She looked at Quarrendon.
His face had not altered. He was still gazing out, through the thick lenses of his spectacles, in the direction of the poppies.
“It’s nice of you not to laugh, or—or despise me or anything,” she said humbly.
“Why should I? In the first place, I’m honoured by your confidence, and in the second, what you’ve just told me is quite serious. Not because it’s true—which of course it isn’t—but because you evidently believe it to be true.”
“I thought it might be. You see, he kissed me, at a dance, and I simply hated it. He was quite nice, really—I’d liked him, till then.”
“But you weren’t in love with him.”
“Oh good heavens, no. And he wasn’t, with me.”
“Then, if I may say so, he was a cad, as well as being a conceited fool, to kiss you. What right had he to expect you to tolerate it—let alone like it?”
“Girls do,” suggested Sylvia. “At least, they always say they do. It’s supposed to be a sort of compliment.”
This time Quarrendon did turn round and look full at her.
She had the curious feeling that he could communicate his thought to her without speaking it aloud.
“Do you mean that they just pretend to themselves they like it, because they think they’re being modern, or grown-up or something?” He nodded.
“But some really do.”
“Some, yes. But not people like you.”
“Nothing to do with my being frigid?”
“Nothing. That was just the young man, pretending. It was naturally more soothing to his vanity to see you as frigid than himself as unattractive.”
They both laughed.
“How easy it is to talk to you!” cried Sylvia.
“Is it? You don’t mind my being so very much older than you are?”
“Oh no. Why should I?”
“I don’t know. But it’s thought to make a difference. As regards sharing the same point of view, I suppose. I don’t quite see why it should, though.”
“Neither do I. Do you think it does—in our case?”
He shook his head.
“No. I’ve had more experience than you, because I’ve lived longer, that’s all. I think that fundamentally we probably see things the same way. That’s why I like talking to you, too.”
Sylvia lifted radiant eyes to his.
“It’s marvellous, for me.”
“Then we’re friends, Sylvia?”
“Oh yes, Andrew.”
He lightly placed his hand over hers for a moment.
(3)
Quarrendon had for years been the victim of his own susceptibility.
Very few women attracted him, but with the ones that did, he usually fell very deeply in love. These affairs interfered with his work, perturbed him profoundly, and always went on long after they should have come to an end—either because he lacked the courage to make a break or because the woman refused to admit that their passion could last for anything less than eternity. He had long ago resolved never to marry. This was partly because he distrusted entirely his own capacity for making any woman happy, and partly because, in the last analysis, freedom to do his own work in his own way was the thing that he most wanted.
His life at Oxford suited him exactly. He wanted to live amongst books, to talk with men whose interests were the same as his own, to write, and to make love to a woman when the desire to do so became over-mastering.
The major emotional crisis of his life had been over more than ten years ago. Never, he supposed, would he love again as he had loved the young, unhappy wife of one of his best friends.
The affair had ended, curiously, with the death of his friend. The lovers—they had been lovers in the full sense of the word—had been confronted with the discovery that they had no longer any wish to spend the rest of their lives together in a joint domesticity.
How he blessed her still for the candour and the generosity with which she had followed him all the way, in their painful and searching struggle to attain to the disappointing, humiliating truth!
Since then he had cared deeply—though far less deeply—for two women, both of them unmarried, although neither was in her early youth.
The first of them, frankly out for a passionate affair and nothing more, had been a reckless and joyous companion throughout a long summer holiday in Bavaria.
She still wrote to him; and they met occasionally, without emotion, excepting friendly pleasure, on either side.
The other, a passionate, intelligent creature of violent moods, had speedily exhausted both Quarrendon and herself. They had parted, only to come together again, and part again.
The final severance had been three years ago.
Quarrendon had not deluded himself, then or at any time, that he was finished with emotional vicissitudes. He knew only too well that sooner or later the fatal spark would be struck again. He was not even sure that he would, wholly, regret it.
Sheer chance had led him into Claudia Winsloe’s office. He had found her intelligence and vitality stimulating, and had been faintly flattered besides that she should take the trouble to make herself attractive to him—for Quarrendon was under no illusions as to his looks, his absence of social adroitness, and his middle-age.
As he had told Sylvia, people always interested him. Claudia interested him very definitely. He felt that he would like to see her away from her office surroundings.
She still interested him—but it was Sylvia, twenty-one years his junior, with whom he had now fallen in love. Quarrendon realized it with something like dismay, but it was dismay that was rapidly becoming submerged in sweetness.
Her youth, her vulnerability, her transparent candour, all moved him profoundly. Her loveliness, although it gave him an exquisite pleasure, was perhaps the least factor in the growing attraction of which he was so acutely aware.
When he found that Sylvia was drawn towards him, as he towards her, Quarrendon knew that he must fight a losing battle.
(4)
At Arling, Claudia was at her desk, a wild confusion of papers all round her, her fingers flying expertly over the keys of her typewriter.
It was hot, and every now and then she pushed her dark hair off her forehead. But never for one moment did she relax.
