Wheels within Wheels Read online

  “Be sure that Mr. Newton gets this the moment he returns,” she instructed.

  Herself, she had a busy day in front of her. Without having anything in particular to do, there were a great many things to which she must attend. She had to go to the Times Book Club to change her library volume. There was a fitting for that new evening dress at Maquin’s. She had promised to call at Mrs. Frampton’s and decide a day for the committee meeting of their branch of the Conservative association. There was Fanny’s lunch party. She had to be at her bridge club by half-past three. Her daughter, Daphne, was bringing round Seton Rivers for a cocktail. That was important.

  Daphne’s acquaintance with that young man had developed far too rapidly. It was high time he was produced for family inspection. She was not all sure that she would approve of him as a constant associate for her daughter. He was clever, she had no doubt of that; and he was likely to go far. No one, however, knew anything about his antecedents. And though he was not, thank heaven, a Communist, he had the most revolutionary ideas. She had read an article by him the other day about State-owned industries that would have been considered rank socialism before the war. Excessively disturbing. She could not understand how the Conservative party could accept the holder of such opinions. The modern advanced Conservatives held practically the same opinions as the 1910 Radicals. Disturbing. It was high time that she and Frank had a look at this young man of Daphne’s. Then there was a dinner party.

  A crowded day. A less concentrated person than herself would never have got through it all. These addle-headed young women who were always talking about being tired didn’t know what organization meant. With a resolute air she walked out of the house, her library book under her arm.

  Over Maitland’s bungalow in the hills behind Port au Roi the sun was levelling its heavy heat, but the leafless trees of Easton Square were dripping with a grimed and melting frost. The sky was a toneless grey. There was rain in the wind. A film of moisture lay over the macadamed roadway. Lorna Newton shivered and drew her coat more tightly round her as she came out of her warmed hall into the cold. She was glad, on such a day, to have a long low limousine waiting for her at the pavement’s edge. There were times when she wondered whether there were sufficient compensations for the responsibilities that money brought with it. But there were more times when she knew there were.

  • • • • •

  She drove to the Times Book Club first. The library was crowded. It was a minute or two before the girl at her desk was disengaged.

  “I want a novel. What are people reading?”

  It was a question that indicated her general attitude to books. Novels as a whole did not interest her. She preferred what she called “real” books: history, sociology, travel, biography. She read novels in the way that a scientist would study specimens: not for themselves, but for what they suggested or involved: as an indication of what people were thinking, doing, feeling. The intrinsic merits of a novel would not concern her. If it were not popular it would be in her opinion unimportant since unrepresentative.

  “What’s being read just now?” she asked.

  The girl mentioned a title.

  “What’s it about?”

  The girl told her, in rough outline. It was the story of a woman of thirty, twelve years married, who finding life empty when her children went to school, fell in love with an Air Force cadet.

  “That’s what most novels seem to be like nowadays,” said Mrs. Newton.

  “Perhaps that’s what most of life’s like nowadays.”

  “Nonsense,” said Mrs. Newton briskly.

  For a few pampered and idle people it might be: with nothing to do but live on cushions and dissect their feelings: people with no responsibilities, who lived in a succession of furnished flats: whose day’s work was done when they had had their bath: who had nothing to do but read novels and chatter into telephones. No doubt she herself would be in a maelstrom of intrigue if she lived that kind of life.

