YOUNG LOVE
Rolandsaid nothing to his people of Mr Marston's conversation with Gerald. He disliked scenes and an atmosphere of expectation. When everything was settled finally he would tell them, but he would not risk the exposure of his hope to the chill of disappointment. He could not, however, resist the temptation to confide in April. She was young; she could share his failures as his successes. Life was before them both.
No sooner had he turned the corner of the road than he saw the door of the Curtises' house open. April was in the porch waiting for him. "She must have been looking for me," he thought. "Sitting in the window-seat, hoping that I should come." His pride as well as his affection was touched by this clear proof of her interest in him.
"Well?" she said.
"I made a duck," he answered; and his vanity noted that her brown eyes clouded suddenly with disappointment. "But that was only in the first innings," he added.
"Oh, you pig!" she said, "and I thought that after all it had come to nothing."
Roland laughed at the quick change to relief.
"But how do you know that I did do anything in the second innings?"
"You must have."
"But why?"
"'Cos—oh, I don't know. It's not fair to tease me, Roland; tell me what happened." They had passed into the hall, shutting the door behind them, and shepulled impatiently at his sleeve: "Come on, tell me."
"Well, as a matter of fact, I made forty-eight not out."
"Oh, how ripping, how ripping! Come and tell me all about it," and catching him by the hand she led him to the window-seat, from which, on that miserable afternoon, she had gazed for over an hour down the darkening street. "Come on, tell me everything."
And though he at first endeavoured to assume an attitude of superior indifference, he soon found himself telling the story of the match eagerly, dramatically. Reticence was well enough in the presence of the old and middle-aged—parents, relatives and schoolmasters—for all those who had put behind them the thrill of wakening confidence and were prepared to patronise it in others, from whose scrutiny the young had to protect their emotions with the shield of "it is no matter." But April's enthusiasm was fresh, unquestioning and freely given; he could not but respond to it.
She listened to the story with alert, admiring eyes. "And were they awfully pleased with you?" she said when he had finished.
"Well, it was pretty exciting."
"And did Mr Marston say anything to you?"
"Rather! Quite a lot. He was more excited than anyone."
"Oh, yes, but I didn't mean the cricket. Did he say anything about the business?"
Roland nodded.
"Oh, but, Roland, what?"
"Well, I'm not quite certain what, but I think he's going to let me have a shot at some sort of foreign representative affair."
"But, how splendid!" She felt that she shared, in a measure, in his success. It was in her that he had confided his hopes; it was to her that he had brought the news of his good fortune. Her face was flushed and eager, its expression softened by her faith in him.And Roland who, up till then, had regarded her as little more than a friend, her charm as a delicate, elusive fragrance, was unprepared for this simple joy in his achievement. The surprise placed in his mouth ardent, unconsidered words.
"But I shouldn't have been able to do anything without you," he said.
"What do you mean?" she asked, feeling herself grow nervous, taut, expectant.
"You encouraged me when I was depressed," he said. "You believed in me. You told me that things would come right. And because of your belief they have come right. If it hadn't been for you I shouldn't have worried; I should have resigned myself to the bank. As likely as not I shouldn't have gone down to the Marstons' at all. It's all you."
There was a pause. And when at last she spoke, the intonation of her voice was tender.
"Is that true, Roland, really true?"
And as she looked at him, with her clear brown eyes, he believed implicitly that it was true. He was not play-acting. His whole being was softened and made tender by her beauty, by the sight of her calm, oval face and quiet colour, her hair swept in a wide curve across her forehead, gathered under the smooth skin of her neck. His manhood grew strong through her belief in him. She was the key that would open for him the gate of adventure. He leant forward, took her hands in his, and the touch of her fingers brought to his lips an immediate avowal.
"It's quite true, April, every word of it. I shouldn't have done anything but for you." Her brown eyes clouded with a mute gratitude. Gently he drew her by the hand towards him, and she made no effort to resist him. "April," he murmured, "April."
It was the first real kiss of his life. His mouth did not meet hers as it had met Dolly's, in a hungry fierceness; he did not hold her in his arms as he had held Dolly; did not press her to him till she was forced, as Dolly had, to fling her head back and gasp for breath. For an instant April's cheek was against his and his mouth touched hers: nothing more. But in that cool contact of her lips he found for the first time the romance, poetry, ecstasy, what you will, of love. And when his arms released her and she leant back, her hand in his, a deep tenderness remained with them. He said nothing. There was no need for words. They sat silent in face of the mystery they had discovered.
Roland walked home in harmony with himself, with nature; one with the rhythm of life that was made manifest in the changing seasons of the year; the green leaf and the bud; the flower and the fruit; the warm days of harvesting. Hammerton was stretched languid beneath the September sunshine. The sky was blue, a pale blue, that whitened where it was cut by the sharp outline of roof and chimney-stack. The leaves that had been fresh and green in May, but had grown dull in the heat and dust of summer, were once more beautiful. The dirty green had changed to a shrivelled, metallic copper. A few mornings of golden mist would break into a day of sultry splendour; then would come the first warning of frost—the chill air at sundown, the grey dawn that held no promise of sunshine. Oh, soon enough the boughs would be leafless, the streets bare and wintersome. But who could be sad on this day of suspended decadence, this afternoon laden with the heavy autumn scents. Were not the year's decay, the lengthening evenings, part of the eternal law of nature—birth and death, spring and winter, and an awakening after sleep? The falling leaves suggested to him no analogy with the elusive enchantments of the senses.
Two days later he received a letter from Mr Marston offering him a post of a hundred and fifty pounds a year, with all expenses found.
"You will understand, of course," the letter ran, "that at present you are on probation. Our work is personal and requires special gifts. These gifts, however, I believe you to possess. For both our sakes I hope that you will make a success of this. Gerald issailing for Brussels at the end of October, and I expect that you will be able to arrange to accompany him. He will tell you what you will need to take out with you. We usually make our representative an allowance of fifteen pounds for personal expenses, but I daresay that we could in your case, if it is necessary, increase this sum."
Roland handed the letter to his father.
