The Balliols Page 24

  “I’m Victor Tavenham. I don’t think we met when you arrived.”

  She looked up with the same, quick interested expression with which she had been looking round the room. Her eyes were bright, her complexion fresh, her lips were half-parted in a smile that was there not for any specific reason but just because she was enjoying herself.

  “I’m Ruth Balliol.”

  Tavenham was surprised. He had never thought of Balliol as the kind of fellow who would have a pretty sister. He had not indeed thought of him at all as a person who had a home, a father, sister, associations. Tavenham was incurious about the ways of life that lay outside the range of his immediate vision. He thought of people in the particular setting in which he chanced to meet them. He did not wonder how large or small a part of that person’s life was circumscribed by that setting. Hugh Balliol for him was a man he met at the club and occasionally played cards with; whose father ran some wine business that paid his father substantial emoluments as a director. Some time ago there had been headlines about a suffragette jumping in front of some horses, who was some kind of relation, he had been told. But he had never thought of Balliol outside the card-room and the lounge annexe of the Clarion. To think that he should have such a pretty sister. He hesitated, anxious to make a pleasant impression with his first remark, wondering what he could best say to please her.

  “Vivian would admire the way you’ve done your hair,” he said.

  “Who’s Vivian?”

  His surprise at discovering that Balliol had a pretty sister was minute in comparison with the astonishment on hearing that a girl of twenty, who went to parties, would not respond to the flattery of being compared with the most discussed, the most photographed, the most sought after young woman of the hour.

  “You’ve not heard of Lady Vivian Ash?”

  “No. Who is she?”

  But that was more than he could cope with. You couldn’t start explaining Vivian. You could only draw a parallel.

  “You’ll be telling me next that you’ve not heard of Mary Patience!”

  “Now, that name does sound familiar.”

  She replied, however, in the dubious tone of voice that suggested she was not quite clear whether Lady Mary was a person in real life, or a character out of a book.

  “Heavens, but who do you know?” he exclaimed.

  “Well, there’s the Vicar. He’s not actually very thrilling but he’s read a lot. And there’s the doctor’s wife. She does the funniest recitations.…”

  There was a twinkle in her eye, a look of roguishness that made him feel slightly silly; but in a rather jolly way. She had laughed at him, but she had laughed with him. “Let’s dance,” he said.

  She danced well, smoothly with rhythm, readily responsive to his guidance; but in a way that somehow differed from that of the dancing to which he was accustomed. A difference such as there had been about her clothes, of which he was conscious but which he could not define. He tried to find a parallel.

  Two lines intersected at a point. He and his friends were headed in a straight line, from a known origin to a known conclusion. Ruth Balliol had come at a different angle from a different source to a different destination. The lines had intersected. At this moment she and they were at the same point; but the fact of having come at a different angle, gave her a sense of difference. For she was different. She had laughed at him; had pulled his leg about Mary Patience; but she had not heard of Vivian. It would have done Vivian a lot of good to have heard that.

  When the gramophone ran down, he led her over to the buffet. Because he had not her measure, did not know how to take her, he adopted a self-protective flippancy, continuing their badinage of the vicar and the doctor’s wife. He supposed that such a one would be shocked at being offered anything stronger than iced coffee.

  “Oh no, we often have claret cup at our tea-parties.”

  She smiled at him friendlily over the rim of her glass. She’s fun, he thought. She is enjoying things more than the girls I’m used to. They’re all so bored. Or else terribly hearty, trying to pretend they’re having a better time than they really are. She’s just enjoying herself.

  He asked her whether the vicar’s wife approved of her going out to such late parties.

  “She’d say I was quite safe as long as I was chaperoned by my brother.”

  “Are you always chaperoned?”

  “In a way.”

  “What am I to take that to mean?”

  “That I’m only allowed a latch-key when my parents know exactly what I’m doing, where I’m doing it and who with.”

  “What happens when you haven’t a latch-key?”

  “They have to let me in. Then they know what time I get back.”

  Tavenham stared. She had evoked the picture of a world, entirely foreign to his own, where the Victorian idea of a chaperon persisted in this typically British point of view that no mischef could befall a girl before midnight and that there was no kind of mischief that might not befall her after. How incredibly different was her world from his. And on the surface how alike they looked. It was not surprising that he should be conscious of a difference in her. He wondered what she was like herself; what she was really like. He looked at her pensively. He was a man who made up his mind quickly. What he wanted to know, he set about finding out.

  “Let’s go to a theatre to-morrow night.”

  She answered him as directly. “I should like to do that.”

  “Where shall I call for you?”

  “Don’t bother to do that. I live miles out. I’ll meet you somewhere.”

  “The Ritz then. At seven-thirty.”

  “Very well.”

  Their eyes met in a long steady look as though they were taking stock of one another. There came into Tavenham’s face the same expression of excited determination that Hugh had seen there in the card-room when he had picked up a Yarborough.

