Sir!' She Said Read online

  His voice which had been harsh and truculent as he talked of the modern girl had softened and deepened as he spoke of Faith. John Terance looked curiously at him. Had Humphries been himself in love with her? Was he one of these men who had been shown friendlily that there was nothing doing and been kept as friends? Perhaps? He did not know. He never had known what had lain behind that long train of friendships that Faith had drawn across her life. It was that capacity for secrecy, indeed, that represented Faith’s hold upon her friends; that knowledge that nothing they ever had said to her would be repeated or used against them. She was loyal to her friends. “Women like that give dignity to life,” Humphries was saying. “They never let it become a squabble.” He paused. “If they were all like that? But. . . oh, well, they aren’t. Let’s go and have a rubber.”

  Terance hesitated. It was a quarter-past six. His house was not ten minutes from the club. He had no engagement for the evening. He would not be dining until eight. There was no real reason why he should not cut in. At the same time, a rubber might well last an hour. Faith would be back from Ranelagh by seven; she liked to have some one there to welcome her when she came home.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, “I’ld love to. But I must get back.”

  Pensively John Terance walked northwards towards his home. It was not simply that he had been worried by Humphries’ conversation, but that that conversation had come as the climax to a mood. He, too, had been telling himself that women had been given a freedom for which they were not ready; had been putting himself in the confessional, had asked himself whether he was fulfilling his duty to his daughters; whether he should have allowed Julia to leave her home; whether he should have allowed Melanie to treat hers as though it were an hotel; whether his treatment of them was not like the Spartan leaving of children in the snow to see if they would survive; though even as he had asked himself those questions he had recognised the impossibility of answering them. He was in the dark. There was nothing that he could do. You could not set yourself against the spirit of the time. You could not make your children unlike other people’s children. You had to trust them.

  As he turned his latchkey in the door the telephone bell began to ring.

  “It’s all right, Davis,” he called out. “I’ll answer it.”

  A languid, high-pitched but masculine voice answered him.

  “Is Mrs. Terance in?” it asked.

  “I’m afraid she’s out.”

  “Then I will ring up later.”

  “Can I take any message for her?”

  “I will ring up later.”

  The line was disconnected.

  Terance shrugged his shoulders. “I wonder who that was?” he thought.

  Not that there was any particular point in wondering. Faith had so many friends, and he knew so few of them. They existed for him as Christian names: vague shapes afloat in the river of her conversation: vague silk-hatted figures waiting in the drawing-room while she finished dressing. They had no individual existence. They were the people that she went out to theatres with and dances, to Ranelagh and on the river. He made no attempt to keep any count of them. He glanced at the pad beside the telephone. It was covered with messages: would Mrs. Terance ring up Garrick 2530 between six and seven? Mr. Hastings had rung up to say he would ring up later. Mr. Coatfair would be in London over the week-end. The pad for Melanie was equally scrawled over. His own was blank. Fretfully he shrugged his shoulders. What could you expect your daughter to become when she had a mother who spent her whole time rushing from one party to another, dining with this man and the other man? Naturally her daughters went one better. And it was all very well for Humphries to talk about a man being able to trust himself with Faith. That sort of talk might only mean that she had been discreet. A discreet woman always had her alibis. There would be nineteen men: every one of whom would be ready to knock on the floor the man who spoke lightly of her honour: every one of whom would swear an oath in a law court to that honour. And what did that amount to when there was the twentieth man who knew better and kept his mouth shut. What sort of a wife had Faith really been? Had she really been a faithful and devoted comrade or had she been simply fond and clever? What sort of a mother, anyway, was she making to her children?

  During the next half-hour there were two more calls, and in neither case would the caller leave a name or message. When Faith returned it was to the telephone that she walked first. She had been spending the day, he knew, rushing from one appointment to another, lunch, Ranelagh, a cocktail party. Yet her effortless and languid grace gave the impression that only at that instant had she emerged from the hands of the hairdresser. Impatient with her though he was, Terance could not help marvelling at her unruffled beauty as she picked up the pad.

  “Let me see now,” she murmured. “Who’s rung me up? Johnny. . . he can wait. Garrick 2530; that’ld be Frank. I don’t suppose it’s anything important. These others, though. I wonder. . .” She paused, her finger resting pensively against her lips. “You don’t know if Bobby rang up, do you?”

  Terance shook his head.

  “A number of people have rung you up during the last half-hour, but whether one of them was Bobby. . .”

  “You might have bothered to find out.”

  “They said they hadn’t any message to leave. They said they’ld ring up later.”

  Faith Terance looked at him as though he were a refractory infant.

  “Of course, that’s what they would say. You frighten them. You’re abrupt with them. You make them feel they aren’t welcome. Of course, they won’t leave any message when they hear it’s you answering them. And now here I am not knowing whether Bobby’s calling for me here or I’m meeting him at the Embassy.”

  But that was more than Terance was prepared to stand. He had left his club an hour before he need have done: he had listened courteously and patiently to other men’s enquiries about his wife: he had ruined his own evening to please her, and now he was being blamed because. . . because of what. . .?

