65 Short Stories (138 page)

Carruthers said all this without a smile. He spoke with the melancholy he might have used if he had been speaking of some person snatched from the pleasant company of the living by untimely death. He gave a deep sigh.

‘I was madly in love with her. I proposed to her half a dozen times. Of course I knew I hadn’t a chance. I was only a very junior clerk at the EO., but I couldn’t help myself. She refused me, but she was always frightfully nice about it. It never made any difference to our friendship. You see, she really liked me. I gave her something that other people didn’t. I always thought that she was really fonder of me than of anybody. I was crazy about her.’

‘I don’t suppose you were the only one,’ I said, having to say something.

Tar from it. She used to get dozens of love letters from men she’d never seen or heard of, farmers in Africa, miners, and policemen in Canada. All sorts of people proposed to her. She could have married anyone she liked.’

‘Even royalty, one heard.’

‘Yes, she said she couldn’t stand the life. And then she married Jimmie Welldon-Burns.’

‘People were rather surprised, weren’t they?’

Did you ever know him?’

‘No, I don’t think so. I may have met him, but he left no impression on me.’

‘He wouldn’t He was the most insignificant fellow that ever breathed. His father was a big manufacturer up in the North. He’d made a lot of money during the war and bought a baronetcy. I believe he hadn’t an aitch to his name. Jimmy was at Eton with me, they’d tried hard to make a gentleman of him, and in London after the war he was about a good deal. He was always willing to throw a party. No one ever paid any attention to him. He just paid the bill. He was the most crashing bore. You know, rather prim, terribly polite; he made you rather uncomfortable because he was so anxious not to do the wrong thing. He always wore his clothes as though he’d just put them on for the first time and they were a little too tight for him.’

When Carruthers innocently opened his 
Times 
one morning and casting his eyes down the fashionable intelligence of the day saw that a marriage had been arranged between Elizabeth, only daughter of the Duke of St Erth, and James, eldest son of Sir John Welldon-Burns, Bart, he was dumbfounded. He rang Betty up and asked if it was true.

‘Of course,’ she said.

He was so shocked that for the moment he found nothing to say. She went on speaking.

‘He’s bringing his family to luncheon today to meet father. I dare say it’ll be a bit grim. You might stand me a cocktail at Claridge’s to fortify me, will you?’

‘At what time?’ he asked.

‘One.’

‘All right. I’ll meet you there.’

He was waiting for her when she came in. She walked with a sort of spring as though her eager feet itched to break into a dance. She was smiling. Her eyes shone with the joy that suffused her because she was alive and the world was such a pleasant place to live in. People recognizing her whispered to one another as she came in. Carruthers really felt that she brought sunshine and the scent of flowers into the sober but rather overwhelming splendour of Claridge’s lounge. He did not wait to say how do you do to her.

‘Betty, you can’t do it,’ he said. ‘It’s simply out of the question.’

‘Why?’

‘He’s awful.’

‘I don’t think he is. I think he’s rather nice.’

A waiter came up and took their order. Betty looked at Carruthers with those beautiful blue eyes of hers that managed to be at the same time so gay and so tender.

‘He’s such a frightful bounder, Betty.’

‘Oh, don’t be so silly, Humphrey. He’s just as good as anybody else. I think you’re rather a snob.’

‘He’s so dull.’

‘No, he’s rather quiet. I don’t know that I want a husband who’s too brilliant. I think he’ll make a very good background. He’s quite good-looking and he has nice manners.’

‘My God, Betty.’

‘Oh, don’t be idiotic, Humphrey.’

‘Are you going to pretend you’re in love with him?’

‘I think it would be tactful, don’t you?’

‘Why are you going to marry him?’

She looked at him coolly.

‘He’s got pots of money. I’m nearly twenty-six.’

There was nothing much more to be said. He drove her back to her aunt’s house. She had a very grand marriage, with dense crowds lining the approach to St Margaret’s, Westminster, presents from practically all the royal family, and the honeymoon was passed on the yacht her father-in-law had lent them. Carruthers applied for a post abroad and was sent to Rome (I was right in guessing that he had thus acquired his admirable Italian) and later to Stockholm. Here he was counsellor and here he wrote the first of his stories.

