Martha, Eric, and George Page 8

  “All right: little illegit.,” conceded Martha. “Any way, you had your mother to look after it, and you say you could afford him, and you were at least as responsible as I was, so what you’re complaining of I’m damned if I know.”

  “What you seem to forget,” articulated Eric, through stiff lips, “is that it’s your fault he’s a … little illegit. I was ready to marry you. I wanted to marry you—”

  “And shoulder all my burdens for me,” reminded Martha. “That’s right.”

  “Now if you can’t see the difference,” began Eric passionately, “between a wife and a—a—”

  “Mistress,” supplied Martha.

  “—I do. There’s all the difference in the world—”

  “Wait a minute,” said Martha. “Do you want to marry me now?”

  It was Eric’s turn to be struck dumb. Even if he hadn’t loved another (Edith Allen), the proposition would still have terrified him. Huge, rough, bullying—ruthless and irredeemably selfish—as the adjectives crowded into Eric’s mind he saw Martha less as an old flame than as an ogress. As for her celebrity, dimly as he appreciated it, that terrified him too. His narrow existence hadn’t room for fame. At the thought of being tied for life to a celebrated ogress—

  “I should jolly well say not!” exclaimed Eric violently.

  “Then that cock won’t fight,” retorted Martha, “and if you think I’m going to have a child on my hands when after here I’m showing in London this autumn, and probably in New York next year, you can damn’ well think again, because he’s all yours.”

  —Would Eric have actually struck her? The man that lays his hand upon a woman save in the way of kindness (to quote John Tobin) is a wretch; the impulse, in Eric (as little of a wretch as possible) was nonetheless strong, and probably healthy.—Martha herself recognized it, and prepared to counter; it was as well for both parties that just then the outer door of the Relais swung open under a large, big-knuckled, freckled fist that descended uninhibitedly on Martha’s scruff.

  4

  “With the full class waiting,” stormed le maître, “also how many types one has never seen before, at least have the grace to appear before noon!”

  He hustled her out without further delay—Martha indeed glad to be so hustled, and Eric, taken aback by the rapidity of the incursion, left with that putative blow suspended and his mouth open. “Who was that,” demanded le maître, “delaying you? Another imbecile of a journalist?” “No, he’s in the City of London Paris branch Bank,” replied Martha dismissively. “What’s the model like?”

  Le maître, as has been said, possessed an eye accurate and retentive as the film of a camera. But it was ten years since he saw Eric Taylor at the studio, and he hadn’t now really looked at him; so Martha was saved further explanation.

  Chapter Fourteen

  1

  Martha’s appearance at the studio, though belated, was nonetheless highly successful. A flattered Swede—shades of Nils!—just as she’d anticipated ceded the best place with positive enthusiasm; over her shoulder, as she stood to draw, the whole class jostled watching. With a certain arrogant humour Martha (at the height of her skeleton-leaf period) decided to draw like Ingres. Smoothly accurate, strictly representational flowed her line; le maître grinned at her over the easel. “That is how one must learn to draw, before one paints!” le maître admonished his flock. “Then up to your elbows in cobalt if you wish—having first learnt to draw like mademoiselle!”

  Martha further added to her popularity by standing chocolats Liégeois all round at a neighbouring patisserie. (Of course Mr. Joyce, via le maître, paid.) It was a modest little establishment, known to the students simply as Fat Rosa’s, but the chocolats were excellent, also much cheaper than on the boulevards: Martha was glad to discover it.

  2

  Eric Taylor for his part spent the rest of the morning wandering along the quais until it was time to go back to lunch; having made rather a point of his morning off, he felt he couldn’t go back to the Bank. He would have liked to; he recognized himself his mind badly in need of some steadying influence, for with such high if ill-founded hopes had he waited at the Relais, Martha’s rough destruction of them left him at once despairing and disoriented. To be plain, Eric, imagining he at last saw the way clear before him, had mentally prepared not only that touching, never-to-be-uttered little exordium, but also a proposal of marriage to Edith Allen; and his path now once more blocked, didn’t know which way to turn.

