Kept

by Alec Waugh

  She cut him short.

  “I’m not going to discuss it, Christopher. You are to catch the 12.15 from Paddington.” And she turned away as though the subject were settled definitely. “You’ll be in London for the rest of the season, I suppose?” she said to Ransom.

  He nodded.

  “Till August,” he said, “then it’ll be Deauville—a month or so, till it’s time to start work upon the partridges. I’ll be back again early in October.

  “For the whole winter?”

  “Till January. Then I suppose it will be time to think about going south for a little sunshine, not that one ever gets much of it. I believe myself that Cannes is nothing but an immense conspiracy for getting you into the Casino. I’ll admit that when the sun shines it’s agreeably hot, and that it is very pleasant to see wild flowers in February. But the prosperity of Cannes isn’t due to the sunlight, it’s due to the rain. If the sun really shone, we should be all the day on the Croisette and the baccarat room would be empty and the town bankrupt.”

  “But you go there all the same.”

  Ransom shrugged his shoulders.

  “Where else is there,” he said, “for one to go.”

  There was a laugh at that, a laugh in which Marjorie did not join. It was all very well for Ransom to present as a joke this machine-made pattern of a life, but his life was in actual fact no more than that. He fitted into a series of pigeon-holes. The London season, Deauville, Scotland, London again, then Cannes or Switzerland or Florence. He did certain things at certain times and at no other. A series of stock dishes. Life á la table d ’hȏte. At any moment of the year you would know more or less what he was doing. His life was composed of a number of carefully mixed ingredients, mixed to order. And what was she herself but an ingredient. A necessary ingredient, doubtless. His life would be incomplete without her, just as it would be incomplete without a club. She was important in his life because she occupied an important pigeon-hole. But it was the pigeon-hole, not herself, that mattered.

  “Ransom,” she said, “I want to dance.”

  He rose at once. On his lips and in his eyes as he held out his hand to her there was that soft, caressing smile that had been from the beginning his chief attraction for her.

  “How nice you look,” he whispered. “What a pity there are all these others here. I’m so looking forward to to-morrow.”

  And like a cloak the sound of his voice was cast about her so that she could feel no longer angry.

  She smiled up at him, but a little sadly.

  “There’s no one like you,” she thought. “How I could love you if you’d only let me.”

  She closed her eyes and drew closer to him, her body relaxing to the music and the pressure of his shoulder against hers.

  They returned to the table to find that Manon Granta had resumed her intimate and hidden conversation with Chris Hammond.

  “I can’t understand,” she was saying, “you are being perfectly ridiculous. You say you want to see me—”

  “I do, I do,” he interjected hurriedly.

  “You say,” she repeated in her even, dangerously placid voice, “that you want to see me. What was it that you quoted to me at dinner, something about this dark world that in my absence was no better than a sty,” and her voice swelled slowly to a note of irony. “You say that, and then when I arrange for you to stay for a week-end in a house where you’ll be able to see me at every meal except breakfast, and spend in all some three or four hours exclusively in my company—then you start talking about a visit to your parents. I repeat, Christopher, I do not understand you.”

  His fingers, as she spoke, had toyed unhappily with his napkin; with increasing feebleness his pride struggled against the magnetism of that ivory pale face.

  “It’s my clothes,” he admitted sulkily, “I couldn’t go in this suit to a place like that, and I can’t afford another.”

  Her annoyance was instantly converted into sympathy.

  “My dear,” she said, and her eyes glowed and widened, “My dear, I am so sorry. You poor darling, and I had never thought of that. Of course you will let me get you some.”

  But again he shook his head.

  “ I couldn’t. It wouldn’t be right,” he said.

  “But why, Christopher, why,” she protested. “I want you to be happy—I want to give you a happy time. And if I can’t because of your clothes, why then—”

  “It’s absurd,” he said, impatiently. “It’s impossible; you must see that it is.”

