“I suppose so,” Miss Beamish agreed, without much enthusiasm. “I must say, I like stocks and shares myself. But then, of course, I’m not in the least Bohemian.”
“Neither am I,” exclaimed Juliet, full of horror. And they talked about other things.
But, secretly, Juliet continued to think of the dark and sombre Monsieur Radow as an investment, and of Mr. Arthur Lawrence as something between a shrewd man of business and a philanthropist with artistic sensibilities. And she thought of her own immense fortune — for so she considered it — and of the bank balance, still untouched, left by her godfather.
On Sunday, Mr. Lawrence came to tea. Juliet, in a panic, had at the last moment invited Kate Beamish too, but Kate Beamish had replied frankly:
“No, thanks ever so, all the same, dear. Sunday afternoon is all I ever get of the week, if you know what I mean. It’s my one chance of a bit of a lay-down, and anyway I couldn’t very well leave the house, because the girl goes home.”
Juliet felt ashamed of herself for having forgotten all these things, once so well known to her.
She entertained Mr. Lawrence to tea alone.
He was as grave, as polite, and as attentive as ever, and he admired the furniture, including the piano. He asked Juliet if she would play, but did not press her in an embarrassing way when she said that she had rather not.
Then they talked again about Raoul Radow. Mr. Lawrence became graver than ever. It was, he said, an opportune moment — the recital at the Chelsea Hall had received good notices, one or two important people had been interested — but what, said Mr. Lawrence, was going to come of it?
He and Juliet gazed at one another in the solemn mutual conviction that little, or nothing, could be expected to come of it, as things were.
“It’s simply a question of a couple of thousand pounds. Nothing more. And it would repay itself — with interest — in less than three years from now. I am as certain of that,” said Mr. Lawrence, “as I am that I sit here.”
He fixed his grey-green eyes upon his hostess and, with no change of voice, observed quietly:
“I wonder you don’t go into it yourself, Miss Duquenois. You are far better fitted than most people to judge of the soundness of the proposition, and you are genuinely interested in the young man. As a musician, I mean.”
“Oh,” said Juliet. She was thoroughly frightened, and the way in which Mr. Lawrence continued to hold her gaze with his own made her feel like a rabbit being hypnotized by a snake.
“I’m going to be perfectly frank with you, and put all my cards on the table at once. I want to interest you in Radow. I believe in Radow, absolutely. I believe in his future. I believe,” said Mr. Lawrence, almost as if he were saying the Creed, “I believe in the commercial soundness of this proposition, just as much as I do in its artistic soundness. Otherwise, I shouldn’t suggest it to you.”
He paused, and as he was still looking at her Juliet felt compelled to murmur, “Oh, of course I know you wouldn’t” — for fear of hurting his feelings.
“Thank you for that expression of confidence. I can assure you that I appreciate it. But I should wish you, before we go any further” — (we were, then, going further sooner or later? Juliet noted in a dazed way)—” I should wish you to obtain testimony entirely independent of mine. I want you to meet one or two people who are absolutely in the know, and hear what they have to say about it. And, for the matter of that” — he. smiled gravely— “what they have to say about me! I don’t forget, Miss Duquenois, that you have only my own account of myself to go on, although you so charmingly agree to forget it. Will you lunch with me one day early next week, and meet one or two people who are deeply interested in Radow himself, and prepared to put up a certain amount of money to give him his chance? You, naturally, are committed to nothing whatever. That is perfectly clear. But you would at least hear what they have to say.”
“Who are they?” Juliet asked, feeling that she must say something.
“Mr. Steinmann, who, as you know, has been connected with the musical world for years, and Cyril Simons, the composer. They both know Radow, and have heard him play, and are going to finance his debut if it can possibly be managed. But — I want to be perfectly straightforward with you — we want another capitalist behind us. Of course, there are people one could get into touch with — but my own feeling — I dare say it’s rather absurd — has been all along, that I should like to let in someone who looks at the whole thing from the artistic point of view, rather than the commercial one. Of course, I needn’t point out to you that anyone who goes into this gets a foothold in the musical world once and for ever. That,” said Mr. Lawrence, “is neither here nor there.”
