XVIt was five weeks since Nicholas's wedding-day and Desmond had quarrelled with him three times. First, because he had taken a flat in Aubrey Walk, with a studio inside it, instead of a house in Campden Hill Square with a studio outside it in the garden. Then, because he had refused to go into his father's business. Last of all, because of Captain Drayton and the Moving Fortress. Nicky had said that his father, who was paying his rent, couldn't afford the house with the studio in the garden; and Desmond said Nicky's father could afford it perfectly well if he liked. He said he had refused to go into his father's business for reasons which didn't concern her. Desmond pointed out that the consequences of his refusal were likely to concern her very much indeed. As for Captain Drayton and the Moving Fortress, nobody but a supreme idiot would have done what Nicky did. But Nicky absolutely refused to discuss what he had done. Nobody but a cad and a rotter would have done anything else. In the matter of the Moving Fortress what had happened was this. The last of the drawings was not finished until Desmond had settled down in the flat in Aubrey Walk. You couldn't hurry Desmond. Nicky hadn't even waited to sign his name in the margins before he had packed the plans in his dispatch box and taken them to the works, and thence, hidden under a pile of Morss estimates, to Eltham. He couldn't rest till he had shown them to Frank Drayton. He could hardly wait till they had dined, and till Drayton, who thought he was on the track of a new and horrible explosive, had told him as much as he could about it. Nicky gave his whole mind to Drayton's new explosive in the hope that, when his turn came, Drayton would do as much for him. "You know," he said at last, "the old idea of the forteresse mobile? "Yes." He couldn't tell whether Drayton was going to be interested or not. He rather thought he wasn't. "It hasn't come to anything, has it?" Drayton smiled and his eyes glittered. He knew what that excited gleam in Drayton's eyes meant. "No," he said. "Not yet." And Nicky had an awful premonition of his doom. "Well," he said, "I believe there's something in it." "So do I, Nicky." Drayton went on. "I believe there's so much in it that—Look here, I don't know what put it into your head, and I'm not asking, but that idea's a dead secret. For God's sake don't talk about it. You mustn't breathe it, or it'll get into the air. And if it does my five years' work goes for nothing. Besides we don't want Germany to collar it." And then: "Don't look so scared, old chap. I was going to tell you about it when I'd got the plans drawn." He told him about it then and there. "Low on the ground like a racing-car—" "Yes," said Nicky. "Revolving turret for the guns—no higher than that—" "Yes," said Nicky. "Sort of armoured train. Only it mustn't run on rails. It's got to go everywhere, through anything, over anything, if it goes at all. It must turn in its own length. It must wade and burrow and climb, Nicky. It must have caterpillar wheels—" "By Jove, of course it must," said Nicky, as if the idea had struck him for the first time. "What have you got there?" said Drayton finally as Nicky rose and picked up his dispatch-box. "Anything interesting? "No," said Nicky. "Mostly estimates." For a long time afterwards he loathed the fields between Eltham and Kidbrooke, and the Mid-Kent line, and Charing Cross Station. He felt as a man feels when the woman he loves goes from him to another man. His idea had gone from him to Drayton. And that, he said to himself, was just like his luck, just like the jolly sells that happened to him when he was a kid. To be sure, there was such a thing as sharing. He had only to produce his plans and his finished model, and he and Drayton would go partners in the Moving Fortress. There was no reason why he shouldn't do it. Drayton had not even drawn his plans yet; he hadn't thought out the mechanical details. He thought, "I could go back now and tell him." But he did not go back. He knew that he would never tell him. If Drayton asked him to help him with the details he would work them out all over again with him; but he would never show his own finished plans or his own model. He didn't know whether it had been hard or easy for him to give up the Moving Fortress. He did it instinctively. There was—unless he had chosen to be a blackguard—nothing else for him to do. Besides, the Moving Fortress wasn't his idea. Drayton had had it first. Anybody might have had it. He hadn't spoken of it first; but that was nothing. The point was that he had had it first, and Nicky wasn't going to take it from him. It meant more to Drayton, who was in the Service, than it could possibly mean to him. He hadn't even got a profession. As he walked back through the fields to the station, he said to himself that he didn't really care. It was only one more jolly sell. He didn't like giving up his Moving Fortress; but it wouldn't end him. There was something in him that would go on. He would make another engine. He didn't care. There was something in him that would go on. "I can't see," Desmond had said, "why Captain Drayton should be allowed to walk off with your idea." "He's worked five years on it." "He hasn't worked it out yet, and