The Balliols (10 page)

He paused, looking at her interrogatively, to see how the history was affecting her. Her face wore an intent expression that encouraged him to change slightly the tempo of the story; making it, since she took it seriously, less ironic than he had intended.

“I counted the hours after I had sent it. I made the most exhaustive inquiries at the post office to know how soon I could expect an answer. So much depended on the reply. Would she send me a short little note of thanks or a real letter? If it were to be a real letter then she would probably take a day or two to write it. On the first morning when I could hope for a reply, though I was so excited that I awoke with daylight, though I listened for the postman's knock for a full half-hour before there was any possibility of his arriving, I almost hoped that there would be no letter with a French postmark beside my plate at the breakfast table. When I saw a pile of letters waiting there, my heart sank. All those letters could not be from friends. I ran them over quickly with my fingers. I gave a sigh of thankfulness. They had English stamps on them; every one.

“There was a second post, late in the afternoon. I did not expect to hear by it. If she was going to wait, it would not be for a few hours, not for a day. She would need a whole night to think over her reply. I did not associate with her the small package that arrived by registered mail that
the femme de chambre
brought in high excitement, with the explanation that she had herself signed for it.

“Then I saw the French stamp mark. I did not dare to open it. Was this package of good or evil omen? I had not expected her to send me anything. She might have thought the exchange of gifts was the equivalent of an exchange of vows. Or she might have thought ‘He's sent me something, what a nuisance! I suppose I must send him something, too.' The present might have meant either of those two things. I tore open the envelope that was bound round a smaller enclosed packet, with what novelists describe as mingled feelings.

“It was in a handwriting that was unfamiliar; that was not hers, round and flourished; it was masculine and methodical. I turned quickly to the signature. It was her father's. I stared at it. My courage waned. Then, with slow fingers, I turned back to the first page. It was very brief. His daughter, he said, had shown him the present that I had sent her. He was returning it herewith. In England very probably things were different. But in France ‘it
was not
convenable
for young ladies to receive presents from young gentlemen.'

“I re-read the letter, then I opened the packet. There it lay: the trinket I had chosen with such care and thought, that I had wrapped up so carefully, that I had pictured lying against her heart. It had symbolized our romance. Its return symbolized its death. I felt that I wanted to die. I pushed the brooch into my pocket. I walked out of the house. Dinner would be ready in twenty minutes, but I had no appetite.

“Our pension was near the lake. It was one of those summer evenings when everything is calm and the air warm. The lake really did look a mirror, with the hills reflected in it, and the roofs of houses. No one was within sight. I took the brooch from my pocket. It lay in the palm of my hand. I stared at it. It was the symbol of my unhappiness. Tears came into my eyes. I clenched my fist over it. ‘If she can't have it, then no one shall.' I swung my arm back. I flung it from me. The sun caught it as it curved, turning towards the water, gilding it with fire. There was a splash, a ripple. Then the lake was a mirror once again. I stood staring at its smooth surface. ‘Love's drowned,' I thought.”

It was a story that he had told many times, and always with considerable success. But never in quite that way. He had told it cynically with a shrugged shoulder, an attitude of “How ridiculous one can be at twenty.” Now, however, with this intent blue-grey gaze fixed on him, he told the story simply, sentimentally.

He paused, waiting with the raconteur's sense of an audience, for the comment which would give him the clue to what his own next remark should be. It was a very simple comment.

“That's rather beautiful,” she said. There was a tender interest in her eyes.

Rather beautiful. No one had ever thought it that before. Yet perhaps that was what it was, since the mood in which he had flung the jewel into the lake had been poetic; had not been a piece of rhodomontade; had been an act of self-expression.

He was so touched that he did something by which he was himself surprised.

He fumbled in his breast pocket; he produced a wad of letters and sheets of paper, glanced through it, extracted a sheet, handed it to her with a blush.

“It's a thing I wrote the other evening: a sonnet. It's nothing, I mean. I dashed it off. When I got back after your party. I
don't know if you'll think it silly. I thought I'd show it you. It's… well, I mean, because of you.”

He was blushing fiercely. It was not true that he had dashed it off; or that he had even begun to write it on the evening of the party. It was the result of a fortnight's burnishing. The blush was not, however, inspired by the untruth, but by a very genuine shyness about his verses. He was always writing poetry; always sonnets. But he would have died sooner than confess it to his friends.

“Of course, I know it isn't anything. I just.…”

She interrupted him.

“Please,” she said.

The handwriting was small, but very clear. The handwriting of a man who has learnt Greek. She read the lines, without focusing their meaning. It was not what his poem said, but that a poem was written. No one had ever written a poem to her before.

The telegram announcing her father-in-law's death reached Jane Balliol at lunch-time on the following day. The funeral, it said, would be on the Monday. There was no need for her to come down. He himself would be returning late that afternoon. He would be home by dinner-time.

He entered the house as calmly as though he were returning from a week-end visit of a business nature. He discussed the plans for the disposal of his father's property as though it belonged to someone else.

“It should realize about ten thousand pounds. That'll make a big difference to Stella. If she invests her share wisely it'll bring her in very nearly three hundred a year. She'll be independent now.”

His wife's eyes had remained fixed on him while he talked, in a look of the most fixed attention. It was her habit to look straight at the person who was addressing her, as though she were absorbing every word. But whenever a pause came in the talk, she would open so completely different a subject that her husband never knew whether she had been listening to one word that he had been saying.

She waited till he had finished talking; then, as though the last word had been said on that topic, “You remember that young man who came to dinner with us when Stella came? He called on Friday. I've asked him to dine with us to-morrow.”

