Kept

by Alec Waugh

  The waiter was hovering behind young Somerset. Merivale had finished his partridge some five minutes back, but the half of Eric’s was untouched, and he was making no attempt to eat it. The waiter’s gaze met Simon’s interrogatively. Merivale nodded. “Yes, take it away,” he said.

  The savoury arrived, a thin layer of mushrooms with the soft roe of a herring laid across it.

  “Now this is very good,” said Merivale. “Rouse yourself from your reverie, brother, and have a stab at it. Like most foods it’s better hot.”

  “I’m not hungry,” said Eric.

  “No? Then you may put, waiter, both savouries on my plate.”

  They did not speak another word during dinner. Eric refused liqueurs, and murmured something about not smoking cigars during the football season. They sat in silence over their coffee in the lounge; a silence though that embarrassed neither of them. Eric was, Merivale suspected, on the whole grateful for his company.

  For twenty minutes or so they remained there, then Merivale rose to his feet. “As an old footballer,” he said, “I shouldn’t recommend you to be in bed after ten.”

  Eric nodded and followed him out into the hall. “I’m afraid I’ve been a rotten guest,” he said, as they stood collecting their coats and hats from the cloakroom. Merivale smiled, but did not answer.

  “Which way are you going?” he asked, as they walked out into Pall Mall. “The tube to Earl’s Court? Then I’ll walk up with you to Dover Street.”

  It was a clear though a cold night, and the stars seemed to shine the brighter through the frosted air, seemed to find a reflection almost in the shining surface of the deserted roadway. As they crossed the road at the corner of St James’s Merivale passed his arm through Somerset’s.

  “I don’t know what you’re feeling now,” he said, “or how much you’re feeling. But we’ve all felt at one time or another, even the most seemingly prosaic of us, very much what you’re feeling now. We’ve thought that our hearts were going to break and that there was nothing left in life worth living for. But one’s heart doesn’t break, Eric, and new things come to replace lost things. Everything passes, Eric It’s not pleasant to remember that when one is happy. Usually at such times one doesn’t choose to think of it. But when you’re unhappy it’s not uncomforting to look back three or four or even a couple of years, and say to yourself: ‘Of all the things and people that filled my life then, of all the things that excited me, or saddened me, or made me happy, is there anything that remains. I have made new friends; I have found new interests. It is by different things now that I am saddened, and excited, and amused.’ Look back four years, Eric, and you’ll find that true. And then look forward four years and say to yourself: ‘In 1929 I shall be twenty-eight. A young man, younger than sixty per cent, of the heroes of plays and films and novels—twenty-eight, with the best of life in front of me. And of all the things that make me unhappy now, there will be no more trace than there is to-day of the things that were worrying me in 1920.’ And it’ll be true, Eric, of all this there won’t be a trace left in four years’ time.”

  Eric did not answer. There was, indeed, no answer that he could have made. They walked in silence up St James’s.

  “Good night,” said Eric, at the corner of Piccadilly, abruptly, almost rudely, as though his voice were only half under his control.

  Chapter XIX

  Shuffling The Pack

  Simon Merivale, in company with the majority of young men, regarded his parents’ house chiefly as an inexpensive and convenient hotel. He would announce by telegram from Aldershot the imminence of his arrival, rush home at about half-past six, deposit a suitcase in the larger of the two spare bedrooms, expect to find both it and the bathroom unoccupied, change, shave, take a bath, borrow his father’s or his brother’s latchkey, and disappear at a quarter to eight into a taxi. He would return at any hour between one and six. His breakfast he would expect to have served to him in bed, and as he would leave the house shortly after ten, he would have spent in all not more than fifteen minutes in the communal portion of the house. When, therefore, at the conclusion of his evening with Eric Somerset, he inserted the latchkey in the door actually before ten o’clock, he considered himself to be an example of filial devotion.

