Love in these Days Read online

  A few minutes after ten. The dance at tfie Gloucester Galleries would have been going for about an hour. It would be just getting warmed up now. After all he might as well. He had paid fifteen shillings for a ticket. He could always come away if he got bored.

  “Somehow or other,” he said, “I mean to get some amusement for myself this evening.”

  • • • • • • • •

  It was the sort of dance that from the beginning Graham Moreton had suspected it would prove to be. In the first place the Gloucester Galleries had no licence, and one must be very young or very much in love to enjoy a dance at which there is no champagne. In the second the stretch of land and seascapes along the walls, for whose exhibition a society of undistinguished amateurs paid a heavy rent to the proprietors, was possessed of singularly anaphrodisiacal properties. And in the third Graham did not recognize in the whole room a single familiar face.

  “One imagines sometimes,” he told himself, as he stood leaning against the doorway, “that one knows everyone in London, but one has only to move a few inches outside the circumference of one’s own crowd to find oneself in a world of which one knows absolutely nothing.” And the curious thing about it was that all these other worlds looked exactly like his own. There were the same young women with close cropped heads and purple mouths and boneless bodies; the same young men with double-breasted waistcoats and piqué shirts, wide-spreading ties and pleated trousers, tight-fitting cuffs and padded shoulders. As they passed by him in groups and couples, it was the same animated flow of chatter that he overheard. They were, these various worlds, like so many trains running at the same speed on parallel tracks. The same people, the same setting, the same attitude towards life, but because while the dimensions of London had increased, there had remained only seven evenings to the week, there was not room for all of them in the same train.

  In the doorway that led from the ballroom to the lounge, Graham Moreton leant back watching the spate of couples sway and circle past him. In the whole room not a soul he knew.

  “Really,” he thought, “I might just as well have stayed at home.”

  And then suddenly he caught his breath. On the arm of a stockish, middle-aged, prosperous-looking man was walking, in a sheath of blue-black marocain, a tall, slim woman. Her face in its helmet of black hair, was pale with the pallor that is less snow’s than ivory’s. Above eyes that were pale pools of amber, the long-lashed lids were lifted. Her lips were like the magenta petals of some tropical and velvet flower. Exotic as the orchid upon her shoulder, slowly, and with a tired, listless expression upon her face, she walked beside her partner towards the long white buffet that was drawn across the far end of the smaller room.

  “Heavens,” thought Graham, “but I’d like to dance with her.”

  Foot by foot, his eyes followed her passage across the room.

  “And I don’t see,” he added, “why I shouldn’t, either. She looks bored enough with the man she’s with.”

  Why not, after all, since he had come there rather desperately in search of entertainment, and she was the only woman in the room from whom he was likely to get any. Resolutely he turned upon his heel, and walked after her in the direction of the buffet.

  There was a fairish crowd before the table, and it was only by the exercise of tact, patience and a little force that he found himself at last beside her, and in football parlance, on the blind side of the scrum, which was to say with her partner on the far side of her. For a moment of beating and exquisite anticipation he waited till her companion had turned aside to address a waiter, then leaning forward, he placed his hand upon her arm above the elbow, and announced in a cheerful and perfectly matter-of-fact voice:

  “You are easily, you know, the most attractive woman in the room.”

  Slowly she turned round to face him, and the amber-coloured eyes were lit with mockery.

  “But how nice of you,” she said, “to come and tell me.”

  The faculty to be abashed easily was not, however, any part of Graham Moreton’s equipment.

  “Then may I hope,” he said, “that you will reward me with a dance?”

  She laughed.

  “But I haven’t the least idea,” she answered, “who you are.”

  “Nor I of you,” he countered, “but you’re so attractive and I do hope you’ll dance with me.”

  After the genuine strain of his dinner with Joan Faversham such a light flirtation would be an immense relief. And with such blind wholeheartedness as at the end of a long day’s cricket one plunges into a cold bath, he dived into the flood of his own audacity.

  “Do,” he pleaded. “If I don’t dance with you I shall regard this evening as one of the supreme calamities of my life.”

  “Really?”

  She was smiling now, a gay, bright, clear-eyed smile. He was a jolly boy, she thought, so fresh and strong and healthy-looking, with his firm crinkly hair and hazel eyes and clear, sunburned cheeks; a jolly boy, and she had been finding the evening more than a little dull.

  “But you will, won’t you?” he was pleading. “Number ten.”

  She neither shook her head nor nodded it: just smiled, a brief ironic smile, then turned towards her partner. “Now I wonder,” he asked himself, “what I am to make of that?”

  • • • • • • • •

  Number ten happened to be the next dance but two. And as the music started and her previous partner rose at her side with the conventional bow, Graham observed walking towards her from the other side of the room the man with whom he had seen her dancing earlier in the evening.

  For a moment he hesitated. He had noticed that she was wearing a wedding ring. Quite possibly the fellow might be her husband. She hadn’t promised him the dance. There might be trouble. For a moment he hesitated, then with a quick step so that he might arrive opposite her at the same moment as her former partner, he walked across the room towards her. He was recklessly inclined this evening. And what did it matter, after all, when so little was at stake? And there was besides something offensively proprietary in the way that the other man came forward, something offensively proprietary in the tone of voice with which he said, “Shall we dance or sit this out?”

