by Alec Waugh
And turning away she walked over to the mantelpiece, and lighting a match held it to the cigarette that a few minutes earlier she had tapped with such slow, rhythmic movements against her thumb.
There was no need to look at him. It was a stratagem that had never failed.
Between them on the table lay the pile of frocks and boxes. Once, and for a moment Guy Fortescue looked at it, then, with a quick step he was beside the bending figure at the mantelpiece, with a wild flood of words upon his lips.
“Forgive me, I’ve been a brute,” he cried. “I wasn’t myself that moment. I was jealous and irritable and impatient. I care so much for you. I So want to be your friend; your one friend, the friend that you’ll turn to first when you’re in trouble. And I can’t help feeling jealous sometimes of all those other men—those men of whom I know nothing, with whom you spend all the time that you’re not with me. You can’t blame me if I’m jealous sometimes.”
Slowly her head was shaken.
“You needn’t have been,” she said. “They mean little enough to me; they’re just things that I pass empty hours with. They come and go. The Ralph Bowers and all the rest. And all the time I have to be on my guard with them, watching them. That’s why I was so proud, so happy in our friendship. I could be myself with you; I hadn’t to be watching. I was mistaken, but—oh, well, I was happy in my mistake. I’ve that at least to be grateful for.”
“You weren’t mistaken,” in a cry, abrupt and pleading, he had answered her. There was nothing left now of his jealousy and anger, nothing but shame and the fear of losing her. “Forget that moment, forget it and forgive. I wasn’t myself then. Let’s go back to what we were; let’s forget it ever happened.”
A slightly pathetic figure, he stood beside her, this ageing, but still not unhandsome man; pathetic in his fear and his abasement; pathetic and, in a way, undignified. And it was to spare his dignity, perhaps, that the glint of mockery returned to light tauntingly the golden amber of Gwen Lawrence’s eyes.
“As we were before, as though nothing had happened,” she said. “Then there mustn’t be any repeat performance, Guy.”
But she wouldn’t listen to his protestation. A slim white hand was lifted before his face to stay him.
“No, no,” she said. “You’ve kept me waiting quite long enough for lunch already.”
Six hours later, as she sat polishing her nails before the mirror, Gwen Lawrence described the details of the encounter for May Julian’s benefit.
“By appealing to man’s baser instincts,” she concluded, “you can feather your nest pretty comfortably for ten weeks, but you’ve got to appeal to what he calls his nobler nature if you want to keep him as I’m proposing to keep Guy Fortescue, for twice as many months.”
Stretched back at full length on the high-heaped cushioned ottoman, her hands clasped behind her head, May Julian watched through half-closed eyes the smoke of her cigarette rise in a slim wavering line towards the ceiling.
“And it ended quite happily?” she asked.
“It ended, my dear, in that,” and Gwen Lawrence lifted from her dressing-table a gold and enamel snuffbox. “Catch,” she said and tossed it over. “Rather divine, darling, don’t you think?”
May Julian turned it over between her fingers.
“You’re an expensive ornament,” was her comment on it.
Gwen Lawrence shrugged her shoulders.
“He thinks I’m worth it, and perhaps I am worth it,” she added. “Love is with that sort of man, nine parts of it selfishness. It’s a drug to cheat him into a favourable opinion of himself. It would flatter his vanity, of course, if I were to fall in love with him. But not for so very long. It would only mean that I had come down to his level. It flatters him far more if I can contrive to place myself upon a pedestal and pull him up to me; which is what I have done with Guy. Can’t you picture him,” she laughed, “indulging this evening in an orgy of self-esteem. ‘I am not as other men,’ I can hear him saying. ‘I am capable of a pure and disinterested friendship for a young and unprotected woman. Where other men love only with their bodies, I can love with my intelligence, my mind, my soul.’” She smiled ironically. “Can’t you see how he’ll preen himself, my dear? And now that I’ve put him on that pedestal he won’t dare come down from it. He won’t dare to confess that he’s only like other men after all. Oh, yes,” she laughed, “men are easy enough to handle when you’ve learnt the way. Or, rather,” she added, “when you’ve ceased to care. In the meantime, though, you can tell me what I’m to wear to-night.”
