Sir!' She Said (12 page)

The lad nodded his head. “She's upstairs changing.”

“Have you had a good day?”

“Melanie's enjoyed herself, I think.”

Faith Terance ignored the implied distinction. She was in no mood for a lover's complaints and confidences. But neither was the lad in any mood for withholding them. He was too unhappy. And there was a curiously soothing, curiously receptive
quality about this woman that was his loved one's mother. She gave you the impression that she understood you.

“It's all wrong,” he said, “though I don't know what is wrong, quite.”

And he rambled off into a long, incoherent explanation of the troubles of that day, and of other days.

“I seem to do everything wrong,” he said, “I don't know why. There's nothing I'ld not do for her, nothing I'ld not give to her.”

Faith Terance smiled. She half pitied, half despised the lad. Men ought to realise when a thing was helpless.

“It's not by giving, but by getting given things,” she said, “that we make people fond of us.”

“Then what. . .?”

But before the lad could finish, Julia had arrived, and by the time that the first greetings had been ended, Melanie had burst into the room. Her eyes were bright, her cheeks glowing. The bronze glint in her hair was intensified as she tossed back her head, by the metallic shimmer of the silver tissue dress that fell in a straight, swaying line from arm to ankle. Every joint and muscle of her body was eloquent of excitement.

“Mother, darlingest,” she cried, “if you knew how much I'd made to-day. But it's no good your guessing. You'd never guess. I backed an outsider. Practically an outsider, that's to say. Mauritius. Only for a place. But even so I made more than a hundred out of it. Think of the fun I'll have. And Julia, I believe I'll actually be able to give your absurd shop something
on account of that bill of mine. Enough, anyhow, to get some new ones from them. I've nothing to wear. You can't think just how nothing. I spent so long deciding over the little I have got, that I didn't see how I was going to get changed in time.”

She talked quickly, breathlessly, the sentences tumbling over one another.

“Darling child,” her mother laughed. “What is the hurry? I've not begun to change yet.”

“But I'm being called for at quarter to eight.”

“Quarter to eight? But young Savile rang up this morning. . . .”

“Young Savile?”

“Melanie, I believe that you've forgotten.”

Her daughter laughed: a care free, ringing laugh.

“Mother dear, I believe that I've forgotten everything that's ever happened. Young Savile, though. Oh, heavens!”

She raised her hands above her head in a mock gesture of despair, crossed over to her mother, laid her cheek low on hers, and “Mother dearest” she whispered, “you'll forgive me, it's naughty of me, I know. But I was so excited. It's not the kind of thing that's likely to happen twice. And when Druce Mander suggested that we ought to celebrate.. . . Mother, I can't, you do understand, don't you?”

Her mother tapped her cheek. “Of course, you go and enjoy yourself.”

Julia had started, however, at Mander's name. “So you're all going out together?” she asked sharply.

The sharpness in her tone made Melanie meet her sister's glance defiantly. “No, not all of us,” she said.

“A
partie carrée
?”

“No, not even that.”

“Yourself and Mander, then?”

“Myself and Mander; and if,” Melanie added, “you've anything to complain about in that. . .”

But Julia was not going to discuss the matter with her sister. “Father,” she said, “it's ridiculous. Druce Mander isn't a person with whom Melanie ought to be going about alone.”

Melanie was resolved, however, that it was with her sister that the problem should be discussed.

“Why shouldn't I go about with him? What have you got against him? You know him yourself, he told me that you did. If you know him, why shouldn't I?”

“I don't go about alone with him.”

“That's quibbling. You've met him in the company of men with whom you have gone about alone. And anyhow, that's not the point. What have you got against him? I've never met him till to-day. He seemed nice. And if he hadn't been, Arthur wouldn't have taken me to his party, would you, Arthur?”

The lad was too embarrassed to reply otherwise than inaudibly. But Melanie went on as though his support had been distinctly vocalised.

“What have you got against him? Is he crooked in business? I've never heard he was. I don't know what his private reputation is.”

“He's not a marrying man.”

Melanie laughed scornfully.

“Not a marrying man! And what's that got to do with it? One doesn't only go about with people that one thinks one might marry. What would happen to
one's married friends if one were to? What about yourself and Leon Carstairs, for example?”

“What's that got to do with it?”

“Leon Carstairs's married. You go about with him.”

“Leon hasn't got Mander's reputation.”

“And what is Druce Mander's reputation? He's forty. A man who's unmarried and has got charm doesn't reach that age without having had something happen to him. If one delved into the secrets of one's friends, one wouldn't have a friend left, probably.”

She spoke truculently, unbalanced by the day's excitement, exasperated by the cool watchfulness of her sister's stare. “Don't you think,” she went on, “that I'm capable of looking after myself?”

“I don't think that any girl of your age is a match for a man of Druce Mander's experience and position.”

“A girl of my age! And what about yourself four years ago, when you were my age? When you said that a girl was as capable as any boy of looking after herself; that you were not going to be kept in cotton wool. That's the way you talked then, wasn't it?”

“I suppose so.”

“And you went out with all sorts of people. You went out with young men, and you went out with middle-aged men, and you went out with married men. Do you remember the arguments there were when you started going out with Leon Carstairs, when father said that a married man like Carstairs wasn't in a position to be taking a young girl out alone, and how scornful you were, and said that nowadays, with women educated and emancipated, a man and woman could
be friends just as easily as two men and two women could be. Do you remember that?”

“I remember.”

“And have you ceased believing all that now?”

“I don't know, no. . . of course I haven't really. . . but. . . oh, well, that's four years ago. . . one's attitude alters in four years.”

“Not in essentials. If it had, you wouldn't be going about with Leon Carstairs still. He's a married man, with wife and daughters. And he's your best friend, surely? He's your proof, isn't he, that a man and a woman can be as good friends as two men and two women can?”