Perhaps Betty’s marriage had disappointed the British public who expected much greater things of her, perhaps only that as a young married woman she no longer appealed to the popular sense of romance; the fact was plain that she soon lost her place in the public eye. You ceased to hear very much about her. Not long after the marriage it was rumoured that she was going to have a baby and a little later that she had had a miscarriage. She did not drop out of society, I suppose she continued to see her friends, but her activities were no longer spectacular. She was certainly but seldom seen any more in those raffish assemblies where the members of a tarnished aristocracy hob-nob with the hangers-on of the arts and flatter themselves that they are being at once smart and cultured. People said she was settling down. They wondered how she was getting on with her husband and no sooner did they do this than they concluded that she was not getting on very well. Presently gossip said that Jimmie was drinking too much and then, a year or two later, one heard that he had contracted tuberculosis. The Welldon-Burnses spent a couple of winters in Switzerland. Then the news spread that they had separated and Betty had gone to live in Rhodes. An odd place to choose.

‘It must be deadly,’ her friends said.

A few of them went to stay with her now and then and came back with reports of the beauty of the island and the leisurely charm of the life. But of course it was very lonely. It seemed strange that Betty, with her brilliance and her energy, should be content to settle there. She had bought a house. She knew no one but a few Italian officials, there was indeed no one to know; but she seemed perfectly happy. Her visitors could not make it out. But the life of London is busy and memories are short. People ceased to concern themselves with her. She was forgotten. Then, a few weeks before I met Humphrey Carruthers in Rome, 
The Times 
announced the death of Sir James Welldon-Burns, second baronet. His younger brother succeeded him in the title. Betty had never had a child.

Carruthers continued to see her after the marriage. Whenever he came to London they lunched together. She had the ability to take up a friendship after a long separation as though no passage of time had intervened, so that there was never any strangeness in their meetings. Sometimes she asked him when he was going to marry.

‘You’re getting on, you know, Humphrey. If you don’t marry soon you’ll get rather old-maidish.’

D’you recommend marriage?’

It was not a very kindly thing to say, because like everyone else he had heard that she was not getting on too well with her husband, but her remark piqued him.

‘On the whole. I think probably an unsatisfactory marriage is better than no marriage at all.’

‘You know quite well that nothing would induce me to marry and you know why.’

‘Oh, my dear, you’re not going to pretend that you’re still in love with me?’

‘I am.’

‘You are a damned fool.’

‘I don’t care.’

She smiled at him. Her eyes always had that look, partly bantering, partly tender, that gave him such a happy pain in his heart. Funny, he could almost localize it.

‘You’re rather sweet, Humphrey. You know I’m devoted to you, but I wouldn’t marry you even if I were free.’

When she left her husband and went to live in Rhodes Carruthers ceased to see her. She never came to England. They maintained an active correspondence.

He suggested coming to Rhodes for a few days, but she thought he had better not. He understood why. Everyone knew he had been madly in love with her. Everyone knew he was still. He did not know in what circumstances exactly the Welldon-Burnses had separated. It might be that there had been a good deal of bad feeling. Betty might think that his presence on the island would compromise her.

She wrote a charming letter to me when my first book came out. You know I dedicated it to her. She was surprised that I had done anything so good. Everyone was very nice about it, and she was delighted with that. I think her pleasure was the chief thing that pleased me. After all I’m not a professional writer, you know: I don’t attach much importance to literary success.’