  She was healthy, alive, reasonably attractive-looking. One had to do something with one’s time. Idleness: that’s all it was. She was far too busy for that kind of thing. She wasn’t in love with her husband any longer. She was devoted to him, but that wasn’t the same thing. How could she expect it to be otherwise? He was twenty years older than she was. Very nearly an old man. He was not in love with her. Daphne was all that mattered to him. She herself had met men who attracted her: of course she had: who hadn’t? Men who had quite clearly been attracted, who had wanted to be more than that. And it would have been amusing, undoubtedly, if she had had time for it. But she hadn’t. That was all there was to it. She had too much to do. Not just her woman’s job of running a house; of looking after a family. That didn’t take anything like as long as people said it did: not nowadays, if you knew how to run a house. It was the mere business of living: of her many interests: the keeping up with things: knowing what was happening: who stood for what: who meant what: the various uses to which one could put that knowledge. Politics, committees, relief work; then one’s relaxations: golf in the winter, tennis in the summer, bridge. There were so many things in life besides love-making. With her lips pursed tightly and a study of economics beneath her arm she walked out into Wigmore Street, mentally calculating the number of minutes she could devote to Maquin’s. A busy day.

  • • • • •

  In spite of its business she arrived at Fanny Tudor’s house at one minute after half-past one. She knew there was no necessity to be punctual. But punctuality was a habit of which she could not break herself. She preferred to wait rather than be waited for. She knew from the sight of three hats in the hall that it was one of Fanny’s lunches.

  “I’m not the last, I hope?” she asked the butler who preceded her up the narrow staircase.

  “I don’t think so, madam.”

  “Think? Don’t you know?”

  “Mrs. Tudor was uncertain how many guests she had invited.”

  Which was like Fanny Tudor. She was a vague, charming creature; an incessant party-goer who invariably invited to lunch or dinner the people that she met at parties. As she was a little deaf she only occasionally caught their names. When they arrived, she did not know how to introduce them, she rarely made the attempt, sometimes leaning a long time upon their elbows, levelling a slow vague glance upon her guests, she would murmur in a slow, vague way: “I think you know everybody here.” More often she solved the problem by leaving her guests to introduce themselves, herself not arriving in the drawing-room till a quarter of an hour after the time for which her guests had been invited.

  On this occasion, however, she was on parade. She came forward to greet Lorna Newton with open arms.

  “Darling Lorna. And so punctual. Now let me see….”

  With her arm through Mrs. Newton’s she levelled her slow, vague gaze upon her half-dozen guests. She was not embarrassed, but quite clearly she was perplexed by her inability to identify her party.

  “Darling,” she whispered, “I wonder if you can tell me who that nice young man over there is?”

  “I’ve never seen him before.”

  Which was one of the attractions of Fanny’s parties. You rarely knew half of the people there by sight. Fanny, who had been left a childless and comfortably incomed widow at the age of forty, had nothing to do except go to parties and give them. At every party she contrived to collect some new friend. Her acquaintance was consequently vast. As she rarely went out to lunch or dinner, preferring to entertain to those meals and accepting invitations only to cocktail and evening parties, she only saw people at large gatherings or in the informal intimacy of her own house. She consequently never recognized the nature of the numerous sets that comprise the life of London; with the result that at her house you met on terms of intimacy people who you would not meet on such terms elsewhere. Fanny’s casual system of entertainment led to an occasional extremely unfortunate evening and sometimes to an extremely dull one. But the balance was most distinctly in her f
avour.

  “I wish I knew who he was,” she said.

  At that moment the butler inaudibly announced another guest. It was luckily a guest whom Fanny knew. A tall, nondescriptly handsome, nondescriptly youthful, nondescriptly dressed man with an accent that was half Oxford and half military.

  “Lorna dear, this is Captain Stewart Fraser.”

  She not only remembered his name, but remembered a fact in connection with him.

  “He was telling me about the most exquisite house where he was spending Christmas. You must ask him to tell you about it.”

  “Mrs. Newton won’t want to be bored by that.”

  “I’m never bored.”

  Which was true; for the moment a subject lost its hold upon her interest she abandoned it.

  “Tell me about the house.”

  “It really is rather an extraordinary place.”

  From his description, it very clearly was. The trouble about country houses was this, he said: if one thing was right, then something else was wrong. It looked picturesque, but there would be one bath and draughty passages. If there were steam heat it would be concealed behind the most loathsome stucco. Either the kitchen would be so far from the dining-room that the food arrived stone-cold; or be so close that the smell of cooking hung about the hall. It was too near a town or so far away that trains could not be met without vast inconveniences. He gave, in fact, the outline for an amusing essay on the discomforts of living in the country.

