Kept Read online

  “Well, Eric, and do you prefer this to the coat and skirt?” She had stepped quietly across the passage, turning the handle of the door so that she should not be heard, and had stolen across the room to stand unexpectedly before him in the firelight.

  “Marjorie,” he gasped. “Marjorie.”

  Never had she seemed to him before so lovely and desirable; so soft, so fragrant.

  “Do you like it, Eric dear?”

  But in the wavering, deceiving firelight he could not see what she was wearing. Something rust red, he thought, or brown was it, he did not know; something soft and yielding though. Something soft and yielding like the green sheath about a flower.

  “Oh Marjorie,” he said. And his arms were fast about her, his kisses were on her lips, and he drew her on to her knees beside him, to sit there in the cushioned fire light, cheek resting against cheek; all that grace and slenderness caught close to him.

  “Marjorie,” he said at last. “I want to talk, Marjorie, seriously.”

  She stirred resentfully within his arms.

  “I don’t want to talk, Eric, I’m so happy here; let’s stay as we are.”

  But he persisted. “Really we must, Marjorie. We ought to have yesterday, but I was so happy.”

  “Can’t we go on to-day being just as happy?”

  “No,” he said, “really no. We must talk.”

  For answer she nestled the closer into his arms, and rubbed the velvet of her cheek softly against his mouth, and kissed him very gently behind the ear.

  “Really, Marjorie, please,” he said.

  She shrugged her shoulders. “Oh well, if you must, but you’re very difficult, Eric. Well, what is it?”

  “It’s about us.”

  “What about us?”

  “Just us; what we are to do, I mean.”

  Marjorie shifted from his embrace. Why must he bother about that now? Why could he not leave it undiscussed till later? She could not bear the dissection of warm feelings in cold blood. With a little shudder she jumped to her feet, shook herself, walked over to the standard lamp, switched on the light, and said in the most matter-of-fact voice:

  “Well, Eric, and what about it all?”

  She stood, her hand on the switch of the electric light, smiling down at him, tenderly, but wistfully, as though she were saying: “You know, my dear, you make things rather difficult.”

  “Why’ve you done that,” he asked. “It was so muchdazed, in front of her.

  “I don’t understand, Marjorie, I don’t understand, jollier in the twilight. I don’t like that hard light, Marjorie.”

  She laughed, a quiet, nervous little laugh.

  “Isn’t that though what we want if we’re to talk seriously. a bright clear lieht; and isn’t that what you’re really care; and you know how much I care; well then surely, Marjorie, couldn’t we decide—”

  But Marjorie could not bear it. She could not hear through to its end this stammered proposition that was reducing romance to a cold fact.

  “Oh why, why, why go on?” she said impatiently. “Surely you know, you must know, I’ve said I care—isn’t that enough? Surely it’s enough for you, Eric.”

  “Then you will, Marjorie,” he said eagerly, “you will, really you will? You care for me enough for that?” She shook her head wearily.

  “Haven’t I said so, Eric. Why force me any further? Is it a thing that there’s any need for us to discuss? I’ve said yes, Eric. Let’s leave it there. For heaven’s sake let’s leave it there.”

  She could speak no further. Her face had been taken between his hands, and on her lips had been set the fervour of an enraptured kiss. “Oh Marjorie, my darling,” he was saying, “I’m so proud, so grateful. But when? Tell me, Marjorie, when, when, when?”

  She pulled herself away from him impatiently, exhausted by his inexperience. “Oh Eric, I don’t understand you,” she said. “Why must you go on; why? Can’t you see I don’t want to talk about it?”

  She had drawn away from him and was leaning against the far end of the sofa. Her hand was raised towards her heart, and her breath was coming quickly, painfully. She was hurt and angry and unhappy. It was so different from what she had expected.

  Eric had risen to his feet, and was standing, baffled and dazed, in front of her.

  “I don’t understand, Marjorie, I don’t understand, he said. “It’s a thing we must discuss. There are so many things, there are difficulties, there’s the money.”

  “Money!—what do you mean—money!” The sentence was almost shrieked at him.

  “Money,” he replied stupidly; “why, of course there’s money. I’ve got very little you see, Marjorie. I don’t know what you expect—”

  He stopped, checked by the look of anger and horror in her eyes. For a moment he thought she was going to cry, then the expression of her face hardened.

  “You’d better go, Eric,” she said quietly. “We’ve said all that we can say profitably to one another. You’d better go.”

  Eric stepped backwards, his fingers pulled helplessly at his tie. It was like a nightmare, a succession of unaccountable happenings.

  “I don’t understand, Marjorie, I don’t understand,” he said.