And rising from her chair, she flung open the doors of her wardrobe and stood back to survey the long, many-coloured row.
“I know them all so well,” she said, “that’s the worst of going out every night. I rather wish Guy had given me a dress instead of that enamel box. I suppose it’ll have to be that blue-black marocain again, or the silver tissue. What do you think, darling?”
“Depends where you’re going,” was May Julian’s answer.
“Don’t know. I’m being called for.”
“Who by?”
“A crowd. This frock, though, what do you think about it?”
May Julian was for once, however, not over interested in the details of her friend’s arrayal.
“That lawyer man,” she asked, “have you decided anything? Are you going to let the divorce go through?”
Gwen Lawrence shrugged her shoulders.
“I’ve worn this dress,” she said, “at least six times since Christmas.”
From the latch of the wardrobe door hung suspended from its hanger, a shimmering sheath of silver tissue. “Six or it may be seven,” she murmured, “still, with an orchid or two upon the shoulder . . .?” Critically, dubiously, she surveyed its worn perfections, while the flow of May Julian’s commentaries continued.
“In a way, of course, it would be rather jolly,” she was saying, “to be free. If, that is to say, there were inducements for you to marry again. Life must be so fearfully amusing as it is. So many new things to do, so many new places to see. These dances and parties and theatres, and with one husband only to be taken out by, it would all have to stop, I suppose. Of course, if there were someone fabulously rich. . . .”
Her eyes were bright and her lips were parted and there was a glow in her pale face, as phrase by phrase she built up for herself the concept of a world so different from her own.
“Don’t you think so, Gwen?”
Gwen Lawrence had not shifted from her position before the wardrobe.
“It’ll have,” she said, “I’m afraid, to be the marocain.”
There was a clatter of feet upon the stairs and a series of rings upon the bell.
“Ah, the crowd,” she said. “So soon. Let them in, May, there’s a dear.”
But already May Julian was half-way across the room.
From the hall came a babble of voices.
“Not ready? Why, of course she isn’t,” one of the men was saying. “Whoever expected her to be? We’re only five minutes late ourselves. Come along, children, and let’s see if there’re any cocktails for us. We’re dining, Gwen,” he shouted, “at the Clarion. Archie’s show. I tried to beat him up to Rumpelstein’s but he says he’s signed too many bills already there.”
“And as my brother’s just settled his affair at the Clarion . . .”
“Certainly, Archie, certainly: the Clarion it shall be. In the meantime will someone tell me who’s giving the dance we’re going to to-night?”
“Haven’t the foggiest,” the answer came. “Molly Cranston told me to keep this evening open, and to bring some folk and get taken on with her crowd somewhere. That’s all I know about it.”
“Which is about all,” the first speaker murmured, “one ever does know nowadays about a dance. The only difference I can see between dancing at private houses and hotels, is that at one you pay and the other you don’t.”
Gwen Lawrence had taken no part in the conversation, although she had
heard through the open doorway the greater part of it. Dress after dress had been lifted from the wardrobe to be eyed distrustfully and discarded.
“It’s hopeless,” she said at last. “I’ll have to have some more dresses.”
From the sitting-room came the rattle of a cocktail shaker.
“That’s right,” someone was advising. “Now over, two to the right, a circular motion now. That’s it. Old Eli at the Sandwich taught me; ’a shook a good bronx, did Eli.”
Brightly, noisily, the stream of chatter flowed. Silent before the mirror Gwen Lawrence smoothed’ back the soft creamed surface of her cheeks; passed slowly along her mouth a painted forefinger till her lips were the magenta petals of some tropical and velvet flower; drew carefully the short black pencil beneath her eyes.
