by Sapper
Personally I have always thought that money had a good deal to do with it. Not that John wasn’t quite a decent fellow, but having said that you’d said all. By no possible stretch of imagination could he be regarded as the sort of man to inspire romance in a girl’s heart. He was far too self-centred: far too much the business man to the exclusion of everything else. And yet, Mary, with numerous men at her feet, had selected him.
My own impression was that she had begun to regret it. They got on very well together, but it was a very restrained relationship. She liked him and he was inordinately proud of her – and that was the end of it. So much for our host and hostess.
There was a married couple – Peter Dankerton and his wife. He was a bridge fiend with the tongue of an adder – but distinctly good-looking and very amusing company.
The younger element consisted of Tony Merrick, a subaltern in the Gunners, and a jolly little kid called Marjorie Stanway, who spent most of their time practising new steps in the hall to a gramophone.
And finally there was a man called Miles Standish, who was the only one I had never met before. He was a planter of sorts out in the FMS. About thirty years old, he seemed to have been everywhere and done everything. He had rather a lazy, pleasant voice, and a trick of raising his eyebrows when he spoke that made the most ordinary remark seem amusing: and little Marjorie, to the fury of young Merrick, adored him openly. In fact, the outstanding personality of the party, Mary always excepted.
She introduced me to him as soon as I arrived.
“The only one you don’t know, Bill,” she said. “Miles – this is Bill Canford, who is almost a fixture about the house.”
“A very pleasant occupation,” he remarked lightly, and I got the impression that his eyes were very observant. “If I could afford to become a fixture, I should choose an English country house to do it in.”
We talked on casually for a while, and he was certainly a most interesting man. And an efficient one. His knowledge, obviously acquired on the spot, of rubber and its future showed him as a man who could observe and think for himself.
“And where,” I said, after a while, “is our worthy host?”
“My dear Bill,” laughed Mary, looking up from the tea table, “John has got a new toy. His present secretary’s face is so frightful that he can’t bear her in the same room with him. So he has got a sort of phonograph machine – a super-dictaphone I think he calls it – and he dictates his letters into it. You don’t have to talk into a trumpet like you do with most of them. It stands in a corner, and looks just like an ordinary box. Then each morning she comes and takes off the records and writes down what he has said.”
“It might almost have been worthwhile to change his secretary,” said Standish lazily. “Still he is doubtless very happy.”
He leant over to light her cigarette, and I was struck by the atmosphere of physical fitness that seemed to radiate from the man. Hard as nails: without an ounce of superfluous flesh on him. In fact a pretty tough customer in a rough house.
I suppose a woman would have spotted the lie of the land that night after dinner. In the light of subsequent events I now realise that the tension was already there, though I didn’t get it personally. It was just a little thing – a casual scrap of conversation between two rubbers. Standish was shuffling the cards, and Phyllis Dankerton, who had been his partner, made some remark about the excellence of his bridge not having been impaired by his living in the back of beyond.
He grinned and said, “We’re not all savages, Mrs Dankerton. Even though there aren’t no Ten Commandments, and a man can raise a thirst.”
“At the moment,” remarked John Somerville quietly, “we don’t happen to be East of Suez.”
The faintest of smiles flickered for an instant round Phyllis Dankerton’s lips. Then –
“How marvellously Kipling gets human nature, doesn’t he?” she murmured. “You and I, Bill – and an original no trumper of mine is open to the gravest suspicion.”
Yes – the tension had begun. To what extent it had grown I don’t know: but it was there. As I say, I realised that afterwards. John Somerville suspected his wife and Standish. Not that he said anything, or even hinted at anything that night, with the exception of that one remark. As always he was the courteous perfect host – at least so it seemed to me. Though when a couple of days later I was discussing things with Phyllis Dankerton she regarded me pityingly when I said so.
“My dear man,” she said, “you must be partially wanting. There is an atmosphere in this house you could cut with a knife. Our worthy John is watching those two like a cat watches a mouse. It’s all excessively amusing.”
“Do you think Mary is in love with Standish?” I said.
“Wasn’t it Maugham who said in one of his plays that a lot of unnecessary fuss is made about the word love? Quite obviously she is immensely attracted by him – who wouldn’t be? I’m crazy about him myself. And, my dear Bill, I might be eighty-one with false teeth for all the notice he takes of me. It’s cruel hard on a deserving girl. There’s poor old Peter who wouldn’t notice the Alps unless they were covered with Stock Exchange quotations, and yet I throw myself at that brute’s head in vain.”
“I wonder how Mary met him,” I said.
“Really, Bill,” she cried impatiently, “you’re intolerably dull today. She met him in the same way that everybody does meet people presumably. Anyway what does it matter? The beginning has nothing to do with it: it’s the end that interests me.”
“You really think that it’s serious,” I said.
She shrugged her shoulders.
“With a woman like Mary, you never know. I don’t believe she would ever have a real affair with a man if she was still living in her husband’s house. But she’s quite capable of bolting for good and all if she loved the man sufficiently. Cheer up, Bill,” she laughed, “it’s not your palaver. By the look on your face Mary might be your wife.”