  “I had not realised,” he remarked acidly, “that it was part of my duty as a husband to arrange your dancing arrangements with other men.”

  She turned slowly round from the telephone to fix him with a puzzled, enquiring look.

  “What am I to take that to mean?” she asked.

  He did not answer her directly.

  “Do you realise,” he said, “that we haven’t dined together for ten days?”

  She raised her eyebrows.

  “My dear,” she said, “why should we?”

  “It’s usual for married people. . .” he began.

  She laughed him into silence.

  “In this year of grace,” she quoted, “we’re a modern couple. We don’t want to live in each other’s pockets. We’ve got to lead our own lives.”

  “Which means,” he retorted, “your going out every night of the week with some other man.”

  He was unable to ruffle her composure, however.

  “I don’t go out every night of the week. And if I were to, I don’t see why you should make objections. I like theatres, and restaurants, and dance clubs. You ought to want me to be happy.”

  “I don’t know that I want you to be made happy by other men.”

  She shook her head wearily.

  “John, don’t be ridiculous. You know quite well that it would bore you terribly to take me out evening after evening.”

  “I don’t know that it would.”

  “But I know very well it would. Don’t you remember when we were first married how tired you used to get of going out? You kept on suggesting that we should stay at home. You couldn’t work at the office, you said, if you had been up till one o’clock the night before. That’s why I started going out with other men. I didn’t want to be a nuisance to you. I didn’t want to spoil your career.”

  It was challengingly that she looked at him. And grudgingly he had to admit that she was right. That was the way that things had started.

 
“If you want to start out again,” she went on, “why, of course, I’ll adore to go with you. But you won’t like it. In a fortnight you’ll be bored to death. One cabaret show is fearfully like another.”

  ‘You seem to find them amusing.”

  “Because I’m taken out by different people. That makes each evening seem a little different. I wouldn’t, for anything in the world, go out with the same person every evening. And, besides, think how much money I’m saving you. You ought to be very grateful to me.”

  She laughed gaily, and, perching herself on the side of his chair, kissed him lightly and affectionately on the forehead. She was an impossible person to argue with. He had long known it. But he felt some retort was needed.

  “There are some men,” he said, “who would feel jealous.”

  At that for the first time in their conversation her composure left her. Her eyes glinted angrily.

  “You don’t trust me, you mean. You don’t trust your own wife.”

  “Of course I trust you implicitly.”

  “Then what’s all this nonsense about jealousy?”

  He shrugged his shoulders. “Jealousy’s not a question of trusting. It’s. . .” he hesitated. “Do you remember the ridiculous fuss you made when you found me dancing with Gladys Stokesbury?”

  “Ridiculous? It wasn’t ridiculous at all. I’m not going to have my husband going about alone with other women!”

  “You go about alone with other men.”

  “That’s different.”

  “I don’t see how.”

  “My dear, of course it is. You can trust me. You’ve just said you can.”

  “And you can’t trust me, you mean?”

  “How can one trust any man? Men are polygamous. Every book on sex that’s ever been written has said as much. You’ld be certain to get into mischief if you weren’t looked after.”

  “So I’m to sit at home while you gad around London with a succession of different men?”

  “If that’s what you find most amusing.”

  “I don’t see that there’s anything else for me to do.”

  “There’s your club.”

  “My club!”

  “Or you can go to watch boxing, or billiards, or you can go to a theatre or a cinema. You’re perfectly free.”

  “Is that your idea of freedom?”

  “Well, what more do you want? You can do anything you like.”

  “Except the things I want to.”

  “I don’t know what you mean by that. I’m not going to have you going out with other women, if that’s what you mean. And, anyhow, why do you want to go out with them? Aren’t I enough for you?”

  He looked at her helplessly. It was an issue that he had contested once, and that he had not the courage to thrash out again. He shuddered as he remembered the miserable week, so many years back now, that had followed her discovery of the completely innocent evening he had spent with Gladys Stokesbury. He had argued, he had pleaded, he had cajoled. “Be reasonable,” he had said. “You’re always going out with some man or other. Night after night you leave me here at home to amuse myself. Why shouldn’t I go out with Gladys Stokesbury now and again? I’m not in the least in love with her. I’m not even attracted to her. She’s just a companion, that, and no more than that. Why shouldn’t I go out with her?”

  But Faith had refused to discuss the question. She had retreated behind a barrier of obstinate reserve.

  “It is no use arguing,” she had said. “I am not going to have my husband going about with other women.”

  “And I,” he had retorted, “am going to do exactly as I choose.”

  “In which case,” she had. announced, “I shall cease to regard you as my husband.”

  And for a whole week she had observed towards him an attitude of frigid and unapproachable politeness that had reduced him to a state of nervous irritability in which it was impossible to sleep or work or play. That cold hostility had pursued him everywhere. In the end he had capitulated unconditionally.

  “I’ll promise anything you like!” he had cried, “if only you’ll come out from behind that barrier.”

