Love in these Days Read online

  LOVE IN THESE DAYS

  A MODERN STORY

  BY

  ALEC WAUGH

  CONTENTS

  PART I

  I. THE WAY THINGS START

  II. HARD-HEARTED LADY

  III. A HALF LIE AND ITS SEQUEL

  IV. LOVE AMONG THE WORLDLINGS

  V. A COCKTAIL PARTY

  VI. AN OFFER OF RELEASE

  VII. LILITH OF OLD

  VIII. THE PRICE OF VIRTUE

  IX. THE REWARDS OF BEAUTY

  X. HOW THINGS DEVELOP

  PART II

  XI. VARIETIES OF LOVE

  XII. DINNER FOR FIVE

  XIII. “THE CAVE OF MELODY”

  XIV. TWELVE HOURS OF TURMOIL

  XV. CHRISTOPHER INTERVENES

  XVI. THE ENCHANTED HOURS

  XVII. TOO LATE

  XVIII. A LAST ATTEMPT

  PART III

  XIX. J’EN AI SOUPÉ

  XX. A RE-OPENED CHAPTER

  XXI. BY AIR AND SEA

  XXII. IN PARIS AND ALONE

  XXIII. THE COST OF LOVING

  XXIV. THE SETTLING OF ACCOUNTS

  EPILOGUE

  Part I

  Chapter I

  The Way Things Start

  “I Should doubt,” remarked Graham Moreton as I he guided his two-seater out of the noise and glare of Piccadilly into the quieter by-ways of Soho, “if we were going to have a particularly exhilarating evening.”

  At his side Joan Faversham stirred, a little restively.

  “Why not?” she asked,

  “The dances at the Gloucester Galleries,” he answered, “are never up to much, and we shan’t know many people there.”

  “I see.” And drawing her fur-fringed cloak the tightlier about her, she pressed herself more closely into the corner of the car. “There was a time,” she had it in her mind to snap at him, “when you used to say that it didn’t matter where we went as long as we were together. There were only two kinds of dances, you said then. The ones I was at and the ones I wasn’t at. It’s different now, I suppose, now that we’ve been engaged two years.” The words trembled on her lips but she bit them back.

  “I mustn’t be silly,” she told herself. “I mustn’t be a pig just because things are going wrong. It’s my fault, really, that they are.” At least, she supposed it was. But things had been more than ordinarily difficult. To begin with, there had been Grace Garston’s wedding; and as she had walked up the wide curving staircase to smile her greetings on the bride she could not help remembering that night such a few months back when Grace had lain sobbing desperately in her arms. “You’re lucky,” Grace had cried. “You’re engaged. You’ve got the man you want, while I....” She had felt so proud, so confident then, in the certainty of Graham’s love for her. Yet now, with herself exactly where she had been twelve months before, with marriage apparently no nearer, here was Grace Garston married. And she had realized in the slightly exaggerated warmth of her friend’s welcome how conscious Grace was of the contrast in their conditions. “A year ago,” she seemed to be saying to her, “I was lonely and wretched and defenceless, while you were safe and loved, with an assured future, in a position from which you could be kind and pity me, whereas now you see....”

  It was petty of her, Joan realized, to feel envious. She despised herself for being it. It was not Graham’s fault after all, that their engagement had been so prolonged. As chief foreign representative of the Universal Oil and Enamel Company he had during the last three years increased the company’s export business so enormously that it was only a matter of time before the directors should decide to enlarge their export department, placing him in control of a London branch. And till that time came he and Joan had decided to delay their marriage.

  It was not that they had not enough money to marry now. Graham was making with commissions between six and seven hundred pounds a year, and Joan’s people were relatively well off. The nature of his work entailed, however, sudden and prolonged trips to the Continent and South America. For at least five months of the year he was out of England, and these were unsettling conditions to start marriage on.

  “You’d better wait,” Mr. Faversham had said.

