by Alec Waugh
Her eyes were angry now, and her mouth was set.
“I don’t care,” she said, “it’s worth it. I want Graham, and when I want a thing, I get it.”
“And how long will you go on wanting him?”
“Does that matter? When I’ve stopped wanting him, I’ll go.”
“And Graham?”
She shrugged her shoulders.
“A man can fend for himself,” she said. “Anyhow, by the time I’ve stopped wanting him, he’ll probably have stopped wanting me. So you needn’t worry about us, my dear. I’m not leading the poor boy up the garden. I’m not entrapping him into marriage.”
“But do you realize into what you do happen to be leading him?”
He spoke very quietly, very persuasively, affectionately almost. And the look of anger and distrust receded in the amber-coloured eyes.
“What do you mean?” she said.
“I mean,” he answered, “that you don’t, I think, quite realize what’ll happen. People when they are in love with one another rarely do. But we others who stand outside can see more or less where the road is curving. We remember how other roads have curved. And though you’ll say, I know, that your road is different from any other road, it usually turns out that all these roads, from wherever they may start, lead eventually to the same waste places.”
“And where, Chris, is this road leading?”
He paused before answering her. She was seated upon the table, her hands resting on the side, and, stretching out his hand towards her, he took in his the slim, cool, unresisting fingers.
“I think,” he said quietly, “that this, more or less, is what’ll happen. He’ll ask you to give up all your friends, the friends that are useful to you, and because you are in love with him, you will. When those friends go, the greater part of this comfort will go with them. You’ll have to pay then for all your meals. You’ll probably sell this flat and invest the money that you get from it. You’ll find your dresses wearing out and you won’t have the money to buy such good new ones. At first it may be that you won’t mind. One doesn’t mind those things when one’s in love. Later on, though, when one’s a little less in love . . . however, we can let that pass. There are other things that have got to happen first. Graham’s quarrel, for one thing, with his parents. For they will quarrel with him, I know that. As long as he leads a life of which they do not approve, they will not allow him to live with them.”
“And what if they do?” she interrupted him. “It’s no new thing for a son to quarrel with his parents.”
“Perhaps not, but it’ll mean Graham taking lodgings somewhere, or a flat, and it’ll mean that later on, when money’s scarce, you and he’ll begin asking each other whether it isn’t cheaper to run one establishment than two. And because you’ll be still in love with one another you’ll say that prudence doesn’t matter, that nothing matters except that the setting should be made as easy for that love as possible. And you don’t need my telling you where that road would lead to.”
Her hand still held in his, she listened wearily.
“Go on,” she said.
“You’ve got enough examples surely in life and literature of what that leads to. You’ll find in that way of living all the disadvantages and none of the advantages of marriage, and the more you begin to jar on one another’s nerves, the more you’ll find yourself remembering the ease and freedom and the luxury of the life you used to know. For one needs those things, when love has begun to pass. Those last months together won’t be particularly amusing.”
“There’ll have been those other months first, Chris,” she protested. “Oh, I know I’ll have to pay for them; one must always pay for anything worth having. But they’ll be worth it. I shan’t regret it. I’m not a coward. I shan’t whimper when the time comes to pay.”
“I wonder, though, if Graham will?”
“Graham, but why should he more than I?”
Stirling did not answer her directly.
“What’ll you do, do you imagine, when it’s over?”
She shrugged her shoulders.
“I shall come back and let all these poor fools start amusing me again.”
“Come back, in fact, to where you are to-day?”
She nodded.
“I suppose so.”
“But Graham won’t be able to.”
She started at that.
“Don’t you realize, my dear,” he said, “that you’ll smash Graham pretty well for good?”
It was the argument to which everything else that he had said had served as a preliminary. It was the one argument he knew that would carry any weight with her. For her own safety and her own position she cared as little as any woman that is in love does care. He had not attempted to appeal to her instinct of self-preservation. He had not attempted to appeal to any feelings of pity she might have for Joan. She was as indifferent to Joan’s unhappiness or happiness as a woman in love must always be towards her rival’s welfare. It was through Graham alone that he could win this fight that he was waging on Joan’s behalf.
“Don’t you realize,” he repeated, “that a young man with his way to make has to be as careful of his reputation, if in a different way, as any woman. People may not expect him to be innocent, but they do demand that he shall be discreet. He must have a clean background. He must be without entanglements—obvious ones, anyhow. He must be able to go to the right places and meet the right people. His firm regard him as a social representative, and if he is not sociably presentable they won’t have any particular use for him. There are so many other young men who are: so many more young men than there are jobs for them. Graham has a future for himself where he is. But he wouldn’t find it easy at his age to begin again. He’d be out of the race by the time you’d done with him, and things move so quickly nowadays that if you once get out of the race you stay out of it. He’d be finished, Gwen.”
There was a silence when he ended. Slowly Gwen Lawrence lifted herself from the table, walked over to the mantelpiece, and, leaning her arms along it, rested her head on them.
“That’s true, is it?” she said in a half-stifled voice. “You are telling me the truth? I should smash him, should I—if—if I were to let him love me?”
