Mr. American

by George MacDonald Fraser

  'Of course I don't! But I never guessed that you ... that you ... well, took it to heart like this. I didn't know, Peggy. That day, when you first talked about Arthur resigning, you said Irish politics made you sick, or something like that; you talked as if he was the firebrand and that you ... well, that you didn't care - '

  'I was out to deceive and swindle, remember,' she said, and before the blank hostility he felt suddenly baffled and sick. First, the full realisation that she had gone about, methodically and coldly, to cajole money out of him, and now the discovery, when she was confronted with it, that any remorse she might feel was certainly not for him. Indeed, she was blaming him for being the witness of her dishonesty, and blaming him with a bitterness that he could not understand.

  'If only you'd told me.' In his bewilderment he tried to be fair, to decide what his reaction would have been. 'Yes, I'd have tried to talk you out of it, I guess, tried to. .. to convince you that buying guns for Irishmen to kill each other doesn't help anybody - '

  'The money was not for the guns - they'd been purchased long ago, for considerably more than ten thousand pounds. It was to charter the ship - there was no money left.'

  'Ship or guns, it's all the same! All right, I'd have tried to stall you, to talk you out of it, I suppose ... but if you'd really wanted it, if it meant that much to you ... if you think I wouldn't have given it you - then you're wrong, Peggy. I'd have given it you, just as I'd give you anything I've got.'

  He was obviously sincere, and a little of the hardness left her face. 'I've told you - I didn't know that.'

  'Couldn't you have trusted me? Taken a chance? Dammit, you must have known you couldn't get away with it, that I'd find out - '

  'We did get away with it. That was why I couldn't take the risk. We had to get away with it. You were bound to find out, in the end, I knew that - but by then it would be done, and whatever you said would be too late.'

  Again the matter-of-fact certainty of it left him helpless. This was a new Peggy, and yet a Peggy he had always half-known was there, underneath the beauty and the boundless high spirits - a calm, determined, and in the long run, quite ruthless young woman who knew what she wanted and would get it, whatever the cost. If she counted it as cost - but she must; he had seen the tears in her eyes a moment ago.

  'You knew I'd find out - didn't you stop to think what would happen then? What it might do to us - to our marriage? What you've done - whatever name you give it, swindling, or deceiving, or ... I don't know - can you do that to someone you love?'

  He was watching her for some sign of softening, for anything except this impersonal composure. She looked at him for a moment, and then away.

  'I don't know, Mark. What has it done - to you? I know it has left you ten thousand pounds poorer - '

  'You know that's got nothing to do with it! I just don't understand you. You've done this, and I can even see why you did it - if I'd known it was so important . . . but I never had the chance to know. You didn't tell me, because you say you couldn't be sure I'd agree. All right, I can appreciate that - although why you had to regard me as some kind of Victorian ogre instead of as a husband who's devoted to you ... don't you understand, Peggy, I love you? You could ask me for anything.' He shook his head. 'But you didn't know. So it's done - and naturally I was shocked by it. But what I don't understand is. ..' He searched her face, looking for any flicker of softness or affection.. is the way you are now. I don't know what it is - whether you're ashamed, or resentful at the way it's come out, or whether you just don't care.' She said nothing, so he went on: 'I guess you thought this ... cause, this ship, was more important to you than I. Was it? I guess it must have been.'

  She turned to look at him again, and shook her head. 'I didn't look at it in that way. I'm sorry if it has shocked you, or caused you distress, and if you find my attitude now ... strange, then I'm sorry for that as well. What else should I say, Mark? That I regret what I've done? That I wouldn't do it again? But I would, you see. At least I'm honest that far. Or am I supposed to ask to be forgiven, like a good little girl?' The hard look was about her mouth again, the little sneering curl that he hated to see. 'I'm sorry, but that isn't my way.'

  He drew himself up a little, considering her. 'What is your way, then? Just to forget about it - all right. Just to regard me as someone who's around to be ... tolerated? And used when you want to use him? But not to be trusted?'