Mr Whately, as usual in the morning, was in a state of nervous excitement. He was always a considerable trial to his family at breakfast. And as often as possible Roland delayed his own appearance till he had heard the slam of the front door. It is not easy to enjoy a meal when someone is bouncing from table to sideboard, reading extracts from the morning paper, opening letters, running up and down stairs, forgetting things in the hall. Mr Whately had never been able to face the first hour of the morning with dignity and composure. When Roland handed him Mr Marston's letter he received it with the impatience of a busy man, who objects to being worried by an absurd trifle.
"Yes, what is it? What is it?"
"A letter from Mr Marston, father, that I thought you might like to read."
"Oh, yes, of course; well, wait a minute," and he projected himself out of the door and up the stairs. He returned within a minute, panting and flustered.
"Yes; now what's the time? Twenty-five past eight. I've got seven minutes. Where's this letter of yours, Roland? Let me see."
He picked up the letter and began to read it as he helped himself to another rasher of bacon. His agitation increased as he read.
"But I don't understand," he said impatiently. "What's all this about Mr Marston offering you a post in his business?"
"What's that, dear?" said Mrs Whately quickly. "Isn't Roland going into the bank after all?"
"Yes, of course he is going into the bank," her husband replied hastily. "It's all settled. Don'tinterrupt me, Roland. I can't understand what you've been doing!"
And he flung the back of his hand against his forehead, a favourite gesture when the pressure of the conversation grew intense.
"I don't know what it's all about, Roland," he continued. "I don't know anything about this man. Who he is, and what he is. And I don't know why you've been arranging all these things behind my back."
Roland expressed surprise that his father had not welcomed the offer of so promising a post. But Mr Whately was too flustered to consider the matter in this light. "It may be a better job," he said, "I don't know. But the bank has been settled and I can't think why you should want to alter things. At any rate, I can't stop to discuss it now," and a minute later the front door had banged behind a querulous, irritable little man, who considered no one had any right to disturb—especially at the breakfast-table—the placid course of his existence. As he left the room he flung the letter upon the table, and Mrs Whately snatched it up eagerly. Roland watched carefully the expression of her face as she read it. At first he noted there only a relieved happiness, but as she folded the letter and handed it back he saw that she was sad.
"Of course it's splendid, Roland," she said. "I'm delighted, but.... Oh, well, I do think you might have told us something about it before."
"I wanted to, mother, but one doesn't like to shout till one's out of the wood."
"With friends, no, but with one's parents—surely you might have confided in us."
There was no such implied disapproval in April's reception of the news. He had not seen her since the afternoon when he had kissed her, and he had wondered in what spirit she would receive him. Would there be awkward stammered explanations? Would she be coy and protest "that she had been silly, that she had not meant it, that it must never happen again?" He had little previous experience to guide him and he wasstill debating the point when he arrived at No. 73 Hammerton Rise.
What April Curtis did was to open the door for him, close it quickly behind him as soon as he was in the porch, take him happily by both hands and hold her face up to be kissed. There was not the least embarrassment in her action.
"Well?" she said, on a note of interrogation.
For answer he put his hand into his pocket, drew out Mr Marston's letter and gave it to her.
April pulled it out of the envelope, hurriedly unfolded it, and ran an engrossed eye over its contents.
"Oh, but how splendid, Roland; now it's all right. Now there's no need to worry about anything. Come at once and tell mother. Mother, mother!" she shouted, and catching Roland by the hand dragged him after her towards the drawing-room.
Mrs Curtis had, through the laborious passage of fifty-two uneventful years, so trained her face to assume on all occasions an expression of pleasant sentimental interest in the affairs of others that by now her features could not be arranged to accommodate any other emotion. She appeared therefore unastonished when her name was called loudly in the hall, when the drawing-room door was flung open and a flushed, excited April stood in the doorway, grasping by the hand an equally flushed but embarrassed Roland. Mrs Curtis laid her knitting in her lap; a kindly smile spread over her glazed countenance.
"Well, my dear, and what's all this about?" she said.
"Oh, it's so exciting, mother. Roland's not going into a bank after all."
"No, dear?"
"No, mother. A Mr Marston, you know the man whom Roland went to stay with last week, has offered him a post in his firm. It's a lovely job. He'll be travelling all over the world and he's going to get a salary; of how much is it—yes, a hundred and fifty pounds a year and all expenses paid. Isn't it splendid?"
Mrs Curtis purred with reciprocated pleasure: "Of course it is, and how pleased your parents must be. Come and sit down here; yes, shut the door, please. You know I always said to Mr Whately, 'Roland is going to do something big; I'm sure of it.' And now you see my prophecy has come true. I shall remind Mr Whately of that next time he comes round to see me, and I shall remind him, too, that I said exactly the same thing about Arthur. 'Mr Whately,' I said," and her voice trailed off into reminiscences.
But though Mrs Curtis was in many—and indeed in most—ways a troublesome old fool, she was not unobservant. She knew that a young girl does not rush into a drawing-room dragging a young man by the hand simply because that young man has obtained a lucrative post in a varnish factory. There must be some other cause for so vigorous an ebullition. And as Mrs Curtis's speculation was unvexed by the complexities of Austrian psychology, she assumed that Roland and April had fallen in love with each other. She was not surprised. She had indeed often wondered why they had not done so before. April was such a dear girl, and Roland could be trained into a highly sympathetic son-in-law. He listened to her conversation with respect and interest, whereas Ralph Richmond insisted on interrupting her. Roland would make April a good husband. Certainly she had been temporarily disquieted by Mr Whately's sudden decision to remove his son from school; but no doubt he had had this post in his mind's eye and had not wished to speak of it till everything had been fixed.
Mrs Curtis's reverie traversed into an agreeable future; she pictured the wedding at St Giles; they would have the full choir. There would be a reception afterwards at the Town Hall. April would look so pretty in orange blossom. Arthur would be the best man. He would stand beside the bridegroom, erect and handsome. "What fine children you have, Mrs Curtis!" That's what everyone would say to her. It would be the prettiest wedding there had ever been at St Giles.... She collected herself with a start.She must not be premature. Nothing was settled yet; they were not even engaged. And of course they could not be engaged yet. They were too absurdly young. Everyone would laugh at her. Still, there might be an understanding. An understanding was first cousin to an engagement; it bound both parties. And then April and Roland would be allowed to go about together. It would be so nice for them.
