Wheels within Wheels Read online

  “Take your own case now, for instance: if you were left a reasonable sum of money you could make far better use of it than investing it in Government stock at five per cent. You could use that money to establish yourself quickly in a way that you now can only do gradually; you could give up the hack journalism that exhausts so much of your time and energy. You might buy or found a paper: a monthly or weekly paper which under your editorship could become the mouthpiece of the party you hope to represent in parliament. You could entertain the leaders of your party. One always makes a better impression as a host than as a guest. If you were left, let us say, ten thousand pounds, and invested it in yourself, you would in ten years be earning, I daresay, three thousand a year from it instead of the five hundred that War Loan would bring you in.”

  He eyed Rivers closely. He could tell from the quick look that flickered in the young man’s eyes how dazzling such a prospect was. Rivers had never visualized such things coming his way. He was born poor. He expected that he would never spend a penny that he had not earned. He was resolved to earn money. He knew how long, how bitter a struggle it would be: how much a windfall of capital could mean: how it could shorten the preliminaries: how much of hackwork it would save him.

  For Rivers was definitely a careerist. He did not want money for its own sake, but for what it symbolized of power and prestige. If he were to be offered a large income on the promise that if he accepted he would retire, Rivers would refuse the offer. The knowledge that he would refuse that offer made people respect him. But like any man who has worked for money, Rivers had a very sensible idea of the value of money. Newton paused just long enough for the idea to be absorbed by Rivers’s consciousness. Then he continued.

  It was a gamble, he admitted; but every form of investment was a gamble, since it was based on human feelings, capacities and institutions which were unstable.

  “Don’t you imagine that the Germans thought themselves prudent and foreseeing in 1910 when they invested their savings instead of spending them? What’s happened to those savings? No,” he went on; “however you invest money you are dependent always in the last analysis on the human equation. That’s why I’d always be ready to invest my money in a person that I trusted: in whose future I believed.”

  He paused. It was to this point that his argument had led. He had so prepared the ground that he could make his offer without making it appear that he was making an offer: so that his self-respect and Rivers’s might be preserved.

  “Yes,” he went on. “That’s what I should always do. It’s what I certainly shall do in regard to my own daughter. I hope, of course, that it’ll be some time yet before she marries; but I must be prepared, I know, for her coming to me any day and telling me that she is engaged. I expect,” he interpolated with a chuckle, “that it’ll be some one I didn’t even know she knew. But when she does, if it’s a young man with his way to make, and in whose capacity to make his way I believe, I shall very certainly invest a large amount of the money that I shall in the course of time be leaving to Daphne, in that young man’s potentialities. If he’s a wastrel, of course I shall take very good care that the capital’s tied up so that neither he can touch it nor Daphne on his behalf. And if he’s a person with money of his own, some one established by birth or his own achievements, then there would not be any need. But if he was a young fellow, with his way to make, well, I should make every effort to make that way easier for him. And as I’ve said, I’d far sooner invest money in an individual than in a business.”

  Rivers had not yet acquired the poker face that one day would have to serve him as a mask, a weapon and a defence. Newton, watching him closely, without giving him the impression that he was watching him, could tell what thoughts were passing through his mind. How Rivers was realizing both how valuable money could be to him at this moment and how marriage to Daphne would provide him with that money: how marriage would solve the problem both of his love and his work: how he was being offered his opportunity to have the thing both ways.

  Newton closed his eyes, gratefully, at the success of his diplomacy. He would be surprised if within a week’s time Daphne were not coming to tell him of her engagement to Seton Rivers. When she did, he would be true to his bond. He would give Rivers every chance of launching his career. He smiled to himself. People said that modern conditions had entirely altered the old fabric of the family life. It had altered the externals, certainly, but had it altered anything more? What was the essential difference between the scene that had just passed and the old parental bargaining for doweries? In the New Hebrides, he had been told, wives were exchanged for pigs. He could not see that there was any essential difference.

  • • • • •

  A fortnight later The Morning Post and Telegraph announced the engagement of Daphne Newton to Seton Rivers.

  On that afternoon Frank Newton instructed his solicitors to arrange for the settlement of ten thousand pounds upon his daughter and five thousand on her marriage, to her husband. He had then gone to his broker and authorized the sale of the War Loan that he had held in case of emergencies. He considered pensively and with little satisfaction the list of his investments. On paper they made an imposing show. But he would be, he knew, extremely hard put to it to face any unexpected demand for immediate capital.

  “I can only pray,” he said, “that no one asks for it.”

  It was a prayer that many men who were rich on paper were making at that moment.

  XIV

  Gibbon has recounted the system of consequences by which the love affairs of a Chinese lady in Peking sent the price of herrings up in London. In the same way the destinies in New Orleans of John Shirley and Julia Maine, in New York of Roy Bauer and Caroline, in London of Frank Newton were to be profoundly influenced by the decision on a wet November evening of a young female person of no beauty or consequence whatsoever to wear a purple scarf. So violent was the purple and so startlingly did it offend the orange plush of a wide-brimmed hat that a young man crossing from Leicester Square checked his step in sheer astonishment in the direct path of an advancing taxi-cab. The driver cursed, tugged at his brakes, pulled his wheel and swinging into the kerb, spattered the pavement with a fountain of liquid mud. A large portion of the spray spattered the silk legs of Frank Newton’s ward as she was stepping out of her taxi-cab on the way to a gathering of Bright Young People at the Café de Paris.