“I’m very fond of Mary,” I said stiffly. “We’ve known one another since we were kids.”
And at that moment young Merrick came in and the conversation dropped. But I couldn’t get it out of my mind. That there should be even the bare possibility of Mary running away with another man seemed to knock the bottom out of my universe. And soon I found myself watching them too, and trying to gauge the state of the affair. Was Mary in love with him? That was the question I asked myself a dozen times a day. That he should be in love with her was only natural. But was the converse true? I studied her expression when she didn’t know I was looking at her, and I had to admit that there was a change. For a few moments, perhaps, she would sit sunk in her thoughts, and then she would make an effort to pull herself together and be laughing and bright as she always used to be. But it was forced, and I knew it: she couldn’t deceive me. And sometimes when she came out of her reverie, if Standish was in the room her eyes would rest on him for a second, as if she was trying to find the answer to some unspoken question.
Then I started to watch him. But there wasn’t much to be got from Miles Standish’s face. Years of poker playing had turned it into an expressionless mask when he wished to make it so. But I managed to catch him unawares once or twice. After lunch one day, for instance. He was holding a match for her cigarette, and over the flame their eyes had met. And in his was a look of such concentrated love and passion as I have never seen before. Then, in an instant it was gone, and he made some commonplace remark. But to me it seemed as if the truth had been proclaimed through a megaphone.
And another time it was even more obvious. Without thinking I went into the billiard-room, and they were alone there. They were standing very close together by the fireplace talking earnestly, and as I opened the door they moved apart quickly. In fact it was so obvious that I almost committed the appalling solecism of apologising for intruding. Standish picked up a paper; Mary smiled and said, “Why don’t you two men have a game?” But once again the truth had been shouted to high Heaven: these two were
in love with one another. What was going to be the end of it? Was Mary going to bolt with him, or would the whole thing die a natural death when he went out East again?
I believe it might have been the latter, had John Somerville not brought matters to a head. It was after dinner, on the same day that I had surprised them in the billiard-room.
“By the way, Standish,” he said as we were beginning to form up for bridge, “when are you going back again?”
“I haven’t quite decided yet,” said Standish, lighting a cigarette. “Not for some little while, I think.”
“Want to pay a round of visits, I suppose, and see all your friends. I’ve just remembered, my dear,” he turned to his wife, “Henry Longstaffe is very anxious to come for a few days, as soon as we can put him up. He and I have a rather considerable business deal to discuss.”
I glanced at Phyllis Dankerton: a smile was hovering on her lips.
I glanced at Miles Standish: his face was expressionless. I glanced at Mary: she was staring at her husband. Because all three of them knew, as I knew, that there was no spare room in the house. If Henry Longstaffe came to stay, somebody had to go.
“I’m afraid I shall have to fold up my tent and fade away very soon,” said Standish easily. “Would the day after tomorrow do for Mr Longstaffe, or would you sooner he came tomorrow?”
“The day after tomorrow will do perfectly,” said Somerville. “Sorry you can’t stop longer.”
And then we sat down to bridge in an atmosphere, as Phyllis Dankerton afterwards described it, which would have frozen a furnace. Nothing more, of course, was said – but words were unnecessary. The gloves were off, and everyone knew it. Miles Standish had been kicked out of the house as blatantly as if he had been shown the door. Moreover it had been done in the presence of all of us, which made the matter worse.
“I think John is a fool,” said Phyllis Dankerton to me just before we went to bed. “And a vulgar fool at that. One doesn’t do that sort of thing in front of other people. If I was Mary I’d give him such a telling off as he would never forget.”
“He’s an extremely angry man,” I remarked. “And that accounts for it.”
“Then it oughtn’t to,” she retorted. “It simply isn’t done. To have said it to him privately would have been a very different matter. And you mark my words, Bill. Unless I’m much mistaken friend John will have achieved the exact opposite to what he intended. He has simply forced their hands.”
“You think she’ll run away with him?” I said.
“I think she is far more likely to now than she was before. And if she does John will be very largely to blame. Tomorrow is going to be the crucial day, while he is in London. The great decision will be made then.”
She gave a little bitter laugh and her eyes were very sad.
“God! what fools women are,” she said under her breath. “What damned fools!”
Then she went to bed, leaving me to a final nightcap. And when I had followed her example, and lay tossing and turning, unable to sleep, there was one picture I couldn’t get out of my mind. It was the picture of Mary and Miles Standish together, leaning over the stern of an East-bound liner. And at last they turn and look at one another, as man and woman look at one another when they love. Then they go below.
I must get the events of the next day straight in my mind. Phyllis Dankerton was right: it was the crucial day. But somehow or other things seem a little blurred in my head. I’m not quite certain of the order in which they happened.
First of all there came the interview between Mary and Miles Standish. I overheard part of it – deliberately. They were in the billiard-room once more, and I happened to stroll past the little window, at one end of the room which is high up in the wall. It was open, and I could hear what they said distinctly, though they couldn’t see me.