“The risk is pretty big.”
“I see.” Again there was a silence, and again in that half-stifled voice: “It’s rather cruel, you know,” she said quietly. “For so many years now there’s been this pack of men about me, any one of whom I could have loved so easily, with such impunity, and I haven’t cared twopence for any of them. And then at last when the man comes . . . it’s rather cruel not to be able to.”
There was a pause: then slowly she turned round to face him.
“And you can’t think, Chris,” she said, “how tired of all this I am. How heavy it grows, this armour of caution and deceit. You can’t think how I’ve longed to fling it down; to be myself; to release myself: to give, and give, and give instead of this perpetual taking. And then when at last the one man comes to whom I could give . . . not to be able to, Chris. For I can’t, you know, if what you say is true.”
Steadily he looked into her eyes, and there was that in them that made him strangely humble.
• • • • • • • •
By half-past six the flat had been restored to a superficial condition, at least, of order. In the armchair beside the fireplace Gwen Lawrence sat watching the smoke of her cigarette curl upwards to the ceiling. “I must be firm,” she told herself. “I must make it quite clear to him how impossible any love must be between us. I will explain to him and he will go away. I shall learn, I suppose, to forget in time. If one does enough and goes about, one hasn’t the time to think of things. I will explain to him, and he will go away.”
But the moment he was in the room before her she knew that it was not by way of explanation that safety lay. Her heart had bounded horribly when she heard the clatter of the knock upon the door. Shakily she had risen to her feet; a mist was before her ey
es. She had not the strength any longer to resist him. She couldn’t argue when she cared so much. He would not listen to argument. He would take her in his arms, his lips would be on hers, and nothing else in the world would matter.
And as she stood swaying before the mantelpiece the memory came to her of a London play-actor, a certain Garrick, who, loving a girl to whom his love would only bring unhappiness, being unable to cure himself of his love for her, had saved her by the curing of her love for him, by the proving of himself unworthy of her love.
“Ah, Graham,” she said jauntily, “so you see I’m back.”
His face was eager and his eyes were bright. On his lips trembled the words of protestation, the words that on no account he must be allowed to utter.
“Well, here we are back,” she laughed, “and now we can sit down quietly and discuss things.”
A perplexed look appeared on Graham’s face. He could not understand this attitude of light-hearted indifference.
“But, but—” he stammered.
“It’s always as well, I think, to get things on a business footing.”
“A business footing?” he repeated the words incredulously. “I don’t understand, Gwen.”
“And after all those protestations of yours, too! That immense passion that you’d fought so hard against. I imagined that it was leading up to something.”
“Of course, yes; but ’ business footing.’”
“One must live,” she laughed, “even when one loves.”
The look of perplexity was changing to one of alarmed misgiving.
“Business footing,” he repeated. “You don’t mean—?”
“What else should I mean, my poor, dear, simple Graham? How did you imagine that I lived?”
For a full minute he stared stupidly at her: till she was forced to repeat, mockingly, her question.
Miserably he shook his head.
“I don’t know. I never thought. I never asked myself. I—you mean that there’s a man behind all this?”
“Man? Men, my dear,” she laughed. “You don’t think one man could run to all I want?”
From his face suddenly all colour and all animation passed. Reaching a hand out blindly, he caught hold of the edge of the table and drew himself towards it.
“I see,” he said dazedly. “I see.”
The dumb anguish of his face tore with sharpened talons at her heart. Every instinct in her urged her to step forward, to throw her arms about his neck, to press her cheek against his face, to whisper in his ear that it was untrue: “Untrue, darling, every word of it. They’ve meant nothing to me—all these men. There’s been nobody in my life but you. I’ve not even let them kiss me. It’s untrue, every word of it.”
Somehow or other, though, she managed to remain rooted where she stood, managed to keep in her eyes and on her lips the same flicker of ironic laughter, managed to retain her voice at the right note of indifferent raillery.
“Oh yes, my dear,” she said. “Quite a number of them. I thought you were wanting to take a share in the syndicate.”
His eyes were fixed in an unseeing stare upon the floor. He made no sound, he made no movement. His arms upon the table were strained and rigid.
“And aren’t you wanting to?” The ache of her heart was more grievous than anything she had ever known. Her knees were so weak that at any moment she felt that they might refuse any longer to support her. But as an actress, whose heart is breaking for some private loss, will set a house roaring with her feigned merriment, so with bright eyes and mocking voice Gwen Lawrence bore laughingly the part she had set herself to play.
“Or perhaps,” she said, “you had pictured yourself as what they describe, I believe, in French novels as an amant de coeur.”
His hands at his side hung limp and purposeless.
“So that,” he said, “was what you meant when you talked of our deciding how to manage things?”
“What else should I mean?”
“Yet even now,” he said, “I can’t believe—”
“I should have thought that I had made it plain enough.”
