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  Ransom turned from the basin and there was on his face that peculiarly winning smile that always disarmed criticism.

  “Perhaps,” he said, “I don’t terribly approve of it myself.”

  “Then why . . . .”

  He shook his head, and his face became serious suddenly. “Because,” he said. Then after a pause: “Perhaps I’m rather tolerant of those folk last night, just because I happen to know how easily one can drift into things.”

  Chapter V

  Manon Deliberates

  Merivale had not expected Manon Granta to be more than tranquilly awake when he arrived at a quarter to twelve with the black velvet cloak that she had left behind her at the Wolves. Nor indeed eight hours earlier had Manon Granta. But at the absurd hour of half-past nine she had been disturbed, and permanently, by the telephonic importunity of Chris Hammond.

  “Now, I’ve told you a great many times,” she had complained, “that I’m not to be rung up before eleven. I am a very busy person, and it is quite impossible for me to do all that I have to do unless I begin the day quietly. I must not be disturbed till I have had my bath. It is most inconsiderate of you, Christopher.”

  But he had in the end appeased her. He had been unable, she gathered, to sleep for one second the whole night. He had not known what had happened to her. He had been wretched and unhappy. He had been terrified lest she was angry with him. And he had deserved that she should be angry with him. He realised that. He assured her that he had realised that. He begged her to believe that he realised that. He had been silly and capricious. He had stood on his dignity. He was ashamed of himself, utterly, abjectly ashamed of himself. He did not deserve to be forgiven. But he entreated that she would forgive—that she would forgive him, and that she would forget. If only she would forgive, there was no proof of his gratitude too great for her to demand of him.

  It had taken him fifteen minutes to say it all, and a smile of subdued content had played over her lips as she lay back listening to him among the pillows.

  “Am, I forgiven?” he pleaded. “Please, please say that I’m forgiven.”

  And she had the heart no longer to be angry with him.

  “I think so, Christopher,” she said.

  There was a pause. Then, in a changed voice, and at a great pace, he began to say something that appeared to be exciting him immensely. She could scarcely follow him at all. One word was begun before its predecessor had been finished. Sentences trailed into one another.

  “Christopher, Christopher,” she laughed, “what are you doing. I can’t hear a word you’re saying. Now begin all over again. Right from the beginning.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said, humbly. “It’s so difficult though. Manon, we’re always quarrelling—”

  “And whose fault is that, Christopher?” she interpolated.

  “Oh, mine, of course it’s mine, Manon. I wouldn’t for one moment pretend that it was anyone’s but mine. But it’s difficult, Manon, very difficult for anyone who cares as much as I do. I’m afraid that we’ll be always quarrelling as long as things are like this between us.”

  She did not answer him, but turning over on her elbow, stretched herself out luxuriously in her bed, her eyes half closed, the arm that held the mouthpiece of the telephone was straightened, and flung sideways as though there were no further need of speech from her, as though his voice had been cast like a cloud of silence over her.

  “Manon,” he said, “you understand, you do understand me, don’t you. It’s impossible for me. I love you so much, and it’s torture to continue as we are. You do understand me, don’t you?”

  She turned her head towards the mouthpiece.

  “Yes, I understand you,” she said quietly.

  “Then, then if you do, Manon—”

  “This is not,” she said,” a subject that can be discussed fittingly over a telephone. You must, my dear Christopher, be practical.”

  “How else can I discuss it?” he complained. “I never see you.”

  “And after spending yesterday some seven hours in my company! “

  “But not alone. If only, Manon, I could see you alone sometimes, really alone, so that I could tell you how much I cared for you. If only you knew how much I cared. It’s so terrible, just those few minutes every now and again in taxis.”

  She sighed contritely and slipped back the deeper into the bed.

  “One day, Christopher,” she said, “perhaps—”

  His voice stammered, gasped excitedly: “When, oh when?” it said. “Manon darling, when?”

  But she had no intention of making him any promise.

  “One day, I said, my dear Christopher—and perhaps. But we won’t talk about it any more. You’re keeping me from my bath, and I’m keeping you from your work, and on Saturday I shall be seeing you at Gowan Castle, which will be most delightful. Good-bye, my dear.”

  “And that is that,” she thought, as she hung up the receiver and, turning over on her side, pulled up the bedclothes about her shoulders. Really, though, he had been absurd last night.

  If she wasn’t allowed to buy with her own money what she wanted, what on earth was the use of money to her? Quite too perfectly absurd. Still it was over now. And, having got her way once, it would be an easy enough thing to get it another time. That was that. She would be certain to enjoy herself now at Gowan Castle. It would make all the difference to her his being there. To have someone to fuss over you and care for you, someone to tease and bully, an instrument to play what tune you liked on. The background of one’s life was, of course, more important than the foreground. And Christopher was no more than a peacock preening itself before the footlights, to keep the audience occupied while the heroine was changing. Still, he was a nice peacock.

