Chapter XXII

CHAPTER XXII "THERE ought to be a drawbridge," said Marta, ('with Marmion clanking across, dressed up in the kitchen stove. Or Ivanhoe." They had come out on the terrace overlooking the water-meadows. Wind sor is a toy castle, she thought. Big enough, but it's not-not grown-up. Russ said: uThere was a picture of Windsor in a book at home, on the marble-topped table in the parlor." Their impression was subjective, Marta recognized; it took them back to ten years old. All the same you can't feel anyone living here. The people who actually lived here have been gone so long, even their ghosts are dispersed. . . . They weren't con scientious tourists; they went down the hill, to hire a carriage. Motor cars were not allowed in the Forest. Their Jehu had a devastating cockney accent, and his ears were wadded with cottonwool. "This ain't no carriage," Marta commented sotto voce, (Cit's a buggy."

She removed her hat, which obscured the landscape. They ambled gently along an earth road; the trees were admirably grouped, and a herd of deer grazed daintily in the middle distance.. "I never went buggy276 N EVE R ASK THE END riding, did you?" Russ said: "Not often," ignoring an unbidden recollection. ((At home, I had to be in every night by eight." Marta exclaimed: "So that's how you got that way?" "How-what way?n ((Sulking in your corner. When things go wrong, you just sit there, telling yourself you knew they would." He acknowledged: "How do you know? What's more, the wronger they go the better it suits me. J can't snap out of it, have to wait for it to wear off." . . . No you don't he said to himself, and be came stiller.. Yau had your showdown . . . He set his shoulders; Marta was saying: ((Dh, I used to watch you. Burning up and eating your own smoke." ..• She'd done it again, touched him. The way a woman does when she really gives you a kiss, slipping her arms under your coat, warm and smooth as silk around your heart. . . . But she's holding her hat on her knee . . .

"When the Prince of Wyles is at the Castle," the driver pointed with his frayed whip, "this is 'is fyvorite ride. '1m and the Duke of York. Abaht where the deer are, they generally tyke different directions; the Prince keeps to the right and the Duke to the left." Russ raised his voice civilly: "Thank you." In a lower tone, addressing the driver's back, he added: "I'm glad they can break away when they're fed up with each other, the Prince and the Duke." ... Conversation was diffiN EVE R ASK THE END 277 cult to fit in between the unexpected contributions of their cicerone. This had also been Queen Victoria's fyvorite drive. Frogmore was abaht twelve miles over yonder. Each time he turned and 'held them with his glittering eye, the intense intelligent scrutiny of the deaf. His threadbare ulster was buttoned tight across his narrow chest; the raw color on his thin cheekbones might have been weather or drink. Or consumption.

Poor soul ..• The utter inconsequence of an equestrian statue of George the Fourth a mile from anywhere invited them to a respite from the habits of his successors. They descended from their carriage and sat on a convenient tussock of turf. Marta resumed an interrupted remark: "But Goodwin won't be willingto let you retire. Espe cially if you put over that contract in Rome." Russ said: "1 can bring him around." Marta looked enquir ing. Russ explained: "On my way back from China, I stopped over in Tokyo to make arrangements for breaking shipments in bond. The Japanese official I had to deal with seemed to take a fancy to me. He must have been nearly seventy; he was retiring at the end of the month, and he fixed up my business in short order. He'd been offering his resignation for ten years. The government wouldn't accept it. One night at din ner the old boy unbelted, told me how he'd worked it finally. He began making mistakes. Not so bad they couldn't be corrected. Then he'd apologize--say his memory was failing. And pretty soon he'd make 278 N EVE R ASK THE END another mistake. Till they'd had enough. He didn't dare tell his little joke except to a foreigner. Well, I'll begin making mistakes.') Marta suggested doubtfully, it would go against the grain. When you're used to doing your best. II • • "1 make mistakes now. But I cover them up." Russ hesitated, his characteristic pause before a confidence, which made it more personal.

He said: 'CLast winter Goodwin sent me to reorganize the service in Rome. Getting ready for this bid we're working on now. I went over the city lvith surveyors. Though half the time I didn't know where I was. Rome is--oh, you'd never get to the end of it. I'd like to spend a year there. It goes down.... Anyhow, I took maps, and made a couple of tracings, dotted in one for population, another for our connections, and approximated them. To get district centers. After I'd checked it over three times, we had a conference of the board and the local engineers. They said it was great. And the general manager said: 'I'm glad you've decided to move the administration office.' 1 nearly went through the floor. Lucky I was too stunned to speak right away. The administration office! I'd clean forgotten it when I centered the whole plan. After I came to, I said: of course, that depends on whether the site is available. They said, oh, yes, they could get the site. They'd wanted to make the move, but hadn't got further than talking about it. . . . That was my big hit. If you want to know, it's why Goodwin made me N EVE R ASK THE END 279 technical director for Europe. So now you know more than he does."