  At any rate he couldn’t go back to the Bank.—Even when it began to rain, as so often happens, in Paris, in May, he turned up his collar and tramped on.

  There was of course another steadying influence available: his mother’s. But in fact Eric’s only immediate consolation was that Mrs. Taylor knew nothing of his démarche. Planning such treachery towards her, he’d naturally concealed it—also easily; at the late hour when Martha appeared on television (practically mute, since they always kept the volume turned down for fear of disturbing George), Mrs. Taylor was already snoozing; nor did she ever spare a glance for an art-column. If Eric couldn’t present her, as he’d hoped to do, with a fait accompli, at least he was spared the painful task of reporting his ill-success …

  With such thoughts as these running through his head, he still kept an eye on the time; and arrived home for lunch in the rue d’Antibes at his usual hour.

  3

  “You’re quite wet, dear,” said Mrs. Taylor. “Give me your jacket and I’ll dry it.”

  It crossed Eric’s mind with some force that she didn’t ask why he hadn’t taken a taxi. Obviously he couldn’t afford taxis. His mother, once so careful of his health, would have considered a taxi an extravagance. “She’d sooner I got pneumonia,” thought Eric, sullenly shrugging out his arms …

  “It’s only damp,” observed Mrs. Taylor. “By the way, dear, when I ’phoned you just after eleven—”

  “About some cheap fish?” supplied Eric—still following his own resentful train of thought.

  “No, dear, about some wool—you weren’t there,” said Mrs. Taylor. “Of course I knew you hadn’t been run over, because no one seemed worried—”

  She paused. So did Eric pause, before the implicit question. (How had he ever allowed his mother, Eric asked himself bitterly, the right to ring him up at the Bank? The answer, of course, stemmed from the earliest days of his paternity.) Now, bitterly, he made the same reply he’d given Martha.

  “After thirteen years, I believe I’m sufficiently valuable to be allowed the odd morning off.”

  His tone was intended to silence. But by this time Mrs. Taylor knew better than to humour her son in one of his odd moods. (Latterly he’d had so many odd moods!) Instead, and with the kindly, firm precision with which she’d have lanced a gumboil—

  “I suppose you went to see Martha?” said Mrs. Taylor.

  4

  Eric should have known it: there was nothing he could keep from his mother. In this instance, moreover, Mrs. Taylor, who was often more wideawake than she appeared, could recall a stifled exclamation before a television-screen; also Eric’s subsequent interest in the art-columns of the Figaro. The guess was an easy one.

  “As a matter of fact, yes,” mumbled Eric. “What’s for lunch?”

  “Steak-and-kidney pudding,” said Mrs. Taylor soothingly. “I’ll just get it …”

  She spoke soothingly indeed, she almost tiptoed from the room; once alone in the kitchen, her expression brightened. Actually the more downcast appeared her son, the better Mrs. Taylor was pleased. She had made one good guess and could make another—at why he’d been to see Martha; and though it was a motive in a sense creditable, had he returned with any air of success she would have been badly shaken. What Mrs. Taylor feared, in short, wasn’t any last attempt to make an honest woman of Martha—(“Dear Edith!” thought Mrs. Taylor warmly)—but a last attempt to rouse Martha’s sense of duty.

  Undoubtedly only Martha could instantly confer upon young George
the precious gift of British nationality. With the passing years, however, his grandmother had become, if not reconciled to his being French, at least ready to prefer his being French, and hers, to his being British and anyone else’s. She still needed a good deal more information before her comfort was complete, but Eric’s hangdog look at least promoted optimism …

  By good fortune, George was lunching at school. Mrs. Taylor could allow several healing moments of silence to elapse, and let Eric get some steak-and-kidney pudding inside him, before she probed again.

  “Of course it was only right, to go to her,” mused Mrs. Taylor aloud. “She must have been so anxious for … news.”

  Fresh from Martha’s rough company, Eric thoroughly appreciated the delicacy of the reference. The reassurance that never upon his mother’s lips would he hear the word “bastard” helped him to begin to unburden himself—as by now, whatever he’d felt earlier, he urgently needed to do.

  “You wouldn’t think so if you’d heard her,” returned Eric dolorously.

