They were still sitting snugly in the back of the car, and now the talk had drifted round to Sir William Porterhouse. Gladys was determined to explain about him, rather to Penderel’s alarm, though he admitted to himself that he felt curious.
‘Of course I like him,’ she was saying, ‘or I wouldn’t go away with him. You can depend on that. But I’m just about as much in love with him as I am with old Banks, the doorkeeper at the Alsatia. I’m not going to put on any airs with you—we’re through with anything like that, aren’t we? And that’s funny too, when you think we’ve only just met.’
‘Yes, but we met in the middle of a black night,’ he told her. ‘And that makes the difference. It’s too damned lonely putting on airs a night like this. And then there isn’t much time.’
‘How d’you mean, there isn’t much time? There’s plenty of time. There always is.’ But she was hurt rather than puzzled. He must mean that he wouldn’t be seeing her any more after this, and somehow she had expected he would be, quite a lot.
‘I don’t know what I meant,’ he said. And he didn’t, now that he came to think of it. It was just a queer spurt of emotion, feeling all things rushing by them. ‘I think I must have meant the usual poetical Preacher stuff: we’re like flowers that are fresh in the morning and withered in the evening; you must know the sort of thing.’
‘Oh, that!’ She dismissed these antique fancies with hearty contempt, all the more hearty because she felt suddenly relieved. ‘That’s only true about looks, when you’re bothering about your face and figure. But it’s not true about anything else, is it? Everybody I’ve ever met had more time than they knew what to do with; even old Bill there—with all his cables and telegrams and private secretaries and rushing about—has more gaps than he knows how to fill; I know that. Those old fellows—they read ’em out in church, don’t they?—must have really been Beauty specialists.’
‘Perhaps they were—in a way,’ he put in, reflectively. ‘But what were you going to say, before you began about not putting on any airs?’
‘Oh, yes. About me and Bill. Well, it really boils down to this. It’s been a convenient arrangement for both of us. As I said before, I like him, and he’s helped me a lot, given me a pretty good time. There’s been nothing regular about it, you know; no little flats and all the rest of it; he’s just taken me out when he’s felt like it or when I’ve felt like it, and we’ve had a few week-ends away. This is the longest and the farthest: I was down on this one from the start, but he was desperately keen, wanted a day’s golf at Harlech. If he was like some of them I’ve seen and heard of, not gone away with, though—for ever pawing round you and very smarmy—there’d have been nothing doing. But what he really wants—most times anyhow—is just somebody to be with, to talk big to at dinner or late at night. He likes to sit on the edge of a bed, boasting a bit to round off the day. He’s lonely really, for all his talk. He ought to have married again; his wife died when he was young and he hasn’t forgotten her either. You can guess that pretty soon. I’ve weighed him up.’
‘I can see the balance in your hand,’ said Penderel. ‘It’s terrifying, but go on.’
‘Now you’re making fun of me,’ she cried. ‘I shan’t tell you any more.’