When Roland had gone, she fixed on her daughter a deep, questioning look, under which April began to grow uncomfortable.
"Well, mother?" she said.
"You like Roland very much, don't you, dear?"
"We're great friends."
"Only friends?"
April did not answer, and her mother repeated her question. "But you're more than friends, aren't you?" But April was still silent. Mrs Curtis leant forward and took April's hand, lifted for a moment out of her vain complacency by the recollection of herself as she had been a quarter of a century ago, like April, with life in front of her. Through placid waters she had come to a safe anchorage, and she wondered whether for April the cruise would be as fortunate, the hand at the helm as steady. Her husband had risked little, but Roland would scarcely be satisfied with safe travel beneath the cliffs. Would April be happier or less happy than she had been? Which was the better—blue skies, calm water, gently throbbing engines, or the pitch and toss and crash of heavy seas?
"Are you very fond of him, dear?" she whispered.
"Yes, mother."
"And he's fond of you?"
"I think so, mother."
"Has he told you so, dear?"
"Yes."
A tear gathered in the corner of her eye, stung her, welled, fell upon her cheek, and this welcome relief recalled her to what she considered the necessities of the moment.
"Of course I shall have to speak to the Whatelys about it."
A shocked, surprised expression came into April's face.
"Oh, but why, mother?"
"Because, my dear, they may have other plans for Roland."
"But ... oh, mother, dear, there's no talk of engagements or anything; we've just ... oh, why can't we go on as we are?"
Mrs Curtis was firm.
"No, my dear," she said, "it would be fair neither to you nor to them. It's not only you and Roland that have to be considered. There's your father and myself and Mr and Mrs Whately. We shall have to talk it over together."
And so when Roland returned that evening from an afternoon with Ralph he found his father and mother sitting in the drawing-room with Mrs Curtis.
"Ah, here's Roland," said Mrs Curtis. "Come along, Roland, we've just been talking about you."
Roland entered and sat on the chair nearest him. He looked from one to the other, and each in turn smiled at him reassuringly: their smile said, "Now don't be nervous. We mean you well. You've only got to agree to our conditions and we'll be ever so nice to you." In the same way, Roland reflected, the Spanish Inquisitors had recommended conversion to the faith with a smile upon their lips, while from the adjoining room sounds came that the impenitents would be wise to associate with furnaces and screws and pliant steel.
"Yes, Roland," said Mr Whately, "we've been talking about you and April."
"Damn!" said Roland to himself. It was like that ridiculous Dolly affair all over again. It was useless, of course, to be flustered. He was growing accustomed to this sort of scene. He supposed that April had got frightened and told her mother, or perhaps the maidservant had seen them kissing in the porch. In any case it was not very serious. They would probably forbid him to see April alone. It would be ratherrotten; but the world was wide. In a few weeks' time he would be going abroad; he could free himself of these entanglements, and when he returned he would decide what he should do. He would be economically independent. In the meantime let them talk. He settled himself back in his chair and prepared to hear at least, with patience, whatever they might have to say to him. What they did have to say came to him as a surprise.
"I was talking to April about it this morning," said Mrs Curtis. "Of course I've noticed it for a long time. A mother can't help seeing these things. Several times I've said to my husband: 'Father, dear, haven't you noticed that Roland and April are becoming very interested in each other?' and he's agreed with me. Though I haven't liked to say anything. But then this morning it was so very plain, wasn't it?" She paused and smiled. And Roland, feeling that an answer was expected of him, said that he supposed it was.
"Yes, really quite clear, and so afterwards I had a talk with my little April and she told me all about it. And, of course, we're all of us very pleased that you should be fond of one another, but you must realise that at present you're much too young for there to be any talk of marriage."
"But..." Roland began.
"Yes, I know that you've got a good post in this varnish factory; but as I was saying to Mr Whately before you came, you're only on probation, and it's a job that means a lot of travelling and expense that you wouldn't be able to afford if you were a married man or were even contemplating matrimony."
"But..." Roland began again, and again Mrs Curtis stopped him.
"Yes, I know what you're thinking; you say that you are content to wait; that four years, five years, six years—it's nothing to you, that you want to be engaged now. I can quite understand it. We all can. We've all been young, but I'm quite certain that..."
Roland could not believe that it was real, that he wassitting in a real room, that a real woman was talking, a real scene was in the process of enaction. He listened in a stupefied amazement. What, after all, had happened? He had kissed April three times. She had asked no vows and he had given none. They were lovers he supposed, but they were boy and girl lovers. The romances of the nursery should not be taken seriously. By holding April's hand and kissing her had he decided the course of both their lives? What were they about, these three solemn people, with their talk of marriage and engagements?
"But you don't understand," he began.
"Oh, yes, we do," Mrs Curtis interrupted. "We old people know more than you think."
And she began to speak in her droning, mellifluous voice of the sanctity of love and of the good fortune that had led him so early to his affinity. And then all three of them began to speak together, and their words beat like hammers upon Roland's head, till he did not know where he was, nor what they were saying to him. "It can't be real," he told himself. "It's preposterous. People don't behave like this in real life." And when his mother came across and kissed him on the forehead and said, "We're all so happy, Roland," he employed every desperate device to recall himself to reality that he was accustomed to use when involved in a nightmare. He fixed his thoughts upon one issue, focused all his powers on that one point: "I will wake up. I will wake up."
And even when it was all over, and he was in his bedroom standing before the looking-glass to arrange his tie, he could not believe that it had really happened. It was impossible that grown-up people should be so foolish. He could understand that Mrs Curtis should be annoyed at his attentions to her daughter. He had been prepared for that. If she had said, "Roland, you're both of you too old for that. It was well enough when you were both children, but it won't do now; April is growing up," he could have appreciated her point of view. Perhaps they were too old for thelove-making of childhood. But that she should take up the attitude that they were too young for the serious matrimonial entanglements of man and womanhood! It was beyond the expectation of any sane intelligence.
In a way he could not help feeling annoyed with April. If she had not told her mother nothing would have happened.
"Oh, but how silly," she said, when he told her about it next day. "I do wish I had been there. It must have been awfully funny!"
Roland had not considered it in that light and hastened to tell her so.