"MY gosh!" said Marta. ((Pure genius! I f you detect me regarding you with awe, you'll know that's what it is. By the way, could you stop this rain?" It drop splashed on her nose. "If 1 detect you doing anything of the kind, I'll know you're giving me the raspberry," said Russ, as they strolled back to their carriage. He regarded her with well-grounded suspicion during the remainder of the. afternoon .... He shuts up like a clam, she thought, because he's naturally candid. It's his only defence. He knows that if he answers at all he is likely to tell the truth. He has literally nothing to say to Ernest; he can't very well say what he thinks of him, and he'd sooner be shot than let Ernest in on his thoughts about anything less, his private mind. Even his disconnected literal statements are keys to some personal experience; and he stops himself just in time, as he did at the con ference. In his position he has to practically gag him self; his least remark might be twisted into office poli tics. He has nobody to tell his little jokes to, like the old Japanese ..•. How dangerous it is to go near any human being. Tigers are safe by comparison. When Sisera fell asleep in the tent of Jael, she drove a nail into his head. And everybody said it was very clever of her. . . . Yet we have to open to somebody. We don't tell quite all, there's always something we hold back. We'd deny it to the Recording Angel, on the 280 N EVE R ASK THE END Judgment Day. Maybe only a trifle, most likely a stupidity that cheapened a good intention. But there's usually one big thing, a tragedy or a cowardice or a be trayal. And a few very .funny episodes, scandalous, that come back suddenly at the most inappropriate moment, and you have to lie in a hurry when you're asked what you are smiling at. Like Keith's silver watch ... 1 wonder what would be the one thing Russ would never tell . . • ,eWell, my work is totally ridiculous," she said. "Any way you look at it." So it was. A weekly comic strip_ ((1 can't even draw." She made the characters with circles and triangles. The foolish dialogue had won for it a measure of success. She could invent it only by not thinking at all in the process. It had begun as a joke, in letters to Alma, who showed them to a friend-the editor of a "woman's page," who suggested the possi bility of using them for "fillers." They had caught on. This preposterous stuff got her a living, even got her photograph uin the papers," for the bedazzlement of Ernest. What had it to do with the years of hard work that had gone before? Nothing but that she extracted her comedy from the stuff of common ex perience . . • Certainly she had been the sport of chance. Other people must be more capable of shaping a career according to a predetermined plan. Only she didn't yet know what it was she had wanted to do.

Some grave, exact and exacting occupation, with a scholarly or mathematical technique. Or else to be N EVE R ASK THE END 281 wholly scatterbrained and idle. Probably if she had had money" she would have played about frivolously. Between these extremes of disinterested concentration and utter irresponsibility, she would have found no satisfaction. The middle way no doubt was best; the fault was in herself. She couldn't walk straight along a pavement. Under the yoke of necessity, she had done her work as well as possible; she had no other merit. "You either get the breaksor you don't," she quoted, as they drove back through the moist teeming green ness, more than ever at the mercy of the driver. "I'll bet if you thumb-screwed the truth out of any success ful man, he'd own up that he had arrived by a fluke. But that doesn)t do more than even the odds; he had to be able to use the chance when it came. There are years and years when nothing will go through, no matter how you break your neck and your heart I trying." ... He knew it only too well. In the big companies, the important positions, or rather the well paid ones, were filled by favor. It was hard enough to get the work done so somebody's son or nephew might blandly pocket the prestige and profit. Inherit ing his place has a fundamental effect on a man; he goes through the motions, but he doesn't know what it's all about. You have to work around him; he is simply in the way •.•"When you land your Roman contract," said Marta, "it won't be by accident."

