moody neighbour.
“I understand you’re going to be demobilized shortly,” he began.
“There’s some talk of it,” was the guarded answer.
“What are you thinking of doing?,” Eric persisted, though his companion
put no hint of welcome into his manner.
“I’m looking for a well-paid job with good holidays and short hours. Do
you know of any?”
“I know of several men who started looking for just that job when they
went down from Oxford a dozen years ago. But for the war they’d still
be looking for it.”
“Well, if you hear of anything,” said Gaymer in a tone of dismissal,
“mind you let me know. Or perhaps you wouldn’t care to take the
responsibility of recommending my name? You expressed yourself very
fluently on the one occasion when you honoured me with a visit.”
He was clearly undecided whether to end the conversation or to pick a
quarrel. Eric knew that it would be wisest to turn round and talk to
General Maitland, but Gaymer always employed a contemptuous insolence
of manner which roused any combativeness that his audience might have.
“Did I say anything that wasn’t justified?,” Eric asked with an effort
of memory.
“I suppose it’s a matter of opinion how far any one’s justified in
interfering with other people’s business. But, as that seems to be the
serious occupation of your life, you can’t be too thorough. I
recognized that then, you remember; I begged you to drop in at
cocktail-time whenever your feelings were too much for you. I suppose
you’ve been too busy to come.”
“No. I felt that, whether it was my business or not, you at least had
dropped out of it.”
Gaymer removed his cigar and stared dully at the glowing end.
“Well, you seem to have been very busy with my name behind my back,” he
said.
“I’m not aware of it.”
“Oh? It was an impression I got.”
“Can you remind me what I said?,” asked Eric.
“I haven’t the least idea. You seem to have been doing very efficient
propaganda against me. Weren’t you in the Propaganda Department at one
time?”
“Yes. And my experience there was that the propaganda which you carry
out against a nation never compares with the propaganda which a nation
carries out against itself. One good _Lusitania_ outrage was worth
months of our solemn generalizations; that shewed the world what the
Germans really were.”
Gaymer yawned openly:
“I daresay you’re right. I’m not a good judge of backstabbers.” Eric
smiled and refused to be roused by the word. “I admit that I sometimes
wonder now, as I wondered then, just where you come in.”
“I think I told you that I was a friend of one of the parties.”
“But does that justify you in telling lies about me to the parents of
one of the parties? I only ask for information.”
“I never met or held any communication with either parent until some
days later. Then I said that I did not know you well enough to give an
opinion about you; it was untrue, but I erred on the side of
generosity. All this was months after you had been invited to leave the
house.”
Gaymer turned away without troubling to answer, and for the next two
days they only exchanged formal greetings when they could not avoid
each other; but there was already so much tension in the house that a
little more or less made no difference. Barbara stayed until the end of
the party, talking without embarrassment to Eric and looking him
frankly in the eyes. Amy Loring, who knew as much of their relationship
as any one, betrayed neither surprise nor curiosity. The Maitlands, who
welcomed Eric as cordially as they repelled Gaymer, presented an
attitude of stolid indifference and would have been artistically
astonished if any one had hinted that the two men were fighting a
subterranean duel for Ivy. Madame Pinto de Vasconcellos tried to
compromise every man in turn, and her husband glowered silently at her
frantic failures.
“I think it was so sweet of you all to come,” said Lady Pentyre
complacently each evening. “I do _hope_ you’re enjoying yourselves. I
was thinking that _to-morrow_, perhaps...”
She would then concentrate on the first attentive listener, suggesting
expeditions and ordering cars indefatigably. The prevailing chill of
misgiving had not spared her in the early days of her party, for Mr.
Justice Maitland had begged her not to facilitate meetings between Ivy
and Gaymer at her house; but what could a woman do, she asked herself,
when a man buttonholed her son at the last moment and said that he had
nowhere to go for Whitsuntide? She remembered, too, that years ago,
when there was so much gossip about the O’Ranes, Sonia had run away
from her husband and billeted herself at Croxton; she had invited the
two of them without really being sure that they went about together. As
Bobbie complained or boasted—in his silly way and without trying to
help her—, the smallest Croxton party could be trusted to produce one
catastrophe and three scandals; but, so far as Lady Pentyre could see,
every one was now getting on very happily with every one else; and she
had reached an age when she aimed less at positive success than at the
avoidance of disaster.
