Giant's Bread (16 page)

A great wave of despondency swept over him. She would never marry him. Was it likely? A great clumsy tongue-tied creature such as he was. She was talking to him – Heavens, he must try and listen to what she said – answer intelligently.

‘We left very soon after you did. Father gave up his job.'

An echo came into his head of past gossip.

‘
Vereker got the sack. Hopelessly incompetent – it was bound to come
.'

Her voice went on – such a lovely voice. You wanted to listen to it instead of to the words.

‘We live in London now. Father died five years ago.'

He said, feeling idiotic, ‘Oh, I say, I'm sorry, awfully sorry!'

‘I'll give you our address. You must come and see us.'

He blundered out hopes of meeting her that evening – what dance was she going to? She told him. No good there. The night after – thank goodness, they'd be at the same. He said hurriedly:

‘Look here. You've got to save me a dance or two – you must – we've not seen each other for years.'

‘Oh! but can I?' Her voice was doubtful.

‘I'll fix it somehow. Leave it to me.'

It was over all too soon. Goodbyes were said. They were going upstream again.

Joe said in an incredibly matter-of-fact tone:

‘Well, isn't that strange? Who would ever have thought that Nell Vereker would have turned out so good-looking? I wonder if she's as much of an ass as ever.'

Sacrilege! He felt oceans removed from Joe. Joe couldn't see anything at all.

Would
Nell ever marry him?
Would
she? Probably she'd never look at him. All sorts of fellows must be in love with her.

He felt terribly despondent. Black misery swept over him.

He was dancing with her. Never had he imagined that he could be so happy. She was like a feather, a rose leaf in his arms. She was wearing a pink dress again – a different one. It floated out all round her.

If life could only go on like this for ever – for ever.

But, of course, life never did. In what seemed to Vernon like one second the music stopped. They were sitting together on two chairs.

He wanted to say a thousand things to her – but he didn't know how to begin. He heard himself saying foolish things about the floor and the music.

Fool – unutterable fool! In a few minutes another dance would begin. She would be swept away from him. He must make some plan – some arrangement to meet her again.

She was talking – desultory in-between-dance talk. London – the season. Horrible to think of – she was going to dances night after night – three dances a night sometimes. And here was he tied by the leg. She would marry someone – some rich, clever, amusing fellow would snap her up.

He mumbled something about being in town – she gave him their address. Mother would be so pleased to see him again. He wrote it down.

The music struck up. He said desperately:

‘Nell, I say, I do call you Nell, don't I?'

‘Why, of course.' She laughed. ‘Do you remember hauling me over the palings that day we thought the rhinoceros was after us?'

And he had thought her a nuisance, he remembered. Nell! A nuisance!

She went on: ‘I used to think you were wonderful then, Vernon.'

She had, had she? But she couldn't think him wonderful now. His mood drooped to despondency once more.

‘I – I was an awful little rotter, I expect,' he mumbled.

Why couldn't he be intelligent and clever, and say witty things?

‘Oh, you were a dear. Sebastian hasn't changed much, has he?'

Sebastian. She called him Sebastian. Well, after all, he supposed she would – since she called him Vernon. What a lucky thing it was that Sebastian cared for nobody but Joe. Sebastian with his money and his brains. Did Nell like Sebastian, he wondered?

‘One would know his ears anywhere!' said Nell with a laugh.

Vernon felt comforted. He had forgotten Sebastian's ears. No girl who had noticed Sebastian's ears could go falling in love with him. Poor old Sebastian – rather rough luck to be handicapped with those ears.

He saw Nell's partner arriving. He blurted out quickly and hurriedly:

‘I say, it's wonderful to have seen you again, Nell. Don't forget me, will you? I shall be turning up in town. It's – it's been awfully jolly seeing you again.' (Oh! damn, I said that before!) ‘I mean – it's been simply ripping. You don't know. But you won't forget, will you?'

She had gone from him. He saw her whirling round in Barnard's arms. She couldn't like Barnard surely, could she? Barnard was such an absolute ass.

