by Alec Waugh
“What’s going to happen now?” he asked.
From the depths of the armchair she shrugged her shoulders.
“How should I know? I’ve hardly begun to think of it yet,” she said. “I could get a job as a secretary, perhaps. If it comes to the worst, I could always, I imagine, get taken on by the people who’ll be buying up my business. A clerk in my own office,” and the little laugh from the tented shadow of the black cloche hat was proudly, courageously, ironical.
“As long as I’m here,” said Geoffrey quickly, “that shan’t happen.”
“And how, Geoffrey, are you proposing to prevent it?”
“As long as I’ve a penny in the world.”
“So I’m to be dependent on you rather than on a company or an employer?”
“Isn’t that what you’d prefer; to be dependent on somebody who cared for you?”
“Which is what every kept woman has had said to her at one time or another. I’m not going to be bought.”
“Sybyl!”
“Well! what else is it?”
“When two people love each other.”
“When two people live together without marriage, and when the woman is supported by the man, that woman is a kept woman, and I am not going to be that.”
“But, surely,” he expostulated, “there’s all the difference in the world——”
She would not listen to him.
“Oh, be quiet, Geoffrey, be quiet. Can’t you leave me alone? Can’t you see how worried by it all I am?” Her eyes were blazing, her cheeks were flushed, the words were half shrieked at him. “It’s not fair,” she said. “It isn’t fair!” and turning on to her elbow she burst suddenly and hysterically into tears.
In an instant Geoffrey was by her side. His arm was about her shoulders, his lips against her ear.
“My dear, my darling,” he was murmuring. “Don’t misjudge me. Please, I beg you, don’t misjudge me. Forgive me for having offended you. You know, surely, you must know, that I could respect no one as I respect—as I have respected you. You are everything to me; and surely, when two people mean that to one another, it is their privilege to help each other. I couldn’t face the thought of you accepting such menial, such unworthy duties. I beg, I implore you not to. I’m not insulting you by making this offer to you. I am begging you out of your generosity to accept it. I’m asking you to trust me, to trust me not to allow this to make the least difference to us. Won’t you, Sybyl, won’t you?”
Slowly the violence of her sobs diminished; slowly subsided to an even breathing. Christopher smiled quietly to himself. He knew so well how it was all to end, if not on this day, then on the other day. He would implore her and entreat. She would retire and resist: resist until finally the acceptance of his offer should have come to be regarded by them both as an added and supreme example of her loyalty and generosity and trust; till, by accepting the unconditional transference to her account of some seven hundred pounds a year, she would seem to have conferred on him the greatest favour that any woman could grant to any man.
There would be no need for her to ask. That had been from the beginning the secret of her hold on him. She had never asked for anything. She had granted favours, not accepted them. She had never asked him to give up golf for her, never asked him to take her to the prize fight; never asked him to spend his money; never asked him to take a flat for her. She had allowed him generously to do things for her, since it pleased him to. Whereas most women dig a pit for a man to fall into, Sybyl Marchant had let Geoffrey dig his own pit for himself. And into that pit he had flung, one by one, the interests and enthusiasms with which her charms had had in the beginning to compete. His friends, his games, his social life, his money, his independence. One by one she had taken the threads of his life between her fingers.
“Please, please, forgive me,” he was saying.
The small black-hatted head was lifted from his shoulder. For a moment her eyes looked piercingly and questioningly into his: then twice quickly her head was nodded.
“Very well, Geoffrey,” she said, “I forgive you. We won’t talk about it any more. Now, please let me get up and rearrange my face.” And, jumping up from the chair, she walked across the room towards the mirror, took from her bag a lip-stick and a powder-puff, and proceeded to repair the ravages of tears.
Christopher waited till the picture was completed, then in a bored, languid voice:
“But still,” he said, “I don’t quite see how it’s happened.”
They turned round on him as though he was an intruder on their privacy. And indeed, for the last quarter of an hour they had not realized that they were not alone.