At the end of each day Ivy reported to Eric all that she had done.
There was little enough to say, for Gaymer had never tried to be alone
with her since she gave him his dismissal on the river. As the train
drew near London, he did indeed join for a moment in the general
discussion of plans and ask her as a matter of form whether he was
likely to see her again soon.
“I’m very busy at present,” she told him. “I daresay you know that I’m
trying to make myself useful to Mr. Lane while his secretary’s away.”
“I didn’t know you were still doing that,” he answered without interest.
Eric drove with the Maitlands to Eaton Place and took Ivy on in their
car to his flat.
“Thank goodness! _That’s_ over!,” he exclaimed, when they were alone.
“Were you afraid there’d be a scene?,” she asked.
“There were—several, only you were spared them. I suppose it was
inevitable. But in five days’ time—”
“It’s only four and a half now.”
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER TEN
THE WANDERING OF ISHMAEL
“It is not good that the man should be alone...”
GENESIS: II.18.
As Lady Maitland’s car drove away from Euston, Carstairs set himself to
divide the luggage and find seats for the rest of the party. His wife
was sent with Madame Pinto, Amy Loring with Barbara; he himself
arranged to share a taxi with Deganway to the Foreign Office.
“What are you going to do, Gaymer?,” he asked.
“I’m going to have a drink,” was the answer.
“We can drop you in Buckingham Gate,” suggested Mrs. O’Rane.
Gaymer sat moodily on his suit-case, beating his cane against the side
of his leg.
“Do I want to go there?,” he yawned. “Well, I suppose it’s as good a
place as any... I’ll drop you first and take the car on.”
As they headed for Westminster, Mrs. O’Rane reviewed the house-party
with a critical eye, while Gaymer stared out of window and her husband
assembled and sorted such impressions as had come to him from words
which were intended to cover feelings and from voices which broke
through the disguise of words. The men and women who talked to him
still made play with gestures and expressions which he could not see;
they forgot to keep their voices mechanical; and, even without Amy’s
warning that they must be prepared for storms, he could have deduced a
state of tension from half-heard changes of tone, from hesitations and
accelerations, from shrill notes of self-betrayal and unctuous rolls of
insincerity.
“We _must_ make Bobbie Pentyre take a little more trouble before we go
to Croxton again,” cried Mrs. O’Rane. “His parties are such a hideous
jumble. That appalling Pinto woman! I won thirty-five pounds from her
at poker, but I’d pay twice that not to meet her again. And fancy
asking Babs and Eric Lane at the same time!”
“I think that’s all over, Sonia,” said her husband.
A murmur of lowered voices had reached him the first night at dinner;
and, though he could not hear the words, he guessed from Barbara’s tone
that she was testing her strength and that Eric was holding himself
detached. It was safe to assume that there had been a scene of some
kind, for on later days, when they spoke at all, Eric’s voice was
apprehensively frigid and Barbara’s unnaturally composed. No one else
seemed to have noticed anything, and any gossip centred round Eric and
Ivy. O’Rane suspected antagonism here between Gaymer and Eric; however
they spoke when they were alone, there was a frozen politeness of voice
when any one else was present. Gaymer, presumably was in love, for his
tone wakened to warmth when he talked to Ivy; and, presumably, his suit
was not prospering, for, when they returned from the river, he had
hardly spoken at all.
“The Maitland child was working hard,” said Mrs. O’Rane.
“She’s being hunted into it by the family,” said Gaymer, breaking
silence for the first time. “She doesn’t get on with her own
people—small blame to her!—, and Connie Maitland doesn’t want to be
stuck with her for all time; so, when a man with a certain amount of
money comes along—”
“She’ll get him easily enough,” interrupted Mrs. O’Rane. “No man of
thirty-five is proof against innocence and bobbed hair. They think
they’re renewing their youth; and, if they’ve made fools of themselves
already, they imagine a girl of eighteen will be nice and tractable...