you have. Can't you see "—her face was dark and hard with anger—"there's money in it?" "If there is, all the more reason why I shouldn't bag it." "And where do I come in?" "Not just here, I'm afraid. It isn't your business." "Not my business? When I did the drawings? You couldn't possibly have done them yourself." At that point Nicky refused to discuss the matter farther. And still Desmond brooded on her grievance. And still at intervals Desmond brought it up again. "There's stacks of money in your father's business—" "There's stacks of money in that Moving Fortress—" "You are a fool, Nicky, to throw it all away." He never answered her. He said to himself that Desmond was hysterical and had a morbid fancy. But it didn't end there. He had taken the drawings and the box that had the model of the Moving Fortress in it and buried them in the locker under the big north window in Desmond's studio. And there, three weeks later, Desmond found them. And she packed the model of the Moving Fortress and marked it "Urgent with Care," and sent it to the War Office with a letter. She packed the drawings in a portfolio—having signed her own and Nicky's name on the margins—and sent them to Captain Drayton with a letter. She said she had no doubt she was doing an immoral thing; but she did it in fairness to Captain Drayton, for she was sure he would not like Nicky to make so great a sacrifice. Nicky, she said, was wrapped up in his Moving Fortress. It was his sweetheart, his baby. "He will never forgive me," she said, "as long as he lives. But I simply had to let you know. It means so much to him." For she thought, "Because Nicky's a fool, I needn't be one." Drayton came over the same evening after he had got the letter. He shouted with laughter. "Nicky," he said, "you filthy rotter, why on earth didn't you tell me?... It was Nickyish of you.... What if I did think of it first? I should have had to come to you for the details. It would have been jolly to have worked it out together.... Not a bit of it! Your wife's absolutely right. Good thing, after all, you married her. "By the way, she says there's a model. I want to see that model. Have you got it here?" Nicky went up into the studio to look for it. He couldn't find it in the locker where he'd left it. "Wherever is the damned thing?" he said. "The damned thing," said Desmond, "is where you should have sent it first of all—at the War Office. You're clever, Nicky, but you aren't quite clever enough." "I'm afraid," he said, "you've been a bit too clever, this time." Drayton agreed with him. It was, he said, about the worst thing that could possibly have happened. "She shouldn't have done that, Nicky. What on earth could have made her do it?" "Don't ask me," said Nicky, "what makes her do things." "It looks," Drayton meditated, "as if she didn't trust me. I'm afraid she's dished us. God knows whether we can ever get it back!" Desmond had a fit of hysterics when she realized how clever she had been. Desmond's baby was born late in November of that year, and it died when it was two weeks old. It was as if she had not wanted it enough to give it life for long outside her body. For though Desmond had been determined to have a child, and had declared that she had a perfect right to have one if she chose, she did not care for it when it came. And when it died Nicky was sorrier than Desmond. He had not wanted to be a father to Headley Richards' child. And yet it was the baby and nothing but the baby that had let him in for marrying Desmond. So that, when it died, he felt that somehow things had tricked and sold him. As they had turned out he need not have married Desmond after all. She herself had pointed out the extreme futility of his behaviour, lest he should miss the peculiar irony of it. For when her fright and the cause of her fright were gone Desmond resented Nicky's having married her. She didn't really want anybody to marry her, and nobody but Nicky would have dreamed of doing it. She lay weak and pathetic in her bed for about a fortnight; and for a little while after she was content to lie stretched out among her cushions on the studio floor, while Nicky waited on her. But, when she got well and came downstairs for good, Nicky saw that Desmond's weakness and pathos had come with the baby and had gone with it. The real Desmond was not weak, she was not pathetic. She was strong and hard and clever with a brutal cleverness. She didn't care how much he saw. He could see to the bottom of her nature, if he liked, and feel how hard it was. She had no more interest in deceiving him. She had no more interest in him at all. She was interested in her painting again. She worked in long fits, after long intervals of idleness. She worked with a hard, passionless efficiency. Nicky thought her paintings were hideous and repulsive; but he did not say so. He was not aware of the extent to which Desmond imitated her master, Alfred Orde-Jones. He knew nothing about painting and he had got used to the things. He had got used to Desmond, slouching about the flat, in her sloping, slovenly grace, dressed in her queer square jacket and straight short skirt, showing her long delicate ankles, and her slender feet in their grey stockings and black slippers. He was used to Desmond