"I felt a most appalling fool. It was beastly. I can't think why you told your mother anything about it."
She looked up quickly, surprised by the note of impatience in his voice.
"But, Roland, dear, what else could I do? She asked me and I couldn't tell a lie. Could I?"
"I don't know," said Roland. And he began to walk backwards and forwards, up and down the room. "I suppose you couldn't help it, but.... Oh, well, what did you say to her?"
"Nothing much. She asked me.... Oh, but, Roland, do sit down," she pleaded, "I can't talk when you're walking up and down the room."
"All right," said Roland, sitting down. "Go on."
"Well, she asked me if I liked you and I said that we were great friends, and then she asked if we weren't more than friends."
"Oh, yes, yes, I know," said Roland, rising impatiently from his chair and walking across the room. "Of course you said we were, and that I had been making love to you, and that—oh, but what's the good of going on with it. I know what she said and what you said, and the whole thing was out in three minutes, and then your mother comes round to my mother and they talk and they talk, and that's how all the trouble in the world begins."
While he was actually speaking he was sustained bythe white heat of his impatience, but the moment he had stopped he was bitterly ashamed of himself. What had he done? What had he said? And April's silence accentuated his shame. She neither turned angrily upon him nor burst into tears. She sat quietly, her hands clasped in front of her knees, looking at the floor.
After a while she rose and walked across to the window. Her back was turned to him. He felt that he must do something to shatter the poignant silence. He drew close to her and touched her hand with his, but she drew her hand away quietly, without haste or anger.
"April," he began, "I'm...."
But she stopped him. "Don't say anything. Please don't say anything."
"But I must, April. I've been a beast. I didn't mean it."
"It's quite all right. I've been very foolish. There's nothing more to be said."
Her voice was calm and level. She kept her back turned to him, distant and unapproachable. He did not know what to do nor what to say. He had been a beast to her. He knew it. And because he had wronged her, because she had made him feel ashamed of himself, he was angry with her.
"Oh, very well then," he said. "If you won't talk to me, I'm going home."
He turned and walked out of the room. In the porch he waited for a moment, thinking that she would call after him. But no sound came from the drawing-room, not even the rustle of clothes, that might have indicated the change of her position. "Oh, well," he said, "if she's going to sulk, let her sulk," and he walked out of the house.
For the rest of the day he endured the humiliating discomfort of contrition. He was honest with himself. He made no attempt to excuse his behaviour. There was no excuse for it. He had behaved like a cad. There was only one thing to do and that was to grovel as soon as possible. It would be an undignified proceeding, but he was quite ready to do it, if he could becertain that the performance would be accepted in the right spirit. It was not easy to grovel before a person who turned her back on you, looked out of the window and refused to listen to what you had to say.
When evening came he decided that he might do worse than make a reconnaissance of the enemy's country under the guidance of an armed escort—in other words, that if he paid a visit to the Curtises' with his father he would be able to see April without having the embarrassment of a private talk forced on him.
And so when Mr Whately returned from the office he found his son waiting to take him for a walk.
"What a pleasant surprise," he said. "I never expected to find you here. I thought you would be spending all your time with April now."
Roland laughed.
"Well, as a matter of fact," he said, "I thought we might go round and see the Curtises together."
"And you thought you wanted a chaperon?"
"Hardly that."
"But you felt shy of facing the old woman?"
"That's more like it."
"All right, then, we'll tackle her together."
Roland was certain, when they arrived, that the idea of employing his father as a shield was in the nature of an inspiration. April received him without a smile; she did not even shake hands with him. Fortunately, in the effusion of Mrs Curtis's welcome, this omission was not noticed.
"I'm so glad you have come, both of you. April told me, Roland, that you had been round to see her this morning, and I must say I began to feel afraid that I should never see you again. I thought you would only want to come round when you could have April all to yourself. It would have been such a disappointment to me if you had; I should have so missed our little evening talks. As I was saying to my husband only yesterday, 'I don't know what we should do without the Whatelys,' and he agreed with me. You know, Mr Whately, there are some people whom we quite like,but whom we shouldn't miss in the least if they went away and we never saw them again, and there are others who would leave a real gap. It's funny, isn't it? And it's so nice, now, to think that Roland and April—though we mustn't talk like that, must we, or they'll begin to think they're engaged. And we couldn't allow that, could we, Mr Whately?"
His body rattled with a deep chuckle. Out of the corner of his eye Roland flung a glance at April, to see what effect this wind of words was having on her, but her face was turned from him.
Mrs Curtis then proceeded to speak of Arthur and of the letter she had received from him by the evening post. "He says—now what is it that he says? Ah, yes, here it is; he says, 'As I am too old for the Junior games, I have been moved into the Senior League.' Now that's very satisfactory, isn't it, Mr Whately, that he should be in the Senior League? I always said he would be good at games, and April too, Mr Whately; she would have been very good at games if she had played them. When they used to play cricket in the nursery she used to hit at the ball so well, with her arms, you know. She would have been very good, but she hasn't had the time and they don't go in for games very much at St Stephen's. Now what do you think of that new frock of hers? I got it so cheap—you can't think how cheaply I got it. And then I got Miss Smithers to make it up for her, and April looks so pretty in it; don't you think so, Mr Whately?"
"Charming, of course, Mrs Curtis, absolutely charming!"
"I thought you'd like it. And I'm sure Roland does too, though he would be too shy to own to it. You know, Mr Whately, I felt like telling her when she put it on that Roland would have to be very careful or he would find a lot of rivals when he came back from Brussels."
It was more than April could bear. She had endured a great deal that day and this was the final ignominy.
"How can you, mother?" she said. "How canyou?" and jumping to her feet, she ran out of the room, slamming the door behind her.
The sudden crash reverberated through the awkward silence; then came the soft caressing voice of Mrs Curtis: "I'm so sorry, Mr Whately; I don't know what April can be thinking of. But she's like that sometimes. These young people are so difficult; one doesn't know where to find them. Yes, that's right, Roland, run and see if you can't console her."
For Roland had risen, moved deeply by the sight of April's misery, her pathetic weakness. It was not fair. First of all he had been beastly to her, then her mother had made a fool of her. He found her in the dining-room, huddled on a chair beside the fire. She turned at once to him for sympathy. She stretched out her arms, and he ran towards them, knelt before her and buried his face in her lap.