“What do you mean?” said Geoffrey hastily. “How what’s happened?”
“How Sybyl’s business has got into this condition.”
“Hasn’t she just explained?”
“Perhaps, but I still don’t understand.”
“You wouldn’t,” she interrupted. “You’re a painter. Painters don’t know anything about business.”
That slightly nettled him.
“Still,” he said, “I once had an overdraft. It wasn’t an easy job, and I don’t know how your manager contrived to collect one on unsound securities.”
She turned wearily and appealingly to Geoffrey.
“Is this absolutely necessary?” she asked.
Geoffrey was a worthy champion.
“Of course it isn’t. I won’t have you worried. Be quiet, can’t you?” This last to Christopher.
“It’s as you like,” he said. “But it’s just possible that Sybyl’s business is not in quite such a bad condition as she thinks, and that the three of us might be able to find some less drastic method than bankruptcy of re-establishing it. There are certainly several things about the affair that I don’t begin to understand. But it’s as you like, of course. It’s not my affair!”
It was a challenge that in the circumstances she could scarcely have let pass.
“Well, and what don’t you understand?” she said.
“In the first place, on what kind of securities was this overdraft arranged?”
“On the office furniture and fittings, which were not mine to mortgage.”
“A singularly unsuspecting bank. And what were the future profits that were mortgaged?”
“The profits on such work as we had on hand, and had been promised.”
“Which would amount to?”
“A fair lot.”
“And to whom,” Christopher persisted, “were these profits mortgaged?”
But she would not listen further. She had turned quickly on her heel to Geoffrey.
“I won’t stand it,” she said. “It isn’t fair. I’ve had a great deal to put up with lately. I will not be subjected to this inquisition.”
“And you shan’t, either,” Geoffrey asserted.
But Christopher was resolved to finish what he had to say.
“Very well,” he said. “It’s not my business what you do or what you have done. But I repeat that I don’t begin to understand this bankruptcy. I don’t see how the overdraft was obtained. I don’t see how these future profits managed to get mortgaged. And, particularly, I don’t see how, if your goodwill is the only asset that you have got to set against your debts, you are going to persuade some other firm to take you over. If it is worth the interest of some other business to buy you up, it would be worth Geoffrey’s while to put capital into your business, and go on running it. That’s all,” he said.
Then, as he had expected, the outburst of fury came. Twice, violently, the small grey suède shoe was stamped upon the thick pile carpet.
“It’s not fair,” she cried. “I won’t stand it. I won’t. I came here, Geoffrey, worried and unhappy, in search of sympathy, and first of all you insult me by trying to turn me into a kept woman, and now your friend cross-examines me as though I were a thief. I won’t. I won’t——”
And for the second time that afternoon she released the torrent of her t
ears. In a moment Geoffrey was at her side: protectingly his arm was cast about her.
“Darling, darling,” he said, “you shan’t,” and over her shoulder he cast upon Christopher a look of the most bitter and acute vindictiveness.
There was only one thing for Christopher to do.
He did it.
“J’en ai soupé,” he murmured ironically to himself as he walked down the stairway of the flat.
Chapter XX
A Re-opened Chapter
Still no reply, sir, I’m afraid.”
Thoughtfully Humphrey Stirling replaced the receiver of the telephone. It was curious, distinctly. It was the second time that morning that he had been unable to get an answer from Mildred’s flat, and he had made three attempts on the previous evening. That, of course, was understandable. But now, between half-past nine and ten. . . .
The line might, of course, be out of order. It was the obvious explanation. At the same time it was idle to deny there had been during the last few weeks more than one disturbing incident; a number of chronological discrepancies; an increase in the weekly bills, and the unheralded arrival one afternoon of that gawkish and uncouth creature with a Cockney accent that she had called “Henry.” He realized, of course, had realized all along, that she must have a background somewhere of obscure acquaintances: but there had been something definitely disquieting in Henry’s dogeared silences.