Suddenly, and at last, he removed his eyes from Juliet’s and looked down at the tips of his own fingers.
Then, again suddenly and most disconcertingly, he looked at her once more.
“Perhaps,” he said, “you will come and lunch on Tuesday — one-fifteen, Mallotin’s in the Strand. I am sorry to say that I have an appointment with a client which will prevent my coming to fetch you — but perhaps you’ll meet me at the entrance.”
There was really no “perhaps” about it, Juliet felt. Mr. Lawrence’s eyes, alone, compelled her.
She murmured gratitude, that implied assent, and very soon afterwards he went away.
Miss Duquenois determined that she would spend the evening in thinking — and so indeed she did, but it was thought of a wild and confused description.
She continued, in the same way, to think until the very moment when she found herself face to face with Mr. Lawrence, and Mr. Lawrence’s compelling and impenetrable gaze, in the small foyer of Mallotin’s in the Strand.
A week later, Miss Beamish came to visit Miss Duquenois in Wilton Crescent. She listened, while Juliet, speaking almost as much to herself as to her friend, relieved her mind of an accumulated torrent of self-justification.
“Kate — you remember my telling you — that young Roumanian — and Mr. Lawrence—”
“I know — the fiddler,” said Kate succinctly.
“The violinist — yes. Well, I — I’m going to finance his appearance in London. Of course, you may say that it’s a speculation, and that I oughtn’t to touch my capital — and in fact I had a — a most difficult time with the lawyers about it. They seemed to think that because a woman happens to be unmarried, and only just come into her money, she doesn’t know how to take care of herself. But as I explained to them, I look upon this as an investment. And in any case they can’t prevent my doing anything I like with the money.”
“Of course not. Though I can’t help hoping, if I may say so, dear, that you won’t go in for this sort of thing regularly. Musicians and that — when once one begins—” said Miss Beamish.
Juliet understood her perfectly. She had, indeed, been saying the same kind of thing to herself whenever she was not actually in the hypnotic presence of Mr. Lawrence.
“Is it actually done?” Kate Beamish asked, reminding Juliet unpleasantly of the dialogue in “Kenilworth” between the two murderers of Amy Robsart.
She nodded. The rapidity of the transaction, engineered by Mr. Lawrence with quiet efficiency, had indeed astonished herself.
“Well, dear, I hope the young man will be grateful,” said Kate, in a tone that was not hopeful in the least. “Of course, I’m not surprised, in a way. I saw what was in your mind, the other day — the first time you ever told me about him, after you’d been to that concert. But somehow, I thought — I’m sure I don’t know why — that you’d made up your mind against it.”
“So I had — in a way,” said Miss Duquenois.
“Well, then — whatever?”
“You mean,” said Miss Duquenois courageously, “whatever made me change my mind? Well, dear, I’ll tell you. Mind you, I don’t regret what I’ve done, in the very least, but I’d just like to explain.
“You see, Mr. Lawrence took me to that concert, as you know, and he was really ve
ry nice about it — taxis both ways, and, after all, he is a professional man, and has to live — and then we had that tea, at that expensive place.... And he didn’t force me into it in any way, Kate — or even try and persuade me. He was perfectly straightforward — really behaved like a gentleman. And, of course, I’d heard Monsieur Radow for myself, and I knew he was good. Well, I really did think about it, and I couldn’t make up my mind exactly, and then Mr. Lawrence told me that he wanted me to meet the other people who were interested in Monsieur Radow — those two men I told you about, Mr. Steinmann and Sir Cyril Simons. He wanted me to meet them at lunch. Of course — that’s where I may have been weak — I didn’t altogether realize.”
“What?” said Miss Beamish, as Juliet paused. “I didn’t altogether realize,” said Miss Duquenois again. “You see — it was a regular luncheon-party. I was the only lady there. Mr. Lawrence was host, of course. When I think,” said Juliet rather wildly, “what it must have cost him — have you ever been to this place?”
