Chapter XI: The Romance of Varnish

A separation of six months makes in the middle years of a man's life little break in a relationship. Human life was compared over two thousand years ago by a Greek philosopher to the stream that is never the same from one moment to another. And though, indeed, nothing is permanent, though everything is in flux, the stream during the later stages of its passage flows quietly through soft meadows to the sea. A man of forty-five who has been married for several years may leave his family to go abroad and returning at the end of the year find his wife, his home, his friends, to all appearances, exactly as he left them.

Roland returned from Belgium a different person. He was no longer a schoolboy; he was a business man. He had been introduced to big financiers; he had listened to the discussion of important deals; he had witnessed the signatures of contracts. In the evenings he had sat with Marston and gone carefully over the accounts of the day's transactions.

"There's not much profit here," Marston would say, "hardly any, in fact, when we've taken over-head charges, office expenses and all that into consideration. But we're not out for profits just now. We're building up connections. If we can make these foreign deals pay their way we're all right. We shall crowd the other fellows out of the market, we shall make ourselves indispensable, and then we can shove our prices as high as we blooming well like."

To Roland it was a game, with the thrills, the dangers, the recompenses of a game. He did not look on business as part of the social fabric. He did not regard wealth as a thing important in itself. A credit balance was like a score at cricket. You were setting your brains against an opponent's. You made as many pounds as you could against his bowling. He did not allow first principles to attach disquieting corollaries. He did not ask himself whether it was just for a big firm to undersell their smaller rivals and drive them out of the market by the simple expedient of taking money out of one pocket and putting it into another. Business was a game: if one was big enough to take risks one took them.

Within a month Gerald was writing home to his father with genuine enthusiasm.

"He really is first class, father. I thought he would be pretty useful, but I never expected him to be a patch on what he is. He's really keen on the job and he's got the hang of it already. He ought to do jolly well when he comes out here alone. The big men like him; old Rosenheim told me the other day that it was a pleasure to see him about the place. 'Such a relief,' he said, 'after the dried-up hard-chinned provincials that pester me from morning to night.' I believe it's the best thing we ever did, getting Roland into the business."

Roland, realising that his work was appreciated, grew confident and hopeful of the future. They were happy days.

It is not easy to explain the friendship of two men. And Roland would have been unable to say why exactly he valued the companionship and esteem of Gerald Marston more highly than that of the many boys, such as Ralph Richmond, whom he had known longer and, on the whole, more intimately. Gerald never said anything brilliant; he was not particularly amusing; he was often irritable and moody. But from the moment when he had seen him for the first time in Brewster's study Roland had recognised in him a potential friend. Later, when they had met at the Oval, he had felt that they understood each other, that they spoke the same language, that there was between them no need for the usual preliminaries of friendship. And during their weeks in France and Belgium this relationship or intuition was fortified by the sharing of common interests and common adventures.

The majority of these adventures were, it must be confessed, of doubtful morality, for it was only natural that Roland and Gerald should in their spare time amuse themselves after the fashion of most young men who find themselves alone in a foreign city.

In the evenings, after they had balanced their accounts, they used to walk through the warm lighted streets, surrounded by the stir of a world waking to a night of pleasure, select a brightly coloured café, sit back on the red plush couch that ran the length of the room, and order iced champagne. The band would play soft, sentimental music that, mixing with the wine in their heads, would render them eager, daring and responsive, and when two girls walked slowly down the centre of the room, swaying from the hips, and casting to left and right sidelong, alluring glances, naturally they smiled back, and indicated two vacant seats on either side of them. Then there would be talk and laughter and more champagne, and afterwards.... But what happened afterwards was of small importance. Gerald had had too much experience to derive much excitement from bought kisses. And for Roland, these romances were the focus of little more than a certain lukewarm kindliness and curiosity. They were not degrading, because they were not regarded so. They were equally unromantic, because neither was particularly interested in the other. Indeed, Roland was a little dismayed to find how slight, on the whole, was the pleasure, even the physical pleasure, that he received from his companion's transports; these experiences, far from having the devastating effect that they are popularly supposed to have on a young man's character, would have had in Roland's life no more significance than an act of solitary indulgence, had they not been another bond between himself and Gerald. And this they most certainly were.