And eighteen adores the wisdom of thirty-five and loves to think that
purity and youth have won the day against experience. I had a _succès
fou_ when I was eighteen; nine old men proposed to me in one week, and
seven of them said that I was like a flower with the dew still on me.
The only one I cared for had a wife already; he didn’t call me a
flower, but he knew enough of women to be dangerous. I’m sure Eric Lane
calls the Maitland child a flower; and, when she grows up, she’ll be so
bored that she’ll run away with the first man who knows that women
aren’t flowers....”
O’Rane retired within himself and continued his analysis. Gaymer was
certainly in love; too prudent to betray himself by attacking a rival,
he soothed his own troubled spirit by pretending that Ivy Maitland, if
not in love with him, was at least not in love with any one else.
Sonia—to judge by her voice, though no one saw her stealthily examining
her reflection in the strip of glass opposite her—was just old enough
to be jealous of a girl ten years younger, who was beginning to attract
men by her looks and youth rather than by artifice or qualities of
mind. And, if the Maitlands were indeed forcing Ivy into marriage, no
compulsion was needed on the other side; though Eric had talked to
every one, his voice too became animated only when he was with Ivy....
“Well, here we are,” said Mrs. O’Rane, as the car came to a standstill.
“D’you like to take it on or will you come in for your drink, Johnny?”
Gaymer sat for some moments in silence, as though unable to make up his
mind to do anything.
“Oh, never refuse a good offer,” he answered at length, as he dragged
himself out of the car.
“Help yourself, then. I’m lunching out and I must change my dress.”
In the moment that she took to hurry into the house and glance at her
letters, Gaymer watched her with a new, impersonal interest. His eyes
followed her as she ran upstairs humming to herself. Less than three
years before, it was commonly believed that she had quarrelled with her
husband and run away with another man; tiring of him, apparently, she
had come back. It was curious that women could dart to and fro like
this; in his own experience he had always been the first to tire and he
had never gone back to a woman after passion, drearily cooling, had at
last mercifully died; if his passion for Ivy had cooled, he could not
now return to her, but she had broken away while she still amused him,
while his power over her was strongest, while he had only to rouse her
jealousy in order to make her do whatever he wanted....
A faint fragrance of violets lingered in the hall, provocative as the
broken music of Sonia’s voice when she sang to herself overhead. Though
he had always found her too metallically sure of herself to be
attractive, Gaymer felt resentfully that he was being denied something
that other men had and that ought to be his. O’Rane was waiting for him
in the library, but he was bored with the company of men. Softness of
voice and touch, lightness of step, sweetness of body, yielding
gentleness... A man was incomplete without woman....
He walked into the library and mixed himself a drink. Women were too
near animals to be civilized, but they were pleasantly domesticated.
Pink tulips on every table, great branches of lilac bursting from both
fire-places... And his senses had brought with him that faint fragrance
of violets. Gaymer wondered what O’Rane had done when Sonia ran away
and left him with memories and a ravening hunger. The world was full of
women, but their love was impermanent; you could not buy or steal a
substitute if it was your wife who had left you... Or Ivy, who was as
much your own as a wife....
“A drink for you, O’Rane?,” asked Gaymer.
“No, thanks. I can smell things, but my taste is not what it once
was... I don’t want to seem inhospitable, Gaymer, but you’re drinking
_much_ more than’s good for you. It’s a sound rule only to drink when
you’re at the top of your form; otherwise it’s a waste of good liquor
and ruination of a good constitution.”
Gaymer drained his tumbler and refilled it. The decanter rattled, as he
put it down on the tray, and he transferred it to the table-cloth so
that he could help himself again, if he desired, without attracting his
host’s over-acute attention.
“I can drop it any time I like,” he boasted.
“Then drop it now,” O’Rane suggested. “Apart from health, you aren’t
doing yourself any good. I hear you’re looking out for a job, and it’s
only fair to warn you that you’re getting a bad name with men and
women. D’you like candid advice?”
“I don’t mind it from you.”
“Well, I should clear out of this country. There’s too little work for
you, too much drink and too many women. Your record in the war was too
creditable to fritter away in bars and promenades. Take a couple of
years to steady down and then come home and get married. You’re not fit
to marry till you’ve got your nerve-centres back in place.”
