Faster! Faster! (15 page)

“I think I know what it is. Of course I'll answer. We ought to talk it out, if it's what I think it is. Why did I say that I shouldn't ask you to marry me. Is that it?”

She nodded. Her very child-like face expressed no anxiety—only complete trustfulness.

“I'm not the right man to marry anybody, my sweet. I shouldn't make any woman happy for long, and I shouldn't be at all happy myself. I suppose that's really at the bottom of it. I'm too selfish. And I hate the domesticities. The pram in the hall—the weekly budget—the inevitable monotony that must creep into any kind of orderly, shared life—and yet the horrid results when people try to do without it—It's no use, Sylvia, my loveliest one. I can't delude myself into thinking that we should be different—that those things needn't overtake us. They would. Even us.”

“Even us?” she echoed, a kind of piteous entreaty in her voice.

“Yes. Am I hurting you by talking like this?”

“A little bit,” said Sylvia, her eyes full of tears. “But I want you to go on. We've got to be honest with one another.”

“You know, Sylvia, you're rather wonderful. Such a lot of people say they want the truth—but they don't really. You, I think do.”

“Go on,” she repeated.

“There's my work. I'm not only interested in it, but I want complete freedom for it.”

“Couldn't you have that with me? I'm not trying to persuade you against your own convictions—only I want to understand.”

“I know. You see, I've seen too many of my friends—men with, as it seemed, a career ahead of them. They've married. It's been wonderful at first. And then, bit by bit, one has seen it—hampering them at every turn. There's the eternal economic question—a man with others dependent on him can't take risks—experimental work that may or may not succeed—that's not for him any more. He's got to think in quite other terms about his work.”

“Sometimes the woman works too.”

“Yes. I think she should, if she wants to. But even that doesn't solve everything. And there's the question of children. Almost every normal man or woman wants to have children, sooner or later.”

“I wouldn't want children if you didn't, Andrew,” she said in a low voice.

Deeply moved, he kissed the hand that he was holding.

“You can't realize how every word you say makes me feel more utterly and completely ashamed
of myself. No—that's not absolutely true. I have, at least, told you the truth.”

“I'm glad you have.”

“Darling, darling Sylvia. Will you forgive me? You know I love you. More and more every minute we're together.”

After a time she said:

“Then what's going to happen, Andrew? Are we going to become lovers—just for a little while?”

“Would you, Sylvia?”

“Yes. I think so. Not yet, though.”

“No. Not till you want to. Not ever, unless you want to my darling.”

“There's something else, Andrew. Sooner or later, my mother will have to know. I couldn't tell her lies, or deceive her. She's always been sweet to us, and terribly uninterfering and modern, and she's always said we were to make up our own minds about everything. She's been like that from the time we were little.”

“But my sweet—could any mother, however modern, understand about this and not try to influence you—at your age especially?”

“I don't know, quite,” Sylvia admitted. “But she wouldn't do
more
than try to influence me. I mean, she wouldn't make fearful scenes—or forbid me to see you again, or any of the things that I feel sure poor dear Grandmama would certainly have done. She'd be rational and kind. She always is.”

“You love her very much, don't you?” said Andrew, watching her.

“Yes, I do. I shall hate thinking I've made her unhappy. But she'd rather—and I would too—
that she was made unhappy than that I should try and deceive her.”

“What about your father?”

“He doesn't count nearly so much. He'd make much more fuss, of course, but probably Mother would manage him. She generally does. Anyway he couldn't stop me, poor darling.”

“You'll have to do as you think best about telling them,” Andrew said. “Only warn me first, won't you? The least I can do is to give them an opportunity of saying to my face some of the things they'll certainly say behind my back.”

“I suppose it means you won't come here any more, once they know,” said Sylvia wistfully.

“Yes. It's bound to mean that, of course. One could hardly expect anything else. But then, I couldn't come here any more anyway. Not to make love to you, sweetheart, in your parents' own house, without their knowledge. That would be too unfair.”

