Authors: Elswyth Thane
Under a sort of unwilling compulsion, Evadne picked up the programme and it opened in her hands to reveal what seemed to be dozens of ticket stubs which spilled out between her hands into the drawer and on the floor. Feeling breathlessly guilty now, as though she had been caught eavesdropping, Evadne gathered them up and thrust them back between the pages of the programme, laid it in place again, and closed the drawer. Then she opened it and returned the pair of stockings she had borrowed, for it would never do for Hermione to know that she had touched them. Returning, shaken, to her own room, she reluctantly put on a pair which had been worn before and went out, late, to her own appointment.
In the bus she sat blindly contemplating her discovery. That was where Hermione went. That was where she was now, for it was a matinée day. Hermione went and sat in the theatre and watched Stephen at work, because of some secret irresistible desire to see him, even at a distance. Hermione—and Evadne’s stomach lurched with the knowledge—must be in love with Stephen. Remnants of resistance strove against conviction—it was a gay, tuneful show, perhaps she had got a little stage-struck, perhaps—But it wasn’t any good. The programme, and the ticket stubs, were all of Stephen that Hermione had, so she cherished those. The quick tears of her ready compassion
stung Evadne’s eyes. He didn’t like Hermione, and she was driven to this, she
paid
to see him, and each stub stood for a meeting between them, a little hoard of secret delight, as people saved dance programmes and wilted corsages. Oh, poor Hermione, what could one
do?
Characteristically, Evadne at once felt compelled in the circumstances to renounce all thought of Stephen for herself from now on, for how could one allow oneself to appropriate the man one’s dearest friend wanted too, no matter how hopeless her position in his regard might be? And could one tell Stephen—? To be Absolutely Honest one must tell Stephen. But this was not just one’s own affair. Surely it was Hermione’s place to be Absolutely Honest with him first? And could one tell Hermione that? It was the Right thing to do, of course, to confess to Hermione at once that one had—well, not snooped, truly, but only stumbled across the evidence in all innocence. And then one could put it to her Honestly, out in the open, that she should let Stephen know how she felt, and—and then what? It made Stephen choose between them—an embarrassing, perhaps in his view unforgivable, situation to place him in.
Evadne was at last confronted by an innate sense of delicacy with regard to something it seemed wiser, perhaps, not to have out in the open. It was contrary to all her new beliefs, but somehow it wasn’t quite the same as with Jeff and Hermione, where there was restitution to make. What’s more, one could not share the problem with an associate behind Hermione’s back and get advice, because it was not one’s own secret, it must be shared first with Hermione, which automatically involved Stephen. Hermione, she knew with fatal certainty, was not going to like it, and she didn’t have to be told that Stephen would hate it. If I had not put the stockings back, thought Evadne in something like panic, I would have to mention it to her and then there would be an Opening. Now I shall have to begin at the beginning. It’s going to be dreadful. But I must do something, it’s not fair to Stephen—what
is
fair to Stephen?
But though she and Hermione dined together at Stewart’s in Bayswater Road and spent the evening at home listening to the radio and catching up on their washing and darning, Evadne could not find an Opening. It wasn’t till the following morning, when she overheard Hermione berating Mrs. Spindle for meddling with her things, that Evadne was forced a step further into the dilemma. Mrs. Spindle’s indignant denials that she had touched the bureau, and Hermione’s violent assertions that she knew better because something had been moved, brought Evadne to the door of her own room across the passage.
“No, Hermione, please—it was me,” she said.
“
You!
”
Hermione stood staring at her and Mrs. Spindle retreated discreetly into the kitchen.
“Yes, I’m awfully sorry, I—went to borrow a pair of stockings. I didn’t think you’d mind, and I—”
“How
dare
you!” said Hermione, perfectly white and with an odd sort of glitter in her eyes, and Evadne thought in spite of herself what a silly thing it was to say outside of a book.
“Well, I only saw that you had one of Stephen’s programmes,” she began. “No, that’s wrong, I saw the stubs too. But why shouldn’t you go to the show, if you like it?” And whereas Hermione was white with rage, Evadne felt herself going scarlet with embarrassment.
And then Hermione shut the bedroom door in her face without a word. Evadne stood a moment staring at it from her own doorway, and finally went over and knocked.