  Mrs. Taylor achieved a look of surprise.

  “Shouldn’t I, dear? Why?”

  “It’s an awful thing to say, Mother, but she showed no more interest than if I’d been talking about a—a stray pup. You’ll hardly believe this,” said Eric, dolorously, “but when I absolutely offered to let her have George back—”

  He paused. The recollection that he’d taken so tremendous (and treacherous) a step behind his mother’s back momentarily hobbled him. But Mrs. Taylor’s look didn’t chide, it rather absolved; also encouraged him to go on.

  “I felt it my duty,” explained Eric. “After all, she’s his mother, Mother; quite apart from the question of his nationality, I thought she might even be …”

  “Yearning?” offered Mrs. Taylor.

  “That’s it: yearning, for him. But not a bit of it,” said Eric bitterly. “She just can’t be bothered. I ask you, Mother, is it believable?”

  Actually to Mrs. Taylor it was not only entirely believable but also a matter for rejoicing. Her happy relief made her charitable.

  “I always did think Martha quite heartless,” reflected Mrs. Taylor. “But we must remember she has her own future to consider. Without a little … stepson, someone might some day be found prepared to marry her.”

  “Heaven help him!” ejaculated Eric.

  “Don’t be unkind, dear,” chided Mrs. Taylor. “In the meantime, Martha is obviously doing her best to earn a respectable living.” (So Mrs. Taylor glossed the most resounding artistic success in Paris memory.) “Of course it can’t be a steady way of life—not as if she were in the Prudential, for instance—but at least she seems able to support herself; and if she can’t support poor little George too, I’m sure I should be the last,” finished Mrs. Taylor liberally, “to cast a stone.”

  In the slight hiatus that followed she watched Eric narrowly for any fresh symptom of revolt against his mother’s judgment. But Eric wasn’t going to argue. His more than ever downcast look showed him finally convinced that he was going to have poor little George on his hands for life. His period of revolt had been short indeed; with for sole consequence the securing of Mrs. Taylor for life in the possession of her grandson.

  With a happy sigh, Mrs. Taylor relaxed. Certainly she wasn’t now going to change her tune and revert to Eric’s brief kicking against the pricks with any censoriousness; his re-encounter with Martha (which had she known of in advance Mrs. Taylor would have gone to any lengths to prevent) had proved too great a blessing. It was a moment for compassionate silence. Indeed, for several moments silence was preserved—if on Eric’s side rather doggedly—before Mrs. Taylor, who actually wished for no daughter-in-law whatever, suddenly perceived an opportunity to make herself doubly safe.

  “As for dear Edith—” began Mrs. Taylor again.

  “Mother!” implored Eric. “If you think I want to talk about Edith just now—”

  “But we must, dear. The time has come when Edith must be told. All.”

  “She knows all already,” muttered Eric. “She must. Who doesn’t?”

  “That little George is yours? Well, of course,” admitted Mrs. Taylor. “And I must say I think she’s always behaved quite beautifully about it. But what she doesn’t know is that his mother’s still alive. I’ve often fancied,” mused Mrs. Taylor, “that Edith thinks of George’s mother as having passed on. (As indeed she might have,” threw in Mrs. Taylor. “I’ve often thought of it myself.) Of course it makes a difference, that Martha hasn’t; and I do feel dear Edith ought to know.”

  “Why?” demanded Eric stubbornly.

  Mrs. Taylor smiled a compassionate smile.

  “That, dear, is perhaps something only another woman could understand. Edith has very high principles.”

  “I know she has. That’s why she’d be upset,” argued Eric.—Arguing at last: a bad omen.

  “Better now than too late,” said Mrs. Taylor, sadly but very firmly. “If you must know, dear, the truth is that should … should anything happen between you, and Edith found out afterwards that George’s mother was alive, she’d feel as though she’d committed … bigamy.”

  So now Eric saw that besides having young George on his hands for life he’d never be able to marry Edith Allen. He always believed everything his mother told him, especially about women. He put his head down between his hands and groaned.

  “It needn’t spoil your nice friendship,” soothed Mrs. Taylor. “And of course you needn’t tell her. Just leave everything to me.”