  How offended the poor child would be if she were to tell him how she had come first to be attracted to him. She had met him, she had subsequently discovered, several times before at dances and at tea-fights, but he had made no impression on her. And then at that dance of Mrs Crosby Featherway she had seen him making love to some absurd, light-haired, little honey-pot of a woman. She had stood watching him, watching the boy’s hand steal slowly about her neck, softly, quietly persuasive, had seen it turn slowly the girl’s face to his so that her lips lay against his cheek, had watched him bring his cheek along her lips until their mouths had met. And, watching, she had thought that it must be rather nice to be kissed like that. And what would Chris say were he to know that his chief attraction for her was now the intriguing, the exasperating fact that never yet had he kissed her in quite that way.

  Chris was the flavouring of her life. He would not be flattered if she told him that. But it was all he was. Still, without flavouring there would be no joy in eating. It was curious, when one came to think of it, how important and yet unimportant flavouring was. It made all the difference to one’s pleasure. But you could so easily after all replace one flavouring by another. The dish itself though—no—that could not be altered.

  How was it going to end, she wondered. You could not keep a man dangling for ever. Some time someone less accommodating was bound to come along. And the position was, as Christopher had said, daily becoming harder. Still she was not anxious to alter it. It would involve the altering of so much else: and it was impossible to guess at the nature of these alterations; it was impossible for her to tell how Christopher would be affected by such a change in their relations. That he would be changed, she had not the slightest doubt. Men always were. Either their desire died in its attainment, or else, realising how little actually they had possessed, their desire became aggravated into jealousy, into a hatred for all that had been withheld from them. Christopher might now think that by possessing her he would make sure of her, and in that belief be strengthened to endure her capriciousness, her cruelty, her appearance of indifference to him. He was able to endure them because he believed that in the establishment of their relations she would become a tender, loving, and submissive mistress. And, of course, she
would not. And when he realised that—realised that she was what she had always been—aloof and composed and powerful, as able to withdraw her gift as she had been to make it, he would know that there were no means left by which he might control her, that he had no weapon that could dominate her. He would be at the mercy of his impotence. And she did not want Christopher to become a nuisance. On the other hand, she did not want to lose him. If you had a thing you might as well hold on to it. At any rate till something better came your way. And she was in her way rather fond of him, poor dear.

  The great thing, she told herself, was not to try and pretend it was something that it wasn’t. One was all right as long as one did not do that, as long as one knew that it wasn’t the real thing.

  A long while ago now they seemed, those days of the real thing. The summer of ’16. Only eight years, actually, but they seemed to belong those war years to another century, another period of time. Her eyes softened at the memory, softened and grew dim. How long had it lasted. Three months; not more than that. There had been the Somme, and that leave when he hadn’t seen her, and then that long period without leave. Eighteen months, and so much could happen in those days in eighteen months. The moment they had met again, before even they had kissed, they had known it was over, the best of it at least, and having had the best, they had no use for anything less than that. That had been the real thing. Nothing had mattered since.

  She had married because Charles was rich and had seemed to want her, and if one had to live, it was better to live comfortably than precariously. But it hadn’t mattered, hadn’t mattered any more than Chris was mattering. And when things ceased to matter, you began to find life quite amusing. Plenty of jolly people and plenty of things to do with them. Last night, for instance. She had quarried enough conversation from it to last her for a week. And that escape had been the first genuine thrill she had had for a good six months. He was an amusing man, that Merivale. She would like to see some more of him. And Ransom, it had been good, good, if a little sad, to see him. He had altered in appearance very little during the last two years. The same straight figure, the same clear skin and clear complexion, the same neat military moustache. He had been only twenty-three when she had first met him in the spring of 1914, but he had looked, as soldiers so often do look, fully thirty. He looked hardly a day older now. Physically the War had left no mark on him. Emotionally it had though. It was hard to recognise in this bored, indolent young man of fashion the keen-eyed boy who had talked so excitedly to her of his ambitions. His future had been mapped out. In 1916 he would be going to India. In 1920 he would return and prepare for the staff college. By 1933 he would be a brigadier. If war came, the close of it would see him a field-marshal. Well, war had come and seen him a colonel at twenty-seven. And after Givenchy they had given him, not undeservedly, a croix de guerre with palms. But he had not brought his ambition back with him. Office seemed to be no longer worth the winning, and work seemed needless when one could afford not to. He had a right after those four years to do what he liked with his own. And if his life wasn’t his own, whose was it? He had resigned his commission, bought a car, was to be seen at the usual times in the usual places in the usual clothes. Apparently happy, apparently at ease. But it was not easy to tell with Ransom. He was armoured so surely behind his courtesy, behind also his pose of laziness. For it was a pose very largely, that isolation of self, that indifference to politics and science and sociology—or rather the aspect he chose to present of it was a pose. For with him it was not a negation so much as it was a belief, a definite attitude to life, that quiet refusal of his to be disturbed by the collapse of the franc, or the occupation of the Ruhr, or a Labour Government. He was indifferent, not because he was too lazy to be interested, but because, having been interested once and having been deceived, he was convinced now that these things did not matter; that if a revolution was to come, it would alter the phenomena of life, but not life itself, that it would be an accident within time and space which could not touch what had its dwelling in infinity.