“Please let me come in,” she said humbly, feeling sick, for she hated scenes. “Please don’t take it like that, it doesn’t
matter
.”
She could feel Mrs. Spindle’s ears flapping in the kitchen, and desperately she opened the door unbidden and went in, closing it behind her. Hermione was flung down on the bed in spectacular floods of tears. Evadne sat down on the edge of it and laid a conciliatory hand on Hermione’s shoulder, which was ignored. “Darling, why do you mind so much? I’ll never tell a soul if you’d rather not,” she said, trying to sound sensible and calm while every nerve tingled with a sense of
Hermione’s shame, for surely to love a man who made no return must be the last word in mortification, and it was happening to Hermione for the second time.
Hermione was understood to say that she could never look Stephen in the face again.
“But why, if he doesn’t know? I promise he’ll never know, from me.”
“He’s in love with you,” Hermione moaned into the pillow.
“Well, what’s that got to do with it? I’m not going to marry him,” Evadne said firmly, and was conscious of a spreading desolation.
“You will, you know you will,” Hermione insisted. “
I’m
nothing to stand in your way. He doesn’t know I’m alive.”
“Why, of course he does, he always—I’m sure he’s very fond of you—” The lie faltered and died for lack of conviction.
“You know very well he can’t see anybody but you!”
“Well, I—I’ll go away,” Evadne offered wildly. “There’s the conference at Lausanne—members are coming from everywhere to attend that, and they
asked
me to go. I’ll stay on the Continent a while, there’s a lot of work to be done there.”
“What good will that do?” Hermione asked thickly, with suspicion.
“If he doesn’t see me for a while he—maybe he’ll get over it. I don’t think it means anything really, he just—” But she knew better than that, and it wasn’t fair to Stephen. “You stay here and I’ll go to Lausanne,” she said, to end it.
Hermione sat up and blew her nose.
“Nonsense, if you go to Lausanne I’ll go too,” she said, as though she was being very brave and self-sacrificing.
Evadne’s slim shoulders drooped. It suddenly seemed as though she just couldn’t bear things the way they were.
“Oh, well,” she said dispiritedly, “we don’t have to decide this minute, do we.”
“You really aren’t engaged to Stephen?” Hermione asked, still suspicious but transparently hopeful.
“Of course not. Whatever gave you that idea?” Evadne rose briskly and smoothed the pillows where Hermione had been lying. “He’s fun to know, and he makes a fuss of a girl from force of habit. American men are like that.” (God forgive me, she added, to Stephen.)
Hermione blew her nose again.
“You’ll
swear
never to tell him,” she said.
“If you’d rather not.”
“Evadne, if you ever
dare
—”
“All right, all
right,
I promised, didn’t I?” Evadne was edging towards the door. “We’ll just forget all about it, shall we?”
“And hereafter kindly leave my things alone,” said Hermione, and Evadne escaped from the room, feeling that she had betrayed all her new-found faith by half-truths and compromise, and had slandered Stephen as well.
Meanwhile the end of the run was coming into sight, and Sylvia found herself up against the necessity of returning to America with Stephen to start a new show for the spring opening in New York. As Jeff was booked to go to Geneva immediately after Christmas it would mean another long separation. They discussed it at some length pro and con, with anguish and with laughter, and got nowhere.
Jeff’s heart had given no trouble for a long time, and so he went to his doctor and heard all the same things—plus a considered opinion that he was in better shape to marry than lots of people who never thought twice about it. But he felt that heart or no heart he would be letting Bracken down to ask for time off now to go to America on a honeymoon. Sylvia was linked to Stephen’s zooming career and was determined not to do to him what Rhoda had done when she married. At last, for everyone came to it sooner or later, they took their problem to Bracken himself, and laid it all out before him, each of them
dismally convinced beforehand what his answer would be, and each of them braced for the inevitable parting.
Bracken heard them to the end, poker-faced, with nothing to say, and minute by minute their hearts sank lower. When they had quite finished explaining themselves there was a long pause, while Bracken wandered away to the window and stood there, his hands jammed into his pockets, staring out into the street. Finally—
“Why don’t you kids just get married and the hell with it?” he said without turning.
