Kept Page 13

  The majority of the best jobs were already taken by the time she returned to London, and the best thing she could find was a secretaryship at fifty shillings a week to the organiser of an obscure West London servant agency. He was a vulgar man, and the work bored her. It was, she felt, so utterly useless. The world was no better for the presence in it of this particular concern. They rarely seemed to find satisfactory employers or employees, but they drew a commission from both parties.

  “As long as servants are as scarce as they are now,” she was assured, “people will come to us, and as long as they do, we can just keep going.”

  “I suppose so,” she would say, and shrug her shoulders and think that she would do this particular job as well as she could, and wonder what was the purpose of it. To keep herself alive, to keep herself clothed and warm and fed, that was all there was to it, to live in and for oneself, just that. To be a person whom if you died no one in the world would miss. A profitless existence, and yet what else was there for her to do.

  It was in such a mood that she had received across a small table in the grill-room at the Ritz. Everard’s stammered proposal to her.

  “I suppose I’ve no right to say it to you,” he said. “I’m forty-five, twice your age nearly, and a married man with a daughter and a boy at Rugby. You may despise me for saying it. But there it is, I love you. I’ve loved you from the first moment that I saw you. I told myself that it was impossible; that a man such as I had no right to be in love with a woman like yourself. I fought against it; I told myself I mustn’t see you, that I would forget you. But I couldn’t. I couldn’t keep away from you. So I told myself that I would be content with friendship, that as long as I could see you, as long as I could be with you I should find life endurable. But I haven’t. It’s impossible. Friendship isn’t enough when one’s in love. Or rather it isn’t enough for me that you should think of me as a friend. I want you to know how much I care. I want you to know how much I love you. I’ve never loved anyone before as I love you. I never knew it was possible for me to love as I love you. I can’t be without you, Marjorie. Will you, if my wife agrees to a divorce, will you marry me?”

  His fingers as he spoke had plucked nervously at a piece of toast, but his gaze on her face had never wavered, had remained steadfast as though he were drawing courage from it. “Please, Marjorie, please,” he had repeated.

  “But it’s not possible,” she said at last. “I’ve no right to marry. I could never bear you children.”

  “I don’t want children. I want you.”

  And in his eyes she had seen a look of awe and love and reverence more eloquent than any of the words he had used.

  Why not, after all, if this man loved her, if he really loved her? She did not love him, not as she and Leslie had understood the word, but she was fond of him, she would make him a good wife. Divorce nowadays was an easy matter. If he really wanted her——

  With her face turned from him she had stretched out her hand across the table. “Very well, Everard,” she had said.

  But divorce she had found was only theoretically an easy matter, or rather only an easy matter when both parties were agreed to it. And Everard’s wife had refused to consider the subject. “It’s ridiculous,” she had said, “of course I shan’t. A man of your age, indeed. She’s a cheap little creature who’s seen you’re easy game and has decided to profit by it. Besides, it isn’t fair to our children. A divorce always leaves a nasty taste behind it. There’s never been a divorce in my family yet. And there’s not going to be one now. If you’re going to have an intrigue with the girl, I can’t stop you. Men are made that way, I suppose. But divorce and a marriage. No, my dear, no.”

  It would be soon all right though, Everard had assured her. A month or two at the outside. As soon as his wife realised that it was not a mere caprice, as soon as she saw his mind was settled.

  “Women are dog-in-the-mangerish, you know,” Marjorie had warned him. “She may say that she won’t let anyone else have what she can’t get herself.”

  “Oh no, really no,” Everard had protested. “She’ll soon be reasonable, I know she will.” But the month became two months and the two months a year, and then there had come that evening when Everard had driven back to her lodgings with her after dinner, and sat on the sofa gazing wretchedly into the fire.

  “It’s too much,” he said, “I can’t stand it. I haven’t the courage. All this trouble at home, and on the top of it the fear that I may lose you through the delay.”

  “You needn’t be afraid of that, Everard,” she had said.

  “Oh, but I am. How can you expect me not to be? You’re so young, so lovely, so attractive; some other man will fall in love with you and will ask you to marry him. And you’ll think it’s no good waiting for me, that the divorce will never come, and you’ll say ’Yes,’ and I shall lose you. The thought of it maddens me.”

  “I have promised you,” she had said softly. “I have given you my word. Everard dear, you ought to trust me.”

  “I do, I do, it’s myself that I can’t trust. It seems so absurd that you should care for me. I’m so much older than you. You’ll find it’s a mistake, that you didn’t really mean it. I can think of nothing else. I can’t work. I can’t sleep. I can’t eat. All the time I’m thinking of it. Marjorie, my darling, my dear one, you won’t, will you; you will stick to me, won’t you; promise me you will?”

  His face was thin and drawn and haggard with anxiety, his hands clenched and unclenched feverishly round his knees, his body swayed sideways as he spoke.

  “Oh, Marjorie, Marjorie,” he had said. “I love you so.”

  She rose from her chair, walked across, and kneeling down before him, took his hands in hers. “You’re behaving very foolishly, Everard. I don’t go back upon my word.”

  “I know, I know. But oh, Marjorie, I’m so unhappy.”

