Love in these Days

by Alec Waugh

  And there was only one way in which it could be got to her. Telegrams and telephones would be unavailing. There was one way only. He would have to take the news himself. Paris at half-past four or Brussels at a little after five, and with no possible way of getting to Brussels before she did. The Imperial Airways line had been temporarily suspended. He would stand no chance of finding her were he to arrive after her. She would be lost in that large city. It would be a hopeless attempt to look for her on the following day. There were so many places she might be going to: so many platforms from which she might be starting. It would be only by a fluke that he could find her, and he was in no mood to rely on flukes. Paris, though; with Paris it might be different.

  He pressed the bell at the corner of his desk and lifted the speaking tube.

  “When does the air mail leave,” he asked, “for Paris?”

  There was a moment’s delay.

  “Twelve o’clock from Croydon,” he was told. “And the car leaves Northumberland Avenue at eleven.”

  At eleven o’clock: but there was no chance of his getting to the Victoria Hotel in forty minutes. He would have to go all the way out to South Kensington to fetch his passport. That alone would be a good half-hour; and to be back again in time. No, no, it was not possible. But to get to Croydon before twelve, that was another matter.

  He jumped up from his desk, gathered together his hat and stick and gloves, and ran out into the passage. He paused scarcely to knock on the door of his immediate superior.

  “It’s like this,” he said breathlessly. “I know it’s a lot to ask. But it’s very important, and it’s very-private. I’ve got to go to Paris, and at once. I’ll be back by Friday morning. I can’t explain. But i want you to let me go.”

  His chief leant back in his chair and smiled.

  “It’s a long time since you’ve had a holiday,” he said. “I expect you need it.”

  “It’s not a holiday.”

  “A rest cure?”

  “Not even that.”

  The smile on his chief’s face widened.

  “Ah, well,” he said. “You can call it what you like. It comes to the same thing. And we’ll see you back again by Friday?”

  “Then I may go?”

  His chief nodded.

  “And mind you come back refreshed.”

  With a high and beating heart Graham dashed along the passage to his secretary’s room: clattered out a series of instuctions that were as precise as they were hurried. “And look here,” he finished, “get on to the Imperial Airways at once and tell them to reserve me a seat on the twelve o’clock Paris service.”

  His secretary lifted her eyes towards the window. The flag from the summit of a block of buildings across the road was flapping furiously: the column of smoke from a tall, wide chimney was wavering gustily and uncertainly. The window frame was rattling in its socket. “A bad day to fly,” she thought. “I shouldn’t be surprised if it wasn’t too bad for them to go.”

  • • • • • • •

  There is not in man’s possession that power of divination which can distinguish a fast from a sluggish taxicab.

  The cab in whose direction Graham waved an imperious and impatient hand looked to be no more battered, no more weather-beaten than the half-dozen other mud-stained cars that were creeping with lifted signals beside the pavement.

  He was, however, speedily to discover that it would have been scarcely possible for two such dejected specimens of machinery to have passed simultaneously through the same street. From Ludgate Circus to Charing Cross a good six minutes, another four to the bottom of St. James’s. They would not at this rate get to Kensington till well after eleven, which would mean less than forty minutes for the journey to the aerodrome. And it was essential that he should be there in time. It was the one chance of saving Gwen from what might be irretrievable disaster.

  He could not be certain, of course, that it was for Paris that she was bound. It might be to Brussels that she was going. Or it might be some other city along the route. It was more likely, though, to be Paris than any other place. And Paris, anyhow, was the one place that he could reach in time.

  By three o’clock at the latest they should be at Le Bourget. By a quarter to four they would be in the Avenue de l’Opéra. And thence to the Gare du Nord was a matter only of ten minutes. If she were on that two-fifteen train from Calais he would be there almost certainly in time to meet it.

  She might not, of course, be on it. It might be that this wild rush of his across the Channel was destined to be unavailing. As long, though, as there was that chance of meeting her, as long as success was possible, it was not for him to consider the probabilities of failure.

  Slowly the cab creaked and jolted its way to Piccadilly. It was a quarter to eleven by the clock beside the Berkeley. Heavens, but this would never do.

  Impatiently he tapped upon the window, jumped out into the street, paid an indignant driver his exact figure, and waved a hand towards the nearest cab rank.

  This time he was luckier. Smoothly, swiftly, the car sped westwards along the gleaming road; at rest Graham leant back against the cushioned seat. Another ten minutes and they would be there.

  His mother was out luckily. There was no one to delay him with the burden of an improvised explanation. He bounded up the stairs, flung open his drawer, dived down into it regardless of the disarray of collars and handkerchiefs and ties that he was creating, unearthed his passport, shouted over the bannisters to a maid that probably he would be out that night, and rushed down the steps into the street.

  “Croydon aerodrome!” he shouted. “And really fast.”

  It was a bleak, clouded, wind-swept day. The streets were for the most part empty. Such people as were upon the pavement were walking with hurried, intent steps, as though they would finish as soon as possible such business as had brought them from the warmth and comfort of their homes and offices.

