So Lovers Dream Page 22

  ‘You must be rushing off to change for dinner, I suppose,’ he said.

  ‘In a minute.’

  ‘I’ve had mine: a steak and beer.’

  ‘I’m going to the Faybrenge’s, that’ll mean champagne.’

  ‘Give them my love.’

  ‘Yes, indeed.’

  ‘You must rush and change now?’

  ‘I suppose I must.’

  ‘It’s been marvellous to hear your voice again.’

  ‘It was sweet of you to ring.’

  ‘Good-bye, my dear.’

  ‘Good-bye.’ There was a click. Once again she was three thousand miles away. She had seemed farther away than that when she had been talking.

  Chapter Two

  In the third week of November Gordon finished his novel. Since his flat was let, he took a bedroom at his club for the week that was necessary to be spent before the typing of his book—he would correct the typescript on the journey over—was finished. Now that he knew that within three weeks he would be seeing Faith, that the date was marked upon the calendar, his passage booked on the de Grasse, that his stay in London was so short that he could not be involved in the network of engagements that is London’s life, he returned to London with the intention of enjoying that one week to its full: of seeing as many people as he could, of crowding into each day as many different episodes as possible.

  ‘Please arrange a nice party for me,’ he said to Julia, ‘so that I’ll get asked to lots of other parties.’

  ‘What’s the good of arranging a party for you?’ she complained. ‘You’ll have no time to get to know people in a week.’

  ‘I don’t want to get to know people. I just want to have a busy week.’

  ‘In that case, then. . . .’ She paused, and a quick smile, the smile that he had always found irresistible, flashed into her eyes.

  ‘As a reward for that, you can take me out to a theatre. I’ve not seen “Ganymede”, and I want to.’

  It was the play in which Joan Malcolm was acting: the play which of all others in London he most wanted to see. He could imagine no one in whose company he would sooner see it. In many ways there was no relationship that gave more unalloyed happiness than that of brother and sister when both were young. There was the excitement of taking a pretty woman out to dinner, the masculine delight in watching a feminine mind at work; and there was the same comfortable feeling you had when you were dining with a man that the evening would not be spoilt by emotional irrationality.

  ‘I sometimes ask myself,’ he said, as they rose from the table, ‘whether it’s only because I so seldom see you that I so terribly enjoy it when I do.’

  ‘And how do you answer yourself?’

  ‘I usually say no.’

  ‘Ganymede’ was the first successful play in which Joan Malcolm had acted before an English audience since her appearance in ‘Adolescence’. No plays could have been more dissimilar. ‘Ganymede’ was a Chicago crook play. Its symbolism showed a high official as Zeus and the bootlegger who supplied him with gin as Ganymede. Women were incidental to the play. But Joan Malcolm as Zeus’ mistress, temporarily attracted by Ganymede and by that attraction causing Ganymede’s ultimate overthrow, had three big scenes.

  In one of these scenes she was faced by the bootlegger’s wife: a common, unattractively presented person. It was a scene that had been written so that the high light should fall upon the wife. The part of the wife was taken by a clever, but little-known actress. Ninety-nine leading actresses would have insisted on the scene being so produced that it should be ‘their’ scene, not the minor character’s. Joan Malcolm acted it as it was written. ‘So she’s unselfish,’ thought Gordon, ‘in addition to everything else.’

  There was a good deal else. Before Joan had been three minutes on the stage, Gordon knew that what might have been guesswork in her three years back was now instinct based upon technique. You had, as you watched her, the same comfortable feeling that you were in the presence of a composed artist, in control of his medium, working within himself, that came to you when you read the first paragraph of a Maupassant short story; when you saw Hobbs take the first ball of an innings in the centre of his bat. You knew you were not going to be let down.