“Never,” declared Miss Beamish with emphasis. “The most extraordinary decorations. Modern. (Men in tights and balloons and things, painted on the wall),” said Juliet in parenthesis. “And he’d reserved a table, and I could tell, by the waiters, that he was ordering the most expensive things there were. Cocktails and oysters, and goodness knows.... He asked what Pd like, and it was all in French — naturally — and I simply couldn’t. I just asked him to choose. But, Kate, I simply couldn’t enjoy it — though it was marvellous — for thinking of the awful expense.”
“The name is really what they make on, in that French cooking,” commented Miss Beamish. “Nothing to the dishes, mostly, except cream and perhaps a tin of mushrooms — it’s just in the name, and the way it’s done. There’s more nourishment, I dare say, in a decent mutton-chop and a tomato.”
“Perhaps,” said Miss Duquenois — but she did not say it with the same conviction as had the manageress of the Bloomsbury boarding-house.
“Anyway, dear,” she concluded mournfully, “that’s how it was. White wine — and the sweet was pears in ice-cream, done up with a hot chocolate sauce — and then coffee — and the gentlemen had liqueur brandy, but, of course, I didn’t — and they were all talking about this Radow all the time, and what a pity it would be if he didn’t get his chance — but they didn’t urge me the least bit — not one of them — and Mr. Lawrence kept on telling me that I wasn’t committed to anything at all. But when I thought of what he’d have to pay for that lunch — and goodness knows what the tips alone must be, at a place like that — And you must remember that he’d taken me to that concert, and tea at that place, Rumpelmayer’s, and taxis both ways—”
They looked at one another, and Miss Beamish pursed up her lips and nodded.
“I’m glad I did it,” said Miss Duquenois firmly. “You see, I know what things cost, through having been poor so long myself, and I should simply have felt that I’d eaten that lunch on false pretences. Tea is one thing, even at that Rumpelmayer place — but such a frightfully expensive lunch — you see what I mean?”
“Yes,” said Miss Beamish thoughtfully. “Yes. An expensive lunch.”
SQUIRREL IN A CAGE
SHE glanced up and down the platform, as she alighted from the train, pretending to herself, and to the ever-present recorder of her days and nights, that she was not actuated by a faint, shadowy hope of seeing Berringer.
He had hardly ever come to meet her train, as a matter of fact, even in the old days of a year ago. But once, at the very beginning, he had been there. She hadn’t told him what train she was coming up by, and he had waited at Waterloo Station from eleven o’clock until half-past three, so that they might have the additional half-hour together.
Sacha Michaelson had never travelled anywhere by train, since then, without remembering that.
Berringer would never be there any more. For the past three months she’d realized that he was tiring of it. Satiated, because she’d given him all she had to give, and had let him know, with reckless prodigality, the extent of her love.
“She had all the capacity for passion of the woman who has southern blood in her veins. An infinite hunger for love looked out of her dark, smouldering gaze.”
“Taxi! To No. 103, Frinton Street, please. It’s just off Marylebone Road.”
“She pulled open the door and stepped into the taxi, the heavy fur border of her velvet coat swinging against her slim legs as she did so. More than one man glanced after the straight slender figure.”
The very last time, probably, that she’d ever go to the Frinton Street room. After all, they hadn’t met there so very many times. At first, he’d simply called for her at her club, and they’d gone to lunch or dine at remote Soho restaurants.
On the third of May — would there ever come a time when she’d not remember that date? — she’d been in town for a week, at the three-roomed fiat of a cousin who was abroad. And it was after that that Berringer had taken the studio in Frinton Street.
There was a strip of looking-glass in the taxi, and Sacha Michaelson mechanically adjusted her hair beneath her low scarlet hat and passed her tiny powder-puff across her face.