“My dear,” Standish was saying, “it’s a big decision that will alter your life completely and irrevocably. It’s a decision that cannot be come to lightly. Divorce and that sort of thing seem a comparatively small matter when applied to other people. But when it’s applied to oneself it doesn’t seem quite so small. Wait, my darling, wait: let me have my say first. You are going to be the one who has to make the big sacrifice. It’s not going to affect me: it never does affect the man. And in my case even less so than usual. My home is out East: it doesn’t matter the snap of a finger what I do. But with you it’s different. You’re giving up all this: you’re running away with a man who is considerably poorer than your husband. You are coming to a strange life, amid strange surroundings – a life you may not like. But a life, which, if you do leave your husband you will have to stick to.”
Yes: he put it very fairly, did Miles Standish. There was no trace of pleading or emotion in his voice: he seemed to be at pains to keep everything matter of fact. And because of that the force of the appeal was doubled.
“We are neither of us children, Mary.” The quiet, measured words went on. “We know enough to disregard catch-phrases like the world being well lost for love. It isn’t, and nobody but a fool would think it was. And if you come with me it won’t be – it will be changed, that’s all. But it’s going to be a big change: that’s what I want you to get into your head.”
And then, at last, Mary spoke.
“I realise that it’s going to be a big change, Miles. Do you really think that matters? I realise that life out there will be different to this. Do you really think I care? My dear, it’s not any material alteration in surroundings that has made me hesitate – it’s been something far more important and fundamental. I’m not going to mince words: you attracted me from the first time we met. But my great problem was – was it only attraction? If so, I’d have been a fool to go. It is a big decision as you say – an irrevocable one, and to take it because of a passing whim would be folly. Last night – when John said what he did to you – I knew with absolute certainty. Every single instinct and thought of mine ranged themselves on your side. I’ve never loved John: now I positively dislike him.”
“That’s not quite enough, Mary,” said Standish gravely. “I don’t want you to come with me because you dislike John: I want you to come with me because you love me.”
“Miles – my darling.”
I scarcely heard the words, so softly were they spoken. And then came silence. In my mind I could see them there staring into one another’s eyes: staring down the unknown path that they were to take together. A little blindly I turned and walked away. The matter was decided: the choice had been made. For good or ill Mary was going with Miles Standish.
“Bill, what is the matter with you? Are you ill?”
With an effort I pulled myself together: Phyllis Dankerton was looking at me with amazement on her face.
“Not a bit,” I answered. “Why should I be?”
“My dear man,” she said lightly, “I am partially responsible for Peter’s tummy, but I hold no brief for yours. I don’t know why you should be ill, but you certainly look it. Incidentally I saw our two turtledoves making tracks for the billiard-room. I wonder if the momentous decision has yet been reached.”
I said nothing: I felt I couldn’t stand the worry any more. Phyllis Dankerton is all right in small doses, but there are times when she drives one positively insane. So I made some fatuous remark and left her, vaguely conscious that the surprised look had returned to her face. What the devil did it matter? What did anything matter except that Mary was going with Miles Standish?
Nothing could alter that fact now: they were neither of them the type of people who change their mind once it is made up. And at dinner that night I found myself watching them curiously. They were both more silent than usual, which was hardly to be wondered at. And John Somerville, who obviously had not yet been told kept glancing from one to the other.
That he would be told I felt sure. The idea of bolting on the sly would not appeal to either Mary or Standish: they weren’t that sort. But would it be done after dinner, or postponed to the follow
ing day? Or would Standish go in the ordinary course of events, leaving Mary to break the news to John?
The point was settled after dinner. John Somerville had gone to his room to write some letters, and suddenly I saw Standish glance at Mary significantly. Then with a quick little nod he left the room.
“What about a stroll, Canford?” said young Merrick, and automatically I got up. Why not?
“It strikes me,” he remarked confidentially when we were out of earshot, “that there’s a bit of an air of gloom and despondency brooding over the old ancestral hall. Somerville’s face at dinner was enough to turn the butter rancid. And Standish seems quite different these last few days.”
“When a man,” I remarked, “is in love with another man’s wife and the other man finds it out, it doesn’t make for conviviality in the house.”
He stopped dead and stared at me.
“Good Lord!” he muttered, “that’s the worry, is it? Well, I’m damned. I never spotted it. But I jolly well know which of the two I’d choose. Mine host, even though I’m eating his salt is not much to my liking.”
“Perhaps not,” I said curtly. “But he happens to be your hostess’s husband.”
“You mean to say,” he began, and then suddenly he gripped my arm.
“My God! Canford – look there.”
We were about a hundred yards from the house. From one of the downstairs rooms the light was streaming out through the open French windows. And the room was John Somerville’s study. He was standing up with his back to the desk facing Miles Standish, and it was evident that a bitter quarrel was in progress. We could hear no actual words, but the attitude of the two men told its own tale.
“Damn it – let’s clear out,” muttered Merrick. “Rather rotten, don’t you think? Seems like spying on them. I’m going back to the house anyway.”