happiness, Isabel.”
She looked at him and she gave him her hands.
“You’re wonderful, Bateman. I didn’t know there was anyone in the world like you. How can I ever thank you?”
“I don’t want your thanks. I only want to be allowed to help you.”
She dropped her eyes and flushed a little. She was so used to him that she had forgotten how handsome he was. He was as tall as Edward and as well made, but he was dark and pale of face, while Edward was ruddy. Of course she knew he loved her. It touched her. She felt very tenderly towards him.
It was from this journey that Bateman Hunter was now returned.
The business part of it took him somewhat longer than he expected and he had much time to think of his two friends. He had come to the conclusion that it could be nothing serious that prevented Edward from coming home, a pride, perhaps, which made him determined to make good before he claimed the bride he adored; but it was a pride that must be reasoned with. Isabel was unhappy. Edward must come back to Chicago with him and marry her at once. A position could be found for him in the works of the Hunter Motor Traction and Automobile Company. Bateman, with a bleeding heart, exulted at the prospect of giving happiness to the two persons he loved best in the world at the cost of his own. He would never marry. He would be godfather to the children of Edward and Isabel, and many years later when they were both dead he would tell Isabel’s daughter how long, long ago he had loved her mother. Bateman’s eyes were veiled with tears when he pictured this scene to himself.
The Great Exotic Novels and Short Stories of Somerset Maugham Page 17
