Friends and Lovers (40 page)

“It is a pity to waste the mercies,” he said, and kissed her ear.

“Now, be cooperative. Look at your arm quite useless. Put it round my neck.

That’s the girl.”

“But, David She tried to sit up and look businesslike.” We have so much to talk about, to decide.”

“It seems to me as if we’ve made the only important decision in all our life,” he said, and kissed the curve of her neck.

“And look here.

Penny, when you’re married to me you had better not interrupt me when I’m making love. I’ll beat you with the poker if you do.”

Penelope laughed delightedly as if she enjoyed the idea, and let herself relax on his lap.

“Still, David, we have a lot to discuss,” she said mildly.

“In my handbag on that table is a letter from Father, for instance.

It came this morning. But first of all I must tell you about Mother’s visit, and that I am now hunting for a job. And a room of my own.”

David looked at her in amazement, his interest now fully awakened.

Penny began her story.

At its end he was silent for some moments. Then he kissed the hand he had been holding, and said quietly, “I’m sorry I lost my temper in the restaurant. I’m sorry. Penny.”

“But I hadn’t told you, darling, so how could you know? You must have thought I was hardly qualified to talk, with my parents providing a nice, comfortable life for me. I should have told you at once, I suppose, but you were so unhappy and gloomy.”

“I was,” he admitted. But no more. All the desperately unhappy thoughts of these last days had vanished. Tonight death had once more gone back into its proper proportion to life. We lived, not in fear of death, but in spite of death.

“Everything seemed useless,” he said.

“Even my work. It is behindhand, as you may guess. Yesterday I thought that proved I could never manage it anyway. Tonight’—he kissed her hand again” I know I’ll manage it. I’ll go back to Oxford and work harder than I’ve ever worked.” He kissed her on her lips.

“Now I know what I’ve been working for,” he added quietly.

“And we’ll manage everything. We’ll get married, sister or no sister.”

He tightened his arms round her, as if by crushing her this way he could hold her for ever.

If we had only my people to struggle against, or only your sister to cope with, we could get married this summer. But my people and Margaret together are going to be a difficult combination. You see, one complicates the other.

“But I don’t see, darling.”

“Father’s letter says quite frankly that I can’t get legally married without his consent. And I can’t, David. Of course a lawyer would think of that.

Now, if we could have shown him that we -were in love and that we had three hundred pounds a year to live on—perhaps even more, but certainly three hundred—he would probably have relented in the end. But I know Father, and he will never allow me to get married on three pounds a week, and that is what we shall have left after Margaret is taken care of. And he wouldn’t allow me ‘to get married if I had to have a job in order to add to our income. He doesn’t believe in that. And if I pointed out that a home might suffer just as much from a wife who spends so much time on committees and concerts and bridge clubs and good works he wouldn’t listen. He would only be furious. And that’s no way to win him to our side.” “Damn it all,” David said angrily, ‘if it is only money they want.” “Darling, darling,” Penny said, and kissed him.

“Don’t, please don’t.

I agree with you. People are not logical. For instance. Mother thinks George Fenton-Stevens is charming and would make a most suitable son-in-law.

But look at this–-” she waved her arm round the room.

“He has this flat.” She glanced at David with a smile.

“And you probably know what I found in that cupboard beside the bathroom. I was looking for a towel; I thought that cupboard was the linen cupboard, and I opened it. A very nice black lace nightie; a pair of slippers, all pink and fluffy.” She laughed openly.

“So, supposing I had got engaged, formally of course, with the correct ring and the correct announcements, to a man like George; supposing after a very correct period of waiting I got married in white, with engraved invitations and three hundred guests in the very best church—well, I know Mother and every one would think it was all a most moral arrangement. A most excellent marriage. Tenderhearted ladies would weep with happiness for the bride.

Mother would be delighted. Yet at the same time she would never want her daughter to have a second-hand husband. So what’s logical in all that?”

David was still silent.