  “When I think,” he had once said to her, “of the number of years that this world has existed, and the number of years for which it must still exist, and when I think that this world is just so large a part of the universe as that pebble at your feet is of our solar system, I find it hard to persuade myself that anything that I do or that happens to me here is of very much importance.”

  “There’s only one way to live,” she recalled him to have said, “and that’s to find out what are the rules of the particular game you’re playing, and then think out your tactics. It’s quite useless trying to alter the rules. You don’t say to a referee at rugger, ’ I think one ought to be allowed to pass forward ’ and then proceed to; he’ll only blow his whistle. You can manage to get what you want if you are prepared to take it on other people’s terms. And really, provided that you get it, I don’t see that it matters whose terms you get it on.”

  It was not his attitude that had altered, but the objects on which he had chosen to focus it. He wanted different things now—as far as he wanted anything. There was an interval to be spent pleasantly. That was all. Was he in love with any one, she wondered. It was hard to tell with him. He took the trouble to make himself agreeable to everyone, and besides it wasn’t any of her business now. He had seemed friendly enough with that Mrs Fairfield, whom Chris had contrived to unearth from somewhere along with that other fellow, Roger Partington, a nondescript sort of man; still he seemed presentable. She must remember to ask him to her dance, and that boy—she would probably be able to get his name from Chris. She might as well send him a card. “Though I’m not myself,” she added, “quite old enough for that type yet.”

  The thought of her dance reminded her that there were still a number of invitations to be sent out, and that the eleventh of July was uncomfortably close. “I might,” she said, “do worse than get up and do them.” A resolution which resulted in her finding herself by half-past eleven with her correspondence finished, no book to read and nothing particular to do, seated in the window of the drawing-room, watching an ancient and dog-eared crossing sweeper pretending that there was enough refuse in the south gutter of Berkeley Square to keep him occupied for an entire day. The spectacle of Merivale emerging from a taxi and bearing on his arm the black velvet of her cloak was as welcome as it was unexpected.

  “You may tell Captain Merivale,” she informed her maid, “that if he has a moment to spare I shall be most grateful if he will come and see me.”

  Chapter VI

  Young Love Deliberates

  The long bar at the Trocadero was during the War in many ways the gayest spot in London. To-day, if one has a memory, it is in some ways the most depressing. It is not so much the number of drinks that one has been stood there by men whom one will never see again, as the change in those who have survived. The old gaiety has gone, the old light-hearted careless abandonment to pleasure. One was back on leave. There were friends to see, there was money in one’s pocket, there were things to be bought with it. Most of the young men one saw in London during the War were not merely passively happy, not merely not unhappy, but were boundingly, joyously elated; they had left their un-happiness behind them in France, and Palestine, and Salisbury Plain. And because misery can exist only as the complement of joy, and back there in the trenches and in their training camps they had known a misery more actual and more acute than any generation of young men has ever known, they could abandon themselves to happiness in London more completely than any generation that has been before them. For a certain space of hours there was nothing to mar the utter joyous-ness of living. And half the meetings, half the reunions, half the preludes to long evenings of excitement took place, during those flaming months, at the long bar at the Trocadero. Those who remember it in its khaki-coloured days can scarcely now watch without some measure of regret the same figures leaning in the same attitudes across the bar, lifting to the light the same glasses of coloured alcohol, unstirred by the o
ld frenzy.

  It was inevitable that it should be so, inevitable that life should grow narrower and harder—that London should become a place to work in, not to play in. It was inevitable. But that does not prevent it to those who remember from seeming a little sad.

  At a minute before the quarter past Ransom arrived to find Somerset already there.

  “Well, young fellow,” he said, “what is it?”

  Somerset flushed, stammered, opened his mouth, closed it, then, in a sudden rush of words, began.

  “Look here, it’s this I wanted to ask you. It’s about Mrs Fairfield.”

  But Ransom raised a hand to check him.

  “My dear Eric, I didn’t mean that. We can let that wait surely. It’s your cocktail I was worrying about. Is it to be a bronx or a manhattan or a clover club? When that’s been decided, we can think of other things.”

  “Oh, I don’t know—anything. A bronx.”

  Ransom fixed him with a look of mock concern, and shook his head.

  “A man’s in a bad way,” he said, “when he doesn’t mind what he drinks. If you want a bronx though, you may have it. I’ll have a plain mixed vermouth. Got that, waiter? Thank you. And now, my lad, what’s the trouble? Something about Mrs Fairfield? Well, what of her? ”

  And that slow reassuring smile flickered across his mouth, the smile that said, “Don’t be afraid of me, we’re old friends.”

  “Damn it,” thought Somerset. “He is really a first-class fellow.” But all the same it was not too easy, the thing he had come to ask him.

  “Mrs Fairfield,” he said at last. “She’s—have you known her long?”

  “A couple of years, I suppose.”

  “And she’s—” he paused interrogatively.

  But Ransom was not prepared to talk in shorthand.

  “She’s what?” he echoed.

  Somerset did not, however, follow through his question.