((Do you think I can?" Russ asked. It wasn't, he 282 N EVE R ASK THE END explained, a question of engineering, in the final issue. I t concerned the other branch of management, a matter of negotiation and financing. His business in Milan had been with bankers. Goodwin was working on it himself .•.. Marta saw he was asking her quite simply for a word of assurance, to be believed in. "0£ course you can," she said with conviction. «I've never been very good at persuading people," . Russ said. "But don't you know you can get people to do any thing you choose?" she exclaimed. "1 mean you can." "How?" he enquired. "I can't analyze it. You-you just sit there," she broke into laughter. "And they want to please you. You always could have, but I suppose you didn't know." It's true, she thought. I'm trying to please him. But we all need to be told. It's little enough to do for someone you like. We don't say the nice things we think about our friends. We make compliments to strangers ...

Russ said: "Aleck Owen was afraid to take it on. I said, if he didn't want to help, I'd handle it alone. He said of course he wanted to help, he was all for it. So now he can't go against me." Neat, Marta thought; Russ trumped the trick. The technical staff was there to execute projects and policies decided by the general management, both being answer able to Goodwin. And Owen had handed over his N EVE R ASK THE END 283 special authority to Russ, carte blanche. "You should ask me how!" she said ••.The driver said he thought it was clearing up. They had a bel~ted lunch in the chilly and deserted dining-room of the very English hotel in the royal town. Bad luck that it should have rained. Genuinely English hotels hold in solution the essence of innumer able wet days. Marta forced herself to keep up a desul tory flow of frivolity; if she allowed the pall of gloom to settle, no human strength could lift it. "There must be a law," she surmised, "against washingsalad in F.ng land. And the English are a law-abid,ingrace." Russ said: "You remind me a good deal of Harriet Gwynn."

Marta investigated an accessory slice of beetroot un hopefully. "Who is Harriet Gwynn?" "My wife," said Russ. I don't know the answer to that, Marta thought. She couldonly stammer: "Excuseitplease. The fact is, I'm in ignorance of your dark past. Except that you've been married and maybe divorced." "I believe so," said Russ. "Harriet wrote me that the divorce had gone through) while I was in China." Then they are still on speaking terms, Marta thought. Better not enquire how I remind him.... "I'm not," divorced, she meant. "I was afraid I'd get married again in a thought less moment, and 1 have a hunch that if you can)t make it stick the first time, you might as well quit." "1 think you're right," Russ agreed.. "N0 matter who I was married to, I'd fall for someone else." "What you 284 N EVE R ASK THE END need," Marta advised, "is a card index system." • Maybe he wants to talk about his wife. But I made a gaffe once. . . . How do I remind him? . . . She was completely at a loss.

It was time' to catch the return train. Russ must have been up at six, Marta thought, while she said menda ciously that she would rest an hour before dinner, in case he wished to. They walked to the station. . . . The toy engine of their train aroused Russ's profes sional interest; it resembled a tea-kettle in a tea-cart. Marta said: "Did you ever go over the Rogers Pass, in the Rockies, before they tunneled it? The mountain division was only ten or fifteen miles long. They put on four and sometimes six Mogul locomotives for the big transcontinental passenger trains. At night, hitting that three per cent. grade, two engines in front and two behind, pouring out streams of smoke and fire, it was like going to hell on a first-class ticket. Perched up in a sort of crow's nest in the observation car. There was a man from Pittsburgh asked me to elope with him. Made you feel like that." She regretted her refusal. "I didn't, so I've never seen Pittsburgn." She was making conversation out of whatever came to mind.

"When was that?" Russ enquired. "Dun't esk." A long time. But he's seen your passport. "Twenty years ago." Russ said: "1 was in Pittsburgh twenty years ago." "Why, of course, that's where you met Nonie." ('The year I was married," said Russ. . .. He does N EVE R ASK THE END 285 want to talk about her, Marta thought. Their train drew up to the platform. Russ opened the door. "It was Nonie introduced me to Harriet." "You certainly mixed those babies up," said Marta wildly. And stopped as a very correct English couple got into the same compartment. They fell back on banalities, at uncertain intervals. Their train was a local, all waystations. "We must be on the wrong train," said Marta finally. "I'm sure we're running around London in circles. About midnight we'll arrive at the end of the line-· Magnum Parva or Stoke Pages or Little Pudlington." To her complete discomfiture, the English lady opposite said courteously: "This is the London train. Waterloo station." Marta replied feebly: "Thank you,') and subsided.... A dismal sta tion; but the street lamps were lit in the city.