"We have been such beasts to you, April, all of us. I have felt so miserable about it all day. I didn't know what to do. I thought you would never forgive me. I don't deserve to be forgiven; but I love you; I do, really awfully!"
"That's all right," she said; "don't worry," and placing her hand beneath his chin she raised gently his face to hers.
It was a long kiss, one of those long passionless kisses of sympathy, pity and contrition that smooth out all difficulties, as a wave that passes over a stretch of sand leaving behind it a shining surface. For a long while they sat in each other's arms, saying nothing, his fingers playing with her hair, her lips from moment to moment meeting his. When at last they reverted to the subject of their morning's quarrel there was little possibility of dissension.
It was with a gay smile that she asked him why he had been so angry with her. "Why shouldn't our parents know, Roland? They would have had to some day."
"Oh, yes, of course, but——"
"And surely, Roland dear," she continued, "it'sbetter for us that they should know. I should have hated having to do things in secret. It would have been exciting, of course; I know that; but it wouldn't have been fair to them, would it? They are so fond of us; they ought to have a share in our happiness."
"That's just what I felt," Roland objected. "I had felt that our love had ceased to be our own, that they had taken too big a share of it. It didn't seem to be our love affair any longer."
"Oh, you silly darling!" and she laughed happily, relieved of her fear that there might be some deeper cause for Roland's behaviour to her. "Why should you worry about that? What does it matter if other people do know about it? Why, what's an engagement but a letting of a lot of other people into our secret; and when we're married, why, that's a telling of everyone in the whole world that we're in love with one another. What does it matter if others know?"
"I suppose it doesn't," Roland dubiously admitted.
"Of course it doesn't. The only thing that does matter," she said, twisting a lock of his hair round her little finger and smiling at him through half-closed eyes, "is that we've made up our silly quarrel and are friends again," and bending forward she kissed him quietly and happily.
He was naturally relieved that the sympathy between them had been re-established; but he realised how little he had made her appreciate his misgivings. Indeed, he would have found it hard to explain them to himself. Their love was no longer fresh and spontaneous. Its growth, as that of a wild flower that is taken from a hedge and planted in a conservatory, would be no longer natural. Other hands would tend it. In April's mind the course of love was marked by certain fixed boundaries—the avowal, the engagement, the marriage service. She did not conceive of love as existing outside these limits. She had never been in love before; and naturally she regarded love as a state of mind into which one was suddenly and miraculously surprised, and in which one continued until the end ofone's life. There was no reason why she should think differently. Her training had taught her that love could not exist outside marriage—marriage that ordained one woman for one man.
But it was different for Roland, who had learnt from the vivid and fleeting romances of his boyhood that love comes and goes, irresponsible as the wind that at one moment is shaking among the branches, scattering the leaves, tossing them in the air, only to subside a moment later into calm.
These misgivings passed quickly enough, however, in the delightful novelty of the situation. It was great fun being in love; to wake in the early morning with the knowledge that as soon as breakfast was over you would run down the road and be welcomed by a charming girl, whom you would counsel to shut the door behind you quickly so that you could kiss her before anyone knew you were in the house, who would then tilt up her face prettily to yours. It was charming to sit with her in the drawing-room and hold her hand and rest your cheek against hers, to answer such questions as, "When did you first begin to love me?"
Often they would go for walks together in the autumn sunshine; occasionally they would take a bus and ride out to Kew or Hampstead, and sit on the green grass and hold hands and talk of the future. These talks were a delicious excitant to Roland's vanity. His ambitions were strengthened by her faith in him. He saw himself rich and famous. "We'll have a wonderful house, with stables and an orchard, and we'll have a private cricket ground and we'll get a pro. down from Lord's to look after it. And we'll have fine parties in the summer—cricket and tennis during the day, and dances in the evening!"
"And a funny little cottage," she would murmur, "somewhere down the river, for when we want to be all by ourselves."
It was exciting, too, when other people, grown-up people, made significant remarks.
One afternoon he was at a tea-party and a lady asked him if he would come round to lunch with them the next day. "We've got a nephew of ours stopping with us. An awfully jolly boy. I'm sure you and he would get on well together." Roland, however, had to excuse himself on the grounds of a previous engagement.
"I'm awfully sorry," he said, "but I've promised to go on the river."
"With April Curtis? Ah, I thought so."
And the smile that accompanied the question made Roland feel very grown up and important.
These weeks of preparation for the foreign tour Roland considered however, in spite of their charm, as an interlude, a pause in the serious affairs of life. It was thus that he had always regarded his holidays. He had divided with a hard line his life at school and his life at home. The two were unrelated. April and Ralph, his parents and the Curtises belonged to a world that must remain for him always episodic. It was a pleasant world in which from time to time he might care to sojourn. But what happened to him there was of no great importance.
As he leant over the taffrail of the steamer and felt the deck throb under him he knew that his real life had begun again. What significance had these encumbrances of his home life if he could cast them off so easily? Already they were slipping from him. The waves beat against the side of the ship, splashing the spray across the deck, and the sting of the water on his face filled him with a buoyant confidence. The thud of the engines beat through his body to a tune of triumph.
The grey line that was England faded and was lost.
THE ROMANCE OF VARNISH
A separationof six months makes in the middle years of a man's life little break in a relationship. Human life was compared over two thousand years ago by a Greek philosopher to the stream that is never the same from one moment to another. And though, indeed, nothing is permanent, though everything is in flux, the stream during the later stages of its passage flows quietly through soft meadows to the sea. A man of forty-five who has been married for several years may leave his family to go abroad and returning at the end of the year find his wife, his home, his friends, to all appearances, exactly as he left them.
Roland returned from Belgium a different person. He was no longer a schoolboy; he was a business man. He had been introduced to big financiers; he had listened to the discussion of important deals; he had witnessed the signatures of contracts. In the evenings he had sat with Marston and gone carefully over the accounts of the day's transactions.
"There's not much profit here," Marston would say, "hardly any, in fact, when we've taken over-head charges, office expenses and all that into consideration. But we're not out for profits just now. We're building up connections. If we can make these foreign deals pay their way we're all right. We shall crowd the other fellows out of the market, we shall make ourselves indispensable, and then we can shove our prices as high as we blooming well like."