  But it was not only in her technique that she had changed. She was changed in herself: not in her looks so much; she had the same dark, haunting loveliness; but in that which was at the back of looks. There was in her the poise of a person who had come to terms with herself. It was not hardness, not ruthlessness, but resolution. It was more than the necessity of the action that made her render so convincingly the practicalness of the woman who had been forced to recognize that the only way to success, to ease, to a seemly way of life, lay through the exploitation of her charm; that she had to exploit that charm in exactly the same way that a man of business would exploit his talent; that she must refuse resolutely to be side-tracked by appeals to sentiment; by what was popularly considered feminine psychology. While, at the same time, in her relation with the bootlegger was shown her quiet resolve to get for herself the thing she needed for herself. She had read into the part far more than the author had written there. Gordon watching from the stalls wondered what drama in her own life had completed the dramatic artist in her. What had happened to her, he wondered, during the four years since they had sat together on the cricket field at Wimbledon? Was she in love now? he wondered. From the proud recklessness that she had flung into her scenes with the bootlegger, she might well be.

  ‘Let’s go round and see Joan Malcolm,’ said Gordon as the curtain fell.

  ‘I didn’t know you knew her,’ Julia said.

  ‘I don’t, very well.’

  ‘Won’t she be bothered at our going round, then?’

  Gordon shook his head. ‘I don’t think she will.’ He scribbled his name on a sheet of paper and handed it to the door-man. They were not kept waiting for longer than two minutes.

  ‘Gordon,’ she cried as he came into the room.

  There is a strange feeling of unreality about an actress in her dressing-room. She is wearing the clothes and the make-up of her part. She is still in appearance the role she has been playing. Yet she has become again the person that she is. She is half-way between two realities. With Joan Malcolm, Gordon was unconscious of this embarrassment though he had not seen her for four years, and then for a few minutes only. He had the same feeling that he had had then, of having known her all his life.

  ‘I hear you’ve been round to my flat making friends with Mrs James,’ he said.

  ‘Was that her name? Oh, darling, I thought she was such a pet.’

  ‘She was so excited about you.’

  ‘She liked me?’

  ‘She was dazzled. Every time I come back from anywhere she says, “Have you seen that nice acting lady?”’

  ‘And why haven’t you?’

  ‘Because we’ve never been in the same town at the same moment.’

  ‘We’re wanderers, aren’t we?’

  ‘And now I’m going to New York next week.’

  ‘By the time I get there you’ll be in Yokohama.’

  ‘Maybe not.’

  ‘I hope not.’

  They chatted for a moment or two. Then:

  ‘It’s time for you to be getting dressed,’ said Gordon. ‘I suppose it’s no use asking you to come out and have some supper?’

  ‘I’m afraid not.’

  ‘Then we’ll have to leave it till New York.’

  Though heaven knows where I’ll be then, he thought.

  Next morning as he was sitting in Stanley’s office, deciding a few final arrangements before his sailing, the telephone bell went.

  ‘It’s for you,’ said Stanley.

  A voice that was strange to Gordon was speaking at the other end.

  ‘You won’t know me,’ the voice said. ‘My name’s Horton. I’ve got all sorts of messages for you from Faith Sweden.’

  ‘What kind of messages?’

  ‘J
ust messages. Hoping you are well. Looking forward to seeing you and all that.’

  ‘You’ve seen her quite recently?’

  ‘I’ve just got back.’

  ‘Then in that case . . . look here.’

  He put his hand over the mouthpiece. ‘Do you mind,’ he said to Stanley, ‘if I ask this man to have dinner with us tonight?’

  ‘It’s your dinner,’ Stanley said.

  ‘But you don’t mind?’

  ‘Why should I mind?’

  ‘Very well, then. Probably he can’t come, anyway.’

  He took his hand away from the mouthpiece. ‘I suppose you can’t have dinner with me tonight?’

  ‘Tonight? Why, that’s very nice of you. I think I’ld love it. I’ld have to be getting away a little early, but apart from that. . . .’

  ‘That’s fine,’ said Gordon. ‘The Granville Club at seven-thirty and don’t dress.’

  ‘And now,’ he turned back to Stanley, ‘let’s get all this settled.’

