by Alec Waugh
It was close on one o’clock; the gallery was overcrowded and by now uncomfortable.
“We’ve seen enough, haven’t we?” said Merivale.
“Let’s be moving on.”
Outside in the street the pale amber sunlight of a winter morning flickered fitfully over the few dingy trees of Leicester Square. At the doorway of the exhibition an ill-dressed, unshaven, shivering figure with a placard round his neck announcing that he had fought at Mons and Cambrai and Givenchy was offering for sale a dozen match-boxes and some shoe-laces. As they passed Ransom handed him a shilling.
“And I suppose,” he said, “that that chap, too, had his five years when he was worth something, in the same way that Archer had, and that that fellow will go on living in the reflection of them in the same way that Archer will, as long as people are ready to remember.”
“Oh, yes,” said Merivale. “We are all in the same boat really.”
Ransom had left his car in the corner of St Martin’s Street and Orange Street.
“Can I give you a lift?” he said.
Merivale shook his head. “I don’t think so, thanks very much. I’m only going to the Rag. I’d better walk. The old war-horse wants to work a bit of a thirst up for a cocktail. Let’s be meeting again soon. It’s about time we had another evening. I don’t believe we’ve had one since that very fine dinner you gave us before the police raid.”
“Not since then?” said Ransom. “Haven’t we really?”
It seemed such a long while ago, though it could not be more than five months actually. Between then and now so much had happened.
“Tell me,” said Merivale, “whom are you in love with now?”
Ransom laughed, shook his head, and smiled; a little sadly it seemed to Merivale. “I’m through with that,” he said. “There ain’t gonna be no more.”
“And how long will you go on thinking that? Till the next one comes along?”
“That’s what it usually ends in, doesn’t it?”
But not this time Merivale felt, or not at least for a long time. Ransom had cared for Marjorie. Perhaps, after all, it had not been such a bad show their loving of one another. Young Somerset couldn’t see it; but then how could he be expected to; what could he know of the compromises that life forced on you? He still thought that you could have a thing both ways; and you couldn’t, of course. You got nothing free. Everything had to be paid for, if not with money, then with the freedom to enjoy something else you valued possibly only slightly less. Somerset was too young to understand that you had to accept things on the terms life offered you. Or was it that his own generation, the pre-war crowd, or what was left of it, had not the courage to demand any longer its own terms of life. Somerset was not out for compromise. He knew what he wanted. Had his own views on what was dirty and what was clean. In the end he might come to accept a compromise; or he might not, and be a failure; or he might not, and triumph. At any rate, win or lose, it was the way the big men had triumphed, by risking failure in stating their own terms of life.
They hadn’t the courage left for that, his crowd. He remembered the accent of disgust and horror with which Eric had heard the truth of Marjorie. “What! Marjorie!” he had cried. “A kept woman. That woman, kept!” He had repeated the word, shocked and horrified. “Kept, Marjorie kept!” Well, and weren’t they all kept really, the whole lot of them, one way and another? Weren’t they living all of them in the reflection of a past quality, on the strength of something that they had done or someone had done for them? There was Vernon Archer living on his reputation, selling, because once he had been inspired, indifferent work; there was Manon Granta wedded to wealth, because eight generations back some sire of hers had earned a monarch’s favour; and Heritage kept by the industry of a grandfather; and Christopher by God knew what; and himself, for one half-hour’s act of courage, entitled for the rest of his life to maintenance and promotion and respect. They were of a piece really with that poor creature selling matches. He, too, was being kept, by what little remained of public gratitude for the men who had stood firm at Mons. Kept, all of them, in their different ways.
And it was easy enough to say that it would have been no different if there had been no war, to say that from the outset some such outcome had been predestined. How was one to know? There were crossroads in life. How could you tell, unless you had travelled both ways, if each road led to the same tavern? In one life you could only take one road.
“We’re played out,” thought Merivale. “We’ve done our work, or as much of it as we can tackle. We’re just playing out time now, waiting for the new lot, the Eric Somersets, to come through and take our places. And God knows what they’ll make of it.”