To be free! Freedom. That thing so many hungered for. It was hers for the asking now.
How she would have welcomed this opportunity five years ago. How she would have welcomed it in those tear-stained days that had followed Eric’s desertion of her. Marriage had seemed then the only door back to the life she was accustomed to: the life of ease and leisure, ornament and display: not a substantial life perhaps, but the life anyhow she had been born to. And you had no right to blame a plant because it could grow only in certain soils.
Her friends and relations had advocated self-righteously a life of vigorous economy. She must sell her furniture and give up her flat. She must learn typewriting and shorthand. They had friends in the city who would find some opening for her. But even while they spoke, she had realized the impossibility of such a life for her, had realized it in the recurrence of that one regret, “I’m not free even to marry again.” There was one way only after all in which a woman such as herself could create about her the setting she required.
“There’s only one way for my sort of woman,” she had told herself. “And that is through men. If not in marriage then in other ways.”
And because she had known that men will spend money only upon what is costly, she had not taken a smaller but a larger flat; she had not bought fewer but more dresses, she had not gone out less but more; had never hesitated to accept invitations that would involve her in expenses; had cut heavily during those first weeks of self-establishment into her capital. And in every respect justifiably. Within three months she had worked herself into a position where it would be unnecessary for her ever to pay for another meal herself, and scarcely a single dress. And in the savage hours when she felt bitterest against men, there was assuagement in the thought of how little she had given in return; in all those months hardly a dozen kisses; and those not to the men who had given most to her.
To what purpose could she put her freedom now? To marry again? There was something to be said for it. If she were fearfully in love of course, or if, as May Julian had said, there were to come into her life somebody fabulously rich, or if, which May Julian did not realize, someone were to be frightfully disinterestedly in love with her. For that, she knew, was the weak point in her woman’s armour. If she were to be loved by a man, not for the man’s sake but for her own.
But she was unlikely to fall in love again; sufficiently, at any rate, to wish to yield her liberty. There were more millionaires in fiction than in life, and who out of all the men she knew was there to care for her unselfishly? Sometimes she might feel bitter against Guy Fortescue, against his vanity and obtuseness, against his merchant’s attitude that in love as in commerce, value must be given for goods received, but he was, she knew, no worse really than the rest: than the so many others for whom women existed as entertainments, to be bought like stalls in a theatre. And when occasionally you met a boy like Graham Moreton, who seemed momentarily a little different, how soon he managed to prove himself like all the rest.
To be free again. Yes, if there was anyone to be free for. But if there weren’t, and if the fact of being free were to prejudice one’s scope. For there was that possibility. She remembered what Guy had said of the poor man’s gallantries: of the advantages of not being taken at one’s word. Might not that theory of his act conversely? Might it not be that men who were in danger of being taken at their word only made love to those women who were not in a position to take them at it? And what woman was less in a position to take them at it than the grass widow? Was the secret of her own power over men the knowledge that she was not in a position to make trial of their fervour? Would men, if there were not a husband in the background of her life, be in quite such a hurry to protest their readiness to serve her for a lifetime? Would they not rather be on their guard. Would they not say, “Here’s a woman who’s looking for a husband,” and would they not in consequence shirk that first invitation that is the prelude to so many others? Might not a husband be rather a good property piece stuck away there in the background? Of all the men she knew was there one for whose sake she could wish her freedom; and if there was not, what likelihood was there of her ever meeting a man for whom she would? While if her freedom was likely to hold men in check . . .
Oh no, she was better tied, and there was amusement enough to be found in the passing days.
From the inner room a voice was raised in querulous complaint. “When is Gwen going to be ready? I’ve finished my second cocktail and I’m abominably thirsty.”
Chapter IX
The Rewards of Beauty
The last nail had been hammered into the pale primrose wallpaper. The last vase set in place on the rosewood cabinet. The last shred of the last packing-case swept from the thick pile of fawn-grey carpet. With a little sigh of happiness Mildred Atkinson lifted her hands behind her head and turned slowly round to gaze with wondering eyes on the flat that had become hers.