when she was lazy; when she sat hunched up on her cushions and smoked one cigarette after another without a word, and watched him sullenly. Her long, slippered feet, thrust out, pointed at him, watching. Her long face watched him between the sleek bands of hair and the big black bosses plaited over her ears. The beauty of Desmond's face had gone to sleep again, stilled into hardness by the passing of her passion. A sort of ugliness was awake there, and it watched him. In putting weakness and pathos away from her Desmond had parted with two-thirds of her power. Yet the third part still served to hold him, used with knowledge and a cold and competent economy. He resented it, resisted it over and over again; and over and over again it conquered resentment and resistance. It had something to do with her subtle, sloping lines, with her blackness and her sallow whiteness, with the delicate scent and the smoothness of her skin under the sliding hand. He couldn't touch her without still feeling a sort of pity, a sort of affection. But she could take and give caresses while she removed her soul from him in stubborn rancour. He couldn't understand that. It amazed him every time. He thought it horrible. For Nicky's memory was faithful. It still kept the impression of the Desmond he had married, the tender, frightened, helpless Desmond he had thought he loved. The Desmond he remembered reminded him of Veronica. And Desmond said to herself, "He's impossible. You can't make any impression on him. I might as well be married to a Moving Fortress." Months passed. The War Office had not yet given up Nicky's model of the Moving Fortress. In the first month it was not aware of any letter or of any parcel or of any Mr. Nicholas Harrison. In the second month inquiries would be made and the results communicated to Captain Drayton. In the third month the War Office knew nothing of the matter referred to by Captain Drayton. Drayton hadn't a hope. "We can't get it back, Nicky," he said. "I can," said Nicky, "I can get it back out of my head." All through the winter of nineteen-eleven and the spring of nineteen-twelve they worked at it together. They owned that they were thus getting better results than either of them could have got alone. There were impossibilities about Nicky's model that a gunner would have seen at once, and there were faults in Drayton's plans that an engineer would not have made. Nicky couldn't draw the plans and Drayton couldn't build the models. They said it was fifty times better fun to work at it together. Nicky was happy. Desmond watched them sombrely. She and Alfred Orde-Jones, the painter, laughed at them behind their backs. She said "How funny they are! Frank wouldn't hurt a fly and Nicky wouldn't say 'Bo!' to a goose if he thought it would frighten the goose, and yet they're only happy when they're inventing some horrible machine that'll kill thousands of people who never did them any harm." He said, "That's because they haven't any imagination." Nicky got up early and went to bed late to work at the Moving Fortress. The time between had to be given to the Works. The Company had paid him fairly well for all his patents in the hope of getting more of his ideas, and when they found that no ideas were forthcoming they took it out of him in labour. He was too busy and too happy to notice what Desmond was doing. One day Vera said to him, "Nicky, do you know that Desmond is going about a good deal with Alfred Orde-Jones?" "Is she? Is there any reason why she shouldn't?" "Not unless you call Orde-Jones a reason." "You mean I've got to stop it? How can I?" "You can't. Nothing can stop Desmond." "What do you think I ought to do about it?" "Nothing. She goes about with scores of people. It doesn't follow that there's anything in it." "Oh, Lord, I should hope not! That beastly bounder. What could there be in it?" "He's a clever painter, Nicky. So's Desmond. There's that in it." "I've hardly a right to object to that, have I? It's not as if I were a clever painter myself." But as he walked home between the white-walled gardens of St. John's Wood, and through Regent's Park and Baker Street, and down the north side of Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens, he worried the thing to shreds. There couldn't be anything in it. He could see Alfred Orde-Jones—the raking swagger of the tall lean body in the loose trousers, the slouch hat and the flowing tie. He could see his flowing black hair and his haggard, eccentric face with its seven fantastic accents, the black eyebrows, the black moustache, the high, close-clipped side whiskers, the two forks of the black beard. There couldn't be anything in it. Orde-Jones's mouth was full of rotten teeth. And yet he never came home rather later than usual without saying to himself, "Supposing I was to find him there with her?" He left off coming home late so that he shouldn't have to ask himself that question. He wondered what—if it really did happen—he would do. He wondered what other men did. It never occurred to him that at twenty-two he was young to be considering this problem. He rehearsed scenes that were only less fantastic than Orde-Jones's face and figure, or that owed their element of fantasy to Orde-Jones's face and figure. He saw