It was amusing to meet in the morning afterwards and exchange confidences. And as everything is transmuted by the imagination, Roland in a little while came to look on those evenings--the wine, the music, the rustle of skirts, the low laughter--not as they had been actually, but as he would have wished to have them. They became for him a gracious revel. And in London his thoughts would wander often from his ink-stained desk, from the screech of the telephone, from the eternal tapping of the typewriter, to those brightly coloured cafés, with their atmosphere of warm comfort, the soft sensuous music, the cool sparkling champagne, the low whisper at his elbow. When he went out to lunch with Marston he would frequently contrast the glitter of a Brussels restaurant with the tawdry furniture and over-heated atmosphere of a City eating-house.

"A bit different this, isn't it?" he would say. "Do you remember that evening when we went down the Rue de la Madeleine and found a café in that little side street?"

"That was where we met the jolly little girl in the blue dress, wasn't it?"

"Yes. And do you remember what she said about the old Padre?"

And they would laugh together over the indelicacies that had slipped so charmingly in broken English from those red lips.

But Gerald was the one figure that remained distinct for Roland. The girls, for the most part, resembled each other so closely that he could only in rare instances recall their features or what they had worn or what they had said. He remembered far more vividly his walks with Gerald through the lighted streets, their confidences and hesitations. Should they go into this café or into that: and then when they had selected their café how Gerald would open the wine list and carefully run his finger down the page, while the waiter would hover over him: "Yes, yes, sir, a very good wine that, sir, a very good wine indeed!" And then when the wine was ordered how they would look round at the girls who sat in couples at the marble-topped tables, sipping a citron or a bock. "What do you think of that couple over there?" "Not bad, but let's wait a bit; something better may turn up soon"; and a little later: "Oh, look, that girl over there, the one with the green dress, just beneath the picture; try and catch her eye, she looks ripping!" They had been more exciting, those moments of expectation, than the subsequent embraces.

Gerald was always the dominant figure.

It was the expression of Gerald's face that Roland remembered most clearly on that disappointing evening when they had taken two chorus girls to dinner at a private room and Roland's selected had refused champagne and preferred fried sole to pheasant--an abstinence so alarming that, in spite of Roland's protests, Gerald had suddenly decided that they would have to catch a train to Paris that evening instead of being able to wait till the morning.

And it was Gerald whom Roland particularly associated with that ignominious occasion on which he had thought at last to have discovered real romance.

They had dropped into a restaurant in the afternoon for a cup of chocolate, and had seen sitting by herself a girl who could hardly have been twenty years of age. She wore a wide-brimmed hat, under which Roland could just see, as she bent her head over her ice, the tip of her nose, the smooth curve of a cheek, the strain on the muscles of her neck. She raised the spoon delicately to her mouth, her lips closed on it and held it there. Her eyelids appeared to droop in a sort of sensual contentment. Roland watched her, fascinated: watched her till she drew the spoon slowly from her mouth. She lingered pensively, and between the even rows of her white teeth the red tip of her tongue played for a moment on the spoon. At that moment she raised her eyes, observed that Roland was staring at her, smiled, and dropped her eyes again.

"Did you see that?" whispered Roland excitedly. "She smiled at me, and she's ripping! I must go and speak to her!"

"Don't be a fool," said Gerald; "a smile may not mean anything. Besides, she's obviously not a tart and she may be known here. If she is she won't want to be seen talking to a stranger. You sit still, like a good boy, and see if she smiles at you again."

Against his will Roland consented. But he had his reward a few minutes later when she turned her chair to catch the waitress's attention, and her eyes, meeting his, smiled at them again--a challenging, alluring smile that seemed to say, "Well, are you brave enough?" He was dismayed, however, to notice that she had turned in order to ask for her bill. He saw her run her eye down the slip of paper, take some money from her purse and begin to button on her gloves, long gauntlet gloves that fastened above the elbow.