“It's got nothing to do with anyone, except you and me!” Sylvia cried with sudden spirit.

“Then don't tell them,” rejoined Quarrendon. “Listen, darling. Whatever you do I shall know is right, and I want you to decide. But if you feel your mother has got to know, it's going to make things much more difficult for all of us. Wouldn't it be possible to wait till you've got your job, and are living in London independently? If you like, I won't see you again till then.”

“I couldn't bear that,” whispered Sylvia, and with a sudden unexpected movement she turned and threw herself into his arms. “I love you so
terribly, darling Andrew. I can't ever do without you any more.”

Holding her slender weight against his thumping heart, Quarrendon was sorely tempted to echo the words.

When they came back to the house, it was after five o'clock.

A languid tea was drawing to a close. Mrs Peel, regarding it as a serious meal, had folded and eaten one or two thin slices of bread and butter, but most of the others drank tea or lemonade and ate nothing.

Anna Zienszi refused everything, and sat on a garden seat just outside the window, nursing the old black cat. He had crawled on to her lap and lay there contentedly, occasionally digging a still sharp claw into the thin, pale silk of her dress.

Anna was the first person to notice Sylvia's return.

She moved to make room for her.

“Sit down here with me,” she urged. “You haven't got the awful English tea habit, have you? It'll ruin your lovely figure in the end.”

“Couldn't I drink something?”

“Professor Quarrendon would get you some lemonade. They've got some inside.”

She smiled at Quarrendon, and he obediently stepped across the low sill into the room beyond.

Claudia was sitting at the head of the table. He wondered whether it was the strong sunlight, filtered through half-drawn blinds, that made her
face seem unusually pale and full of strange shadows.

She looked at him as he came in, smiled, and suggested tea.

Nothing in either the look or the words held any but the most ordinary significance. Andrew Quarrendon told himself ruefully that probably it was a guilty conscience that caused him to feel as if something faintly sinister, resembling a vague threat, was in the atmosphere about him.

Claudia was, indeed, extraordinarily tired.

It was a sensation to which she was for the most part unaccustomed, for it was true that she was, as she said, a strong woman and one not at all given to dwelling on her own minor symptoms. She thought that it must be partly the heat that was upsetting her, and the trouble of her increasing anxiety over Sylvia's affair with Quarrendon. The talk under the willow-tree she had resolutely determined not to think about until later. She knew that it had hurt her, and would hurt her more when she came to dwell upon the remembrance of it.

What Sal had said didn't matter. Sal was unjust because she was prejudiced. Claudia had always known that.

Frances—poor Frances—could be dismissed, although with a little pang for her failure in loyalty. Sal Oliver, with her easy effect of slick, modern cleverness, had perhaps slightly dazzled the simple, old-fashioned Frances. She was not—
and never had been—a judge of character.

It was Anna's criticism that hurt and rankled—Anna, who as a little girl had so uncritically admired and adored her elder sister.

Why couldn't that childish relation—so happy, so uncomplicated—have been maintained between them? It was not Claudia who had changed. It was Anna. Resentment, anger, and bewilderment surged in Claudia. She found continually that in despite of her determination to the contrary her thoughts were circling round and round the same subject. Again and again she resolutely checked them. Her mind turned restlessly hither and thither, nowhere finding solace.

Sylvia and Quarrendon! They hadn't come in—they were somewhere together.

She felt that she had too much to bear, but still she went on mechanically talking and even laughing, and when Quarrendon at last appeared, she smiled at him.

After all, she wasn't angry with him. There was no cause for anger.

Claudia even began to wonder why she had been so deeply troubled by the realization that he and Sylvia were mutually attracted.

Perhaps they would marry.