Her eyes met his over Barnard's shoulder. She smiled.

He was in heaven again. She liked him – he knew she liked him. She had smiled …

May week was over. Vernon was sitting at a table writing.

‘Dear Uncle Sydney, – I've thought over your offer, and I'd like to come into Bent's if you still want me. I'm afraid I shall be rather useless, but I will try all I know how. I still think it's most awfully good of you.'

He paused. Sebastian was walking up and down restlessly. His pacing disturbed Vernon.

‘For goodness' sake, sit down,' he said irritably. ‘What's the matter with you?'

‘Nothing.'

Sebastian sat down with unusual mildness. He filled and lighted a pipe. From behind a sheltering haze of smoke, he spoke.

‘I say, Vernon. I asked Joe to marry me that last night. She turned me down.'

‘Oh! rough luck!' said Vernon, trying to bring his mind back and be sympathetic. ‘Perhaps she'll change her mind,' he said vaguely. ‘They say girls do.'

‘It's this damned money,' said Sebastian angrily.

‘What damned money?'

‘Mine. Joe always said she would marry me when we were kids together. She likes me – I'm sure she does. And now – everything I say or do always seems to be wrong. If I were only persecuted, or looked down on, or socially undesirable, I believe she'd marry me like a shot. But she's always got to be on the losing side. It's a ripping quality in a way; but you can carry it to a pitch where it's damned illogical. Joe is illogical.'

‘H'm,' said Vernon vaguely.

He was selfishly intent on his own affairs. It seemed to him curious that Sebastian should be so keen on marrying Joe. There were lots of other girls who would suit him just as well. He re-read his letter and added another sentence.

‘
I will work like a nigger
.'

‘We want another man,' said Mrs Vereker.

Her eyebrows, slightly enhanced by art, drew together in a straight line as she frowned.

‘It's too annoying young Wetherill failing us,' she added.

Nell nodded apathetically. She was sitting on the arm of a chair, not yet dressed. Her golden hair hung in a stream over the pale-pink kimono she was wearing. She looked very lovely and very young and defenceless.

Mrs Vereker, sitting at her inlaid desk, frowned still more and bit the end of her penholder thoughtfully. The hardness that had always been noticeable was now accentuated and, as it were, crystallized. This was a woman who had battled steadily and unceasingly through life and was now engaged in a supreme struggle. She lived in a house the rent of which she could not afford to pay, and she dressed her daughter in clothes she could not afford to buy. She got things on credit, not, like some others, by cajolery but by sheer driving power. She never appealed to her creditors, she browbeat them.

And the result was that Nell went everywhere and did everything that other girls did, and was better dressed while doing so.

‘Mademoiselle is lovely,' said the dressmakers, and their eyes would meet Mrs Vereker's in a glance of understanding.

A girl so beautiful, so well turned out, would marry probably in her first season, certainly in her second – and then – a rich harvest would be reaped. They were used to taking risks of this kind. Mademoiselle was lovely, Madame, her mother, was a woman of the world and a woman, they could see, who was accustomed to success in her undertakings. She would assuredly see to it that her daughter made a good match and did not marry a nobody.

Nobody but Mrs Vereker herself knew the difficulties, the setbacks, the galling defeats of the campaign she had undertaken.

‘There is young Earnescliff,' she said thoughtfully. ‘But he is really too much of an outsider, and not even money to recommend him.'

Nell looked at her pink polished nails.

‘What about Vernon Deyre?' she suggested. ‘He wrote he was coming up to town this week-end.'

‘He would do,' said Mrs Vereker. She looked sharply at her daughter. ‘Nell – you're not – you're not allowing yourself to become foolish about that young man, are you? We seem to have seen a great deal of him lately.'

‘He dances well,' said Nell. ‘And he's frightfully useful.'

‘Yes,' said Mrs Vereker. ‘Yes. It's a pity.'

‘What's a pity?'