  “If only,” he thought, “there were more sons like me.” A reflection that he repeated as he stood on the threshold of the house. The hall was in a state of generous confusion. A suitcase had been deposited before the fireplace. A greatcoat had been tossed across it. A walking-stick, a scarf, a cap, and a pair of gloves were littered about its base. On the central table was piled high a diffused collection of papers, magazines, and books, all of which was circumstantial evidence of his brother’s precipitate and unheralded return a few minutes earlier from Oxford.

  “Let’s hope,” he murmured, “that the poor lad has been sent down for some creditable offence.”

  David Merivale was standing in a characteristic attitude before the fire. His hands were driven deep into the pockets of a pair of grubby and uncreased grey flannel trousers that terminated unevenly above a pair of checked and unsuspended socks. His hair was unarranged about his forehead, his tie was unarranged about his neck, and the patterned woollen jumper about his waist was a triumph of pictorial disarrangement. Simon opened his mouth in protest, but his brother was the first to score.

  “If only,” he said, “I could persuade you to patronise a less urban tailor. In my city there are several such, and it would so improve my credit.”

  His brother was wise enough to retort in a different key. “And was it for drunkenness,” he asked, “that they have sent you down?”

  “I have not been sent down,” said David proudly. “I have come down; and I may add that it will be many months before the college authorities will be able to reconcile themselves to my desertion. I have come down,” and he paused dramatically to give the full value to his confession, “I have come down, my poor friend, to enter the holy state of matrimony.”

  “What!”

  “Yes, isn’t it splendid?” Sybyl interrupted. “David’s just heard this morning that he’s got a post in Leeds as lecturer on music. He never thought he’d get it. He’s going to begin in January, and, of course, he’s going to marry first.”

  “Of course,” Simon agreed weakly.

  “Isn’t it wonderful?” Sybyl chattered on. “I never thought the poor darlings would be able to manage it for years and years, and now they’ll be able to in about three weeks’ time.”

  “You see,” David panted out, “I am only getting three fifty a year actually, but I shall be given rooms and meals and things, so that it’s the equivalent of about six hundred; and one ought to be able to manage on six hundred.”

  “Of course you can manage on six hundred,” This from Sybyl. “It won’t be easy, Nothing that’s worth having is. Don’t you agree with us, Simon?”

  “I should,” he answered, “be in a better position to agree with you if I had the slightest idea in whom my brother was proposing to invest the capital of his life’s companionship.” A derisive laugh greeted this admission of ignorance.

  “Why, but surely—”

  “No, really, Sybyl, I assure you.”

  “But do you mean to say you’ve never guessed?”

  “I can’t say that I’ve had many opportunities of guessing; the old war-horse is ridden hard. He has not the time for these frivolities. He does not accompany you on your Terpsichorean revelries.”

  “Isn’t this though too amusing,” and Sybyl clapped her hands delightedly together. “I thought everybody knew. Let’s see if he can guess, David. Whom do you think it is now, Simon?”

  The old war-horse shook his head.

  “I only trust,” he said, “that you are not proposing to elope with Manon Granta? No. Then I may stable myself in peace. Who is it, Sybyl?”

  “My dear Simon, who could it be but Blanch.”

  “Blanch?”

  so young.”

  �
��It is,” said Simon, but it was not really about David that I have come to see you.”

  “No?”

  “Blanch Tristram.”

  “Oh!”

  It was uttered so misgivingly, on a note of such uncompromising alarm, that the elation subsided instantly in Sybyl’s face.

  “Why, what is it, Simon?” she asked “What’s the matter?”

  “Nothing,” he said, “nothing, only—”

  “Only what?”

  “Only nothing, Sybyl.”

  “But there must be something; you wouldn’t have said ‘Oh’ like that, unless there had been.”

  “There’s nothing,” he repeated obstinately.

  “You don’t like Blanch, Simon?”

  “My dear Sybyl, I’ve hardly seen her.”

  “Then is there anything you know against her?”

  “Oh, don’t bother him,” David interrupted impatiently. “Whatever it may be, he’s not going to let us know.”

  “But I want to know, David,” she persisted. “You ought to tell us, Simon. It isn’t fair not to. Why did you say ’Oh’ like that? Do you know anything against her?”

