Chapter VIII

Gladys Farham was a little puzzled at not having received Percy's promised letter. But she was extraordinarily happy.

She had gone off to her manager's and signed the American contract within two hours of having received the telegram; she had lunched out all alone in a restaurant to which Percy had once taken her, in a kind of ecstasy; and had tested her stability, so to speak, by the admirable composure with which she had been able to encounter Jims Marridon at the end of her lunch.

She was putting on her gloves when she looked up and saw him coming towards her. He sat down instantly at her table.

" You're all alone," he said. " How's that? "

Jim Marridon was one of those large, rather silent and rather rude persons, who have nothing whatever to exalt them amongst men except that extraordinary gift that is called Personality. His intellectual activities were limited strictly by such literature as the Sporting Times; his artistic aspirations rose no higher than musical comedy. He was entirely stupid, except as regards the lower reaches of human experience, in which he had a certain shrewdness: he possessed a number of little rather cynical principles which, unfortunately, were quite often justified. He did not believe, that is to say, in the disinterestedness of any human being on earth; he was persuaded that no woman really took any interest at all in anything except

Digitized by Google men. The type is quite a common one, and quite a successful one in its own plane, especially when it is accompanied by that which I have called Personality. Its examples are seen everywhere. They sit with mask-like faces in the stalls of the Gaiety Theatre and at the supper-tables of the Savoy Restaurant; they remain, slow-speaking and oracular, in the smoking-rooms of country-houses until the small hours of the morning: they solemnly appear in divorce-courts with an air of irreproachable respectability: at certain hours of the day they exude a faint aroma of whisky, of which they talk a good deal, with allusions: they have a curious, but quite rigid code of morals and behaviour, which scarcely resembles at all that of Christianity. But, on the other hand, sometimes they settle down into admirable fathers and husbands, become very careful indeed for the welfare of their children, and attend Divine worship in the country, with portentous and punctual gravity.

Jim Marridon, then, was precisely one of these. If he were placed in a selected row of his fellows it would be almost impossible to distinguish him from the rest. He had, to the full, the set eyes and the rigid mouth under a clipped moustache, and the little indescribable details of gait and language. But he had Personality, unquestionably. People cared, somehow, very much as to whether he were pleased with them or not, although they could not have justified their attitude for a moment: they would hasten to propitiate him if he were annoyed, and would glow all over with satisfaction if they succeeded and he approved.

Now he had laid the slow siege of his kind to Miss Gladys Farham for nearly a year, and had given her to understand, without any unforgivable openness, that she might

Digitized by Google command him in anything reasonable. God, who made him, alone knows why he had selected her; it was usually the musical-comedy kind of person to whom he was attracted. He had been privileged to meet her at supper a few times; and it may be supposed that he found in her moods a kind of pleasant foil to his own solemnity.

Gladys had always been a little afraid of him. She had shown this on more than one occasion by a sudden flare of rudeness to him; while at other times she had concealed it under extreme pleasantness.... In any case she was delighted now, as she nodded to him, to find that he no longer affected her at all. She felt completely on a different plane from that on which he energized.

" Oh! I don't know," she said. " I suppose because there's nobody with me."

No expression passed over his face to show that he was either amused or annoyed at her flippancy.

" And what have you been up to? " he said.

She drew on her left-hand glove completely and began to button it. He appeared to watch the process.

"Well," she said, " I've just signed a contract to go to America."

" For long?"

" I don't know. Not less than three months. But it may be more."

" Is A Gentleman of Fortune going, then? " " That's it." " Soon?"

" We sail on Wednesday week."

He lifted his eyes to her face as she began on the second glove.

" Can't I come and see you first? Can't we do something together? "

It was astonishing to her how unimportant this sug-

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SSS gestion seemed to her now. On the half-dozen occasions when she had driven or supped with him it had seemed to stand for more than it presented: it was all part of the game that sometimes ended in marriage and sometimes did not — the game she had seen played by others more than once, with various endings — the game which she had once played herself, in the case of her first marriage, with such astonishing ill-fortune. But it seemed to her all very trifling and foolish now: she had done with such follies: she felt exalted clean out of its atmosphere altogether.