  “Joan’s only twenty and you’re twenty-eight. You’ve got tons of time. Keep yourself free for the next eighteen months to go away when you like and where you like. Build up your foreign connections, so that your position will be really strong by the time you come to take over the management in London; so strong that subordinates will be able to carry on for you. You couldn’t be really free to do that if you were to marry.”

  They had taken his advice. Every two or three months Graham had been rushed abroad, interviewing, prospecting, drafting contracts. His position had been considerably strengthened, but marriage had come no closer. And two years was a long time to be engaged. It was hard for her not to feel a little envious of the white georgette and lilies, above which with so radiant a smile Grace was accepting her friend’s congratulations.

  And then when Christopher Stirling had begun with his languid elegance to ask her about her plans . . .

  “Our plans?” she had answered bitterly. “Very much what they were two years ago. We are waiting as we were then.”

  He had smiled, a quick, diffident, curiously winning smile, the sort of smile that made people who had known him seven minutes imagine they had been his friend for half a lifetime.

  “And you’ve been engaged two years,” he said. “It’s a long while. I should think you must sometimes find it a little difficult.”

  From any other man such a suggestion would have seemed to Joan an unpardonable impertinence. But with Chris it was somehow different. There was a sympathy, a kindliness, a sense of intimacy in his attitude that unweaponed her.

  “Sometimes,” she replied, pausing as though uncertain whether to say more; as though uncertain whether more were expected of her. She was not one to whom confidences came easily, particularly where she cared intensely; but she was sad and in need of sympathy, and the light was kindly in the well-shaped, indolently handsome face that bent above her.

  She nodded her head.

  “Being engaged isn’t an altogether happy business,” she said. “You see, one expects—I don’t quite know what one expects. Chiefly that nothing’s ever going to be the same again, and in a way it isn’t. One’s old life stops. The things that used to thrill and excite you, they’re a coat you put away. One had thought of a career once, and one knows it’s no use thinking of it any longer. One used to go to dances and to parties, wondering if there’d be any amusing men there; now one ceases to. And flirting—well, I suppose, that’s really a girl’s equivalent of cricket, and it’s great fun, of course—but that’s over. One expects it to be, of course. One would hate it not to be. It’s only natural that one should want life to begin all over again. And then—well, you see——” She hesitated as though uncertain of how exactly the form of her trouble was to be conveyed.

  “And then?” he said.

  “Well then, how shall I put it? You find that for a man it isn’t quite the same, that you haven’t turned his life inside out as he has turned yours.”

  “You mean,” Christopher suggested, “that while the whole framework of your life is changed, Graham’s work and his games have gone on apparently uninterruptedly?”

  She nodded her head quickly.

  “One feels—it’s silly of me, I know, and one doesn’t feel it often, only just at odd moments, that if you mattered to him as much as he mattered to you his games and his work and his other interests wouldn’t go on quite so much as though nothing at all had happened.

  “Oh, I know quite well,” she had added hurriedly, “that when I’m once married all this won’t wo
rry me at all. But with things as they are it’s so easy to let small things worry you. I see Graham carrying on with his ordinary life exactly as he was before he knew me, and I think how completely he has altered mine, and I wonder whether there mayn’t be a woman who will do for his life what he has done for mine, and what I haven’t been able to do for his. Not that I want to, you understand, but”—and she gave a quick, helpless little laugh—” it’s hard not to be frightened sometimes, not to let small things worry one. I wouldn’t wish anyone a long engagement.”

  “When it’s once over though,” he had said.

  She had shrugged her shoulders.

  “When.”

  “It’ll be worth it,” he had said. “Graham is, you see, a one idea person. It may hurt now rather, but in the long run I’m very certain you’ll be grateful. If he were the sort of man who didn’t for two minutes on end know what he wanted, who was changing his job every other week, the moment he met you, whatever job he happened to have at the moment would have meant nothing to him. But he isn’t. He’s decided what job he’s going to do, and he’s stuck to it, and he’s making a success of it.

