A GRATEFUL FRIEND
Marie's remonstrance with her brother was not ill-received--Raymond was
too amiable for that--but it was quite unsuccessful. Just emerged from
an exhaustive business training on the latest lines at home and abroad,
able (as he pointed out in mingled pride and ruefulness) to correspond
about perfumes in French, German, Spanish, and Italian, and to talk
about them in three of those languages, he declared openly not for a
lifetime of leisure but for an hedonistic interval. Further, he favoured
a little scattering of money after so much amassing.
"If Pops," he observed, "would only go back to his Balzac, he would see
how much harm and sorrow this perpetual money-grubbing causes among the
business classes of our beloved France. In England a more liberal spirit
prevails, and after a hundred and fifty years we ought to be able to
catch it. In fact I have caught it, Marie."
"You have; and you'll catch something else--from Pops--if you don't look
out," said Marie, who could not help smiling at the trim, spry, gay
little fellow. Like herself, he was dark and lively, but of the two she
was the manager, the man of business.
"Besides it does the house good. 'Who's that?' they ask. 'Young
Sarradet.' 'What, the scent and soap people?' 'The same.' 'Dashed fine
business that!'" He enacted the dialogue with dramatic talent. "As an
advertisement I'm worth all my debts, dear sister."
Marie was too much amused to press her point further. "You rather remind
me of Bob Sawyer," she remarked. "But, anyhow, be here oftener in the
evenings, if you can. That'll go a long way towards pacifying Pops. When
you're away, he sits thinking of the money you're spending. Besides, he
does like to have you here, you know."
"You tell me when Amabel Osling is coming, and I'll be here."
"I'm glad you like Amabel. She's pretty, isn't she?"
"She's all right. Otherwise I didn't think it was very lively."
"N-no. It was hardly one of our best evenings," Marie admitted
reluctantly.
It hadn't been--that first meeting of her circle after Arthur Lisle's
dinner party. They had all been there, including Raymond, whose
exchanges of wit and chaff with Joe Halliday were generally of
themselves enough to make the evening a success. It had not been a
success--at least from the moment of Arthur's arrival. Mildred Quain had
started off about the party at once; her curiosity concerning the Norton
Wards was insatiable--she seemed to be working up a regular cult of
them. Marie herself had been benevolently inquisitive too, hoping to
hear that Arthur had had a grand time and made a great impression. But
the topic had seemed distasteful to Arthur, he tried to get away from it
directly; when the persevering Mildred dragged him back, his replies
grew short and his manner reserved; he seemed ill at ease. As for Sidney
Barslow, as soon as ever Arthur and his party came on the scene, he
turned sulky--indecently sulky. It was painful as well as absurd, and it
got worse when Joe Halliday, trying (in justice let it be said) to
lighten the atmosphere by jocularity, suggested, "And, after it all, I
suppose some beautiful lady took you to your humble home in her
six-cylinder car?" Arthur answered dryly, with a pointed ignoring of the
joke, "I walked home by Oxford Street." Joe, still persevering, asked,
"No romantic adventures on the way?" "Nothing out of the common," Arthur
replied in a cool hard voice which was very rare in his mouth, but
meant, Marie knew, serious displeasure. In fact she was just going to
make some laughing apology for the catechism through which he had been
put when Sidney Barslow, who had been glowering worse and worse every
minute, suddenly broke out:
"There's an end of the thing, at all events, at last!" And he looked at
Arthur, as it seemed to her, with a curious mixture of anger and fear, a
sort of snarling defiance.
"It was not I who introduced the subject or was responsible for its
continuance," said Arthur, in the iciest of all his cool voices. "That
you must do me the justice to admit, Barslow."
Then an awful pause--even Joe gravelled for a joke--and the most obvious
clumsy resort to "a little more music"! The strains failed of soothing
effect. On the one side a careful but disdainful courtesy, on the other
a surly defiance--they persisted all the evening, making everybody
uncomfortable and (as Marie shrewdly guessed) inquisitive. This was
something much worse, much more pronounced, than mere 'grating.' There
was, on Sidney's side at least, an actual enmity; and Arthur, noting it,
treated it with contemptuous indifference.
"Have you had a row with Sidney about anything?" she managed to whisper
to Arthur.
"No."
"Have you said anything to annoy him, do you think?"
He looked straight into her eyes. "I haven't spoken to him since we were
last here."