" No," she said coolly. " I've got too much to do." He dropped his eyes again to her glove. Then he took out his card.

" Look here," he said. " Perhaps you'll change your mind. If you do, let me know. I'm staying at my club."

He put his card before her and stood up. She looked at it carelessly, and then a thought struck her. She wondered if he knew Percy. Their places in the country must surely be rather near one another.

" By the way," she said. " Haven't you some neighbours called Brandreth-Smith?"

He nodded.

"Some new people. Yes. Do you know them?" " I've met one of them." "Which? The girl?" " No, the boy." He laughed a little.

" That young cub! " he said. " He was out shooting with us the other day. At least that's what he said he was doing."

A spasm of sudden and intense anger seized her. She drove it down; she must not rouse any questionings at all. But she must have her little revenge.

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M Well/' she said, " I mustn't keep you."

She stood up, smiling, wholly disregarding the card, nodded to him, and moved off. Yet she was entirely aware of his anger, of his hot slow displeasure, and of that which I have called his Personality. She knew perfectly well that he wished to be friends with her very much indeed, and that her manner had been to him like a slap in the face. And she did not care in the slightest, she told herself.

When the third morning dawned, and there was no letter from Percy in her box, she became a trifle perturbed. She had promised herself last night that it would be here. Then she remembered that she had thought that perhaps he meant to come instead, and again felt content. There were not many more days, and some of them at least would be pretty full since she was to sail to-day week. It would be charming if he could manage to get up to town for two or three of them, and perhaps see her off, at least from Euston. But there was an element of pleasure to her, in her new relations, in the thought that she was waiting upon his plans.

It was one of those sudden mornings of spring that occasionally herald Easter; and the sunlight streamed into her pretty room as she sat at breakfast, softened by the delicate muslin curtains through which it came, lighting up the sprigged china, the daffodils behind the tea-pot, and the two or three pieces of really nice silver that she had. She half shut her eyes, to see it with the greater pleasure; it was as dainty as a picture.

She, too, was as pretty as a picture; and she was not entirely unaware of it. Her masses of dark hair were looped out loosely, shadowing her clear face and her big

Digitized by Google bright eyes... she put out her ringed fingers once or twice and looked at them, and particularly at that on which was the diamond and ruby half -circle that had been Percy's gift.

Her contentment was very nearly complete. It woujld have been quite complete if his letter had come; yet it was very nearly as nice to contemplate pleasant reasons for the delay. Perhaps he had some plan, and would presently burst in upon her, with it. Perhaps he was arranging, on some excuse, to stay at the house in Wilton Crescent, and would be with her every day. Perhaps — why, there were a hundred possibilities!

That which, possibly, gave her the most joy was the very point at which Percy had so obviously hesitated — the arrangement that, after her return from America, it would be upon her money that the two would chiefly depend. Money was a very big symbol with Miss Gladys Farham: she was not at all avaricious, but she was quite aware of what it could do, and of the discomfort that accompanied its absence. It was delightful to her, then, to feel, first that the tables had been very completely turned since the day when Percy had first proposed to help her with her debts, and that it was she who for the present at any rate would be the provider; and, next, this very thought chimed in harmoniously with the strong element of motherliness that lay in her relations towards him. It was this motherliness, probably, that gave her love for him its peculiar clean sweetness; she combined it somehow, in her extremely feminine nature, with that other, apparently mutually exclusive, emotion of desiring to look up to him and be protected and ruled by him. It is an odd combination, but extremely common; and it

Digitized by Google resulted, in her case, at any rate, in an emotion towards this boy that had really and truly, for the time being, at any rate, changed her character. She was aware of this — that her standards had changed, that her hardness had practically gone, and that such views of life as those represented by Jim Marridon were entirely and completely distasteful to her.

She heard the latch of her letter-box click suddenly: she rose instantly and went out into her tiny hall. Then she came back, smiling, with Percy's letter in her hands. He must have caught the last post, then, after all.

She forgot the remainder of her breakfast; and sat down in the sunshine on her sofa to read what he had to tell her. A canary burst into sudden song.

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