  Sally Allen was a good-humoured girl. She stared at her muddied stockings and the draggled hem of her frock.

  “It’s no good,” she told her escort. “Nothing I can do to myself in the ladies’ cloakroom will make me fit to join any party in this frock.”

  “Let’s go back and change it.”

  “The party’s not worth it.”

  “Let’s go into the Rialto, then, and see a film.”

  “Very well.”

  It was a bucolic film: a story in semitones: wistful and sentimental: the kind of thing that you either, according to your mood, simply can’t sit through, or else weep buckets over. Sally was in the mood for it. Before the film was a third finished she had slipped her hand into her escort’s.

  “I liked that picture,” she said as they drove back afterwards to her flat.

  “So did I.”

  “A relief after those gangster films.”

  “Quite.”

  “I’m sick of films about young people drinking and going to night-clubs, and the wrong people falling in love with one another.”

  “Yes.”

  “One sees too much of that kind of thing oneself.”

  “Much too much.”

  “You know, I’m really rather glad that taxi-cab did splash me. I enjoyed that film far more than I’d have enjoyed the party.”

  “It was a change.”

  Through the half light of the cab she looked at him. He was tall, broad-shouldered, in the latish thirties. He had a dark moustache that was brushed back from his upper lip. He had a brigade manner, a slow voice, the figure for doub
le-breasted coats. You would have expected him to be overbearing, yet he wasn’t. He was adaptable, always ready to fall in with her plans when she had any; and ready to make her mind up for her when she was indecisive. He was an easy and cozy person to be about with.

  The cab turning into the entrance of the mews, clattered and jolted over the cobbles. He hesitated at the door.

  “Won’t you come in for a moment?” she asked.

  “Thank you very much. I’d like to.”

  He never assumed that she should make such an invitation. He waited to be asked; which was another of the things she liked about him. There was a good deal she liked.

  • • • • •

  She lived in a converted mews. There was a kitchenette in the basement, a bathroom on the landing, a large bed-sitting-room with the bed in a curtained alcove. She had forgotten to open the windows when she went out. The air was smirched with cigarette smoke and unwashed cocktail glasses. She wrinkled her nose.

  “And it’s cold. What a mess!”

  “It’ll all be right in a second.”

  His movements for so big a man were light and graceful. He lit the gas-fire, flung the windows open, collected the glasses, took them downstairs to the kitchen, brought up clean glasses and a syphon; pulled up the windows, drew the curtains, shook the cushions out. In five minutes he had made the room clean and cozy. He moved the chesterfield up in front of the fireplace.

  “Now we can be comfortable,” he said.

  She had watched him pensively as he busied himself about the flat. He was a dear. She did not know how she had managed without him: did not know how she would manage without him. She would have to one day. One day she would just not find him here; as one day she had just found him here.

  It was one of those things that cannot be described otherwise than by the formula “it just happened.” There had been that cocktail party at June’s. She had had nothing to do that evening. She had lingered on. Half a dozen others had lingered on. He had been one of the lingerers. “Let’s go somewhere and do something,” she had said. They weren’t changed so they had decided on the Gargoyle. He had sat next to her. She couldn’t remember what they had talked about, but there had never been any lack of subjects, no making of conversation. No excitement but no boredom, just calm enjoyment. His dancing was like that. It had a smooth rhythm; none of the electric vitality with which some dancers could make you feel that you were the saxophone, the ’cello, the piano and the drums rolled into one. But it was dancing.

  It was not an extension night at the Gargoyle. Almost it seemed before they had got there waiters were asking if they had any further orders; and a moment or two later, sweeping up the glasses.

  “Let’s go back to my place,” she had said.

  One or two others had joined them at their table. Nine or ten had squashed into a couple of taxis. She had got drinks out and had gone down to the kitchenette to prepare scrambled eggs. He had come down with her and been very helpful in an unobtrusive way, having the right things ready at the right moments, seeming to know what was needed and where it was, without asking for it.

  Everyone had said the eggs were fine. They turned on the gramophone and made a party of it. One o’clock, two o’clock, three o’clock, half-past three. She had begun to feel very tired. She had not drunk too much; she was on the whole abstemious; but she had been in the atmosphere of drink too long. She had smoked too many cigarettes. There had been too much talk.

  He had realized that she was tired.

  “It’s time we went. I’ll get rid of these people for you.”

  He rose to his feet, announced loudly that he was going home, asked if he could give anyone a lift, walked over to the telephone to ring a taxi.

  It broke the party up.

  Everyone began to look at watches: to say, “But my dear, how late!” More taxis were rung up. The front door stood open, coats, wraps, cloaks were collected. She had gone down into the mews to say good-bye. When the last cab rattled off, she had turned and had climbed the short, narrow flight of stairs to find him standing in the centre of the room.