The parlour-maid appeared at the door and made a trivial announcement concerning the cook’s requirements.
“I’ll come,” said Claudia.
She took up her keys and went.
As soon as she had re-established herself at her machine, the telephone-bell rang.
The telephone was in a singularly inconvenient position in the hall.
Claudia listened to a full exposition from the laundry concerning a bath-towel, once lost and now found.
As she hurried back to her work, Mrs Peel rustled through the hall.
“Darling, you’re doing too much. I can see it. You’ve no idea how over-strained you look, and it’s most unbecoming,” said Mrs Peel impressively. “I wish you’d have a look at these patterns and tell me what you think. It’s for the new cretonne covers in my flat.”
They took the patterns to the window. Claudia looked at them carefully and without hurry. It was Mrs Peel who broke into their discussion a good many times in order to say that Claudia was too busy to attend to it now, and that she had better get back to her desk, and why, oh why, wasn’t she out in the fresh air giving herself a good rest?
“It’s all right, Mother,” said Claudia, fourteen times.
At last she was at work again, acutely aware of backache, eye-strain, and nervous exasperation. She was aware also, although much less consciously, of having lived up to her own ideal of a woman achieving, by sheer force of will, the next-to-impossible.
She heard the car drive up to the door, and as she worked she smiled.
It would be lovely for the children, by the sea.
Maurice came in and stood beside her, a worried, wistful expression on his small face.
“As soon as the sandwiches are ready. Sylvia’s doing them. Have you got a lot to do, Mother?”
“Not so terribly much,” said Claudia cheerfully. “I shall be through by one o’clock, and this afternoon I’ll come down and bathe.”
“You won’t be too tired?”
“Oh no,” said Claudia lightly. “You know I’m hardly ever tired.”
Maurice’s anxious look seemed to deepen, rather than relax, at this optimistic pronouncement.
“I wish you didn’t have to work so very hard. It seems such a shame.”
“But you know, Maurice, nearly everybody has to work. I don’t mind it a bit, because it’s for all of you. If I can earn money it all helps to educate you and Taffy and Sylvia, and then when you’re older you’ll work for yourselves.”
“And for you,” said Maurice.
She kissed his little plain, freckled face.
“Thank you, darling.”
The horn of the car was sounded vigorously from without.
“I suppose the girls are ready at last,” Maurice observed morosely. “I hope all your typing will get done quickly, and not be too difficult.”
He walked away very deliberately, still unsmiling.
It was Claudia who smiled, tenderly and proudly.
Ten minutes later the telephone-bell rang again.
She went to the door.
“All right, dear!” called Mrs Peel’s voice, shrilly and nervously. “I’ll see what it is. Hallo, hallo, hallo!” There was a pause, fraught with agitation, for Mrs Peel was neither calm nor collected when telephoning.
“Clau-dia!”
“All right, Mother.”
“No, don’t come, darling. No, it’s all right, I was only speaking to my—I’m afraid I can’t hear you. I think there’s something wrong with the telephone——”
“I’ll take it, Mother.”
“It’s all right, dear. You go back to your writing. I think it’s someone who wants … Would you please tell me who’s speaking? I can’t quite hear. Harvey, or Jarvey?”
“Jarvey the butcher,” said Claudia. “Give it to me.”
“The line is very bad to-day,” said Mrs Peel severely. “It might equally well have been Harvey.”
With an air of resentment, she handed the receiver to Claudia.
“You know, darling, it isn’t right that you should have to do this kind of thing on the top of all your other jobs. You’re doing too much, and sooner or later you’ll suffer for it. You may not think so now, but the day will come.”
These sentiments penetrated to Claudia’s hearing, rather than to her understanding, as she agreed with the butcher that it would be wiser to have a small leg rather than a large sirloin, in view of the weather.
Then she replaced the receiver.
“Copper ought to do far more than he does, to help you,” said Mrs Peel.
Claudia shrugged her shoulders.
Sal Oliver’s voice, cool and unexpected, sounded from the stairs addressing Claudia.
“You’re not what I should call an easy person to help. There’s that to be said for Copper. Meanwhile I’ll read out that manuscript while you type it. You’ll do it much quicker like that.”
“I thought you’d gone out.”
“No. I haven’t gone out and I’m not going out.”
“I can manage perfectly well by myself,” said Claudia rather coldly. “Honestly, Sal, I’d rather.”
“I think you’d far better do it together,” announced Mrs Peel. “You’re only working yourself to death, darling. How is it going to help anybody when you go to bed with a complete nervous breakdown?”
From this unanswerable question Claudia fled back to the library.
The first hint of impatience betrayed itself in her tone as she curtly bade Sal: “Go on—I’m ready.”
Sal Oliver, unmoved, began to dictate.
They worked without interruption until the manuscript was finished.
Claudia ran the last sheet off the machine, slammed down the carriage, and feverishly began to gather together typescript, carbon copies, and sheets of carbon paper.
“I’ll sort those,” said Sal.
“They’ve got to be clipped together.”