  At the breakfast table on the following morning Ruth announced that she would be dining out that night. No comment was made; no questions were asked. Had she said, “Frank’s taking me to a show this evening,” and had Frank been a person whom the family had inspected and approved, her mother would have said, “That’ll be nice for you. I expect you’d like a latch-key.” It was the compromise at which her parents had arrived after considerable consultation. They had agreed that the days of the chaperons were past; at any rate as far as they were concerned; that anyhow it would be impossible to chaperon a girl like Ruth. There was nobody to do it. At the same time they couldn’t just let her run wild. They had both to trust her and to supervise Ruth.

  “We must make her realize that her friends are welcome here,” said Balliol. “We must encourage her to bring them here. Occasionally she may want to go out with someone and not tell us. That’s natural. It probably doesn’t matter. But if it’s a question of going out practically every night with some one of whom she suspects we would not approve, she would be certain to feel qualms about waking us up night after night. She would either bring the young man to see us, or she would stop going out with him. The great thing,” he continued, “is to make it easier for her to behave the way we want her. One can’t control young people’s lives, one can only direct them. You can only give them advice when they come to ask you for it.”

  “I seem to remember that you said that in Lucy’s case.”

  “Did I? Well, I was right, wasn’t I?”

  “I suppose you were.”

  Which was the most that he could say of his own conduct. He had often asked himself whether if he had done this or left that undone things would have been any different. He doubted it. And anyhow, as things were now, they might not be any better had he followed a different course. At least as far as Lucy was concerned. She was happy now. The accounts that came back from friends pictured a happy, occupied home life, with a healthy child and a devoted husband. He had lost her, but that sooner or later must have happened. Things usually worked out, not for the best one hoped, but as well as
one had the right to expect. He did not worry about Ruth. He had confidence in her self-reliance.

  “You can always have a latch-key when we know where you are going,” he had said.

  There had been no argument when the regulation had first been made. There was no one with whom Ruth had wanted to go out that she would not be quite pleased to bring into her own home. And she did not believe in quarrelling over problematic issues. She never started rows “for the principle of the thing.” When the time came for her to need greater freedom, then would be the time to put in her demand for freedom. But the time might never come. At any rate, the thin end of the wedge had been inserted.

  The expedition with Victor Tavenham was in point of fact the first occasion on which she had availed herself of her freedom without a latch-key. There was no reason why she should not have told them where she was going. But too much curiosity would have been aroused. Her first evening with him might well be her last. She would not like to have Francis saying afterwards “Have you seen anything of that grand friend of yours?” to have references made to this one evening whenever Victor Tavenham was discussed; to hear her mother say, “No, I’ve not met him, but Ruth.…”

  The evening with Tavenham might be an episode that she would prefer afterwards to forget. It might well be. She knew well enough in what spirit he had invited her. She did not delude herself on that point. She had heard women complain that “men only want you for one thing.” Well, and why shouldn’t they, since it was an important thing? And since women in their way only wanted one thing from a man: to be spoilt, to be made much of, to have time and money spent on them. Neither generalization was quite true. But the one was as true as the other was. She could never picture herself turning round with the indignant protest, “So that’s all you wanted, was it?” At the same time there was a difference between Tavenham’s invitation and that of the other young men who from time to time had taken her to dances and theatres. They were men of her own class. Marriage might not be part of their intentions, but there was no reason why it should not be. It was certain to be no part of Tavenham’s. Other young men might ask her out for a variety of reasons; they might have mutual friends; they might as friends have a great deal in common. Her father might be able to be of use to them. They might want to confide some secret in her; to ask her advice about a girl they were in love with. A vast variety of reasons. Not one of which explained Tavenham’s invitation. He had only one reason for asking her out with him: to see if she was the kind of girl that would be amusing in that way.

  And I’m not. I’m not like the girls he goes about with: actresses and married women, and the fast kind of society girl one reads about. I’m going out with him on false pretences. It’s silly of me. What’s the point?

  But deeper than any cautionary argument, was the instinct of curiosity. The love of risk. The need to savour a new experience. Nothing like this had happened to her before. She was not entirely inexperienced. More than one young man who had not been satisfied with kisses, had lost his head and had to be repelled. More than once she had seen in a young man’s eyes longings that he lacked the courage and experience to express. Hot-headed moments had surprised young men into actions and avowals of which afterwards they had felt ashamed, for which they had apologized. “Would she ever be able to feel about them in the same way again?“ they’d asked. She’d laughed. She’d told them not to be idiots. She’d felt flattered and excited; rather a devil. It had been the excitement of walking on thin ice. There had been the thrill of the unknown. The asking yourself “What’s going to happen next?” There had been such incidents. But they were altogether different. She’d never before had a man of the world set out deliberately to seduce her.

  Nothing could have been further from the atmosphere of a seduction than Tavenham’s welcome to her in the many-chaired Ritz lounge. During the long, slow passing day Ruth had worked herself up into such a state of nervous anticipation, had done so much counting of hours, minutes, seconds, up till seven thirty, as though her stepping across the threshold of the Ritz would be like the pistol start of a race; creating an appropriate mood of preparation for that one minute, as though it were from that instant that the evening’s drama would begin; that when Tavenham came towards her with his friendly, easy welcome she felt as unprepared as she would if she had discovered on reaching a drawing-room that she had arrived at the wrong house. She had come prepared for battle; for the deploying of forces; a manoeuvring for position: the kind of fight in which two opponents walk round and round each other, waiting till the other is off his guard, choosing the right moment to spring. That was what she had expected. But it was not like that at all. She was at a party. An extremely attractive and gracious person was making it his business to see that she enjoyed herself. Or rather, that they enjoyed themselves. Instead of a feeling of opposition there was one of partnership; as though the two of them in this large city on this one evening were conspiring to draw the greatest measure of entertainment.