"She's going! what shall I do?" he asked.

For answer Marston took a piece of paper from his pocket and wrote on it: "Meet me at the Café des Colombes to-night at eight-thirty."

"Now, walk up to the counter and pretend to choose a cake; if she wants to see any more of you she will drop her handkerchief, or purse, or at any rate give you an opportunity of speaking to her; if she does, slip this note into her hand. If she doesn't, you can buy me an éclair, and thank your lucky stars that you've been preserved from making a most abandoned fool of yourself."

Roland was in such a hurry to get to the counter that he tripped against a table and only saved himself from falling by gripping violently the shoulder of an elderly bourgeois. By the time he had completed his apologies his charmer had very nearly reached the door.

"It's all up," he told himself; "she thinks me a clumsy fool, that it's not worth her while to worry about, I ought to have gone straight up to her at once"; and he followed with dejected eyes her progress towards the door.

She was carrying in one hand an umbrella and in the other a little velvet bag. As she raised her hand to open the door, the bag slipped from her fingers and fell upon the floor. There were three persons nearer to the bag than Roland, but before even a hand had been stretched out to it he had precipitated himself forward, had picked it up and was handing it to the lady. She smiled at him with gracious gratitude. So far all had gone splendidly. Then he began to fumble. The note was in the other hand, and in the flurry of the moment he did not know how to manœuvre the bag and the note into the same hand. First of all, he tried to change the bag from the right hand to the left. But his forefinger and thumb were so closely engaged with the note that the remaining three fingers failed to grasp the handle of the bag. He made a furious dive and caught the bag in his right hand just before it reached the floor. Panic seized him. He lost all sense of the proprieties. He handed the bag straight to her, and then realising, before she had had time to take it from him, that somehow or other the note also had to come into her possession, he offered it to her between the forefinger and thumb of his left hand with less secrecy than he would have displayed in giving a tip to a waiter. The sudden change of the lady's expression from inviting kindliness to a surprised affronted indignation threw him into so acute a fever of embarrassment that once again he endeavoured to move the bag from the right hand to the left. Again he fumbled, but with a different result. He piloted the bag successfully into the lady's hands, but allowed the note to slip from between his fingers. It fell face upwards on the floor.

Several ways of escape were open to him. He might have affected unconcern, and either picked up the piece of paper or left it where it lay. He might have kicked the note away and walked forward to open the door. He might have placed his foot on the note till the attention of the room was once again directed to its separate interests. None of these things, however, did he do. He did what was natural for him in such an unexpected situation. He did nothing. He stood quite still and gazed at the note as it lay there startlingly white against the black tiles of the floor. The eyes of everyone in the room appeared to be directed towards it. The features of the startled lady assumed an expression of horrified amazement. Two waitresses leant over the counter in undisguised excitement; another stopped dead with a tray in her hand to survey the incriminating document. The fat gentleman against whom Roland had collided began to make some unpleasantly loud remarks to his companion. An old woman leant forward and asked the room in general what was happening. From a far corner came the horrible suppression of a giggle.

The lady herself, who was, as a matter of fact, perfectly respectable, though she liked to be thought otherwise, and had dropped her bag accidentally, was the first to recover her composure. She fixed on Roland a glance of which as a combination of hatred and contempt he had never seen the equal, turned quickly and walked out of the restaurant. The sudden bang of the door behind her broke the tension. The various spectators of this entertaining interlude returned to their ices and their chocolate, the waitresses resumed their duties, the patron of the establishment fussed up the centre of the room, and Gerald, who had watched the scene with intense if slightly nervous amusement, left his table, picked up the note, and taking Roland by the arm, led him out of the public notice, and listened to his friend's solemn vow that never again, under any circumstances, would he be induced to open negotiations with any woman, be she never so lovely, who did not by her dress, her manner and the places she frequented proclaim unquestionably her profession.