  There they were, Graham told himself, the puppets of custom and routine, fulfilling in the usual way at the usual time the usual services.

  For them the day was as every other day; as yesterday had been and to-morrow would be; this day that was to him of such momentous import; that for as long as he lived would be one of the landmarks on the calendar. This day meant nothing special to them.

  It was a curious thought that he, through whose veins drama was so fiercely beating, was breathing the same air in the same streets as all these others for whom the day was passing in such quiet raiment. How often must he himself in buses and tubes and cinemas have sat with unstirred pulse next one to whom life was at the moment speaking with heightened and inflamed accents? All these people seemingly so one with another, so much a section of the same machine, and yet how apart actually, how separate in the peace or turmoil of their lives.

  • • • • • • •

  “I rather doubt if they will fly to-day. It’s pretty rough.” Those were the first words he heard, as he walked into the main waiting-room, where the tickets were being examined and the luggage weighed.

  And as he looked out through the window across the aerodrome, he could see how gustily the flags above the sheds were waving. Round the blue-coated sergeant a group of some dozen or so passengers was gathered.

  “When shall we be told?” one of them was asking fretfully. “It’s most important that I should be able to let my friends in Paris know if we have to wait.”

  “In twenty minutes,” the patient, courteous, but not untired voice informed her.

  “And do you think they’ll let us go?”

  “How can I say, madam?”

  “But you must have some idea; you’ve seen how rough it’s been on other days. Have you known the aeroplanes to go up on days as rough as this?”

  Graham did not stay to listen. There was nothing to be learnt from this circle of comment and conjecture. He moved quickly across the room to where in a small group behind the counter a number of officials were standing talking.

&nb
sp; “My name,” he said, “is G. S. Moreton. My secretary rang up an hour ago to book a seat on the twelve o’clock service.”

  The official spread his hands sideways in a diplomatic gesture of regret.

  “And we had, Mr. Moreton, with the greatest possible reluctance, to inform your secretary that every place on the twelve o’clock service was engaged.”

  “What?” He stood gazing stupidly with open mouth at the tall, courteous, elegant person who had answered him. “But, surely——” he began.

  “At such short notice,” the official explained, “it would only have been by a piece of luck that we should have been able to allot a seat to you.”

  “Surely you could have used a machine with more accommodation?”

  “We have already engaged the largest machine we have. I assure you, Mr. Moreton, that with the best will in the world we cannot help you. There is a seat, though, in the afternoon service”

  “That’s no use to me,” Graham replied wretchedly.

  “Then I am afraid, Mr. Moreton——”

  But Graham was not to be easily discountenanced.

  “Look here,” he said. “Don’t you think you could persuade one of these people here to take the later service? It can’t matter so desperately to all of them. There must be one or two who could go just as well by the later one.”

  The official smiled.

  “I doubt whether any of them will want to stay in this not particularly exciting waiting-room for three more hours than they need.”

  “You might ask them.”

  The official inclined his head.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” he announced, “there is a gentleman here who tells me that it is particularly important that he should reach Paris this afternoon. There is not any room for him on the car, but he wondered whether, in the event of our being able to make the trip, one or other of you would care to take his place on the four o’clock service in exchange for yours.”

  There was a silence; the sort of silence that always does follow an unexpected announcement, when everyone is waiting for someone else to speak.

  “What sort of business is it?” an elderly sententious-looking person hazarded at last.

  “It is business,” Graham answered, “of an extremely important and private nature.”

  The elderly personage emitted a contemptuous snort.

  “I know that sort of business,” he remarked, “and I can see no reason why any of us should surrender our places for it.”

  “There is no reason at all,” Graham replied quietly. “There rarely is for any particularly courteous action.”

  There was a little laugh at that.

  “I cannot say,” Graham continued, “how extraordinarily grateful I should be if any one of you would help me.”

  But even as he glanced over the fourteen faces that were turned towards him, he knew that there was little chance of his succeeding.

  Through the mind of each of them the same not unreasonable thought was passing: why should they sentence themselves to three or four solitary and tedious hours in an empty waiting-room, simply because a pleasant young man had chosen to behave pleasantly?

  “It would be a great kindness,” he repeated, but there was no reply. “Ah, well,” he said, “I’m sorry,” and a sensation of complete hopelessness descended on him. It was so essential that he should catch this service.

  Was there nothing that he could do? And then suddenly, even as he wondered, the idea came to him.

  “At least, I suppose I’m sorry,” he added, “I can’t honestly say I frightfully wanted to make the trip.”

  He spoke in an offhand, cheerful, confidential tone.

  “That’s a curious confession,” the pompous and elderly gentleman remarked.

  “Curious? Oh, I don’t think so,” Graham laughed. “As a responsible employee of an important firm I’ve got to do my best to carry out instructions, but duty and inclination don’t go invariably hand in hand, and as a private individual I can’t say that I was particularly looking forward to three hours in the air on such a day. I have, you see,” he added, “made this trip a good many times before,” and he pointed knowingly to where across the aerodrome the flags were flapping gustily.