  “Perhaps not,” she answered. “Why should you? I was mistaken. You’d better go.”

  His eyes widened with surprise and misery, widened and welled with tears. “I don’t understand, Marjorie,” he repeated. “Surely, surely one’s got to discuss these things before one marries.”

  “Marries!” The word came in a gasp from between her lips.

  “Yes, marries. I want to know, I must know how soon we can be married.”

  She raised her hand despairingly across her forehead, pushed back her fringe and ran her fingers through it.

  “Married,” she repeated. “So that’s what you meant then, was it?”

  “Of course, Marjorie. What did you think I meant?”

  She shook her head. “I don’t know. I didn’t know what you meant. Marriage—that’s what you meant then? You want to marry me?”

  “What else could I mean? What else could anyone mean when they fall in love?”

  “Exactly, Eric, what else?” She gave a little laugh, sat down slowly on to a footstool beside the chesterfield, and leant forward, her head resting on her hands—leant forward and remained there rigid. Eric sat watching her, wondering what to do. What did one do at such a moment? And what sort of a moment was it? What had happened, what was happening? What was worrying her? God knew what he had done.

  He stepped away from the fireplace, moved across to the chesterfield, seated himself behind her, and bending forward, lifted her head so that it lay back against his knees. Very gently, very tenderly, his fingers stroked her cheek. For several minutes they sat in silence, then suddenly Marjorie seized his hand from her face, and pressed it fiercely, gratefully, despairingly against her lips.

  “You’re rather a dear,” she said. Her face was turned from him so that he could not see it, but in her voice there was the sound of tears. And again there was silence between them, while his fingers stroked at the smooth satin of her cheek.

  “I’m sorry,” he said at last. “I don’t know what I’ve done, darling Marjorie, to offend you, but I’ve done something. I’ve hurt you somewhere. I don’t know how I’ve done it. I don’t know what I’ve said. But whatever it is, forgive me, please, please, forgive me, Marjorie.”

  “There’s nothing to forgive, Eric.”

  “Surely though, Marjorie—”

  “There was nothing. I was being silly. There was nothing, Eric.” Her voice was dead, toneless, lifeless, colourless. He had never heard her speak like that before.

  “Then if there’s nothing, Marjorie, if there was nothing, then—then you’ll marry me, Marjorie.”

  She shook her head.

  “No, Eric. I’m very sorry. That’s not possible.”

  “But why, Marjorie, why—” he pleaded.

  “Because—”

&n
bsp; “Because what?”

  “Because a lot of things.”

  “As for example.”

  She paused before she answered.

  “Oh, well—money, I suppose, for one.”

  He caught her up eagerly. “Money, yes I know, Marjorie, that’s what I was saying at the beginning, and you said—”

  “We were talking at cross purposes just then.”

  “I know. I felt, I didn’t understand, but money you see—well I know I’ve practically nothing now, but my parents would allow me something, and I shall soon be in a position to earn something at the bar. I know it sounds rather a rotten sort of offer to make a girl, but I shall get there in the end, Marjorie, I know I shall. And with you to work for I’ll do big things, I swear I will. I’ll make you proud of me.” He spoke in short, broken, agitated sentences. “We could live here at first,” he added.

  “We couldn’t live here, Eric, if I married.” But he was too excited to notice the curiously restrained tone in which she answered him.

  “Because of the added income-tax,” he said hurriedly.

  “I had thought of that, and I did feel that it was a pretty rotten thing to ask one’s wife practically to support one and to give up a great chunk of her income because of one. But if two people really care for each other. I wouldn’t dare ask you if I didn’t care so much. I know one oughtn’t to ask a girl to marry one unless one can support her. But what is one to do, Marjorie, if one falls in love when one can’t support one—and well a girl who’s got money as you have?”

  “I’ve got no money, Eric.” She spoke on the same toneless note that had he been himself less eager would have warned him.

  “But, Marjorie—but you must have some. Why, there’s the flat. It can’t be cheap.”

  “I’ve my war pension,” she said. “It’s not much, and I’ll lose that when I marry. I’ve nothing else. Or rather, if I marry I’ll have nothing else.”

  “But then I don’t see—” he paused meditatively. “Oh, why, of course,” he said. “I see—how stupid of me. Your husband’s money, the money he left you; it was only yours so long as you didn’t marry. What a rotten shame. Oh, I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said that, still though—well, if it’s like that, I’m pretty sure my people would see me through for a bit, at any rate till I’m making my own way. If that’s what has happened.”

  “My husband,” she said, “left me eighty-seven pounds.”