“So I supposed,” said Sal drily.
She took a handful of paper-clips out of the pen-tray and began to put the sheets together.
Claudia flung herself back in her chair and passed both hands across her eyes.
“Thank heaven that’s done. We’ll send them off from the post-office on our way down to the sea.”
“You know,” said Sal, “you really are a perfect fool.”
She spoke in chilly and detached tones and Claudia made no pretence of not understanding the meaning underlying the words.
“I’ve never let a job down yet and I never propose to.”
“You’ll have to, one of these days. You’re not superhuman, any more than anybody else is.”
“I’ve never supposed I was superhuman,” said Claudia gently. “I’m simply a person—one of the few persons of my acquaintance—who knows the meaning of the word work.”
“Fiddle,” said Sal, deftly adjusting the final paper-clip. “Most people know the meaning of the word ‘work’ quite as well as you do. Why shouldn’t they? But they don’t get the same kick out of making martyrs of themselves, and calling it work.”
Claudia remained unmoved.
“I suppose,” she said meditatively, “that you really do believe I enjoy working as I do, instead of, for instance, being with my children in the few short weeks in the year that I’ve got them at home.”
“There’s no earthly reason why you shouldn’t knock off work altogether in August. I’ve always told you we could manage perfectly well.”
“I’m afraid I don’t agree. Excepting yourself, there’s no competent executive person in the office. In any case, I’d rather work all the time than leave off and then begin again. One only gets unstrung.”
“The alternative, as of course you know, being to go on until everything snaps at once.”
“Those things are very largely a matter of willpower,” said Claudia superbly. “I haven’t any intention of letting everything snap at once.”
“Haven’t you? Well, you’ve got an almighty crash coming one of these days. However, it’s your show—not mine. I’m a fool to gratify your egotism by talking like this.”
“Sal,” said Claudia, in her most carefully impersonal tones. “I’d honestly like to get this straight. I’ve the greatest respect for your intelligence, and yet it seems to me so odd that you should—speaking, of course, from my point of view—have got me so utterly wrong.”
The detached candour of this appeal was without any visible effect upon Sal.
“I don’t think I’ve got you wrong at all,” she answered. “After all, I’ve worked with you for five years, and been down here off and on. I’ve seen you in relation to your work, and in relation to your family. But I admit that it doesn’t give me, in any way, the right to criticize you unasked.”
“Not unasked at all,” said Claudia cheerfully. “I’m interested in what you think, and I’d like to go into it, some time. If I’m deluding myself, I’d very much better know it. I’m quite prepared to consider the whole question absolutely dispassionately. In spite of having been given only a miserable two out of ten for honesty, in the game last night,” she added, smiling.
There was a pause as she took out a large envelope from a drawer and carefully began writing the Cambridge address.
Still writing, and without raising her eyes, she added in a tone of casual enquiry:
“It was you, I take it, who gave me that two, wasn’t it?”
“No,” said Sal. “But I can tell you exactly who did.”
“Can you?”
“It was Andrew Quarrendon.”
“How do you know?”
“By a process of elimination,” said Sal drily.<
br />
(5)
When Quarrendon came back at three o’clock to fetch his hostess and the picnic tea, Sylvia sat beside the driving-seat.
Claudia had just finished packing the tea-basket. It was the cook’s afternoon out.
“I’m just ready!” she cried, flying through the hall with the two heavy baskets. “Here, I’ll put these in, and then go and get my hat on. I shan’t be a minute.”
“There isn’t any hurry,” Sal suggested.
She stood—hatless—by the car.
Claudia was already half-way up the stairs.
When she came down again Mrs Peel was hovering restlessly between the library and the open front-door. She was unable to decide whether she was, or was not, coming with them.
“Is it very hot by the sea?” she enquired suspiciously.
“It was lovely on the cliffs,” Sylvia said. “I suppose it was rather hot.”
“We were sitting in the sun,” Quarrendon reminded her. His face had burnt to a lively scarlet.
“Have you bathed?”
“I’m afraid I don’t,” Quarrendon replied, and at the same moment Sylvia answered “Not yet.”
“Not yet!” repeated Claudia in surprise. “What have you all been doing?”
“The others have been swimming. We just sat on the cliffs and talked.”
“I really ought to write to Anna,” Mrs Peel suddenly decided.
“No, do come. We shall all be out—you can’t stay all by yourself, Grandmama.”
“There won’t be room in the car, I’m afraid.”
“Heaps,” said Sylvia vaguely.
Mrs Peel yielded. She explained, in a short and involved speech, that it would be necessary for her to go upstairs first and fetch a hat and a pair of gloves.
By the time she had said this, had gone, and had come back again, wearing a large shady hat and a pair of wash-leather gloves, and carrying a black watered-silk handbag, a parasol, an air-cushion, and a light dust-cloak, Claudia had reorganized the seating arrangements of the car.
“It will be more comfortable for Grandmama if you go in the back, Sylvia, and let her sit in front. You and Sal and I can all fit in easily, and put the baskets on the floor.”
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