To Roland it was a game, with the thrills, the dangers, the recompenses of a game. He did not look on business as part of the social fabric. He did not regard wealthas a thing important in itself. A credit balance was like a score at cricket. You were setting your brains against an opponent's. You made as many pounds as you could against his bowling. He did not allow first principles to attach disquieting corollaries. He did not ask himself whether it was just for a big firm to undersell their smaller rivals and drive them out of the market by the simple expedient of taking money out of one pocket and putting it into another. Business was a game: if one was big enough to take risks one took them.
Within a month Gerald was writing home to his father with genuine enthusiasm.
"He really is first class, father. I thought he would be pretty useful, but I never expected him to be a patch on what he is. He's really keen on the job and he's got the hang of it already. He ought to do jolly well when he comes out here alone. The big men like him; old Rosenheim told me the other day that it was a pleasure to see him about the place. 'Such a relief,' he said, 'after the dried-up hard-chinned provincials that pester me from morning to night.' I believe it's the best thing we ever did, getting Roland into the business."
Roland, realising that his work was appreciated, grew confident and hopeful of the future. They were happy days.
It is not easy to explain the friendship of two men. And Roland would have been unable to say why exactly he valued the companionship and esteem of Gerald Marston more highly than that of the many boys, such as Ralph Richmond, whom he had known longer and, on the whole, more intimately. Gerald never said anything brilliant; he was not particularly amusing; he was often irritable and moody. But from the moment when he had seen him for the first time in Brewster's study Roland had recognised in him a potential friend. Later, when they had met at the Oval, he had felt that they understood each other, that they spoke the same language, that there was between them no need for theusual preliminaries of friendship. And during their weeks in France and Belgium this relationship or intuition was fortified by the sharing of common interests and common adventures.
The majority of these adventures were, it must be confessed, of doubtful morality, for it was only natural that Roland and Gerald should in their spare time amuse themselves after the fashion of most young men who find themselves alone in a foreign city.
In the evenings, after they had balanced their accounts, they used to walk through the warm lighted streets, surrounded by the stir of a world waking to a night of pleasure, select a brightly coloured café, sit back on the red plush couch that ran the length of the room, and order iced champagne. The band would play soft, sentimental music that, mixing with the wine in their heads, would render them eager, daring and responsive, and when two girls walked slowly down the centre of the room, swaying from the hips, and casting to left and right sidelong, alluring glances, naturally they smiled back, and indicated two vacant seats on either side of them. Then there would be talk and laughter and more champagne, and afterwards.... But what happened afterwards was of small importance. Gerald had had too much experience to derive much excitement from bought kisses. And for Roland, these romances were the focus of little more than a certain lukewarm kindliness and curiosity. They were not degrading, because they were not regarded so. They were equally unromantic, because neither was particularly interested in the other. Indeed, Roland was a little dismayed to find how slight, on the whole, was the pleasure, even the physical pleasure, that he received from his companion's transports; these experiences, far from having the devastating effect that they are popularly supposed to have on a young man's character, would have had in Roland's life no more significance than an act of solitary indulgence, had they not been another bond between himself and Gerald. And this they most certainly were.
It was amusing to meet in the morning afterwardsand exchange confidences. And as everything is transmuted by the imagination, Roland in a little while came to look on those evenings—the wine, the music, the rustle of skirts, the low laughter—not as they had been actually, but as he would have wished to have them. They became for him a gracious revel. And in London his thoughts would wander often from his ink-stained desk, from the screech of the telephone, from the eternal tapping of the typewriter, to those brightly coloured cafés, with their atmosphere of warm comfort, the soft sensuous music, the cool sparkling champagne, the low whisper at his elbow. When he went out to lunch with Marston he would frequently contrast the glitter of a Brussels restaurant with the tawdry furniture and over-heated atmosphere of a City eating-house.
"A bit different this, isn't it?" he would say. "Do you remember that evening when we went down the Rue de la Madeleine and found a café in that little side street?"
"That was where we met the jolly little girl in the blue dress, wasn't it?"
"Yes. And do you remember what she said about the old Padre?"
And they would laugh together over the indelicacies that had slipped so charmingly in broken English from those red lips.
But Gerald was the one figure that remained distinct for Roland. The girls, for the most part, resembled each other so closely that he could only in rare instances recall their features or what they had worn or what they had said. He remembered far more vividly his walks with Gerald through the lighted streets, their confidences and hesitations. Should they go into this café or into that: and then when they had selected their café how Gerald would open the wine list and carefully run his finger down the page, while the waiter would hover over him: "Yes, yes, sir, a very good wine that, sir, a very good wine indeed!" And then when the wine was ordered how they would look round at the girls who sat in couples at the marble-topped tables,sipping a citron or a bock. "What do you think of that couple over there?" "Not bad, but let's wait a bit; something better may turn up soon"; and a little later: "Oh, look, that girl over there, the one with the green dress, just beneath the picture; try and catch her eye, she looks ripping!" They had been more exciting, those moments of expectation, than the subsequent embraces.
Gerald was always the dominant figure.
It was the expression of Gerald's face that Roland remembered most clearly on that disappointing evening when they had taken two chorus girls to dinner at a private room and Roland's selected had refused champagne and preferred fried sole to pheasant—an abstinence so alarming that, in spite of Roland's protests, Gerald had suddenly decided that they would have to catch a train to Paris that evening instead of being able to wait till the morning.
And it was Gerald whom Roland particularly associated with that ignominious occasion on which he had thought at last to have discovered real romance.
They had dropped into a restaurant in the afternoon for a cup of chocolate, and had seen sitting by herself a girl who could hardly have been twenty years of age. She wore a wide-brimmed hat, under which Roland could just see, as she bent her head over her ice, the tip of her nose, the smooth curve of a cheek, the strain on the muscles of her neck. She raised the spoon delicately to her mouth, her lips closed on it and held it there. Her eyelids appeared to droop in a sort of sensual contentment. Roland watched her, fascinated: watched her till she drew the spoon slowly from her mouth. She lingered pensively, and between the even rows of her white teeth the red tip of her tongue played for a moment on the spoon. At that moment she raised her eyes, observed that Roland was staring at her, smiled, and dropped her eyes again.