Chapter XXIV
Redeal
Four hours later in her flat alone Marjorie Fairfield sat with a letter from Eric in her hand. She had read it through so many times that she very nearly knew the words by heart, but still her eyes continued to follow the small, close-packed handwriting along its twenty odd lines of script, and her lips as her eyes followed them framed the words they read.
“I don’t know what to say, Marjorie darling. I was a cad,” the letter ran. “I will not attempt to excuse myself. I was a cad. I just appeal to your forgiveness. Forget it, Marjorie. I did not know what I was saying. It was such a shock to me. Let us forget that, along with all the other things that have to be forgotten. The past does not count. It is not what you were, but what we are going to be that matters. And we are going to be something fine. We will be married, Marjorie, at once. As soon as it can be arranged. By the end of next week it should be possible. We shall be very poor at first. But that will not matter, will it; not if we’re together? I haven’t told you though, I’m hurrying on too quickly, I haven’t explained things. It isn’t much, Marjorie, just this. I’ve given up the bar. I don’t know if I should ever have been a success, but anyhow I shouldn’t have been making any money worth speaking of for a long while. And we can’t, can we, afford to wait? So I’m giving up the bar. I haven’t told them yet, but I’m going to to-morrow, after I’ve got your message. I’m giving up the bar, and I’m taking a job as a preparatory schoolmaster in Norfolk. A fellow who was in our battery runs a place there. I went down yesterday to see him. He was a great friend of mine, and I explained to him how things were. Not everything, of course, Marjorie, just that I wanted to be married at once, and saw no chance of being able to afford it. And he thought a minute, and said: ‘I can see you through that show, Eric. I’ve a vacancy on my staff, and one can always do with another woman in the place to keep the kids in order and mind the linen. There won’t be much screw for you. But it’ll be enough to live on.’ And, of course, Marjorie, I jumped at it. It makes everything quite simple. He said we could go down there at once. We’ll only have time for about four days’ honeymoon, but you won’t mind that, will you, for our whole life together is going to be a honeymoon. Marjorie, we’ll be so happy. There’ll never have been such a marriage as ours is going to be. I’ll make you so happy. Oh, Marjorie, my love. Will you ring me up as soon as you get this? Western 50071. I’ll be waiting there all the afternoon for ‘Yes.’”
The telephone was beside her elbow, it was half-an-hour back that the letter had been brought to her by a special messenger, but her fingers had not even rested on the receiver. Wearily she passed her hand along her fringe. Oh, but she was tired. She rose to her feet, and tossed the letter upon the table and stretched her arm sideways above her head. It was a way out all right. But she was too practical a woman not to look ahead; and looking ahead, to realise how Eric would be feeling in five years’ time. Some women might have felt that the boy was ruining his life in flinging up so haphazardly the plans that had been nurtured so carefully through so many years. But she did not feel like that. If she could be certain that their life together would be a success, she would consider that for such happiness his ambition had been well exchanged. Success was only a substitute for happiness, a drug to make one believe that
one was happy. And besides she could, she was very certain, make a success of the man who loved her as she would be loved. Men were what women made them. Had she been certain that they would be happy together, she and Eric, she would not have felt that it would have been unjust in her to accept his offer. But she could not be certain, belonging as they did to different generations. Between them lay the gap of those four years, that cycle of disenchantment. She had thought of Eric as a lover, but never as a husband. There was so much that he would take so long to understand. He spoke of burying the past; but she had no wish to bury the past, the past that was a part of her. And she knew that, however he might talk now of burying the past, one day that past would be flung back at her in accusation.