  “It’ll be the same with his love life; he’ll decide on one woman, and he’ll stick to her. The other sort—the sort that is changing its job every other fortnight, the sort that can never make up its mind what it really wants—is just the same with its women-folk as with its work. It can’t make up its mind. For a month or so it may be frightfully exciting. But the one idea man——” Again he hesitated; then: “The woman—may I say it?—who once gets Graham Moreton will keep him.”

  And again in his eyes and on his mouth that brief smile flickered.

  “You’ve been very kind to me,” she had said simply. “And I hope you won’t get the idea that I’m a ridiculously jealous person. You won’t please think that of me. It’s only now and again I feel like that. I don’t very often show it.”

  “My dear, I know far too well,” he said, “the geography of the road you’re travelling.”

  But for all his kindness she had walked unhappily away into the lamp-lit chill of a March evening.

  And then there had been that dress. They had promised faithfully at the shop to let her have it before seven. And minute after minute she had gone on waiting. She had been so anxious to look her prettiest to-night, had been so anxious to make it up to Graham for having forced him, practically, to take her to this dance. He hadn’t wanted to. She had known that. It was a charity dance, and Graham only liked dances in private houses and in hotels. But some friends of hers had promised to take tickets; and she had persuaded him, and because she had persuaded him she had meant to try all the harder to make things jolly for him. She had ordered that dress specially; a heavenly affair of pale-pink petalled taffeta, a little on the “period” side. The dressmaker had said with a smile that it took someone really young to wear that sort of dress. And she had wondered with a beating heart what Graham would find to say of it. Perhaps that she looked like a rose in it. She had almost wept when it had not arrived.

  And then, when she had come down half an hour late, doing her best to be brave and cheerful: “I’m so sorry, darling,” she had begun, “I’ve been waiting for a dress”; at that of all moments for him to say: “It’s well worth it, though. It’s a jolly thing”; to say that of a dress she had had six months and in which he had seen her a dozen times.

  It would have been easy enough when he had made that remark about the Gloucester Galleries to have answered tartly. But she bit back the words. “I won’t,” she said, “I won’t be silly. He’s a darling. And we love each other. I won’t spoil his evening.”

  “Where are we going, Graham?” she asked instead.

  “Clarice’s.”

  It was one of Soho’s larger and costlier houses, as costly indeed as any West End restaurant. As, however, it was unnecessary to change to dine there, it attracted those many who are prepared occasionally to spend forty shillings a head upon a dinner, but would feel sartorially embarrassed by the elaborate settings of Dover Street and Piccadilly.

  A stately and obsequious waiter came towards them.

  “For two, sir? Here, sir.” Graham shook his head.

  “I ordered a table in the corner. Graham Moreton.”

  The waiter looked slowly and apologetically round the room.

  “The corner tables appear, sir, to be occupied.”

  “But I rang up this morning and ordered one. It’s ridiculous. Fetch me the head waiter.”

  Apprehensively Joan Faversham looked up at Graham. The high clear forehead was puckered with angry lines, and the firm, well-shaped mouth was set. Things were going wrong this evening with a vengeance.

  “I am extremely sorry, sir,” the head waiter was explaining, “you ordered your table for eight o’clock. It is now twenty minutes to nine. We kept your table reserved till half-past eight.”

  “And you ought to have kept it reserved till ten o’clock.”

  The head waiter lifted his hands sideways in aggrieved assent.

  “I am very sorry, sir, but corner tables are in great demand and we get let down so very often.”

  “When I give an order,” Graham retorted, “I mean it.”

  The head waiter was appropriately docile.

  “I assure you, sir,” he said, “that it shall not occur again. And I will reprimand the persons who were responsible. In the meantime, sir, I think you will find this table very satisfactory.”

  The table in question was beside a pillar, and a few feet from the kitchen door. It was, however, the only one unoccupied.

  “That’ll be all right,” Joan intervened hastily.

  “It’s pretty awful,” he muttered.

  “It’ll do, though,” she answered. People had begun to stare. She hated being made conspicuous, and she was annoyed with Graham for aggravating into a scene an occasion for which she was herself responsible.