  She began to enjoy herself in the way that she had not expected; in a childish Cinderella way. The drama of walking into the restaurant at his side. He was tall, handsome, well-known. Heads were turned to look at them. People whispered across tables, “Victor Tavenham.” One or two people smiled at him. There was a “Hullo, Victor!“ She was conscious of a tall, imperious woman in the middle thirties, staring at her, wondering who she was. She had never before made such an entrance into a restaurant. And it wasn’t simply that she felt proud at walking beside a man who attracted such attention. She felt proud for her own sake; because she was a match for him; because her looks were the complement of his; so that not only was she more impressive because of him, but he was more impressive because of her. People who did not know either of them were remarking on “that striking-looking couple who’ve just come in.” They wouldn’t have noticed Tavenham in the same way had she not been with him.

  She enjoyed, too, the deference with which the waiters treated them; and the friendly terms on which he stood with the head waiter; terms that at the same time made clear the difference in their positions. Tavenham was one of those who knew the exact tone to adopt towards a servant; the friendly, courteous concern that never became familiar. She liked too the easy way in which he played his part of host, the immediate skill with which he put her at her ease. On the previous night she had been too excited at being noticed by him to notice him. But now she did and taking stock of him, in the same way that he had noted a difference in her, she found herself noticing a difference in him that she found it difficult to define. She was accustomed to the company of good-looking, graciously mannered men, but their elegance and their charm had been of a different order. For six generations the Tavenhams had exercised authority with the knowledge that they would be unquestionably obeyed. They had enjoyed leisure, luxury with an unquestioning acceptance of their right to them. They had never had to explain themselves. What others had had to fight for they had inherited. What you acquire you suspect that someone will take from you. What you inherit you know is yours. The Tavenhams had never known self doubt. They had known that what they asked for within reason would be theirs. In consequence their manner, their attitude to life had such a deep, inherent, unconscious confidence as athletes display when they have mastered their technique; when they have reached the point of no longer knowing how they do a thing; when the effortless grace with which they sweep a golf ball from a tee, or stroke a long hop through the slips, is unconscious and unconsidered.

  Ruth, listening to Tavenham’s talk, watching the changing expression on his face, noting the movements of his hands, had that same impersonally aesthetic delight that you get when you watch an athlete, an acrobat, an actor making something that is really difficult, whose mastery has been perfected only by long combinations of thought and skill, appear mere child’s play. His novelty fascinated her. He had a rather high-pitched laugh. He was always laughing: at what he said, at what she said. To keep the ball of laughter rolling, she foun
d herself talking better than she remembered herself to have ever talked. The laughing responses he gave her, encouraged her, made her talk more easily, be more herself. Never had she felt more gay, more irresponsible, more alive.

  He had not yet booked seats for anything. “I thought we might decide that ourselves, over dinner,” he said. “Nothing’s so full that you can’t get in at the last moment if you really want to.” So they got a theatre programme from the waiter, and the discussion of the various merits of the various pieces gave her the same feeling of partnership that she had had when she had walked into the restaurant at his side. It was the two of them arranging how they could get the most fun together, not he arranging some cut-and-dried scheme in which he expected her to fit.

  They decided on “Hullo, Tango.” They both agreed that they did not want anything serious; that they went to a theatre to be amused, not to be instructed. They wanted bright lights, movement laughter, dresses.

  At the theatre there was that same proud feeling of heads turning in their direction as they strolled round the foyer between the acts; the same happy feeling of partnership as they laughed at the same jokes, turning towards each other to exchange a smile when anything particularly amusing was said or done.

  Afterwards, as they stood on the pavement in the warm, lamplit night while a commissionaire sought a taxi, he turned laughingly towards her.

  “Have you brought your latch-key with you?”

  “No.”

  “Then you don’t want to be too late.”

  “Not too late.”

  “I thought we might have gone on to dance somewhere. But in that case, I think we might as well go straight back to supper.”

  And that, too, seemed another facet of their partnership.

  Tavenham had a flat in Westminster. In a large block of service flats. It was on the fifth floor. The windows of its sitting-room looked out upon the river. The curtains were undrawn. The vistaed view of the Embankment with its line of lights, the double-decked tramcars swaying along its length; the dark barges drifting slowly down the moon-silvered water; the chimney stacks and warehouses on the Surrey side was like a picture. Ruth gasped. It was so lovely. She walked towards it, as you do at an exhibition when a picture glimpsed across the room catches your attention. A cushioned seat ran under the low-set window sill. She knelt there, looking down. He stood beside her. She was grateful to him for remaining silent, till she turned away.