The Balliols (6 page)

He was so astonished that he could make no answer.

“I've lived here for sixteen years. I want to go and live where there's fresh air and open country. I want a garden. You can't make a real home for children in a London house. I want to go right away from this. As soon as possible.”

He came across to her. He put his arm about her shoulder. He made it a rule always to agree with people straightaway; to show willingness. Then afterwards, if need be, to make difficulties, or rather so present the problem that the other person should see the difficulties before he himself had mentioned them. He followed that rule now.

“Of course, my dear. I had no idea you were tired of this house. I'll make inquiries straightaway.”

“I'm serious about this, Edward.”

“Of course you are.”

He had no intention of leaving a house that was suitable to his tastes and needs. He did not believe that Jane had the slightest real wish to leave it. But he did not mean to cross a feminine mood at this hour of night. He began to discuss, as though it were eminently practical, the suggestion that they should leave their house and build a new house on the fringe of Hampstead. She listened attentively, her eyes on his, her lips following his words; then suddenly the familiar abstracted, preoccupied look came into her face.

“He ought to marry someone younger than himself; but someone with a good deal of character. I've a feeling that he may be weak,” she said.

“Who on earth are you talking about?”

“Mr. Rickman, who else should I be? And I think she ought to have a certain amount of money. I've a feeling that if he hadn't money, he might get unscrupulous. He'll find money harder to earn as he gets older.”

As Balliol came upstairs he noticed a line of light below the door of Lucy's bedroom. He hesitated. It was nearly twelve. He wondered if there was anything wrong. He tapped on the door.
There was an eager “Come in.” Then, as he pushed open the door, a disappointed “Oh!” Lucy was sitting up in bed. He had time to see the excitement on her face before the sullen pout returned. A book lay open on the coverlet.

“My dear child, what are you doing: reading at this time of night?”

“I was waiting for Aunt Stella.”

“But she's gone half an hour ago.”

“Mother promised to ask if she couldn't take her coffee here with me.”

“You can't break up a party in that way.”

“Mother promised.”

“And she kept her promise. She's arranged for Aunt Stella to come to lunch here and then take you to a matinée.”

“Oh! When?”

“Quite soon!”

“You mean they didn't fix any actual day?”

“No; they were going to write and arrange it in a day or two.”

“I see.”

The excitement that had leapt back into her face at the prospect of being taken to a theatre, disappeared on learning that no definite date had been arranged.

“What's the matter with her?” Balliol thought. “Is it just girlhood; that half-way house between the child and woman?”

He remembered his own adolescence; how uncertain, inquisitive a time it was. One was both self-important and self-conscious. If that was all it was, there wasn't anything one could do to help. One had to watch and wait. Adolescence was a malady that cured itself. And if it was more than that? He shrugged his shoulders. You didn't help young people by probing into their troubles. You had to wait till they came to you with them. If they ever did.

He stooped and kissed his daughter's forehead.

“I'll remind your mother about it in the morning. We'll try and arrange it for the week-end after this.”

In her small club bedroom Stella Balliol sat, twirling between her fingers the letter she had found waiting her on her return. It was on Reform Club stationery.

“DEAR STELLA,

“For weeks now, as I suspect that you have guessed, I have been trying to say this to you. Somehow the right moment has
not come. And anyhow, since it is something that you will want to think over alone, perhaps it is better that I should ask through a letter if you will become my wife.

“We have known each other now for seven years. We cannot have many secrets from one another. At least, I do not suspect that I have a great many from you. You know what my life is: what I am planning to make it: what I hope to make it: what I am confident that, with you to help, I shall make it. I hope that you know, too, how deep is the regard I bear for you. I will make you a good husband.”

For signature there was the one name “ALAN.”

The letter came as no particular surprise to her. For a long time she had suspected that Alan Cheyne was meditating a proposal. All the same, its arrival on this particular evening was appropriately opportune. It soothed the smart of Mrs. Shirley's implied taunt. “I should like to be able to show her this.” Just as she would enjoy the surprise that the announcement of her engagement in
The Times
would cause to all those many friends who had said of her, “Stella Balliol, oh yes, one of the very best, of course. But not a man's woman, if you follow me.” That alone was an inducement to say “Yes.” It would be a vindication of herself. The word spinster no longer had the sinister implications that it had held for the Victorians. But there was a freemasonry of married women from which she was increasingly conscious of her exclusion, now that her first youth was passed. Her views were disparaged because she was not a member of that lodge. As a married woman she would stand on a far firmer platform. She would be protected from the sneer; “You only feel that way because you can't get a husband.” She would also, being relieved from the necessity of earning her own living, have infinitely more time and energy to devote to her campaign. Marriage held many advantages for her.

They were material advantages. The problem was one to be judged by the head rather than the heart. As it was from the head rather than the heart that the proposal came. They had known each other, she and Alan, for seven years. He was a man in the Foreign Office, some eight years older than herself. Their friendship had been built up slowly out of shared tastes and interests. They lent each other books; they went to lectures; they were members of a debating society; they saw eye to eye on a great many points. Since they agreed on ultimate essentials, their arguments on points that they held at issue were stimulating. She rarely read or heard
anything that interested her without thinking, “I wonder what Alan will make of that.” They had corresponded at length, even though they were meeting two or three times a week. Their friendship had grown closer, year by year, month by month. He was the most important person in her life; as she was, she presumed, in his. It was not surprising that when in the middle thirties he should feel the need for marriage, for the background of a hostess and a home, he should turn to her as the companion and associate he needed. For a long time now she had known that he was playing with the idea. He had sounded her as to her views on marriage. She had known that sooner or later he would propose. She had known, too, that it was in some such way that he would do it.