himself assaulting Orde-Jones with violence, dragging him out of Desmond's studio, and throwing him downstairs. He wondered what shapes that body and those legs and arms would take when they got to the bottom. Perhaps they wouldn't get to the bottom all at once. He would hang on to the banisters. He saw himself simply opening the door of the studio and ordering Orde-Jones to walk out of it. Really, there would be nothing else for him to do but to walk out, and he would look an awful ass doing it. He saw himself standing in the room and looking at them, and saying, "I've no intention of interrupting you." Perhaps Desmond would answer, "You're not interrupting us. We've finished all we had to say." And he would walk out and leave them there. Not caring. He wondered if he would look an awful ass doing it. In the end, when it came, he hadn't to do any of these things. It happened very quietly and simply, early on a Sunday evening after he had got back from Eltham. He had dined with Drayton and his people on Saturday, and stayed, for once, over-night, risking it. Desmond was sitting on a cushion, on the floor, with her thin legs in their grey stockings slanting out in front of her. She propped her chin on her hands. Her thin, long face, between the great black ear-bosses, looked at him thoughtfully, without rancour. "Nicky," she said, "Alfred Orde-Jones slept with me last night." And he said, simply and quietly, "Very well, Desmond; then I shall leave you. You can keep the flat, and I or my father will make you an allowance. I shan't divorce you, but I won't live with you." "Why won't you divorce me?" she said. "Because I don't want to drag you through the dirt." She laughed quietly. "Dear Nicky," she said, "how sweet and like you. But don't let's have any more chivalrous idiocy. I don't want it. I never did." (She had forgotten that she had wanted it very badly once. But Nicky did not remind her of that time. No matter. She didn't want it now). "Let's look at the thing sensibly, without any rotten sentiment. We've had some good times together, and we've had some bad times. I'll admit that when you married me you saved me from a very bad time. That's no reason why we should go on giving each other worse times indefinitely. You seem to think I don't want you to divorce me. What else do you imagine Alfred came for last night? Why we've been trying for it for the last three months. "Of course, if you'll let me divorce you for desertion, it would be very nice of you. That," said Desmond, "is what decent people do." He went out and telephoned to his father. Then he left her and went back to his father's house. Desmond asked the servant to remember particularly that it was the fifteenth of June and that the master was going away and would not come back again. As Nicky walked up the hill and across the Heath, he wondered why it had happened, and why, now that it had happened, he cared so little. He could have understood it if he hadn't cared at all for Desmond. But he had cared in a sort of way. If she had cared at all for him he thought they might have made something of it, something enduring, perhaps, if they had had children of their own. He still couldn't think why it had happened. But he knew that, even if he had loved Desmond with passion, it wouldn't have been the end of him. The part of him that didn't care, that hadn't cared much when he lost his Moving Fortress, was the part that Desmond never would have cared for. He didn't know whether it was outside him and beyond him, bigger and stronger than he was, or whether it was deep inside, the most real part of him. Whatever happened or didn't happen it would go on. How could he have ended here, with poor little Desmond? There was something ahead of him, something that he felt to be tremendous and holy. He had always known it waited for him. He was going out to meet it; and because of it he didn't care. And after a year of Desmond he was glad to go back to his father's house; even though he knew that the thing that waited for him was not there. Frances and Anthony were happy again. After all, Heaven had manipulated their happiness with exquisite art and wisdom, letting Michael and Nicholas go from them for a little while that they might have them again more completely, and teaching them the art and wisdom that would keep them. Some day the children would marry; even Nicky might marry again. They would prepare now, by small daily self-denials, for the big renunciation that must come. Yet in secret they thought that Michael would never marry; that Nicky, made prudent by disaster, wasn't really likely to marry again. John would marry; and they would be happy in John's happiness and in John's children. And Nicky had not been home before he offered to his parents the spectacle of an outrageous gaiety. You would have said that life to Nicholas was an amusing game where you might win or lose, but either way it didn't matter. It was a rag, a sell. Even the preceedings, the involved and ridiculous proceedings of his divorce, amused him. It was undeniably funny that he should be supposed to have deserted Desmond. Frances wondered, again, whether Nicky really had any feelings, and whether things really made any impression on him. Last | Next | Contents |