  She looked at him for a long moment, very intently, without expression, and he found himself realising, with a sudden pang, how beautiful she was, and how great the gulf was between them. At last she spoke, quietly and deliberately:

  'What is your own way, Mark? Just to forget about it? All right. Just to regard me as someone who's around to be ... tolerated. And used - when you want to use her. But not to be trusted.'

  They were facing each other in the silence that followed when there was a creak at the French windows, and Sir Charles's voice was heard:

  'What about that fifty-up at billiards, young woman? Or are you two going to stand out there spooning all night? You must be freezing.'

  'Coming, Daddy.' Peggy turned away and walked quickly towards the shaft of light from the window. 'Have you got the balls set up? I expect twenty start, you know - didn't I mention it? Oh, come, if it's a penny a point. ..'

  Mr Franklin stood by the conservatory, looking at his new wrist-watch, remembering the smiling girl who had given it to him, and thinking of the other girl he had encountered tonight. He was numbed; it had been like stepping on a stair that wasn't there. The money, Arthur's resignation, the arms ship, all seemed vague details in a puzzle that didn't matter; all that mattered was that pale, lovely face in the dusk, with the auburn halo of hair, looking at him with the appraising impersonality it might have bestowed on a total stranger, showing no contrition, no guilt, above all, no feeling. If she had raged, or burst into tears, or begged his forgiveness, or argued to justify herself - he could have understood all those, and dealt with them, and he knew it would have ended with him comforting her, and assuring her that the money didn't matter, and all the rest of it. For what he had said was true - he would have done anything for her. And she could have played on that, if she had wanted to.

  But she didn't want to. The way she had looked, and spoken, had been clinical, almost. Had all the rest, all the past, been just a sham? Certainly their marriage had not been all he had wished, but he had been content to be in love with her, and had supposed her content, too; they had been happy enough, after their fashion. He had known he was not very necessary - or not often necessary - to her ordinary life, but he had never doubted that she needed him, as he needed her, in the deepest sense, which was based on love. But if tonight had told him anything, it was that he had been mistaken. Peggy did not need him, and probably never had.

  Except, apparently, in one way. The thought was born of pain, and frustration, and anger, and no doubt a generous measure of self-pity. But if the emotions were unworthy, that was no reason to disregard the thought itself. He had been extremely necessary where money was concerned. Peggy herself had been enabled to live in high style which her father could never have provided, to have everything she wanted, to cut a splendid figure in society; her brother had been maintained in a fashionable regiment; her father's estate had been rescued from bankruptcy - the great Clayton revival had been financed entirely by him. Two of the family - he could acquit Sir Charles - had even been able to take up gun-running on the money he had sweated out of the Tonopah mud. Jesus, the English landed gentry! No wonder they'd taken over a quarter of the globe. The words ran through his mind even while he told himself that he was being despicable ... and yet the thought was there, the question he had thrust resolutely aside when the matter of Arthur's allowance had arisen, when Peggy had stated her wish to live in Belgravia, when Sir Charles had agreed to the metamorphosis of Oxton estate. It was an ugly question, and all the uglier because he knew the answer beyond a shadow of doubt.

  If the America
n who had so ridiculously got a fox trapped in his lunch-basket, had subsequently proved to be of moderate means, would he have been quite so welcome at Oxton Hall? Would the daughter of the house have taken such an interest in him? Would the father have encouraged his attentions, and congratulated him so warmly as a son-in-law? Would Peggy have been so concerned to see that his room was comfortable that night of the blizzard?

  They were not new questions, but they had not troubled him before, because he was a realist. Old Man Clayton had seen him coming - very well. So had Peggy - very well. Arthur had been damned glad he'd come very well. You can only get it where it is. That had been true for him, too - he had got a beautiful wife, a comfortable acceptance in a new land, a high place in its society (which, by the way, had been opened to him, by someone rather more exalted than the Claytons, to wit, Edward Rex et Imperator). Still, she had been a beautiful, and he supposed, loving wife to the good. But, in those terms, she hadn't. kept the bargain; she had demonstrated as much tonight.