She re-read the letter carefully. Yes, that was how she had known it must be. Whether it had come as a letter, or as a set speech. The neat, precise statement of a case. That was how it was bound to have come, between them. As a climax, as a corollary to their friendship, their mental friendship. It could have come in no other way. And yet.…

Rising to her feet, she walked over to the window and leant her arms on the high sill. At the back of her was the small bed-sitting-room; with its narrow iron bedstead, its bare wash-hand stand; the chest of drawers from which a leaf for writing could be drawn, that supported her one three-shelved bookcase; the hard chair; the one wicker chair; the linoleumed floor; the one neutral-coloured rug; the Medici reproduction of Rembrandt's warrior; the framed photograph of her rather; the narrow room and all it symbolized. And in front of her was the vast sea of London's roofs and chimney-stacks; its spires; its lighted windows; the dull murmur of it; the red flush it cast upwards to the clouds. London and all it symbolized. She stood, staring.

When at last she turned away there was a film before her eyes, so that the familiar view was blurred. She drew her fore-arm sharply across her eyes. “Now then, don't behave like a school-girl just because.…”

She paused. Because what? Because there was nothing in this letter that could truthfully be held to contradict Mrs. Shirley's taunt? It was a proposal, yes. Her first proposal. But not the kind of proposal that as a young girl she had dreamed of. Alan did not feel about her in that way. No one had ever felt about her in that way. Probably no one ever would. And yet deep in her heart she knew that this was the one feeling she wanted to inspire; the one feeling to which she wanted to respond. All this sharing of interests,
exchanging of books, going to debates, comparing views; friendship might come that way, did come that way. But.…

What was it that she had dreamed of as a girl? For what was it that when she was honest with herself she knew herself to be lonely still, hungry for in her profoundest instincts? That recognition in the presence of another person, unaccountably, irrefutably, of oneness. A knowledge that could make you say “You're mine. I'm yours. Let the world slip.” The one person to whom you did not need to explain yourself, who understood without explanation, who restored your faith through his belief in you, whom you could rely on and who needed you, who gave a purpose to each thing you did, who completed you. Was she never to know that feeling, was she never to meet that person? Because she was no longer young; because she was not the fluffy doll men seemed to want, because she needed knowing, was not on the surface? Surely somewhere, she thought, there must be that person waiting, who needs me as I need him. No one is born without a mate. Will I never meet that person? Will it be too late? He must be somewhere, waiting for me, as I am for him.

She laid her head back on her arms. He must be somewhere, she told herself. He
must
be, somewhere.

Stella's department of the Morrison Teach-Yourself-By-Post Institute was devoted to the card-indexing of circulars and pamphlets. The activities of the firm were considerable. It was necessary that particulars of each new enterprise should reach the particular audience to whom it was addressed. Elaborate lists had been compiled of societies, libraries, institutions, specialists. If a journal on stamp collecting, a supplement on blue porcelain, a dictionary of classical references or a magazine for motor-car mechanics was projected, the hundred, thousand, or ten thousand addresses at which this particular information would be of interest were supplied by copious card-indexes. A considerable section of the company's morning post consisted of the post cards which were inserted in each of the company's publications, and on which specialists were invited to indicate the nature of their hobbies.

The preparation and employment of these lists occupied the full time of thirty women. They worked in a single room. Desks flanked with drawers contained the particular card-indexes that lay under their province. Typewriters, on account of their noise and expense, were not allotted them. A high standard of caligraphy was demanded. The system was elaborate, but simple. When Stella, who directed their activities from a small glass-doored office, was told, “We are issuing a special yachting supplement with the
Amateur Sportsman
, fifteen thousand circulars must be dispatched by the 15th of next month,” she would be able to prepare and supervise the addressing of the necessary envelopes as simply as a mechanic sets a machine in motion, by pressing a button or pulling down a lever. Which was how, in point of fact, the authorities regarded the thirty women who from nine till half-past five for a weekly salary of thirty shillings sat hunched over their envelopes and wrappers.

Stella took her immediate orders from a small, tubby, white-haired, high-foreheaded little man who concealed beneath an air of Pickwickian benevolence a crafty, malicious nature. His name was Beccles. His cheeks were pink and full. A constant smile punctuated his talk with chuckles. His eyes twinkled. He would lean
forward on his elbows, revolving between his short, plump, well-kept hands a pencil that he never appeared to use, so uniform was its length. Your first impression of him was, “What a jolly little man.” He prided himself on this impression. “My face is my fortune,” he would say. “I can't tell you how useful it is to look something quite different from what you are. People think I am easy-going, tolerant, unsuspecting. Consequently, they relax, slacken off, take things easily. Then, when the time comes, I pounce.”

Stella disliked him cordially. She hoped that she concealed her dislike beneath a brisk office manner. But she had no means of knowing whether she was successful. On the whole she was inclined to believe that Beccles did not really care whether she liked or disliked him; that he respected and prized her capability, and left it there.

She could never, all the same, be quite certain that he was not awaiting a right moment for his pounce. She never heard without a slight qualm the thin piping voice of his secretary. “Mr. Beccles would be very much obliged, Miss Balliol, if you would come up and see him at your convenience.” The words “at your convenience” were always added. She would have liked to take him at his word and keep him waiting half a day. As it was she had the greatest difficulty in restraining her impulse to jump up from her desk there and then, and scamper down the passage. She usually delayed her visit twenty minutes.

On the morning following her brother's dinner-party the scream of the buzzer at her side—telephones were the privilege of masculine departmental heads—informed her that Mr. Beccles had a matter he would like to discuss with her “at her convenience.” Stella looked at her clock: twelve minutes past ten. At half-past, precisely, she left her desk.