Gaymer refilled his glass and replaced the decanter carefully; the
syphon was a noisy complication, so he dispensed with it.
“I haven’t the least idea what I want to do,” he yawned.
“Well, you want to be a decent member of society.”
“Not in the least! Before the war I wanted to make money and have a
good time; I enjoyed the war because I liked flying... and I liked
killing. There was no ‘thin red line’ about me; I wasn’t risking my
skin for the people here. It was good fun, though and I believe I
killed more French than Germans. Now I want to have a good time again.”
“And what constitutes a good time?,” asked O’Rane.
“Oh, I don’t know. The usual things... Human nature’s constant.”
“And it’s amazing how soon human nature gets tired of wine, women and
song. Short of sudden death, you’ve a long life before you still; you
must aim at something permanent. And the only permanent things you’re
going for at present are cirrhosis of the liver and general
paralysis... Were you in love with this Maitland child?”
Gaymer turned in his chair so quickly that he upset his tumbler; as he
picked it up, he wondered if O’Rane knew that blindness alone saved him
from having the remains of the brandy thrown in his face... After a
moment’s industrious mopping, Gaymer looked up and was bewildered to
find his ill-temper evaporating. Criticism, advice and questions were
jerked out with a naked candour which mysteriously robbed them of
offence.
“She’s—a pretty kid,” he answered carelessly.
“I’ve never seen her, of course. She’s nothing more?” asked O’Rane.
“I was quite fond of her.”
“Nothing more?”
“I’m fond of her still.”
“Nothing more?”
Gaymer impatiently broke three matches before he could light his
cigarette.
“What more d’you _want_?,” he asked petulantly.
“Well, does she or any woman mean enough to you to make you want to be
a decent member of society?... That’s your fourth brandy! Yes, I know
you spilt one... That’s why I said you weren’t fit to marry yet. Would
you knock off drink and give up hanging about with every other woman
you see and start in to earn a decent living?”
A patter of light feet and a rustle of clothes heralded Sonia’s return.
She hurried to the writing-table, kissing her husband on the way,
rummaged among a litter of papers and hurried out again, leaving the
same faint fragrance of violets as a provocative reminder of her
presence.
“I’m rather out of favour at present,” said Gaymer, as he stood up and
began to inspect the room with critical envy.
“There are other women in the world. This one’s much too much of a
child for you.”
“I’m not so sure. I’d do a lot for—for a woman I loved. Oh, I’d be the
complete reformed character,” he added with a laugh that was a
contemptuous antidote to his sincerity of a moment before.
“Well, I’m glad to see that you have one vulnerable spot... It’s time
to pull up.”
Gaymer looked at him for a moment without understanding.
“I wonder what you’re trying to get at..,” he murmured.
Refusing the offer of a seat in Sonia’s car, he strolled towards
Buckingham Gate and arranged to have his luggage collected from the
O’Ranes’ house. There had been no purpose in going there, no purpose in
declining the lift, no purpose in anything. He could not make up his
mind or decide what he wanted to do next. After ordering luncheon at
home because he did not want to meet people at his club, he
countermanded the order and set out aimlessly across the Park. The
government offices were emitting a stream of girl-clerks, and he paused
to watch them with disfavour; other women were curiously unattractive
at this moment... One o’clock... He too must have something to eat....
Instead of walking to his club, Gaymer found himself halting
irresolutely at the corner of Ryder Street. It was in one of these
houses that Ivy worked now; at any moment she might come out, he could
invite her to lunch with him... He waited for half-an-hour and then
turned disgustedly into St. James’ Street. Ivy was not coming out. Eric
Lane had taken possession of her with so much assurance that no one
else was allowed to see her....
An errand-boy swept round the corner on the wrong side of the road and
sent his front wheel over Gaymer’s toes before overbalancing with
basket and bicycle. Gaymer surveyed him dispassionately for a moment
and then broke into such abuse that a crowd began to collect. The
furious rush of foul language eased a pressure which was becoming
unbearable. The boy was scared, the onlookers were cynically amused;
amusement changed to inarticulate sympathy as Gaymer paused, drew
breath and started again; he was still hurling maledictions when boy
and bicycle had disappeared from sight, and the idlers raised a murmur
of sympathy as a white-whiskered admiral intervened in defence of
decency.