  Simon rose from his chair. “I’m very sorry,” he said, “I shouldn’t have; but it was a surprise to me, that’s all. I’m tired. I’m going to bed now. Good night.”

  “Perhaps,” Sybyl suggested, as the door closed behind him, “he was half in love with her himself.”

  David shrugged his shoulders. “More probably he hasn’t enjoyed his dinner. Poor old Simon! But any how it doesn’t matter.”

  “No, no, of course it doesn’t. Not the leastest bit, not the very leastest bit. Oh, David, darling, I am so happy.”

  And jumping from her chair, she ran across the room to him, flung her arms about his neck, and kissed him.

  By eleven o’clock next morning Simon Merivale had called at Everard Tristram’s office.

  “I’m David’s brother,” he explained.

  “Oh yes, of course, I’ve heard of you. A great deal in fact. I’d been looking forward to meeting you. We must have a dinner, the lot of us, one day soon. I must get my wife to arrange it. Everything has been so hurried. I had no idea they were in love with one another; that they were in the least bit serious. It was a great surprise to her mother and myself.”

  “I only heard last night.”

  “And you’ve come round at once to see me. Now that is extremely nice of you.”

  He spoke quickly and nervously, and his eyes as he spoke shifted from one side of the room to the other. It seemed curious to Simon that a man with so diffident a manner should have been so successful in a world that despised diffidence. Perhaps, though, it was only in his personal transactions that he was unassertive. For Simon had often noticed that the more completely a man expressed his nature in his work, the less need he found to be assertive in his life.

  “Extremely kind of you,” Everard Tristram was repeating. “I had thought, as a matter of fact, of paying a visit this evening on your parents. They would be in, do you think?”

  “Probably.”

  “And we might arrange then an evening for the party. There are so many things to speak about. It is extremely fortunate that David should have secured so good a post so young.”

  “It is,” said Simon, “but it was not really about David that I have come to see you.”

  “No?”

  “No, Mr Tristram, it was not,” and Simon Merivale leant forward in his chair. “I hope that you will not think I am being impertinent, but what I really came to say to you was this: I am the friend, in a way we are all of us the friend, of Mrs Fairfield.”

  Three minutes earlier Simon Merivale had wondered how a man so seemingly ineffectual as Everard Tristram had made a success in commerce. He had a glimpse now into the secret of that success. Everard Tristram, whatever else he might not be, was a man who saw things through. His eyes no longer flickered about the room; his fingers no longer toyed awkwardly with the haft of his paper-cutter. Still and silent and composed, he looked Simon Merivale in the face.

  “I see,” he said.

  “It makes things,” said Simon, “rather difficult.”

  Everard Tristram bent his head forward in agreement. “Extremely,” he replied. “Do you know her well?”

  “Fairly, not very. Better than the rest though. David’s only met her once, I think; where your daughter did—at Lady Manon’s.”

  “I know, I had heard that she met Blanch. It was to be expected, I suppose. Marjorie’s very popular. She goes about a great deal. And you feel, I suppose, that you may run into her any day.”

  Simon nodded.

  “And now that we’re one family as it were, that’s going to be a little awkward. Yes, I see that, I see that quite clearly: diplomatic relations with an unrecognised government. Yes, I do see that; what’s to be done about it, though?”

  “It’s no business of mine, I suppose,” said Merivale, “but it wouldn’t be a bad thing if one way or another it could be settled.”

  “I know,” and in the utter misery of that reply Everard Tristram’s brief show of courage left him. He was unmanned again, and weak, and helpless. “I know, I know,” he repeated. “For four years I’ve known it. But my wife won’t move. She won’t do anything. She refuses to divorce me. And I can’t leave Marjorie, I can’t, can I? She’s been so good to me. She’s stuck to me all this time, when she could have so easily, had she wanted, married someone else. She must have had many chances. I must stick to her, you do see that, don’t you, Merivale?”