  “If I were to give you, Everard, some proof, some clear, irrefutable proof that I cared for you, that I meant to wait for you, some proof that there would be no gainsaying, would you be happy then, Everard, would you stop worrying?”

  She had spoken very softly; very softly and very tenderly.

  “Would you, Everard.” she repeated, “would you stop worrying then?”

  “I don’t understand, Marjorie. What do you mean, what proof?”

  Her eyes as she answered him did not drop from his. “I mean this, Everard; if without marriage and without any pledge beyond your word, I were to give myself to you now, would you believe I cared for you, would you believe I was prepared to wait, would you cease to worry, Everard?”

  As she spoke, his eyes widened and his face lightened with surprise and joy. “Marjorie,” he stammered, “Marjorie.”

  “You would, Everard, if I did that,” she said, “you would cease worrying?”

  But he could not answer her. “Marjorie, my love,” he stammered, “Marjorie, Marjorie.’

  For a moment she had held him from her, looking searchingly into the face which would never again seem quite the same to her, then slowly she had drawn closer to him and passed an arm about his neck, and answered as she had drawn down his face to hers, “Very well then, Everard, I am yours from when you want me.”

  Perhaps she should have been ungenerous then, should have been niggardly of herself, should have withheld from the man who so cared for her, till he could purchase it with marriage, the thing he so highly valued. It was what the worldly woman would have done. But she was not worldly. She would rather be herself than that. He was wretched; and if having it in her power to make him happy, she had allowed him to remain wretched, she would have despised herself.

  Things had happened very quickly after that. There had been first the landlady’s complaint of the lateness of Everard’s visits.

  “I’m sorry, ma’am,” she had said, “but it won’t do. Other people in the street are speaking. They’re saying that gentlemen or a gentleman have been seen leaving here sometimes as late as one and two o’clock.
Now I’m not saying anything myself mind, I’m making no accusation. I’m merely repeating what other people have said to me. And it won’t do. It will do me harm, you see, ma’am. People talk, and when people talk, well you know what it is. So I must—I’m afraid, ma’am, that I must ask you not to have anyone here after ten o’clock or else—well, I’m very much afraid, ma’am——”

  “And it will be the same everywhere, I am afraid,” she had told Everard. “You know what landladies are.”

  “Then you must move into a flat.”

  “I can’t afford it.”

  “That’ll be all right. I’ll see to that.”

  “Oh no, Everard.” She had refused unconditionally. It was impossible, absolutely. “I couldn’t. Oh no, I couldn’t,” she had protested.

  “Why not, Marjorie?”

  “Because———”

  “Because you think I shouldn’t be offering to unless you had been so kind, so generous to me. But isn’t that rather a false pride, Marjorie? When a man falls in love with a woman, isn’t it his privilege to be allowed to support her? If 1 had been free, we should be married, you would be living in my house, you would not have to work, you would be my wife. And aren’t you my wife now in everything but name? Haven’t we given each other everything we have to give? Aren’t we one person really? You’re not going surely to allow an absurd thing like money to stand in the way of our loving one another? What’s the good of my money to me if I can’t make you happy with it?”

  “But it is different, really it is different, Everard.”

  “Where though, darling? Where, where?”

  In the end she had yielded to him. They were sound enough his arguments after all. And it was the one way to keep him happy. So she had moved into the flat that had looked so gay and fresh and pretty with its blue walls and primrose-yellow ceiling. Then there had come that trip to Switzerland where Everard had decided to make a business visit an excuse for a fortnight’s tobogganing at Mürren.

  “Take your holiday now instead of in July,” he had said. “We’ll have a gorgeous time.”

  But the agency had refused to let her take her holiday in January.

  “I am very sorry, Mrs Fairfield,” her employer had said. “But January is our busiest month. I cannot spare you possibly. I am very sorry, but no—really, there it is.”

  “Then give them notice,” was Everard’s comment. “We’ll soon find you another job when we get back.” And because she was both tired of the agency and had never been to Switzerland she had accepted his advice. But she had not been able to find a job on her return, and Everard, she suspected, had been none too anxious really to assist her. It was pleasanter and easier for him that she should be free at any time he might wish to see her. And also it might be that he preferred to have her entirely dependent on him economically. For a few weeks she had answered numberless advertisements and applied to several agencies, but without success. Till she decided under Everard’s encouragement that for five years she had really had no holiday at all, she had come straight from the hospital to her town job, and that it would be good for her to rest and look round for a month or two. And she had come to know through Everard quite a number of amusing people. Very soon she found herself caught up by a circle of engagements. Her diary was usually filled up for a week ahead. Her spare time increasingly diminished. From time to time she would promise herself that she would next week begin again to look for work, and then when next week came the telephone bell would go, and there would be an invitation to Ranelagh or Hurlingham, and the thought of work would be put aside. And so the days went by. And she came finally to realise that work is a habit like everything else; and a habit once lost is difficult to resume. She had drifted into a way of living that resulted in her reaching home at one or two in the morning, and breakfasting in bed at ten o’clock.