  The arrangements were taking longer than they did usually. Gordon was preparing for contingencies that had not arisen before. He was not certain whether within a week of his arrival Faith and he might not be flying south for the Martinique that he had always promised himself he would revisit.

  The man who was brought up to where Gordon and Stanley were sitting in the Granville lounge was difficult to place. He was tall, broad-shouldered and in the late twenties or early thirties. He was the kind of man who would look magnificent in a photograph. But who somehow, owing to a lack of poise, of carriage, did not make an instantaneous effect of looks as he came up the stairs into the Granville drawing-room. His clothes were good, but not distinguished. He had either, Gordon decided, gone to a moderate tailor, or else had let an expensive tailor be casual. He appeared to be English. He spoke in a nondescript voice. There was no trace of an accent; nor was there any attempt to conceal an accent. Gordon guessed that he had gone to a smallish public school; that he had left at about sixteen; and since then had knocked about the world; that he travelled in something, probably. He wondered how Faith had come to know him. Some business connection of Roger’s probably. Their conversation was of the casual standardized type that would take place between three men at a first meeting. They asked him what ship he had crossed on. He had come over on the Lafayette. He couldn’t understand why people wanted to travel second-class on the five-day liners, when there were cabin-boats like that.

  ‘Some people are in a hurry,’ Stanley said. They compared the ships of the various lines.

  ‘I’ve always wanted to try one of the American merchant boats,’ said Stanley.

  Gordon said he had never travelled on an Italian ship.

  They asked him what kind of weather he had had.

  ‘It was bad for the first two days. Afterwards it was pretty decent.’

  They compared various crossings.

  ‘In the air and on a small boat I’m more likely to be ill than not,’ said Gordon. ‘But I’ve only once felt even bad on a large boat. And I think that was the sudden change of climate from the Red Sea to the Indian Ocean.’

  Stanley said that the very atmosphere of a liner made him bad. ‘A row-boat in a tempest every time for me.’

  They had begun to discuss New York when the gong went for the quarter to eight dinner which is one of the features of the Granville Club.

  ‘You would hardly recognize New York, it’s so changed,’ said Horton. ‘They weathered the first slump. They thought it was temporary. But now there’s this second slump and they’re beginning to feel there’s something basically wrong.’

  ‘And as a result of that first slump,’ said Stanley, ‘there are all these unemployed being flung upon the market.’

  ‘They’ve lost their heads,’ said Horton. ‘They’re like spoilt children who’ve had their toys taken from them.’

  Stanley shook his head. ‘It’s not that so much,’ he said, ‘as that they’ve had prosperity preached to them like a religion. Now that their religion’s taken from them, they’ve nothing to fall back upon. They haven’t been inoculated against bad periods.’

  It was easy, pleasant talk, and Horton, Gordon considered, was an easy, pleasant fellow. The kind of fellow whom you would not mind if you never saw again, but whom you would always be quite pleased to see. It was nice of Faith to have sent him with messages. Later, when Stanley went down to the cardroom for a rubber, he would ask him the latest news of her.

  When they reached the joint Horton helped himself liberally to potatoes.

  ‘It’s nice to be out of training,’ he remarked.

  ‘What do you train for? Football?’

  ‘No, bicycling.’

  ‘What an extraordinary thing to be in training for. What kind of bicycling?’

  ‘Six-day bicycling.’

  Stanley looked at him in undisguised curiosity.

  ‘I didn’t know people like you really existed. Now tell me all about it from the very start.’

  While Stanley asked question after question, Gordon sat and stared. So this was he, then: the man with glamour, and those arms had held Faith even as his had done, and it was to this voice that Faith had listened, bewitched. It was to this face that Faith’s eyes had turned, and fastened. He looked at Horton’s hands; their palms rough and hardened. That those hands should have touched that so soft body. Carefully, he led the conversation round to Faith.

  ‘Tell me about the Swedens,’ he asked. ‘Are they really as badly hit as they thought they were?’