Sidney she did not venture to approach in confidence; he was altogether
too dangerous that night. She did not know the occasion which had fanned
a smouldering hostility into flame, which had changed a mere 'grating'
of the one on the other, an uncongeniality, into feelings much stronger
and more positive. Even had she known it, perhaps she was not well
enough versed in the standards and the moods of men to understand all
that it carried with it. Sidney Barslow was not particularly ashamed of
what had happened to him in itself: in suitable company he would have
found it a story he could tell and be sure of a humorous sympathy; there
was nothing to be remorseful or miserable about. As long as a man did
his work and earned his 'screw' (and Sidney held a good position in a
wholesale linen-merchant's business and was doing well) he was entitled
to his amusements--if you like, his dissipations--while he was young at
all events. If indiscretions marked them, if one sometimes tumbled over
the line, that was in the nature of the case. He would not have minded
an encounter with Joe Halliday outside that public-house in the
least--no, nor even with young Raymond Sarradet, Marie's brother though
he was. Nay, he would not much have minded being seen even by Arthur
Lisle himself; for if Arthur had been shocked, Sidney would, in all
sincerity, have dubbed him a milksop; the man who would be shocked at a
thing like that was certainly a milksop. He was not even afraid of
Arthur's betraying him to Marie--not because he thought his enemy above
that, but because he had an easy confidence that he could put the matter
right with Marie, and a strong doubt whether women objected to that sort
of thing so much as they were in the habit of pretending; in their
hearts they like a man to be a man, Sidney would have told himself for
comfort.
The poison lay elsewhere. Under the influence of his liquor and the
stress of his plight--wanting to prove to the policeman, to the
'chucker-out,' to the interested bystanders, that he was not a common
tap-room frequenter but a 'gentleman'--he had let himself appeal for his
warrant of gentility to the man whom he had derided for thinking himself
so much (if you please!) a gentleman. Arthur Lisle's acquaintance was to
prove to bystanders, policeman, and chucker-out, that he, Sidney
Barslow, though drunk and in queer company, was yet a gentleman! And how
had the appeal been received? He could not charge Arthur with cutting
him, or leaving him in the lurch. He hated far worse the look he had
seen in his enemy's eyes as they gazed steadfastly into his--the
fastidious repulsion and the high contempt. True, on the sight of them
he had withdrawn his appeal; he had preferred to accept defeat and
humiliation at the hands of chucker-out and constable; but the fact of
the appeal having been made remained with all its damning admission of
inferiority. And that look of contempt he had seen again when Arthur
Lisle, in answer to Joe Halliday's clumsy jokes, replied in his cool
proud voice that, as he walked home by Oxford Street, he had met with
"nothing out of the common." He had met a common fellow with a common
woman, and, as was common, the common fellow was drunk. With all the
sharpness wherewith humiliation pricks a man, with all the keenness
wherewith hatred can read the mind of an enemy, he pointed for himself
the meaning of Arthur's careless-sounding words.
He was in a rage, not only with Arthur Lisle, but with himself and his
luck--which had indeed been somewhat perverse. Lashing himself with
these various irritants, he soon produced another sore spot--Marie
Sarradet's behaviour. He was an older friend than Arthur; she had, he
declared, backed Arthur up in his airy insolence; he swore to himself
that he had seen her smile at it. At any rate she had not backed him up;
to a man in a rage, or several rages, it was enough--more than enough
for a man of his temper, to whom the desire for a woman was the desire
for a mastery over her. And in the end he could not believe that that
fragile whipper-snapper with his hoity-toity effeminate ways (the point
of view is Sidney's) could be weighed in the balance against his own
manly handsomeness, his dashing gallantry; why, he knew that he was a
conqueror with women--knew it by experience!
Marie and Raymond, Amabel Osling and himself had made up a four to play
lawn-tennis on the hard courts at Acton. They had enjoyed their game and
their tea. He and Marie had won after a close match, and were in a good
humour with themselves. He was forgetting his grievance against her. She
liked him playing games; he was a finely built fellow and looked really
splendid in his white flannels; if he ordered her about the court like a
master, it was a legitimate sway; he knew the game and played well.
When, after tea, the other two sauntered off--for an open and unashamed
flirtation--Marie had never felt more kindly towards him; she had really
forgiven the bearishness of his behaviour, and was prepared to tell him
so after a little lecture, which, by the way, she quite looked forward
to giving; for she too was fond of domination. She started leading up to
the lecture.
"You seem to have found something since we last met, Sidney. I'm glad of
it."
"What do you mean?" he asked carelessly, as he filled his pipe. He did
not see her drift.
"Hadn't you mislaid something the other night?" Her dark eyes were
dancing with mockery, and her lips twitched.
Now he looked at her suspiciously. "I don't understand."
"You might. I'm referring to your temper."
"I'm not aware that I said anything rude to you. If I did, I apologise."
"I'm not speaking of myself, but of my friends--my guests."
He leant his arm on the table which stood between them. "Meaning Mr.
Arthur Lisle?"
"The smoke of your pipe blows in my face when you lean forward like
that."
"Sorry!" He laid his pipe down beside him. "Well, the fact is, I'm about
fed up with Lisle."
And Arthur Lisle was much in the same case--allowing for the difference
of expression--as to Sidney! Marie smiled, but her brow wrinkled. "Sorry
you don't like him, but it costs nothing to be polite."