  “But I don’t see it, Christopher,” and her voice had again grown placid. “You are being childish, the slave of an absurd old-fashioned shibboleth that says a man must not take presents from a woman; it’s masculine vanity, no more than that. And there’s not one of you that would think twice of accepting an invitation to a dance that might cost me well over five hundred.”

  “That’s quite different.”

  “Why?”

  “Because it is.”

  She looked at him for a moment appraisingly. Then, “You tire me,” she said, and turned to discuss with Merivale the possibility of a police raid.

  “It’s not likely,” he assured her, “at anyrate I have it from our host that it isn’t.”

  “But suppose there was a raid,” she insisted.

  “Which there won’t be.” This from Ferguson.

  “Yes, but if there was, what would happen to us?”

  “Well, I suppose,” said Merivale, “that we should have our names taken and get fined five pounds. Young Somerset could probably tell us. A terribly bad fellow is Brother Somerset. Spends half his nights in Vine Street.”

  “Seriously though, isn’t there some way of getting out—some window or other. Surely, Captain Merivale. Do let us go and look.”

  They walked together to the far end of the room, opened the window and looked out on to a sheer thirty-foot drop into a collection of dust-bins.

  “In that dress,” said Merivale, “scarcely to be recommended.”

  She shot a quick glance up at him.

  “You like it?”

  “Charming. But then anything that you wore would be.”

  She pouted. “That’s silly.”

  “True though,” he answered her. And, as their eyes met, it seemed to him that her body ever so slightly swayed towards him, just so much that the scent of L’Oregan might dangerously float about him.

  “Now, I wonder if she’s flirting with me,” he thought. “If she is, though, it’s only, I suppose, to make that young lap-dog of hers jealous,”

  “What about a door somewhere,” she was saying.

  “Ah, a door.”

  After a lengthy search they discovered beyond the kitchen a small window opening on to a roof that slanted dangerously towards another roof, from the ledge of which it would be possible without too much trouble to drop into some sort of side street.

  “There,” he said, “But I sincerely trust it will not be necessary.”

  “Still, it’s a relief to know it’s there.”

  For Eric Somerset the evening was slow in passing. At one moment he was wretched with envy at the ease and assurance with which the other men one by one came up to Mrs Fairfield with their smile, and their half bow, and their, “Shall we?” At another he would be leaning forward to watch her dance, more utterly at peace in the quiet contemplation of her beauty than he had dreamed it ever possible to be. It was an excitement more intense than any he had ever reached through pictures and books and music; though the difference between those states of mind and this was of degree only. He was in the presence, at such moments, of something that precluded envy; something he could admire and wonder at, unfretted by the desire to possess it. It was enough that it should exist and that it should, by its existence, make life richer. It was enough that her beauty should make lovelier the world it moved in. And then, again, the sense of his personal inferiority would besiege him, the torturing knowledge that she was unruffled by the force, whatever it might be,
that had so shaken him.

  Often in day-dreams he had wondered what it would be like to fall in love. Would it, he had asked himself, come in a flash instantly, or would it be built up slowly day by day, week by week, a gradual flowering to fruit. He could hardly believe that it was this, this sudden inexplicable attraction for a woman of whom he knew nothing, on whom he had made not the least impression, to whom he was simply a young man that she had danced once with and, as likely as not, would never see again. Their one dance together had been a failure. He had found not a word to say to her. He was too frightened to dance well, though, because she danced so well herself, he was spared the ignominy of continually treading on her toes. Most of the time she was looking over his shoulder at the other dancers. Once as they passed close to Ransom she had stretched out her hand and laughingly touched him on the shoulder. On their return to the table he had placed himself deliberately several paces away from her.

  It was after two and the club was at its gayest. The musicians were singing as they played, the syncopation of the fox-trots grew noisier and more barbaric. The couples were dancing shoulder to shoulder. The large blocks of ice had begun to melt, and the air was thickening.

  “Nearly breakfast time,” Merivale remarked.