“But—” said Jeff incredulously, and—
“Oh, Bracken!” cried Sylvia, radiant.
“You’ve got a year—maybe two,” said Bracken, his back to them. “In your place I wouldn’t fool around. Hell, you’re only young once,” he said, coming back to them, and he stood over Sylvia, looking down at her with a wry, kind smile. “Maybe, I’m giving all the wrong advice,” he said. “But you asked me, and for what it’s worth you’ve got it. Suppose I was to lend Jeff to you for a year, beginning now. Mind you, I’ll want him back if the balloon goes up, but suppose he was all yours for three hundred and sixty-five days from this Christmas—what would you do?”
“Oh,
Bracken!
”
gasped Sylvia, and cast herself lovingly round Bracken’s neck.
“What about Geneva?” Jeff asked, unable to believe his ears.
“
I’ll
do Geneva,” Bracken told him through Sylvia’s strangling hug. “Not but what I hate the place. You go along to New York with Sylvia and forget Geneva, it’ll keep—if it doesn’t blow up in everybody’s face. Something is going to break on you-know-what very soon and you’d better stick around for that. But I think after Christmas I can get along without you better sooner than later.”
The not-so-very hush-hush romance between King Edward and Mrs. Simpson which Bracken referred to with his euphemism was first mentioned in the British Press on December 3rd, but it came as no surprise to most of England
then. A generation which had a little outgrown Ruritania and Graustark and Elinor Glyn had been awaiting the denouement with very mixed feelings, particularly as the high traditions of the fictitious Balkan royalty in the novels seemed to have been outgrown as well. Instead of the noble sacrifice of love and personal happiness on the altar of duty, this very modern king showed a tendency to temporize and to hold out for the privilege of living his life as less exalted persons had more right to do—a course which meant head-on collision with both the elderly Conservative Court faction, which had doubtless made concessions to traditional duties of its own, and with the hard-headed lower classes who had also seen their bleak duty and done it in such tiresome ways as going into the Flanders trenches during four long years of war. There was a general inclination towards the opinion that it was not too much to ask of their King, whom they loved, that he remain faithful to his heritage and to their expectations of him—to say nothing of being an example to the rest of them when they found the going a bit rough. Discussion was open and free in the buses and pubs where Bracken practised his newspaper man’s art of informal conversation without taking notes—’E’ll get the sack, I shouldn’t wonder— What’s he mean, letting us down this way?— Well, what abart
’is
side, why don’t we ’ear more of that?— Because they ain’t got nothink to say, that’s w’y…. And it was argued in the drawing-rooms and clubs where Bracken was known and accepted as one of the company— Well, after all, old boy, if things have come to such a pass that we can all behave like just
anybody
—I hope I’m as broadminded as the next person about divorce when it’s absolutely necessary, but at a time like this— Besides, it isn’t as if he had been
brought
up
to act like a spoilt child— And does he think he’s the
only
one who has ever had the same kind of choice to make? … On December 10th he made the broadcast which shook the Western world, and was gone across the Channel in the night.
It was the biggest news story since the radio had been used to carry news, and while Bracken deplored some abuse of the
new medium his own coverage was thorough and required many hours of hanging about waiting for developments, not to say considerable thought in composition. But it had all simmered down by Christmas-time, and Stephen’s show finally closed and the family went to Farthingale, where Jeff and Sylvia were to be married. After a brief honeymoon in the neighbourhood they would sail with Stephen for New York, an arrangement which would give him time, they hoped, to bring his own affairs to a satisfactory conclusion.
The announcement of Jeff’s impending wedding came to Mab not unexpected, but found her still unprepared for the private agony it imposed. Striving for self-control, she reminded herself stoically how long it would be before she was old enough to compare with Sylvia, and anyway nobody ever could. Sylvia was too beautiful and exciting, anybody, even Jeff, was lucky to get her. Mab was quite sure, in a sober, well-considered way, that she would never see anyone in all her own life to come who could hold a candle to Jeff, for he possessed completely her strange, unchildish heart. But one didn’t have to get married. Aunt Sue, who had left her house to Jeff, had never got married, perhaps because she too had seen someone like Jeff, after whom no one else was worth looking at twice.