  “A week-end,” he concluded, “is really as much as one can be expected to stand. In fact, the only amusing thing about a week-end in the country is having a bet with a friend to see who can discover the particular house’s particular snag first.” And he laughed—with a townsman’s knowingness.

  At the same time, he continued, this particular house did seem without any of the snags that one associated ordinarily with the English countryside. It was plainly the kind of place that one dreamed about. During the ten minutes wait for a guest whom Fanny Tudor was not certain if she’d asked, as in final agreement that whether he had been asked or not lunch could not be kept waiting after ten to two, they trooped downstairs; as without much stage-managing help from Fanny they grouped themselves round the dining-table, he described at length but entertainingly its varied excellencies.

  “And the nicest thing of all about it,” he said as they took their seats, “is that there is a most amusing nine-hole golf course.”

  The word “golf course” had a galvanizing effect on Lorna Newton. She had listened attentively before, because practically anything was capable of interesting her for ten minutes. But “golf course” created a definite picture.

  A house with a private golf course. Within a year one’s handicap should be in single figures.

  In a second she had made up her mind. Everything fitted in.

  A country house instead of a London house; Daphne rescued from unchaperoned excursions: Daphne under her eyes; nice week-end parties: the best kind of young men down; riding through park land; pleasant and accessible exercise; an hour or so’s golf between lunch and tea. Not those long country walks and drives to golf courses fifteen miles away: lunching out, not knowing whom your daughter might be meeting. It was old-fashioned of her, she knew. She had made such excursions herself when she was young. But you knew where you were with young men then. Young men did not feel that way about their sisters’ friends. But now…. She liked to have Daphne well under her eye. A country house. A private golf course. Her handicap in single figures. She immediately began to ask a series of questions. Where, exactly, was the house? who owned it? what was it worth? In the course of which the information was elicited that the house was owned by a family who to lessen the ravages of Income Tax were planning a move to the South of France.

  “Then the house is for sale?”

  “I don’t know, but from the way they were talking, I fancy they could be induced to sell.”

  The thought that that house could be hers flickered tantalizingly before Mrs. Newton’s imagination. To live permanently in the country would be possible now that Frank had retired. If only she could have that house.

  “I believe I’d take it if I hadn’t one in London already.”

  “You could always sell it.”

  “It wouldn’t be so easy.”

  All the same, the thought that she might sell their present house and in exchange buy this new house with the golf course was at the back of her mind as she maintained with the elderly financier on her other side a lively discussion on the problem of reparations.

  • • • • •

  In Captain Stewart Fraser’s mind the thought was quite definitely in the foreground. He was a gentleman who lived upon his wits. In his fourth year at Oxford, in 1914, he had held during the war a commission in the R.A.F. The war had brought him his captaincy; and several medals. It had also ruined his health. He had a small wound pension; but few qualifications for employment in civilian life. He had had the good sense not to put those qualifications upon the open market. The most he was worth to any business in any permanent capacity was five pounds a week, and life on that would not be worth his living.

  He had had the sense to recognize and capitalize his real assets; good looks, good manners, and a wide acquaintance.

  Before long he had learnt more ways of getting a commission than any similarly positioned man in London. It could be said of him that he never introduced a conversation that did not in some way open up an avenue profitable to himself. He was an agent for cars, for politicians, for journalists, for house-agents, for steamship companies, for tailors, for athletic outfitters, for hotels. His power was that not one of his friends suspected it. They imagined that he was what he appeared to be; a man of independent means, invalided out of the army, living for his own amusement, harmlessly. He worked, in point of fact, extremely hard.