  Simon nodded. He had only, he knew, to say one word to straighten out this business for all time. He had only to tell Tristram all he knew, and all that of Eric Somerset he half suspected. Were Tristram to be told that for two years his mistress had been unfaithful to him, and that she was contemplating infidelity with a second lover, there would be no need for family councils and family dissensions. There would be between them then no further obligation; no obligation, that was to say, that money could not settle. There would be no moral obligation, and it was the moral obligation, the responsibility of having accepted a gift made freely with no terms attached to it, that made for men of decent feeling the ties of free love as binding as those of marriage. There was no moral obligation now between Everard Tristram and Mrs Fairfield. None, certainly, that Tristram would himself admit, and perhaps it was his duty to free permanently from such imaginary obligations the man who was about to become a member of his family: his duty to do everything that might make easier his brother’s marriage. He had no right perhaps to withhold the knowledge that would so completely clear a difficult position.

  A crumpled figure, Everard Tristram bent forward across his desk. Would he be happier though, or sadder, were he to know the truth? But then it was not Everard Tristram’s happiness he was considering. Nor was it indeed the happiness of his brother and his family, or the happiness for that matter of the greater number, but the more ponderable sense of chivalry that made the uttering of those words impossible. Whatever might be expedient for him to do, whatever technically it might be just for him to do, whatever it might even be his duty to do, he knew that were he to tell the truth to Tristram he would hold himself for the rest of his life in his own esteem an utter cad.

  “Perhaps,” he said, “your wife may feel differently now. It was for your children’s sake that you kept this hidden. Perhaps she might think it was for them now to decide what was to happen.”

  Everard Tristram made no reply. He rocked his head from side to side miserably along his arms.

  “Don’t you think,” Merivale persisted, “that if your wife had it put to her that way, she might reconsider her decision now?”

  And so, two evenings later, there was held that family council that Simon had so dreaded and could so easily have avoided. It was held in Mrs Tristram’s drawing-room. There were six of them, David and Blanch, Simon, and John Tristram and his parents; and it was Mrs Tristram who spoke. She was a small, thin woman, with
pinched features and lined cheeks, who sat very straight and still in a high-backed Queen Anne chair, her arms folded across her chest.

  “I have to tell you,” she said, “something that I had hoped you would need never know, but which Blanch’s engagement has made it necessary for you to know. Five years ago your father told me that he had fallen in love with a young war widow whom he wished to marry. For your sakes I refused to divorce him. Your father and I for a long time had not, perhaps, been very much in sympathy; but if you make a home, you should maintain a home. That, at any rate, is what I felt and what I feel. I may have been wrong, but I did what I did do for your sakes. I refused to divorce your father. For the last four years that woman has been your father’s mistress. No, please, Everard, do not interrupt; anything that you may wish to say you can say afterwards. For four years, I repeat, she has been your father’s mistress. I have never met her, I know nothing of her, I have imagined her to be a scheming and self-seeking woman, who wished to get an older man into her power. I imagined that when she discovered I would not divorce your father, she would turn to what she would describe as more profitable game. She has not, however, done so. Perhaps I have misjudged her. An intrigue which I had expected to see ended in four months has lasted for four years. I may, I repeat, have been wrong in my estimate of this woman’s character, but were the situation to arise again, I should act precisely as I have acted. I behaved according to my standards and what I believed to be my children’s interest.

  “The position, now that Blanch is to be married, is somewhat different. This woman, Mrs Fairfield, is, I learn, a friend of David’s brother. She has met David, and she has met Blanch. In the world, Blanch, into which you are marrying, it is possible that you may be meeting her. The situation, whatever attitude you may adopt towards her, will be difficult. Simon has known her, though not intimately, for two years. He feels, and I agree with him, that he could scarcely be anything but friendly to her. You, if you were with Simon, would have to behave as he behaved. You would have to recognise, that is to say, a woman whom your mother cannot recognise, who has indeed supplanted your mother in your father’s life. It is not a moment that I envy you. Perhaps, though, you might prefer the possibility of such moments to a divorce suit between your parents. For that is the only alternative. Your father will not leave this woman. So if you, my children, should desire it, now that you have come to an age when you may decide such matters for yourselves, I am prepared to divorce your father, and make this Mrs Fairfield a woman whom you need not be ashamed to meet.”