She would set out aware that marriage was a compromise. Eric would set out in the boundless confidence of an untried idealism. She would be certain to disappoint him. She could not think herself back into the days when she had thought love endless. And when the time of disappointment came he would accept its coming as the symbol, not of life’s imperfection, but of her own. He would not believe that it was in that way things always happened. He would believe things had so happened because of her own unworthiness, because of that past of hers that had tarnished their love’s brief splendour. It was impossible that he should not feel that had she been a different woman their love would have retained its first intensity. Two young people setting out in life together, loving each other and believing in love’s infinity, might carry unscathed with them down the years that sweet illusion. It was not possible for her, who had seen the death of love, who had recognised in its death a forerunner of the ultimate quiescence. It was impossible for her to believe that love was endless. Where she would be trying to build out of that first rapture a permanent comradeship, Eric would be trying to retain the vividness of that first rapture, and when it went, he would seek elsewhere for it. He would not believe till he had lost it more than once that it was perishable stuff, and it would be herself that must pay the price for that first loss of it. She would be the first step in his romantic education. Facing the future with unbandaged eyes she knew that in that way and in no other way could things fare with them. They would come never to understand each other. They spoke a different language. A way out, yes; but to what and from what.
From outside on the front door came the bang suddenly of a triple knock. Everard. She had quite forgotten that Everard had promised to visit her that afternoon. He had said that he had exceptionally exciting news for her. But the announcement had not thrilled her. It was three years since anything in connection with Everard had.
He burst into the room, his face rosy with good humour and good health, his eyes glistening with excitement, his mouth parted with a smile.
“Marjorie,” he exclaimed, “Marjorie—the most wonderful news. I couldn’t tell you over the ’phone. I had to come myself and tell you. Marjorie, Marjorie, you can’t think what it means to me.”
And he had set his hands upon her shoulders and placed two quick boyish kisses upon either cheek. She smiled, fondly as a mother will over a child’s exuberance.
“And what is the news, Everard?” she said. “You haven’t told me.”
“No more, no more I have, it’s so wonderful. I can hardly tell it you.” And he pranced across the room in the manner of Scrooge when he awoke to find a score of Christmases in front of him. “The news we’ve been waiting for so long, Marjorie. The news, the only news. “Muriel’s agreeing to divorce me.”
“What!”
“ Muriel’s agreeing to divorce me. I heard to-day. Under the new Act it will be through within the year. By September we’ll be married. Marjorie, isn’t it wonderful?” He danced up to her, expecting to feel cool arms flung round his neck and warm lips set on his in a long kiss of relief and gratitude. Instead Marjorie turned away from him, walked to the mantelpiece, rested her arm along it, and leant her head forward on her elbow.
“Marjorie,” he said, his voice quivering to a note of pained surprise.
She made no answer. Her head pressed into the warm hollow of her elbow, she was facing the most actual temptation of her life. Here was the one way, the only safe way out. Eric was lost to her. But she could marry Everard, marry into a world that knew nothing of Ransom and Eric and of Manon Granta; a world where she could recover her old position, rehabilitate herself, become again a decent woman, a woman whom men could invite to their homes, would introduce to their wives. Her exile would be ended. And she would make Everard happy. She was sure of that. She knew how to make him happy. It was the surest of all ways out. She could become all those lost things again, but at the expense of the one thing that she had left to her—her self-respect.
However at other times she might have been content to drift and temporise, at the critical moments of her life she had faced the issues clearly. It did not take her two minutes to make up her mind.
Slowly she swung round to face him,
“I’m sorry, Everard,” she said, “I’m very sorry. It’s quite impossible. I can never be your wife.”
The expression of his face changed suddenly as though from behind a cloud a ray of dazzling sunshine had been flung over it.
“But I don’t, I don’t understand,” he stammered.
“Surely, Marjorie-”
She raised her hand to silence him. “It is quite impossible, Everard,” she said. “I was content to remain your mistress; it was a bargain that I kept. But your wife—no, that I can never be.”
At the word “mistress” he raised his hands in protest above his head.
“Mistress, Marjorie!” he cried, “that you’ve never been.”
“Oh yes, I have,” she said, “I have lived in your flat. I have worn the clothes you bought. I have eaten the food you paid for. For four years I have not earned a penny. I have been supported as the women in the streets are by their bodies.”