  “I don’t believe,” she thought, “I could work now if I wanted to.” And so for two years it had lasted, with Everard’s wife refusing obstinately to divorce him, with the consciousness of her own position growing hourly more oppressive, and with Everard becoming tediously unromantic. Her love for him, she came to feel, had been nothing more than gratitude for kindnesses when she had been lonely, gratitude mingled with a sort of pity for him, a misfocussing of maternal feeling. And then at Cannes in the Casino she had met Ransom.

  One thing had flowed so simply into another. It was easy to look at her position now and her position then, to say: “Now you are an unfaithful mistress; then you were a clean-living, decent, independent woman.” But it was not what one did, it was the way one did it that mattered, or rather the way in which one came to do it. Going back over it step by step, she could not see where exactly she had gone wrong, could not see where, if she had it all to do again, she would act differently. At no point had she acted against her judgment, her nature, or her conscience. She had done at each crisis what she had felt it to be right for her to do. And yet to what a dishonourable climax had these crises led.

  What else though, she repeated, was there for her to do? If she were to leave the flat and Everard, she might lose Ransom.

  If only she could be certain that Ransom loved her. In a few days’ time he would be going out of London for two months. Her presence in his life had not involved the slightest alteration in his habits. He had fitted her into the pattern of his life. She had her place in it as Deauville had its place, and shooting and cricket and dancing had their place. She had her place and season. Did he worry about her when he was away from her any more than he would worry about shooting during the cricket season? He never wrote to her, but then he never wrote to anyone. Would he remember her birthday—August the twenty-third—a day that they had cause both of them to remember? If he thought of her at all he would remember that. If he forgot, he could hardly once, she would know, have thought of her.

  There was a bang on the knocker of the front door.

  “That boy,” she thought, “and I’m only a quarter ready.”

  Chapter XI

  New Loves and Old

  A Strong emotion may determine, possibly, its own setting. But one must be very much in love not to notice where one is making love; and Manon Granta was not very much in love with Christopher Hammond. At first it had been original and exciting to visit him in his small bed-sitting room off the Hampstead Road. It had been like a scene out of a novel. She had enjoyed the adventure of paying off her taxi at the corner of the mews, of walking over uneven cobbles past grubby and curious-faced children to the narrow and unobtrusive doorway with the immense copper knocker representing Glastonbury Abbey, on which she would have to knock three times. She had been thrilled by the long, steep climb up the narrow, uncarpeted, stone stairway, and it had been a good moment when the door had closed behind them, and she had turned, warm and breathless, to be caught up into her lover’s arms. As a new sensation, it had been worth it; as a habit, it had become impossible. One’s aesthetic sense could be only temporarily displaced by an emotional reaction. To the formation of that aesthetic sense had gone after all the perceptions and associations of thirty years. The décor of one’s life was as important as one’s life itself. The finest claret would be unpalatable if drunken out of earthenware. One could no more sit with comfort in an ill-furnished room than one could walk happily in the park on the brightest of midsummer days in a costume that did not suit one. One’s tastes were a part of one; and Manon Granta was no longer under the blinding spell of an infatuation. She shuddered as she recalled the details of the afternoon that was sinking about her into a slow and sunshot decadence. It was not good enough; really, it was not good enough. Love was not worth having if it could not be better had than that.

  There was nothing about Chris’s room that she did not detest. The violently aggressive carpet, the grubby wallpaper, the thin, rusty rod across the window on which the small iron rings always contrived to catch when you drew the curtains, the discoloured patch in the corner of the ceiling, the gas fire with its dry, unhealth
y heat and sound of popping in the pipes, the narrow two-foot divan which might be all very well to sleep on—no, it would not do, it was not good enough. Rather than have to put up with that she would do without it altogether. And she did not particularly want to do without it. Poor, dear Chris. She was really quite fond of him, and he did seem genuinely to be in love with her. No, she did not want to give him up. He could, if things were suitably arranged, add quite considerably to the sum of her entertainment. But it was essential, quite essential, that they should be so arranged.

  With an even, noiseless diminution of its pace the taxi was preparing to draw up on the left-hand side of Berkeley Square. But there was nothing in particular for her to do at home. No letters to write, no book to read; and conversations over the telephone were exasperatingly inconclusive. With the end of her umbrella she tapped against the window and beckoned to the driver. He turned sideways and backwards in his seat expecting her to speak to him through the open window. But she remained indolently stretched back against the ill-sprung cushions. “Damn,” he murmured to himself, unhooked grudgingly the waterproof rug that was fastened across his knees, stepped down from his seat, opened the door, and leant his head forward into the carriage. It was not ten minutes since that Manon Granta had waved from the corner of the mews an imperious command at him, but already the small wooden box that was the cab had become filled with her rich and heavy fragrance. The taxi-driver had prepared to be ill-humoured. Why on earth couldn’t she have told him what she wanted through the window instead of making him unfasten himself, get down from his seat, and open the door for her? Too high and mighty; and they’d a lesson to learn those people. They weren’t going to find things so easy now that Labour had got a say in things. “Well,” he had prepared to say; just that, gruffly and aggressively, “Well.” But his ill-humour was unarmed against that fragrance. Appreciatively he sniffed at it and smiled.