  Ransom looked at his watch. “Yes, I suppose it is,” he said. “You know I sometimes think it’s only at night clubs that we shall be finding, in a few years’ time, any survival of that old heavy Victorian breakfast. At nine in the morning the sight of a huge dish of eggs and sausages and kidneys would ruin me for the rest of the day. It’s as much as I can do to stagger down to Heppell’s.”

  “As bad as that?”

  “Usually. On my good mornings I can just grapple with a grape fruit.” He paused, then looked searchingly at Partington. “This sort of thing, though, I shouldn’t have thought it was quite your game.”

  Partington shrugged his shoulders. “Perhaps it isn’t,” he answered. “I don’t know. One’s got to try everything to find out.”

  “A dangerous principle,” he laughed, and then added: “for a married man.”

  Partington flushed. “One goes one’s own way,” he said, “in a modern marriage.”

  Ransom made no answer. He had suspected as much all the evening. He remembered that wedding of Partington’s in the first weeks of 1919. He remembered meeting Partington a few days before. “I’ve just got demobbed,” he had said, “and I’m to be married next Saturday. If you had told me a year ago that this would be happening—War over, Boche beat and our innings just going to begin—isn’t life wonderful?”

  And Ransom could remember how he had walked on alone a little sadly, wondering what would be the outcome, not so much of one particular marriage, as of all that uprush of hope, that childlike belief in happiness. He had wondered, and he had doubted, and he had been right to doubt. Here was the end of it—” A modern marriage; we each go our own way.”

  A waiter was hovering inquisitively at his elbow. “Oh yes,” be began to say, “the very man I want.” But Ferguson cut across him. “Really no,” he protested. “It’s my turn. Please let me. George, another magnum. Just one before breakfast.”

  His companion glanced at his watch, “Half-past two,” he murmured. “If you’ll excuse me, I’ll just run out and telephone.”

  Three minutes later he returned and nodded to Ferguson who rose with a smile of general apology to follow him.

  “Who did you say those two young men were?” asked Marjorie, as soon as they were sufficiently out of earshot.

  “I don’t know,” said Ransom. “Two fellows in a pub whom Captain Merivale made friends with.”

  “Who made friends with Captain Merivale,” the ex-scholar suggested as an emendation. “The old war-horse does not solicit friendship, he accepts it. They seemed genial fellows, so I encouraged them.”

  “Merivale’s social instincts “—but Ransom never completed the sentence. There were sounds suddenly of scuffling in the hall, there was the shriek of a whistle, the door at the far end was flung open, and a voice sounded above the music: “Ladies and gentlemen, will you please be seated.” There was a moment’s silence. The fox-trot faded into a wail of silence, the dancers stood where they were, still half in each other’s arms, the waiters with their trays of drink and food gazed stupidly towards the door. Then there was a gasp, a cry of “the police,” and, from Vernon Archer, a coarse, heavy laugh. “And our two young friends at the head of them,” he jeered. “I think that for once Merivale’s social instincts were at fault.” Within half a minute the room had become a babble of noise and talk, and through that babble Merivale heard Lady Manon’s voice in a quick whisper: “Captain Merivale, I must get out of this.” He turned to look at her, to laugh away her nervousness, to tell her that it would be all right, that they would give a false name, that there need be no scandal. But he had only to look once to see the futility of logic. She was not frightened, her face had paled certainly, but the eyes were firm, hard, and resolute. “I must go,” she said quietly.

  “I don’t know what it’s all about,” he thought, “but it’s something that’s to be grappled with.”

  And, seizing her by the wrist, he jumped to his feet and pulled her towards the kitchen. From the far end of the room he heard a cry of “Watch that fellow.” But he was too incensed at the behaviour of the two police agents to be less than reckless.

  “Come along,” he said, and dragged her after him.

  A police officer rushed across the floor to stop him. But Merivale did not pause. “Get along quick,” he shouted, “down through there and out along the roof.” And in the narrow doorway, turning quickly on his heel, he flung into one crashing upper-cut the cumulated disgust of outraged hospitality, and, slamming the door after him, turned the key quickly in the door.