* * * * *

It was hardly surprising that as a result of these adventures a more developed, more independent Roland returned at the end of his six months' tour, a Roland, moreover, with a different attitude to himself, his future, his surroundings, who was prepared to despise the chrysalis from which he had emerged. His school-days appeared trivial.

"What a deal of fuss we made about things that didn't really matter at all," he said to Gerald as they leant over the taffrail and watched the dim line that was England grow distinct, its grey slowly whitening as they drew near. "What a fuss about one's place in form, one's position in the house; whether one ragged or whether one didn't rag. I can see all those masters, with their solemn faces, thinking I had perjured my immortal soul because I had walked out with a girl. They really thought it mattered."

How puny it became in comparison with this magnificent gamble of finance! What were marks in an exam. to set against a turnover of several thousands? Duty, privilege, responsibility; what had they been but the brightly coloured bricks with which children play in the nursery; and as for the fret and fever concerning their arrangement, where could be found an equivalent for the serious absorption of a child?

In the same way he thought of his home and the environment of his boyhood. What a grey world it had been! How monotonous, how arid! He remembered sitting as a child at the bars of his nursery window watching the stream of business men hurrying to their offices in the morning, their newspapers tucked under their arms. They had seemed to him like marionettes. The front door had opened. Husband and wife had exchanged a brusque embrace; the male marionette had trotted down the steps, had paused at the gate to wave his hand, and as he had turned into the street the front door had closed behind him. Always the same thing every day. And then in the evening the same stream of tired listless men hurrying home, their bulky morning paper exchanged for the slim evening newssheet. They would trot up the white stone steps, the front door would swing open, again in the porch the marionettes would kiss. It had amused him as a child, this dumb show, but as a boy he had come to hate it--and to fear it also. For he knew that this was the life that awaited him if he failed to turn to account his superior opportunities. The fear of degenerating into a suburban business man had been always the strongest goad to his ambition. But now he could look that fear confidently in the face. He had won through out of that world of routine and friction and small economies into one of enterprise and daring and romance.

And April: he had not thought very much about her during his six months' absence; she belonged to the world he had outgrown, a landmark on his road of adventure. And it was disconcerting to find on his return that she did not regard their relationship in this light. Roland had grown accustomed to the fleeting relationships of school that at the start of a new term could be resumed or dropped at will. He had not realised that it would be different now; that six months in Belgium were not the equivalent of a seven weeks' summer holiday; that he would be returning to an unaltered society in which he would be expected to fulfil the obligations incurred by him before his departure. It was the reversal of the Rip Van Winkle legend. Roland had altered and was returning to a world that was precisely as he had left it.

Nothing had changed.

On the first evening he went round to visit April, and there was Mrs Curtis as she had always been, sitting before the fire, her hands crossed over her bony bosom. She welcomed him as though he had been spending a week-end in Kent.

"I'm so glad to see you, Roland, and have you had a nice time? It must be pleasant for you to think of how soon the cricket season will be starting. I was saying to our little April only yesterday: 'How Roland will be looking forward to it.' What club are you thinking of joining?"

"The Marstons said something to me about my joining their local club."

"But how jolly that would be! You'll like that, won't you?"

Her voice rose and fell as it had risen and fallen as long as Roland's memory had knowledge of her. The same clock ticked over the same mantelpiece; above the table was the same picture of a cow grazing beside a stream; the curtains, once red, had not faded to a deeper brown; the carpet was no more threadbare; the same books lined the shelves that rose on either side of the fire-place; in the bracket beside the window was the calf-bound set of _William Morris_ that had been presented to April as a prize; on the rosewood table lay yesterday's copy of _The Times_. Mrs Curtis and her setting were eternal in the scheme of things.