Russ paused at the porter's desk in the hotel to make reservations for tomorrow's boat. He :)howed Marta, doubtfully, the slip he had filled out. "Is that right? Nonie used to call me down for spelling her name wrong. I can't spelL" Martha Browne. "Perfectly correct," said Marta. gravely. He did pretty well to spell hoth my names wrong, she thought. I wouldn't tell him for worlds-the duck. Besides, she had been named Martha. Her full name was a dreadful secret. Martha May! She spent the rest hour powdering her nose repeat edly and wondering if the day had been a failure. She had missed Pauline ... Russ was wearing the green tie 286 N EVE R ASK THE END when they went to dinner. The French restaurant they pitched upon was absolutely empty except for them selves; Sunday night in August, out of season. She had lost all her cues, and talked extravagant nonsense. She didn't dare stop. Russ was so quiet, she couldn't tell what he made of it; was it the color or the wide open directness of his eyes that lent them such in scrutable innocence? ..• No heel-taps. Better leave too soon than overstay. "This is such a homelike cor ner; doesn't it remind you of the back room of the old New York saloon? Family entrance. It was always cool in summer, and so correct. Ladies were not allowed to smoke." She extinguished her final cigarette and lifted her arms to put on her hat. The attitude drew her thin frock close.••.Breasts Jike a maid, he thought. In Alma's car•••.She said you always could have. . • • But that wasn't what she was talking about.

. . . And damn it, you always wanted to .•. He said: "Will you write me when you get back: to New York?" "Of course I will. Twice. You'll in tend to answer, but you'll put it off. I daresay it's more sensible to forget people when they're away." ... He thought: If I could work it through Colville, have him send for Ernest .... He said: "I don't for get. It's because I'm sure I'll see them again." Why, that must be so, she thought, rather dazed. He did send word, this year and last year and the year before, to Alma and to me. Asking us to come over. . . . "1 always have a feeling that I won't see my N EVE R ASK THE END 287 friends again," she said unguardedly. "On the dock at Antwerp. • ••" The waiter was presenting the bill, and she was grateful for the interruption. In the street, Russ said: "1 went back to the dock at Antwerp." "You came back?" "Yes. Those drunks were still quarreling at the gangplank. Yau weren't on deck."

We had gone below, Marta thought sadly. Because it was so dreary without Russ. He didn't want us to leave. And if we'd seen him, we'd have gone ashore again. That's the way things are.... A cab cruised up to the curb. The hotel was only a dozen blocks distant; Russ said: "Shall we drive around for a few minutes? They say Westminster Bridge is fine at night." "I'd love to see it." A few more minutes ... She folded her hands prettily. The night was soft and cool, too sweet to spoil; when Russ offered her a ciga rette she shook her head, turning slightly toward him with the gesture. . . ~ She was not aware how it hap pened, only that he was holding her close, kissing her. As they had once kissed. . . . She flung her hat to the floor of the cab and slid out of her silk coat to clasp her bare arms about his neck. He said, with a deep sigh, as if he couldn't help himself: "Oh, you must, you must!" With his hand over her heart. She was changing into a cloud. A feather against amber • • .

The cabman said: ('Westminster Bridge, sir." The universe stopped.... There was a cabman. He 288 N EVE R ASK THE END repeated inexorably: ((This is Westminster Bridge." Marta said: ((To hell with it." Russ chuckled, while she recovered her hat and coat and purse. The cabman said: ((Thank you) sir." The long dim-lit level of the bridge stretched over an un fathomable gulf. Two or three people moved on it at a distance. Marta had to hold to Russ's arm; they leaned upon the parapet, and saw faint streaks of gold and silver glimmering far below in the liquid dark ness. Across the Thames an immense electric sign made a broad golden blur. Russ said: (cy ou'll be glad to know that Hilgate's Toothpaste is the best." "Where?" said Marta. "That sign," Russ explained. She, said: ((1 thought it was all the stars," and they kissed again. They were both laughing. Like a drunken sailor and his girl, Marta thought; no) a sailor and his drunken girl; Russ drank nothing. "Why did I payoff the cab?" Russ said aloud. He hadn't known what he was doing either. She was glad of it. He signalled another taxi and gave the address of the hotel. They sat apart; Marta concentrated with an in tense effort-· her hat, her hair. . . . She must walk through the lounge and ask for her key.... She had it. The lift boy paid no attention to them; they were silent and perhaps appeared sleepy. They waited until the lift had sunk out of sight again. Russ looked at Marta; the hall was quite empty and she opened her· door ... They had always liked each other...• CHAPTER XXIII THE waiters were indubitably French. Marta was down a few minutes early, and postponed her order.