“That? Oh yes, that. It’s other things. I—” he hesitated, then rather wistfully: “It’s not easy, you know, to reform one’s picture of a person. I thought you were something so completely different. You meant—it is rather hard to say what exactly you did mean to me. But I saw you as something rather wonderful. You represented all those things for me. Oh, I know it’ll seem silly enough to you now, those things one reads about and dreams about and never quite expects to find. Poetry and mystery and romance—” He stopped and laughed awkwardly, a little bitterly.
He had spoken stammeringly. And as she had heard one by one the clumsy, faltered words, it had been only by the intensest effort that she had been restrained from flinging herself into his arms, from burying her face against his cheek, from crying, “Ah, but I am, I am! I am that other me. It’s false, this picture of myself I’ve given.”
But because she knew that that step once taken would be irretraceable, because she knew into what waste places that road must ultimately curve, she kept bright and mocking the amber-coloured depths.
“And I’m not, you see,” she said. “Perhaps no woman is. Perhaps we’re all much the same at heart. Frivolous, pleasure-loving creatures, for whom men exist as kindly ginns who spread jam and butter on our bread. That’s all we are. And occasionally when we rather like a man we can do without the butter. Which was perhaps, my dear, the part I had for you.”
Her voice dropped a little at the last sentence, and the hardness went from it.
“That’s all we are,” she said, “and you make such a mistake in expecting more from us.” Her eyes were tender now and a little misted. “That’s what I used to be,” she thought. “But there’s nothing in the world I wouldn’t give up now for you. Nothing. Nothing. Why, aren’t I even giving up you because I love you so!”
Unsteadily Graham lifted himself from the table.
“I’d better be going, then,” he said.
She made no answer. She stood leaning back against the mantelpiece, her arms spread out along it. This was the last time, she told herself, she would ever see him in this room. Never again would she hear the sound of his voice along the telephone. Never again when the telephone bell rang would she wonder with suddenly indrawn breath, “Can this be he?” Never again would they pass in happy, lazy talk the enchanted space of hours between tea and dinner. Never again.
Another minute and the door of the drawing-room would have closed behind him; another minute and there would be the heavy thud of the outside door; another minute and he would be out of her life for ever.
With slow, uncertain steps he walked towards the door; his fingers were upon the handle. Slowly they were turning it. He paused. Then suddenly he turned round towards her, and in his eyes and in his face flamed an impassioned protest.
“It isn’t true,” he shouted. “It isn’t true. It’s a lie, all of it—every word of it. You are frightened, that’s all it is. You’re frightened, as I was frightened when I sold those shares. Frightened, as you’ve admitted that you were frightened when you left London hurriedly. I know, because I was frightened in just that same way myself, and I’ve got beyond fear now. As you will. As I’m going to make you. For it’s a lie. You can’t look me in the face and deny that it’s a lie!”
He took a couple of quick steps towards her. Her elbow raised across her face, she shuddered back. Frightened? Frightened was it he had called her? Ah, but she was frightened now. Frightened lest she might not be strong enough to stay him.
Three more steps and he would be beside her, his hand would be upon her shoulder, and as his arms went round her the power to resist would slip from her. Passive, she would lie there in his arms. Docile and submissive, she would raise her lips to the mouth that sought them. And in the long silence of that kiss irrevocably would their fate be settled. Whatever happened, for his sake, she must defend herself from that.
“A lie?” she retorted recklessly. “But for what should I want to be telling lies to you? Of course, my poor innocent, it’s the truth.”
“Then why, if it’s the truth, did you run away to Paris? Why did you tell me that you were frightened? What else was there to be frightened of except your loving of me as I loved you? Why, why, why?”
The repeated words beat like blows upon her guard. But as an experienced boxer will hold up his fists mechanically, as he waits with numbed senses for the gong, she flung back her answer on the former note of proud defiance.
“Frightened, perhaps that was too big a word. One uses a big word so easily at the end of a long evening. I wasn’t frightened. But I thought it would be—how shall I put it?—just as well if you didn’t—join the syndicate. There are only twenty-four hours in the day. One must employ them as profitably as one can. And I didn’t feel, my dear, that you were likely to be a fearfully good investment.”
It was her supreme, her final effort. It was her last blow. But it sufficed. Steadily he looked in her face, then, without a word, turned quickly on his heel and left the room.
Motionless, her back to the fireplace, she stood staring at the blank doorway in which a moment earlier his figure had been framed.
“That’s that, then,” she thought. Her eyes were dry. The strength had returned to the limbs that had so nearly failed her. She felt neither hysterical nor faint. Something had died inside her, that was all. There was no more to be done about it.
The clock of a neighbouring church chimed the third quarter of the hour. She shook herself as hypnotic patients do on emerging from a trance. It was time that she made some plans for the passing of the evening.
A quarter to seven and Guy Fortescue would be almost certainly at his club. It would be, at any rate, worth trying.
“Grosvenor 85979. Yes. The Corinthian Club. Is Mr. Guy Fortescue in? He is? Good. Ah, is that you, Guy? It’s Gwen speaking. No, I’m speaking from London. I got bored with Paris. What? Missing you? Oh, well, perhaps. Anyhow, what about this evening? You can? But that is charming of you. And you’ll call for me at eight. Thank you so much, Guy dear. Good-bye.”