  Graham Moreton said nothing, but as she lifted her head he bent slightly forward, and as their eyes met he smiled; the diffident smile of a conspirator who is uncertain of his ground.

  “Shall we dance this?” the man repeated.

  She shook her head.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’ve promised to dance it with . . . with this gentleman.”

  And rising from her chair she stretched her hand out towards Graham.

  “Thank you,” he said. She made no reply, and, placing his hand upon her shoulder, with long sweeping strides he swept her into the smooth flowing rhythm of “Titina.” “Your dancing’s divine,” he murmured, “but, then, I knew it would be,” and as he guided her through the maze of bobbing couples he whispered into her ear those graceful gallantries that fall from the lips so easily when one is not in love, so stammeringly when one is.

  “Who is he, that man you were dancing with?” he asked at length.

  “That? Oh, a man called Fortescue. Guy Fortescue.”

  “He’s not your husband, is he?”

  “My dear boy, is it likely?”

  “And why not?”

  As far as it is possible to shrug one’s shoulders when one is dancing, Gwen Lawrence shrugged hers.

  “There are such things as taste,” was her reply.

  “In some things,” Graham hastened to explain. “But if you look round you’ll usually see that it’s the least attractive man who gets the most attractive woman.”

  She smiled.

  “Which means——” she said, and paused, leaving the sentence unfinished for his completion.

  “Which means,” he said, “that if utter plainness is the magnet for supreme loveliness that man is the only person worthy of you in the room.”

  He spok
e lightly, smilingly, in such a way as the courtiers of the eighteenth century must have spoken, and she replied in the same key. After all, why not? They had never met before. They did not know each other’s names. As likely as not they would never see each other again. How better than in such light flirtation could the odd half-hour of a dance be spent? And so they laughed and jested and in a dim corner of the lounge made mockery of much devotion.

  “Three hours ago,” Graham Moreton was saying, “I had never seen you. I did not know even that you existed. I had not thought it possible that such perfection could exist. While now—” and he spread his hands sideways with the resigned gesture of one who accepts a miracle.

  “While now,” she said, “I observe that my cavalier is coming here to claim me.”

  The music had begun, and with a firm resolute tread the middle-aged and stockish man was walking towards the sofa where they were sitting. He did not bow. He did not speak. He just paused in front of them and stood there waiting with that in his bearing of complacent, arrogant conceit which would have stirred a subject far less inflammable than Graham Moreton.

  And there was in Graham Moreton that night a spirit of heady recklessness. He had been talking, for half an hour, a quantity of high-sounding nonsense. There was the memory to be killed of his unhappy quarrel with Joan Faversham. At his side in the presence of an attractive and unknown woman there was an intoxicating sense of audience. And there was in the smug attitude of Guy Fortescue something peculiarly and offensively aggressive. “He seems to imagine,” thought Graham angrily, “that because he has taken her out to dinner and bought her a ticket for this dance, he has acquired permanent rights in her. Oh, well, I’ll show him.”

  And rising from his seat with his back turned to Fortescue he took his leave.

  “It’s been a heavenly dance,” he said. “I’ve so enjoyed myself. And let me see now, which day was it we arranged to lunch together? Thursday, was it, or to-morrow? To-morrow, I rather think.”

  Of such an arrangement there had not passed a single word between them. And had Graham, in the glance that they exchanged, attempted either to plead or to intimidate her into compliance, as likely as not she would have found some excuse or other to refuse him. She would have refused, and they would have passed for ever out of each other’s lives.

  But in the look that met hers so steadily was the gay twinkle of the conspirator. “Say yes,” it said, that twinkle. “This man’s an awful mutt, and it’s the one way of taking the conceit out of him. Be a sport—say yes.” And because the request was made in that spirit it was acceded to.

  “I think,” she replied, “I think it was to-morrow.”

  The twinkle deepened in the hazel eyes.

  “Tomorrow. Splendid. Romano’s, then, at half-past one. Thank you so much.” And, without turning even to acknowledge or look at her companion, he walked with a gay step towards the door.

  Chapter II

  Hard-Hearted Lady

  In silence the woman with whom Graham Moreton had danced drove home two hours later beside the man whom she had called Guy Fortescue. Cautiously out of the corner of her eye she watched him. Morose and sullen, with the fur rug drawn tightly round his knees he sat huddled in the far corner of the car. Since they had left the Gloucester Galleries he had not spoken a single word. And it was only, she suspected, for the sake of appearance, because they had been there with a party, that he had stayed so long.

  There would be a row probably when they got back. For days now she had been conscious of its imminence. It had been a mistake, perhaps, to yield to that rather jolly boy’s impertinence. And she had been rash to accept that ridiculous lunch engagement. If she had wished, that was to say, to avoid a row. She was not though altogether certain that she did. It could be a question only of postponement. The row was bound to come, sooner or later, in one way or another; and these things were better put behind one. It was best, perhaps, to make use of the first occasion that lay to hand.