  The moment he had given that promise she had become again the sweet, affectionate companion with whom he had fallen, and still was, in love. As long as she had her way she was charming and agreeable. The moment that she was thwarted she became hard and hostile and impossible. There was only one way of maintaining peace, of leading any sort of life, and that was to let her do exactly as she chose. It was no use trying to reason with her. She was not interested in reason. She was concerned only with her own will and the getting of it. She knew, too, the way to get it. She had only to retreat behind that barrier to make his own capitulation inevitable. She held all the cards. As everywhere women were holding all the cards to-day.

  With a sigh John Terance looked up at the portrait of his great-grandfather that hung above the mantelpiece. A genial four-bottle fellow he had been. You could tell that from the flushed face, the thickened nostrils, the friendly wrinkles about the eyes and mouth. A genial autocrat who had ruled his family of thirteen children as a colonel rules a regiment. He had not bothered about getting home in time for dinner. He had stayed in the card-room of the Granville as long as his money lasted, and his legs supported him. He had told his wife that the nursery, the drawing-room and the kitchen were her province. He had given supper parties for the ladies of the chorus, and had excused himself with the reflection that with men these things were different, and that, anyhow, men were polygamous. As though, John Terance reflected, to keep track of one woman’s fancies was not job enough for any man. In the whole course of her married life his great-grandmother had not received a single letter that had not been read by her husband first. A genial autocrat.

  And there was the telephone ringing, and Faith was lifting the receiver, and, “Oh, yes, Bobby darling,” she was saying, “and you’re calling for me here? that’ll be splendid. And, angel, whatever you do, don’t forget. . .”

  Terance shrugged his shoulders. There was nothing to be said. One could not argue with her. One had to let her be. But it was reprovingly that he looked up at his great-grandfather’s portrait.

  “If only you had been less of an autocrat,” he thought, “life would have been a great deal easier for me.”

  Chapter XIII

  The Golf Match

  “Can he? I wonder? He should be able to. I don’t know.”

  Mr. Bulliwell’s breath came fast and labouredly. It was hot: damnably. The sweat was running down his face; his collar was soiled and sodden. His vest had rucked above the equatorial expanses of his stomach. His shirt was scratching him between his legs. His feet were swollen inside his pointed shoes. He had galleried sixteen holes and felt as though he had walked sixteen miles. His anxiety was greater, however, than his discomfort. He was too busy praying that Gavin Todd would win his match against the American who had challenged him to a return match on any day on any course, to realise how miserable he was himself.

  It had been an exacting match. To begin with Todd had gone right ahead. At the turn he had been five up. But from then on the American had pulled the game right round. He had won the tenth hole, halved the eleventh and twelfth, won the thirteenth, halved the fourteenth, and won the fifteenth and sixteenth holes with ease. He was on top. Had it been then a thirty-six hole match there was no doubt who would have won: the betting would have been twenty to one on the American. Even as it was the betting was against Todd. If Merivale finished level on the eighteenth green the chances were overwhelmingly in favour of his taking the lead and match during the extra, deciding holes.

  “If Todd loses the next hole, he’ll lose the match,” thought Bulliwell. “The moment his lead’s gone his confidence will follow, too.”

  And he felt as worried, as nervous, as unhappy as if his own commercial prosperity were at stake.

  “If only he can pull it off,” he thought, “if only.”

  He felt for Todd that fervou
r of unaccountable adoration reserved for athletes, that Aristotle described as the lowest form of love. Bulliwell identified himself with Todd. From a distance he had always admired him, and now that they had become acquainted he felt as though it was himself, not Todd that was playing. “If he could only win this hole,” he thought, “even if he could halve it, it might be enough; it would give him back his confidence.”

  Which was what Gavin himself was feeling.

  In most games there is a psychological moment to which you look back and say, “that was the deciding stroke.” Such a moment had come at the turn, at the tenth hole. If Todd had won that hole he would have been six up, and Merivale would have abandoned heart. Todd had realised that, and realising it had played over-confidently. He had been so sure of winning that he had tried to do in three a hole he should have been content to do in four. As a result he had gone off the course and had lost the hole.

  The loss of that hole had given his opponent the confidence he needed. From that moment Merivale had outplayed him thoroughly. If the American were to win this hole, Gavin knew that although they would start the eighteenth hole square, he himself stood little chance of winning. But he knew equally well as he walked from the sixteenth hole to the tee, that could he halve that hole, could he check the American’s chance of success, could he start the eighteenth hole one up, the betting was on his keeping his lead. It was a moment as psychological as the tenth hole had been.

  There was a dead silence in the huge gallery as the American prepared to drive. The seventeenth hole was about the most difficult and fascinating in the course. A stream ran out at an angle across the fairway, some two hundred and sixty yards away. The one chance of getting on to the green in two was to clear that stream. It was a shot, however, that only a champion playing at the height of his form would attempt. Bogey for the hole was five. The safe game was to stay on the near side, clear the stream with the second shot and reach the green in three. From the way the American addressed his ball it was clear, however, that he was going to try to carry the stream. Glances were exchanged meaningly in the gallery. So this was his game, was it, to carry the stream on the wave of his self-confidence and win the hole on his drive.