  He had given no explanation of his presence. She had asked for none; she had been somehow curiously glad to find him there. She had come across to him. “I’m tired,” she said. He seemed to be what her tiredness needed. He had put his arm round her shoulder.

  “Poor pretty one,” he had said.

  She could not remember much what it had been like. It had been like his dancing and his talk. Effortless, easy. Enjoyment, not excitement. She had the feeling he had been rather nice about it all.

  Next day there had been flowers; they had dined together. He had told her about a hotel in Devonshire where there was an amusing golf course. Wouldn’t it be a good idea if they week-ended there? The golf course was amusing, his company was amusing. They had stayed a week. By the time they had come back they had got to the end of the dated days in their diaries. They had gone on seeing each other. Their lives had got intertwined.

  For four months it had gone on like that. She had never been so happy. It was not love as she understood love, but it made everything she did seem more amusing. It made her welcome each new day. It banished that driven feeling: “What on earth am I going to do now?” to which she had woken so often in the past. It was fun to have some one around to do things with: some one who was capable, who could cope with situations. She did not quite know how she would do without him. As, of course, she’d have to.

  Her very ignorance of him convinced her of that.

  She knew practically nothing about him.

  “One would take you for a soldier,” she had told him once.

  “I was a soldier: still am, I suppose. On the reserve.”

  “A regular?”

  “In the Sixtieth.”

  “You resigned after the war?”

  “I was tired of soldiering. The good days of it were over. After being a colonel I did not want to go back to being a captain.”

  “You never call yourself captain.”

  “Too many temporary officers were calling themselves colonels for my liking.”

  She asked him what he had done with himself those years. He had shrugged his shoulders. “A fellow with a few hundreds can lead a very comfortable life in London, if he’s got enough friends. No polo, no hunting, of course. But there’s golf, and one gets a bit of shooting sometimes. A lot of fellows like himself to have a yarn with.”

  His acquaintance was considerable. In his conversation he referred casually to men distinguished in public life. “So-and-so was telling me yesterday …” without flourish, as though there was nothing remarkable in his having lunched with a well-known privy councillor. But he knew hardly any of her friends: not many of them even by name. He considered them neither interesting nor important. His lack of interest in that side of London life which was called London in the gossip columns was, in fact, largely responsible for her own suddenly arrived at dissatisfaction with it.

  She began to wonder whether the Bright Young People were anything more than the decor of a restaurant in which from time to time important people loitered in relaxation from the serious business of their lives; to lend by their presence grace and dignity to what in their absence would be an empty room. Were she and her friends anything more than furniture; just chairs and tables?

  They did nothing. They were no one. They were simply now and again in the same room as those who were. They would never be mentioned in any of the lists of guests at the parties to which they strove so hard to be invited. They would never be invited to the houses and parties where those who gave temporary brilliance to their world lead the more actual part of their lives. The Bright Young world was all very well for those who visited it occasionally. It was pretty and carefree; young and irresponsible. It was a different thing if one was a perpetual fixture in that world. All this business of being in the swim, of being asked to the parties which would be paragraphed next day, peering over shoulders for celebrities, so that one
could say “Noel was at Maria’s last night.” The Victorians had thought it woman’s lot to be the decor of a man’s life. To that there might have been some point, but to be the perpetual decor of the party spirit in a number of men’s lives.… No, that was not so good.

  She had really enjoyed herself far more at the cinema then she would have at the Café de Paris. She was enjoying herself far more talking quietly than she would have enjoyed dancing with a celebrity, conscious of the eyes that followed her.

  “It’s a pretty dreary life that we lead—most of us.”

  He smiled. He never criticized her; which was one of the nice things about him. He gave her his opinion if she asked him. But he didn’t try to run her life: which was a relief. The number of men who had wanted to reform her!

  “It’s not the life I’d choose,” he said.

  “But don’t you get bored with your own life sometimes?”

  “Sometimes.”

  “There are things you’d rather be doing, aren’t there?”

  “Of course.”

  “You’d rather be in the country, wouldn’t you?” The mood of the film was still on her. “Out of doors, with dogs and things.” She was very vague as to what country life involved.

  “I’m a country person. But you can get more fun out of a small income in London than in the country. If you’re alone, that’s to say.”

  Which was what it all came to in the long run, she knew. If you were alone you had to be where other people were. If you were alone, had no responsibilities, nothing to do, you came to London where so much was happening, where you were so busy that you hadn’t time to realize you were doing nothing. They were in the same boat, he and she; in their different ways.

  She looked steadily, thoughtfully at him; as one does when one wants to impress on one’s memory a landscape one will never see again. She knew that the outcome either way of what she was going to say now would make him a different person for her.

  “Look here,” she said. “We’re both of us leading lives we weren’t meant to lead, because we’re alone; at least, because we can’t get out of it while we’re alone. We aren’t in love with each other, but we like each other: a good deal. Why don’t we quit all this? Get some place in the country. Get something to do. Do it. Lead reasonable lives.”