  Unless that was the bargain, in her terms - to be a beautiful decoration, companion, concubine, hostess, mistress of his household. Was that what she had been saying when she had repeated his own words: 'What is your own way, Mark?' Perhaps he had expected too much, in expecting more. Perhaps, from the standpoint of her youth, she gave all that she thought necessary. And considered herself entitled to plunder him deceitfully at the same time.

  Well, he was the last person on God's earth who was entitled to object to that. He had plundered in his time. On the other hand, he'd never promised to love, honour, and obey the Union Pacific Railroad or the Farmer's Bank. He had never smiled lovingly at them, or breathed his affection in their ear, or lain in their arms under a tropic moon, or moaned with passion in their embrace, or brought them gold watches from Switzerland, or straightened their necktie, or smiled with pride beside them in Buckingham Palace, or walked hand in hand with them slowly through the fallen wet leaves at Castle Lancing.

  Oh, God, Peggy, he thought. It was no use telling himself he was unjust - that he, too, was a deceiver who had married a girl with never a word to her that he had been an outlaw, a criminal, even a killer (not a murderer; Deaf Charley had reached first). To conceal all that had been a kindness. He could have forgiven her if she had robbed him, swindled him, cleaned out his pockets while he slept - if only she had done it in the determination that he would never know. But she had deceived him in the certain knowledge that it would be discovered; that had not troubled her. If she had hesitated, it had been for the thought of her own derogation, not for what it might do to their marriage. To that she was indifferent.

  He walked back to the French windows, and into a billiard room. Whatever he felt, he could keep his face as well as anyone, even a Clayton. Sir Charles turned to smile at him and nod ruefully towards the table, where Peggy was placing her ball in the 'D' and appraising the red and white.

  'She needs five more,' said Sir Charles. 'I blush to admit that I am eighteen behind, and that she is playing without a start.'

  They watched as she settled her white, lined up the cue, and played a slow cannon, nudging the red up the cushion. Then she came round the table, stretched across from the middle pocket, and with extreme care cut the red deftly into the top bag. Sir Charles laughed and exclaimed, Peggy bowed, and then looked across the table at Mr Franklin and said: 'Care for a game, Mark?'

  Her eyes were serene, her voice was cheerfully casual, there was even a little smile on her lips.

  'You'll get little joy out of it, I can tell you,' said Sir Charles to Mr Franklin, counting out his coppers. 'One and eleven, you little shark.' He handed the money to his daughter, who slipped it into her evening bag.

  'Well, Mark?' She took up her cue again. 'Shall we play? We might as well.'

  He looked across the table at her thoughtfuly, while Sir Charles, suspecting nothing, chuckled and settled himself to watch. Mr Franklin turned and took a cue from the rack.

  'Why not?' he said.

  20

  On the first of May London was charmed by the sight of omnibuses lit by electricity for the first time; one or two people complained that it was too bright and garish, but for the most part pedestrians were happy to turn and stare as the jewelled monsters rumbled past, their interiors bathed in the cold, white light, a brilliant reminder that this was the scientific twentieth century in which technical wonders were becoming commonplace. A few traditionalists might shake their heads and wonder where all this material progress was leading, and whether the good old values and institutions were not in danger of being lost in the dazzling glare of the new age; but even they were cheered when His Majesty the King, attending a notoriously plebeian occasion, the Football Association Challenge Cup Final between Burnley and Liverpool at Crystal Palace, was greeted with thunderous acclamation by the commonalty. More - after His Majesty had presented the Cup to the victorious Burnley team, their captain had called for three cheers for the sovereign, the teams had given them with enthusiasm, and the whole vast mob had then sung 'God Save the King'. Lighted buses, jazz music, and disgusting pictures at the Royal Academy nothwithstanding, England was England still.