  Horton shook his head.

  ‘I don’t believe anybody was. They say that there’s more money in the banks now than there’s ever been, only that people are afraid to spend it.’

  It was good news to Gordon, both for Faith’s sake and for his own; if Sweden was not ruined, Faith would not feel the same compunction about leaving him.

  ‘And how’s Faith herself?’ he asked.

  ‘Unchanged.’

  It was said on a note of comradely affection.

  ‘There can’t be anything in it,’ thought Gordon. ‘He couldn’t, if there had been anything between them, have used that particular intonation.’

  ‘Did you see her much this time?’

  ‘A fair amount.’

  ‘And Roger Sweden, how was he?’

  ‘I didn’t see so much of him.’

  At that remark once again the serpent of jealousy raised its head. To have seen Faith and not Sweden. How had that been? He longed to ask questions, to probe without seeming to probe. Hating himself at the same time for wanting to; for not trusting Faith; for wanting to know more of her than she chose to tell him. There couldn’t be anything in it. There couldn’t. If there had been, she would never have sent messages to him by Horton. She could not have; could not conceivably. And how casually, too, Horton had spoken of her. With the affectionate unconcern of friendship. ‘Though that’s just how I’m talking of her, myself,’ he thought. ‘No one who had heard me talking of her would have imagined that there had been anything between us.’ It was in the past though anyhow; whatever there had been in the past was finished now. It must have been finished during those nights in Villefranche; in the same way that for him everything had been finished then: so completely that it had been impossible for him to return to Gwen. Yet though it might have been impossible, she had said that she would not know how she would feel if she were to see him again: she had said that physical attraction never died. There was a side of her that he probably had never touched and would never touch. But this man had. That side of her that had thought Harlem rather fun, that had called Rolo rather sweet. In the same way that he had noted the broad hand of Rolo laid against the pale green of Faith’s jumper when they had danced together, he noted each trick and movement of Horton’s hands and face. So this was the voice and the look that had thrilled her. He could understand how women could throw vitriol in a rival’s face. There was not one thing about Horton that he did not loathe. What was it that had bee
n said all those days ago at Villefranche, that women had their barmaid side? He had not thought Faith had; and since she had, he did not care if he ever saw her again. The fact that he hated Horton brought him near to hating Faith. If it were not for those lecture dates, he would never go back to New York. It was not a question of the money. The lecture market, except for a very few very prominent people, was far less profitable than was supposed. If this tour paid its expenses that was the most that he could hope. He had put himself at the disposal of a lecture agency for the sake of something new to do, in order to see more of the States. He would lose nothing by cancelling the engagement. The agent would not sue him for breach of contract. If he did cancel his agreement though, he would make things more difficult for other English writers. He would make it easy for the agent to say: ‘When people get the other side of the Atlantic, you can’t rely on them,’ and in consequence make a less generous proposal. One had no right to damage one’s fellow-countrymen’s credit. One had no right to let down one’s fellow writers. He could not get out of his lecture tour. He had to be in New York in January. And since he had to be there, he might as well go at once: face the issue and one way or another get it settled. Something was at an end, however. He knew that, as he looked at Horton’s clear-cut profile and broad shoulders. If only he had never seen him; if only for ever afterwards his imagination would not be able to visualize in such clear outline the picture of Faith’s blonde head clasped close to those strong shoulders.

  ‘What do you make of him?’ he said to Stanley as he came upstairs from having seen Horton to his taxi-cab.

  ‘Pretty pleasant person he seemed to me.’

  Gordon wished that Stanley hadn’t liked him.

  Next morning the valet brought him up with his hot water a little pile of letters at the top of which was one in Gwen’s handwriting. He had not known that she was aware of his return. He had been above all things anxious not to hurt her feelings. He had meant to write to her from the boat to say good-bye, explaining that on his return from the South he had gone straight into the country to work; that he had had no more than time to rush through London on his way to New York.