Still, why go into it? There were certain puddles better left unplumbed. He had scarcely flattered himself that Mildred had ever been more than casually in love with him. And if she were to be unfaithful he supposed that his vanity would be less hurt by a Henry than by someone out of his own crowd. It was to the Henry world, after all, that she belonged. Her return there would not be a criticism of himself. And anyhow, why go into it? Since she gave him what he had asked of her, interest and relaxation. If one hadn’t at his age acquired a tempered irony one was better out of things. In the meantime there was money to be earned.
He lifted the receiver of the telephone. “You can get me,” he informed his secretary, “Mr. Graham Moreton.”
The voice that answered him was not as impatient as voices are apt to be when their possessors are disturbed before the dictation of the morning’s mail is finished. For indeed Graham was at that moment beyond impatience. He was buried too deeply in perplexity. That morning he had received a letter from Joan Faversham.
“GRAHAM DEAR” (it had run), “By Thursday I’ll be back in London. I’ve had a jolly time, but I can’t say how much I’m longing to be home. You’ll guess the reason. Letters are a poor substitute. My love, dear, all of it, as always.”
Thursday. And to-day was Wednesday.
In thirty-six hours’ time she would be back in London. Was he glad or sorry? And what was it that he was to say to her?
He was so tired: so unfitted to bear the strain of that first meeting. She would look at him quietly, firmly, and before a word had passed between them he would know that there was not a thing in his life held secret from her. She would know, without his telling her, through what manner of tempest he had passed in her absence. In thirty-six hours’ time! To-morrow evening. And he was so tired, physically and emotionally. With his body and his brain.
There was not a particularly large post waiting for him at the office. Some fifteen to twenty letters. And he began lazily, as one who has many half-filled hours in front of him, to cut back the flaps of the long, slim envelopes.
“I’ll be able to take two hours over lunch to-day,” he thought.
When the telephone bell rang, he had lifted the receiver without enthusiasm and without annoyance.
“Hullo!” he said. “This is Graham Moreton.”
From the other end of the wire a bored and languid voice replied:
“Good morning, Graham, this is Humphrey Stirling. I just wondered whether your friend was anxious for another flutter.”
“Not just yet,” Graham answered. “That last one was a little too expensive.”
“Was it? Not very. And there’s a really pretty decent thing—the Connowaya Mines—which he ought to be able to get back his losses on.”
“Thanks awfully, but——”
“Frightened? Ah, well; it’s not surprising. Folk think they’re going to become millionaires in an evening, and when they lose ninety pounds in seven weeks imagine they’re being swindled. These amateurs! It was lucky, though, you sold out when you did.”
“What, those Florida Asiatics? Why?”
“Haven’t you seen?”
“I’ve hardly looked at a paper for three days.”
“And folk tell me I’m incurious! Why, whenever I sell shares I spend the next two years working out what I’ve lost by being uncourageous, while you can’t be bothered to look for seven weeks. You’d have felt ever so much more cheerful if you had.”
“Are they going down?”
“Going? They’re gone. They were at seventy last night, and heavens know where they’ll be by lunch time. Not far off fifty, I expect.”
Fifty! And with Gwen Lawrence still holding on to those shares of hers!
“But—but—what are we to do?” he stammered.
“Do? What do you mean, do? What is there for us to do?”
“I know,” Graham answered helplessly, “that’s just the point, what is there for us to do?”
“Exactly,” was Humphrey’s comment. “Though what particular reason there is for our wanting to do anything——” And he paused on a note of interrogation.
“You don’t understand.”
“At present, no.”
There was a pause. Then:
“Oh well, I suppose it’s all right,” said Graham wretchedly, and hung up the receiver on its clamp.
Humphrey Stirling shrugged his shoulders.