"Did you see that?" whispered Roland excitedly. "She smiled at me, and she's ripping! I must go and speak to her!"
"Don't be a fool," said Gerald; "a smile may not mean anything. Besides, she's obviously not a tart and she may be known here. If she is she won't want to be seen talking to a stranger. You sit still, like a good boy, and see if she smiles at you again."
Against his will Roland consented. But he had his reward a few minutes later when she turned her chair to catch the waitress's attention, and her eyes, meeting his, smiled at them again—a challenging, alluring smile that seemed to say, "Well, are you brave enough?" He was dismayed, however, to notice that she had turned in order to ask for her bill. He saw her run her eye down the slip of paper, take some money from her purse and begin to button on her gloves, long gauntlet gloves that fastened above the elbow.
"She's going! what shall I do?" he asked.
For answer Marston took a piece of paper from his pocket and wrote on it: "Meet me at the Café des Colombes to-night at eight-thirty."
"Now, walk up to the counter and pretend to choose a cake; if she wants to see any more of you she will drop her handkerchief, or purse, or at any rate give you an opportunity of speaking to her; if she does, slip this note into her hand. If she doesn't, you can buy me an éclair, and thank your lucky stars that you've been preserved from making a most abandoned fool of yourself."
Roland was in such a hurry to get to the counter that he tripped against a table and only saved himself from falling by gripping violently the shoulder of an elderly bourgeois. By the time he had completed his apologies his charmer had very nearly reached the door.
"It's all up," he told himself; "she thinks me a clumsy fool, that it's not worth her while to worry about, I ought to have gone straight up to her at once"; and he followed with dejected eyes her progress towards the door.
She was carrying in one hand an umbrella and in the other a little velvet bag. As she raised her hand to open the door, the bag slipped from her fingers and fellupon the floor. There were three persons nearer to the bag than Roland, but before even a hand had been stretched out to it he had precipitated himself forward, had picked it up and was handing it to the lady. She smiled at him with gracious gratitude. So far all had gone splendidly. Then he began to fumble. The note was in the other hand, and in the flurry of the moment he did not know how to manœuvre the bag and the note into the same hand. First of all, he tried to change the bag from the right hand to the left. But his forefinger and thumb were so closely engaged with the note that the remaining three fingers failed to grasp the handle of the bag. He made a furious dive and caught the bag in his right hand just before it reached the floor. Panic seized him. He lost all sense of the proprieties. He handed the bag straight to her, and then realising, before she had had time to take it from him, that somehow or other the note also had to come into her possession, he offered it to her between the forefinger and thumb of his left hand with less secrecy than he would have displayed in giving a tip to a waiter. The sudden change of the lady's expression from inviting kindliness to a surprised affronted indignation threw him into so acute a fever of embarrassment that once again he endeavoured to move the bag from the right hand to the left. Again he fumbled, but with a different result. He piloted the bag successfully into the lady's hands, but allowed the note to slip from between his fingers. It fell face upwards on the floor.
Several ways of escape were open to him. He might have affected unconcern, and either picked up the piece of paper or left it where it lay. He might have kicked the note away and walked forward to open the door. He might have placed his foot on the note till the attention of the room was once again directed to its separate interests. None of these things, however, did he do. He did what was natural for him in such an unexpected situation. He did nothing. He stood quite still and gazed at the note as it lay there startlingly white against the black tiles of the floor. The eyesof everyone in the room appeared to be directed towards it. The features of the startled lady assumed an expression of horrified amazement. Two waitresses leant over the counter in undisguised excitement; another stopped dead with a tray in her hand to survey the incriminating document. The fat gentleman against whom Roland had collided began to make some unpleasantly loud remarks to his companion. An old woman leant forward and asked the room in general what was happening. From a far corner came the horrible suppression of a giggle.
The lady herself, who was, as a matter of fact, perfectly respectable, though she liked to be thought otherwise, and had dropped her bag accidentally, was the first to recover her composure. She fixed on Roland a glance of which as a combination of hatred and contempt he had never seen the equal, turned quickly and walked out of the restaurant. The sudden bang of the door behind her broke the tension. The various spectators of this entertaining interlude returned to their ices and their chocolate, the waitresses resumed their duties, the patron of the establishment fussed up the centre of the room, and Gerald, who had watched the scene with intense if slightly nervous amusement, left his table, picked up the note, and taking Roland by the arm, led him out of the public notice, and listened to his friend's solemn vow that never again, under any circumstances, would he be induced to open negotiations with any woman, be she never so lovely, who did not by her dress, her manner and the places she frequented proclaim unquestionably her profession.
It was hardly surprising that as a result of these adventures a more developed, more independent Roland returned at the end of his six months' tour, a Roland, moreover, with a different attitude to himself, his future, his surroundings, who was prepared to despise the chrysalis from which he had emerged. His school-days appeared trivial.
"What a deal of fuss we made about things thatdidn't really matter at all," he said to Gerald as they leant over the taffrail and watched the dim line that was England grow distinct, its grey slowly whitening as they drew near. "What a fuss about one's place in form, one's position in the house; whether one ragged or whether one didn't rag. I can see all those masters, with their solemn faces, thinking I had perjured my immortal soul because I had walked out with a girl. They really thought it mattered."
How puny it became in comparison with this magnificent gamble of finance! What were marks in an exam. to set against a turnover of several thousands? Duty, privilege, responsibility; what had they been but the brightly coloured bricks with which children play in the nursery; and as for the fret and fever concerning their arrangement, where could be found an equivalent for the serious absorption of a child?
In the same way he thought of his home and the environment of his boyhood. What a grey world it had been! How monotonous, how arid! He remembered sitting as a child at the bars of his nursery window watching the stream of business men hurrying to their offices in the morning, their newspapers tucked under their arms. They had seemed to him like marionettes. The front door had opened. Husband and wife had exchanged a brusque embrace; the male marionette had trotted down the steps, had paused at the gate to wave his hand, and as he had turned into the street the front door had closed behind him. Always the same thing every day. And then in the evening the same stream of tired listless men hurrying home, their bulky morning paper exchanged for the slim evening newssheet. They would trot up the white stone steps, the front door would swing open, again in the porch the marionettes would kiss. It had amused him as a child, this dumb show, but as a boy he had come to hate it—and to fear it also. For he knew that this was the life that awaited him if he failed to turn to account his superior opportunities. The fear of degenerating into a suburban business man had been always the strongest goad to hisambition. But now he could look that fear confidently in the face. He had won through out of that world of routine and friction and small economies into one of enterprise and daring and romance.