  “Really,” he thought, “this is like good old Amiens.”

  Chapter IV

  Ransom Deliberates

  At a quarter to ten on the following morning Giles entered Ransom’s bedroom bearing on a large brass tray an iced grape fruit, a slice of dry toast, and a jug of coffee.

  “Your breakfast, sir, and it is now ten o’clock.” In France, Giles had discovered that the only way to get his master punctually on to parade was to announce to him an hour fifteen minutes in advance of the actual time. He had carried the tradition into civilian life.

  Ransom rolled over, rubbed his eyes, and worked himself slowly into a sitting posture. “Excellent, Giles, excellent. And any messages?”

  “Young Mr Somerset, sir, he’s just rung through.” Ransom raised his hands in mock astonishment.

  “What energy these young men have. And what did he want, Giles?”

  “Said he wanted to see you very particular about something, sir.”

  “And what did you say?”

  “I said you’d take a cocktail with him at the long bar at the Trocadero at a quarter past one, sir.”

  “Excellent, Giles, excellent. How well you know my habits. Anything else, Giles?”

  “No, sir. Not yet, sir.”

  “Good. Well then, in about half-an-hour, by which time I will have finished this excellent breakfast and read such of my letters as do not bear halfpenny stamps, you will perhaps turn on my bath, and put out my light grey single-breasted suit. And now, Giles, to my breakfast.”

  There were six letters on the tray, four of which were quite obviously bills. As he suspected that he had no credit left him at the bank, he decided that it was scarcely worth his while to open them. The fifth, however, was from his bank announcing that his account was overdrawn to the extent of seventeen pounds in excess of the authorised limit of his overdraft.

  “Which will mean,” he told himself, “a further inroad upon my diminishing store of capital.”

  He was still considering the problem when Giles returned to announce the presence in the hall of Captain Simon Merivale.

  “Ah, the Buccaneer,” he said. “Come in, Merivale, come in. I can’t think how you fello
ws manage to be up at this absurd hour. You must have had to shave in the dark, and I suppose your right hand is feeling very sore. It was a bad show, though, wasn’t it?”

  “The worst of it was,” said Merivale, “that those two fellows were gentlemen.”

  Ransom nodded. “In every way the worst part of it. I suppose that’s about the only way they can afford to live nowadays. I wonder, though, if it’s any worse than spying was in the War. In both cases you have to betray personal relations to advance whatever a particular government may consider to be to its interests. I don’t know that there’s much to choose.”

  “Anyhow, a fellow who does that rather puts himself outside the pale.”

  But Ransom for once as serious.

  “I don’t know, Merivale,” he said. “Frankly, I don’t know. We are hardly in a position, you see, to judge. Life’s been easy to us, you and I. We may have been hard up now and then. But we’ve never been hungry. We’ve never been cold; we’ve always had a bed to sleep in. Suppose a time were to come when we couldn’t be certain of that, when we’d got to choose between starving and taking on such a job as that. Well, my lad, it wouldn’t be very easy. And now,” he went on, “I must be thinking of my bath. Perhaps you would Watch me. You are in no hurry?”

  Merivale said that he must collect Manon Granta’s cloak which he assumed Heritage had brought away with him, but that he had half-an-hour or so to waste.

  “And what is your programme for to-day?”

  “First of all,” said Ransom, as he shuffled into his blue silk dressing-gown and heelless leather slippers—” First of all I must go and have my hair cut; then there will be a painful interview with my bank, which will probably last some while. Eric Somerset said something about wanting to take a cocktail with me. The afternoon will be devoted to a couple of bun fights, one in Hampstead, the other at Eaton Place. In the evening I’m, I think, taking Mrs Fairfield to the Comedy. A full day, Merivale.”

  There was a pause. Then in a slow, rather drawling voice: “I am not sure, you know,” said Merivale, “that the old war-horse quite approves of that party with Mrs Fairfield.”