Julia hesitated. “Yes, I suppose so.”

The anger had gone out of Melanie's tone as she had argued. As Julia hesitated the fresh, friendly smile came back into her eyes.

“Silly one, of course he is,” she said. “And if you have your Leon Carstairs why shouldn't I have my Druce Mander?”

“Because. . .”

“Darlingest, because nothing. You're just being the fractious elder sister. And you mustn't be, because I love you so, and I won't be made angry with you. I should be so unhappy if I were, and I won't let anyone make me that, so don't be silly, dearest.”

Her voice was soft again and wooing: she had moved over from her mother to her sister, and her arm, her cool, soft arm, was about her neck.

Helplessly Julia shook her head.

“It isn't as simple as all that,” she said.

Melanie would not let her continue the discussion.

“Oh, but it is, my dear, much simpler. I'm only doing now what you were starting to do four years ago, and I don't see that you've come to any particular harm by it. You're not going back now on what you were saying then. You're not regretting that you were allowed to have things the way you chose, are you now?”

“Of course not, only. . .”

“Only what?”

“Only that. . . well, there are dangers, there are complications I hadn't realised then.”

“But you avoided them, why shouldn't I? No, darling, you can't think of one real reason why I shouldn't go out with Mander, and I'm sure I can think of ever so many why I should. He's so amusing. He knows so much. And he's been everywhere, and he knows every one. And he is so rich. There's Watkins coming up the stairs, and I'm sure that it's to tell me I'm being called for. Good-bye, darlings, all of you.”

Neither father nor mother had taken any part in the sisters' argument.

More than once, however, John Terance looked thoughtfully at Julia during the quiet dinner that they shared after her mother had gone out. What had prompted that sudden outburst, he asked himself: that unexpected denial of everything that she and her generation had seemed to stand for. Why should Julia be seeking to protect her sister unless she had felt in her own life the need for some such protection? Had she in some way unknown to him, paid the penalty of
that freedom? He did not know. There was no way of knowing. He knew so little of her life after all, whom she saw, where she went; what her ideas and her ambitions were. She would drop in once or twice a week at cocktail time, and once a fo$$$tnight she would come to dinner: and they would discuss mutual acquaintances; and books and theatres and the chance topics of the hour. But he saw nothing of the real Julia, could only guess at what filled her life and heart. She was as strange and secret to him as her mother was.

His perplexity was by no means soothed by Julia's sudden asking of him if he knew anything about the people that Leon Carstairs worked for. The question surprised him so much that he did not at first know what kind of answer was required to it.

“Smart and Alderston,” he said. “I don't know much about them. I believe they're sound.”

“I know that. But they themselves? Leon says they're stodgy. Do you know them personally?”

“Not enough to know that.”

“Leon says they've got very Victorian ideas. He thinks they'll take him into partnership one day. Do you think they will?”

“My dear, how can I tell?”

“You can tell how likely it would be. If you were in their place would you be wanting a younger partner? And if you were, would Leon be the kind of man you'ld be taking in?”

John Terance pursed his lips.

“Smart and Alderston looking for a partner? Well, they may be. They're both oldish. Smart's not married; Alderston's two sons are in the Army. And
I daresay that if they are looking for a partner, Carstairs is the kind of man they'ld choose. He's irresolute in some ways, but he's straight. People would trust him. He'ld bring business. His wife's very well connected: she's no money herself, but she was born into a world that has. Yes, Leon Carstairs has got quite a chance, I'ld say.”

A look of relief flickered over Julia's face, lifting momentarily the tired, fretful look.

“Let's hope he does,” she said. “He's banking on it quite a bit, I fancy.”

In another moment she had changed the subject. But her father had noticed and been worried by the anxiety with which she had questioned him, and the impatience with which she had heard his first answers and the relief when she had heard his last. One was interested, naturally, in one's friends' welfare. But that anxiety and impatience and relief had seemed to be pointing to more than interest.

What was at the back of that questioning? What was at the back of that outburst to Melanie?

Helplessly he put the question to himself. It was not any use his asking her. A daughter was like a wife in that way. You had to know them by intuition and guesswork, not by facts. The days had passed when parents had any control over their children. One must not probe. Whatever happened one must not ask questions. But that night, when he kissed her goodbye, he held her more closely than usual in his arms.

“Bless you,” he said. “I don't know what I'ld do if anything happened to either of you.”

The memory of Julia's argument with her sister was to remain in John Terance's mind for many days. It had been banished from Melanie's before she was half-way down the stairs. A hundred and thirty pounds were waiting for her in her bank. She had never known what it was to have fifty there before. In two days' time she would have settled half her bills. She would be walking proudly into her hairdresser's; she would be ordering some new frocks in Brooke Street; she would be looking Madge Caroway squarely in the face. There would not be a thing in the world to worry her. And in the hall waiting for her was the most exciting man she had ever met. How could she be bothered to remember Julia's absurd complaints, as Mander's face brightened at the sight of her, as with his hand upon her elbow she walked into the cool evening air.

Outside the door beside the battered Daimler was a long and shining limousine, the kind of car that she would have expected to be Mander's: and as she sank beside him into the deep, soft cushions, he talked as she had expected him to talk.

He did not, as would the lad have done, ask her where she would like to go.

“We're tired,” he said, “both of us. We'll go to Boulestin's; that's quiet. We can go on to somewhere like Ciro's later if we feel like it.”

Nor when he had guided her to the rust-red setteed table in the far corner, did he embarrass her with wine lists and large menus as would the lad have done. “We'll have this and this and this,” he told the waiter.

He did not order carelessly. But he gave the impression that it was in her, not in what they ate that he was interested. The moment the waiter had left them he turned to talk to her.