And April: he had not thought very much about her during his six months' absence; she belonged to the world he had outgrown, a landmark on his road of adventure. And it was disconcerting to find on his return that she did not regard their relationship in this light. Roland had grown accustomed to the fleeting relationships of school that at the start of a new term could be resumed or dropped at will. He had not realised that it would be different now; that six months in Belgium were not the equivalent of a seven weeks' summer holiday; that he would be returning to an unaltered society in which he would be expected to fulfil the obligations incurred by him before his departure. It was the reversal of the Rip Van Winkle legend. Roland had altered and was returning to a world that was precisely as he had left it.
Nothing had changed.
On the first evening he went round to visit April, and there was Mrs Curtis as she had always been, sitting before the fire, her hands crossed over her bony bosom. She welcomed him as though he had been spending a week-end in Kent.
"I'm so glad to see you, Roland, and have you had a nice time? It must be pleasant for you to think of how soon the cricket season will be starting. I was saying to our little April only yesterday: 'How Roland will be looking forward to it.' What club are you thinking of joining?"
"The Marstons said something to me about my joining their local club."
"But how jolly that would be! You'll like that, won't you?"
Her voice rose and fell as it had risen and fallen as long as Roland's memory had knowledge of her. The same clock ticked over the same mantelpiece; above the table was the same picture of a cow grazing besidea stream; the curtains, once red, had not faded to a deeper brown; the carpet was no more threadbare; the same books lined the shelves that rose on either side of the fire-place; in the bracket beside the window was the calf-bound set ofWilliam Morristhat had been presented to April as a prize; on the rosewood table lay yesterday's copy ofThe Times. Mrs Curtis and her setting were eternal in the scheme of things.
April, too, was as he had left her. Indeed, her life in his absence had been a pause. She had no personal existence outside Roland. She had waited for his return, thinking happily of the future. She had gone to school every morning at a quarter to nine and had returned every evening at half-past five. During the Christmas holidays she had readNicholas NicklebyandVanity Fair. She was now half-way throughLittle Dorrit. At the end of the Michaelmas term she had gained a promotion into a higher form and in her new form she had acquitted herself creditably, finishing half-way up the class. At home she had performed cheerfully the various duties that had been allotted to her. But she had regarded those six months as an interlude in her real life: that was Roland's now. Happiness could only come to her through him; and, being sure of happiness, she was not fretful nor impatient during the delay. She did not expect nor indeed ask of life violent transports either of ecstasy or sorrow. Her ideas of romance were domestic enough. To love and to be loved faithfully, to have children, to keep a home happy, a home to which her friends would be glad to come—this seemed to her as much as any woman had the right to need. She felt that she would be able to make Roland happy. The prospect was full of a quiet but deep contentment.
Roland had no opportunity of speaking to her on that first evening; Mrs Curtis, as usual, monopolised the conversation. But he sat near to April. From time to time their eyes met and she smiled at him. And the next morning when he came round to see her she ran eagerly to meet him.
"It's lovely to have you back again," she said; "you can't think how I've been looking forward to it!"
Roland was embarrassed by her eagerness. He did not know what to say and stood beside her, smiling stupidly.
She pouted.
"Aren't you going to kiss me?" she said. And a moment later: "I shouldn't have thought, after six months, you'd have needed asking!"
Roland met her reproach with a stammered apology.
"I felt shy. I thought you might have got tired of me, all that long time."
"Oh, but Roland, how horrid of you!" And she moved away from him. But he took her in his arms and made love prettily to her and consoled her.
"I daresay," she said, "I daresay. But you didn't write to me so very often."
"I wanted to, but I thought your mother wouldn't like it."
"Oh, but, Roland, that's no excuse; she expected you to. There's an understanding." Then with a quiet smile: "Do you remember the row we had about that understanding?"
"I was a beast."
"No, you weren't, I was a silly."
"I was miserable about it."
"So was I. I didn't know what to do with myself. I thought you'ld never speak to me again, that you'd gone off in a huff, like the heroes in the story books."
"But the heroes always come back in the story books."
"I know, and that's just why I thought that very likely you wouldn't in real life. I was so unhappy I cried myself to sleep."
"We were sillies, weren't we?"
"But it was worth it," said April.
"Worth it?"
"Don't you remember how nice you were to me when we made it up?"
They laughed and kissed, and the minutes passed pleasantly. But their love-making fell short of Roland'sideal of love. It was jolly; it was comfortable; but it was little more. He was not thrilled when the back of his hand brushed accidentally against hers; their kisses were hardly a lyric ecstasy. Even when he held her in his arms he was conscious of himself, outside their embrace, watching it, saying to himself: "Those two are having a good time together," and being outside it he was envious, jealous of a happiness he did not share. It was someone else who was holding April's hand, someone else's head that bent to her slim shoulder. It was an exciting experience. But then had it not been exciting to walk across Hampstead Heath on a Sunday evening and observe the feverish ardours of the prostrate lovers.
He despised himself; he reminded himself that he was extraordinarily lucky to have a girl such as April in love with him; he was unworthy of her. Was not Ralph eating out his heart with envy? And yet he was dissatisfied. The Curtises' house had become a prison for him; a soft, warm prison, with cushions and shaded lights and gentle voices, but it was a prison none the less. He was still able to leave it at will, but the time was coming when that freedom would be denied him. In a year or two their understanding would be an engagement; the engagement would drift to marriage. For the rest of his life he would be enclosed in that warm, clammy atmosphere. There was a conspiracy at work against him. His father had already begun to speak of his marriage as an accomplished fact. His mother was chiefly glad he was doing well in business because success there would make an early marriage possible. On all sides inducements were being offered him to marry—marriage with its corollary to settle down. Marry and settle down, when he was still under twenty!—before he had begun to live!