It was like a chapter out of a fairy tale. Three weeks ago, morning after morning she had been hurrying at nine o’clock down the chill stone steps of the immense bleak house in Camberwell, where with seventy other girls she received in return for three-quarters of her weekly wage a strip of partitioned passage that housed a bed, a breakfast of weak coffee, and leanless bacon, and at half-past six a high tea of marmalade and ham and eggs. Three weeks ago, morning after morning, between half-past nine and eleven she had dusted and cleaned and polished; staining her nails and hardening her hands; three weeks ago through day after lagging day in that heated air under the strain of artificial lights, with bright eyes and double-edged retort she had cajoled the tips that were both an offering and an invitation. All day long, as she laughed and chattered between the alcoved tables, she was conscious of hot glances focusing upon her their restless appetites. And then afterwards, night after night, limp and a little dazed with eyes that had grown weak in twilight, she had pressed and fought her way by tube and bus to the long bare tables where seventy girls silent and exhausted ate with the resentful concentration of a hunger that is unseemingly appeased, the margarined bread, the salted ham, the cool and congealing eggs.
Only three weeks ago. It had happened, all of it, so quickly that she could scarcely reconstruct the intermediary steps by which the Mildred Atkinson who had scrubbed floors and shivered in cold bedrooms had become the Mildred Atkinson with a banking account, credit at Reville, and a flat in Mount Street. It was like a chapter out of a fairy tale; the noise of the cocktail party, the quiet of the Ritz, the twilit kisses of that long afternoon. And then the rush to Camber-well, the hurried packing, the transportation of her few possessions to the hotel suite that had seemed then so opulent and now so tawdry; the interviews with house agents and decorators: that marvellous morning when mannequin after mannequin had passed before her, and through a mist she had heard Humphrey saying: “Don’t you think that rather suits you, dear? We’d better have that, too, I think!” The three hectic days when carpets were going down and curtains going up, and it had seemed impossible that this anthology of noise and dust could ever become a home.
In three weeks, all of it! And in an hour’s time Humphrey would be calling for her; they were to dine at Ciro’s, the glass door outside which she had li
ngered enviously so often would swing open; like a mantle the kindly and scented heat would be cast over her. As she walked beside Humphrey into the dining-rooms with the gold and beaded flounces of her frock rustling against her knees, she would be conscious from the cushioned seats about the room of the hot glances of appraising men: no longer though to revolt her and weary her; no longer was she subject to their need of her; no longer a thing to have florins tossed at. They were a ladder she had made use of and could kick away.
In an hour’s time he would be calling for her. It would be the first time that he had seen the flat since the carpets had gone down. In the last four days she had refused to let him come. “No,” she had said, “no. You’ve seen it looking like a rabbit warren. You shan’t see it again till it’s finished.” And as she turned slowly round, letting her eyes pass from one object to another: the pale primrose wallpaper, the faint lilac ceiling, the thick fawn-grey carpet, the round walnut table, with its low bowl of mauve-grey tulips, the gilt-framed mezzotints, the deep cushioned chairs with their silver-shot damask coverings, she smiled with the quiet pride of the artist who is conscious of success.
And the bedroom: she would be able, she felt, to lie entranced for hours watching the brave splash of colour that her dressing-table with its three-sided mirror and its array of pots and powder puffs and bottles made against the dull gold of the wallpaper. With a little laugh, she clapped her hands together. How marvellously happy she was going to be.
• • • • • • • •
With a series of little splashes the hard Houbigant crystals were scattered upon the warm and steaming water. For a moment they lay, some clear and transparent, others yellow and opaque, on the white enamel of the bath. Then as above them the ruffled surface became smooth, slowly the water clouded with their essence. Luxuriatingly Mildred Atkinson drew into her lungs the scent of Chypre.