Fool, I thought, and liar. Did he think I had not noticed the self-satisfaction that consumed him on account of the favourable reception of his books? I did not blame him for feeling that, nothing could be more pardonable, but why be at such pains to deny it. But it was doubtless true that it was mostly for Betty’s sake that he relished the notoriety they had brought him. He had a positive achievement to offer her. He could lay at her feet now not only his love, but a distinguished reputation. Betty was not very young any more, she was thirty-six; her marriage, her sojourn abroad, had changed things; she was no longer surrounded by suitors; she had lost the halo with which the public admiration had surrounded her. The distance between them was no longer insuperable. He alone had remained faithful through the years. It was absurd that she should continue to bury her beauty, her wit, her social grace in an island in the corner of the Mediterranean. He knew she was fond of him. She could hardly fail to be touched by his long devotion. And the life he had to offer her now was one that he knew would appeal to her. He made up his mind to ask her once more to marry him. He was able to get away towards the end of July. He wrote and said that he was going to spend his leave in the Greek islands and if she would be glad to see him he would stop off at Rhodes for a day or two where he had heard the Italians had opened a very good hotel. He put his suggestion in this casual way out of delicacy. His training at the Foreign Office had taught him to eschew abruptness. He never willingly put himself in a position from which he could not if necessary withdraw with tact. Betty sent him a telegram in reply. She said it was too marvellous that he was coming to Rhodes and of course he must come and stay with her, for at least a fortnight, and he was to wire what boat he was coming by.

He was in a state of wild excitement when at last the ship he had taken at Brindisi steamed, soon after sunrise, into the neat and pretty harbour of Rhodes. He had hardly slept a wink all night and getting up early had watched the island loom grandly out of the dawn and the sun rise over the summer sea. Boats came out as the ship dropped her anchor. The gangway was lowered. Humphrey, leaning over the rail, watched the doctor and the port officials and the hotel couriers swarm up it. He was the only Englishman on board. His nationality was obvious. A man came on deck and immediately walked up to him.

‘Are you Mr Carruthers?’

‘Yes.’

He was about to smile and put out his hand, but he perceived in the twinkling of an eye that the person who addressed him, an Englishman like himself, was not a gentleman. Instinctively his manner, remaining exceedingly polite, became a trifle stiff Of course Carruthers did not tell me this, but I see the scene so clearly that I have no hesitation in describing it.

‘Her ladyship hopes you don’t mind her not coming to meet you, but the boat got in so early and it’s more than an hour’s drive to where we live.’

‘Oh, of course. Her ladyship well?’

‘Yes, thank you. Got your luggage ready?’

‘Yes.’

‘If you’ll show me where it is I’ll tell one of these fellows to put it in a boat. You won’t have any difficulty at the Customs. I’ve fixed that up all right, and then we’ll get off. Have you had breakfast?’

‘Yes, thank you.’

The man was not quite sure of his aitches. Carruthers wondered who he was. You could not say he was uncivil, but he was certainly a little offhand. Carruthers knew that Betty had rather a large estate; perhaps he was her agent He seemed very competent He gave the porters instructions in fluent Greek and when they got in the boat and the boatmen asked for more money than he gave them, he said something that made them laugh and they shrugged their shoulders satisfied. The luggage was passed through the Customs without examination, Humphreys guide shaking hands with the officials, and they went into a sunny place where a large yellow car was standing.

‘Are you going to drive me?’ asked Carruthers.

‘I’m her ladyship’s chauffeur.’

‘Oh, I see. I didn’t know’

He was not dressed like a chauffeur. He wore white duck trousers and espadrilles on his bare feet, a white tennis shirt, with no tie and open at the neck, and a straw hat Carruthers frowned. Betty oughtn’t to let her chauffeur drive the car like that It was true that he had had to get up before daybreak and it looked like being a hot drive up to the villa. Perhaps under ordinary conditions he wore uniform. Though not so tall as Carruthers, who was six feet one in his socks, he was not short; but he was broad-shouldered and squarely built, so that he looked stocky. He was not fat, but plump rather; he looked as though he had a hearty appetite and ate well. Young still, thirty perhaps or thirty-one, he had already a massive look and one day would be very beefy. Now he was a hefty fellow. He had a broad face deeply sun-burned, a short thickish nose, and a somewhat sullen look. He wore a short fair moustache. Oddly enough Carruthers had a vague feeling that he had seen him before.