"Well, all I can say is that I shall be very much obliged if you'll ask
us on different evenings."
"That's assuming that I'm going to ask you on any evenings at all."
She thought this smart flick of her whip would bring him to reason.
"Oh, perhaps Lisle's going to be there every evening?"
"Any evening that he likes, Pops and I will be very pleased to see
him--with or without an invitation." She relented a little; he looked
angry and obstinate, but he looked handsome too. "You too, if you won't
be silly. Why do you dislike him so much?"
He could not give her the whole reason; he gave what he could. "I see
his game. He's always trying to come the swell over me and the rest of
us."
"I'm sure he doesn't mean to; it's just----"
"His naturally aristocratic manner?" he sneered.
Marie sat up straight and looked composedly at him. By now she was
angry--and she meant to hurt. "That's exactly it, Sidney," she said,
"and it's a pity everybody hasn't got it."
She did hurt sorely. He had no code to keep him from hitting back, and
his wrath was fierce. "Where did you learn so much about aristocratic
manners? Behind the counter?"
She flushed hotly; tears came in her eyes. He saw what he had done, and
was touched to a sudden remorse.
"Oh, I say, Marie, I didn't mean----!"
"I shan't forget that," she said. "Never!"
He shrugged his shoulders and stuck his pipe back in his mouth. He was
ashamed, but obstinate still. "You brought it on yourself," he grumbled.
"Yes, I forgot that I wasn't talking to a gentleman."
He made one more effort after reconciliation. "Look here, Marie, you
know what I think of you----"
"Yes, I do--you've just told me."
"Damnation!" he muttered, pulling at his pipe. Marie, looking carefully
past him, began to put on her gloves. Thus Amabel and Raymond found
them--with things obviously very wrong. Amabel diagnosed an offer and a
refusal, but Raymond thought there must be even more behind his sister's
stormy brow and clouded eyes. The journey back was not cheerful.
Marie was indeed cut to the quick. Even to herself it was strange how
deeply she was wounded. The Sarradets had never been ashamed of the
shop; rather they had taken an honourable pride in it and in the growth
of its fortunes from generation to generation. Yet Sidney Barslow's gibe
about the counter was to her now unforgivable. It brought into coarse
and vivid relief her secret doubts and fears. It made her ask whether
she, having made a friend of the man who had used a taunt like that,
must not have something about her to justify it. It set her on fire to
put an utter end to her friendship and association with Sidney
Barslow--and thereby to prove to herself that, whatever her manners
might be they were at least too good for such company as his.
Hitherto pretty equally balanced between the two young men, or at all
events wistfully anxious that friendship with Arthur should not make
impossible her old and pleasant comradeship with Sidney--in whom she
found so much that she liked--she became now Arthur's furious partisan.
With him and his cause she identified herself. She declared that it was
purely for his sake, and not at all in the interest of her own
domination and authority, that she had rebuked Sidney, and for his sake
solely that she had suffered insult. By a natural turn of feeling she
asked in her heart for a reward from him, a recognition of her
championship, gratitude to her for having preferred him to his would-be
rival; if he were not at least a little pleased and proud, she would
feel disappointment and humiliation.
But he would be. And why? Because that was the right thing for him to
be, and now in her eyes, at this moment, he could do no wrong. Sidney
was all wrong, therefore Arthur must be all right. She could not bring
herself to doubt it. And, being all right, he must do and feel all the
right things. So he would--when he knew what she had done and suffered
for him. Her heart cried out that somehow (as delicately as possible, of
course) he must be made to know, to know the full extent of her service
and her sacrifice; he must know the insult she had received; and he must
consider it as great and wanton an insult as she did.
So her feelings formulated their claim upon him, with an instinctive
cunning. It was a claim to which no chivalrous-minded man could be
insensible; it was one that would appeal with commanding force to Arthur
Lisle's impulsive generosity.
"For you I have quarrelled with my old friend--for you I have endured
insult." What could he answer save that in him she should find a better
friend, that his appreciation should efface the insult?
"Don't be afraid to come. There will be nobody here that you don't like
this time." With these words her next invitation to Arthur Lisle ended.
He read them with a quick grasp of her meaning--of the essential part of
it at least. She was on his side! He was glad. Neither for his own sake,
nor for the sake of the idea that he had of her, would he easily have
endured that she should be on Sidney Barslow's side and against him.
Although she did not know what he knew, and had not seen what he had
seen, her instincts and her taste were right! He looked forward eagerly
to letting her perceive, in some way or other, that he recognised this,
to congratulating her somehow on it, to sealing the pact of a natural
alliance between them. How he would do this, or how far he might seem to
go in the course of doing it, or what further implications might be
involved in such a bond between man and maid, his young blood and his
generous impulses did not pause to ask. It was the thing to do--and he
wanted to do it.