He drew his arm across his face as though he had been struck.
“Marjorie, Marjorie,” he said, “you mustn’t talk like that. You mustn’t use that word. It’s cruel.”
“I don’t want to be cruel, Everard,” and her voice softened. “But it’s the truth I’m telling you.”
“It’s not the truth, it’s not the truth,” he protested, “or if it is, it’s a subversion of the truth. You say you’ve let me give you things. But isn’t it the privilege of love to give and the privilege of love to accept? Isn’t that the basis of all marriages—the sharing of everything one has? I had money and you hadn’t. You were my wife—I looked on you as my wife—I honoured you as my wife—I gave you everything that I would have given to a wife—you were my wife in everything but the name.”
“Oh yes, I know,” she said impatiently, “a wife’s just a super mistress. I know that. That isn’t the point, Everard. You wouldn’t let me finish, you wouldn’t let me explain why it is impossible for me ever to become your wife.”
His hand fluttered to his side. His voice was lifted to a wail of imploring misery.
“Why, Marjorie, why; in God’s name, why?”
“Because,” and her voice was calm and hard, “I have been for the last two years unfaithful to you. I have been the mistress of one man, and I was prepared, had he wished it, to be the mistress of another. As such I can never be your wife.”
Everard gasped, his knees sagged and struck together as the knees of a boxer who has been hit above the heart. He flung out towards the table a hand to steady himself, and stood there rocking dumbly.
“I am sorry, Everard,” she said. “I have treated you very badly. Things went that way. And I suppose,” she added, “I gave you some happy times.”
He nodded. He was past power of speech.
“I will leave the flat,” she went on, “to-morrow. It will be impossible after what has happened for me to go on living here. I will post the keys to you to-morrow evening.”
She stood, her mouth set, her hands clasped behind her back, her eyes fixed on the catch of the left-hand windo
w-pane. He opened his mouth, appeared to be about to speak, said nothing, then turned and walked with bent shoulders from the room.
Quietly the front door was swung to behind him, faintly the sound of his feet on the stone flagged stairs fell fainter.
“That’s that,” she said, “and I suppose I’m a fool, and I suppose, as Ransom used to say, ‘I’ve chucked away my wicket.’ And a lot of good it’s done me. I have only made him miserable, whereas I might have made him happy. He’s got twenty or thirty years in front of him. They may be pretty wretched ones because of me. I suppose I was the basket he put all his eggs into. Still, I’m glad I did it.”
On the table where she had tossed it lay the crumpled ball of Eric’s letter to her. She picked it up, smoothed out the paper, re-read the small, close-packed handwriting, then shook her head, crumpled it up, and tossed it on the fire. Not that way. If she had not wanted that before, she was not going to want it now. She walked over to the gramophone, turned the handle, lifted the lid, searched for a moment among the cardboard-covered records. “Horsey” or “What’ll I do?” After a moment’s hesitation she decided against the waltz, but as she swayed backwards to the rhythm across the room, a look of discontent crept slowly upwards across her face. She was tired of dancing. She had met Everard at a dance, and Eric at a dance, and in those days so far distant as to belong seemingly to another century it was at a dance that she had met her husband. Her whole life seemed to have gone to the syncopation of these eternal foxtrots.
Dejectedly she sank down upon the sofa. She was tired, tired of this idealism that had made such demands on her, that had refused to let her be, that had made a goddess instead of a woman of her. She wanted to be herself. She did not want to inspire or reform or influence. She wanted to be herself—to be herself and to be understood. There was no one really except Ransom who had understood her, no one except Ransom whom she had wanted for his own sake. She had accepted the others out of gratitude for their need of her. Because she could not exist when she was not loved. From the gramophone came the scrunch of a completed record. “Good for the sound-box that,” she thought, but she made no attempt to rescue it. Let the thing run down. No one but Ransom had understood her, no one but Ransom could understand her. There was only Ransom. There had been others, but they had not mattered. There was only Ransom.