“Quaint,” he murmured, “quaint, admittedly. I imagined that news like that would make him dance round the office with delight. He’d have gone potty if he had learnt he had made two thousand in a night, but because he has learnt that he hasn’t lost two thousand, which is the same thing in the long run, for he’s two thousand pounds better off at this moment than he has any right to expect to be, he begins to moan and groan and wonder what’s to be done about it. Quaint, extremely quaint. I’d like to know. But——” and again resignedly he shrugged his shoulders, “but I shan’t,” he added, “so why go into it?”
And, lifting the receiver of the telephone, he proceeded to get into touch with a client who might be prepared to take advantage of the imminent prosperity of the Connowaya Mines.
With listless, downcast head, Graham Moreton leant forward across his desk. Down to seventy and falling, and with Gwen Lawrence holding heaven knew how many of them. “Oh, practically all I’ve got,” she had said jokingly. Which might mean anything; which might be a grotesque exaggeration or a laughing confession of the truth. How was he to know? She was the sort of woman who would plunge recklessly. And if she had taken as her limit eightythree or eighty she might well find herself faced with a deficit that only the sale of everything she possessed could meet.
Seventy and falling fast! And it had been through him, on his recommendation, that she had bought these shares: it would be through himself of all people in the world that she had been ruined! Unless, that was to say, she had had from her other broker the warning to sell out in time? That at least he could find out. “Give me the exchange,” he told the operator, and as his heart thudded against his shirt he repeated the number that he had sworn never under any circumstances to repeat again.
There was a long pause before the reply came, and it was then a Cockney and unfamiliar voice that answered him.
“May I speak, please, to Mrs. Lawrence?”
“Mrs. Lawrence is away,” he was informed.
“Away? Where?”
“Where? I don’t know. She didn’t leave no address. ‘No letters to be forwarded,’ she said. I was to clean out the flat, she said, then go. Leave the keys, she told me, with the a
gent.”
“But did she sell her shares out first?”
“Shares—what shares?”
“The Florida Asiatics, of course.”
“Don’t know,” the voice grumbled surlily, “what you’re talking about at all.”
“But her broker,” he exclaimed. “Who’s her broker? What’s his address?”
“Now how can I tell? I’m a char——”
Desperately Graham drew the back of his hand across his forehead. The shares falling, Gwen away, and this ignorant fool at the other end.
“And you’ve no idea,” he persisted, “where Mrs. Lawrence has gone?”
“’Aven’t I told you once she didn’t leave no address? I was to tidy up the flat, she said, this morning——”
Eagerly he caught her up.
“Then it’s to-day she went away?”
“That’s what I’ve been telling you.”
To-day. Then she could not be too impossibly far away. He looked quickly at his watch; a quarter-past ten. Two hours ago she had been in London. Somewhere she must be in England still.
“You don’t remember,” he asked, “if she said anything about her journey, anything that might give you any idea of where she was making for?”
There was a pause, a pause that could not have lasted longer than twenty seconds, but that to Graham waiting impatiently at the other end appeared unending.
“Oh, please, please,” he began.
“No, now, don’t fluster me. I’m trying to think. What did she say now? Something about having booked a suite somewhere at a hotel; something about being afraid it would be a wretched crossing.”
“A wretched crossing,” he repeated the words excitedly. That was a clue at least. A wretched crossing. There were only a limited number of places to which she could be going. Ostend or Calais or Boulogne. “And when did she leave the flat?” he asked.
“About half-past eight.”
With hurried fluttering fingers he turned the pages of an A B C. There was the 9.10 to Folkestone, and the 9.15 to Dover. Ostend or Calais then. (To Brussels or to Paris.
There was nothing more that this woman had to tell him. He knew enough. Either she would be reaching Paris at half-past four, or Brussels at a little after five. She had booked a suite at a hotel. Wherever she was bound eventually, it would seem tolerably certain that she had decided to break her journey for the night at one or the other capital. And there, either to Paris or to Brussels the news must be somehow got to her; must be got to her before she had passed beyond hope of finding into the vast pleasure ground of Europe.