Stella Balliol sat before the mirror, arranging the pad over which her back-drawn hair was puffed forward on to her forehead, above a short curled fringe. She was to dine that night with Alan Cheyne. On the evening's course would depend her answer to his proposal. “In four hours I may be an engaged girl.” In four hours Alan might be preparing
The Times
announcement that would vindicate her in the eyes of women like Mrs. Shirley. He might be. But she did not know. She was undecided. It would depend on the way things happened during the next three hours. She had answered Alan's letter with the briefest of notes:

“DEAR ALAN,

“I was touched by your letter, naturally. Could we not dine together one day next week? Monday would be the best for me.”

She did not tell him about her father's death. She did not use the excuse for delay it would have given her. It would have been an excuse, she knew that. And she had no use for excuses, for the avoidance of straight issues. Her father's death did not affect her as regarded Alan. It did, as regarded Beccles, financially. With an independent income, she could face a row with him; which she had never been able to before. Emotionally, too, there was a difference. There was no one in the world now she mattered to. If she chose to throw herself into the militant suffrage movement, she would be hurting nobody except herself.

When she had considered Alan Cheyne's proposal from the purely utilitarian point of view, and it was hard to consider such a proposal in any other light, she had thought of it not in the light of finance, as many girls would have done; as an opportunity to give up work that worried her; but as a platform from which she could deliver unconventional opinions. The only emotional pull that the proposal had made was in point of fact in relation to her father—the knowledge that her marriage would have made him happy. But that consideration would not have decided her. She would have refrained from doing things she wanted to do because the doing of them could
cause her father pain; but she would not do things she did not want, to please him. She would have despised herself if she had made her father's death an excuse for indecision.

Her fingers trembled as they smoothed her hair over the pad. She was excited. It would be absurd for her to pretend that she was not excited. It was not only the first proposal of her life, but it was likely to be her last. On her reply depended her whole life's future. Yet her excitement was not that of a girl standing on the threshold of enchantment, but of a man on the eve of a business interview that might mean promotion.

It was not in that mood that she had pictured herself at such a moment.

She closed her eyes. How was it that she would have pictured it? How, if this was to be a romantic, not a practical decision, would she arrange the setting? How did the outline run? She could not see distinctly the features of the young man who had proposed by letter. He would be young; as young as herself, or younger. He would be in love with her; very much in love with her; timid in the expression of his love. He would look at her with wide eyes. He would begin to speak, and be afraid to speak. She would glow happily. Ordinarily he was effective and talkative. But now through love for her he was silent, stammering. It would amuse her for a little to keep him in suspense; to make bright conversation, giving the impression that she was really interested in the issues raised by a leader in that morning's
Times
. Then she would relent. She would pause, she would meet his glance, her eyes would soften. “It's all right. Don't worry, silly, it's going to be ‘yes'.” And the whole expression of his face would change; like a garden when the sun comes behind a cloud and shines on it. In his face there would be nothing but happiness, excitement, relief, love for her. It was in that way she had pictured it.

With a blink, a shake of the shoulders, she opened her eyes, saw her reflection in the glass.

“Don't be a fool. That isn't the way it is. That isn't the way it's going to be. You've not been proposed to by a young man who's tongue-tied with adoration. You've been proposed to by Alan Cheyne, who's got as much red blood in him as a grey mullet; who will spend his wedding-night discussing indented labour in the New Hebrides. Don't be a fool. Pull yourself together.”

Her prophecy proved unsurprisingly correct. Alan called for her, as she had expected, exactly one minute after he had announced
his intention of arriving. His attire was pedantically correct, even to the mathematically exact knot of his shoe-laces. His clothes had, however, the same featureless expression as his face. There was nothing about him by which a stranger would be likely to remember him. In a way he reminded her of her brother: a drained version of her brother. He had the slow voice, the precise articulation, the impersonal address; without the fresh colouring, the vitality, the mental agility of Edward. During the weeks while their acquaintance was ripening into friendship this was the reason she had given herself for liking him. Even now she was not sure that her feelings for him were not mainly sisterly. She was never thrilled by his company, but she
enjoyed
it.

Just as she found herself enjoying now, in a jolly, impersonal kind of way, even though she was in mourning, the fun of dressing up, the drive in the hansom through the thronged, brightly lighted streets, the glitter of a restaurant; the ritual of the head waiter's oriental deference; the second waiter's bowing of them to their table; the presentation of the large embossed menu-card; the deliberation as to their choice of dishes; and Alan was a good person to be taken out by. He neither handed you a large menu and left you in embarrassed contemplation of it; nor again did he take all the initiative out of your hand, by saying “We'll have this, and this, and this.” He combined the two. He made a précis of that vast list. In each course he offered you a couple of choices, or three choices, say; so that you were only left with the pleasant part of the selection. She always enjoyed being taken out by Alan.

She enjoyed, too, the freedom of their discussions. He had a fresh, informed mind. They could follow each other's allusions. They would talk in shorthand. She could never imagine herself being bored by Alan. Yet marriage… and what marriage stood for.… She could not picture Alan making love to her.

She looked closely, inquiringly at him, as he developed the theory that after the next general election the labour party, though small, might, by holding the balance of power, become the key to the political situation. What women had there been in his life, she wondered. He was thirty-five. Had he ever been in love? Had he ever had an intrigue: a real intrigue? Did that side of life mean anything to him? One was always told that men were “like that.” But they needn't be. There were men, as there were women, who were congenitally cold, to whom there was no question of inhibited impulses, who were incapable of warmth. Very likely Alan was like that. He had proposed to her because he had reached the
marrying age; perhaps because he wanted children; but more probably because he needed the background of a home and hostess.