  She had not once looked at him as they spoke. She had leant forward, her chin resting against her knees, staring fixedly at the glowing heap of coals. And her voice had retained throughout the same dead level of intonation.

  “Eighty-seven pounds,” Eric repeated.

  She nodded. “Eighty-seven pounds. And there was a gratuity, I’ve forgotten what. Not much at any rate.”

  “Eighty-seven pounds. Then—then—” he rose to his feet abruptly, walked across the room, and stood, his hands behind his back looking out through a slit where the curtains had been half-drawn on to the swaying leaflessness of Regent’s Park. For a full five minutes he must have stood there while Marjorie sat motionless before the fire. Then he turned quickly and stood in front of her.

  “Marjorie,” he said, and he spoke impatiently. “I don’t understand. There’s a mystery here, and I don’t know what it is. And I’ve a right to know. What is it, Marjorie? Why is it that you’d have no money if you married? Why have you been so queer from the moment we began to discuss this thing? What is it? I must know, Marjorie. What is it?”

  She raised her face to look at him.

  “You’re very young, Eric,” she said.

  “What do you mean—young?”

  “I mean—well an older man, Eric, he wouldn’t have asked those questions. He’d have left them to solve themselves.”

  “I don’t understand what you mean,”

  “I didn’t expect you to, my dear.”

  He tapped the ball of his foot impatiently upon the carpet.

  “Don’t let’s talk in parables,” he said, and his voice had grown almost brutal now. “I want to know the truth. I’m going to know the truth. You’ve got to tell me, Marjorie.”

  Her eyes did not leave his face, they had grown wide and mournful and a little pitying.

  “And I could have made you very happy, Eric.” She murmured the words softly, to herself rather than to him, and he did not catch them.

  “What did you say?” he said. “I didn’t hear you.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” she answered. “It wasn’t anything.” She lifted herself to her feet and stood beside him, raised her hands and took the lapels of his coat between her fingers.

  “Eric,” she said, and her voice was soft now, very soft and very wooing. “You do love me, don’t you? And aren’t I the first woman you’ve ever loved?”

  He nodded his head.

  “I’ve never loved anyone before, Marjorie. I feel that I can never love anyone again.”

  “Very well, then, Eric, kiss me, please, just once—now sit down here; no, no, not again. One day you’ll understand that kiss. Now listen.”

  And turning her back to him, she knelt before the fire, her hands stretched out towards the blaze.

  “You’ll understand that kiss one day,” she said, “because you’ll remember that it was the last time you ever kissed, loving her, the first woman that you ever loved. I’m not saying that we shall never kiss again. But I shall never again mean to you what I’m meaning to you now. I shall be a different woman, or rather you’ll be seeing me as a different woman. Because you know, my dear, the woman you’re seeing now isn’t me at all.”

  But he was too hungry for the truth to listen to her. “For God’s sake, Marjorie, don’t talk to me in parables. I don’t know what you’re meaning, or what you’re saying I’m in a fog and I want to be out of it. Do, do, Marjorie, I must know.”

  “Oh Eric, Eric,” she sighed. “Why must you worry so? Why can’t you let us be happy as we are, as we were half-an-hour since? Why must you drag into the light so much that was better in the darkness? Why, why—Oh Eric, why?”

  “Because I love you, because I want you to be my wife. I insist on knowing. It’s my right to know.”

  “Your right, your right, how you men talk about your rights. As though I hadn’t the right to my own life, and the right to live it as I choose. You wouldn’t understand, Eric dear. However long I talked to you, however much I tried to explain to you, you’d never understand. You’re so young, Eric. You still think that you can get a thing both ways. And you can’t, my dear, you can’t. That’s one of the rules of life. It hurts learning it. And you haven’t learnt it. There’s no right or wrong. There’s simply the lesser of two evils. And if you’re selfish you choose the way that will hurt yourself the less; and if you’re unselfish the way that’ll hurt others less. That’s all there is to it, my dear; believe me, that’s all there is to it.”

  Her body rocked sideways as she spoke, sideways and forwards in a sort of circle. And the intensity with which she spoke aggravated Eric’s impatience. He jumped to his feet, and put his hands upon her shoulders.

  “Stop,” he half shouted, and as he shouted shook her.

  “Stop, I tell you, stop. I’ve heard enough of this. You’re torturing me with all these riddles. I want the facts. I must have the facts. Give them me, Marjorie, give them me.”

  She shook her head wretchedly.

  “It’s no good,” she said, “it’s no good my talking. You wouldn’t understand me. You’d better go and ask one of your friends. They’ll know, they’ll give you them.”

  “My friends!” he gasped. “My friends-they know and I don’t know. What do you mean? Which of my friends?”