“Mind your own blasted business, curse you!,” Gaymer roared in savage
delight at finding a new antagonist.
“Another word, and I give you in charge for using obscene language,”
threatened the admiral.
The crowd, which was beginning to disperse, collected again and raised
a subdued cheer in support of the old man. “Quite right too!,” Gaymer
heard. “Perfectly disgusting... Ashamed of himself...” He filled his
lungs for an annihilating attack on them all; but, before he could
deliver it, Carstairs elbowed his way through the onlookers and
demanded to know what was amiss.
“Swine of a boy runs his bloody machine over my toes...,” Gaymer began.
“Well, don’t make such a row about it! Come to the club and have some
lunch.”
Gaymer directed a last furious look at his muddy boots, then turned
from Carstairs and walked rapidly down Piccadilly. He would have liked
to tell the interfering old admiral what he thought of him; he would
have liked to thrash that damned boy, to thrash any one... Cursing him
was good in its way, but he had been stopped before he attained any
satisfaction....
The desire for food had passed; but Gaymer reached his club in time for
a drink and felt better for it. The desire for a fight remained. In the
open noon of his life as a soldier he had never known this maddening
itch of truculence. To be able to call some one a German!... He prowled
through the smoking-room in search of a victim, but people would only
say “Hullo, Johnny! Coming to join us?”... And he had already been
reported to the committee and forced to apologize “for conduct unworthy
of a gentleman” in the card-room....
At five o’clock he returned to Ryder Street, only remembering when it
was too late that he had not yet looked for Eric Lane’s number in the
directory. Ivy must come out _some_ time!... Unless she spent the night
there... Gaymer checked in his short, loathed beat, for this was a
question that had to be faced and answered. _Imprimis_, all these
writers—and especially the fellows connected with the stage who could
blackmail a girl before they would give her a speaking part—helped
themselves to anything that came their way; they were an immoral lot,
but a man did not need to be a plaster saint in order to feel that some
forms of immorality were worse than others, that the lethal chamber was
the only place for the long-haired gang who pretended to be _above_ the
ordinary rules... Lane did not grow his hair long, he had been taken up
by quite decent people; but what was true of all was true of one. He
posed as a delicate idealist—with the caressing voice of a woman and a
soulful, ‘not-long-for-this-world’ look in his eyes; so familiar was
the pose become that Gaymer had been deceived by it into thinking he
had nothing to fear. The fellow talked “spiritual beauty” to a little
fool like Ivy until he won her, soul and body... And all the time
looking like a parson....
Gaymer rang at the nearest door without looking at the number. He
_might_ have the luck to meet Ivy; failing that, he could always bait
the parson-poet... Somewhere inside, a clock chimed seven, and he flung
away in disgust without waiting for the door to be opened. Two hours!
Ivy was home by now. Two hours walking up and down that forsaken street
because a consumptive-looking Grub Street hack had walked off with the
girl that he wanted... What could she see in him? Gaymer caught sight
of his own sturdy, well-groomed reflection in a shop-window. In the
name of Heaven, what could she see in the fellow?
It was still broad daylight, owing to this accursed “summer time”; and
London was never so intolerable as by day. He walked aimlessly along
Piccadilly and up Regent Street, along Oxford Street and up Tottenham
Court Road. His course would be a zig-zag on the map... Zig-zag...
Everything was zig-zag; purposeless, wearisome... He remembered
suddenly that he had eaten no food all day. Zig-zag... His feet had
strayed out of Tottenham Court Road into a side-street, and he found
himself staring at a newly painted shop-front. Inside, a band was
playing; appetizing savours of hot food floated up from the basement;
and women with arms white and eyes darkly mysterious in the gathering
dusk pattered through the door-way with a half-glance back in universal
invitation.
“What’s this place?,” Gaymer asked the commissionaire.
“Fleur de Lys Dance Club, sir.”
“Well, I want to be a member. Make up a name for me and fix it with the
secretary. Add my subscription to the dinner-bill and keep this for
yourself.”