  5

  The line Mrs. Taylor took with Edith Allen was in fact rather different. (Mrs. Taylor lost no time. She picked up Edith at the English Library the very next day, and took her out to a very nice lunch at the English Chop-house—justifiably confident of Miss Allen’s self-control in any public place. What a daughter-in-law she would have made, reflected Mrs. Taylor, if one had wanted a daughter-in-law!) But Mrs. Taylor didn’t, and so told Edith all as explicitly as possible, though adopting a rather different line.

  “So now we know,” ended Mrs. Taylor. “Eric is committed to support little George for years and years—which you, dear Edith, realize what it costs, at a private school in Paris! Then of course there’s life-insurance; in the circumstances it must obviously be doubled—poor Eric with not just an old mother’s future to think of, but his son’s!—I mean, if anything happened.” (The word “happen,” in Mrs. Taylor’s vocabulary, usefully covered both marriage and sudden death.) “So you see, dear Edith, why I’ve felt it my duty to make plain what Eric, because he’s so attached to you, can’t bring himself to.”

  What Mrs. Taylor in fact made plain was that Eric couldn’t afford, never would be able to afford, to marry, and didn’t want Edith to go on hoping.

  Silently, stoically, like the perfect lady Mrs. Taylor knew her to be, Edith finished her steak. (It was another of her virtues that she never left anything on a plate.) Like Eric, she wasn’t going to argue. However, this time Mrs. Taylor was dealing not with her son but with another woman; and perfect lady though she might be Edith retained a modicum of mother-wit. She sensed obscurely something more to be told, something behind Mrs. Taylor’s words; but Eric’s mother ever having treated her with extreme kindness, picked up a false scent.

  “Isn’t there something else you want to tell me?” asked Edith, painfully. “I don’t mind being poor, I’ve always been poor, and I can’t believe Eric would think I minded either, if it was on account of George’s education. What you mean is that there’s still, isn’t there, Martha?”

  She pronounced the name, if with difficulty, at least steadily. Already it was familiar—as the name of some newly-diagnosed ill becomes swiftly familiar. Edith Allen was moreover of the sort doctors do not lie to.

  “Is Eric still in love with her?” asked Edith.

  “Certainly not!” cried Mrs. Taylor.

  —She checked herself. The denial had been so spontaneous, springing as it did from her deepest, happiest convictions, Mrs. Tayl
or hadn’t taken time to think. Now she saw the moment one for precaution; she thought fast; and after what seemed to Edith no more than a natural faltering, came up with a brilliant improvisation.

  “Certainly not,” repeated Mrs. Taylor, more calmly. “Martha has shown herself too utterly heartless. She may be by way of becoming a celebrity—”

  “I’ve read about her,” murmured Edith humbly.

  “—but if so it’s at the expense of every womanly feeling. When Eric, as I’ve told you, absolutely offered to let her have George back, Martha showed no more interest—these are his very words—than in a stray puppy. It’s turned him, I’m afraid for ever, from all thoughts of marrying: Martha has robbed him of his trust in women.—How quick and clever of you, dear Edith,” said Mrs. Taylor, “to see it isn’t just money! If I’ve talked as though it were, it was to spare you the pain of knowing that not even you can restore that trust. When I spoke of you—”

  “Oh, no!” cried Edith.

  “But of course I did, my dear. I saw you as Eric’s only hope of consolation.—But when I spoke of you to him, he just … didn’t want to hear your name. Thanks to Martha, Eric will die an old bachelor—and I,” ended Mrs. Taylor pathetically, “without a daughter-in-law …”

  Edith Allen sat silent. She didn’t, as Eric had done, put her head down between her hands and groan. She was in a public place. She just sat silent.

  “It still needn’t spoil your nice friendship,” reassured Mrs. Taylor, “now that you understand. You do understand, don’t you, dear?”

  “Thank you for telling me,” said Edith Allen.

  Rising to pay the bill, Mrs. Taylor kissed her lightly on the cheek; feeling it moist, kissed it again. The odd thing was that in most respects Mrs. Taylor was a thoroughly nice woman.