We drank our coffee and smoked a couple of cigarettes, and she asked me the time.
“A quarter to three.”
“I must ask for my bill.”
“Won’t you let me stand you lunch?”
“Of course,” she smiled.
“Are you in a hurry?”
“I’m meeting Peter at three.”
“Oh, how is he?”
“He’s very well.”
She gave a little smile, that tardy and delightful smile of hers, but I seemed to discern in it a certain mockery. For an instant she hesitated and she looked at me with deliberation.
“You like curious situations, don’t you?” she said. “You’d never guess the errand I’m bound on. I rang up Peter this morning and asked him to meet me at three. I’m going to ask him to divorce me.”
“You’re not,” I cried. I felt myself flush and did not know what to say. “I thought you got on so well together.”
“Do you think it’s likely that I shouldn’t know what all the world knows? I’m really not such a fool as all that.”
She was not a woman to whom it was possible to say what one did not believe and I could not pretend that I did not know what she meant. I remained silent for a second or two.
“Why should you allow yourself to be divorced?”
“Robert Canton is a stuffy old thing. I very much doubt if he’d let Barbara marry Peter if I divorced him. And for me, you know, it isn’t of the smallest consequence: one divorce more or less …”
She shrugged her pretty shoulders.
“How do you know he wants to marry her?”
“He’s head over ears in love with her.”
“Has he told you so?”
“No. He doesn’t even know that I know. He’s been so wretched, poor darling. He’s been trying so hard not to hurt my feelings.”
“Perhaps it’s only a momentary infatuation,” I hazarded. “It may pass.”
“Why should it? Barbara’s young and pretty. She’s quite nice. They’re very well suited to one another. And besides, what good would it do if it did pass? They love each other now and the present in love is all that matters. I’m nineteen years older than Peter. If a man stops loving a woman old enough to be his mother do you think he’ll ever come to love her again? You’re a novelist, you must know more about human nature than that.”
“Why should you make this sacrifice?”
“When he asked me to marry him ten years ago I promised him that when he wanted his release he should have it. You see there was so great a disproportion between our ages I thought that was only fair.”
“And are you going to keep a promise that he hasn’t asked you to keep?”
She gave a little flutter of those long thin hands of hers and now I felt that there was something ominous in the dark glitter of that emerald.
“Oh, I must, you know. One must behave like a gentleman. To tell you the truth, that’s why I’m lunching here today. It was at this table that he proposed to me; we were dining together, you know, and I was sitting just where I am now. The nuisance is that I’m just as much in love with him now as I was then.” She paused for a minute and I could see that she clenched her teeth. “Well, I suppose I ought to go. Peter hates one to keep him waiting.”
She gave me a sort of little helpless look and it struck me that she simply could not bring herself to rise from her chair. But she smiled and with an abrupt gesture sprang to her feet.
“Would you like me to come with you?”
“As far as the hotel door,” she smiled.
We walked through the restaurant and the lounge and when we came to the entrance a porter swung round the revolving doors. I asked if she would like a taxi.
“No, I’d sooner walk, it’s such a lovely day.” She gave me her hand. “It’s been so nice to see you. I shall go abroad tomorrow, but I expect to be in London all the autumn. Do ring me up.”
She smiled and nodded and turned away. I watched her walk up Davies Street. The air was still bland and springlike, and above the roofs little white clouds were sailing leisurely in a blue sky. She held herself very erect and the poise of her head was gallant. She was a slim and lovely figure so that people looked at her as they passed. I saw her bow graciously to some acquaintance who raised his hat, and I thought that never in a thousand years would it occur to him that she had a breaking heart. I repeat, she was a very honest woman.
A String of Beads
“WHAT A BIT OF LUCK that I’m placed next to you,” said Laura, as we sat down to dinner.
”For me,” I replied politely.
“That remains to be seen. I particularly wanted to have the chance of talking to you. I’ve got a story to tell you.”
At this my heart sank a little.
“I’d sooner you talked about yourself,” I answered. “Or even about me.”
“Oh, but I must tell you the story. I think you’ll be able to use it."
“If you must, you must. But let’s look at the menu first.”
“Don’t you want me to?” she said, somewhat aggrieved. “I thought you’d be pleased."
“I am. You might have written a play and wanted to read me that.”
“It happened to some friends of mine. It’s perfectly true.”
“That’s no recommendation. A true story is never quite so true as an invented one.”
“What does that mean?”
“Nothing very much,” I admitted. “But I thought it sounded well.”
“I wish you’d let me get on with it."
“I’m all attention. I’m not going to eat the soup. It’s fattening.”
She gave me a pinched look and then glanced at the menu. She uttered a little sigh.
“Oh, well, if you’re going to deny yourself I suppose I must too. Heaven knows, I can’t afford to take liberties with my figure.”
“And yet is there any soup more heavenly than the sort of soup in which you put a great dollop of cream?”
“Bortsch,” she sighed. “It’s the only soup I really like.”
“Never mind. Tell me your story and we’ll forget about food till the fish comes.”
“Well, I was actually there when it happened. I was dining with the Livingstones. Do you know the Livingstones?”
“No, I don’t think I do.”
“Well, you can ask them and they’ll confirm every word I say. They’d asked their governess to come in to dinner because some woman had thrown them over at the last moment—you know how inconsiderate people are—and they would have been thirteen at table. Their governess was a Miss Robinson, quite a nice girl, young, you know, twenty or twenty-one, and rather pretty. Personally I would never engage a governess who was young and pretty. One never knows.”
“But one hopes for the best.”
Laura paid no attention to my remark.
“The chances are that she’ll be thinking of young men instead of attending to her duties and then, just when she’s got used to your ways, she’ll want to go and get married. But Miss Robinson had excellent references, and I must allow that she was a very nice, respectable person. I believe in point of fact she was a clergyman’s daughter.
“There was a man at dinner whom I don’t suppose you’ve ever heard of, but who’s quite a celebrity in his way. He’s a Count Borselli and he knows more about precious stones than anyone in the world. He was sitting next to Mary Lyngate, who rather fancies herself on her pearls, and in the course of conversation she asked him what he thought of the string she was wearing, he said it was very pretty. She was rather piqued at this and told him it was valued at eight thousand pounds. “ ‘Yes, it’s worth that,’ he said.
“Miss Robinson was sitting opposite to him. She was looking rather nice that evening. Of course I recognized her dress, it was one of Sophie’s old ones; but if you hadn’t known Miss Robinson was the governess you would never have suspected it.