Penny said, “You see, darling, I’ve been thinking things out all week. If we are serious about each other we must take ourselves seriously. Not let ourselves be persuaded by anyone or anything. We are our own conventions, our own morality. If we keep faith, then nothing we do is wrong. Do you believe that?”

“If I didn’t you would not be here now.” He repeated slowly, “If we keep faith …” That was the whole foundation. “Without it we can build nothing. And marriage is a house you build, not a hotel room you can rent and move into. It has to be well built, too. Not a ramshackle affair.” He raised her face gently towards him, and bent forward to give her lips a long, slow kiss.

“Speaking as a man,” he said at last, “I

don’t know a better start on that foundation than the proof you gave me tonight: you love me for nothing but myself That is what all men want, and damned few get it.” This time he kissed her with a violence that startled her. And ther pleased her.

“And what do women want in love?” he asked. He watchec her face now.

It was one of her greatest charms that her thoughts should sometimes be so unconsciously revealed b^ her expression.

“To be judged so wonderful in love that the man you lovt will never think of anyone else,” she said at last.

“You see darling, if you were to stop loving me it would be a dreadfu confession of failure on my part. And women always like to think they are a success. Oh, David,” she tightened her arms about his neck, ‘let’s make it a good house. A strong and wonderful house, a lovely house.” “Yes,” David said.

“And to begin with, did I ever tell yot how many ways I love you, and why, and how much?”

“Never sufficiently. But, darling, we haven’t finished discussing problems.”

“Remember the poker!” David warned.

“They can be discussed—what is left of them—in letters. What are letters for anyway, except to say all the things you hadn’t time to sa) when you were talking? And we have done enough talking tonight.”

He rose suddenly, switched off the lamp on the table, and turned towards the window to open the curtains again

“Quotations seem in order,” he said, looking at the stars. ‘] should now begin with Shakespeare and work down throughout the lesser poets. Or should I—”

“What are letters for, anyway?” Penny asked, leaning her head back against the chair.

“Besides, in letters we can always make the quotations word-perfect.

Darling, do you remembe) how I used to quote chunks and chunks of poetry in my firs letters to you? I was trying to show an Oxford man that j really might be educated, even if I did come from Scotland I’d remember the first line or two quite fairly.

And then ; cheated: I copied out the other lines from the texts. Sound; awful, doesn’t it, but I was trying so hard … And, at least give me the credit for having the texts, and for knowing where to look in them.”

Scholars would say that was more important than having i parrot memory.

They are purists, you see. Just as you are, but in a different direction.” He came back to her.

“In a very different direction, thank God.” He paused, looking down at her.

The room’s silence grew under the silvered light from the windows.

The traffic in the street had now ceased. In the deep quiet Penny looked up at David. She was startled for a moment. There’s so much about men that I never knew, she thought in amazement; but if I am to be as happily married at the age of fifty as I am now, then I must learn. The age of fifty, viewed that way, seemed even attractive.

David had taken hold of her hands. He was trying to be so impersonal, so thoughtful, that a wave of love flooded her heart and broke out into her smile.

“Tired, darling?” he asked.

“Yes,” she said truthfully. And then, her smile deepening, “No.”

He laughed. His momentary nervousness had gone.

“Darling,” he said, with a sudden deep emotion which held them together in a tightening grip.

“I love you. I love you for ever.”

Chapter Thirty.

OXFORD REALITY.

David’s life at Oxford became austerely simple. He set himself to work with an intensity that surprised even Chaundler, who found himself in the strange position of advising a pupil to take things easy. David would answer with a smile, “But it seems to agree with me, Walter.”

And Chaundler would have to admit to himself that Bosworth seemed happier than he had been last year, and that he was less worried and more sure of himself than he had been last month.