  Calm-eyed and with unflurried ease she stepped out on to the pavement as the car drew up before her flat.

  “Will you come in,” she asked, “and have a drink?”

  Guy Fortescue nodded his head. “Thanks,” he answered. “You can wait,” he told his chauffeur, and followed her into the flat in silence. In the hall she paused to move the wooden shutter from “Out” to “In,” after the name of Mrs. Lawrence.

  “I hope,” she said, “that May Julian’s remembered to make the fire up before she went to bed. Ah! and she has.”

  In the dining-room a high-piled fire was casting a dull red glow on to the walls and ceiling. The room was comfortably warm, and on the table had been set out a plate of sandwiches, a thermos flask, a decanter of whisky, a siphon of soda water and several tumblers.

  “She thinks of everything,” Mrs. Lawrence murmured.

  Fortescue grunted.

  “She gets your breakfast too in the morning, doesn’t she?”

  Mrs. Lawrence nodded.

  “She tidies your flat before she goes to work.”

  “And at lunch time,” she replied, sprightly enough, ignoring the venom of his comment, “she returns and does my bedroom. She’s a perfect treasure.”

  “An unsalaried maid, in fact.”

  For a moment she looked him steadily in the eyes.

  “May Julian,” she answered, “is, as you know perfectly well, a homeless and not very happy girl who lives here as my guest and helps me with the house.”

  “One of the many, Gwen,” he sneered, “who give you a great deal and get very little in return.”

  Unconcernedly her eyes met his.

  “I don’t know what you mean,” she said. “Will you help yourself to a whisky?” and turning she walked over to the mantelpiece, against one of whose ornaments was resting the orange envelope of an unopened telegram.

  She tore back the flap and spread out the flimsy paper; read it; then tossed it upon the table.

  “How absurd,” she said. “Just look at that. ‘Can I call for you dine Thursday eight o’clock Ralph.’ As though I could be expected to know who that referred to.”

  The expression of Guy Fortescue’s face grew surlier.

  “How many Ralphs do you know?” he asked.

  “Three or four, I suppose, not more.”

  “And you call each of them by their Christian name?”

  “Except the ones that I’ve got pet names for.”

  For a moment his fists clenched tightly. Ah, but how she maddened him with her cool loveliness, her long, graceful hands that fluttered ceaselessly, her tall, slim, smoothly-moving figure; that body so rich in promise, so tauntingly withheld.

  “And who was that young man,” he asked, “that you were dancing with?”

  “A friend of mine.”

  “An old one?”

  “Not particularly.”

  “He didn’t seem to be unenterprising. But then he’s not in a position where he has need to be.”

  He spoke spitefully. And Gwen was reminded of one of Christopher Stirling’s favourite mots: “Cattishness is an affair of sex, but not of gender.” It was scarcely surprising, of course, that he should be in a bad temper. When one takes out a woman with whom one is in love, however hopelessly, one doesn’t expect to have to spend a large part of the evening watching another man making intense, if equally hopeless love to her. All the same, she did not quite see the point of his remark.

  “I don’t know what you mean,” she said.

  “He’s poor. All young men are nowadays. They don’t know how to work. And poverty is the best passport to successful gallantries.”

  “That sounds like an epigram out of the ‘nineties.’”

  “It’s true,” he maintained. “If a man’s poor he can say what he likes because he knows no practical woman will take him at his word. He can promise eternal devotion; he can offer everything he has. He needn’t think twice first, as a man with money need.”

  Gwen Lawrence pouted.


  “You’re cynical,” she said.

  “I have had enough to make me.”

  Closely, but with half shut eyes, she watched him. Was this the prelude to the quarrel that had become inevitable, or was it that he had not at this latest hour the vitality to sustain decisive action? He was over fifty and it was after two. Was this merely an advance barrage, a preparatory skirmish?

  For a few moments in silence they stood acutely conscious of one another, waiting each of them for the other to move first. Then with a quick jerk of the wrist Guy Fortescue emptied off his glass.

  “When shall I see you again?” he asked.

  “If you’d care,” she said, “to call for me before one to-morrow, we might go and have a cocktail at the Ritz.”

  With a sigh that was half only of relief, Gwen Lawrence as the door closed behind Guy Fortescue sank back into a chair before the fire. She scarcely knew whether she was glad or sorry that the moment had passed indecisively. She liked to get things over.

  From behind her came softly the sound of an opening door.

  “May I come in, darling?”

  “Of course, May dear.”

  “Was the coffee all right?”

  “Delightful: it was sweet of you to have thought of it.”

  “But, darling, why, of course.”

  A frail, timid figure, wrapped round in a flannel dressing-gown, May Julian scuttled forward across the floor to sit on a footstool at Gwen’s feet and look up at her with wide, adoring eyes.

  “Was it a nice dance?” she asked.

  “Not too bad.”

  “Did anything exciting happen?”

  “What is there that could happen that would be exciting?”