Did it really matter whether she looked pretty or not, to-day? Impossible to believe that it didn’t matter, that Berringer wouldn’t see. And yet it was in order to end it all, to make a clean break, that she was meeting him to-day.
Sacha remembered her last letter, that she had written in imagination so many times before she had written it on paper.
“Ian, dear — let’s be honest, and not spoil things. We made a compact once, that if either of us grew tired, it should finish — then and there. Not drag on, with expostulations, and scenes — unthinkable between us. Ian, if the time has come now, won’t you be honest with me? I shan’t make it difficult for you. I’m coming to London on Wednesday and I want to see you, even if it’s only to say good-bye. — SACHA.”
Although it was weeks since he had ceased to answer her letters by return of post, she had the reply to that one immediately, asking her to come to Frinton Street at four o’clock. The real answer lay in the only other sentence that the note contained. “As you say, we swore to be honest with one another. But it’s very hard, sometimes, and I’m hating myself now.”
She knew it was the end, of course.
No. What he meant was that he couldn’t stand the treachery of it — although it was he who had passionately urged, in the beginning, that she owed no loyalty to a husband whom she had never loved. He had come to feel that he could not face Charlie any more....
What he meant was that their love could find its expression in daily letters, in the constant spiritual awareness of one another — that the subterfuges and lies of the Frinton Street rendezvous were a degradation of the most beautiful thing that life could ever hold for either. Long ago, she had said that to him. Now, he saw it like that, too....
What he meant was that they were imprudent and reckless, risking the discovery that would be fatal to their happiness. He had suddenly become afraid — for her, and for the safety of their wonderful, secret life.
What was it he meant?
That he had ceased to love her.
The sword-like stab of that utter certainty went through her again. Ian Berringer was tired of her.
It had been real, too, for him as for her, whilst it lasted.
For him, now, it had ceased.
Assertion, and negation, intuition, and denial, going round and round, to the senseless clamour of the outer world, like the painted horses of a merry-go-round to the mechanical music accompanying its dizzy gyrations.
There was the same faint sense of physical sickness that a too-prolonged gazing at the merry-go-round would have produced.
The grinding wheels of the taxi jarred in stopping as the merry-go-round might have jarred.
“She wrenched open the door, and stepped out of the taxi, the heavy fur border of her velvet coat swinging... her slim, ungloved hand found the
coins in her purse... she paid the driver....”
She had a key, and she let herself into the narrow, secretive-looking house, and went up the steep stairs.
She and Berringer had agreed long ago that it was wiser for him to await her inside the studio. Her heart was beating so quickly that she stopped for an instant outside the shut door on the second floor.
Always, the near approach of that moment when she would see him again had made her heart throb wildly, and always she had paused, in an ineffectual attempt to regain control of her racing breath, behind the door.
In the early days he had torn open the door and his hands had drawn her over the threshold. Later, he had waited inside the room, his face turned to the door. And once — the last time she had been there — he had been writing at the table in the window and had sprung up at the sight of her, with vague, startled eyes, and the exclamation: “I never heard you arrive!”
As usual, her desperate attempt to visualize him clearly before they actually met, failed. Every mental and emotional faculty was absorbed in a passion of anticipation.
“Her hand was shaking as she opened the door and sharply closed it behind her.”
Berringer faced her as she entered.
He was standing by the window, his hands thrust into his pockets, and he was shifting the weight of his body from his heels to the balls of his feet, with a very characteristic movement.
The sense of his virility, his height, his masculine strength, rushed over her again. The light, startling grey of his eyes in his swarthy face — the heavy line of his dark, irregular brows, the jut of his lower lip — all came as so many vivid impressions thrust upon her recognition.
“Sacha.”
“Ian.”
“Her proud, delicate air of aloofness made it impossible for him to touch her.”
She moved blindly towards him, suffering incredibly more because he had hesitated.
He looked at her for an instant — at her mouth, not into her eyes — and then kissed her. She could only remember, with a vividness that appalled her, their other kisses, prolonged until pain and ecstasy had mingled.
Collected Works of E M Delafield Page 544