  On the way up from lunch he asked if he might telephone. He saw that the door of the telephone room was carefully closed behind him. Then he rang up the Daily Meteor. The gossip writer was out, but he left a message. Lady Angela Barwick had returned unexpectedly from Holland; she had spent an hour in the Sports Club in Grosvenor House, in the company of Major Chagford. The gossip writer could make what he chose of that.

  He next rang up a firm of house-agents in Piccadilly. He was diffident about his information. He did not know whether anything would come of it. But he had thought it worth mentioning in case Messrs. Lowenstein & Kohl should think it useful. Messrs. Lowenstein & Kohl expressed their gratitude; they would most certainly and most gratefully consider any proposition that Captain Stewart Fraser should be gracious enough to submit to them. In that case, continued Captain Stewart Fraser, there was a Mrs. Frank Newton owning the lease of a house in Easton Square. It was worth probably six thousand pounds. He had interested her considerably in Appleton Manor. That was worth at least ten thousand pounds. If a purchaser could be found for the London house, he was certain that Mrs. Newton would buy Appleton. He suggested that Messrs. Lowenstein & Kohl should write to her stating that they had received an inquiry for her London house; wondering, would she like to sell? Enclosing, in case she should be interested in a country house, a list of houses that were upon their books, among which should be included Appleton. Messrs. Lowenstein & Kohl would not in any way mention the name of Captain Stewart Fraser in connection with their transaction. But they would note down Captain Stewart Fraser’s name with reference to the commission on any sale that might accrue. Messrs. Lowenstein & Kohl agreed. They understood completely. They were grateful; extremely grateful to Captain Fraser. They hoped that business would develop satisfactorily to all concerned. They would take the matter up at once.

  Messrs. Lowenstein & Kohl were speedy workers. They delivered the greater part of their mail by hand. When Mr. Frank Newton returned late that afternoon to his house, it was to find on the hall table a large envelope labelled with their name on the top left-hand corner, beside a Western Union envelope.

  �
�� • • • •

  Frank Newton read the cable with mingled feelings. He was not certain whether he was pleased or not. The scheme had appealed to him as an amusing adventure three years earlier when he had made that pleasure cruise in the West Indies. But three years can make a big difference when one is over sixty. Particularly when they contain one of those illnesses that striking men in the late fifties mark the boundary between middle-age and age. For three weeks he had hovered upon the brink of death. When he had recovered it was to the certain knowledge that his life’s work was over. Of the many activities that he had sponsored and controlled there remained nothing but a couple of directorships and the venture in Santa Marta. To those, too, he would be glad to see an end.

  He had retained the directorships out of a feeling of responsibility to those of his friends whom he had encouraged to invest in the concerned companies. But the West Indian experiment was no one’s but his own. It had seemed an amusing adventure when he had embarked on it. He was in the mood for a gamble; he could afford a gamble. It had cost him so far close on three thousand pounds. But he could afford that. The losses could be set against Income Tax. On the whole he would have been relieved if the cable had said “Discontinue”; if he could have accepted that loss and made his retirement complete.

  Even now he was not certain. The profits, if oil were struck, would be immense; but he was tired of responsibility.

  “I’d better let it go,” he thought half an hour later, walking into the drawing-room to meet the young man whose name had figured of late so often in his daughter’s conversation.

  • • • • •

  His first impression of Seton Rivers was not favourable. Rivers was sturdy and dark: the kind of man whose appearance would not greatly alter between seventeen and fifty. At twenty he must have looked old for his age. At forty he would look young for it. Now, in the late twenties, he was at his least prepossessing period. His skin was pale: without being spotty it looked as though it might become so at any moment. The soft moustache that hung over his upper lip was discoloured faintly by tobacco. It was longer on the right side than on the left. He was tall and his long thin legs seemed to be taking up half the floor as he sprawled on a cushion at Mrs. Newton’s feet examining a house-agent’s prospectus. His single-breasted coat was buttoned, hunching the collar over one shoulder, drawing it tight over the other. His attitude was as graceless as John Shirley’s in the New Orleans studio had been graceful.