“Besides,” David said one day, after another fatherly lecture by Chaundler on the wisdom of working with black coffee until four o’clock in the morning, “I have to make quite sure of this job with Fairbairn, you know.” Walter Chaundler agreed, but he also suggested, in that halting, quiet-voiced way of his, that David was practically sure of it already Fairbairn had lunched at length on two occasions, and hac dined once, with David; and during these meetings—a’ Chaundler well knew, although David was not supposed to realize it—David’s brains had been skilfully though subtle examined, and David’s personality and capabilities had beer carefully reviewed. So Chaundler contented himself b) smiling, when David looked sceptical at such confidence and replied, patting the books he held under his arm, “Well, this is one sure way of making sure.”

David had to make sure. There was the competition of Marain, for instance.

Marain, until he had discovered that David was Fairbairn’s possible choice in his search for taleni in this year’s crop of graduates, had been thinking of a car eel combining writing with politics. Now he suddenly decidec that a job with Fairbairn would be interesting and useful, and entirely suitable for his own talents. His plan of campaigr had been quite simple and direct. His uncle owned a smal but important economic quarterly, which Fairbairn wouk have liked to buy and build up into a monthly magazine. Anc although Marain would not work on the staff of his uncle’s journal, for he was always scornful of nepotism, he somehow had no compunction about arranging a luncheon in towr where his uncle played host to his nephew from Oxforc and Mr. Fairbairn.

David learned about this luncheon from Burns. David and the American had come to know each other in an easy, casua kind of way, and Burns liked David enough to make a spec ia visit to Mrs. Pillington’s lodgings and drop the news about Marain in the middle of a conversation about dos Passes.

David looked sharply at Burns, and then said as casually a; possible, “Well, of course, Marain’s a good man. Clever Probably get a good First if he will only allow himself to appear to work.” He paused, trying to disguise the worr^ which this piece of news had started churning, and forcec himself to say, “He would probably be very good in the Fair bairn job.”

Burns looked at David with irritation.

“Well, I wouldn’t lei myself be beaten with thoughts like that.” Hell, he thought I’d fight Marain every inch of the way. And no quarter Marain has asked for it. Didn’t Bosworth see that he had tolc him about this straw in the wind not as a piece of Oxforc gossip, but as a warning? Hell, didn’t Bosworth know that he liked him? There was a real warmth in Bosworth that attracted Burns; if there were more Bosworth’s in Oxford he wouldn’t be so damned homesick for America. It was not the coldness of the climate but the coldness of the people which depressed him over here. You could never relax and stop worrying, either about the way you spoke or the way you liked to dress or the way you liked to eat. You could not be natural without feeling you had to apologize for it. You couldn’t even talk about being natural without some one quoting Oscar Wilde at you in a most unnatural voice—The greatest affectation of all is that of being perfectly natural.” You were always trying to behave as people expected you to behave. England expects .

Quite, as they would say. And, he reflected as he watched David’s impassive face, you might as well not waste your breath in warning an Englishman. For warnings implied knowledge that he did not possess, and that, of course, was unthinkable. And if you were fool enough to make the gesture and waste your breath, what did you get? The glacier stopped moving a couple of inches each year and froze dead in its tracks.

“Stop worrying,” David said, with a smile.

“I shant.”

Burns relaxed. He liked the look of that smile, the look in David’s eyes which had been allowed to appear for a moment before it was hidden again.

“Fine,” Burns said, and he meant it even if he had to revise a nicely building theory. He didn’t object. If these people only knew, he wanted them to disprove the theories they aroused. He wanted to like them. The trouble was that few of them cared whether they were liked or not. Their attitude was that it was just too bad if foreigners didn’t like them or behave as they did; too bad for the foreigners, of course.

Burns walked slowly over to the window, and stood there looking morosely down into the garden.

“What was it like here all through Easter? This place must have been a graveyard then. Nothing but monuments left. Why didn’t you take a week off and come to Paris with me? It’s nice in the spring.”

“Nice at any time. Not this Easter for me, though. Perhaps next year …” David glanced almost imperceptibly at Penny’s photograph.

“I’m hoping to break the back of this work in May. Then, if all goes well, I’ll have a weekend in town.”

And then, six weeks later. Finals. Thank God. His voice wa; casual.

There was no hint of the trouble that had hind ere his work so badly.