But no—Quarrendon was too old. He wasn't the right type of man for little Sylvia. He didn't, she was nearly sure, really want to marry anyone. He was the kind of man to find emotional satisfaction in a close friendship with a clever woman of his own age. …

Suddenly she was thinking of Anna again, and
of the things Anna had said. Were they very important things, or was it just that the cruelty of them, the utter lack of understanding they betrayed, had hurt so much that one couldn't dismiss them?

Claudia almost involuntarily put her hand up to her aching head.

She moved her chair back from the table. Tea was finished.

“When are we going down to bathe?” Maurice whispered urgently.

“Now, if you like—and if Daddy will take you, or let Sylvia drive the car.”

“P'raps Aunt Anna would let us go in the lovely Rolls. The chauffeur's had a long rest,” Maurice suggested.

She smiled.

“Go and ask her.”

They were all leaving the room now.

Claudia felt too wearied to move.

Suddenly Mrs Peel, with an air of determination, came and sat down in the chair next to hers. Oh God, thought Claudia, she's going to be tiresome, poor darling!

It was a true foreboding.

“You look very tired, dear,” began Mrs Peel automatically.
“And
thin,” she added rather absent-mindedly, for she was thinking of something else.

“Where is poor little Sylvia? Why didn't she come in to tea?”

“She's outside, with Anna. I saw her go past the window. I suppose she didn't want tea. Girls
never do seem to want any tea or breakfast nowadays. I dare say it's better for them to go without,” perversely said Claudia, not averse from irritating her mother by the advancement of a theory which she did not, in actual point of fact, really hold at all.

“Nonsense, nonsense. They'll probably all die of consumption before they're forty. They'll have no powers of resistance whatever. Any doctor would tell you the same. I'm worried about poor little Sylvia.”

“Why, Mother?”

“I don't like this idea of her going off to work in some horrid London office—you know I don't mean yours, darling, but some ordinary office. I know it's of no use speaking to you, Claudia, you never dream of taking my advice, although I'm your mother and have far more experience than you have—but
what is
this place you're sending her to?”

Claudia replied with a mildness that surprised herself.

“It's a perfectly well-known publishing firm—entirely reputable—I've met one of the senior partners. Sal Oliver heard that this job was going, and it was Sylvia's own idea to try for it. She's always known that she'd have to take a job when she left school.”

Mrs Peel groaned faintly in disapproval.

“There must surely be better jobs than grubbing about in a dirty office with a lot of third-rate young men. After all, Sylvia's a lady.”

“Mother! What
has
that got to do with it?
People don't think in those terms any more.”

“The world,” said Mrs Peel stoutly, “would be a much better place if they did. Look at Germany! Look at America!”

“I'm not thinking of sending Sylvia either to Germany or to America. If she gets this job, she can even go on living at home if she wants to, anyway at the week-ends.”

“And what is she going to do when it isn't the week-ends? Sleep in the Park, I suppose,” witheringly suggested Mrs Peel.

“I think the sensible thing would be for her to share a small flat with a friend, as so many girls do nowadays. Though I suppose we ought really to consider what's least expensive.”

“How much is the poor child likely to earn?”

“Very little, to begin with. She won't be worth a great deal. Sylvia's not really in the least clever, except perhaps with her fingers.”

“Why don't you let her learn dress-making, or something of that kind, properly?”

Claudia, startled, looked up.

“You mean in London?”

“Paris would be better. And there's dear old madame, who we
know
would look after her, and probably be only too delighted to board her, and think how good for her French!”

“What made you think of it?”

“Seeing that very disagreeable Professor, as he calls himself, hanging about her,” promptly answered Mrs Peel. “I don't blame him for admiring her, naturally, but from what he says he's continually popping up to London—I always say
these University people haven't anything whatever to do—and what's to prevent him, I should like to know, from seeing her three or four times a week if she's in London?”

“Nothing, I suppose.”

Claudia spoke quite abstractedly.

Her mother's suggestion, in the most extraordinary way, chimed in with some scarcely-formed scheme in her own mind.