  “Oh, very well,” he said. “It’s perfectly maddening,” he continued, as they took their seats. “I’ll never come to this place again. Now then, what are we going to eat?”

  It was an unwisely, because hurriedly, selected dinner. For himself he chose as a successor to smoked salmon a steak tartare whose preparation was certain to occupy the cook’s attention for twenty minutes, without bothering to notice that the Poulet en Casserole which Joan had preferred, happened to be a plat du jour. By some thirteen minutes the arrival of the dishes failed to synchronize, and Joan hated eating by herself. Minute by minute her exasperation grew more intense.

  “How different it’ll be,” he said, with a gallant attempt at joviality, “when we’re married and dine at home, and the arrangements are in your hands.”

  “When we’re married,” and she laughed, a short, unhappy little laugh. “I wonder when that’ll be.”

  “When the time comes,” he answered shortly, “for me to take over the London management of our export business.”

  “And when will that time come?”

  “I’m not one of the directors.”

  She pouted.

  “You said a few weeks at the beginning. It’s twenty-five months now.”

  “I’m doing my best,” he answered, a trifle testily. It was for her sake, after all, that he was making this delay; for her sake, so that things should be easier for her during the early months of marriage.

  “I sometimes wonder,” she went on “whether we ever shall get married. It’s been going on so long now, this putting off of things.”

  “Jonakin. . . .”

  But she would not listen. The cumulative irritation of the evening had taken control of her.

  “Perhaps by the time we’re free to marry,” she said, “we shan’t want to any longer.”

  “Joan.”

  But she shook her head wearily.

  “Oh, I don’t know, Graham, I don’t know. Things are so different now. We’re getting used to one another, I suppose. You don’t notice what I wear, and it’s not enough for you just
to be with me any longer. It’s got to be an amusing place; and among amusing people.”

  She spoke not angrily but fretfully, as tired people speak.

  “Oh, well,” said Graham, “if you feel like that about it.”

  The meal concluded, as it had begun, in silence. “And now,” he said, “for the Gloucester Galleries.”

  She shook her head.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “Would you mind very much—I’m tired—I don’t feel like dancing.”

  He should, he knew it, protest and plead, pet and cajole her into coming. It was what at the back of her mind he knew she looked for. But he too was ruffled by the evening’s varied frictions. He had been kept waiting for half an hour; he had not been able to get the corner table that he wanted: he had failed to enjoy an expensive and presumably well-cooked dinner, and he had been more than a little hurt by her lack of faith in him, both as a worker and a lover.

  “Very well,” he said. “I’ll take you home.”

  In silence they drove through the bright and sounding streets. Out of the corner of his eye he watched her. Ah, but she was lovely, as she sat huddled there in the corner of the car, the fur-fringed cloak drawn closely about her throat, so that only her eyes, the pale cornflower blue eyes, and the freckled tip-tilted nose, and the sleek curve of her corn-coloured hair were visible. So lovely and he loved her so. If only they were in a taxi so that he could take her in his arms and kiss away their quarrel; but you could not at the same time make love and drive through London’s traffic.

  She did not ask him to come in when the car drew up outside her parents’ house; she jumped out, waved her hand, and ran up the steps. The key turned easily in the lock, the door swung open; momentarily against the lighted interior of the hall was stamped in graceful silhouette the long flowing line of her slim figure. Momentarily, to be shut away.

  “Heavens!” he thought, “but what an evening!”

  For a moment he hesitated on the pavement. What was he to do? It was only a few minutes after ten. And he was in no spirit for a return to his parents’ house, to the explanations that his abrupt arrival would demand of him, to the subsequent hour of desultory conversation over a collapsing fire. He was restless and unsleepy. He had not particularly wanted to dance that evening. He was working very hard just now, and preferred to be in bed by midnight. But when one had made one’s mind up to a thing, when one had got oneself into the mood for a late night . . . no, no, one did not put on a white tie to come home in it at half-past ten. “I must do something,” he told himself.