  And while those who had read the prophetic novels of Mr Wells might wonder sometimes if the march of technology - symbolised by that masterpiece of marine engineering, the great floating palace, the Aquitania, which was about to make her maiden voyage - might not prove to have a less happy side to it, they were in a minority. They did not include Mr Franklin, whose literary nourishment that month was taken from the pages of the new romantic seller, The Gates of Doom, by Mr Sabatini. Mr Franklin would not have considered himself a romantic, but like most people encountering the deceptively austere Anglo-Italian's work for the first time, he found himself helplessly ensnared by the story, and with nothing for it but to read to the end. It was about a young Jacobite agent who gambled at cards for the right to woo a great heiress - he intended to apply her vast fortune in the Jacobite interest, but of course he finished up falling in love with the girl, and there were mistaken identities and escapes and the hero survived a Tyburn hanging, and Mr Franklin finished it at a sitting and missed his dinner in consequence.

  It was, he supposed, an unlikely story in retrospect, and yet he had accepted it unhesitatingly as he read - a tribute to the gifts of the writer. Anyway, what was unlikely? No one knew better than he did that truth had a brutal habit of beggaring fiction - if ever he doubted that, there were patched bullet-holes in the walls at Lancing Manor to remind him. What struck him, as he closed the book, was how simple and soluble had seemed the romantic problems of the principles in the story - with his own marital difficulties ever present even as he read, it seemed to him that Captain Harry Gaynor had had a relatively easy passage in winning the heart of the heroine, despite misunderstandings, unhappy appearances, Bow Street Runners, hangmen, moneylenders, and treacherous rivals. They were trifles compared with the unimagined, intangible barriers that could come between a man and a woman in reality - or so it seemed to him as he slipped the book back on to its shelf in his study and contemplated his position for the hundredth time.

  Peggy had gone down to Cornwall, to spend a week yachting with friends, leaving him to try to make sense of the days that had elapsed since their confrontation in the garden. He had determined, as they played billiards that evening, to let things be; eventually it must right itself, she must say something, matters could not rest forever as they had been left. It had been a wary, artificial, anxious time for him, waiting to see ... what? Some change in her, some sign that she wanted to be reconciled, some crumbling of that outward composure that would give him the opportunity to reach her again. But nothing happened. Peggy seemed determined to behave as though nothing had happened, as though no crisis in the their relationship had been reached, and in the face of that implacable serenity he felt himself helpless. She was civil, pleasant, cheerful even, as attentive as she had ever been to him; she went about her social round, filled her engagements, ch
atted about them to him, greeted him amiably at meals, kissed him goodbye when she went out, and pecked his cheek when she came home; to all outward appearance things were exactly as they had been before that miserable night.

  He told himself that she couldn't keep up the pretence for long, but as the days passed he began to realise that he was wrong; that she simply did not care. She was capable of carrying on as though nothing was changed, because for her nothing, in any deep sense, was changed. He only realised it after, in a desperate attempt to break the barrier down, he had made love to her - and discovered that for her there was no barrier to break. She had responded, to his amazement and joy, warmly at first and then with passion, but when it was over, and he had tried to talk about the things that must be talked about, she had simply looked at him impassively and said: 'No. Don't talk about that, Mark. Leave things as they are,' and he saw with hopeless clarity that there was no point in trying to touch her, since there was nothing in her to be touched, and nothing to be done except meet her on her own terms.

  So the outward appearance was maintained, with an inward despair on his part, but with apparent serenity on hers. And curiously, it was not difficult to keep up the masquerade, probably because for her it was no masquerade at all; for the sake of surface harmony, Mr Franklin must be the actor. The alternative would have been to sulk in silence, which was not only alien to his nature, but would not, he knew, have produced the slightest change in her attitude. As things were, he was at least not constantly reminded of her indifference.