April, too, was as he had left her. Indeed, her life in his absence had been a pause. She had no personal existence outside Roland. She had waited for his return, thinking happily of the future. She had gone to school every morning at a quarter to nine and had returned every evening at half-past five. During the Christmas holidays she had read _Nicholas Nickleby_ and _Vanity Fair_. She was now half-way through _Little Dorrit_. At the end of the Michaelmas term she had gained a promotion into a higher form and in her new form she had acquitted herself creditably, finishing half-way up the class. At home she had performed cheerfully the various duties that had been allotted to her. But she had regarded those six months as an interlude in her real life: that was Roland's now. Happiness could only come to her through him; and, being sure of happiness, she was not fretful nor impatient during the delay. She did not expect nor indeed ask of life violent transports either of ecstasy or sorrow. Her ideas of romance were domestic enough. To love and to be loved faithfully, to have children, to keep a home happy, a home to which her friends would be glad to come--this seemed to her as much as any woman had the right to need. She felt that she would be able to make Roland happy. The prospect was full of a quiet but deep contentment.

Roland had no opportunity of speaking to her on that first evening; Mrs Curtis, as usual, monopolised the conversation. But he sat near to April. From time to time their eyes met and she smiled at him. And the next morning when he came round to see her she ran eagerly to meet him.

"It's lovely to have you back again," she said; "you can't think how I've been looking forward to it!"

Roland was embarrassed by her eagerness. He did not know what to say and stood beside her, smiling stupidly.

She pouted.

"Aren't you going to kiss me?" she said. And a moment later: "I shouldn't have thought, after six months, you'd have needed asking!"

Roland met her reproach with a stammered apology.

"I felt shy. I thought you might have got tired of me, all that long time."

"Oh, but Roland, how horrid of you!" And she moved away from him. But he took her in his arms and made love prettily to her and consoled her.

"I daresay," she said, "I daresay. But you didn't write to me so very often."

"I wanted to, but I thought your mother wouldn't like it."

"Oh, but, Roland, that's no excuse; she expected you to. There's an understanding." Then with a quiet smile: "Do you remember the row we had about that understanding?"

"I was a beast."

"No, you weren't, I was a silly."

"I was miserable about it."

"So was I. I didn't know what to do with myself. I thought you'ld never speak to me again, that you'd gone off in a huff, like the heroes in the story books."

"But the heroes always come back in the story books."

"I know, and that's just why I thought that very likely you wouldn't in real life. I was so unhappy I cried myself to sleep."

"We were sillies, weren't we?"

"But it was worth it," said April.

"Worth it?"

"Don't you remember how nice you were to me when we made it up?"

They laughed and kissed, and the minutes passed pleasantly. But their love-making fell short of Roland's ideal of love. It was jolly; it was comfortable; but it was little more. He was not thrilled when the back of his hand brushed accidentally against hers; their kisses were hardly a lyric ecstasy. Even when he held her in his arms he was conscious of himself, outside their embrace, watching it, saying to himself: "Those two are having a good time together," and being outside it he was envious, jealous of a happiness he did not share. It was someone else who was holding April's hand, someone else's head that bent to her slim shoulder. It was an exciting experience. But then had it not been exciting to walk across Hampstead Heath on a Sunday evening and observe the feverish ardours of the prostrate lovers.

He despised himself; he reminded himself that he was extraordinarily lucky to have a girl such as April in love with him; he was unworthy of her. Was not Ralph eating out his heart with envy? And yet he was dissatisfied. The Curtises' house had become a prison for him; a soft, warm prison, with cushions and shaded lights and gentle voices, but it was a prison none the less. He was still able to leave it at will, but the time was coming when that freedom would be denied him. In a year or two their understanding would be an engagement; the engagement would drift to marriage. For the rest of his life he would be enclosed in that warm, clammy atmosphere. There was a conspiracy at work against him. His father had already begun to speak of his marriage as an accomplished fact. His mother was chiefly glad he was doing well in business because success there would make an early marriage possible. On all sides inducements were being offered him to marry--marriage with its corollary to settle down. Marry and settle down, when he was still under twenty!--before he had begun to live!