  There was, as he had anticipated, a stir of a not too comfortable interest.

  “You think,” an old lady ventured timidly, “that it will be a little rough?”

  “I know,” Graham announced cheerfully, “that it will be supremely foul.” And after just so long a pause as was necessary for his words to create a suitable effect, he proceeded to expose the discomforts of aerial transport.

  “You see,” he continued, “it’s like this.”

  On a great many occasions during the previous three years Graham had been forced to cross the Channel, and he had made the journey every time by air.

  “There is no other way,” he would assure his friends, “of travelling. At times you may, of course, be ill. But if you are ill by air you can assure yourself that you would be very much more ill by sea. You are ill, for one thing, a very great deal later, because you do not suggest the idea of sickness to yourself. If you are a bad sailor you tell yourself the moment you see the white horses from the train that you are destined for disaster. And, of course, you are. There are no white horses in the air. You do not make yourself ill. You wait till illness comes. And if you are ill, compare the appalling arrival at Calais or at Dover, the customs, the shrieking porters, the rush and bustle, the struggle for a seat, compare that with the tranquillity, the space, the leisure of Le Bourget. If you travelled once by air you would not travel any other way.”

  That was Graham’s settled and announced opinion. But never had the case against aerial transport been presented more convincingly than it was by Graham Moreton that morning.

  “You’re certain, you see, to be ill,” he said. “Any fool can tell that. Just look at those flags across the aerodrome. And you’ll be ill in a stuffy atmosphere, with no privacy; with other people being ill in front of you and behind you and beside you. There’s no worse fate, I should think, than being sick suddenly in a drawing-room, in a crowd of strangers. And that’s what being ill in an aeroplane feels like. I’m not sorry, 1 can assure you, to be out of it.”

  He spoke with the air of an extensively travelled man, and he could see that his words were having an effect.

  “I shall think of you all,” he laughed, “in about two hours’ time, while I’m safe and at peace in my London office.”

  At that moment the main door of the office was flung open; a gust of chilling wind rushed in, and a blue-coated official announced that it had been decided to make the trip.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” he said, “will you please follow me?”

  It was a bleak, cold, wind-swept day, and there was not one in that small party that did not shiver slightly as they made their way out into the open.

  “Heavens!” Graham repeated, “I don’t envy you.” He spoke cheerfully enough, but his heart was pounding fiercely, and the roof of his mouth was dry.

  Was it to fail, after all, this bluff of his? Was he to be forced to stand and watch from the ground the slim, wide-winged machine rise into the air? And standing there, to see, as the pale shape diminished and grew fainter, his one chance of rescuing Gwen Lawrence vanish?

  The engines of the machine were buzzing noisily. There it stood, the large fourteen-placed machine—the machine that in three hours’ time would be landing at Le Bourget.

  He rested his hand against the blue-painted side. How maddening to think that this affair of wood and iron, which he was touching now, would be in three hours’ time where he so longed to be, where it was impossible for him to be unless this hundred to one bluff came off!

  One by one he watched the passengers climb up the wooden steps into the saloon. One by one he waved his farewell to them. Only six left now. Only four, three, two. Gloomily, and with a sinking heart, he watched the last man climb the ladder.

  One st
ep, two steps, three steps, an attendant was preparing to help him into the saloon, when a sudden and providential gust of wind lifted his grey felt hat and blew it in a curving circle across the grass.

  The wind was so strong that Graham had to run a good fifty yards before he could recover it, and he was panting when he returned with it to its owner.

  “I’m sorry I was so long,” he said. “But the wind’s pretty strong. It needed chasing.”

  Slowly the man stretched out his hand towards the hat, twisted the brim nervously between his fingers, glanced apprehensively towards the fluttering flags, then in a quick impulsive burst:

  “Look here,” he said, “if it’s so fearfully important for you to get to Paris this afternoon, I don’t mind selling you my ticket.”

  There was a quiet smile; a quiet, cynical smile on Graham’s face as he stepped into the saloon and took the fourteenth place.

  “It’s no good appealing to people’s generosity,” he told himself, “unless you can appeal to their selfinterest at the same time.”

  His heart beat with a heavy exultation. Would Gwen be there? That was the one thing that mattered now. Would she be there?

  Chapter XXI

  By Air and Sea

  The Paris train for a Thursday in September was comfortably uncrowded, and Gwen Lawrence had little difficulty in finding herself a corner seat; which was as well, for it had been a filthy crossing; two and a half hours and scarcely a calm minute in it. With a cushion arranged behind her head, she leant back, watching through half-closed eyes the familiar landmarks pass one by one behind her.

  It was a journey that she had made many times. But never in quite this temper: never in quite this mood of lassitude and half regret. Always, before, she had gone expecting something, with something definite to look forward to; not as now, with something behind her to be forgotten.