‘That he hasn't got a few more of this world's goods. He'll have to marry money if he's ever going to be able to keep up Abbots Puissants. It's mortgaged, you know. I found that out. Of course, when his mother dies … But she's one of those large healthy women who go on living till they're eighty or ninety. And besides, she may marry again. No, Vernon Deyre is hopeless considered as a
parti
. He's very much in love with you, too, poor boy.'

‘Do you think so?' said Nell in a low voice.

‘Anyone can see it. It sticks out all over him – it always does with boys of that age. Well, they've got to go through calf love, I suppose. But no foolishness on your part, Nell.'

‘Oh, Mother, he's only a boy – a very nice boy, but a boy.'

‘He's a good-looking boy,' said her mother drily. ‘I'm only warning you. Being in love is a painful process when you can't have the man you want. And worse –'

She stopped. Nell knew well enough how her thoughts ran on. Captain Vereker had once been a handsome, blue-eyed, impecunious young subaltern. Her mother had been guilty of the folly of marrying him for love. She had lived to rue the day bitterly. A weak man, a failure, a drunkard. Disillusionment enough there in all conscience.

‘Someone devoted is always useful,' said Mrs Vereker, reverting to her utilitarian standpoint. ‘He mustn't, of course, spoil your chances with other men. But you're too wise to let him monopolize you to that extent. Yes, write and ask him to drive down to Ranelagh and dine with us there on Sunday next.'

Nell nodded. She got up and went to her own room, flung off the trailing kimono and started dressing. With a stiff brush, she brushed out the long golden hair, before coiling it round her small lovely head.

The window was open. A sooty London sparrow chirped and sang with the arrogance of his kind.

Something caught at Nell's heart. Oh, why was everything so – so –

So what? She didn't know – couldn't put into words, the feeling that surged over her. Why couldn't things be nice instead of nasty? It would be just as easy for God.

Nell never thought much about God, but she knew, of course, that he was there. Perhaps, somehow or other, God would make everything come right for her.

There was something child-like about Nell Vereker on that summer's morning in London.

Vernon was in the seventh heaven. He had had the luck to meet Nell in the park that morning, and now there was a whole glorious rapturous evening! So happy was he that he almost felt affectionate towards Mrs Vereker.

Instead of saying to himself: ‘That woman is a gorgon!' as he usually did, he found himself thinking, ‘She may not be so bad after all. Anyhow, she's very fond of Nell.'

At dinner he studied the other members of the party. There was an inferior girl dressed in green, a being not to be mentioned in the same breath with Nell, and there was a tall, dark man, a Major Somebody whose evening dress was very faultless, and who talked about India a lot. An insufferably conceited being. Vernon hated him. Boasting and swaggering, and showing off! A cold hand closed round his heart. Nell would marry this blighter and go away to India. He knew it, he simply knew it. He refused a course that was handed to him and gave the girl in green a hard time, so monosyllabic were his responses to her efforts.

The other man was older – very old to Vernon. A rather wooden figure, very upright. Grey hair, blue eyes, a square determined face. It turned out that he was an American though no one would have known it, for he had no trace of accent.

He spoke stiffly and a little punctiliously. He sounded rich. A very suitable companion for Mrs Vereker, Vernon thought him. She might even marry him, and then, perhaps, she would cease worrying Nell and making her lead this insane life.

Mr Chetwynd seemed to admire Nell a good deal, which was only natural, and he paid her one or two rather old-fashioned compliments. He sat between her and her mother.

‘You must bring Miss Nell to Dinard this summer, Mrs Vereker,' he said. ‘You really must. Quite a party of us going. Wonderful place.'

‘It sounds delightful, Mr Chetwynd, but I don't know whether we can manage it. We seem to have promised so many people for visits and one thing and another –'

‘I know you're always so much in request that it's hard to get hold of you. I hope your daughter's not listening when I congratulate you on being the mother of the beauty of the season.'

‘And I said to the syce –'

This from Major Dacre.

All the Deyres had been soldiers. Why wasn't he a soldier, thought Vernon, instead of being in business in Birmingham? Then he laughed to himself. Absurd to be so jealous. What could be worse than to be a penniless subaltern – there would be no hope of Nell then.